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Yuck...more creepy fetishization of the unhealthy but tremendously picturesque practices of the underclasses. Those dice games are certainly "authentic". So was that awesome dis...and Ok, so that Brown Authentic was driving a Hummer but...c'mon, we can't hold them to the same standards to which we hold ourselves, we the illuminated Right Thinkers! Halliburton gives money to charity. Hamas hands out rice to Palestinians. Tammany Hall helped immigrants out when they arrived in New York. I'm sure you could easily dredge up plenty of people who owe their lives to these organizations...plenty of little Billys from Beaumont whose heart transplants would have been impossible without that phone call from Dick Cheney. None of this changes anything important. There are two ways of looking at these groups: 1. They are noble public endeavors which have all, unfortunately, been tainted with some sort of corruption. 2. They are all gangs who, for one reason or another, have masterfully and cynically manipulated the established orthodoxies of public opinion to accrue power to themselves in one way or another.
The author mentions that that one guy with the Mumia poster on his wall has gentle eyes or something...this is the whole substance of this kind of heartbreaking ideological junk thinking: seduction by the image. The raised fist - Mumia's benevolent gaze - the American Real Man cutting Brush on his Ranch - the nobly suffering Brown Authentic - the post 9/11 American Flags everywhere - the hysterically impotent gesture (picking the fancy lettuce) flung in the face of the Evil Master - the stupid "commemorative vegetable patch" ("we are united in our putrid resentment"), no different from those maudlin and ridiculous 9/11 "Osama we're coming for you!" t-shirts - just empty images, exhilirating in the same way that watching a Kevin Garnett slam dunk is and whose capacity to deceive is bottomless...disgusting.
