“In order to keep their sanity,” Thomas said, “Russians from the Soviet Union had deep and serious discussions about serious and deep subjects. In order to save their lives, they orchestrated never reaching any serious conclusions,” he said, he did, as you can read here, word-for-word, of course, everything herein is verbatim, no? You doubt it is so?” He asked.
“I might say something similar to and about Americans,” he said, having lived here all of his life. “Yes, almost . . .what? What is it about what Americans do with this talking endlessly they seem to be in love with doing . . . women, for the many instances they incur, all the time talking ceaselessly, yes, especially about the need to talk and about how no one likes to talk about the need to talk which is what they do all the time when talking, talking talking about how no one talks enough about what they should talk about including the need to talk about the need to talk,” he said without a trace of mocking. He does not mock. He has been accused of mocking from a few who are not too bright in spite of their level of education, purported, verified, however it is or has been appraised in a culture too long divorced from supporting literacy as something other than and yes higher and more advanced than the mere alphabetics that gets instructed . . . too many students in our Public Schools are told they are special every day for no reason, without any accomplishment, so the kid in class who cannot read imagines he’s a genius, believes it . . . and couple that with a complete lack of faith in expertise and a pronounced disbelief in the existence of Truth as even a direction, a destination to move toward, as well as a disbelief in Knowledge as even a possibility . . .
“How is it that anyone takes this seriously, as abstract as everything said becomes, once removed from once removed and so on in perpetuity backwards,” he said. “And what it is that is needed in the talking . . . this talking especially about the need to address how no one talks enough about how they should say what they are certain they should say having received their scripts, performing them like the perfect parrots they have all of them become,” he said. Do not ask me how, that is, with what inflection, tone, pace, rhythm, whatever else we have in words to describe the speech of another that any one of us would be privy to . . . do not ask me exactly how he has spoken.
“All this talk is not about saving their lives, but something else that leads them to draw no conclusions of any seriousness; but since having reached the culturally unilateral conclusion that Doubt is the highest wisdom, and Truth is a lie and that there are no absolutes of any kind, Americans talk and talk and talk about everything, especially serious subjects, and get nowhere, intellectually, spiritually, practically, concluding nothing of any worth, upholding the dogma that knowledge is impossible and that the man or woman who does know anything must always be suspected and vilified if possible, or necessary, the latter always arising in a culture ruled by superstition and mysticism when not outright mystery and the power of feeling or emotion, the latter perpetually linked with com-motion, either of these motions always other than both passion and compassion . . . neither of which we have, being ruled, as my bigotry allows me to conclude, Protestant metaphysics, the threads that have woven our Totalitarian Bourgeois Capitalism,” or so he feels compelled to say, “as completely fuckin’ abstract as they are . . . as crass as everything bourgeois has ever been, turning everything done, made, created into one form of prostitution after another. There will be no freedom without 300,000 fuckin heads rolling in the gutters,” he insisted. “Ah! the impure blood flowing and washing away the litter, the refuse and pollution in the streets . . . blood is not impure by nature, but by nurture not necessarily long endured. And make no mistake, the heads will not be of one kind, but of all kinds. That will be necessary.”
The Falling Leaf Review 