festivalIt starts out harmlessly enough. A celebration of local culture. A parade. Local vendors selling falafel. Volvos in tutus. Buddhists blowing bubbles. A chance to show off the kids and, in turn, to be seen by others who share your pride of place.
Hey, consider yourself lucky. You live in upstate New York, surrounded by natural beauty where the slow hand of distant ice ages left their mark. In a practically lily white enclave. Where, untouched by war and its attendant sorrows, you can play the liberal card, watch the decals slowly peel off your bumper, plant a anti-Bush sign on your front lawn, write letters to the papers about the virtues of renaming this or that after MLK.
Ithacaculture. Bobo volk culture. A celebration of the good life. Wineries, the Farmer's Market, coop groceries, trendy Vegetarian restaurants, an educated labor force. There are parts of the US where 1 in 10 have a college degree. 1 in 3 Ithacans have a MA or better. The other two/thirds mow your lawns, bus tables at your favorite bistros, stock the shelves at Wegmanns.
You live in paradise. Your rightful place. You have the right stuff. You keep the riff raff away by raising the bar for rents, keeping the economy cool, building fewer low income housing units, gentrification, social stratification.
You deserve your own special festival. Celebrate!
Holy shit! Ezra! Do you know what you just did? You equated the Ithaca Festival with the Nurenberg Party Rallies of the 1930's! How the fuck can you get away with that shit?
What the fuck? (This is Ez talking, not one of the angels of his better nature.) It's a free county, right? Not technically, but theoretically right? If I want to compare these self-satisfied, self-congratulatory, hagiography-manufacturing, middle class, elitist, so-called liberal hypocrites with nazis, well's that's that my right. Who do you fuck come off saying I can't compare that shit? This is a free speech blog. This is a temporary autononomous zone, thanks Mr. Hakim Bey, this is pirate internet, this is a chronic grumbler, complainer, hitman of the gemutlich, rainbow griper, Ezra Kidder, speaking his mind.
But, still man, Ithaca ain't that bad. This is not Nazi Germany, be real, after all. Those people out there at the ithaca festival aren't like killing jews or shit like that?
Well, yeah, you're right. But all Nazi Germany's start off in little petri dishes where the conservative forces in society team up with people who can deliver the muscle to create a single monololithic narrative for the rest of society. Suddenly there is no free press, no opposition parties, no alternative narratives, no other way of looking at the world except the dominant paradigm. Ithaca is gorges is the dominant paradigm. There is no real opposing point of view that makes it through. You've got the university, the politicans, the business community, the cultural elites teaming up to deliver the message that ithaca is great, things are better here than anywhere else, love it or leave it. Now that is fascism whether it looks like the brown shirt variety or not. It's too bad. Ithaca has so much potential. But there is a generalized suppression of energy, a diverting of power away from the edges to the center, a dampening of joy. Ithaca is gorges but you don't see people dancing and swimming in those gorges, do you? You don't see people out in the parks, you don't see having fun. Because for most people who can't make a living in ithaca, or a marginal one at best, or who work for jerks because the area seems to attract the jerk entrepeneurial types who open businessesm restaurants, bakeries, the small fascist businessman variety, ithaca is not gorges. It's existential palookaville. Did I spell that right? Free the gorges. Free the people. Fuck Ithaca.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 10:53 AM
