Oh, How Lucrative to be a Slave

I can’t imagine how anyone who creates wouldn’t be reflective on the current climate of culture. (By the way, click here if you’d rather listen to this post, rather than read it).

When we allow what is considered socially acceptable and what is not to be determined by another person, then we have already lost any credentials we may have had as artists. Because art is then no longer an attempt to connect to the individual, but just an attempt to appease the masses.

Do you recall when we used to fawn over anti-war protest work? Bob Dylan made a career of it. Hell, half a dozen druggies proclaimed decades ago to fight the media establishment and write what you want, paint what you want, set a guitar on fire while covered in mud whenever you want and scream “HOWL!” (A more poignant poem now than I think it was before).

Some of our most important and prominent artists are noted for their rebellious desire to push back against the mob’s choking control over artistic permission.

These days….? Compliance is required when you approach your canvas. Community standards are to be adhered if you’re going to type out words on their platform. Rectifying your racist name before singing another song is mandatory if you are to ever sing another song again….(Lady Antebellum is doing its best to come up with a new name to save their own hides. Well, I have a name for you. “Lady Shame.”)

I’m waiting for the day the Bully Ministry of Culture demands I apply for an application to produce art. “You need a license for that.”

Artists used to be fearless in the face of censorship and oppression. Now they cower before it, adhere to it….even promote it.

This should tell any artist what the BLM Bully Movement is all about and why you should fear them. The minute they squash sculptures ( to include statues), ban books, strip the digital sphere of anything that can be streamed, and profess that “Tootsie” is a trans phobic film, tells you EVERYTHING you need to know about how they view any sort of individual expression. They want to corral you, control you, decide not only what you are allowed to express, but what you can experience.

The mob despises any connection from one individual to another if it isn’t approved by them first.

Because if you are allowed (for any moment) to make a distinctive soul to soul acknowledgement of another person rather than the group, the mob would cease to exist.

If you want to see the direction this movement is going, tally up each day the number of artists that placate for their own financial safety, then tally up the number of corporations writing public ransom notes worth millions (while symbolic guns are pointed at their heads)

….then tally the number of voices of detraction that are never mentioned.

Virtually none.

There are no massive waves of corporations, nor media outlets, donating tens of billions towards the widows of slain police officers and their children.

Is your compliance with this Bully Movement about the money? Is that why you submit to their oppression? Is that why are you, as artists, are approving of art being censored? For the money?

Oh, how lucrative to be a slave….

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  1. I live in Minnesota…what happened here had nothing to do with Mr Floyd….he was a kind person…sadly the guy in a uniform was a bad egg …very bad egg…but people don’t destroy their own neighborhood to prove a point. looters came in
    Are all cops, firemen bad no… people need to stop judging….I have friends of ALL walks of life and they are my friends…. thats the world I grew up in

  2. If the mob held a gun to my head I would never cower your them. Why would anyone want to be a part of that insanity?

  3. I first read your story on (I think) NPR many years ago and had great admiration for your creativity and tenacity in pulling yourself out of homelessness. I bought your and began following your blog. Until recently, I didn’t read every post, but I have been interested in your perspective on our current situation, starting with the one about how you are prejudged by your appearance. I can relate to that; as a middle-aged white woman, I sometimes encounter people who make conspiratorial comments about which stores or events I should avoid because there are “too many coloreds” or some such nonsense. At first, these whispers left me speechless. Now I speak up.
    I’m not sure in what way you’ve been silenced. Is it in your knitting, your writing, or something else? You seem to be doing both. The best art throughout history has been born of discomfort and unpopular opinions, by those who would not be silenced. The post that followed the one I referenced above went on to lament the rising voices in our country and included the assertion that you don’t have a dog in this fight. Many who don’t have a dog in the fight engage anyway because they feel it is the right thing to do. I support human rights, including those of people who are unlike me in various ways, because I believe that we all should have equal access and opportunity. I championed the right-to-marry of same-sex couples, and I support the abolishment of systemic racism in our country’s institutions. This doesn’t make me anti-police; it makes me pro-accountability. (On a side note, I found it ironic that you mentioned snuggling on the sofa with your husband as you absolved yourself of any responsibility to work toward a more just world, when if it hadn’t been for the efforts of those allied with – but not directly affected by – that fight, you wouldn’t enjoy that right.)
    I don’t expect my comments to change your mind about anything. You absolutely have the right to think and say whatever you like. But to refer to those who are socially conscious —and I would agree that some, but not all, of them are pandering) – as slaves is at best disrespectful, or maybe your point is to nurture resentment among those who believe “different” people are scary. No one is censoring you but you.

    1. You haven’t be around long enough then. You haven’t seen what’s been done to Greg over the last few years or you would know better.

      1. Sorry Flo and Dmnez but I respectfully disagree with you both
        I think Bernadette’s comments were spot on. I’m going to paraphrase Suynin Hayes here: this current BLM movement is a culmination of work from many often-marginalized parts of society—and in that sense, it is like many movements that came before including women’s rights, queer rights, refugee rights (remember your history of when America despised the Irish in the 19th century), labor rights, anti-war protests… Please see https://time.com/5855232/lgbtq-protest-history/

        I have benefited from many who went before, and so has Patrick

  4. That is the thing isn’t it. My brother and I have long discussions about the state of the US and the World at large frequently. It’s about control. There are people, entities, whatever, that want to control the US, control it’s people and tell them how they should think, who they should like, who they should hate, that they should go after people because they don’t represent or “toe the party line”. Welcome to communism. That’s where we are headed. The national media outlets have not reported the truth since Walter Cronkite died.They lie, social media lies, and we have younger generations, hanging on to every little word that is spoken. We have younger generations, that don’t know how to think for themselves. They believe whatever they are told, by someone famous and that someone famous has been bought or coerced into saying what someone else wants otherwise they wouldn’t be popular. There are two ways to control people Fear and Force. If you can make people fearful, they will do whatever you tell them to. If that doesn’t work use force. We are going down a dangerous path and it will not lead us anywhere good.

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