gagablog 77: Artrave-olution

I was talking with someone about the ideas from my last gagablog and she asked me "what are the goals of this revolution? Without a clear purpose, won't it just be like Occupy Wall St.?" I responded that the goal was nothing short of saving the world and that there are various avenues to take to reach this goal but whichever ones we focus on they will all be fixed by the same transformation. Looking back from the future, when everything is better, we may not be able to tell which movement started it all or which ones helped pave the way for others, but all of these goals come together in realizing the liberal ideal. The "success" of the Occupy movement can't be determined at this point but it may be a milestone in global revolution. We might have begun this revolution years ago but it is still building to take off. Since I wrote gagablog 76 a few days ago there have been a number of media/news events that magically support what I've been getting at: the very next day St. Louis cops shot and killed another 18-year old kid, sparking a new round of protests and media coverage. Also that night the Daily Show had a report on how we have no national statistics on police brutality - compare this with the swift report of 87 tear gas canisters fired at Chinese protestors. Jon Oliver was interviewd on NPR a couple days ago and they covered his bit about Net Nuetrality and the same concept I discussed, that in America we can bore you into apathy, our form of China's blackout news censorship that actually works even better because it lets people think they know stuff and that even the more we know we can't do anything about it. An evening news show did a piece on police brutality yesterday and I don't know if they were trying to be encouraging when they said it was not an increase of police brutality but just having cameras to catch it all - there was almost the tone that the cameras were the problem, not the police. They certainly did not come out and explicitly say "we have always had a lot of police brutality" just things like we are seeing the tip of the iceberg. But again, we can report on other countries and try to feel superior if they have more communist or socialized government, like China, but they might be right, or "better". Tonight on the news I have seen riot-gear American police shaking teargas cans like spray-paint cans, advancing in thick lines upon peaceful protestors. They reported on Chinese police moving in with no weapons, just orange vests, to remove barriers of the protest in Hong Kong, in order to avoid negative publicity of violent clashes. From the images and reports I've seen I would much rather be at the Chinese protests. We report on people being "unjustly" jailed in China - I don't put that in quotes because I think they are justified but to point out that our media makes that judgment call. When the cops shot this kid a few days ago in St. Louis they said he had a gun and shot at them first. I don't see that as justification personally but I'm a radical pacifist, you are supposed to see that as justification, at least in contrast to Michael Brown who was apparently murdered with his hands up. Isn't that the worst thing we say about ISIS or other militant groups, that makes them the worst terrorists ever, that they murder innocent people with their hands tied behind their backs, etc.? Why not apply that same standard to American cops? Or, as I think I said earlier, if cops can kill anyone without punishment, why don't the good cops shoot the bad cops? Because they are vastly outnumbered, perhaps? Or are they sucked into the mentality? Are we all sucked into that mentality, in a way? And is there a way out, and isn't it the same way out no matter where we are stuck in it, no matter the specific country or the worst injustice there, we all share the same fate and injustice anywhere holds us all back. I wanted to talk about how Gaga fits into all of this, specifically how the things she said at the Denver show, the things she is always saying, promote this whole revolution. I also want these to be more succinct so maybe I will save that part for #78 and just talk about the ideas here, then after the next one I will get back to song-by-song meditations on Artpop. There are multiple categories of action to be taken to save the world. These are environmentalism, pacifism, feminism, ending poverty and disease, and social justice. Social justice these days means the right to vote: Republicans are forging a new Jim Crow with racist and classist voter suppression and we must stop them. It means justice for police brutality and murder. It means civil rights and marriage rights for gay people. It means respect and real care for kids, not just using them as lab rats for pharmaceutical companies, potential debtors for predatory student loans, or jerking around their education with some 1984/Nazi-like revisionism. It means equal pay for women and security of reproductive freedom. It also means escaping the property mentality of marriage and even escaping jealousy and monogamy - it certainly means escaping the shame society has placed upon sex. We keep seeing progress: recently legalizing gay marriage, now in 30 states, Obama strengthening the EPA and setting standards to reduce global warming. I can't believe conservatives still have any chance at power and I can't believe the issues of debate, whether women can get abortions or contraception, but it shows how much progress we need to make in mentality. And plenty of us are modern, futuristic, advanced. We might not be able to convince people who insist on being ignorant on certain issues but more progress in other issues will have the same effect. Someone might be homophobic but believe in global warming. As society becomes more accepting of gay people the homophobia will erode, but if a global effort actually addressed climate change that person would appreciate it, and if the same global effort then said "let's be nice to everyone" and had a campaign to end homophobia it might have more influence on this person who appreciates keeping the temperature in the human-survivable range. Conversely, someone who believes in rights for gay people but does not believe in global warming could be impressed by the movement that wins the recognition of rights for gay people and when some of the same people move on to address global warming they might re-consider their position on it. But the truth is these examples are a little strained because generally it is the same people who are enemies of progress on every front. It's always the conservatives, in America it is the Republicans. Their power and influence may be eroding but it can't go away fast enough and we still suffer from much of it as the status quo - but there are enough different issues that we can reach even the people who insist on being blind to 9 out of 10 of the categories, when we find which is the tenth one they will actually care about. I read comments and live in America so I know how racist people can be here - extremely - but I also know that humanity is deeper than racism and while some of these people probably cheer on the cops shooting and beating black people, the more examples of this we see, the more grandmothers and pregnant ladies and kids we see getting slammed to the ground or tasered or shot, the more we will have opportunities for that humanity and sense of injustice to emerge. Hell, for some assholes it might take seeing people of their own color getting beaten to bring out their sympathies if somehow pregnancy or age doesn't do it, but they will have those examples. It is great when the media is focused on this issue but it is not going away even if the media focus does, it has gotten out on social media. Do I think all other problems will be solved if we ONLY focus on ending police brutality? Actually, I do, though of course we can work on all of these issues simultaneously. But just taking this one, if we quit oppressing people we unlock their potential. If people are liberated from oppression, if we liberate ourselves, we become much more productive just from the relief but also we become empowered to make other changes. This is one reason I think global warming is such a great example. I first learned about it in school in the 80's and it really seemed like something would be done, now that we know. But instead we got Reaganomics and the Cold War, outspending the Russians on nuclear missiles and exaggerating their stockpiles to destroy their economy with all that waste. If, at any point, in the 80's, 90's, 00's or today, the countries of the world actually worked together to end the threat of climate change, well that is such a major accomplishment, what else would be a problem for us? Working together, seeing as many sides and factors of issues and addressing them in different ways, a world community could certainly have avoided some of the wars we have had in the last decades. Conversely, if we were truly working towards a peaceful world instead of a world we can sell weapons to, we could have come together to address those issues and worked towards a global alliance that could eventually address global warming. The reason all of these things are the liberal agenda is because fixing them leads to utopian society. And we can fix them all together. I realized discussing this that my most radical ideas are ending money and caring for kids. I won't even talk about ending money, let's just let that be a secret and not mention it along with pacifism and environmentalism and justice, because we don't want to scare the rich people - it is only because they are so insecure that they would be rich in the first place so let's be gentle with unstable people. But most people would say they already care about kids. The thing is, if we really cared about and respected kids we would have to start trying to live up to the standards of their innocent expectations: to be decent human beings. And this actually scares society as much or more than to stop oppressing people or paying women fairly - but as long as they can keep 18th and 19th-century debates alive we won't move on to the deeper, more subtle, more important stuff. War is one of those centuries-old debates that I thought should have gone away before I even got here, but since I see so clearly the evil of it I guess I'm glad to be here now in a role to end it. I want to being in the Ebola plague, and end it with the magic of this Gagablog - I know this magic has not been effective in ending the war in Syria but maybe it takes this "other side" to make as major a flip as I am anticipating. Once we get rid of war there will still be a need to focus on peace, peace in smaller conflicts between individuals, within relationships, or resolving conflicts between communities. We just won't use violence. Will there be a use for the military once we stop fighting each other? Yes, to help with natural disasters and to fight diseases like ebola. And to rescue people from persecution. We can do all of these things, end war, make troops deployable to end misery wherever it occurs - but never to cause it. ISIS seems awful but it is a horror of our own making - using other, non-military means to depose Saddam Hussien would not have left the power vacuum or more importantly the weapons for them to take over. Ending war would free up so much ability and resources to fix every other problem, but if that is too hard we can work on it from other angles first. "I don't need these 14 karat guns to win I'm a woman I insist it's my right" - from "The Queen". Next time I will get into the details of how Gaga's message encompasses all of these issues (except vegetarianism which I left out and don't practice myself yet but is also key to all of this) but my point here is to say something about awareness, protest, art and revolution. No matter which issue resonates with you, just posting about it, increasing awareness, is an act of protest and gets the ball rolling, even if it seems like a trick by the establishment to make us think we are actually doing something when it is just "virtual" - we like to say it is "something" when it is the "Twitter Revolution" in Iran, but that really can lead to something, even in Iran or even in the US. Attending an actual protest can be many times more powerful than joining an online cause or campaign. The nature of social media and the internet is allowing more and more people to grow comfortable with virtual protest, which increases the chances people will attend actual protests. And while protest can be so much more powerful for actual physical connections with people and being part of a moment in a movement, art can do this even across the years and generations. A piece of art inspired by a major movement or social transformation remains powerful and relevant for centuries. Just as a facebook post can inspire you to join a movement which can then inspire others or make them feel bold enough to join you, issues can inspire art and that art can continue to spark ideas and make radical ideas feel accepted all the way to The Future. Gaga encourages this in all her examples and that is why she represents the divine future, paradise, to me an they way to get there. She said "if you have a dream, chase it like the fastest horse you ever saw" and with that kind of courage, inspired by art, we really can make any and all of these utopian dreams come true. I'll talk about the other things she said next time, thanks for reading! One more secret before I go, the last category I left out besides vegetarianism/animal rights was just Art for the sake of art. Art is itself a revolutionary path, it always has been, like magic. And it is the flip-side of ending money, but that is all I will say since this one is long enough for now.