Now understand this: Toni has dedicated herself and her life to her art. Despite countless obstacles and difficulties of every kind — financial (LOTS of financial obstacles; this is the United States, after all, and she is an artist, who does not come from family money, and married a public school teacher, the poor misguided fool), personal, medical, emotional, cultural, and practical — she has always made art. Starting when she was a tiny child (Who looked pretty much like this:)
Toni has spent her life drawing and painting, observing, learning, practicing, training, hoping, dreaming, trying — and living –but mostly, drawing and painting. It is her favorite thing to do, her solace, her source of self. And she is absolutely incredible.
She set out to depict how animals are, despite their generally kind nature, slowly building up rage over how humans have treated them, and treated the Earth that we all share. In dozens of drawings like this one:
This was an Inktober sketch, one of 31 she did in the month of October: one ink sketch per day.
And paintings like this one:
This is Llombie. He is a llama zombie. I love him.
She has depicted animals in unusual ways, often exploring the interactions between humans and animals, the ways humans use animals, and particularly the ways animals reflect human ideas, and the way human ideas impact animals. Sometimes the humans and animals are friends:
Just a sketchbook page she posted, but I love the toad
And sometimes they are not:
Another Inktober sketch
A few years ago, that morphed into the Anarchy Animals: in drawings and sketches and paintings, animal portraits started suddenly including the anarchy sign, which she was using to show that animals were someday going to rise up and overthrow their oppressors. Worldwide anarchy. Led by such as these:
Anarchat
And this:
And this one, where the anger is growing more clear, and more dangerous:
Eventually, she decided to do a full series of paintings of animals in this theme, all inspired by creatures exploited and threatened by humans, creatures whom she would depict fighting back. That series, Animal Anarchy, led to these two paintings (The series is ongoing):
And when she happened upon a call for entries for a show that would focus on the theme of Animal Activism, she entered both of these paintings. And, of course, she won. The koala piece won First Place in the Painting category for all entries, and an Honorable Mention for Overall Best In Show; the ostrich piece won Honorable Mention in the Painting category.
And I just want to share with everyone how amazing and unbelievably talented and fiercely imaginative my wife is. And how proud I am of her. Because she is the best artist, and the best partner (but more importantly, the best artist), I have ever known or ever hope to know.
It struck me as I was reading Brave New World, both in the beginning when Huxley takes us on a tour of his nightmare baby factory, and at the end when the World Controller, Mustapha Mond, explains that the people of the Brave New World have chosen stability and happiness over independence and change and growth: why would anyone want to create this?
Why would anyone want to rule this?
I admit freely that I don’t really understand the thirst for power. Myself, I’d really rather just be left alone. Sure, I can see the draw of commanding everyone to obey me, both for selfish pleasures (Like ordering people I don’t like to go get me a donut. No! TWO donuts. And then I won’t share the donuts with them. Ha! How you like that, Doug from third grade?!) and because I think that my vision of the world is the correct one and I would like to solve every problem that exists through my genius becoming law according to my whim.
Because surely that could never go wrong.
I have a certain amount of power, because I’m a public school teacher. And while I have no control over the larger context of my profession or the specifics of my particular job — I don’t get to pick my clients or my work hours or my work space — I do have quite a bit of control over my classroom and the other humans in it. I can boss them around. I can generally make them obey me, at least in small things. I have, no joke, gotten them to get me a donut. And you know what I think every single time I am required to take control over them? I think, “Jesus, do I have to do this shit again? Why me? Why can’t they just, I dunno, control themselves?”
Nothing makes you a libertarian anarchist like trying to control a room full of teenagers.
I genuinely don’t understand why people want power. The obvious reason is personal enrichment and glory, and I understand both of those things; they’re not worth it to me, but I understand them. I want to be rich enough to have all the donuts I want, and I would love to have a donut named after me so I could be remembered after my death. But if it means I have to be in control of the donut shop, and get up at 2am to make the donuts, then the attractions of power become a whole lot less, for me.
(By the way: remember this guy? I do. Fred the Baker. Icon.)
I still don’t fully understand why Donald Trump became president. He was already rich and famous. I suppose a narcissist like our First Stooge can never have enough money and glory, and I guarantee his little troll-ego gets a big happy jolt out of bossing people around — since that was his whole shtick on his TV show — but unless one gets to be a third-world dictator, then being in charge is, believe me, a whole hell of a lot of work. Even being a third-world dictator is a lot of work: because dictators don’t just get power, they have to keep power. And the way you do that is by keeping the other wielders of power happy with you in charge. If your power base is the bankers and corporations, then they have to be given a free hand with the business world to make all the money they want; if the people get upset about the bankers and you want to squeeze those bankers to please the people, you can’t, because then you lose power. If your power base is the military, then you pretty much have to treat the generals as even more important than you, and make sure they get all the wealth and prestige they want. The person in charge has to work, continuously, to remain in charge. Even in my tiny world of one classroom with a couple of dozen students, being in charge is a constant pain in the ass. I can’t imagine what a pain it is to be President.
He must have known that, having been a dictator in the past, with his company. So why did he do it? I maintain that he enjoyed the race: he liked the debates (Which people still talk about him winning through his oratorical skills. No: you act like a shitpitcher, you’re going to score more points than someone trying to be polite. But in any real debate you’d be stopped by the moderators; that didn’t happen because the TV moderators were not really in charge, because they work for TV stations who love shitpitchers, so Trump was allowed to continue being an ass, and then pundits pretend it was a clever strategy.), he loved giving his rallies, he loved being on the nightly news; he’s been powerful and wealthy all his life, but he’s never had crowds cheering for him, and that must have been a hoot. I think he didn’t ever expect to win, and as surprised as we all were that Wednesday morning, he was the most surprised at all. I think he’s only running now because he can’t back down and maintain his ego.
But that doesn’t explain why he does all the stuff he does. I mean, if I’m right and he never wanted the job, then he’d spend all of his time on social media or the golf course — oh wait. My theory gains ground. But still: he also does stuff. He gives speeches that are not about himself. He holds a couple of press conferences. He works to pass laws and whatnot. He’s doing a terrible job, but he’s still doing the job; and now he’s fighting very hard to keep that job. So maybe it’s not as simple as I am arguing; maybe there is another reason for him to want power.
This is where his supporters get the idea that he is beneficent and patriotic. We all know being president is a shit job, and only someone who really wanted to help Americans would take on that pile of shit. (Though here’s another theory: shitpitchers would be attracted to piles of shit, right? Maybe the biggest pile of shit job drew in the biggest shitpitcher in the country. It’s the law of fecal gravitation.) I don’t believe that because he’s not really helping anyone very much. Other rich assholes, sure, but I don’t think his loyalty to them is strong.
In the Brave New World, the people in charge have an even shittier job, honestly. Because they get prestige, but they don’t really get to be in charge: their job is simply to maintain the machinery of the society, which is exactly what I think makes being President so shitty: there’s an unending mound of duties just to keep things going. In Huxley’s book, the people they control are under perfect and total control, which, I would argue, would take all the fun out of being in control: there aren’t any rebellions to be crushed (And if you want to know how much fun crushing rebellions is, watch Star Wars and think about the fact that Darth Vader controls a GALACTIC EMPIRE and yet spends all his time chasing down a ragtag band of rebel scum.) and even the sucking up you get from your underlings is only because you programmed them to obey. I can see the ego boost from bending another will to your own; but when the will is already broken, what’s the point? In the book the controllers don’t get to put their ideas in place, don”t get to be glorified; the society has erased (and continues to erase) the past, and their social structure was set centuries before the book.
So why would they want the job?
Are they selfless lovers of humanity? Like Trump?
But then why would they crush the humanity out of the people they “serve?”
Like Trump?
I don’t have an answer here. I realized, when I went to get that video clip at the beginning of this, that the song might be satirical; that Tears for Fears meant the song to make the same point I’m making, that ruling the world would be hellish.
But I guess Satan chose to rule in Hell, didn’t he? Maybe that’s enough.
All I know is, it’s time to go make some donuts. Play us out, Fred.
Just Dusty 