RevolutionZ
RevolutionZ
Ep 267 Time Has Come Today - Become Revolutionary
Episode 267 of RevolutionZ is, what? Part primal scream. Part an argument for going all in. The title is from The Chambers Brothers. The sentiment is channelled, I hope, from tomorrow to today. The words are equal parts rage, hope, and plain truth.
Hello, my name is Michael Albert and I am the host of the podcast that's titled Revolution Z. This is our 267th consecutive episode and this one's going to be a short one If, that is, I can keep it together enough to deliver it to its end and it is titled Time has come today Becoming Revolutionary. I borrowed that title Adding Becoming Revolutionary, from a chamber's brother's song that was released in 1967. And now it is 2024. The blink of an eye later, a billion lifetimes later.
Speaker 1:And here follows my argument for Becoming Revolutionary. It's a little bit apocalyptic, a little bit optimistic and a little bit antagonistic. Told this time just the way I feel it. It is for whoever hears it or reads it, but I guess mostly I have a young audience in mind. So I look around, I notice what I notice. The NBA season is about halfway through.
Speaker 1:Cable images flow on and on and on and on Everywhere. New platforms with endless new material, tons of entertaining stuff you can enjoy or curse. Taylor Swift news every day, novels and Netflix galore, and of course, youtube. It's binge heaven out there. But simultaneously state-of-the-art armies unleash holy hell. High waters flood cities, low waters drain aquifers. Self-absorbed bigotry cremates life-affirming love Head in the dirt. Denial nurtures horrific hypocrisy. Record-setting cowardice occupies center stage. Starve them, sicken them, shoot them, explode them. Genocide on parade. And would you believe? Hey, I just read this the US is designing a new nuclear bomb, the first one in 30 years. It's binge hell out there. These things are beyond words, they are beyond pain, they are beyond desire, beyond shame, beyond feeling, beyond reason. And hey, hooray for my team. Incinerate your team. A selfie for me. A thousand million cuts for you. Welcome to the world in 2024.
Speaker 1:Butterflies scream. Slow motion. Murder becomes mass murder. Occasional lies become a permanent shitstorm. Cacophony. Lying is the new maturity. Take a selfie and another. Why do we do what we do? Is it only because it is what we have done? And having done it, we do it again, lest we realize we are horribly wrong all along, and when we do it again and again, onto death. But hey, hooray for my team. Incinerate your team. A selfie for me. A thousand million cuts for you. Lions, weep, science, cowers. Respect withers. Truth becomes fable. Lives become truth Is dishonesty, our destiny, is egoism, our legacy Robotically welcome robots who look human.
Speaker 1:Fuck the robot, get fucked by the robot. Robotically welcome robot love. Then watch a video of a violent drone. Get your own at the mall. Do it for pleasure, do it for pain. The difference dwindles. Whatever have a cigar, dogs whimper.
Speaker 1:Violence calls itself virtue. Violence preens. Violence goes viral. Violence is number one with a bullet. Violence is hunger and bombs. Violence is hurricanes and floods. Violence is regimentation and enforcement. Violence is rape. Violence goes viral. You cannot deny this shit.
Speaker 1:Abort, abortions, nurture, shooting ranges. Call it realistic. Violence is at the mall. Violence is in our schools. Violence is at work. Violence is in the kitchen. Violence screams. See me everywhere. Violence screams. I am great. Violence screams. Bow down to me.
Speaker 1:Violence demands On your knees for me, grovel, or else Hate everything. Bombs galore, prophet rules, greed grabs, riches, preachers pay to penthouse gods, morons, master war, lunatics lubricate self destruction. Learn hate, teach hate, aim, shoot, mourn or party. Burn ourselves up. The sky is on fire. The sky weeps, but wait. That is all out there. There is no denying it. But so is this.
Speaker 1:Demands for peace, demands for caring, demands for health, demands for knowledge, demands for sexual healing. Demands for an end to billionaires profiting. Demands for an end to billionaires period. Demands for an end to bosses bossing. Demands for an end to color corroding. Demands for an end to lives atrophying Display for a generation of 25 lives to be found. Lives are barely lived, lives are extinguished. Demands proliferate Demands for dignity, demands to save the planet, demands to save ourselves, demands to cease firing. Cease firing, damn it, doves awake.
Speaker 1:Demands are nice, very nice, but to be implemented, demands need careful plans and continuous efforts. Strategic activism and careful plans and strategic efforts. Strategic activism needs lots and lots of people. And to engage lots and lots of people and then more people and then still more people, requires effective listening and hearing. And effective listening and hearing requires clear voices, requires inspiring actions and requires ears wide open to what's written on subway walls and reverberating in tenement halls Deduction To have lots and lots of people seek peace, justice and liberation, we need for lots and lots of people to see hopeful, welcoming movement possibilities and to anticipate movement worthiness. We need for many, many people to share where they wanna go and how they can get there.
Speaker 1:Our times are in our face. They are undeniably embarrassing, they are off the charts, disgusting, they are mindlessly brazen and suicidally blatant. The devil whoops it up. But our times are also undeniably hopeful. Unions, communities, youth, couples, loners, parents and kids stirring, waking, smoldering Hell. No, we won't go On one side, we see Nazi apocalypse resurgent and proliferating, hullering hatred. On the other side, we see freedom, dignity, respect, mutual aid and a new world that is returning to struggle, peeking out, perking up, starting to stride again. Movement's flex, the power of the people is getting reborn. Our times are undeniably wretched, but also undeniably hopeful. Which side is our friend? Look closely. Which side are you on? Which side are we on?
Speaker 1:No more nitpicking, no more ghosting, no more self delusion, no more business as usual, no more yesterday's papers, no more excuses for joining the wrong side, no more excuses for silence. Silence is indeed golden, but only for the rich. Silence is indeed sustenance, but only for violence. No more accommodating, no more being busy dying. Better is possible, better is necessary. Better means dignity, better means life.
Speaker 1:Time has come today. There is no way to avoid this boiling confrontation. We will either be part of the problem being living dead and then being dead dead, or we will be part of the solution, being born anew over and over, being liberated. I hate apocalyptic formulations, but there you go, it has become unavoidable. Time has come today. We can no longer deny, fear, ridicule or play act at fundamental change.
Speaker 1:But it is also undeniably true that we won't win the world in one gulp. We want the world, yes, but we can't get it in one sitting One gulp. Rhetoric is gluttonous nonsense. Amassing support takes time. Amassing support takes. Reaching out and welcoming in History takes time.
Speaker 1:To win, we must unify many threads. To unify many threads, we must weave together countless partial steps that overcome the past and construct the future Gender steps, cultural steps, legislative steps, economic steps, ecological steps, international steps, steps we all help happen, steps that all together intersect to go where we want to arrive. No vanguard, no rearguard, just collectively going forward. No more denying the obvious. Our pursuit, our job, our agenda, our profession, what we admire, what we aspire to, what we respect, what we celebrate, who we want to be, who we must be and who we will be, has all got to become patiently, smartly, but unrelentingly revolutionary. We have got to become caring, mature, sober revolutionaries. No macho nonsense, no passive reticence. Step by step, we have to engage ourselves until we civilize ourselves, until we civilize the world.
Speaker 1:Time has come today, back when the chambered brothers sang that song, I felt it. Here are their lyrics from then, 1967. They are good, but with the music give it a listen they are better. You may feel it. Today, time has come. Today, young hearts can go their way, can't put it off another day. I don't care what others say. They say we don't listen. Anyway, time has come today. Oh, the rules have changed. Today I have no place to stay. I'm thinking about the subway. My love has flown away. My tears have come and gone. Oh, my lord, I have to roam. I have no home. I have no home. Now the time has come. There's no place to run. I might get burned up by the sun, but I had my fun. I've been loved and put aside. I've been crushed by the tumbling tide and my soul has been psychedelicized. Now the time has come. There are things to realize. Time has come today. Time has come today.
Speaker 1:I remember the Chamber's brothers singing it at a concert in, of all places, harvard University's football stadium in Cambridge Massachusetts. The audience resonated with their beat. Literally. We stamped our feats in time all over the stands. Not football revolution, the whole place shook. For us back then, time had come today, but no, and it seemed to, but it hadn't. In those days, a half century ago, we shook up a whole lot, but we didn't build enough, we didn't unite enough, we didn't envision enough, we didn't share enough, we didn't get whole enough, we did not sufficiently seize the time.
Speaker 1:So what about now? What about you in 2024? What is warranted? What is required? Do you ask yourself that? What is on our minds? A new product at the mall? What to wear next Tomorrow's exam? Next day's big show? How to avoid pissing off our school or our boss, our tiny team? What is on our minds? What's for dinner? How to get laid? How to pay the rent? How to get out of bed? How to get out of bed? How to get out of bed? How to not get drowned? That is all actually quite reasonable. Certainly it is. When you are straightjacketed by society's pliers, it accomplishes nothing to make believe you are not, but you do have to navigate daily. What about how to turn it all around? What about how to break chains? What about how to win better? Are you not only angry, not only furious, but also curious about how to exit? If not, why the hell not After all, time has come.
Speaker 1:Today, a court says the obvious Genocide is genocide. Now what? Back to school? Back to work? Out of sight, out of mind? Except it isn't out of sight and it will eat our innards, minds included, until we are hollow. Scientists say the floods, the storms, the droughts are just getting going. Now what? Back to school, back to work, out of sight, out of mind. Except it is just beginning, and so the world is literally on a suicide watch. But who is watching? More important, who is changing the world? Trump, biden? Of course not. What about us? Time has come today, hasn't it?
Speaker 1:A friend, my age and whatever I may tell myself that's teeth-missing, eyes failing ear, shot to hell old Recently told me everyone he knew and he knows a lot of people, nice people, good people have no thoughts for the Middle East, no thoughts for global warming, no thoughts for onrushing lunatic fascism. Instead, he told me they have only thoughts about what's new at the mall, only thoughts about what's happening on TV, only thoughts about the most proximate, most individualistic things. And I get it. Those people aren't crazy, but they are without hope. You wake up, you get out of bed, you drag a comb across your head, you learn to dance, get dressed, try to be a success. Meantime life goes on all around you until it doesn't. Here are some more lyrics back from when I stood stamping my feet in unison with so many others, feeling like the whole damn stadium and Harvard too, and everything like it was going to come down and that we would rebuild the world back in the time that had come for me and for lots of others. But the time that ultimately didn't succeed. We were kids. We should have stayed. Kids do better.
Speaker 1:And here is Jackson Brown's song titled the Pretender. Jackson's warning is in the blink of an eye you may become a pretender. So what the hell am I saying? Don't become a pretender. Love but also fight. Lives today but also win tomorrow. Jackson sang I'm gonna rent myself a house in the shade of the freeway, gonna pack my lunch in the morning and go to work each day, and when the evening rolls around I'll go on home and lay my body down. And when the morning light comes streaming in, I'll get up and do it again. Amen. Say it again, amen. I want to know what became of the changes we waited for love to bring. Were they only the fitful dreams of some greater awakening? I've been aware of the time going by. They say in the end it's the wink of an eye. When the morning light comes streaming in, you'll get up and do it again. Amen.
Speaker 1:Call between the longing for love and the struggle for the legal tender. Where the sirens sing and the church bells ring and the junkman pounds his fender, where the veterans dream of the fight, fast asleep at the traffic light and the children solemnly wait for the ice cream vendor. Out into the cool of the evening strolls the pretender. He knows that all his hopes and dreams begin and end there the lovers as they run through the night, leaving nothing but to choose off and fight and tear at the world with all their might while the ships bearing their dreams sail out of sight. I'm gonna find myself a girl who can show what the laughter means and will fill in the missing colors in each other's paint-by-number dreams. And then we'll put on our dark glasses and we'll make love until our strength is gone and when the morning light comes streaming in, we'll get up and do it again. Get it up again. I'm gonna be a happy idiot and struggle for the legal tender, where the ads take aim and lay their claim to the heart and the soul of the spender and believe in whatever may lie in those things that money can buy, where true love could have been a contender. Are you there? Say a prayer for the pretender who started out so young and strong, only to surrender. Say a prayer for the pretender. Are you there for the pretender? Say a prayer for the pretender. Are you there for the pretender? Are you prepared for the pretender?
Speaker 1:My bard song back then too. Here is just one stanza. Advertising signs that con you into thinking You're the one that can do what's never been done, that can win what's never been won. Meantime life outside goes on all around you. And here is another from the same song. My eyes collide head on with stuffed graveyards. False gods, I scuff at pettiness which plays so rough, walk upside down inside handcuffs, kick my legs to crash it off. Say okay, I have had enough. What else can you show me? So this is Michael Albert signing off until next time for Revolution Z and saying time has come today. No more pretending.