Edification from Ed

     Somewhere in the convoluted mess that was my adolescence, I became aware of a certain fellow named Edward Abbey through a book that I found titled "The Monkey Wrench Gang".

Here's a pair of things from him, first a wonderfully weird drawing he did of himself:

Then, this quote from his collection titled "The Journey Home, Some Words In Defense of the American West" going way back to 1977 and an essay to be found therein titled "Freedom and Wilderness, Wilderness and Freedom".

"As I see it, our own nation is not free from the danger of dictatorship. And I refer to internal as well as external threats to our liberties. As social conflict tends to become more severe in this country - and it will unless we strive for social justice - there will inevitably be a tendency on the part of the authoritarian element - always present in our history - to suppress individual freedoms, to utilize the refined techniques of police surveillance (not excluding torture, of course) in order to preserve - not wilderness! - but the status quo, the privileged positions of those who now so largely control the economic and governmental institutions of the United States."

Hayzoos H. Creeping Christonaut on a Double Acting Rubber Crutch, Ed Abbey had our current situation nailed to the barn door like an unfortunate coyote hide way back then.... The question going begging at this point is just why the fuck we, as a collective species, have not done enough to counteract the evils perpetrated by these nefarious, greedy, reckless and awesomely evil assholes that have gotten away with dominating the globe despite the warning so eloquently given by Dwight David Eisenhower at the end of his Presidency?