Possibly Subversive Flower Arrangements

by Kerry Wendell Thornley

Originally published in Factsheet Five № 30 (p. 70), May 1989. Errors in spelling and grammar are presented as they appear in the original publication.

I still think the anti-intellectualism was Johnson's, though, and also Mao's. Politicians are all the same: "Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous." And Caesar was right. We are dangerous — to them, to their power. When you can think of a sensible way of doing something and you have to argue with a gun instead of a man you become dangerous.

I've always, lately anyway, wondered if Ralph Borsodi was one of the architects of the J.F.K. murder and L.B.J. jake. Mildred Loomis seemed to be mischievous, hinting that he was. He was one of the smartest men who ever lived when it came to dealing with poverty. In the Depression the city of Dayton called upon him as a consultant and he devised Liberty Homestead, which was also where R.A.W. and Mildred Loomis met. They must have been very frustrated that F.D.R. was ignoring their workable answers in favor of authoritarian programs unconnected with land and bank reform that weren't working.

There have been hints for years that the anarchist conspiracy began in Yellow Springs, Ohio — with Wilson and Tracy Barnes, probably playing the role incognito with R.A.W. that Hunt as Gary Kirstein played with me.

(The Middle of the Trilogy)

The strangest thing about it all is that I met Wilson by accident — that simply couldn't have been planned unless mind control was involved. Ever since the French Quarter I'd been working fanatically to organize a group marriage. Then I read an article about Kerista in FACT magazine by a guy I never heard of named Robert Anton Wilson. So I became involved with the L.A. Kerista group and, for the first time in my life, wasn't sexually frustrated. At the same time Richard Bray compiled an issue of INNOVATOR called "Postmen Against The State." The Playboy Adviser had been complaining about Federal snooping of swingers' mail., So I suggested Dick send them that issue — which featured Lysander Spooner, among others.

Wilson, who was the Playboy Adviser, wrote us a letter, enclosing some pamphlets about Spooner's not-so-capitalist economic ideas, which of course began an argument — since I, still very close to Ayn Rand's ideology, too issue with him. (Wilson won every argument we ever had except one. He insisted humans were naturally monogamous and pair-bonding animals. I disagreed. Many years later — after we;d aimost forgot about it in a heated exchange of letters — he said, "You were right. All our friends these days are into open marriages. It's us who are abnormal: Arlen and I are just queer for each other.")

So anyway, R.A.W. converted me to Spooner's economics — which were also Tucker's and Warren's and Borsodi's and Loomis's and even, Goddess forbid, Lawrence Labadie's economics (I always hated Labadie). Wilson was also into Bakunin and Kropotkin — which presents no difficulty for an anarchist, since it is only an argument about what will happen when what all agree are the necessary measures have bene taken — a metaphysical disagreement about human nature, and a mild one — whether liberated Individuals tend to be more competitive or cooperative. In that respect I became, and still am, a communist.

What gripes me most is that within the intelligence community the Libertarian Left, Center and Right treat one another as deadly enemies — since they all belong to different "clubs". There is no such division among free anarchists. Without any central committee, everyone shares a very similar analysis — more consensual than the factions of Marxism by far — and almost as similar ideas about strategy and at least an empathy about one another's tactics.

Much of the problem, I'm convinced, is these idiot karma and reincarnation cults — these Rube Goldberg approaches to movement building that depend upon lies and that don't get to the depths of anarchist theory. How, for example, can anyone who has not first sat half-afraid watching Stirner demolish every traditional morality appreciate Kropotkin's rational ethic of mutual aid? Instead we get these Christians who are called "popcorn" whose anarchism would forbid fucking, etc. — or would at least worry the whole subject to death with gossip. That's why I keep pushing Stimer, not unaware of the risks, either.

Cramped individuals are driven to desperate measures, time and again!

Room? You say you want room? The landlords will give you room?

Are you kidding? They'll find a way to rent room! Why isn't there any room to begin with — because whole portions of unused land are fenced ff. Because, originally, of the Enclosure Laws — which drove everyone into the slums of the cities.

Fighting crime with the voluntary and enthusiastic aid of the Cosa Nostra makes more sense.

In fact, that's an idea! Just find a way to make it pay…

Carlos Marcello for District Attorney, (Probably not much different from Garrison, actually).

(In fact I suspect Garrison wrote the World Power Foundation manifesto as the result to discussions with Marcello).

Who else besides Garrison would say: "Thousands of people are being sacrificed every day. Why not have them sacrificed for you?"

Although it was probably Marcello's idea not to waste food, There is natural compassion buried somewhere in everyone.

Sacrifice people. Accumulate human slaves. Keep thugs and sadists away from your slaves. And above all, don't waste food.

Actually, it is functionally about the same as any other philosophy of social change, or of reaction — either one. Degend the nation. Conscript soldiers. Treat them right. Hmmmm. Actually, Marcello seems more merciful. At least he's against wasting food. The state pays farmers not to grow things.

I don't hate people like my father and Manuel Maloor who think F.D.R. was a saint. I recognize that their intentions are the same as my own. In fact I like them much more than I like most conservatives and many libertarian capitalists and a few individualist anarchists. Murray Rothbard is to my mind Roosevelt's most articulate critic among them. Murray is, however, at least as terrifying as Kissinger — blood and guts and gore and mayhem, page after page, letter after letter, with such robust gusto — in salivating anticipation of The Revolution. You keep getting the idea that revolutionary violence is an end in itself, in corresponding with Murray — that the ends are subservient to the furious means.

Yet his case against Roosevelt is as damning as Smedley Butler's case against the ruling class that tried to overthrow him with a 1930s version of a National Security Adviser — in face he leaves you wondering if they didn't secretly succeed after all, before assassinating Kennedy.

They say LBJ's "butterscotch diamond tie" depended upon the willingness of anarchists to keep secrets for Marxists. Methinks the Kronstadt Vengeance Committee must've struck with the publication of the Trilogy, What In both Erisian and orthodox Maoist numerology would be called 12:22.

Unfortunately, because of the reactionary nature of page 12 — the rulers seem to have won again — both against anarchists and Marxists.

I tell you why I don't like every action being interpreted as a vote and I why I would refuse political power of an administrative nature even if I could wield it in plain English — because it neurologically armors you the same way sexual repression does. You wind up either way with this little Fuhrer inside yourself — urging you to do exactly the opposite of what you want to do, afraid to admit to anyone that what you are doing is what you think they expect instead of what you want.

I always think of Dr. Strangelove, who had to keep grabbing his arm to keep from giving the President a Nazi salute: a precise illustration of the Reichian theory of armor arising because of muscle against muscle — pulling it in opposite directions.

So here I am: A true authorized misfit — with a theory to back it up. More than Oswald ever dreamed of becoming.