OBSERVATIONS THAT CALL FOR ACCOUNTABILITY AND BREAKING AN ADDICTION TO THE AESTHETIC OF DEFEAT

INTRO

The lyrix to this song should articulate their criticism well enough as they stand. But this is a subject that even after years of raging incoherently about it with Realicide, I still have stories to tell and no shortage of scathing combat to fire forth. Radical punk should be about positive acceptance of society's creative deviants and the truly misunderstood banding together in pursuit of whatever better world we can imagine. If it is truly of an anarchist stance, let punk be a rejection of oppression; rejecting the fear of wildly personalized expression; a phobia we intend to escape when divorcing ourselves from conventional or dominant social order. Beyond aesthetic and stylistic boundaries, punk culture has had its lasting global impact due largely to its beautiful malleability; its thriving on a wide spectrum of bizarre interpretations. Within the context of civilization’s numbing madness, we celebrate punk as the liberty to really take a stab at being yourself.

DOGMA: ENEMY OF ANARCHY

After years of standing driven with a solid straightedge, I was hit abruptly by experiences of desolation so circumstantially intense that I'm still willing to credit it all as the "worst" times I've survived so far. During this period of crippling disillusion, I began drinking alcohol again, and on a regular basis for the first time in my life (at age 29). My standards of social company had dropped, and frequency of seeking company to distract me from my thoughts had risen, so like many people who have experienced that combination I ended up hanging out at random parties. However, "party" in this case was nothing more than random people sitting in a house drinking alcohol, maybe with music playing on a stereo, if the host sort of tried. Being voluntarily in this setting was a new experiment for me, and even through my drunken depression the results were disturbing.

"xROBERTx!!! When did you start drinking?!" I had never heard this man so genuinely overcome with delight. I'd always known him to be notoriously stand-offish to those who did not share his rigid aesthetic, and even after years of brief interactions he had until recently claimed to not know my name or that we'd already met, with the excuse of a memory clouded by beer. I found this increasingly hard to believe when I'd meet more open-minded crust punks on tour and they told me when their band had hit Cincinnati they asked for Realicide as local support, but it was forbidden and the suggestion condemned. I found his persistent unawareness of me hard to believe when I'd make a friend and after we'd hit it off they'd say "If I knew you were like this we woulda been friends years ago, but I never talked to you because _____ told me not to." That happened more than once. These footnotes could go on and on, but by now you see I was caught off guard when this person, with sincere joy, gave me a hug and said "Man if you'd just been drinking a few years ago we could have DESTROYED THE WORLD TOGETHER!!!"

During the weeks and years later, that moment has echoed in my head. All the hours of wondering why people in the same town who seem to share common ground in radical politics, anarchism for the pursuit of peace and the extinction of war, cannot work collaboratively despite trivial differences in genre tastes. Year after year confused at being among Cincinnati's scarce punk minority at benefits for Earth Liberation prisoners, Vegan potlucks, screenprinting workshops... Even while listening to breakcore or deathrock on the way there, I'd often been one of few token punks who made a public effort to "care" by showing up for events that were aside from an endless supply of screaming rock bands. Cincinnati had no shortage of punk activity, but it seemed confined strictly to band shows, even though anarchist imagery boasting claims of die-hard convictions was common place on any scrap of clothing within studs’ reach of these people. "Man if you'd just been drinking a few years ago…"

But I wasn't. Instead I was on tour across America, DIY'ing records and writing zines like this, avoiding rent and buying a flight to Australia, not participating in taxed employment, embracing the blessing and curse of a clear mind, and savoring the countless in-tact memories once the dust had settled... The idea of trading those years for hundreds of vague drunken nights stumbling through the culturally-handicapped fishbowl that is my hometown, is beyond me. My confusion turns to anger, and in my emerging post-youth (32 now, but still "young til I die") instead of being blinded by anger I am capable of being sharpened by it.

Fuck the insecure defaming of any person's choice to live sober, especially where "revolution" is concerned. When I see a person, or worse yet a band, spouting off about rebellion and getting organized for social upheaval while wobbling around with a beer in their hand, I count it as another step backwards from the goals they were credited with promoting. All talk. I say this as someone who drinks alcohol, but was not imprinted in my youth that it is a mandatory aid in the equation of human interaction. I am not going to follow a blatant alcoholic into their vision of a better world, because waking up in that "better world" with a hangover and seeing, once sober, that it is holes punched in apartment walls, or the inside of a jail cell downtown, is a disgrace to the endorsement of anarchy. Alcohol is often an acceptable social accessory, but I believe it can never be the fuel of true and effective resistance. Fuck anyone who tells younger impressionable punx that it's not OK to stay sober. For every teenage kid struggling with depression that you assimilate into a prematurely jaded go-nowhere, you're the enemy locked in my sights.

CALLING OUT THE AESTHETIC OF DEFEAT

Fuck titling efforts of resistance the exact subjects we’d claim to abhor. This is kind of a touchy subject to some, but I believe it is imperative if we intend to use language for legitimately constructive ambitions rather than just masochistically reveling in the abuse surrounding society to a degree of perpetual strangulation. For a comedic yet plausible example, it's like starting a band called "Oppression" (there have gotta be many bands called that, I'm not about to look it up) with alluring songs like "Raped By Patriarchy" and "Apocalyptic Eco-holocaust" etc. All I'm saying is next thing you know everybody's got shirts and backpatches that just say "OPPRESSION" with a picture of a cop shooting a kid in the face. People look at it endlessly, because this hypothetical art is designed well, and I wonder how often it really inspires someone to stand up against the police, the eco-holocaust, or whatever else...? Abuse and defeat look cool \m/ but if our projects truthfully desire for people to rise above this world's obstacles and injustice, shouldn't priority be placed on strategies for empowering them? Shouldn't we encourage a vision of more compassionate existence, even if through the wreckage of what currently IS?

Ironically fitting, Decide Today's song is titled "Bulletbelt"; most straight forward symbol of contradictory fashion among those who commonly object to war. If your titling and imagery is meant to ignite political reverse psychology against totalitarian dystopia, at least craft your work as satire to the epic standards of a group like Laibach.
Attraction to defeatist subject matter, guised as resistance, troubles me deeply. I know my observations and attempts at conveying this concern may not be academically honed, but I hope through humor and informality they may spark critical thoughts and dialogue surrounding the concept which this essay is titled. I hope each of us would periodically step back and evaluate "What do I really want?" Do I want to actualize a world in which racism, sexism, queer-phobias, anthropocentric exploitation, &c are abolished? Do I want to romanticize pain, and find the high of misery most potent when fixating on an array of tortures plaguing this Earth known to be real? Do I want one thing one day and something quite contrary the next? I'm a goth writing an anarchist zine for a digital hardcore band, haha I know how it is to wear "different hats". Ultimately the prompt of this part of the zine is to well up honesty. If your interests may be narcissistic or decidedly rotting in a sloth-paced suicide, so be it, but if you have any capacity for social responsibility, please try not to parade it as anarchist virtues. If you desire empowerment for yourself and your peers, against civilization’s dogmas that dwarf the petty in comparison infractions described regarding self-righteous anarcho-drunx, then break from traditions of default pessimism. Find confidence via punk or whatever else works for you. Fall madly in love with a vision of total liberation.

"You can keep the past. THE FUTURE IS MINE!" – Divtech

FASHION PUNX: DEFINITION + HOW THIS CAN DE-FANG RESISTANCE

"We're fashion punx we gotta stick together!" I like Ving's way of determining "fashion punk" status. He says if you were to take away all a person's punk clothing, accessories, haircut, whatever, would they still seem "punk" by their behavior and general way of making moment to moment decisions? If there's not a sincere gravitation towards Do It Yourself, impulsive expression, fast raw means of operation, &c then you may be dealing with a poser who just figured out how to dress like an extra in some TV show.

I am by no means saying all the studs, patches, even the unexplainably retro gas masks, don't look cool. They look very much like movies I’ve enjoyed watching, especially when I was a kid. I totally get it, but insist upon criticism during the pivotal shift in which this fashion-driven aesthetic attempts to expand into claims of fighting for justice and a better world, eclipsing actual social resistance into rituals somewhat comparable to LARP'ing. Opposing the actually lethal war machines in this real world ought not be lumped in with harmless dress-up games, alleviating the subculture's participants of pondering a non-hypothetical reality of unimaginable suffering and atrocity. Images of holocaust should not become equated merely with tribes of ex-suburban slackers recording grunting sounds and selling vague images meant to remind people of their grunts. That's a harsh articulation, but I believe it is necessary. Let fun and games be valuable aspects of our lives, but cautious that they never inadvertently de-fang the blood and sweat shed in realms of non-fiction. It's obvious there are powerful forces in this world using every trick they can conjure to very intentionally render Anarchists and Punx effectively impotent; meanwhile their heartless genocides plow on... (insert crust lyrix from this line forward)

...essays by Robert I'mhuman, drawing and engaging Cincinnati’s lines in the sand, September 2014