My Libertarian Motorcycle Diary
by Lee Edward "Ed" Enochs
We are stardust, we are golden
We are caught in the devils bargain
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden
January 25, 2015
Today (and please forgive me), I find myself filled with streams of consciousness, angst and alienation outside alone in the bitter nordic cold. As my beloved mentor and father's family friend, Jimi Hendrix, always told me, that life is but a joke and in the distance all along the watchtower, I find myself very much exhausted, and on the lam and on the run again. Always and forever a proverbial and actual iconoclastic nomad, pushing bitterly forward, when I am not in Princeton, going to grad school, on the run as the wayward son of the devil with the blue dress on. This is the nomadic and wayward life I have chosen for myself.
Or perhaps by a cruel twist of providential divine intervention to those of more astute and Princetonian Calvinist theological aspirations. I am a Libertarian and very much conservative estranged son of hippie, counter cultural individual of the 1960's. While I vehemently reject the liberal and progressive Elizabeth Warren type politics of my father, as I said yesterday in my video blog (or "vlog" for those in the technological know) on my father's family hemp farm, I am only now coming to terms with my father's outlaw, wanton and vagabond lifestyle.
Besides a bad and very bitter family surname, his family ganja enclave and a little bit of advice not to sleep in the same bed twice, my father was kind of a good person in a neo-marxist and cocaine-cartel owning kind of a way. This tidbit of advice my hippie "pops" learned during his "motorcycle diary" days as a revolutionary and intimate confidant of the dynamic, and a bit iniquitous revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, commonly known as "el Che" or simply "Che," was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist.
However, (And I am sorry to lapse into a narcissistic reminisce) on this day, (a good day that I did not have to use my gat on, and a great day to live free or die hard), I find myself in a Jimi Hendrix induced stupor, and very much rural North Bennington, Vermont, an incorporated village in the town of Bennington in Bennington County, Vermont, United States. The population here in North Bennington was 1,643 as of the 2010 census. North Bennington's boundary with Bennington cuts across the grounds of Bennington College. North Bennington is home to several companies, most notably National Hanger Company, PortaBrace and Sterling Gun Drills. North Bennington is some 122 miles south of Burlington, Vermont and approximately 190 miles north of New York City. And if this matters to you at all, North Bennington is roughly 214 miles south of Portland, Maine.
Yes, I have to confess to you today, with bitter tears and a bit of freudian Oedipus complex, my father encouraged me to lose my teenage and "pinball wizard" obsessed virginity to a multiplicity of peruvian women of the night and was a very close friend of "Che" Guevara and participated in a myriad of unspeakable and peyote induced frenzied religious ceremonies and anti-capitalistic revolutionary micro- socialist military campaigns in what has become known by scholars as the "lost and wonderful years of Che" (Spanish: Los Perdidos y maravillosos años de Che). Yes, my father did have a passionate and stormy revolutionary "bromance" with simply wonderful Che Guevara and they ran naked with the bulls of Barcelona, smashed on Argentine coco leaves together.
The subject of peyote, "Che," economics and ecstatic South American religious ceremony is very personal to me due to my own personal narrative and has contemporaneously taken center stage in recent political discussions in the United States and it is of paramount importance that American conservatives be knowledgeable of the fiscal problems that currently plague this country in order to be effective ambassadors of life to the culture in which we live.
The recent “Occupy Wall Street Movement” and cultural ascendancy and trenchant leftist policy implementation of the likes of Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and President Barack Obama has made the subject of economics pertinent to every concerned American. President Obama, by his own admission is a progressive and left leaning politician who has decried the alleged economic injustices fiscal abuses of recent Republican administrations and the free market system and has attempted to level the playing field between rich and poor in American society through economic policy change and a more activist role of the federal government.
Since the election and mercurial cultural ascendancy of President of Obama in November 2008, I have aspired like Will Farrell in his somber but hit cinematic masterpiece, "Step Brothers," to "cash checks and snap necks," in an economic machismo type manner and have learned that the economic terms known as capitalism and socialism have been well discussed and used indiscriminately by both his supporters and opponents, and clarification is needed in order to understand precisely what these concepts really mean.
An objective and careful analysis of these critical economic concepts is necessary in order to see what fiscal principles are necessary in order to help America out of its current economic calamity. As America faces a catastrophic debt crisis of unparalleled proportions, the subject of economics has become of paramount importance to every American irrespective of political party and demographic status. Since the days of my youth, I have been a bit scared and always enthralled with the forgotten lore of my hippie father with his myriad stories of living and loving (in a very platonic heterosexual way) Che Guevara.
Not to far from here in North Bennington, is a little pacifistic Amish community known for their great knowledge of the theological and ideological understanding of the theology of Paul Tillich, Karl Barth, H. Richard Niebuhr, John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas. I have learned to love this intellectualist and a bit rancorous enclave in a deep and abiding manner. For it was this group that taught me to fear and loathe all forms of technology after 1990. They particularly hated Steve Jobs and saw him as the incarnation of the devil himself or "herself" to remain politically correct here in the egalitarian North East. This stoic religious enclave has showed me love when no one else has. They have shared their fresh and artificial free toxin free milk and cornbread with me on a regular basis since the days of my vagabond youth when I was taught by dad to love Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayers, be evasive and avoid at all costs, doing a 15 year pop in prison for cocaine possession.
I also learned much and have had "dreams of my father" like President Obama. I have learned from my father to hate all conservatives irrespective of who they are and their personal affinities. I have also learned that all forms of technological and tracking surveillance are evil. Remember this my friend, that conservatives should learn from dad, Che and Bill Ayers, the warm embrace of the revolution. We must always be on guard for big brother and the TSA is always lurking beyond every bush, striving to take away our civil liberties. They can take away our stock portfolios but they can never take away our freedoms. Remember, happiness is Che's embrace and a warm gun. Yet, conservatives and progressives alike can agree that all forms of technology are evil because the government uses it to track our movements. As my beloved counter-cultural father imparted to me in his final words, "carry on my wayward son, there'll be peace when you are done." Amen and Amen.
God bless you all,
Lee Edward "Ed" Enochs
North Bennington, VT
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