...and the Feathered Platypus replied, 'Karl Marx?'

Despite public misconception, platypi actually do not have feathers, although one long glance with squashed eyeballs should reasonably lead you to ask your respective creative deities, “Well, why the hell not? They've got everything else.”  First of all, I suppose, they don’t really talk, either, nor do they constantly muse on what the late Mr. Marx might have to say on any given global topic discussed, ad nauseum, in some of today’s left-handed circles.

 

In actuality, flat-footed platypode, the only egg-laying mammals, trick disbelieving predators into a complete cerebral meltdown, defended by only that most classic of animal world Halloween costumes, a Daffy Duck custom Groucho mask taped to the a*s-half of a hairless beaver.  The true wilderness pride of Australia exists blissfully unaware of both danger and mirrors.  The male of the species releases venom from a secret pouch stashed behind their webbed rear paw, for seemingly no particular reason other than they want to.  Anyone who has actually seen one of these majestic creatures, once forcefully convinced that Doctor Frankenstein has not turned to taxidermy, must wonder why did evolutionary architects turn conservative at the crazy idea of sticking a feather in a tidy bobby cap, calling it no weirder than before, and crowning the breast-stroking Platypus the heighth of all Darwinian musings?  Why do the progressive birthday parties all have to end with pinning the feather on the platypus, the one final element everyone wants to believe will make perfect this noble beast?     

For a writer without the burdens of employment to occupy a wandering mind, answering your own philosophical questions can be a dangerous assignment to accept.  If offered a safer alternative, say, to instead infiltrate a lion’s den wearing only safari clothing selected from Lady Gaga’s walk-in meat closet, you may just be wiser to start Googling generous life insurance agents in your state offering an ‘intentional pet death’ clause with every new policy.  Wrestling giant, man-eating felines, at least, is a straightforward proposition�"a sporting death match between two ‘top of the food chain’ candidates leaves little room for interpretation, as opposed, say, to one inebriated and poorly educated man versus the swirling bottomless well of esoteric-ish ideas churning in their first-class vortex-within-a-cortex.  If I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, how am I supposed to know what the hell to talk about? 

 

It is with sincere regret with which I inform you that an entire factory of lucid-dream assembly workers were laid off over the preceding mental gangbang.  Don’t worry about me, though, I sleep fine.  Nightly forced marriages to Freddy Kruger ain’t so bad, but his insistence on honeymoon night fisting is starting to chaff the bum.  Regardless, those union-endorsed nap breaks were costing too much…mental currency, you know?  There’s a national deficit to worry about, I’ve been told, and I am, if nothing else, a good ‘Merican. 

***

Dumb looking critters aside, the actual question at hand has for forty years consistently inspired wave after wave of blowhard Democratic Party strategists to beach themselves upon the misty Isle of Elections Lost, and the query is this: Why is there such a lack of mass physical activism on behalf of the left-leaning millennial youth?  A star-crossed community borne from a solar burst of social change so profound that the flower-powered explorers consumed every gaseous vapor in the Yellow Submarine’s tank, just so we could glimpse the locked gates of Nutopia’s Supernova Playground before the Summer of Love’s chemical vacation adventure ended.

In honor of the aforementioned platypus, let us try and wave away every needless feather that is so often mistakingly associated to this otherwise perfect creature.

 

Some people will tell you that ‘dope’ is the feather!

 

They say this generation is too busy getting stoned and laughing uncontrollably while Daniel Tosh brings back ‘America’s Stupidest Home Videos,’ one sad modern superstar at a time.  If this hazed hippie splinter group, so inclusive yet so forgetful of events that don’t fall on Adolph Hitler’s birthday, ever got the idea to protest the Man, en masse,  then just by keeping elections in November could said Man trim their stems.  You know what I call the leftover stems?  Hippie Chew.     

Other feather chasers will point to the inter-webs.

According to these people, given the ‘whatever’ attitude prevalent among the various youth cliques, no matter in whom they trust, it’s just too easy to BBM your inner Starchild to the world than to have to go out during primo nude-Skyping hours and Draw Down the whole f*****g Moon.  If outdoor social organizing can’t be multitasked around staying up-to-the-now on celebrity Twitter threads and Jenna_TX69’s multi-partner hermaphrodite love cam, then it must be rsvp’d on Facebook as a polite  ‘Maybe’. 

 

Naturally, the Pagans are holders of the elusive chicken coat!  Or so I have heard.

 

True, no group so proudly displays the quirky genetic inheritencies of trippy, hippie-dippie ancestry as those Earth loving neo-‘s, who always have the inside info on your county park’s permit by-laws regarding pet bats.  They’re open tolerance, nay, acceptance!, of alternative lifestyles in the Goddessly name of highly vaginal deities has corroded the divine ‘Merican belief system.  A clear hierarchy where one and only one big-phallused God is necessary; worth the bloody Eucharistic sacrifice of all heathen crones and the sweeping mythical traditions they rode in on.  If the Yahweh Bloc boycotts, then the Metaphysical Olympics is just a bunch of Pentagram wearing outcasts competitively meditating on the beach, each with a different silly name, like Starhawk.

 

Some less tolerant friends may try and tell you that the feather is all just the kind of self-absorbed, all-important attitude that youngsters develop from ol' pappy no longer being able answer toddler Timmy’s annoying f*****g questions with the Enlightening end of a University of Texas-sized belt buckle!

 

The lady liberals get all MAAD, NOW, when honest people want to raise their children in the honest traditions of old-fashioned America.  The one where children were sent into coal mines and factories for ‘character-building’ wages that were still probably higher than what their immigrant mothers’ earned at the‘Super Flammable’ Clothing & Keyless Lock factory in downtown No-one-gives-a-s**t-anymore.  The sooner we get God back in this country, the sooner the good men of the Lord will remember that female sensibilities can not be trusted.  The next big snake to come sliding through the canyon may cause them to get all emotional, forgetting which fruit is best for them, and which that has been forbidden!

 

***

True as the trees that gave their life for this ink, we are indeed getting nearer to the red-beating heart of the matter.  Believe it or not, I am working with a word-count limit, here, people.  I’m no Dickens.  Oh, how fairhe was to the ladies.

Given the evidence presented and the thoughts native to my radical brain, it seems to me that the Spirit of ’68, recalls time when the forces of ‘Old and Evil’ had erected their iron levees over the grave of Bobby, Martin, and hundreds of other peaceful protestors, inspired to action with an acid tab under tongue and eyes of falling water focused on the public execution of Nguyen Van Lem.  August, 1968 was the moment when those old, evil forces realized the approaching storm was far greater than they could have imagined�"Katrina sized.  And we all know how even the slithering descendants of those socially ambivalent forces deal with storms as bitchy as she.

Alas, Ostara’s perfect storm proved to be too pure, too fast and too powerful for politics, and the movement died a slow disco death in the double-hinged jaw of Richard M. Nixon, former human reptile. 

From a distant point of view, with the right kind of eyes, one can still see the withered canopies of that beautiful savage garden--soiled with mysticism, watered with psilocybin and grown not by the Sun, but the Lunar energies of photosynthetic femininism. A skyclad grove spiritually inspired, yet, universally and fundamentally unbalanced. 

Sadly, the highs and depths of that decade can never seem to shake the sulfuric stench of cliché mixed with condescending stereotype that haters and should-be admirers wave away with gagging impunity.  The roots of the flower children are obvious within every individual sect choosing to do its own thing, but those roots somehow can’t figure out how to grow together.  Instead of a mighty reborn Oak grove with a million strong, mutual bonds, the Left movement today is more like an endless field of dust, with only patchy oasies of fertile grass to rest a weary, resilient soul.  Is the air of true solidarity really so foul, even to sentimental nostrils?  Where are all the Outlaw spirits willing to rise above together? Maybe the whole idea is so far ahead it cannot help being left behind.  Yet, I can’t help but think, with The Beatles still being the best-selling act going, that there are indeed plenty of folks out there forever willing to cut free their noses and spite a crumbling, new-century reality.  If only our voices could all come together, what a song that would be--the kind of harmonious tune conspicuously absent from today’s corporately-tamed Bluetooth ear buds.

***

The events in Chicago during late August of the fated year turned out to be the climax of an era still five years from its grave.  America saw first hand and in full view not only the awesome flowing energy present in the peace movement, but the full evil brutality of those who would suppress it, by any means available.  From the deafening individual protest of Cassius Clay, to the mass civilian carnage levied by the draft, the feelings present on both sides churned violently until the emerging maelstroms could no longer remain stable.  It was The End, my friends, of all their elaborate plans.

 

Survivors named the messy afterbirth Gerald Ford, and no one knew how to rebuild from that mess.

Not as easy as it looks... 

Except, of course, for those old, evil forces.  Possessive demons inhabiting the Oval Office throne itself have taught their presidential servants to become more diabolically strategic in their efforts.  More subversive and villainously clever, in order not to raise the tides of discontent once again. 

In lieu of 50,000 dead in Southeast Asia, we have a few thousand in Iraq, a few more in Kosovo, a downed squadron in Mogadishu.  Small smatterings of American red here and there, so that no one notices we are all drowning in heroes’ blood.

 

Without the option of a factual, bold and curious news media, we instead are force-fed screeching infotainers desperate to shill one more piece of worthless bounty to a public desperate for hidden treasures.  Events with staggering global consequences are instantly polished, packaged and sent down the 24-hour assembly line behind the same shiny s**t that cable news dishes out to a vampire audience that is only now beginning to become conscious to the subliminally advertised Golden Ruse.

 

Greedy tentacles will reach out from the financial galaxy’s super-massive black hole as long as cowardly Congressmen are all too willing to exchange the keys to the public’s safe deposit box for two more years of maintenance free Cadillac health care.  While the price of the American Dream rises with the artificially inflated stock market, the actual cost of dreaming ironically only skyrockets when the market crashes.  Either way, we get left paying the check, plus tip--for such fantastic customer service. 

 

Make no mistake, the darkness is not confined to the edge of town.  It infects every side-walk and Main street.  It is even within our own inner-selves, filtering our will to resist, intruding under the cover of noon while we daydream of worlds perfect for one. 

 

We can never defeat this black specter, much less fight it head on.  Without the presence of mass activism, subverted by a coordinated effort to wean the public from the visual flow of obvious atrocities, the darkness has become stronger.  To overcome we must begin to embrace not only our own individual spirituality�"a special brand of faith entrenched in the belief that nothing more than energy itself dominates the universe, no matter what form of deity it takes�"but create an active, shared repellant to nameless forces that strive to see us glued to the You Tube.

 

We must recognize our ancestor’s faults, refrain from binging on our pure singular causes, aware that another all-or-nothing push will only create an equal-and-opposite purge.  That old darkness within is a part of our human nature, with no further evidence than the integrity of American electoral candidates needed to prove it. 

 

There will always be inane greed and pointless bloodshed.  Banishing them forcibly from our community is a fool’s errand.  If we were to achieve Utopia now, I promise that the generation next would inherit front row seats to the Apocalypse. 

 

This may seem to some a sobering, defeatist attitude, one that may in fact dull our carnal thrust for justice, but accepting that which is out of our control will prove to be the strength we will ride to a true victory�"a world in balance. 

While we will rely on an interconnected community to stay vigilant against the wrath of ancient darkness.  We must rely on ourselves to spread love and respect for the Earth and all her guests, to keep that critical balance in our own lives.  And when the feelings of despair creep in unnoticed with their chain saws and tractors, intending to deforest our content spiritual grove, I hope the following parable will provide you the path to changing those negative thoughts:

 

Everyone knows that a ton of gold and a ton of feathers weigh exactly the same, and no one would have a tough time deciding which one they’d rather haul back to the homestead.  A ton of gold is worth more coin than any of us will see in this lifetime or the next, without getting elected to something, anyway. 

 

Feathers, on the other hand, only have value to plucked fowl and misaligned spines. 

 

But let us continue the idea of this grade school riddle one imaginary step further.  You’ve somehow managed to hold on this long, careening all the way down to well bottom, so why not have a little fun before the ride’s over? 

 

Now, to ensure a fair deal, the gold would have to be weighed, screw the feathers, but let’s bring them along for posterity’s sake.  Besides, if there isn’t an actual ton of feathers, the whole story really goes to s**t.

 

So you’re going to need to rent a monster truck but, screw it�"you’re about to be rich!  Once on the nearest freight scale, you see the quantities together for the first time, and somehow you find that the thrill has gone on to better stories.  Why?  The gold is still there, two thousand whole pounds of it, but the luster has been overshadowed by a mile-high pile of worthless fake platypus feathers.  You can no longer see the luster of your good fortune, so you begin to forget how amazing this day has been!

 

Now to the rational eye, it would seem this grey world, too, is out of balance.  The sky is dark and cloudy and it is not until your enlightened scientific mind remembers that the total mass of all the good things in life, even if they seem too few or far between, still greatly out values that foreboding pile of a giant’s pillow stuffing teetering above you.  When we can dismiss all our fear of that weak monolith, our progressive movement will get back on a common beam, ready to vault forward into a balanced future, willing to accept the mighty platypus for exactly what he is.

Author's Note

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