Alienation Nation is a Harm City book, published in November 2014, prior to the Freddie Gray riots and purge, painting a "before" picture of Baltimore that is bleak yet instructive. James offers a philosophy to aid his fellow seekers in staying off the radar of the Machine that owns us all.
LL: James, this is the first complete Harm City book I have read, though I think I have read everything you have published from the riots forward. I think this book makes clear the advanced state of the dehumanization of interpersonal behavior in even pre-purge Baltimore. Now, more than two years later, has there been any recovery?
JL: The Purge is still on. As far as I can tell there is only a tiny cadre of BLM advisors in Baltimore, but black men in bands of 3-5 continue to cruise out of West Baltimore, hunting whites on foot by night, resulting in a very barren nightscape, except for the weird and the insane.
This past Saturday night I walked by the closed pizzeria at Eastern Boulevard and Hawthorne Road in Middle River, and between two small cars, saw a small, thin, white woman in her early 20s performing oral sex on two older black teens as they stood with their backs to the cars. I did not want to see this, but before I could avert my eyes they all gave me hostile looks before she went back to it.
The situation in Baltimore City and Baltimore County has continued to deteriorate, with more black on white and black on black killings and mob attacks, fewer police, slower police responses and almost all violent crime being re-characterized as non-violent or less-violent in police and news reports or not being reported at all. Fewer victims report crimes causing a cascade of silence. There is now no relationship between reported aggression and actual aggression in Baltimore City and County, other than in the category of homicide.
LL: Early in the book, you set out part of the philosophy that you develop in this book: "1. No decent man seeks power over his fellows... I believe that every politician is evil, that every law officer is therefore the servant of evil...," you also criticize the War on Drugs. You come dangerously close to libertarianism here. I think this material would do a lot of Libertarians a lot of good. Have you considered sending review copies to the autists at Reason?
JL: The autists! I don’t have any time to do promotional emails let alone mailings. But you may do so if you wish—or any of the six other people who have purchased the book.
Libertarianism is a state of moral delusion that believes in no-violence, that violence, or aggression is evil. However, as a realist, I understand that aggression is a tool which can be used for good or evil. Let me be clear that if I am attacked by a knife wielding man tonight, I would not characterize this as evil, for he is assuming risk and will be disemboweled in any case. However, the politician who gets elected is doing so in order to send police after me to make me comply with his will. He is evil for he takes no physical risk. The cop is evil for he takes no moral risk. The black men who seek to murder me and other whites as an expression of their racial hatred are not evil, but are merely pawns without agency, like the guns of the police. Those back thugs serve the same masters as the blue-uniformed police terrorists, the two pincers of the jaws of the Beast.
LL: James, the title of this book tells us the theme, alienation, and it is a painful one. The bystanders and witnesses here tend towards victim blaming, but you reject that, even as you have devised a behavior pattern for yourself that has kept you out of the victim column. I found this book a bit of a slower read than others of yours, because of the way you portray the victims with such pathos. Does honoring the victims through your writing help you stay sane?
JL: I have re-imagined myself as a target. I am a legitimate target for aggression to any person or persons able to do me in. When I walk out the front door down stairs I become a defensive combatant in the war to eradicate humanity waged by thugs and cops.
As far as maintaining my sanity goes, it is more selfish than that. I write to maintain my sanity or peace of mind. The victims are nothing but my material, rendering them in human terms is my art—I am arranging maimed souls like some heathen herald stacking skulls for the khan’s viewing pleasure.
LL: Throughout your Harm City writing, you offer the sound legal advice that when you are attacked by a group and mount an effective defense, any attacker who escapes injury will turn into an innocent witness against you. How did you come by this knowledge, I don't know of anyone else who teaches this?
JL: It happened to me in first grade. It happened to me as a man. The entire key to the Soul Eating Construct we call Civilization is to marshal the voices of the myriad soulless meat-puppets to drown out the true expression of the human few. Our legal system is designed for exactly this outcome. American legal doctrine is based on the evil precepts of English and Roman law, two entirely slave-based societies. I would expect nothing else.
The fact is, we live within the deviously woven fabric of a vast lie of unsavory depth. Those who are most wedded to the lie are politicians, police and the black criminal slaves of the Mammy State. All of these types will lie as a first reflex in any stressful situation. Therefore, by defending yourself against a group according to the karate douche bag method of KOing the biggest one and letting the rest learn from his fate, you are placing yourself over an injured body, for which only your word [worse than useless, as it is an aspect of the truth and is therefore easily twisted in the hands of The Lie] can serve as evidence that he attacked you. You have also placed yourself between two packs of liars, the thugs and the pigs, who will all lie on reflex just to make their day easy. This shall all occur in the Realm of the Lie [America] and be adjudicated in the Temple of the Lie [Court.]
Good luck, Captain Karate.
LL: You include here a list of the most common categories of aggressors and their effectiveness. The last one you describe is the "car-mobile, cell-phone informed, group of three to four black men in their twenties, usually unarmed." How has this group changed since the Purge?
JL: This group was rare in 2014 and is not the second most common type in the city and the most common type in the suburbs, and is more likely to number 4 aggressors than 3, which is a real break from traditional patterns of aggression.
LL: Your description of the teenagers who stake out the ATM by the church reads like something out of Buffalo Bill's Wild West scouting stories. If Harm City went fully Wild West, as it did briefly during the Purge, how long would it take for a new order to be established?
JL: As soon as knuckleheads like Big Ron and I caved in a few sacred martyr skulls, the National Guard and military contractors [which I encountered at the outset of the Purge] would be sent in to protect black aggressors from white defenders.
The best case scenario is total social collapse due to natural disaster dollar implosion, EMP blast, etc. In which case, the criminals would quickly be driven from the streets by the tens of thousands of able-bodied men who are currently prevented from defending their body, their family, their property and their community from the government-sponsored thugs, who number in their mere high 100s. This happens every time there is a snow storm and the thugs know that the police will not show in time to rescue them from the men, so stay in doors with their mommy.
For instance, those five kids elected not to attack me even after I flashed my cash and walked into a dark street mouth. In a lawless situation I could take a sword or hammer or stick and wipe them out. The hardest part would be acting like I was sick and hurt so that I could get them to corner themselves in the alley behind the Church. This could be solved by recruiting Mescaline and Ron or like minded souls and breaking all their legs.
LL: You tell the story of Daryl and his pizza, and he closes the interaction by inviting you to stop by his house sometime to say hi. This struck me as a small bit of resistance against the alienation. Is he still your neighbor, do you say hi?
JL: They took him out of the halfway house on a stretcher with a sheet over his head about six months later. I had waved hello a few times as I walked by. He had given up on leaving the house. That house coughs up a body twice a year. I have declined to befriend the old fellows who have moved in since, simply wave and say hello.
LL: When you cover predation and the four priorities that attackers follow, you close with the comment that you have never found a children's book describing this. I have thought about suggesting you write a children's book, have you ever considered it?
JL: Jack and Jill went up into Cherry Hill to score some pills… I am writing Why Grownups Suck. I’ll put a self defense section in there as well as methods for killing abusive parents in their sleep.
LL: We get some Ghetto Grocer action in this book, as well as some Snowpocalypse stories, and learn more about your friend Oliver. There is a story that hinges on the old single-date welfare distribution scheme. What impact has the staggered welfare distribution dates had on Harm City?
JL: This has spread crime out evenly across the month, has helped supermarkets staff more effectively, but has also sent criminals in their doors looking to steal in a constant stream as opposed to bottle necking at the end of the month. The reason for spreading the befits across the month is to make future unrest less likely and less intense, which will work until there are NO benefits, then the bag of hoodrats will burst open and Hell will be in seething session.
LL: James, there is much more here, a description of the self regulating mechanisms of black neighborhoods in the middle of the last century, an insightful graduation address, Craig's story (I shed a few tears) and some closing advice on how we might all create a little sanctuary of crackpottery in our lives. The topic of alienation is important to the series on
suicides which you have recently started. You cover this concept so well, I think, because you walk the line of purposely alienating yourself for survival, but maintaining that connection with others that serves your writing. Thanks for doing it, James, I know it can't be easy.
(c) 2017 James LaFond & Lynn Lockhart
