Karmic Chaos & The Quest for Catharsis

As one elementary school teacher aptly summarized, “Politics, greed, and mismanagement have made [teaching] incompatible with physical and mental health” (p. 90, Libby).

Well, one more disheartening report on how our society’s pillars are crumbling, and it couldn’t be more infuriating. Education is the bedrock of any advanced society; well, education and overall health, and good health is attained through solid education. The United States of Hypocrisy is failing dramatically at both of these keystones, and the parallelisms are flagrant.

”Between 2020 and 2022, there was a marked increase in parents harassing, intimidating, and threatening school staff; in several states, parents physically assaulted teachers because they were upset about school mask policies even during virus surges. NBC News reported in 2021, ‘The teacher is now viewed by a small, loud contingent not as a public servant but as a public enemy.’ The following spring, FOX News host Tucker Carlson said that teachers should be ‘beaten up’—and encouraged viewers to ‘thrash the teacher’” (p. 68, Libby).

This mirrors how certain demographics in America have likewise railed against science and healthcare, and just about everything else that scares them. Now, look at education attainment within the United States (https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/educational-attainment.html). It is terribly sad, but terribly telling too.

Any wonder such a drastic shift has happened in such a short period of time with a toddler tyrant and his sycophants in the White House, entire news networks pandering and puppeteering and propagandizing their virulent misinformation and weaponized disinformation, and global social media-empires profiting off such clickbait bs, to truly influence too many towards an undereducated and incredibly gullible Idiocracy, just so the entitled can reap all the rewards from it while the mindless mobs fight to hold onto xenophobic-based White Christian Nationalism (despite all the data saying it’s the absolute minority in this country now)? All the screeching Karens in Moms For Liberty exemplify this brainwashed desperation, and the GOP couldn’t work harder at watering these poisonous weeds at every opportunity. Heck, the GOP fights against anything that would best benefit the middle and lower classes, seemingly hell-bent on doing everything possible to reinforce systemic poverty. I wonder why. Now, teachers and librarians are under attack, verbally and physically, from emotionally stunted adults who have lost the skills required for good parenting, wanting instant gratification through their bullying and tantrums. The American Psychological Association (APA) has been tracking this well (https://www.apa.org/education-career/k12/violence-educators.pdf), which of course NPR cares about too (https://www.npr.org/2022/03/17/1087137571/school-violence-teachers-covid).

I’ve written this so many times, but the priorities of this country are painfully delusive. Affordable health care and quality education SHOULD BE foundational rights for every single person, and free of charge. Teachers and police officers SHOULD BE the highest trained and best paid public servants on every budget. This is what creates an educated (dare I say “enlightened”), multicultural, vibrant and empathetic, and safe-for-all society. We need to trust our teachers; they are some of the most educated people in society, having to be experts in child development, social-emotional development, curriculum development and assessment, as well as unpaid tutors, parent liaisons, book buyers, charity workers, therapists, social workers, crisis managers, security staff, and human shields. Tell me you do more at whatever job you currently have.

Robbins gives some painfully clear examples of how both “the system” itself, and society at large, work to undermine education in America, save for the lily-white and wealthy enclaves and their for-profit charter school islands (even if teachers form cliques of their own, and fall into patterns of childish bullying, petty rumormongering, and mindless sabotage upon their colleagues). Systemic racism is baked into every fiber of this nation, and education is historically a glaring fault line. Read Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond for kicks, and look at Florida for the reactionary, clownish insanity of today (and watch as the state slowly, ignorantly allows the sea to reclaim the peninsula in a constantly warming world).

From Columbine High to Robb Elementary, nothing has been done to stop mass murder in schools except to make teachers frontline shields for your children. All of this is a glaring national crisis that reaches the heart of what a nation is.

So: 1. We have a seriously undereducated populace . . . 2. The deep-rooted problems with tech addiction and an unregulated internet erode an undereducated society in all-too apparent ways . . . 3. Parenting, in so many ways for so many children, has changed over the past three generations to be another symptom of a deteriorating society . . . 4. And small-minded, primitive-brained people suck.

For two semesters, I was a counseling intern at an outpatient day-treatment center for kids and teens whose schools deemed them unfit due to behavioral issues. This was a partnership with the county school district, and we had an inpatient facility too. Individual, group, and family sessions were mixed into their weekly coursework, which we continued through licensed educators. Our goal was to help these kids, and their families, find some equilibrium with diagnosed conditions and help them reintegrate back to their home schools. This was, without a doubt, the most rewarding work I’ve ever done. While some conditions are biological or genetic in origin, all too many were direct products of toxic family dynamics. It takes a village to help a child; it takes a village to help a family help their child. Teachers, therapists, child psychologists, a psychiatrist, and all the supporting staff all worked as that village for every single kid. The emotionally, if not physically abandoned, the sexually molested, the physically abused, the psychologically tormented, and the otherwise traumatized were cared for through tears and screams and tantrums of furious energy, but they ultimately knew they were safe and protected, at least for eight hours each day. This is what every school should look like, working as interdisciplinary teams to help every child succeed and thrive. Every child should be given access to every resource imaginable in the wealthiest nation in human history. The future depends upon such a seismic shift in societal priorities.

Robbins also highlights the existential issues alongside viable solutions, which she apparently shared with the Next Big Idea Club (https://nextbigideaclub.com/magazine/teachers-year-inside-americas-vulnerable-important-profession-bookbite/41045/). Solutions are very possible with enough public willpower. We can dynamically transform society in radical ways that can empower the lower classes to thrive with the resources, infrastructure, and opportunities to do so. Ensuring teaching professions are “worth their weight in gold” is a crucial first step. This means giving them the respect and trust they deserve, safe working environments, fair and effective protections, collective bargaining, more staffing, loan forgiveness, supply-rich classes and small class sizes, well-defined and realistic job descriptions, and of course well-paid salaries with encouraging incentives. It takes a certain type of person to be a good teacher; it takes a system that nurtures those good people to pursue education as a life-long career. Again, this is the bedrock of a modern society.

Helping all struggling parents is a future-focused second step that benefits society holistically.

Let the Lost Cause racists scream into the ether, since our bought-out politicians can’t do anything about regulating and policing up the internet, AI, autonomous weapons, and whatever the whole thing evolves into (it will happen sooner than we realize). However, in the meantime, our police forces need the power and motivation to track, prosecute, and punish every ignoramus who bullies, assaults, and casts death threats at everything they don’t like, and protect our public servants from the slathering public, from brick-throwing dads to AR-15-toting teens. (I do realize the bind this puts me in: power to the people, but only those who behave themselves like the adults they’re supposed to be.) Behaviors have consequences, and we need to start policing up such behaviors, collectively. Online public shaming doesn’t seem to affect enough of them, and oftentimes they’re simply parroting their elected officials and media darlings. Adults who lack emotional intelligence will surely produce children doing likewise. The “moral majority” have turned into rabid dogs since the 1960s, and classrooms filled with gunned-down kids don’t phase them one bit. Instead of harassing teachers, they should be parenting their children and grandchildren, helping them prepare for a highly uncertain future. Education will help them. It takes a village, right?

We need to move forward, overturn the priorities of this country, and rebuild our infrastructure from the ground skyward. Education, health care, labor, and pensions. However, this country looks to be a sinking ship captained by selfish, deluded morons voted into office by equally selfish, deluded, and poorly educated idiots. Idiocracy, here we come as climate change falls like a hammer on humanity.

I really, truly wanted to love this novel. Ilana Masad gave a glowing review for NPR (https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1173613977/john-wray-novel-gone-to-the-wolves-heavy-metal-book-review), which only heightened my interest and led me to purchase the e-book through Barnes & Noble.  

As a traumatized and misfit kid of the ‘80s who embraced heavy metal in ’85, then thrash in ’87, then speed in ’88, then crust and grindcore and death metal after my very first concert—the Milwaukee Metal Fest of ’89, then . . . just a couple of years later as the “Grunge Gold Rush” took off . . . all subgenera of what is now a vast spectrum of metal musicianship, I felt this story might resonate deeply within my grey matter of memories. Back then, metalheads were truly outcasts just about everywhere, the geeks and freaks and broken things that slithered into our own cloistered cliques who haunted the back of the cafeteria and found solace in empty parking lots far away from the football and basketball games, wanting to disappear and be left alone with our music and comic books and hollowed-out dreams. Finding kinship in any form was something akin to fate; the dark gods smiling on their chosen bastard children for some blissful moment. Tape-trading was the ONLY way to discover new music that wasn’t on garbage FM rock stations, until Columbia House started having a metal insert in their monthly mailings. There were the magazines, but we never read any of them. Nobody had the money to piss away, or the monomaniacal fascination to toss money at them. I didn’t even know about MTV’s Headbangers Ball until about ’90 and only then because my girlfriend was babysitting at a house who could afford cable. 

I remember that hallowed night in a cavernous building in the dead of winter watching some 30 bands blast us to shreds in Milwaukee, most of whom I had never heard of before then. We were kids amongst a horde of leather-clad giants handing us beers and drags from joints and pushing pills in our hands (“just say no!”). Nuclear Assault nuked the place. I remember being deafened by a wall of speakers as Judas Priest opened up with a long drum solo for their Painkiller tour in Chicago, while Rob Halford languidly rolled out on his Harley as another curtain opened to reveal a second wall of speakers. I remember climbing a plastic construction fence to get to the sound booth in the rafters as Rage Against the Machine whipped the crowd into a frenzied mob on the outskirts of Honolulu. They tore the place apart. I remember seeing Metallica in Bangkok in an open-air arena with what felt like a million others who spoke a different language. I remember seeing Type O Negative, Danzig, and Ronnie James Dio-fronted Black Sabbath play on Halloween 1994, and the hurried drive back for the graveyard shift with some kindred spirits with ears ringing and the afterglow lasting long past dawn. I remember seeing Project 86 at what seemed like a 1950s cocktail lounge in Chevy Chase, Maryland, as they thunderously evoked their Songs to Burn Your Bridges By, and as I prepared to go to Iraq to save hallowed democracy from the evils of Islam (and cash in on their oil fields). I remember seeing Slipknot at a filthy toilet-bowl bar in downtown Des Moines looking like lunatics who just escaped from the asylum and raided a cheap costume store (by this time I was wearing earplugs to concerts big and small). I remember seeing the almighty GWAR, alien overlords that they are, in Minneapolis, drenching the crowd in fountains of fake bile and blood and semen. I remember thousands of us screaming “God hates us all!” over and over at a Slayer show to the silent, impotent, starry and frigid firmament in Sacramento. I remember seeing Obituary on Leap Day 2020, as the world soon succumbed to the worst pandemic in a hundred years, and the millions of obituaries which followed in its wake. I remember, quite recently, Body Count turning their mosh pit into a furious meat grinder with energy I’ve not witnessed ever before, nor probably will ever again. The hate is real, America. It is so tangibly real. So many other venues, tours, and bands with less-permanent memories are held within my mind, for as long as that lasts. Metal music is infused within my apostate, heathen, godless life-blood. It will accompany me beyond, to whatever end awaits us all. Most likely boring, open-mawed Oblivion. 

The chord that rang out was familiar enough—an overdriven minor triad—but what stood [Kip’s] hair on end was how it felt. Distorted guitar had always had a certain temperature to him: it had always, no matter how vicious the music, been a sound he understood in terms of heat. Embedded with that warmth—hidden inside it—lived a cryptic form of life-affirming power. Deicide and Morbid Angel played their riffs to raise the dead, not to inter them. That was the nature of the exchange, the secret truth of the transaction, however bleak the songs might sound to virgin ears. Rage and violence and pain instead of nothingness (pp. 226-227, Nook). 

Wray captures this environment—this “subculture”—incredibly well, even if his chosen trio is nothing like anyone I ever knew, wedged as we were between the steel mills and iron works of East Chicago and Gary, Indiana, and the endless cornfields of everywhere beyond. Florida backwater it was not, but neither did anyone have the depth of knowledge in guitars, amplifiers, band members, and vocabulary like Leslie does at such a similar age. Doesn’t matter. I was the quiet, awkward, rage-filled wallflower . . . and metal music filled the void in my damaged soul. 

Masad has understandable issues with the lone female character, Kira, but at the same time the “beautiful but broken girl from a white-trash home” was a familiar trope from my high-school hellscape. No circus-freak father required. Normal blue-collar fathers were awful enough. My white-collar Vietnam Vet father was simply a haunted monster no bottle of bourbon could quell. Connie and Angie and Kim and Shannon and Crystal fit the bill all-too perfectly with Kira, if tragically. Masad may want to do some research on childhood trauma and its effects on developing brains. I have no idea if any of them are alive today, but I have no recollection of any of them speaking to the depth of personality that Kira does either. We didn’t grow up online though. We had, at best, five or six television stations to gawk at. Some regrets can never be resolved. Some mistakes never forgiven. 

Gone To The Wolves is theatrically broken into three parts for our wayward trio: the Florida Death Metal scene, the dying LA Glam and rising LA Thrash scene, then—oddly—the Norwegian Black Metal scene. It’s the Scooby-Doo third part that collapsed my nostalgic high, but I understand Wray’s supposed Dan-Brown desire to make a “thrilling finale”. For me, it falls flat by stepping way outside plausible reality (but I’m primarily a nonfiction reader so grant me some leeway if this is the norm these days). Too many people need endorphin bumps every two minutes or so thanks to tech addiction. I do not. I would have liked to see our troubled trio mature in the early 90s, like most of us did to one degree or another. Some died early of course, others weren’t true metalheads to begin with. We die-hards are devoted to the bitter end. 

While I can’t definitively identity with any character in this book, Wray opens to door to so many vibrant arteries of our subculture’s primordial existence that we can—at the very least—sympathize with them. We knew people who resembled them. The lost souls, the drug addicts, the lovelorn, the bipolar-depressive violent. I have to assume early heavy metal coming-of-age stories are rare. Nobody truly cared about us, and they still don’t. So maybe we can call this The Perks of Being a Wallflower meets Lords of Chaos? 

Disparity by design, as the Chicago pop-punk band Rise Against sings (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29x2hCviWcw). 

I truly believe this book should be required reading for every citizen of the United States of Hypocrisy, and part of the curriculum from Middle School to Undergrad to educate and empower everyone on the systems in place that create, reinforce, exploit, and capitalize on poverty in the wealthiest nation in recorded history. In the U.S., one in nine people—and one in eight children—is officially poor. This is utterly contemptible and we are all to blame. 

“Those who have amassed he most power and capital bear the most responsibility for America’s vast poverty: political elites who have utterly failed low-income Americans over the past half-century; corporate bosses who have spent and schemed to prioritize profits over people; lobbyists blocking the will of the American people with their self-serving interests; property owners who have exiled the poor from entire cities and fueled the affordable housing crisis. Acknowledging this is both crucial and deliciously absolving, directing our attention upward and distracting us from all the ways (many unintentional) we also contribute to the problem. Just as global warming is not only caused by large industrial polluters and multinational logging companies but also by the cars we choose to drive and the energy we choose to buy, poverty in America is not simply the result of actions taken by Congress and corporate boards but the millions of decisions we make each day when going about our business. 

To live and strive in modern America is to participate in a series of morally fraught systems.” (p. 155, hardcover). 

Polemical? Absolutely. From the farcical tax code to the prison industrial complex to predatory payday lending to systemic racism and segregated cities to our shoddy, vampiric healthcare system to real estate and rental rackets to all the political and social forces (“Not in MY backyard!”) that keep it all running, these corrupted systems of power work to keep millions of Americans dirt poor, and millions more struggling on the cusp of poverty living paycheck to paycheck, all while the filthy rich and their corporations hide some $1,000,000,000,000 ($1 trillion) in taxes in offshore accounts, hold control over 80% of the stock market, and amass more wealth than the bottom 80% of us possess collectively (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States). A reckoning must come. Desmond deconstructs all the arguments against systemic change, and destroys the age-old myths that keep the current systems in place. Why do Caucasian Wall Street CEOs get off scot-free for screwing millions of Americans out of their homes, while a Black kid gets 15 years in a hardcore prison for having an ounce of meth is his pocket, or worse, fourteen 9mm bullets in his back by poorly trained sociopathic cops? Disparity by design.  

Martin Luther King Jr. had a plan to completely eradicate poverty, as he detailed in his last book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?. The total cost would have a been a fraction of all the money this nation wasted on the Vietnam War—never mind all the death, trauma, wasted materiel, and destruction that conflict left the world—and just imagine where we could be today had the Poor People’s Campaign been energized in 1967. Desmond imagines, and he’s enraged. This book is hopeful that you will become enraged too, then act upon that rage for the greater good of society writ large. Cast your ballots, vet your purchasing power (“Consumer activism recognizes that every purchase is an ethical choice” [p. 157]), sharpen your pitchforks, light up the Molotov cocktails, neutralize the filthy rich, their media outlets, and their hand-puppet politicians. Billionaires should not exist. 

The 20-year “War on Terror” cost some $8 trillion ($8,000,000,000,000), all to win hearts and minds in the Middle East, while the military-industrial-congressional complex got fat at the trough (https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-09-01/costsofwar) and the American poor received little relief. 

Dave Davies of NPR’s Fresh Air interviewed this current viral-trending author about this crucial book (https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/21/1164275807/poverty-by-america-matthew-desmond-inequality). At the end of the interview, Davies asks Desmond about his optimism, and Desmond has a beautiful summation of the entire issue: “Completely optimistic . . . despair is useless . . . and ending poverty in America is better for all of us.” Desmond gifted The New York Times with an article about it too if you can afford their paywall (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/magazine/poverty-by-america-matthew-desmond.html). Despair is useless and nobody has a time machine. We must all act now to force systemic change world-wide, starting in your local community. 

Our nation is a travesty of inequality, and it could be so much stronger if we work together to help the lower classes rise up, be heard, and become empowered to be active, fulfilled members of the community. Join the Poor People’s Campaign (https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org) and so many other groups to become a poverty abolitionist; support collective bargaining efforts by the workforce and living wages for all through groups like One Fair Wage (https://onefairwage.site) and the Fight For $15 (https://fightfor15.org); be vocal proponents of housing-justice initiatives, inclusionary zoning, and infrastructure reinforcement—including quality schools and affordable health clinics for everyone; advocate for quality healthcare and education for everybody; hold the filthy-rich accountable to their roles within our society; boycott vampiric corporations that prey upon and exploit their workforce, supporting the status quo; and, crusade for drastic, systemic societal changes by voting for progressive candidates who walk the talk. Empty words and half-measures are worthless. History proves this. “We don’t just need deeper antipoverty investments. We need different ones, policies that refuse to partner with poverty, policies that threaten its very survival” (p. 138). Tackling poverty, inequality, and climate change can happen all at once. Let’s get started now. In solidarity with those who truly care and take action. (The rest be damned to whatever fantasyland hell you can conjure in your feeble minds.)  

”It is hard to put into words what the end of poverty would mean for millions of workers and parents and tenants and children below the line. It would mean a wholly different existence, a life marked by more safety and health, by more fairness and security. It would mean lives directed not by the scramble of survival but by passions and aspirations. It would mean finally being able to breathe. It would mean an opening up of the nation, the full embrace of the poor into the Union—to the benefit of the Union as a whole. Ending poverty would not solve all our problems. But since poverty is a catalyst and cause of an untold number of social ills, finally cutting the cancer out would lead to enormous improvements in many aspects of American life. The end of poverty would bring a net gain in broad prosperity” (p. 179). 

OK, well, I’ve had two glasses of wine already, so this might be my most lucid review; however, this was a completely enjoyable and edifying book. She-Punk scholar, Feminist, professor, writer, musician, and life-long punk fan, Goldman writes a wonderful reflection on the multifaceted roles women have played within the punk genre of music since its first wave back in the mid-70s, starting in London, flowing to New York City and then Los Angeles, and now blooming all over the world as the foundational issues of poverty, inequality, classism, oppression, and patriarchy are becoming clearer to greater millions every year. Women are becoming more and more empowered, reinforced by the groundbreakers and barricade-smashers that came before them. This book illustrates those connections beautifully as Goldman takes us around the world.  

Look, music is powerfully subjective and the fact that pop music is forever dominant speaks volumes about the majority of humanity. I’ve been an anti-pop metalhead since 1985. We all tended to be social outcasts, misfits, bastards, and broken things who gravitated towards such outsider communities for a multitude of reasons. A sense of belonging and communion was certainly one of them. At its best (to me), punk is primal, enraged, and riotous. From early Suicidal Tendencies to old-school Anti-Flag to The Exploited to Death by Stereo to Redbait to Soul Glo to Cliterati, that’s where my heart and mind go to when I think of punk. Of course I know punk is on a spectrum just like every other offshoot of “rock music”—I saw the Ramones open for White Zombie in 1992 while Green Day was banking big—and this made me wonder if anyone’s put together a taxonomy of rock music, which Professor Google found this aesthetically cool but terribly incomplete (description- and sampling-wise) Music Map (https://musicmap.info/). Goldman provides a track listing for each chapter and some kind soul on Spotify cobbled it together for the rest of us to enjoy (the playlist is this book’s title). While I wouldn’t personally consider half of it punk music in any way, this is a nice strength of the book to breaking open the preconceived notions of how even an educated metalhead like me looks at this sub-genre, and allows us the opportunity to discover and explore new music by incredible musicians sharing their passions with the world, most especially if they’re speaking truth to power. The Riot Grrrl movement of the 1990s was a tremendous cerebral stimulation as I drank a beer at a dive bar in Honolulu with Lori Barbero of Babes in Toyland, watched The Breeders pogostick a crowd, and witnessed Lollapalooza start in my home town of Chicago in 1991.  

From The Decline of Western Civilization Part I (1981) to the free-for-all that the cornucopia of “identity” is today, cultural appropriation and countercultural conformity are ever-present these days, but I have to admit when a see a young kid with a foot-tall mohawk, the leather jacket, face piercings, and Doc Martins, I can’t help but smile with pride that punk’s not dead, nor will it ever be. Women have been a part of my music scene since I can remember. From Girlschool to Rock Goddess to Tam Simpson of Sacrilege to Doro Pesch of Warlock to all the amazingly talented women of metal today (https://rideintoglory.com/women-in-traditional-metal-the-old-school-the-new-school-and-the-girlschool/), I have always seen these genres as multicultural and inclusive, but I know that’s not truly how it is. Sexism, predation by men, outright misogyny, inherent trauma, rampant inequality, and pervasive patriarchy have always been the dominant forces within metal and punk, even as so many bands railed—and continue to rail—against all of it. FUN FACT: I had a playlist dedicated to female metal musicians, but then I read how someone (Alissa White-Gluz from Archenemy I think) call bs on that saying nobody ever says “male-fronted metal band”. Being “woke” is a journey of continuous education, growing empathy, and nurturing humility. I guess I’ve leveled-up to Third-wave Feminist now \m/

Goldman shares all of this across the past five decades and highlights one glimmering positive from the cesspool internet: the ability for so many artists to find an audience on essentially their own terms. Bandcamp.com is a nice example of how anyone can promote themselves through sharing with like-minded music fans. Just this week, Bandcamp’s straightforwardly titled The Metal Show podcast hosted Alicia Cordisco (a self-defined trans-female) and her band Transgressive churning out perfect, political thrash metal, and whose proceeds (including proceeds from physical merchandise) go to Trans Lifeline (translifeline.org/donate). I probably never would have found them without Bandcamp, and through such avenues as Bandcamp we can rally in solidarity for such worthy causes as the world continues to struggle against the forces of Fear, Oppression, Authoritarianism, Systemic Racism, and Ignorant Xenophobia. Fifty years ago the only people to have tattoos were sailors and convicts. Now people can walk down most streets however they wish to wrap themselves in identity and nobody but geriatrics take a second-look. That’s forward progress.

I bought my copy of this softcover (surprisingly signed by the author with a dazzling “Stay Punky!” inscription) from Hat & Beard Press (https://hatandbeard.com/collections/books/products/revenge-of-the-she-punks-by-vivien-goldman), combining titles to try justifying my carbon footprint mailing physical books across the continental United States. I’m glad I did. I promise to stay punky unto the grave.