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Regarding the Pain of Others The Passion of the Christ through the vision of Mel Gibson. I saw that movie when it first came out, with my boyfriend at the time, now my ex. On our first date I took him to see Monster. He thought it was a strange choice for a first date. The “Monster” in the movie was a serial killer who was brutalized both as a child and as an adult. I had to close my eyes in the scene where she was being raped with a flashlight. Why had I chosen that movie as a first date, after a fine dinner? Not sure; I guess I wanted to be decisive about what interested me. We saw The Passion of the Christ a few weeks later. The 30-minute torture scene of the Christ was nearly unbearable; I heard weeping from someone in the row just in front of us, and as the brutal Roman soldier, foaming at the mouth, slashed Christ with a whip made of sharp bones and metal, and as it lacerated his flesh with each blow, each strike on the big screen, I dug my nails into my boyfriend’s arm, and he almost covered my eyes with his hands, gripping my hand tighter, his hand moving to stroke my leg. The force of each blow was matched by THX surround sound, as the Roman leader, watching with perverted pleasure, gestured with his hand to have Christ’s body turned over to lash it. I had never viewed such cruelty for that long, nor ever observed someone’s physical body mutilated to ribbons. You could not see it as a simulated scene—with its stunning filmed imagery—it was taking place in front of you, in real time. The darkened theater was silent except for some quiet sobbing. Finally, I too could no longer control my emotions. I pulled my glasses off and cried uncontrollably. How could anyone’s body survive such vicious lashes? How could his mother stand by and let it happen without offering her body instead? That night after the movie I was mentally exhausted, but my boyfriend and I carried out our lovemaking anyway. Between displays of passion, images of mutilated flesh and blood flashed through my mind. White circles fade into one another in a concentric, intersecting pattern. A speeding van flips over on a dirt road. Border Patrol sirens peel the air. Women and children pour out of the shattered auto windows like gasoline. They try to run but lean into dizzying figure eights that trace the flag of the Olympic Games. Corazon. Amor. Compasión. They only see white circles fading into one another and wonder if this is El Norte. The headaches whiplash memory of more white circles, priests’ robes, Santa Claus elves. I once knew a man, an alcoholic, who lived in constant pain. He lived in Leucadia and worked in Del Mar. He labored for a rich white man named Don Ross. The rich white man paid him one hundred dollars a week cash, because the alcoholic man was undocumented. He drove a yellow Datsun to work every morning. In the trunk of his Datsun were many empty cans of beer and a few unopened ones. Every morning he would freshen up with a beer. During lunch he would sneak out to his car and quickly down beer number two. When he reached his home he would drink beer number three, four, five... Before he went to bed he would drink a good night beer. His wife had stopped loving him. He lived in the house with her, but she slept with other men. He tried to speak to his wife about his demons, but he revolted her. He slept on the living room floor and she slept in the bedroom. His children ignored him. Years went by that way. The man continued to be kind, but he had a drinking problem; he couldn’t get away from it. When young he’d worked in a distillery in his home town in Mexico, which is where he picked up the habit. Somewhere along the way the beer took over. One day while living and working in the US he disappeared. Several years later, a phone call was received: “Your uncle Chano is dead; he went back home to Mexico to die. He died alone on the streets in his home town.” Me, I lived with him, and I loved him. He played catch with me when nobody else would. The asphalt parking lot in his Leucadia apartment was our field—I was Fernando Valenzuela and he was Mike Scioscia. Afterward he would cool down with a warm beer from the trunk of the yellow Datsun. Tattooed hangnails and barcode manicures become the rage as French police cruisers smear teenagers on mopeds. Tiny shreds of cotton appear dangling from crystal glasses at fashionable martini bars. Some ignite the cotton with Eiffel Tower lighters and toast comrades and collaborators. When the constable asks for a “Mock Molotov,” the bartender slides over a book of matches with a phone number inside. It’s a line to the latest spreads in Las Vegas. Patriots will go undefeated; Sarkozy will not be assassinated. Short needles poke out from the top of my friend’s shaved skull. A line of coagulated blood divides the hand-sized patch of naked skin near his temple. He sits up in the hospital gurney when he sees me, and we shake hands—his left in my right. I look at the green and blue Mylar balloons floating in the corner, the football game on TV, and the vases holding wilted flowers. My friend jokes about how he used to work at this hospital, only weeks before. He tells me that someone must have implanted a nano bomb in his head when they heard he was leaving. Once he was gone, they detonated it to force him back to the hospital. We laugh at this idea, but I can’t help thinking about the cocci fungus eating his skin, bone, and brain. The toxicologist enters the room and greets us with a friendly Salaam. He holds Ali’s left hand and speaks to him quickly about yesterday’s surgery and the one scheduled for tomorrow. “It’s definitely weapon grade biological contaminant. Genetically native to California and Arizona,” he says. The doctor reads a few lines of Ali’s chart and pens additional notes. After the toxicologist leaves, I sit near Ali’s bed and study his tired face. He says he doesn’t want another surgery. He describes the tube shoved down his esophagus as a burning lance. He says the post-operation nausea makes him too sick to eat. The nurses, he says, ask him questions about his age, the day of the week, the name of the president. I can’t decide whether to tell him the story of my mother. As a toddler, doctors had to cut out her cancer-filled eyes. From that point on, she lived in constant fear of hospitals. At age 36, she was forced to get a hysterectomy. Because she suffered immense pain after the operation, the nurse showed her how to activate the morphine drip. My mother refused. She refused everything at the hospital. It was how she maintained control and demonstrated resolve. Still, the pain continued to grow, and finally she relented. She said the morphine melted her down into an abyss of calm, and she woke up feeling sore but content. The following morning she asked the nurse how much morphine she had used. The nurse said none. My mother had pressed the wrong button on the dispenser. I looked again at the needles holding Ali’s scalp together, and I decided to keep my mother’s story to myself. I couldn’t decide if pain flags by giving in or by tricking it, as with my mother. Either way, I would do my best to leave Ali’s pain in the hospital room, but end up taking it home with me. Pain will track you, persist. Until the Americans go away. Bricks tossed into a cistern of Strawberry Quik catapult droplets outward into an arc that ends with Jell-O-blood soldiers waving amputated weapons. They rub prosthetic belly buttons and organize for longer vacations between suburban cul-de-sacs and submachine Iraq. They want pepperoni pizzas and an end to night sweats. They want to drive in the middle of the road on a clear day and dream of Dallas Cowgirl cheerleaders wearing see-through burkas and panting like they’re hauling 40-pound rucksacks. How many years does it take for a wad of chewing gum to disintegrate in a urinal? When a hand pulls the gnarled wad from the porcelain, does it stick like sex-moistened skin? Is there a man who collects these pieces of gum with his bare hands? Does he put the gum to his nose and smell the artificial flavoring? Is he tempted to put it in his mouth and chew? Does he add each piece of gum to the homemade diaphragm covering his mannequin’s cervix? Is the gum hard and rock-like? Is it pliable after a few seconds in the microwave? Does the man feel like mailing his homemade diaphragm like anthrax? Perhaps it’s not gum at all, but C-4 plastic explosive? Does he wonder if it has given him gout? His knee, ankle, and foot joints have filled with uric acid like a sponge. He buys wads of Bubbalicious and chews the flavor out of them. He fantasizes that the gum will grow into the caverns of his body like the blob, sponging the uric acid like a kidney. He pokes a needle into his elbow and into the back of his hand twenty times. But, his bones run dry. He wonders what has happened to his blood. Maybe he’s an alcoholic. Maybe he’s overdosed on chemotherapy. Maybe he’s been whipped and bruised until he’s bled like a sacrificial lamb. Stop staring at him... You can’t stop. You wait for him to address you personally. “How is your day?” He doesn’t give a fuck how you feel. You don’t either. You’re a voyeur getting off on what you see. That is why you can’t avert your eyes. Would you like him to chew the pissy gum twice over? You want to be the person he shares it with? You want to touch his pain and call it yours? You want to lick the sweat from his brow and say, “I love you, I understand you, I am you?” He doesn’t suffer for your fucking pleasure. Look away. When green tea bags steep for too long, the water becomes bitter and alkaline. I pour it out and rub my cracked knuckles against my face to feel the warmth. My stomach flutters and my bowels squirm. I read about the 44-year-old “Marathon Monk” who spent 1,000 days running in the mountains near Kyoto. He covers a distance equal to the circumference of the Earth and stops for nine days to chant mantras; no food, water, sleep. Most monks die during this part of the quest, but he must live, because of the handless babies who chew on their calluses for nourishment. I write hip-hop verses about revolution that no one will ever hear. I think about Malcolm X and my two mortgages. I cradle my daughter in her favorite blanket and teach her to root for the underdog. I hold my wife tenderly and send her love letters through the warmth of my arms. I know I must first imagine a more fulfilling state of existence in order to realize it in the future, and I count my blessings like the holes in saltine crackers, hoping they don’t crumble away. But imagining something does not make it happen. I imagined the worst was over when the doctor, reading the results of my mother’s first uterine biopsy, told her: “Congratulations, it’s not cancer.” I imagined the winking eye and electricity of the object of my desire were meant for me alone. My mother died of cancer. And he is sending currents through the body of someone younger, less jaded. We place our hands, all fingers pointing down, in the gesture of Varada Mudra, the fulfillment of all wishes; the gesture of charity, generating the force of the Buddha to our liking. We believe that the mind is strong enough to will him into existence. But maybe we should be performing the Tarjani Mudra, pointing to east, west, north, south, to threaten and warn everyone in our existence bubble. Maybe we should perform the Karana Mudra, the cattle hand, to expel our collective demons. But try as we may to meditate to the point of exhaustion, it is our pain, and our pain alone. We pray for protection as we walk through the desert with our young and old. We make the pilgrimage to the holy land of Wal-Marts and Costcos in search of the fabled green card. The document that gives us the right to walk in Aztlan. We’re here to build the empire for the new ruler. The mission is simple: sign up, ship out, kill or be killed. If you don’t make it back we will gift your family with a complimentary flag as we escort them to the nearest border. He died protecting our freedom. His father died picking your strawberries. His sister died when Nagasaki was bombed. She slit her wrist because he was gone. My daughter was kidnapped to be used in a prostitution ring. We take drugs to ease the pain. The hammock in Nayarit that hangs from the mango trees where the fields sing at night is my every breath. Cradles me into the earth. --TC, CB, & TN

Orfeo I am of the race that sang under torture —Rimbaud I was about to exit when I felt the heavy hand on my left shoulder. I knew it would be the left shoulder. I’d been caught shoplifting the electric razor from WAL* MART. I was handcuffed then maneuvered through the dazzlingly illuminated aisles, a burly plainclothes security guard on either side. Shoppers turned to look, perfunctorily. I caught the eye of a shopper’s child, a small dark-skinned girl. She gazed at me, alarmed at what she took to be my plight. Not wanting her to see my manacles, I didn’t wave but winked at her. She looked uncertain. I was led into the vast warehouse-like back area. Seated on the straight-backed aluminum chair with my hands cuffed behind me under the glaring fluorescent light. The security guard who’d put his heavy hand on my left shoulder wore a large heart-shaped orange nametag on his chest which said WAL* MART. His head was shaved and he wore a musk-based cologne. He turned his back to me and spoke into his cellphone. I heard him say the word “shoplift.” He slipped the cell in his pants pocket, turned toward me and held out a wide palm. “Identification.” I shook my head. “Driver’s license, social security card, credit card, something with your contact information?” I shook my head. “US citizen?” I nodded. “Born in the US or green card?” I nodded. “Which is it?” he said. “Your call,” I said. He shrugged his heavy shoulders. “You have a salt and pepper beard. “That’s what it’s called, right? “Salt and pepper? “It’s all over your damned face. “That’s green card, okay? “What I want to know is what’s a salt and pepper bearded green card planning to do with a WAL* MART-brand electric razor?” He took out a toothpick from his shirt pocket and picked at a tooth. He put the toothpick back in the same pocket. He said, “You’re not a salt and pepper terrorist, are you?” I looked up at the sardonic flat face. “I’ll tell you,” I said. “If you tell me.” He rubbed his thick palm on his beardless face, grinning. “No salt and pepper here, bro. “Smooth all over like a baby’s ass.” “I can see that. “What I want to know is: are you a baby’s ass who carries a sidearm?” He glared at me then raised his right pants leg just high enough for me to see the ankle holster and semi-automatic. It looked like a new-model Glock. I said, “If I tell you I was planning to transform the stolen electric razor into a smart bomb and blow up WAL* MART would you shoot me with your Glock semi?” He narrowed his gaze. “Even a green card shit-eater would know not to even think of stealing from WAL* MART. “Our security is flat-out number one in the free world.” “I understood that Target’s security was flat-out number one in the free world,” I said. “With Costco firmly in the number two slot.” “Okay. Enough jerking off,” he said. “You’re in deep shit, green card. “I don’t think you realize how deep the shit you’re in is.” “You married?” the other plainclothes security guard asked me unex-pectedly, in a loud voice. He wore a close-to-the-scalp crewcut and WAL* MART nametag and stood behind and to the left of the first guard. “You have a wife and shit?” he said loudly. “You look spooky with that beard sticking out your face but you don’t look gay.” “Are you saying I look gay?” I said. “I’m saying you look like a freak,” he said. “A little crazy. “My guess is you’re married with kids.” I nodded vaguely. “Well, congratulations, you just fucked your life up,” the first security guard said. “How does it feel?” “You want to know how it feels to fuck my life up?” I said. They both glared at me. “Give me your cellphone number and I’ll get back to you.” “There won’t be any getting back, freak,” the first security guard said. “Not where your green card ass is going.” They separated me from the chair and marched me, still cuffed, through the back area and outside to one of a series of unmarked orange customized SUVs parked abreast. It was raining lightly, which for some reason surprised me. I smelled the ozone. With one hand on the top of my head I was pushed into the rear of a vehicle. That was how it was always done on cop TV programs; I never understood why. The rear was un-windowed and barred with low wooden benches on either side. They sat me on a bench with my hands cuffed to a steel pole that ran above the bench from front to back. Whichever WAL* MART security male drove, drove very fast. I could hear them talking on their cells or listening to talk radio and wisecracking. After about an hour the SUV stopped and they got out. Ten minutes later they were back with fast food; I smelled the burgers and fries and heard them eat. Even eating they drove recklessly fast, veering from lane to lane on the freeway. After some time the driving changed and it felt like we were out of the city. After another hour or so they stopped. One of them separated me from the steel pole, relocked my cuffs and pushed me outside. It was dusk, raining harder. We were in front of a bunker-like concrete structure, in what looked like a deserted lot with tall weeds and rocks. I couldn’t see clearly in the rain, but the structure looked as if it was built into the ground Two burly males in uniform grey shirts, pants and caps emerged from the structure. They weren’t wearing nametags. No words were exchanged between them and the WAL* MART males, who drove off immediately. The two uniform males said nothing as they transported me in a freight elevator underground. The elevator traveled slowly and I felt the air changing. When the elevator opened, they put leg-irons around my ankles. “Aren’t you going to remove my shoelaces?” I said. “I tried to shoplift an electric razor from WAL* MART. “I might want to hang myself.” They ignored me. They pushed me through a narrow corridor of cave-like cells which may or may not have been occupied. They locked me in a small, low-ceilinged cell at the end of the corridor. All around was the damp sweet-sour stench of earth. “Have to pee,” I said as they were leaving. “Your prob,” one of them said over his shoulder. I shuffled to a corner of the cell and peed. Then I removed my shoes and sat semi-cross-legged (the leg-irons impeded me) on the dirt floor against the wall in the opposite corner. After a time I slept. I dreamed of eight bighorned sheep-like animals cropping—or trying to crop—the hardscrabble grass. The horned sheep moved with extreme caution even though no hunters were in sight. Close-up, the animals’ faces were bruised, even torn, with caked blood and what looked like rough sutures . I was thinking—in the dream—about the number eight. Why were there precisely eight of the gentle beasts? I was awakened by a female voice haranguing me through the bars of the cell. It was my wife; I wondered how she knew I was here. I opened my eyes partially and rattled my leg irons but otherwise didn’t move. She demanded why I would try to steal an electric razor from WAL* MART. She said the cell stank of piss. She demanded again why I would try to shoplift a razor from WAL* MART. She seemed more chagrined than angry. She said despite my “background” and education I’d always been a loser, but this was the last straw. This was the lowest I could sink without being in hell. She’d consulted an attorney and now she would sue me for divorce and custody of our daughter. She said I’d dug my own grave and as far as she was concerned I could rot in it. A grey-uniformed guard looked on expressionless. After she left I closed my eyes. I slept. I dreamed of eight large pelagic, albatross-like birds with their majestic wingspan flying in formation, not over ocean but desert. Moreover the desert seemed to be on fire, or blazing fires were scattered over the desert. The birds would gaze down occasionally but kept flying because there was no habitable place to land. From where I was located below I could see the great birds’ faces which weren’t the faces of pelagic birds but rather the round faces of infants such as barn owls resemble. I was awakened by someone rattling the bars of my cell. He spoke my name. I opened then closed my eyes. He was an administrator from the company where I worked. A small, pale male, vaguely rat-like: I didn’t remember his name. I remembered that he always seemed to be sweating. As with my wife, I had no idea how he knew of my whereabouts. The message he delivered was brief: the company would not employ thieves who attempted to steal from WAL* MART and so I was thereby terminated. Whatever salary was owed to me would be transferred to my wife. Then he left along with the expressionless guard. I shouted after the guard: “Toilet.” He didn’t respond. I struggled to my feet and peed again in the far corner, though in truth there was no far corner since the cell was cramped. I had to squat so that my head didn’t hit the ceiling. Because the floor was earthen the pee soaked into the hardened dirt. I noticed a soiled straw mat rolled up against the wall. I unrolled it and lay down on my back gazing up at the low ceiling. From every side the damp earth was palpable. Occasionally a sliver or even small clod of earth would fall from the ceiling. Moreover there was vermin, and why shouldn’t there be? Neither the wrist nor the leg manacles hindered me overmuch. I was having a small problem drawing breath. I thought I could hear cell doors clanging open and shut down the corridor and on the floor above. Maybe it was the floor below. I think it was below. Which would make it Hades. Where Orpheus descended. I will miss my daughter. --HJ

"Sans Soleil" This meta-film by Chris Marker begins with a clip of three children in Iceland who, for the fictional filmmaker/protagonist of the film, are the image of happiness. The clip is broken by long runs of “black leader,” and woman’s voiceover saying that the filmmaker told her, “If they don’t see happiness in the picture, at least they’ll see the black.” The children, in simple summer clothes and wild hair, bring to mind John Berger’s discussions on peasants, which in turn refers to the film. “I never have the impression that my experience is entirely my own,” he writes in Pig Earth. “The act of approaching a given moment involves both scrutiny (closeness) and the capacity to connect (distance).” And so Marker, through his fictional filmmaker by way of the smoky female voiceover, is close and distant to the subject of his film – admitting early ,under the insistent gaze of a girl, that one can not pretend in the absence of the camera. Berger writes that as a storyteller, he sees how things fit together, he gives meaning to experience. Sans Soleil is a voyeuristic film about the banal, the woman tells us. For the filmmaker, the images together have a meaning only transferable by the experience of watching the film. That experience, then, itself becomes a story the viewer shares, as peasants – in Berger’s example – create gossip out of the facts of an event, as I have created a conversation between Marker and Berger, as you might create an argument or addition to this piece. – MJI

"Television: Drug of the nation. Breeding ignorance; feeding radiation" These are the words of Michael Franti on the 1990 album Hipocrisy is the Greatest Luxury with Rono Tse on the turntables. The name of their band was The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, playing off the socialist phrase "disposable heroes of hypocrisy." Today, Franti leads Spearhead, and more often than not ends up at big festivals with aged psychodelic rockers (Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead) and college bands (Dave Matthews), neither which speak to his sound or the urgency of his lyrics, but the intention of this post isn't to convince you of the integrity of his music. The purpose is to point you to "I Know I'm Not Alone," a film that Franti made with some friends in Baghdad, when he went there to see for himself how the people there were doing. This guy, I saw at a festival walking around barefoot, hugging and talking to people. The film is much the same. www.iknowimnotalone.com - MJI

Vermin I remember the first time I ever heard of a place named "Israel." I was doing my social studies homework in elementary school, and the textbook said that after World War II millions of Jews migrated from Europe to an empty desert in the Middle East where they irrigated the land and became prosperous. This land was called Israel. As per my teacher's instructions, I wrote a short explanation of how Israel was founded. I asked my dad to proofread it, and his only comment was that the publishers of the textbook must be Jewish. Decades later I told this story to a friend at a New Year's Eve party. I explained how the textbook version of the foundation of Israel was disingenuous, because it made it seem like the desert was uninhabited. He told me I was wrong. He said the desert that composes much of southern Israel was largely uninhabited, and Israelis revived a harsh landscape with hard work and ingenuity. He also said that the problem with the textbook version is that it leaves out what happened in northern Israel. My friend was raised in Iran, and he guessed that a class titled "History of the Islamic Revolution of Iran" was the Persian equivalent of "social studies" in the U.S. I found it unsettling that a textbook written in an Islamic republic like Iran has a more accurate depiction of the formation of Israel than one written in the U.S. I've always thought that the line "A young fighter reading Soul on Ice in the Golan Heights" would make a great beginning to a rap song. The word "fighter" is cleverly ambiguous. It could refer to an Israeli, Palestinian, or both, but I've never read Soul on Ice. I've read the Autobiography of Malcolm X, The Black Panthers Speak, and Revolutionary Suicide. I don't know why I never read Soul on Ice. Maybe it's because I learned that Eldridge Cleaver became a born-again Christian, a conservative, and supporter of the Republican Party. "A young fighter reading Soul on Ice in the Golan Heights" is incomplete. It's too elusive. Is it a young Palestinian reading the book and internalizing Cleaver's rage and rhetoric in an effort to understand his own political struggle? Is the book being read by a young Israeli soldier—perhaps an immigrant from Ethiopia—who reads the book in terms of trying to understand his own struggles with racism, emasculation, power, and identity. The fighters and their motivations are different. Or, are they? I guess that's the reason I’ve never tried writing a rap song with that line in it. I'm afraid of where it would take me. I often wonder if Israelis and Palestinians will find peace in my lifetime. Israel has fought two wars to control the Golan Heights and others for control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. I think the answer is no. Israelis and Palestinians will not find peace, but I thought the same until witnessing the election of Barack Obama. I come from the American generation that understands racial relations through the police beating of Rodney King, the subsequent acquittal of the police who beat King, and the resulting riots demanding justice for King. I come from the generation that learned about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. from the same textbook that taught me about the creation of Israel. I’m still trying to figure it out. I've been thinking about Scorsese's movie Taxi Driver (1976) lately. Every morning when I turn on the radio or TV I wonder if I'll hear about the shooting of Barack Obama. In Taxi Driver Robert De Niro’s character plots the assassination of a man running for president, but he is spotted by the secret service. Instead of offing the president, he offs a pimp, a john, and a thug who are prostituting Jody Foster’s character. In Paul Schrader's original screenplay of Taxi Driver, the pimp was supposed to be black, but Scorsese thought there was too much demonizing of black men, so he made him white. I’ve also been thinking about the TV show 24. It's about a counterterrorist agent named Jack Bauer. The show premiered 7 weeks after the 9/11 attacks. It featured an African American president who often gave advice and support to Jack Bauer. One day when I was driving home from work and listening to conservative talk radio the host asked people to call in and talk about "real" American heroes. The first caller said that his hero was "Jack Bauer" from 24, because Bauer kicked a lot of terrorist ass. The host of the show was initially surprised but made a quick recovery and confirmed the caller's hero worship of Bauer. I wonder if a sociologist can find a correlation between the black president in 24 and the black president now occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. John Hinckley, Jr. became obsessed with Jody Foster after watching Taxi Driver. He tried to assassinate President Reagan on March 30, 1981 to impress Foster. Paul Schrader based the character played by De Niro on the diaries of Arthur Bremer, who attempted to assassinate presidential candidate George Wallace on May 15, 1972. --TN

The Artist in Wartime You live in Des Moines, Iowa, and are a published novelist with a modest reputation based on your narratives about white middle-class domestic crises. You also serve in a National Guard military police unit, and your company is called up and sent to Iraq to function as MP's in Abu Ghraib Prison, west of Baghdad. There, you observe and strongly disapprove of the unlawful abuse and torture of the inmates, many of them innocent Iraqi teenagers snatched from the streets. Do you continue to write narrative still lifes or do you bracket your customary subject in order to bear witness, to broadcast as widely as possible the unlawful, immoral treatment in Abu Ghraib? ************************** You are an "Aryan" painter living in Berlin during the Reich. You have heard and read about the extermination camps. You have seen Nazis violently mistreat Jews and gypsies, homosexuals and the disabled. Appalled colleagues and friends -- most of them Aryans like you -- have left the country. You yourself are appalled at the Nazi practices. At the same time, you continue to sell your pictures -- oil and watercolor renditions of rustic woodland scenes -- and make a respectable living in Germany, so you choose not to leave the country, at least physically. Mentally, you have separated yourself from the ongoing atrocities. You have, in Hannah Arendt's words, embarked on an inner emigration, and in keeping with this "emigration" your art does not in any way reflect the Nazi virulence. In a time of wide-scale ethnicide and systemic demonizing, consider, if you will, whether the attempt to remain hors de combat represents integrity or silent complicity, as with the hypothetical Aryan artist embarked on his "inner emigration." ********************** The AIDS pandemic and the punitive official ideology that exploited it generated in the US in the late 1980s a host of visual artists and writers, many but not all gay, who "bracketed" their current projects to help establish ACT-UP and its artistic wing, Gran Fury. Among other accomplishments, these related groups created, or greatly reinforced, a "crisis art" to combat in potently imaginative ways the official propaganda directed against gay males. It is fair to say that without the brazen interventions of ACT-UP and Gran Fury the institutionalized hate-mongering would have taken an even greater toll on homosexual communities. Does that intervention by writers and artists constitute an abandonment of "esthetic integrity?" Not when (to quote one of ACT-UP's battle cries) Silence = Death. To put it differently: The directed crisis art produced by ACT-UP and Gran Fury might be called, in the British art critic Victor Burgin's words, a "situational esthetics." Currently, Weblogs and blog art are patently situational. But it could also be argued that every art is situational, deliberately or without deliberation. The US culture economy supports only that art which one way or another sustains the culture economy, whether it is politically sanitized writing or purportedly self-referential painting and sculpture. In that important regard officially supported art constitutes an opportunistic, self-aggrandizing "situational esthetics."