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    Before the Chop IV
    Before the Chop IV
    Before the Chop IV
    Ebook352 pages8 hours

    Before the Chop IV

    By Henry Rollins

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    About this ebook

    Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on, four times? REALLY? How in the hell did I fall for this again? Was it the $40 (ten bucks more than last time) I was paid to choke out the words for the back cover of this “book?”

    This time around, old angry ass couldn’t even get to one hundred columns for the LA Weekly. He keeled over at fifty-nine. How weak! I know what you’re thinking—he must have been fired, right? All the complaints and missed deadlines took their toll and the little paper that could, finally did and sent H Rollings packing, right back into to his glass box at the Smithsonian. Believe it or not, he quit. What an idiot! Do you have any idea how lucky he was to get that job in the first place? The people who hired him are long gone. You have to believe that they brought HR on as a parting shot, the proverbial lit paper bag on the front porch.

    Finally, a bright spot on the horizon. This has to be last of these “Chop” books, right? Please let it be the last one. The stupid covers of a frickin’ pen “winning.” The whole pen-v-sword gag one more time shows you how much the under talented, over stimulated scrawler at a certain vanity label has NO IMAGINATION. Note to Henry Rollings: No one wants to read the “real” versions of your work! Don’t you get that? It was Andy Hermann’s great editing that made your worthless column barely readable in the first place. Talk about the lipstick hitting the pig. Rollings should mow Mr. Hermann’s lawn every other week and send the pig a get well card.

    I bet Henry Rollings feels reeeeeal important since his column won the Southern California Journalism Award in 2017. Well, there’s one award that won’t ever get its integrity back. I can see him now, carrying it everywhere, carefully placing it next to his laptop when in the coffee places he inhabits, so everyone knows there's an AWARD WINNING WRITER in the room. Insecure much? I think I’m going to hurl.

    You know what? This time around, I didn’t read the pdf file of the book that was sent to me. I already know what’s in it—and so do you. Henry’s the only person out there with an opinion, and citizen do you need to know it. Sound familiar?

    Let’s all spare ourselves, shall we? Let’s give Before the Chop IV (and after): LA Weekly Writing (and more) 2012-2018 a miss. Put the book down. Put. It. Down. Good. Now walk away. Still here? Why? Trust me, he’s not going to get any better.

    So glad it’s over. I feel like a three-legged rabbit, hopping away from a trap, leaving a trail of blood in the snow. Maimed and in excruciating pain. But free. Oooh. My name? It’s been dragged down so far by all this that even I can't find it. Enough!
    LanguageEnglish
    Publisher2.13.61
    Release dateNov 1, 2018
    ISBN9781880985984
    Before the Chop IV
    Author

    Henry Rollins

    Originally from Washington DC, Henry Rollins fronted the Los Angeles-based punk band Black Flag and is well-known for his hard-hitting writing, music, and acting.

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      Before the Chop IV - Henry Rollins

      Chapter 01

      LA Weekly Columns

      LA WEEKLY #301

      10-27-16

      Once More

      It’s a night off in Durham, North Carolina. I just watched Anderson Cooper interview Melania Trump on CNN. I guess things aren’t going well, so they had to bring her in for the charm offensive. Unsurprising to hear her accuse Billy Bush of egging on Trump, causing him to talk about pussy grabbing and all the rest. Ms. M then accused the left-wing media of bashing her husband. …they want to influence the American people how to vote, and they are influencing in the wrong way. I think it’s the media just playing the recordings, airing the speeches and letting the electorate decide. I’m convinced that not one of Trump’s supporters give a damn what he said to Billy Bush or if any of the allegations of inappropriate behavior are true. If you want to find out what either candidate thinks of issues outside of the aforementioned, one will wear you out with information and plans, the other one, not so much.

      I think Ms. Trump’s interview was part of the Trump campaign’s post-election defeat strategy for their lives going forward. Between her blaming everything from that damned left-wing media to her husband, claiming an election that hasn’t happened yet is rigged, it’s obvious they have given more thought to rebranding the grift more than what the new wallpaper in the White House will look like. This is where Trump, the failed businessman, shows his huge acumen. The campaign was just another mafia style bust out. If Trump loses, his earnings in the private sector will skyrocket. He’ll be able to sell everything from reverse mortgages and gold, to patriot prepper meals with a 25-year shelf life. His foaming followers will never admit they were had. That being said, if there is one country you would be foolish to predict the next move of, it’s the America. No matter who wins, the room is only going to get rougher.

      American politics has certainly been this dismal before, you don’t have to go too far back before the ghosts of McCarthy, Wallace and others crowd the windshield on your moonlight drive. It seems to be the same bad joke, all the worse from repetition.

      If Hillary Clinton becomes president, some will see it as an achievement, much the same way many saw President Obama’s two terms. I think Americans pat themselves on the back too often. The country’s history is a series of catastrophic choices and actions, resulting in not only a staggering body count, but a generational disenfranchisement and misery that should be the lesson, not the legacy. The great parts are, for the most part, what took you so longs. Examples are plentiful. There’s slavery, indefensible by any argument, made unconstitutional in 1865 by the Thirteenth Amendment. Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court decision in 1896, upholding segregation in public places, the idea of separate but equal making American style apartheid enforceable, overturned by Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Mildred Jeter, a woman of African and Rappahannock Native American lineage and Richard Loving, a white man, got married in the land of the free and the home of the brave which, at that time, didn’t include Virginia due to the Racial Integrity Act, established in 1924, making it illegal for people of different races to marry. The Lovings were married in Washington, DC. Unfortunately, they lived in Virginia. Their home was raided and their legally obtained marriage certificate got them both sentenced to a year in prison. Thankfully, they were allowed to leave the state without having to serve the time. In 1967, the Supreme Court invalidated these ridiculous laws. I’m not holding my breath for America to be great. At this point, I’ll settle for semi-literate and not as afraid of science as it used to be.

      While the country’s backstory is splattered with blood soaked injustice and not at all great, many of the inhabitants are. It is my third night in North Carolina. The days have been perfect early fall, a little warmer than they used to be but I’ll just deploy my inner Rubio and work around that. Not even House Bill 2 can keep the state from being great. Some of the friendliest, most even-keeled people I meet on tour are here.

      Every night, I look into the audience and see my optimism. Looking back are hundreds of sane, sensible people who have different expectations of everything from their government to the people they share America with. For the most part, they are younger than I am and I’m willing to bet that we are different in many ways. I’m part of the older demographic that’s slowly but surely being moved to the sidelines. I tell them that I demand an upgrade from every one of them and myself. Brighter ideas, better outcomes, more intelligence, less fear, more science and innovation, less tradition and regression.

      America is days away from finishing out eight years with a man a solid majority elected to change the country’s course. Turns out, the majority wasn’t all that into it and ironically, it was the minority that bided its time and stood on their message with far more zeal. They wanted the past again more than the rest wanted the future, so here we are. Okay, now it’s time to go back to the old play book. Another four years of being frustrated with elected officials you sent to Washington to do what they promised you so emphatically they were going to. Apparently, that’s all we want and all we can handle. I stopped getting mad at politicians years ago and started getting mad at myself instead. The blame for the grinding dullness and depressing predictability of the current election cycle is on the electorate as much as it is on the candidates. That the America gets everything it deserves and settles for is a hard truth to swallow. Maybe one day, we’ll get tired of choking.

      LA WEEKLY #302

      11-03-16

      Award Show

      I’m in Sayreville, NJ tonight at the Starland Ballroom. The woods behind the venue make you wonder if there might be some wise guy bodies buried back there.

      While on tour, I get a lot of mail and do a lot of interviews. It’s from these two sources that I found out the Bad Brains have been nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This particular institution was started in 1983 by Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records. Mr. Ertegun is a man you can not heap enough superlatives on. He was the realest of the real deal music industry men. As an example of the weight of the man, when Led Zeppelin members Plant, Page and Jones reunited for a show at the O2 Arena in London in 2007, it was the Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert.

      I wonder if Mr. Ertegun’s vision of this hall would still line up with how it is now. I read that there has been some personnel changes in the group that decides who gets nominated and inducted. Admittedly, they have a fairly thankless task. The genre has been around so long, they would have needed to induct hundreds of people and bands in year one just to be on somewhat level ground in order to go forward. For me at least, like most awards, one from this outfit is absolutely meaningless.

      Many years ago, I would look at the nominees with the slightest bit of interest until it occurred to me that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is just a building dedicated to the opinion of a few people and that any writ of Rock supremacy is as worthwhile as anyone elses. As soon as you give something a logo, it suddenly takes on an air of credibility. That credibility should be challenged with great vigor, lest someone take any of this crap too seriously.

      A perfect reason not to take this hall with more than a grain is that the actual RRHOF is in Cleveland, Ohio. Ohio is the state that gave you Pere Ubu, the Cramps and Devo. To my knowledge, none of these truly amazing, groundbreaking bands have been nominated.

      No malice towards the nomination of the Bad Brains, they are easily in the top three live bands I’ve ever seen. In the late 1970s when I started checking out their early shows, they were not to be believed. Wide awake with your eyes wide open, what they were doing was so beyond anything you had ever seen or heard, you left their shows barely able to find your way home. All you wanted to do was tell people that you had just seen the most amazing band in the world. The first time I saw them was in June of 1979, opening for the Damned. They had no records out at the time. They went on right after doors opened in front of a fraction of the people who would be packing the place an hour later for the headliner. They were so ferocious, most of those who were there hung in the back. Myself, Ian MacKaye and some others went right up to the front and had pretty much every idea of what live music could be obliterated. The Damned, who were amazing, were mere Rock by comparison. After that, we saw the Bad Brains every chance we could. We were very lucky to live in the same city as they did. To this day, those were some of the best shows I have ever seen.

      On the other hand, bands like Pere Ubu, the Cramps, Devo and a whole lot of other amazing Ohio bands, like Rocket From the Tombs, the Pagans, and the Electric Eels, came out of a vacuum so intense, all of them are, in and of themselves, miracles of creativity and originality.

      I can’t explain to you how completely change-your-life great the Cramps were. They were more than music. Visually, musically, performance-wise, they were the complete package. None of this is a thing until the undertaking of awarding an act or an artist starts a hierarchy. By which criteria does one judge? Record sales? There are crap bands that have sold more of one title than the entire John Coltrane catalog, so it’s obvious that tonnage doesn’t matter. What the RRHOF is basically saying when they don’t nominate Roky Erickson, a American songwriter worth his weight in gold, is that they are disconnected, tone deaf and grossly corporate. With each omission, they prove their ever growing irrelevance.

      The Award for Not Caring About the Award for 2006 goes to the Sex Pistols, who refused the RRHOF nomination. The RRHOF were the recipient of quite a bashing by Johnny Lydon in a letter that would peel the paint off your car. He was right about all of it.

      Ten years later, in 2016, the Award for Not Caring About the Award most certainly goes to the great Bob Dylan. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and for several days did not acknowledge it. A member of the Swedish Academy found Dylan’s silence to be impolite and arrogant. Fuck you. Fuck your award. Fuck your idea of its importance and yours.

      Dylan’s non-communicative status, for whatever reason, was 100 percent purebred badass. It’s not like he asked to get the prize or the $900,000 check that comes with it. Dylan’s delayed response is one of the coolest moves in the history of rock & roll. It reminds me of Dylan in Don’t Look Back, the documentary that covers Dylan’s 1965 tour of England. He was at a young, surly, behind-the-sunglasses insolent highpoint. He had the smarts, the songs, the delivery and he knew it. He didn’t need your award then, either.

      I’m always impressed when someone can take or leave something of great magnitude. The sheer magnificence of the attitude at work is what it’s all about. Long live Rock.

      LA WEEKLY #303

      11-10-16

      November

      I’ve been looking forward to November for several months. The election cycle has been a severely wounded animal that needed to be put out of our collective misery. For the longest time, it howled and gnashed its teeth, seemingly not caring who it injured. It brought out the worst in so many who crossed lines they never knew existed and might not get back to who they were before. As screwed up as things are, I think the USA might be at its most transparent. Too bad it is what it is and no doubt, many will just dig in deeper and invest in their hysteria with more zeal.

      To pay attention to a presidential election is an almost natural impulse. It’s what you do, but never has intellectual content passing for daily reportage sunk so low as this one. Not even close. I usually stay with it as best I can but this time around, I found it so consistently depressing and insulting, that I would tune out for days. Upon returning, I found that things had only grown more toxic. Weeks ago, I decided the election could go fuck itself.

      November is one of the greatest of the 12 months for listening to intense music. Where in other times of the year, some records could be considered over serious and dreary, in November, they make perfect sense.

      Music is perhaps the single most consistently good thing I’ve ever known. No matter what’s happening around you, if you can hear some music, you stand a chance. Obviously, you need a bit more than your record collection to get you through the madness but it’s a solid go-to. More on that in a minute.

      Every tour I have ever done (rarely less than 100 shows, this one finishing at 140 something before the end of the year) is in itself like a campaign. You have to really want it. I find myself adhering to a fidelity that I’m unable to maintain unless I’m in performance mode. Usually, there’s only one reason I’m in a city. The entire day is ultimately about the show that night. To spend so much time devoted to two hours is a little intense but that’s the best and only way I know how to go about it.

      I’m quite sure I like the audience more than they like me. I’m also sure I need them more than they need me. I also know they will be done with me before I’m done with them. That being said, audience members can be an unpredictable bunch. They’re individuals with their own minds and agendas, brought together in a space they have a vague to nonexistent relationship with, to endure a temporary version of togetherness, proximity more like, and then disperse. I never know what to expect and night to night, have no idea what I’m in for.

      These people can be incredibly good. They knit me scarves and hats, leave food, records and all manner of gifts. They tell me how much my music has meant to them and ask to have their records and photos signed. Days later, I can often find these items for sale online. People you meet who act friendly will, due to inebriation or whatever else, turn hostile. To keep on liking them, I have to look past a lot of things, not judge the many by the actions of a few and try to be a good judge of character. I’m not that good at any of this but I’m better than I used to be. I’ve come to the conclusion that humans are capable of changing directions instantly and it’s best to give them a lot of room to move. This is one of the reasons I keep my audience close but keep music closer.

      There are certain artists and bands I try not to listen to until November. I have it in my mind that it’s worth the wait. Kraftwerk, Can, Wolfgang Reichmann, Nico, Einsturzende Neubauten, Alan Vega, late period Gun Club, Zweistein, Crisis, basically, an intense, introspective listening environment I create for pre and post show listening. All this music is crammed in with all the new music I’m doing my best to check out, as I often work on upcoming radio broadcasts while on tour. Out here, there is only the show, everything else is just what happens on either side of it. The early dark and dropping temperatures make music the perfect company for cold backstage areas, gyms and streets. I try to stay away from the television that’s always on in our tour bus. I’ve had it with all the worthless speculation, the perfect waste of time that watching news channels has become. It’s never a waste of time listening to music.

      I’ve spent so many years on the road during the cold parts of the year, I associate late fall and winter with movement, the delivery of the show night after night and beautiful bleakness of some of the backstage areas I occupy, waiting to get out there. This is one of my favorite times of the year. I will not let the tail end of the election cycle and the level of disgust it has left me with ruin it for me. The more music I listen to, the better things get.

      When this tour is over in early 2017, it will be over a year that I have been on and off the road, making it to stages in 19 countries. The hardest part is when it ends, right when things are getting interesting. Thankfully, that’s months away. From here, until I make it back to LA for my shows at Largo, it will be more cold, more darkness and rooms full of people. I’m trying to put as much distance between myself and the wreckage of the last several months as I can.

      LA WEEKLY #304

      11-17-16

      Sailing Through Troubled Waters

      I’ve been living on a tour bus for about six weeks now. It suits me fine and I would be happy to remain on board through next year. Much to my regret, I’ll be disembarking in mid-January.

      There’s always something to see out of the windows. We’re basically outside but enclosed. Yesterday evening, I watched two people engage in a quickly escalating argument. Three police cars showed up and minutes later, one of them, a woman, was handcuffed and put into the back of a squad car and taken away. Soon after, the other cars left and the street was quiet again.

      It’s impossible for me to not draw boat/river analogies from this mode of existence. We sail down major rivers, move off into tributaries, dock for several hours and then leave again. Every single location besides the bus itself is temporary. The level of visual input is incredible. Sometimes I feel like a dog with its face stuck out the window.

      I remember the first time it hit me that we were sort of sailors. It was summer of 1984. I was sitting in the back of the gear truck with one of the road crew as we were heading overnight to a show somewhere in Florida. We had the back door rolled up and we were digging the night air and the insanity of the fact that we could fall out and very possibly die. We went by some kind of construction site that was brightly lit. I said to the crew guy, This sure enough is a bizarre sight in the middle of this shit. He caught that I was quoting Laurence Fishburne’s character, Clean, from a scene in Apocalypse Now.

      There’s often a lot of activity outside the bus during the day on the shoreline/sidewalk. In the early afternoon, the vendors show up and wait for me to show my face in order for them to hopefully get me to sign things so they can sell them. They position themselves so interaction is inevitable. They always tell me what they want me to sign won’t be sold, that they would never do that. I always try to get them to tell the truth but they rarely admit that they will be moving the signatures for profit. I usually sign one or two things. They’re part of the foodchain. By traveling in America this way, we are moving through the country’s digestive tract.

      At odd hours of the morning post-show, we sometimes pull in to a Walmart to provision for the miles ahead. They store is usually almost empty of shoppers, the aisles are often full of goods and people restocking the shelves. The conversations are rarely less than surreal. You were in (insert really bad film I worked in)! No way! What are you doing here?! Soon enough, I’m back on the bus as it rumbles through the night.

      This way of living defies the norm and long established value of waking up in your own bed. However, anything you do over and over can become routine, so after a few weeks, the bus, the day pass to the gym, backstage areas, stages and post-show meals out of paper bags becomes normal. That being said, I’ve never felt more like I’m in the right place, doing the right thing as when I’m on tour and constantly on the move. No other way of life has ever made more sense to me. This truth has prevented me from ever feeling that bus life is a grind.

      Being on the ground and moving from place to place during the recent election cycle has been a strange and often depressing experience. After the election results came in, it occurred to me that we now know everything. All the people who had previously lurked in shadows and back rooms were now out in the open. All was shown and now all is known. America is presently at its most transparent. The veil of civility has been shredded and maybe it’s about time. It’s a rough room, America, but at least we now know where we’re at. You could say that the Trump presidency will be one of the greatest lessons and cautionary tales of our life time. The thing is, obviously, there are millions of people who didn’t see it that way. Four years from now, the whirlwind that America will be battered veterans of will only be the trailer for the epic battle that will take place in 2020.

      I’m still on the road and will be for weeks. The America I’m traveling through is probably more divided than ever. To see so much landscape, cityscape, so many people, I feel almost invisible, like I am silently gliding through the states through the many back roads. This is as free as I can get. We set a course and we are going from one port to the next. Roaring down highways in the American night, living lives we never imagined were possible when we were young.

      There is no part of this way of life I don’t like. Sitting up late, alone in the front lounge, listening to the droning ring of the wheels and the engine, as we sail on what David Lee Roth once termed the Sea of Consequence.

      I think of my new president taking the global lap, meeting with leaders from all over the world and what the future holds. Remembering all the corny crap that came out of the new president’s mouth when he accepted the victory, all I can do is laugh at the insanity that is to come. In a lot of ways, many things are over. For me, out here, the road is eternal. At this point, it’s all I’ve got.

      LA WEEKLY #305

      11-24-16

      The Hurt. The Tears.

      I can’t think of a better time to be in America. Although it wasn’t the outcome I thought was the best way forward, the reality of President-elect Trump is endlessly fascinating.

      During the president-elect’s acceptance speech, I noticed a difference in his tone and delivery. I don’t think it was exhaustion or the adrenaline that was no doubt coursing through his veins after being elected to the country’s highest office, nor do I think it was surprise, even as every poll seemed to have gotten it wrong. I think it was the massive chunk of meat he had just turn off had just hit the president-to-be. It was as if he had been punched in the solar plexus and rushed to the podium immediately afterwards. Rather than elated or confident, he seemed stunned. This is understandable. I don’t think he counted on getting this far and am not convinced he really wants the job.

      This state of awe, almost rendering the man paralytic, was even more prominently on display when he went to talk to the outgoing President Obama. Trump told the press that he thought the meeting with the president would only last 10 or 15 minutes but actually went much longer. The look on President Obama’s face, one of civility being pulled by its ear through a key hole, was almost agonizing. Later that day, when he was sitting next to Paul Ryan, Trump was the paunchy neophyte in the room, a billboard for not a fucking clue. Trump better prepare himself for nothing taking 10 or 15 minutes for the next few years.

      These are only some of the signs indicating Trump’s unraveling. His petulant tweets, complaining like a child about the protestors that took to the streets in reaction to his victory was another glimpse of how unaware he is of the magnitude of the job that less than half of the participating electorate sent him to do starting next year. Amateur hour.

      As always, I read posted comments underneath articles to see where people are at. After the election, I saw a lot of suck it up sentiments. The term butthurt and the phrase Need a tissue, bro? were utilized frequently. I think these are just fantastic.

      As the Electoral College votes were coming in, I thought of Mitt Romney, wondering what he was thinking watching Trump win. There had to have been moments of stunned disbelief as he tentatively stuck the tines of a silver fork into his foie gras and said aloud, Golly. I mean gosh. What the fuck?! Butthurt.

      Donald Trump told his foaming fans at one rally after another that he would repeal and replace Obamacare. He also said that he would build a wall on America’s southern border and that Mexico would pay for it. He repeated until he was orange in the face that he would deport or arrest up to 11 million undocumented immigrants via a deportation force. These were some of the yuger arrows in his campaign quiver. Only days after winning the election, repeal and replace was repealed and replaced by an openness to amend the Affordable Care Act. The wall was walked back to fence and 11 million became 3. Word to Trump supporters: your hero went from grabbing pussies to being one. He didn’t fuck you. He fisted you. Oh, the butthurt.

      Then there is the Electoral College and the Popular vote. The former, steeped in antiquity, elitism and, at this point, convenience, would probably stick bigly in the craw of many Trump supporters if they understood why it was put into place and if Trump had experienced the opposite outcome by winning the General and losing the Electoral. The hard truth for the president-elect’s multi-million fans is that he got less votes than Hillary Clinton. That is to say—he lost. You need to check your jeans, partner. You’re spotting. Big time butthurt.

      You know how Trump said all manner of jobs will be coming back to the States because he’s going to ease taxes on all those corporations, which will beat the fastest path back because they really want all those good citizens of the Republic to have those jobs? Did you believe him? What inclination would any of these behemoths want with American workers when they can pay other humans a fraction of what an American would need to get by? They have stockholders to satisfy and the demands of Amazon.com to supply. Your love of convenience and low prices sent the jobs away. If you paid an American to make your cell phone, only rich people like Trump and Fox News personalities would have them. Besides, the corporations don’t want you. You’re too fucking whiny and self-involved with your butthurt.

      Start the laugh track for this part and turn it up. When President Trump deports millions of undocumented people, get ready for a lot of job openings that Americans are on record as not wanting to do. If America loses its casual slave labor force, it will seize up like a race car with no motor oil. Packages of almonds and countless other agricultural goods will all be adorned with picked by crackers stickers as no doubt, this will be one of the many blessings of capitalism unleashed. You better head out to Walmart to stock up on supplies for your Patriot Pantry because there’s no way you’re going to do that work. Save yourself the back ache and just settle for butthurt.

      Reince Priebus will be Trump’s Chief of Staff. Good. He’ll need someone to walk him ever so slowly through the mechanics of not only the Executive Branch but through the workings of government itself. He brought in Steve Bannon, a campaign staffer and executive chairman at Brietbart News as his chief strategist. Wow. Between these two and Mike Pence, racism, homophobia and misogyny will be action plans.

      Fortunately, Trump will deliver on only a fraction of his promises. Need a tissue, bro?

      LA WEEKLY #306

      12-01-16

      Fargo

      Tread carefully, citizen. The war will be starting soon if it hasn’t already. The Atheists are coming with their oppressive, joy killing, contrarian points of view, which they seek to cram down the throats of the Christianconsumerist majority to make them feel bad for merely drawing their next breath. The audacity of these drips! To think they could in any way, neutralize a wave of love and acceptance worth billions. It’s time for millions of Americans to get rolled like drunken sailors as they fill their carts with products made from other parts of the world.

      Yesterday, while walking the streets of Fargo, ND, looking at the Christmas lights that adorned the light poles, it occurred to me that our traditions are often far more powerful as cultural propellants than we are as high-functioning creatures. While many traditions find their origins in religion, they have been worn by so many for so long, they’re different than how they started, like something said and passed to another millions of times. This being the case, as a nation, we are wild and barely controllable, drifting in and out

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