In Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Raoul Duke awakes in a hotel room after eating, sniffing, inhaling and digesting every drug known to man and some only know to select scientists. Wearing a a dinosaur tale and hung-over delusions, he notices the walls are smeared with blood --- no, wait. That's ketchup.
Tennessee Democrats had that same revelation Thursday morning, the 23rd, when walking into the Murfreesboro campaign HQ. After probably assuming their offices were the scene of a midnight massacre, the Demos called the cops, only to find the smell was more burger joint than slaughterhouse.
It seems after likely raiding every fast food establishment in town to loot the ketchup packets, a group of happy vandals smeared the walls of the Lefty offices. According to WSMV Nashville website (wsmv.com), this happened only one night after a brick with an anarchy sign went flying through a window of the Republican's HQ in the same city.
Whether this is actually the work of anarchists remains to be confirmed. While a true believer in non-hierarchical forms of community organizing would equally hate the Republicans as much as the Democrats, why not vandalize the two HQs on the same night? And why stop at petty bricks and ketchup? You already broke into the office, why not take some money, light some fires, really muck up the place and your eventual criminal charges?
It seems some violent Democrat is using a member of the "unwashed masses" as a scape goat. When the cops got hot on the trail of the Obama-loving, brick-throwing, abortion-inducing, blame-America-first lefty, the criminal started a ketchup fight in their own office to divert attention. I mean, what sane Democrat would smear perfectly good condiments in their own command quarters?
On the other hand, my imagination could be running away with me... to Thurston County, Washington, where according to The Olympian, "someone throw a couple of marbles through a small window and spray-painted graffiti at the Thurston County Democrats' headquarters" (theolympian.com). The article went on to state the child-like pillagers (my guess: from Peter Pan's Neverland) left messages, including: "No More Rulers" and "I Want Freedom."
OK, so we've got ketchup in Murfreesboro and marbles in Thurston County. What's next? Anti-establishment pillow fights? Perhaps anarchists can really stick it to the two-party system with strawberry ice cream and sprinkles: imagine, entire campaign headquarters overwhelmed with ants attracted to the sticky stuff.
If this is truly the work of proponents of the big "A," then it can be safely said the ideologies of anti-consumerism and pro-environmentalism are being expressed in stranger and stranger ways. It's a melding of Dadaism, or the anti-art art movement, with Anarchism, the anti-politics political movement.
Dadaism arose during WWI as a dissent against war and capitalism. It's no surprise anarchist actions would arise now, during elections, when the US is simultaneously conducting two wars (although the media barely covers the carnage), and undergoing an economic recession. Desperate times call for desperate measures, the saying goes, and if you could call the present "surreal times," then what better weapons than ketchup and marbles?
*Photo from NYPL Digital Gallery
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