The collection / 15 fragments

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01Undated

See, I’m a great believer in the power of negative thought. And in an age of affirmation, of self-help and self-love, of the rebirth of wide-eyed idealism and the power of positive thinking — I’m happy to be a champion of skepticism and doubt. That night, I rediscovered my role, my reason, and my rage.

Phillip Andrew Bennett Low / quote

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02Undated

…so that’s why I’m pleased to announce my endorsement of Sarah Palin for President in 2016: because you know that whoever gets elected is going to fuck you over. So why not vote for somebody that you actually want to get fucked by?

Phillip Andrew Bennett Low / quote

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03Undated

And I thought, y’know, I mean…this is crazy. I mean, the only thing that determines what country you belong to is where you happened to be born? What is a country, anyway? It’s not, y’know, “purple mountain’s majesty” or “fruited plains,” whatever the hell that means. I mean, America isn’t a place, it’s an ideal. It could happen in the Sahara Desert and still be America. For that matter, I’m the child of immigrants. My father’s lived and worked in this country for the past three decades. And he’s somehow more or less American than some redneck who uses Osama bin Laden for toilet paper? How the hell do you measure something like that?

Phillip Andrew Bennett Low / quote

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04Undated

Okay. I’m not a white male. At least, not predominantly so. And as I mentioned before, I’m in an environment right now where race is really important. See, Chinese men are not that physically intimidating. We’re not that tall. We’re not that built. We have exactly one thing going for us in a fight — that our opponent recognizes that there’s a possibility, no matter how remote, that we might know kung-fu.

Phillip Andrew Bennett Low / quote

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05Undated

INDECISION NOW!' isn’t a battle cry that’s going to rouse anybody’s blood. But I sometimes wonder if it isn’t the sanest one.

Phillip Andrew Bennett Low / quote

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06Undated

There is nothing worse than certainty. Doubt makes us weak. That is why it’s so important. I’ve wasted too much of my life trying to be powerful.

Phillip Andrew Bennett Low / quote

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07Undated

In the Code of Canon Law, it states clearly: 'A person who is conscious of grave sin is not to celebrate Mass or receive the body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession.' I haven’t attended confession in well over a decade, and that’s less because of dogmatic conflict than it is because of moral cowardice. Deeper than that, maybe I don’t want to be forgiven. I want to be punished. Which may be just about the most selfish, egotistical thought I’ve ever had. I’m sick with self-love. Or self-loathing. After all, they’re both essentially the same thing.

Phillip Andrew Bennett Low / quote

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08Undated

A number of people who I’ve talked to about this assume that I got into a fight with the cops. (Because of, y'know, the militant politics.) I actually had an audience member come up to me once and ask me if I paid taxes. Of course I pay taxes! I pay taxes for exactly the same reason that I hate paying taxes — because I think my government is terrifying and stupid. I don't need the IRS kicking my door down and taking my meticulously alphabetized collection of Tijuana bibles.

Phillip Andrew Bennett Low / quote

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09Undated

She leaned into me, and I could feel her hot breath against my ear. 'I want you to eat me,' she whispered. 'I want you to eat me like you’re an angry Alaskan grizzly and I’m Timothy Treadwell.

Phillip Andrew Bennett Low / quote

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10Undated

She lifted me back into the seat with a wicked grin, and breathed, 'Just don’t stop talking. Whatever you do, just don’t stop talking,' and swallowed my manhood. I scrambled desperately through the darkened corners of my memory until I couldn’t take it anymore. I grabbed her by the hair and said, 'Now bend over, and I’ll do to you what the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries wants to keep the Federal government from doing to the state of Alaska.

Phillip Andrew Bennett Low / quote

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11Undated

So, I’m a playwright. In Minneapolis. Which means that I find myself operating in a pretty lefty crowd, most of the time. And most of my energy goes towards arguing with that, and musing about how I really fucking can’t stand Democrats. So I was startled to be reminded of a fact that I’d almost entirely forgotten: I really fucking can’t stand Republicans.

Phillip Andrew Bennett Low / quote

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12Undated

So a while back I spent a night in jail. Now, as for exactly what landed me there, I’d be so delighted to never have to go into any of the details regarding that. Besides, other people’s theories are so much more exotic and exciting than the reality. I've heard everything from 'attempted terrorism' to 'indecent public condescension.

Phillip Andrew Bennett Low / quote

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13Undated

And then the other guy will look really sheepish, and mumble that, okay, maybe he tried to make a run for it, and maybe he took a drunken swing at the arresting officer, and maybe he made a couple of off-color remarks about law-enforcement professionals, and maybe he’s been hiding from the cops ever since an incident a few years back involving a bleeding hooker, nine pounds of cocaine, and a soiled image of Tipper Gore.

Phillip Andrew Bennett Low / quote

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14Undated

And it started out fun. We were chattering enthusiastically, flipping between CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News. But as the evening wore on, and the numbers rolled in, it got quieter, and I found myself becoming intensely depressed. Why was I putting myself through this? The issues I’ve devoted my life to have become so marginalized by the coverage that they have no possible relevance to me. I can’t even blame the media — people simply don’t care about alternate-party politics. And why should they? I’m so far in the minority that my activism is a joke, a punchline that stopped being funny years ago. It goes beyond rooting for the underdog. It’s not rooting for the Giants: it’s more like, say, rooting for the Twins. But during the Super Bowl.

Phillip Andrew Bennett Low / quote

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15Undated

The Libertarian Party convention wasn’t much better. You will never find a more stammering, awkward, inarticulate group of people than libertarians. I still remember the convention the previous year, entitled 'Women of Liberty.' All of the speakers were women, and all of the topics boiled down to 'Effectively Communicating Libertarian Ideas to Women' — in other words, 'How to talk to girls.' Looking around at the nearly entirely white male audience, it wasn’t hard to see why they chose this tack.

Phillip Andrew Bennett Low / quote

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