Frat America

There's another element to the Republican takeover of everything I haven't mentioned. It's OIL. Not OPERATION IRAQI LIBERATION. The black stuff. Here we're talking real addiction. Serious denial. Arrested development. Misappropriation. Misrepresentation. Criminality. Conflicted interest. Bad faith. Bad manners. Squandered resources. Lying, lying, lying. Got to feed the habit. As always, like any addict, they end up stealing from family. From us.

The Dems are well implicated in this too, but they're responsible social drinkers by comparison. The Republicans are screaming petroholics. It's twelve steps or the ditch for them. And so, sadly, for all of us. They're dragging us along with them. And we're enablers as long as we allow it.

Maybe we'll get lucky. Get a DUI. A wake up call. Be forced to deal. Had a couple close calls already. That 70's oil shock. And, notably, 9/11. Real DUI on that one, I'd say, now that I think about it. And did we question ourselves, the way of life? Look in the mirror? No way. We lashed out. Like an ignorant, wasted frat boy at a bar. Went out and blew stuff up.

The degree of the failure after 9/11 shows just how far gone we are, how ripped on the juice. The failure of leadership, to an incomprehensible degree. To think that America ever had the world's sympathy to the extent that we did, and where we went from there, it makes you ill.

And, no less distressing, to think that we ever stood for something besides consuming the world's resources as quickly and desperately as possible. The memory fades. And it's all based on OIL. And some flaw in the national character, I guess. Predisposition and opportunity.

There's been no reckoning, of course, on our catastrophic reaction to 9/11. That's the nature of denial. Of addiction. Same people running shit. All the architects of the disaster carrying on as though they hadn't been proved wrong. On everything. On strategy and tactics. On conception and execution. On planning and implementation. On vision. Total fucking failure.

We're living in the world of ANIMAL HOUSE here. Been to a frat party and gotten smashed on the petro punch. Frat America. We're hungover, and drunk, and still drinking, all at the same time. We're never sober. So you deal with a tragedy like 9/11 like idiots. Never asking why about anything because the guys flying the planes are supplying the booze, the crude. Their peeps anyway. That's the one thing that can't stop, that supply.

And, in 2000, we had elected Bluto president. A pig. A pernicious pig. The guy who will drink until he dies, knocking down the crude. The guy who lives on the assumption no one has to clean up the mess, get up in the morning, go to class, get a job, get out of bed even. Let alone grow up. Living off mommy and daddy. Got fetal alcohol syndrome, petro version. You could see it in the eyes.

And he'll suck the vulnerable down into the pig vortex. The shit vortex. Suck everyone down. So we had exactly the wrong guy in place at the time. To say there was a problem of character doesn't even begin to get it. He wasn't even in the arena, living on an island of addiction to the crude, out of sight of shore. An island called, let's say, Texas. The absence of addiction is inconceivable in that world. It's all they know.

A guy like this can do a lot of harm even kept around as a kind of jester. A human amusement. The guy who defines the lowest possible level of existence, making everyone else look better by comparison. But, my god, you don't want him running things. We've seen the results of that.

Point is, however, he wasn't really running things. Somebody else was. Still is. He was a prop. A stooge. An idiot anti-savant. Ignoramus. Operating well below shill level in the great Republican ponzi scheme based on our tax dollars. The backward child of the upper classes. The type usually institutionalized at an asylum at great expense.

I recently watched the original UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS again after many years. Kept thinking of Junior, our illustrious 43rd, in relation to James, the upstairs crowd's son and heir. James was solid by comparison. He actually went to war. Risked his life. But, overall, James would be characterized by cluelessness, self-centeredness, and incompetence. He's likable though. Disarmingly. Most of the time. When he isn't running into walls.

One telling moment among many: James gets told that Rose, head house-maid, is leaving. Getting married and leaving the country, actually. Has a life of her own, thank you. James wants to know, who's going to bring him his coffee. Like now. Rose has been there, a big part of family life, forever. And it doesn't register what's going on. That he should care or at least feign caring about her. 

Rose's life isn't real to James. It's subsumed into the family's functional existence. This is to say she has no existence of her own to James. Kind of like the young Americans Bluto shipped off to fight in Iraq. This is called racism, I think, or classism, or something. Anyway it's not good. It's Republicanism. 

James eventually blew Rose's money in the markets. She had stuck around, turns out, after all, and inherited her former fiancee's money when he died in the war. James meant well. 

James kills himself which, again, shows his staggering moral superiority in relation to Junior. What, me worry? That's our guy's attitude. No conscience at all. Must have been excised or irradiated. Assuming he had one to start.

Look at all the Americans whose lives have been wrecked under the Republican Reign of Error. Wrecked as in dead or mutilated, in the case of some of those sent off to Iraq. 

Or Afghanistan. Young Americans, many of whom joined the military because they couldn't get jobs. Couldn't get jobs because the Republicans had sent their jobs to China, or obliterated them in other insidious and stupid ways. So they throw up a smokescreen of patriotism, the national interest, security, whatever, to obscure the carnage and their stupidity, those Republicans.

And wrecked, other American lives, as in working harder and harder for less. And wrecked as in not having health care. And wrecked as in not having hope. Not being able to assume anything about the quality of your future existence. Or quantity, given the health care. They want to take it all away, the Republicans. Allocate resources to feed the addiction. Stoke the fires. Have toga parties on their yachts.

Pretty obvious when, of all the imaginable, meaningful issues the country might tackle, the Republicans become obsessed with the DEATH TAX. They care only about themselves. All the while from the wars, from everything, money accumulates in Republican coffers. Enormous silos of cash. Just seems to happen. Poof. They swear it's all fair, legit, above-board. Incidental to the normal operation of free markets. That it's their due. That's their opinion, as disinterested parties.

None of it is real to Junior or to America's new Republican plutocracy. It doesn't register, the suffering, the destruction, the despair. It's almost unfair to say they don't give a shit. They're just not in that world. They're insulated. As insulated as they can make themselves. Impenetrable armor of ignorance. Force field of obliviousness. And they're going to heaven, they believe. The ignorance, the lack of culpability, they get to keep it. For eternity. That's their idea. Cool model. Doesn't ring biblical to me, exactly. But what do I know.

And then there's the damage we've done to the rest of the world, which I don't even mean to get into. The insulation here is easier not so much because of the physical separation but because the people can't vote. They have to spend a fortune peddling lies to us, at least. And the alcoholic stupor of consumption helps on the domestic front. Dulls the awareness. Keep consuming, sucking it all in, and don't stop to think about anything.

We sold our souls cheap, people. For shit we didn't need. Non-essentials. Not food, shelter, clothing. Who's the buyer of our souls, in this sad-ass Faust story? The American version of that English upper class?

Who's running shit, behind the scenes? Paying the shills, suckering the suckers, pulling Junior's strings? It's corporations and the corporatists. This isn't even good drama. This is banal. No Charles Manson. No swastikas. No Darth.

We do the bad stuff the way the English did it, in our new class culture, as you would expect. With decorum. With self-righteousness. With composure. The stiff lip. The immobile, pasty complexion. 

Talk to me about it. I'm Irish, by descent. Ever read about the Irish famine? Genocide by incompetence. Willful neglect. Malignant carelessness. Crass, self-interested, criminal stupidity.

But wait, who empowered the corporations and the corporatists? We did. We voters. We fucking idiot voters.

Hang on.

I'm back. Had to check the mirror, the forehead, for the swastika. Not there. Thank God? We should all get them, like ashes, on Ash Wednesday. Serve us right. Because we enable the enablers, the corporatists. Kind of circular sounding, which is what you expect, I suppose, in a closed system of denial, when you can't acknowledge the addiction, the dependency.

It's a perpetual motion, squirrel cage kind of thing. Our whole, huge, unsustainable economy. And the thinking underlying it. The rationalizations. We're all implicated. Perpetual as long as you ignore the enormous energy subsidy, the addicting agent, the OIL. That'll take the perpetual out of that machine, if you take away the oil. So we're all living on borrowed time. Borrowing from the past and the future. Anything to keep the addiction alive.

That should be our motto. In Latin, on all the national stuff. ON BORROWED TIME. Like "Videri Quam Esse." Yes, Mr Colbert, I saw that. So we've all had to empower the inner idiot in ourselves in an ongoing, seat-of-the-pants sort of way, to keep it all going. It's required, denial, to live in this exploding plastic inevitable (sorry to lose you, Lou) consumption machine of ours. Too painful otherwise, to not quell the awareness.

I've depressed myself. That's the problem, there, in a nut. Who wants to look at this crap straight on. It hurts too much. We had it made. All we had to do was not blow it, and we screwed up so badly. For nothing. No Star Wars. No white hats or black. No winners. Lots of losers. We've seen the enemy and it's ourselves.

But there's hope, I'll tell you. It's OIL. The Republican ponzi scheme is real, as is the inevitable reckoning, but it's different because we're pulling money from outside the system, in the form of OIL. Could save our irresponsible asses.

Which means maybe the inevitable isn't inevitable. 

We may get away with it if we stop. Now. Did we stop yet? Time to grow up. Graduate. Get a job. Get productive. The model ain't the frat, it's the family. We have to get it through our fucking heads, we really are in it together. Got to start behaving like grown-ups.

Vroom, Vroom

I have another play, in the conceptual stages, titled CLOSED LOOP. Usual deal, like my others: simple staging, and a chorus of southern white boys. Supposed to be evocative of James Dean in REBEL, stylistically. Maybe Mitchum in THUNDER ROAD.

Here I use NASCAR as representative of the Republican mindset. Especially Southern Republicans. See, you burn up a ton of resources in order to drive around in a circle. Can't even reverse direction. Never escape the track. Enclosed. Controlled. And it's a privately owned sport.

So-called sport. Completely cut off from reality. Huge barriers to entry. Plantation size. It's expensive as hell. So it's not very fair, very welcoming, very created-equal, to those lacking capital. How very Republican. And Southern. Exclusive. Non-competitive. Like elections, ideally. Like everything, ideally.

The chorus are the pit crew. They dance, too. There are girls scattered around in skimpy dress. Everyone biding time, I suppose, until Jesus waves the checkered flag, a huge one, signaling an end to the great race of life. Then they all go to heaven, even the girls in the skimpies. If they been saved. So the ennui, it makes sense, watching a bunch of cars going nowhere, if life is just something you wait around to escape from.

Maybe the four horsemen will descend from the sky and take a few victory laps for Jesus, when that day arrives. Get raptured, the spectators. Right there at the event, from the stands. Don't repeat that. The NASCAR crowd will take it seriously. Start bringing crap to the track. Salvation aids. Maybe signs. "Hi, Jesus".

Who knows what. Help them get raptured. Make sure none of the righteous get missed. Hang on, there are strange clouds on the horizon. Not like any I've seen before. I think I see images in those clouds. Didn't mean to be a doubter there, Lord.

Then, whoa, a new breed appears, at the track. New kind of drivers, and cars. Here the mood goes to MAD MAX. They don't play by the rules. Crash the gates. Start driving around the wrong way, in the middle of a race. The cars have all kinds of sharp shit sticking out.

And hood ornaments: Ryan, Cruz, Rand, Michele, their belle. In chrome, burnished, all sleaked back, deco style. Big ones, kind of phallic.

These guys, they want to get back to purity. They're puritans. Back to the roots of stock car. In crime. Bootleggers, avoiding the law. The race deteriorates or is elevated, maybe, into a demolition derby. Enormous mess. Think war zone. Iraq.

Burned out hulks of cars. Others still afire. Drivers scattered about with limbs missing, guts spilling out. Pit crew going ape-shit, jumping around. The girls, in the skimpies, looking a little smoky and singed.

They win, of course, the new guys. If you can call this winning. They do. Here the mood goes to BEN HUR. They carry their muse, Sarah, around the track in an enormous sedan chair, all done up like Cleopatra. Celebrating, triumphant, they knock down the hooch.

The crowd doesn't know whether to cheer or what. These guys are well-funded, clearly, and they respect that instinctively. Privilege. They love privilege. Keeps the riff-raff at bay.

They kind of cheered for Iraq, all that chaos, after all. The NASCAR crowd. And their kin actually fought there, unlike the guys who started it. Reconstructive surgery of a sort, on the heathen, those Iraqis.

Uncivilized lot. Don't know Jesus. Made things better there. More Christian. Didn't we? Hate to think Billy Bob got his balls blown off for nothing.

But then, oh fuck, this was just practice. The primaries. Sarah is dropped, unceremoniously marooned, in the infield, looking about for an innocent moose to murder. Her blood's up. She was only a prop. Even they know that.

They hop back in their cars, decorated now with severed heads and other body parts on pikes, on the pointy protuberances, on the hood ornaments, and head back out through the crashed gates. Onto I-40. Wrong way, of course, making mayhem. They're taking the show on the road.

All of America must be purified of the taint, of the sin, of secularity. Got to get back to God. Back to the roots. Religify the country. The government. Bring them back to God, if you have to kill them to do it. That's one way, actually, the way of the Inquisition.

Meet your maker in church or at the pearlies, the great gates, with Saint Peter presiding, bouncer at the great bar at the end of the universe. God's night club, if you will. If Peter is hungover Jake will be there. Jake Neal. He used to be bouncer at HELL. That's a bar. Used to be.

Looking back, this one may be better suited to film. Get a director. Someone good at special effects. More possibilities that way. Bring out all the apocalyptic undertones. Not so under, really, on the tones. Pretty up-front. The tea gang think they're in league with the Lord, hanging around yearning for the second coming.

Impatient for it. It's an insult to God, somehow, to try to make the world better. It's supposed to be shit. They're reassured when it's shit. So, hey, they get proactive. Why wait around when you can go out and bust stuff up. In the name of Jesus, no less. Doing God's work.

So you would have hoped they'd be content to live in their own hell-hole, but no. They want that for everybody. In the best interests of our salvation. They're looking out for us, ruining our lives. Wish they wouldn't tread on me.

They kind of are the apocalypse, themselves, in slow motion. Bet they like the sound of that. Apocalypse, now! Uh-oh, reports coming in on the I-40 situation. Maybe not so slo-mo, on the destruction. They're getting the job done there. Big tactical advantage, when you don't give a shit about anything.

While we're at it there's another play in the works, in the think tank of my brain. A STREETCAR NAMED DESPAIR, all about Paul Ryan. He's the main character, the protagonist. This one has a chorus of dockworkers, burly as hell, all in wife-beaters, as is Ryan.

There's a catchy tune, WE'RE RANDY FOR AYN, during the singing of which there are assorted spats in the chorus, and a little blood. There are scratch-and-sniff cards with the smell of those guys in the chorus, after a long work day. Earthy to say the least, with a hint of bear-breath. I mean beer-breath.

Ryan plays himself. Who better. His wife, Stella, is jealous as hell, and weirded out by Paul's devotion to Ayn. Ryan has a little shrine at home, in the spare bedroom, stage right, in their dingy apartment. It's an altar to Ayn, with candles and such.

There's a weekly poker game, and the guy who fares worst gets shit beat out of him by the others at the end of the night. This keeps a nice edge on everything. Very randy. I mean Randian.

All the guys in the chorus lose their jobs, as does Ryan, when their company gets bought out by Bain. The pension plan is declared overfunded, on the basis of very optimistic earnings forecasts, by home-schooled economists right out of Patrick Henry. It's pillaged to the bone.

They're distraught, understandably, and ready to kill Ryan, who had persuaded them to de-unionize. Then, ex-machina, Mitt himself is lowered down in a big, boardroom-style chair. Black suit, white shirt, tie. Stage center. Hair neatly greased, right out of the eugenics lab, by all appearances. Scratch and sniff. Cologne, after-shave, pomade, hint of cognac.

He tries to calm the chorus, reassure them. All will be well. Ryan hops aboard, pretty much in Mitt's lap, as he slowly ascends. Turns out Ryan's been special economic advisor all along, to Bain. On their payroll. Helping Mitt make money. Guys are now visible either side of Mitt, suspended on cables, in SWAT gear.

This is an extraction, an op. The helicopter hovers. The boys are still trying to get their hands on Ryan. But he's going, going, gone, off to the lair, their hide-out, at the bastian of the Boehnerites, in some crevice in the mountains. An inverted Shangri-La where there's ten coolies for every white boy.

The news comes in on the radio. The economy is in free fall. It's 2008. Ryan, on the side, has been advising the government to deregulate everything, for years, destabilizing capital markets. So Mitt and the plunderers can make more money.

The pension is toast. Nonexistent. Whole world has gone Enron. Stella enters from the kitchen, stage left, with grilled cheese sandwiches for the guys. And water. Not enough money for beer. They attack the shrine, enraged to insanity, as Stella flees back to the kitchen.

They find all kinds of incriminating stuff in the debris, at the shrine, and realize the extent of the plot. Whole government is compromised. All the regulating agencies, bought off. Staffed with shills. There's no one to turn to. Images emerge in their minds of an assault, the storming of the Bastille, Fort Boehner.

They're aware, at the same time, of the futility, their helplessness, their powerlessness. They can't do anything. Scratch and sniff. Despair, overpowering everything. With a hint of rot-gut. These hard-working Americans, they're headed for the streets.

Maybe the gutters. They know it. Hope? Nope. So say the Boehner boys. And Rove's platoon of pussies, the chicken-hawks. Rich boys jealously guarding their piles of loot.

They're Shifty

Since the Supreme Court has certified corporations as shape-shifters it's only right that the other branches adjust their thinking. Keep up with the times. If a corporation can morph at will from business to person, person to business, that opens the gates. Maybe they're both at the same time. No matter. But, I mean, what the fuck ELSE are they?

The laws and regulations need to reflect this. They're uncertain entities, corporations. So we're talking probabilities. Quantum stuff. Very Heisenberg. Not the one that broke bad. You know what I mean. And you can't regulate 'em if you can't find 'em, pin 'em down. They're amorphous. And out of our purview as of now. We'll need special shit on the regulatory front. New tools for new times.

You say they're self-regulating? Invisible hand? Whose hand would that be? Some market thing? Wait a minute I think we've stumbled onto something here. They're going back, way back, to a state-of-nature. Pre-civilization. Dog eat dog. Winner take all.

They're de-criminalizing everything. For themselves. Not for us. We have to live by the rules. So invisible as in non-existent, on the hand. They just do what they want. Should have said so. This IS very Heisenberg. Not the uncertainty dude, the one that broke bad. This is the world of drug lords, their new corporate working environment.

See they're all potentially rogue entities, those corporations. Renegade states-within-states. Unregulated entities, possibly unregulatable, with a mandate to maximize the short term bottom line at the expense of everything else. Period. It's required. It's what corporations do.

Can't look out for the employees, the scum, or the national interests. They're bound not to if it conflicts with the profit (the holy grail, omega point, salvation, orgasm, best thing ever, etc). Some fool interferes? Waste his ass.

They're laws unto themselves. Neat model. You live by one set of rules. Everyone else, another. All to their advantage of course. That's fairness in their world. All the advantages of enfrachisement, citizenship, without the responsibilities.

So it's not about respecting or breaking laws per se. There aren't any laws. None that apply to them, outside their system. None that they're actually subject to in real-life circumstances. Just means and ends. They make it up on the fly, what's allowed, to suit their needs. Isn't that what you would do if you could? See, they are like people.

So corporations are corporations, and people, and what else? States, functionally. Beginning to sound like it since they enact their own laws, or at least aren't subject to ours.

This resonates with something in my past, deep in the drawers. Been packed away in the memory banks. Got it. Oh my god, they're gods! Three but one. Triune. States, corps, peeps, all at once.

All the power and no responsibility. Answerable only to themselves. Omnipotent. Or damn powerful at least. And omniscient, presumably. Give them the benefit. The Republicans do.

Man, you can rationalize anything from there. As with God, so with Corps. Tripartite but indivisible. Unlimited power but no responsibility. Transcendent when it comes to, let's say, taxes. Above those. Undignified for a deity. Immanent on profits. Be there for that.

Cool. And a little kinky, this way of operating. Like to buy a kit for that on eBay. You say you can buy them at Capitol Goods and Trading, Penn Ave, D.C.? Contact my Representative? Lobbyist? All it takes is a load of cash but the returns are good.

Look at Heisenberg. Had to eliminate a few dudes on the way up, invest a sum, but the returns are mind blowing. And the shape-shifting comes in super handy. You're way enfranchised, tons of leverage, but no fingerprints. Stealth technology.

And other goodies. Came with the warship. Used. Klingon. A little worse for the wear from that last encounter with a worm hole, but fully functional. Cloak. And dagger. Fucking photon torpedoes. Got to have it. Tough world.

So the regulators come after your corporate ass, you morph into a person. Or a divinity. Or just waste their asses if they won't leave you alone. Out-gun 'em on the money front. Waste their asses with cash. Cool. Lee Atwater style. You just make shit up.

No wonder the Republicans kowtow to corporations, what with the religious bent. And the good returns, too. They love that. At least the ones high enough up in the food chain. May have to send them all off to Betty Ford on this one. Sounds a little funky. And addicting. And all sub rosa it is, too, with the stealth.

Anyway we're told this all somehow works out in the best interests of everybody, little guys included. Magically. Mysteriously. How? Shut up. You don't ask. It's a mystery, dummy.

They mean well, we're constantly reassured. Corporate kumbaya. Picture it. All these corporations--just bent the knee--sitting around a camp fire singing in the drizzle. They only let Fox News cover this in their program SPIN CYCLE, with host Bill the Shill, so we'll have to take his word. He swears they're beneficent, magnanimous, all that's good and holy, the corporations.

Ahem, the people. Those people. Them there. With the halos. The auras. Sitting around the fire with the embers glowing. Throwing another log--wait, shit, that's not wood. Those are our jobs being reduced to ashes.

The creationist crowd, they eat it up. It's all an article of faith with them anyway. They have special insight into the laws of the universe. So they think. So they believe. God's laws, which trump the heathen crap enacted by congress, fucking apostates.

So they're patriots, the creationists, their contempt for constitutional mechanisms notwithstanding. And the birthers. Remember it doesn't have to make sense. Good sign if it doesn't. Means you're in the realm of paradox. With the deity. All must be bent to His will. He, mark you. None of that She shit. A white He. Don't need no science. No reason. They got God.

And clearly since corporations are peeps--their peeps, mind--they can go to heaven. Probably predestined. Forgive me if I sound skeptical. Sounds like a big power grab and a lot of flimsy double-talk. They want us to take it all on faith, though. That's their idea.

No need. We ran an experiment on this, on ourselves, starting in the 70's, with the tax cuts for the rich and corporate welfare. Same thing really, those two. And more so in the 80's, the glory years of SS/RT. Supply Side, Rising Tide. Tide rose. Way up there. Small boats nowhere to be seen. They floated out to sea. Over to China.

But the people on the big boats, the corporatists, they rescued those people, some of them anyway, off the little boats. Out of their goodness. Saved their asses. Some of them. Gave them jobs. Good jobs, as servants. They're philanthropists, the corporatists. Points of light.

Those grateful people, the rescuees, are toiling away contentedly, they say, in the engine rooms and galleys. You never see them. It's said they look like ghosts. The government rewarded the big boat people for their good deed doing, and general holiness, with (more) money. From taxes paid by those little boat people under-decks. Got to come from somewhere.

Apart from being sick isn't this unsustainable? Isn't this system eating itself alive? I tried to point this out but they couldn't hear me, on the big boats. Huge party. Gatsby-style. No question about the outcome here, folks. Since the 70's the rich have done incredibly well. Everyone else, not so much.

This is the real Ponzi. Our tax dollars. They line their pockets, the corporatists, any way they can and give back as little as possible short of causing suspicion. They invest nothing, issuing false reports via their think tanks, Fox News, whatever. Why squander money on infrastructure for ingrates, those "takers," when you can buy another house, a bigger yacht. All kinds of great shit can be had, where the money flows.

There's a whole heirarchy, in the Ponzi. Leaders, Shills, Suckers. Appears to be in the late stages. They want more, they need more, since it's all going up in smoke to maintain their lifestyle.

But there's progressively less left to siphon off as the suckers become increasingly impoverished. The economic base? The jobs? What do you think the little boats were. And they're more and more irritated about their lives, the working folk, all the time. Might insurrect or something. They work harder while losing ground. Ultimately, inevitably, the system starves, collapses, comes unraveled, and everybody suffers.

OOPS! ERROR! They'll blame government of course. These aren't competitive entities, the big boat crowd. They're the takers, not the makers, despite the propaganda. They don't produce anything or benefit anyone. Just suck up resources. It's extractive.

Look at Mitt. Extracting wealth, like mining. Finding value, leaving skeletons of once viable industries. They're like snowballs rolling downhill. Accumulating stuff, running on inertia, until they come to a rest. As they must, inevitably.

Sure, they leave an occasional business or industry standing. If it suits their purposes. But the welfare of anyone else, or the country as a whole, doesn't factor in. It's irrelevant. And they ARE building infrastructure. Lots of it. In China.

Now look at basketball. Isn't that where you see the purest competition anywhere? Real competition. And football. And the national pastime, dogfighting. Let's say baseball. Privilege don't mean shit. Privilege gives you white boy basketball, circa 1950's. Dribble, dribble, tea break, shoot. Shake hands, pat the back.

Look now. What was that, fucking missile? Some black guy putting it down. Two points? Should get more than that. Looked like he came out of the rafters. You think the white boys want that on Wall Street? No way. Dribble, dribble, tea break, money rolling in, bushels and bushels. Shake hands, head home. Greenwich, their ghetto.

Good gig. I worked for that money! And they did. Kind of. Woke up at the top of a hill after a nice ride on the lift, took two steps forward, wiped the sweat from the brow, then whee! Just avoid the black guys clawing up-slope, on the way down. Would you give this up without a fight?

Anyway they regulate hell out of basketball. Order the owners around all over the place. Screaming socialists. The worst team gets first pick in the next draft, and so on. Total commies, but it keeps the whole system from imploding. In fact everybody does better. I mean everybody. And it makes for amazing competition. Real competition. Level playing field. No free rides to the top.

Somebody contact the SS/RT crowd and the libertarians. It's what they said they wanted. Freedom, latitude, to sink or swim. Structure enables this, it seems. Rational structure. Regulation. The kind only good, strong government can provide. Great discovery. Should instill the regulatory fervor. They're sure to get on board, when we show them.

But no, not what they really want, it turns out. Fair play? Rules? Limitations? Strictures? Instant replays? Game films? Independent analysts? Can't buy the refs? On Wall Street? No fucking way.

You can't hide shit. Not fair! Not fair! We paid a lot for the stealth! And that Klingon warship. What was that strange sound? Republican brains grinding their gears. Prime the photon torpedoes! Fire at will! Nuke something, anything! What good is a Swiss bank account in such a world. Horror.

One morning before I abandoned NPR in defense of my sanity, there was a report about a bust in Brooklyn. Prostitution. Mostly financial guys buying the services. Ten thousand dollars a night. That was the going rate. There's some free enterprise for you. Entrepreneurship. On both ends, I guess.

Then another report. The average net worth of a black person in the land of the free. Less than ten thousand dollars, if I remember right.

And here you thought I was exaggerating. I do sometimes, for effect. You never noticed? Hard to exaggerate these days when it comes to income disparity. And wealth disparity. And every kind of disparity.

I should mention Heisenberg here and the frankencorps and tie it all together somehow, but I've got to go to work. In the galleys, the engine room, of our wonderful floating plantation, plutocrat's paradise, yacht, Rovian Reichstag thingy. The big boat of the Boehnerites, with every imaginable amenity. Golf course, tanning beds, beer flowing in fountains, you name it.

You'll have to do it for me. Tie it in. Be creative. But keep your head down. Helmet. Flak jacket. Maybe body armor. Impenetrable force field.

Remember, they have drones. And the photons. Someone drops a dime, you're toast. Run a missile up your ass. Cruz missile. Photon your ass. Might want to invest in an igloo of concrete and steel, or a bunker. Cloaking would be good.

Heisenberg and his type, they don't mess around. Beam me out of here, somebody.

Ralph

So here's another little play, a skit, an appetizer, an amusement. A foible, folly, flight of fancy, RALPH REED MEETS HIS MAKER. Picture Ralph, and God, cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown. "So I made it, Lord, I knew I would," says Ralph. "Not so fast, Ralph," says God. "I've got a couple hundred thousand assorted Muslims up here early and it's on your account, because you did that thing you do so well, too well, in 2000. You were working for the wrong guy there, Ralph, and I don't mean what's his boots, who won the election, or whatever.

I mean the guy with the little horns. Ya'll did a lot of damage. So here's the deal. You can stay, and wait on all those folks for eternity, those Muslims. Turns out they're big into margaritas and daiquiris, up here. They love them. You get a cute little outfit. Not a bad gig, Ralph, I assure you. But, you know, the last will be first and all that. I, too, have promises to keep."

"So, Lord," says Ralph, "I get to be cabana boy to a bunch of heathen? Forever?" "Yes, Ralph. Not quite the way I would put it, but yes. Or you can go to the other place. Your choice," says the Lord. And, as the lights dim, Ralph stands there, stupefied.

El Barto!

I'm an oddball. Eccentric. Just want to get that on the table. Have been, as long as I can remember. Maybe everybody feels that way, I don't know, but I don't think so. I had cool friends, as a kid, but I didn't belong with them, after a point. I certainly knew it, and I think they knew it. I was funny, and mouthy as hell, and good at sports, to a degree. Mostly baseball. So that gave me an in with the ins. But I sucked with girls, beyond imagining. And I wasn't typically competitive. Really, I didn't get it. I remember a coach screaming at me, in frustration, "Flanagan, get mean out there." Why. What's your problem. I don't buy it. Get a grip.

Not the attitude they wanted. And, playing sports, I got it into my head that there was something not right with me, my constitution. I couldn't make it work quite right, the body. Never got wind, no matter what I did, which was inconvenient, since they ran your ass off, in practice, especially mine, since I was bad at it. It was worrying and confusing. So I had a sense of physical insufficiency, maybe of mortality, early on. Like at ten. Sounds neurotic.

Finally, first time I had a chest scan, weirdness. Confirmation. Diagnosis. Big, inefficient heart. This was in my mid twenties. And emotionally, I was reactive as hell, which led to assorted humiliations, in adolescence. Couldn't seem to help it. Probably conditions at home, messing with me. Who knows. I think it made me empathetic, though, which is the point of telling you all this, how we come upon empathy, how I came upon empathy. Ask my friends, about the empathy. Let me know what they think. I'm curious.

So, I love THE SIMPSONS. And Bart. A kind of puer. A perpetual, preternatural pre-adolescent. Cool thing about toons, they get to be arrested, legitimately. They don't age. But you wouldn't want him as, let's say, head of state. Not a good fit. Unless you're Republican. In which case, perfecto! El Barto! Let's blow shit up! Oh, wait, you mean then I can't still have it, the thing I just blew to bits? It only takes the average adolescent boy about three years and a couple hundred demolitions to get this, bless their pointed little heads. People got hurt? Aw, shucks.

Look at L Paul "Bart" Bremer, custodian of Iraq. The Bushies had people on the ground there with some sense of reality. Inherited them. People who knew things. Things about Iraq. And they brought in guys like Bremer, because they had pro-life stickers on their skateboards. And they blew shit up. And none of the people responsible for this seem to have realized, let alone regretted, what they did there. They sit around making fart noises and laughing, I suppose, in their better jobs and bigger offices.

In this perversion of the Peter Principle, Republicans get promoted, not just to their level of incompetence, but beyond it, transcendently. Maybe it's the perfection of it, the Principle. They get promoted as a reward for incompetence, and to bring it to bear in appropriate situations. Screwing up is a skill. A talent. A knack. Something to be done with style, elan, aplomb, panache. Something to be nurtered, cultivated, inculcated. Onwards and downwards! I assume they have a secret awards' ceremony, and statuettes.

It's insidiously brilliant, or brilliantly insidious. Maybe just fucked up. They trash everything, then step back, and point the bony finger--at government. See, we told you, government sucks. No, actually, you suck. And the huge wreckage they leave behind, they never own. So they never grow up, these cartoon cowboys. Other people clean up the mess, or live in the rubble. Peter Pan cowboys, arrested in development, but not by the law. Too young, existentially. Juvenile delinquents, approaching retirement. On the road to their reward.

And I remember being there, mine own self. El Jimbo. As I said, I was an oddball, but all boy, nonetheless. Stupid. Insensitive. Impulsive. Destructive. Probably spoiled. What can I say. Witnesses are few. However, I have a wonderful, highly visual memory, to please and plague me. Entertaining, and distracting. I can very nearly relive stuff, certainly the emotional component. It's true of the adolescent crap, the evil-doing. So I can relive the indifference--to everything.

That's at the core, I think, of adolescent boyhood, a lack of the awareness of connectedness, and consequences. The lack of conscience is incidental, if no less appalling, for that. Most adolescent boys, if you point out some personal harm, and can get them to focus for a moment and actually see it, are instantly and sincerely remorseful, in my experience. I remember this exactly, when I ran my mouth insensitively and crashed it into some kid (Jim Lyons, for one), which I did more times than I care to think about, and got called on it.

Who's to say who's guilty of what. I have no real animus about Republicans, just the stuff they do. And the regret I feel over the youthful transgressions is genuine, if not altogether historical. It's current, certainly. I remember, and I strive to do better. El Jimbo, grown up version. Who knows how we would have turned out if our lives had been otherwise, any of us. In my case, I was sensitized when things went wrong, when I felt vulnerable, or when someone reprimanded me, in real time, which is what the Republicans need. Sensitivity training, and resistance. Big time.

You hope, from that, that they get a clue without having the first hand experience of, let's say, having your ass blown off in Iraq. There are always irredeemables, like the Cruz character, but there lies despair. Hell, I could have broke bad, I guess, meaning Republican. And I think I turned out okay. I'm an empathetic guy now, and nice. Please say yes to this. Oh, well. Ask my friends. Still curious.

So the Republicans get religion on gay rights if they have a gay kid, if ever. Do they need to be impoverished to have sympathy for the poor? Impoverishment isn't a viable policy, but a few steps in that direction, maybe so. The rich folks, they cough up a fee to join the country club, typically only six or so times the average net worth of a black family, in the land of plenty, but what the heck. Then, at the end of the year, they divvy up the expenses. Make it come out right.

I propose this as a deficit reduction model. A deficit eradication model. The Country Club Model. Let's do that with the national finances. Those that benefit the most, pay the bills, make it come out right. Maybe that will engender some sympathy, in the Republicans. Right. Piss them off, I'm sure. But at least we'd fix a problem.

Now, more broadly, the animus that's evident, in the air, hanging around like pollution, the indifference, the wanton, adolescent destructiveness, is almost all Republican. The Democrats are reacting to that, to the extent they're reactive, not generating it themselves, from what I've observed. I have no idea how to counteract it, the animus, to quick effect, since the culture warriors resist engagement at all. I think we may need help, to bring the transgressors back into the family fold, where we can at least work with them, sensitize them.

I look to the toons. That means Marge. The expert on Bart. Marge, for president. Really, the toon. How cool is that. First female president and first toon, all in one. The Republicans will run Cruella, I'm sure, but she has high negatives. Just need to get Marge scripted right, but I trust the experts on that. Man, I like this idea. Bart, first boy. Lisa, first girl/secretary of state. Homer? First whatever. He'll be pleased enough just to be first anything. We'll let Marge deal with that destructive adolescent impulse. The right balance of indulgence and indignation. Resistence and resignation. She knows how. She'll get it done

Sauna

Man, do I love Finnish sauna. I have a sideline business installing them and I have one myself. Just did one, in fact. Best thing ever. The protocol is this:

Sweat your balls off, cold dunk (full immersion), round one
Sweat your balls off, cold dunk (full immersion), round two
Sweat your balls off, cold dunk (full immersion), round three
Hot, soapy shower, scrub with brush, cold rinse, dry down
Optional, if you have a sweetie: soapy massage

Now get a stiff drink. I mean it. I'm going to hit you with something hard. Here we go. Deactivate whatever you have in the way of visualizing skills. Turn it off. It's for your own protection. The proposal, the prescription, the decree:

Dick Cheney does a sauna, with his sweetie (his wife, one hopes). Repeat as necessary.

Oh, man. You okay? The idea is, if we could get the Republicans to do saunas, it might just sweat the meanness out of them. The resentment. The indifference to human suffering. We may have to have sauna internment camps -- spas, we'll call them --and employ a regimen, but just the thought gives me hope.

We have the opposite problem with the Democrats, how to get them pissed off. How to get them to fight back. I think everyone engages in projection, to a degree, so the Democrats think the Republicans are normal, when they're wackers, and the Republicans think the Democrats are foaming, when they're harmless. The Democrats are mild-mannered, mostly. Constitutionally even-tempered. Regular residents of Lake Wobegon. Soft spoken. Respectful. Non-confrontational. Alright, maybe not quite so saintly but, still, it will take a lot to stir them. So, I'm thinking, severed heads. On the lawns of prominent Democrats.

Thing is, there are these severed heads cropping up in Mexico and, I mean, we paid for those. Our money. The provenance is indisputable: our money, drug lords, severed heads. Some of those must surely go unclaimed by the families. I understand there may be some trouble with customs, but we'll deal. I wish we would own our shit and do away with the drug war, but this is America. We don't do that. We unload our problems on innocent people elsewhere. Next best thing is to make good use of what we've bought. Just a thought. A modest proposal.

So somebody go get Dick. He's usually elbow-deep in the red meat at NumNuts, his favorite restaurant, or on the golf course, or blasting his friends with the twelve gauge. Forgot about that, didn't you. While we're waiting here's another idea: waterboard his ass. Not his ass--you know what I mean. If he's guilty of half the stuff it appears, well, he makes the bearded guy look like an amateur. And if that's the way you get good info, good intel, true confessions, we've got to use it.

The problem is the disparity. The Republicans are fighting a war. Against I don't know what. Good question. Certainly truth, justice, the American way. What do they want? I guess it's a vision thing. A feeling. Authoritarian. Arbitrary. Mean. Maybe more than a feeling. A program for a social model. Plantation. Or prison, maybe.

And the Dems. How many times do you have to get cold-cocked before you get it, it's not a game to them. They want to kill you.

Last time you looked in the mirror did you see Yugoslavia? It's hard, human nature, I suppose, to see your own shit. And the US is as divided a place as Yugoslavia ever was. A third of the country under apartheid, ruled by terrorists, with religious underpinnings, for most of our history.

Then what? Desegregation. The hated Yankees telling us how to live. Ain't going to hand our nuts to us again in a dessert cup, like the last time. All of a sudden after desegregation, the country turns inexorably to issues supposed long settled. States Rights. Gun Rights. Religion in the Schools, the Workplace, fucking everywhere. Nullification. I mean, Nullification? What century is this? Secession? How obvious does this have to get? And Property, Property, Property. A biggie south of the line, owner or owned.

And, my god, do they hate the government. And social programs. What's the big deal? Oh, wait, it's not our government, the apartheid government. It's the Yankee government, giving free shit to undeserving black people. And something goes off in their heads. It must be destroyed. It... must... be... destroyed... (picture the zombie walk here). At any and all costs. So the question is not, will we live by 'the constitution,' it's which constitution, and the Confederate one is now in force. So says the ghost of Lee Atwater.

How to destroy. Drown it in deficits. In debt. Very Norquistian. A bathtub of debt. And leverage. Use leverage. Get 'em by the nuts. You don't need a majority, when you got 'em by the nuts. That's a song in one of my plays.

And there we are folks. We've just been through it again, courtesy of the Boehnerites. And now Sarah, god help us, or someone from the tea tribe has the Boehner balls in her teeth. GREAT CHAIN OF BEING, red-state style. Glad we turned that imaging apparatus off.

All the while Rove's Reich, at the real governmental headquarters, attacks everything we thought the country ever stood for. I see it in the mists--was it that long ago?--when the US did not torture people. FUCKING PERIOD. But the gates are open now.

So, Dick. And I mean, "So, Dick," with sinister undertones. Never waterboarded a guy with a pacemaker. Could be interesting. You never had the training, did you? The military training. Interesting. So much for the sauna.

This has been so unfair. The sauna has immunized me against the harshness of what I've written, with the mellowing effects. But not you, gentle reader. James, you still there? It goes to show the power of sauna. I'm feeling strong. That's right, James, you have one as well, don't you. I wasn't thinking. So get your white ass in there.

Mull all this over and report back. The rest of you, well, maybe you can use mine. Or, then, there's ketchup. Natural mellowing agents, I've heard. A home remedy from the Wobegoners, a peaceful tribe. They use it in their casseroles. Wait a minute, maybe we can douse Republicans in that. I'm open to suggestions here.

White Women

White women, I want a divorce. Have the complaint right here. Treason. Infidelity. Disorderly Conduct. Irregularity. Default. Obfuscation. Embezzlement. Unpredictability. Infringement. Fraternization. Obstruction. Truancy. Alienation and Affectation. Promiscuity. Callousness. Excessive use of Force. Heterophobia. Failure to Yield. Going Right and Red. Sleeping at the Wheel and on the Job and with the Enemy. Snoring. It's all there. Civil, Criminal, Custodial. White collar, Blue collar, Clerical, Eton, Nehru. I'm throwing the book. You hurt my feelings. And, by the way, I want full custody of Junior, the Democratic Party.

You lost me, girls--man, that feels good--when you voted for what's-his-ass, a known mass-murderer and war criminal, in '04. Thirty years or so of hearing how you were the good guys and then that. Girls is good, boys is bad. Guilty until proven innocent, if you're a guy. I'll admit it, we screwed up. What with interminable wars and the Holocaust and other mishaps. And you said, and I believed, that it was a guy thing. Testosterone. So you not only didn't get the job done you invalidated that argument and implicated yourselves in the whole history of human grief. Lysistrata, righteous girl, where are you now?

Okay I'm trying to understand it. Maybe you wanted to mother him. After all he was pretty arrested. As in he wasn't toilet-trained. His whole life he just shit on everything. And they'd come riding in on their horses, James Baker and the Texas ass-wipes, toilet paper streaming, and clean him up and put him back on his feet. Anyway that last time, I mean, there wasn't enough toilet paper in Texas. He shit the whole world. They tried. There was that panel or committee, bi-partisan, and James Baker was on it. Got ignored. Pivotal moment. The music wells up in the movie version. He's ready for Wheaties. He knows he's a man. What dwama.

I don't think that was it. It doesn't ring right. I think you bought the machismo. But it was fake. Just some frat boy stuck in a cave in developmental and evolutionary time. You need to make it right. To start with you need to go global, galactic, whole-hog, big picture. Maybe intergalactic, the full Douglas Adams. Blow it open. Stop talking about women's issues and the vajayjays. Too parochial, especially that last one. Americans don't want to hear it. They're tired of it. Offends the sense of who we are. Talk about the country, the planet, freedom, democracy, justice, fate, destiny, sin and redemption, profit and loss. The whole, huge enchilada. Strange, the dems really are individualists, and they talk constantly about their beloved groups and narrow issues. And the other side, they're all about their virtual plantation or country club, selfish as hell, and they talk about freedom, fairness, democracy. Oh, inverted world. It won't matter. If we can win we'll just do what we want, women's issues and all. That's what they do. They just do all the wrong stuff.

Damn, that "we" word. I forgot, we are separated. Shit! Hard to avoid. Oh, well. I guess you're still kind of family. Black women been saving your white asses, by the way. Righteous voters if ever there were. Make the statistics look way better on the women's front. Black people as well, too parochial. All about the black stuff. But they get a pass. They were so screwed for so long and so insidiously. Still are. At least they vote Democratic. You think the black guys would be in prison if the white boys didn't want them there? Come on. They're concentration camps. And the white boys, they're privatizing the thing. Going to make money on it. Our despised tax dollars into their pockets. Republican pockets. And that's the tip of a very big iceberg.

They hate welfare but love prisons. I don't have much in the way of illusions about welfare but it beats prisons, and jobs beats all. No such thing as bad jobs just bad pay, that's what I think. So all the black guys get jobs. Public works, post office, whatever. When all this got started, affirmative action and such, I wanted to get straight, get honest about it and, let's say, turn the post office over to black people. Don't fire anybody, just hire only black people. Why not? Makes as much sense as anything. And UPS. Wait, we don't own that. But the black guys look great in those uniforms.

So I guess, to be fair, we make sure all the black women have jobs as well, with decent pay. And the unemployed whites. EUREKA! Jobs for everybody. Copyright. Patent Pending. Am I thinking straight? Can't be that simple. Follow that line of reasoning back for me, will you. You say Paul Krugman was sitting there in a wing chair? Who's that heckler? Rush? He says there's not enough money? Well, he's got plenty. What did he ever contribute? And that's a big fat idiot's lying liar's lie. There's tons of money. Pallets. Like what they littered on Iraq. Our huge inheritence, built up over generations by Americans who actually got stuff done. They want to spend it on their pet project, the Cheneyfeld Memorial Maginot Defense Initiative/Corporate Feeding Trough, a massive sink-hole, and enriching people who don't contribute shit. Your money, our money, what's left of it.

Anyway, that was the WWII plan, as far as ending the Great Depression, employ everybody. I don't think we need a war to do that, white boys, and it worked good. Everything was better for everybody. Find fault with that, morons. Sorry, that was mean. We really are all in this together. But it's so wearing, sometimes, trying to talk sense, a lonely voice in the black forests of the Boehnerites. A little guy in the tatters of his health care, at the soaring walls of the citadel of Rove's Reich.  I'm tempted to hitch a ride off the planet, with Zooey Deschanel. Oh, I bet she's got a guy. There's a couple women out there, though, been on my radar. Oh, darn. Those white women. I like them. I can't help it. Let's see if we can get it done. Together.

on the importance of not being earnest

Earnestness is a drag. It's not entertaining. Must to avoid.

Pledges

Don't tell anyone but I tapped the cable running from Koch boy headquarters to Grover's Corners, cracked their code, and I now have full access to the darkest crevices in the darkest place anywhere, Norquist's Noodle. I hear everything. They keep saying the same thing over and over: they want more money.

Or maybe it was honey. Here I expected all kinds of high flown discussions about what was good and right, think tank stuff. I mean they spend a bunch of money, hire all these people with advanced degrees from Patrick Henry or wherever and talk about freedom and the constitution and the founding fathers and all the big stuff in their official publications and pronouncements, and then they just talk trash when you're not looking.

And, you know, I'm not naive but I expected a little more respect. For something. It kind of turned my stomach after a while but they don't give a shit about anything. Not that I could discover.

Grover has a closet full of tee shirts that say "It's Unanimous!," in fond expection of the day when all his charges vote the same all the time, and the few lost lambs that don't already take the pledge succumb. What a photo op when they all show up in the hallowed halls. There's frat paraphernalia, Kappa, Kappa, Kappa, all over the place.

And woe, and I mean woe--distilled, concentrated, ready to be unleashed--to those that don't toe. The new breed. Kamikaze drones. They fly right into you in the primaries. Kind of unstable and hard to control but super lethal. What's a little collateral damage among friends, among allies. There's different models, even. The T-2 (pekoe) and so on. It's a hive. Who cares if you lose a few, long as the immense queen, the breeder, is safe in Wichita, or wherever.

They're an invasive exotic. No known control. Don't fuck with the hive. Interestingly, they talk the worst trash about their own guys. Just dripping. They can't believe how cheaply they could buy them, I guess. They underpriced themselves, the drones clubbers. And the religious crowd, they really despise them. The nicknames. Yikes. I don't even like them, their guys, and I couldn't stand it.

The thing they can't believe, and I don't blame them, is how easy it was to get the entire working apparatus, of the most powerful country ever, by the nuts. And they're pretty good-sized gonads, last time I looked, what with the nukes. It all comes down to the pledge. It was so simple. Most all of the the elected representatives of the red persuasion now take two oaths when they show up in the revered capitol.

They take the oath of office, the boilerplate, as they call it, and then toddle over to Grover's place, kowtow, and take another oath. The real oath. The one that's binding. Enforcible. Ever hear Grover brag about putting the screws down? Chilling. And they call this democracy. Not the old red, white and blue, as I thought of it. But, hey, it's a new world. Virtual everything. Or maybe a new world order.

Sorry, I just woke up. Have I been writing in my sleep again? Oh, darn. That happens sometimes. Sleepy. Too tired to revise. So, whatever I've written, there may be elements of reverie, facts may be suspect, but you be the judge. You know how dreams are. Impressionistic. Dozing off again. Sorry, that you, Puck? Oh, shit. Mickey Rooney. Ian? Now, wait, Helen Mirren? There we go. I can sleep now.

Charming Billy

This is outside of my expertise, but I think Billy Graham is going to Hell. To be with Ruth. Is that mean? Okay, it was in a whisper. Somewhere in there the man went over the line. What's his name--oh, I've repressed it--but the guy who won or at least stole the '00 presidential election, and went on to wreck the nation and kill tens of thousands of people, aren't you supposed to not do that? And didn't Billy help get him there, big time? And did he ever repent? Not publicly, that I know of.

I don't get the idea that you can die assured of salvation. I would be quaking in my Birks. Talk about presumption. And evidently Ruth expressed concern, before she passed, that America had lost its way or broke bad or whatever. I don't think that countries exist, as a unit of account, in the Christian scheme. Countries don't go to heaven or hell. Salvation is personal, period. Point is, to the extent that the US has any claim to be a Christian country, it's about individualism. And standards of behavior. It follows.

The Republicans are about anything but individualism. They're about identification. About conformity. Unanimity. Power is policy. Privilege is principle. Or maybe the other way around. Anyway, there is one way to do things, their way, the right way. So what happens in their heads when they screw up? Like throwing the whole world into an economic death spiral with their deregulatory madness? Millions of people went over the line from subsistence to starvation on that one. DENIAL.

And isn't that kind of unchristian? Aren't you supposed to own your shit, as in repent of your sins? Not in their air force. They think they're right irrespective of how they behave. They've got the franchise, own the patent, got the card stamped. So of course, if any Democrat, on a bad hair day, criticizes the USA in any way, they're all over it. Apologizing for America! When really the Democrats just believe that we're as right as we act. Makes you sad for the countries that have to deal with us. Ever been involved with someone who thinks they're existentially right?

So, they're a little touchy about dissent. As in they want to annihilate you if you disagree with them. And do they ever love privilege. Something for nothing. God's way, I guess, according to John Calvin or someone. But the Christian way is not tribal, where rightness is a group attribute, and the Republicans are tribalists, corporatists and elitists. It's a bad sign when people worry more about other people's morality than their own, and the Republicans excel at this.

The Christian way actually gives you something that looks like an ecosystem. Multiplicity. Diversity. That's the brilliance of a free system, relatively unencumbered by privilege. Everyone can find their place, make their contribution. And benefit and be held responsible, as an individual. It doesn't give you (the-name-that-must-not-be-spoken) as president. That's privilege. Didn't he put out a book, "Revision Points"? This guy will never own his stuff. Lost cause. God may forgive him. Not my call.

Freedom gives you diversity. And what's true of your stocks, if you have any, is true of everything, there's strength and stability in diversity. It's nature's way, God's way, but not the Republican way. The Republican way gives you a weed free lawn of white men, the most unstable thing ever. And, according to the laws of ecology, it takes an enormous energy subsidy to run. Hence their sucking up of the resources of the world, all into their death star.

And this is what Billy bought into. Sorry, I don't mean to pick on you, Billy, but it's supposed to bother us when we screw up, and you should come out and say "I backed the wrong rhino," or whatever. Best wishes to you, really. No hard feelings. You must be old as hell.

Help Wanted

I have ideas for plays that I come up with and evolve to an extent but don't have time, or probably the skill, to write up for presentation, way off-Broadway. Like, Carrboro off-Broadway. So, if you know anyone with the time and the skill, send them my way.

The first is DAMN YANKEES, on the new dawn of the South. It has a chorus of Southern White Boys (SWBs), in hula skirts and drag, and a hit song, Yankees is So Stupid.

This one is more presentation than plot, with a SOUTH PACIFIC feel, and is an evocation of how great it is to see the plantation economy reborn and to have all the black guys in jail. There's a black guy in the wings, of course, with a wang that makes the white boys wince. A mechanical phallus is employed. He makes out and makes off with Fannie Mae, the wife of a member of the chorus.

On balance, though, the SWBs are feeling triumphant. We're torturing people, the USA, a great sign. And there's so much else to celebrate. The unprecedented concentration of wealth, the attack on anything that helps anybody. Anybody that needs help, that is.

But there's an irresolvable tension. I mean, really a sea of the shit. And it's structural. Ain't going nowhere. When you buy your mojo at gun shows, well, the cool thing is you can buy more mojo. The problem is that somebody could possibly take it away.

Woe to them that try.

Yankee scum probably never even read Sir Walter Scott. Don't understand Southern Culture. No sense of honor. And they're so fucking sentimental. Damn Yankees! Who cares some turd in Bangladesh dies making my bermuda shorts. They're turds, really. Sorry, got to go to church. Pray to Jesus. No darkies there. And not in my schools. And not in my pools.

Then there's another play, DOG EAT DOG. That's the name of a PAC, man. Who knows where the money came from--the Koch cloud financing program, probably--but the lawyers are the best out there. The SWBs are thrilled. Gonna sue. Ain't nothing in the Constitution says you can't fight dogs. That's in the articles, in the brief, that exact language. Powerful stuff. Convincing on the face for those that knows, the Real Americans.

And it goes to the Supreme Court--of the US--and they're hung, four to four. Clarence is on medical leave. But--lo--he's lowered, slowly, magisterially, down in his chair, from above, center stage, his crotch bandaged. Clarence will decide. He will even speak. And he does. Dog fighting is legal, he decrees.

And, as the patriotic music wells up, he orates: dog fighting is the most American of sports, the real national pastime, the sport that embodies the real ethos of America, the Randian competition that makes us great. Do or die--in the ditch. Makers and takers. The strong and the weak. Supermen and scum. And the dogs? They're valuable assets, Clarence points out, and therefore very well treated.

Like to see you make this into a Capra movie. There's a chorus, of course, with sound-effects (lots of growls), and various subplots. Butch in the chorus is gay, it turns out. And the others are all having anal sex with someone, mostly their wives.

Clarence, by the way, if you were concerned, has had plastic surgery. To shorten his dick. A mechanical phallus is employed. Okay, I like them. Saw one used in a presentation of Aristophanes' THE CLOUDS, at UD (Dayton), back in the day. Great production. And we think "the cloud" is new. The Greeks discovered it all.

Harley

My dog has dementia. "Canine Cognitive Disorder," I guess. I used to walk him, most mornings, up the trail, the old wagon road to Hillsborough, as far as the headwaters of Morgan's Creek. He could always get a drink there, even in really cold weather. He never got lost. At least not that he let on. I would see a brown streak shooting through the beautiful woods every once in a while, that was all. He ran his ass off. Now he gets lost on my property. I think maybe even in the house. I'm not sure. My kind neighbors called today to tell me that he was walking, "pacing," back and forth at the other end of the place, inside the fence. I came home and rescued him.

I was going to write about "instant forgetting" and the Republicans and the deficits they so obviously created and now want to remedy on the backs of those they've already screwed, and the stunning gall of Paul Ryan and his ilk in calling themselves fiscal anything, but the dog just makes me too sad. I don't have the stomach. He's so sweet and appreciative of everything, but he's really out of it, and so much so like a human. He's really helpless. There's an occasional turd-drop in the house, and he's night-active, which is a change, so I'm having my sleep interrupted, and he falls down and crashes into things. Three times he's gotten stuck under my bed. He never was that great a dog, really. Hard to engage. Handsome, though. And we have a lot of history.

When my last dog, Edgar, died I was amazed and embarrassed at how hard it hit me. He was a cool guy. We would ride the town in the Miata with the top down and he would know people I didn't know. They knew him through affiliation with his previous owner, Clarissa "Gooey" Engstrom, who left him with me when she went to Scotland to study with the guy who cloned Dolly the sheep. Gooey was going to go to Pakistan and use her DVM as a donkey doc for the folks there, eventually. I think politics prevented, but she had a very interesting life thereafter until she ended it herself. There's an article or obit on her online. It seemed to me that something died with her, and I was just an acquaintance, but Gooey could affect you that way.

Edgar was a fetch monster. Stick or ball, on land or lake, he would bring it back. It was great for me. Who knew you could hit tennis balls with a golf club to such effect. Had to train the dog not to lunge at the ball pre-whack, though, or I might have taken off his nose. And the tennis racket I had used to fight the carpenter bees was used to hit the fuzzy ball way out into the lake on the property now owned by the Tobens. Great. Wear him out and cool him off at the same time. It was the last thing we did together. He got out of the lake and collapsed, finally. Bad cancer.

So I'll have to have Harley have the shot, one of these days. It will be hard. I don't know how hard, truly, and I don't know when. I'd like to get him through the winter. It's good to have time to get used to the idea, and to take care of the guy. He doesn't have to worry that Ryan and the Boehnerites will keel haul his health care or hang it from the highest yard arm, after all, or impale it on Vlad's sharpest stake, be they on land.

What the fuck is wrong with these people, anyway, I wonder. Do they watch Capra's classic at Christmas and then go out and vote for Pottersville or Boehnerburg or Kochtown knowingly? Do they root for the flying monkeys, the wicked witch? The banker scumball in STAGECOACH? Do their hearts wither in disappointment as Scrooge's melts? Do they dream of remakes of MR SMITH and YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU? How would they cast YOU CAN TAKE IT WITH YOU? Oh, Robert Preston, if only he could.

I once met the man, Frank Capra. He came to Xavier when I was there to give a talk and stayed at the Jesuit residence, where I worked as a receptionist. They failed to get word out and almost nobody showed up for the talk. My heart is softening again thinking of the massive compassion and humanity of his movies. I won't lambast the luddites no more. I think I love my dog, and I'll go care for him. I hope someone will care for me when the time comes.

Dayton

Once in a while I get on a jag thinking about the old home town: Dayton, Ohio. If ever a place got collateralized, downsized, de-industrialized, pink-slipped, made redundant and just generally screwed I think Dayton is it. Dayton had the highest percentage of patents per head of any city in the country in 1900, I've been told. The Wright Brothers didn't come from there for nothing. In 2003, anniversary of the fabled first flight, I tried to explain to some tarheels--tactfully, I thought--what the Wrights did just do. However you describe it, it was to Dayton what tobacco was to North Carolina. It was everything. Whole basis of the economy.

I'm fine with "First in Flight." You can have it. I used to picture billboards at NC's borders with the face of Jesse Helms (back when), and a caption reading "From the State that Gave You Lung Cancer," but that's an aside. The Wrights were amazing. One example: when they realized that the available lift tables were useless they made their own apparatus, a wind tunnel, and figured it out. They also figured out that a propeller is a rotary wing. Lift and thrust. Different applications of the same principle. Their propellers are efficient even by modern standards. And they were the first to control an airplane, or even try, in three dimensions--three axis control. Everyone else was trying to fly Fiats. Good for them they didn't get it up. It would have ended poorly.

Anyway, they were great, and so was Dayton. But, you know, when Rove's Reich began its revolutionary driving down of all that is good and decent and productive Dayton and places like it were doomed. When you believe, as an article of faith, de facto, a priori, that whatever big business wants is "good for America," and big business wants nothing more than cheap labor, and cheap labor is plentiful in China and elsewhere, your jobs are toast. It goes back beyond Rove, really, but it culminates with these scoundrels. And it was probably somewhat reversible until his invasion of the job snatchers.

I haven't been back to Dayton since dad died, in 1989, and I don't have many ties there, but I do have a smart phone. I download apps and mess with them. So I download "Realtor.whatever" and look at houses in Chapel Hill for some reason. And then--I mean, how many ZIP's do you know?--I look in Dayton. Not good. My part of town is in foreclosure, pretty much. Great houses on the block for nothing. Siebenthaler's North Store, on their old family property, looks bad, and is chopped up into little commercial rental spaces. Man, it was beautiful in the 60's. I played there as a kid, un-permitted, and worked there once. Salem Mall is gone. And so on.

And I think about Dayton because of Bob Pollard, the greatest writer of rock songs ever. I would love his stuff anyway, I'm sure, but he's so deeply Dayton, down to the Converse on his feet, back when. The dirt, the vast energy, the ringing chords of industry, the sadness, the sadness, the sadness. Even when it works. The roar of jets, and the flak thrown up at the brave factory pilots by Rove's blood-sucking hooligans. Maybe I'm reading that last one in. When it doesn't work? He's there, I'm not. Got to be hard.

I think he had the same sports-driven intense boy friendships I had, for sure. Did the crazy stuff. Played ball day and night. I don't want to think about it. Some of the shit I did horrifies me, and I miss it so it aches. I may have played ball against Bob. Those loose summer league games when I pitched for Chaminade.

You hear about the banality of evil, the strange and unexpected ordinariness of it. Look at those Republicans. Pillsbury dough boys from hell. But the banality of genius? The Wrights were so normal. And Bob Pollard. Working class kid. Not what you'd expect, if you tried to reverse engineer the guy from his output. But, man, what songs. I've known people with such dexterity and physical coordination--my father was one--that they couldn't seem to do anything ungracefully. Pollard writes great songs while face-planting on Bud Lite, or so it seems. Pollard's opus has a kind of stunning, inevitable, aboriginal authenticity. And it's huge. Really, I'm in awe of the guy.

I collect paintings. I think I get art. My friend Marvin Saltzman--the real deal. And a normal guy, more or less. Cranky normal, sweet normal, caustic normal. And his paintings have great depth.  Pollard? No clue about the man, really. But the music is remarkable. Great depth. Layers. Poetry. Emotional range. It's all there. The music of the spheres. Cubes, maybe, for the creationist crowd. And it captures Dayton, for me, existentially. Somehow embodies it. Listen for yourself. Give him time. It was an acquired taste for me. Life's a collage, you know. We paste it all together best we can.

With the advent of the republican administration in Raleigh I had to stop with NPR. I was going to shoot somebody. Not really. But maybe somebody named Goolsby. The Republicrats must have gladiatorial training camps hidden somewhere in the mountains, among the militias. They're drones. They must smoke cigars in their drones' clubs. Jeeves cleans them up and looses them on the world. Berties with bludgeons. Woosters with wrecking balls.

Giving up on NPR was hard. I had to start to listen to music in the mornings instead, on weekdays, which seemed kind of decadent at first. But, whatever voice is guiding Robert Ellsworth Pollard, Jr, praise be to it. Bob has saved my ass for now. Thank you, Bob, and God bless you.

OOPS!

Okay, I'm totally new to this, but here goes:

Here are notes on the national insanity, probably provoked by the horrible spectacle of the Boehnerites' latest efforts to de-modernize, medievalize, deconstruct and reconstruct the US Government into a facilitator of the planters' paradise, with the darkies or chinamen or whatever singing melodiously in the fields while the white boys play golf and eat steaks. I mean, we're there already but it can clearly get worse, or they wouldn't be working so hard to make it so. The "Reign of Error" is a nod I guess to Thomas Frank.

The wrecking crew's tee shirts all say "OOPS!" in large letters. Half a million dead Iraqis. OOPS! A trillion dollars up in smoke. OOPS! World economy on the ropes. Matching his and hers OOPS! tee shirts to Phil and Wendy Gramm on that one! The deficit debacle. OOPS! It's a Republican Deficit after all. Their creation. All the while the white boys play golf, eat steaks, and paint pussycats, evidently.

Their fear is that people will one day have a "blink" moment, an instance of zen mind clarity, look up from their plate of palaver, and ask themselves if someone like Tom DeLay ever deserved to be one of the most powerful people in the world. I mean, really. Which of these doesn't belong?
1. Thomas Jefferson
2. Abraham Lincoln
3. John F Kennedy (even)
4. Tom DeLay

Sorry, but the man is an irredeemable piece of shit. Ditto Lee Atwater (was), Newt, Jack, Rove, Rush, Hannity.... Ralph Reed? Who the hell let him off the used car lot. They've got the troops, you have to admit. Das Boot. A great tactical team in the service of a strategic nightmare squad.

When your only tools are a wrecking ball and jack hammer everything looks like a burned out building. Oh, wait, there are people in there! Children and Oldies last! Every man for himself! Sorry, you say there's assets in there? I'm going in! Personal Property first!

And meanwhile The Hammer, King Herod in Hush Puppies--Hush Puppies with cleats--carries on in the self assurance that he has a personal relationship with The Man. The King will come again, Sir Tom, and you will not see Him. He will come to the sweatshops, not the pro shops, to those with nothing, not those with platinum cards and their white legs sticking out. Oh, they love their little balls. Whack, Whack, Whack. Let the darkies get the divots!