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