Dear Ted:

Ted Cruz, you must abandon your iPhone. Burn it like a Beatles record. It's the only way to ensure you aren't implicated in the horror of homosexuality.

And, my God, think of all the other stuff you're implicated in, livin' in the USA, this place which you declare to be both God's chosen country and a pit of sin. Talk about cognitive dissonance.

Where can you go, Ted, and see your values, your own moral purity and excellence, embodied in the society at large? You must clearly leave us. We are unworthy. But where will you go?

To the land of Sharia Law? Those people take their morality really seriously. They insist that it be embodied in the State. Oh, wait, I forgot, wrong morality. They're all doomed to Hell.

Ted, it's a dilemma. Only in relatively free, pluralistic societies is your religion the dominant one. Hold on, there's Vatican City! No, sorry, they're all going to Hell as well, the idolaters. Damn, it's a tough nut.

Oh, shit, I used a swear word. Did it again. Anyway, you must clearly go and leave the planet and be with Jesus, maybe move to Oregon and get euthanized. But your values don't permit it. Eureka, the army!

You join and volunteer for the most dangerous duty. You supported all that anyhow, the militarism. You can die and go to Jesus while fighting against rampaging Muslims and Sharia Law and all that shit.

And good luck to you, on the front lines in Iraq or wherever. I know you will be a brave dude and do your country proud. It can't be any worse than butting heads with the Democrats day and night.

Lunacy

Someone I know with inside information has revealed to me that there is a secret group drafting bills in anticipation of the day when Republicans can pass whatever legislation they want. This group, recognizing that America is indebted to England for its laws and traditions, has decided to revive the transportation of criminals, because it worked out so well before.

England not only got rid of a lot of bad elements but succeeded in founding outposts, later colonies and countries, loyal to the Crown, a two-fer. The new, American version will begin by colonizing the moon with convicts. They will be landed there and continue to be landed until they find a way to survive, then they will be granted statehood.

Critics contend that the entire colony will expire the instant the doors are opened on the landing vehicle, but the bill's sponsors believe this difficulty will only spur innovation, necessity being a mother, you know. Also it is assumed that very few people will arrive alive since they will mostly kill one another en route, being criminals and such.

Only good outcomes are possible, in other words, once you get rid of the people, and it's so hard to get rid of people these days, the planet and prisons being so full, a problem which has been vexing Republicans for years. Most methods of mass-elimination have been hard to implement due to legal restrictions and political correctness.

But Republicans contend that the moon is no more inhospitable than Australia, back in the day. A reality show is also planned. Cameras will be installed in the prisons and shuttle vehicles. Relatives will be interviewed to humanize the thing, since average people may have trouble identifying with the criminal element.

Halliburton has agreed to furnish all the necessary hardware and infrastructure in a no-bid contract as stipulated in the bill. In fact, the whole thing will be managed privately to promote free enterprise and efficiency. It has been noted, however, that Republicans are working very hard behind the scenes.

In order to get all their friends and relatives out of jail before the bill passes. You may want to do the same.

My Goodness!

Pirate and plunderer Mitt Romney himself has deigned to come to my state! America's elite is unhappy that Butler Barack, the guy who got hired to manage the old estate while it was engulfed in flames, has failed to do what they wanted. It was unclear to the underlings that Mitt and his wealthy friends actually wanted the old homeplace burned.

And it's still standing through the valiant efforts of Butler Barack. There's a lot of smoke lingering and the place is pretty charred, but it's recognizably the old residence built by some air-headed idealists named Jefferson and Adams and Hamilton and Madison. We all thought they wanted it saved, out of sentiment or as an artefact of the old ways, at least. So sorry, Mitt!

The estate was an entire functioning economy unto itself: made stuff, sold stuff, employed people, with lots of rituals and traditions. Oh, we will miss it, but Mitt and the mandarins have condemned it on grounds of inefficiency. There's old capital stock, outdated means and methods, and bad management based on some bizarre model called "Checks and Balances."

But what a great idea we now have! The old edifice and grounds are just perfect for a Halloween house, what with all the smoke and cinders and decay. In Chapel Hill, where I live, there's an enormous Halloween bash every year, a costume party which takes over the entire center of town, mostly Franklin St. That Halloween party is our model.

There are all these jobless and homeless people wandering the old estate in rags, unfortunate casualties in the new plantation economy. We will pretend they are in costumes from feudal Russia. It can only raise their spirits, make them again feel that they belong and have a home and some hope for the future, for the day, at least.

Mitt and his supporters will probably attend parties in the country clubs and gated communities, or just hang out in one of their houses, so our party should be earthy and informal and fun. There won't be rich folks running around dressed up in expensive costumes inspiring envy, I mean, and putting an uppity edge on everything.

Which is only right, since they have created a kind of parallel, doppelganger country of their own. Good luck to them all, that's what I say. I'm so pleased about the party I can't really fault them right now. So this is your invitation. Please come and remember, heavy on the despair and decay. Go goth, if you will.

When it comes to your costume. It's the new reality in America.

Why We F(l)ight

I've had two near-death experiences with crazy people. The first: my sister. She's dead now so I can write that. The second: a guy who was part of a surrogate family I had in the first year after my father died.

The lessons were the same:
     They are not culpable.
     They will almost certainly die crazy.
     You can't do anything about it.

In both cases I had sudden moments of understanding which are very vivid in my memory. I remember exactly where I was and how it felt. I felt amazement. Wonder.

And certainty about the fact of the mental illness and its trajectory. The understanding didn't seem to have an analytical component, it was experiential and observational. Just kind of "wow." Fucking wow.

I also understood that there was only one way to deal with it. Pack your bags. Any interaction with people living in that primal, archetypal place will be on their terms. You have to leave.

The last situation in the world you want to be in is to be stuck with crazy people. Which isn't to say you don't care about them. Or even love them. But they do unbelievable harm. I was stuck with my sister.

For about six years, once the crazy came. I figured it out about midway through, three years in. That it would never pass. We were screwed. I was a kid. I couldn't do anything about it. I got out when I could.

I got extricated from the other situation rather slowly and messily. I was pretty implicated. Because, I believe, there was an unwitting desire on my part to suffer. To work my way through some unresolved grief.

Who knows. There are people out there who will help you along if you want to suffer. But I'm back in that situation now, stuck with insanity. With the Republicans. How can I say this:

THEY ARE COMPLETELY OUT OF THEIR FUCKING MINDS.    
  
We, the Democrats, are in a political marriage with lunatics. It's mass hysteria, of some sort. Or mass something else, an infectious strain of stupidity and fear.

That, to me, is observational, not analytical. If you don't agree, sorry. Go read somebody else. What's hard is that there is no way to get extricated. Not really. The only other option is quarantine.

Us or them. Ideally them, but I'd rather be institutionalized than stuck with them. In an asylum called the USA, maybe. We should at least get to use the name. They're the secessionists.

Their system should implode without people to persecute and exploit. People to take advantage of. So we try to shut them in. Let them live out their crap at their own expense.

We'll throw leaflets over the walls, just in case there are non-crazies stuck there. Or someone has a change of heart after watching a Frank Capra movie, or through mental mutation.

I am now leaving the realm of observation. What follows includes analysis and interpretation. Hypothe-..., hypothe-..., hypothe-.... Shit! Speculation. I'm going existentialist on you.

I believe that we are profoundly free. People have a lot of choice. I think we make decisions in our sleep. And from the moment we get up. French toast? The boiled egg? It could be anything. 

Not acting is not not choosing. We are choosing. Not to act, definitively, in the curious case of the Republicans. Choosing not to take an unambiguous stand in the face of a lot of terrible, destructive behavior on their end.

It's parallel to being the uncrazy partner in a marriage with an abuser. Not being abusive is not enough. You're there. You see it. If you don't stop it, or at least try, you are responsible. Possibly more so than the abuser, because they're crazy.

It isn't fair, but there are innocents involved. We have an enormous responsibility to children. And the powerless. Old people. The poor. The pregnant. Anyone with less power than we have. Anyone encumbered. Even dogs. I love dogs.

I was taught as a child that people who suffer somehow suffer for all of us. They bear a burden for all of us. There's an utter truth to me in this, because a certain percentage of people will have certain problems. It could have been any of us. Even me. Maybe it is me.

My father actually failed at this. He failed to get my sister out of the house, which he should have done, or protect us from her in some way. He couldn't do it. He was in over his head. If anything he cared too much and it incapacitated him.

He was a good guy. If someone were to ask me if I forgive him I would know they didn't understand. To even say there's nothing to forgive puts it in a context that's incomprehensible to me. It just happened. It's no longer happening.

That doesn't in any way absolve us from the need to challenge the Republicans on what they're doing and to try to stop it. We must do it. You first.

The Purple Cow Car Wash and Salvation Station

Wow. I just put a new business plan on KOCH-STARTER and the money is pouring in.

The idea is to have carwashes where you can simultaneously be baptized, bathed, saved and get a tan. Saved the way they do it at revivals, when you stake your claim to Jesus and are assured of salvation.

It's an environmental initiative. To conserve resources by washing a car and a human in one pass, and baptizing and saving said human from Satan's snares all at once, then drying the car and its owner with special tanning heaters and big fans. You reappear all spiffy and pure out the end of the specially designed building.

Picture the car wash. An anonymous guy on one side at a console, running things, looking through big plate glass windows. Jesus, or a facsimile thereof, in a similar space opposite, blessing people and waving his arms around.

The cars and owners move through, down the middle and out the end, assembly-line style. I picture the owners strapped to or splayed on the roofs of the cars, but there may be a better way.

What's cool about this is the baptismal angle. The salvation angle. Anybody can get a car washed. But you play the soul-cleansing for all it's worth. That it's a bargain because it's permanent.

Because God has taken up residence in your soul through an instantaneous infusion of grace, so it cannot be tainted again. Your soul. Not with God living there.

It makes me crave the cleansing just envisioning it. How reassuring it must be to know with certainty you are on the side of God, until you die. Then you are actually with God.

I can think now of so many remarkable characters in history who have clearly lived with this certainty. Mostly lunatics and fanatics and delusional individuals but that doesn't invalidate anything.

I don't know why not. It seems it should. But I'm trying to run a car wash here. And make some money, as God would surely wish it. And you can't do that with Charles Manson as a model.

Anyway, all this envisioning is helping me refine the design. Cruciform is the obvious choice, as viewed from above, with Jesus and the anonymous operator in the wings. And a nice gabled roof with cathedral ceilings and exposed beams.

We could go Baptist on the decor. Really spartan. Or Catholic. Baroque. Let's do spartan. The whole idea of a single, permanent, life-altering religious experience is way more Protestant. We'll sell indulgences to the Catholics.

And wash their cars, of course. At least they'll go to hell with clean cars, because by grace alone you are saved, not by good works. Look at all those Catholic commentators on FOX NEWS, poor fools.

Good work, indeed, but no ticket to heaven, because all those lies are just lies and sins without the infusion of grace. With it, however, everything you do, irrespective of what you do, is God's work, by definition.

Which is what makes the soul-cleansing such a deal. Such a steal. We'll have Tom DeLay and Ralph Reed there for the grand-opening of our first facility, the pilot project, just to reassure people that character is not an issue.

You will be clean, when we get done with you, no matter what a sleazebag you are. And a sleazebag you can stay. All the way to heaven. The enthusiasm builds within me. I can feel it, the calling, the mission.

The money. The infusion of money. Fuck grace. You see, that's it, right there. You don't have to care, not when you're doing God's work. Nothing else matters. Oh, Lord, bring on the money! See you in heaven!