NIXON IN CHINA opened my eyes. Opera can be about current events. I'm now working on an exciting, new opera of my own, GROVER AT BURNING MAN. What pathos there will be, what weightiness and momentum, what utter inertia and ennui! It'll put the sturm in your drang. Evidently Grover really liked Burning Man. Ahhh, the spectacle.
I assume he actually went. Republicans are so quick to don fatigues for the photographs when it comes to the military stuff while some kid from Idaho, who joined the military because there weren't any jobs because the Republicans sent the jobs to China, gets his ass blown off defending Grover's freedom, but I digress.
It's a good thing Grover liked Burning Man. You don't want to be on his bathtub list. And what's not to like, as Burning Man so perfectly embodies the aspirations of Republicans of Grover's type, to remain an adolescent forever--the eternal frat boy, living on the family's money with bluster and bravado, totally arrested.
And challenging authority at every opportunity while embracing the delusion that they aren't implicated in anything. Will Junior ever reach escape velocity, the parents wonder, and grow up, finally, for the love of God, and quit sucking up resources like there's no tomorrow. And treating women like crap, as well. What greater freedom is there?
All the benefits and none of the responsibilities. You just get born into it and it's one big ski vacation after that. Look at the presidential candidates these guys cough up, showcasing affirmative action in full flower. It's legacy land. You can see how Obama and Clinton would drive them nuts, since they actually did get there on their own merits.
Since they started out without the advantages of the country club crowd. They are usurpers, faux fathers, in the eyes of the Norquisters, who are still very much in touch with their fathers. It's where the checks come from. Or "daddiness," existentially, as it works out, there being some source of subsistence flowing out of Wichita or wherever.
Truly, they have made an art of living with access to tons of resources while not contributing anything. What has Grover ever done for anyone besides himself? An entire life sucking off the system he says he hates. Is it any wonder these guys are prickly and overly defensive? And crazy nuts about their opponents who did escape puberty.
The important thing is to maintain the privilege, by whatever means they can, while keeping the opposition on their heels by accusing them of all the stuff they're doing themselves, as they insist that they are the most independent and productive guys ever. Just like Grover, whose life in politics belies his avowed hatred of government.
What would he do without it? It's his sustenance. The Republicans refuse to cooperate with any legitimately elected official they don't like, meaning every Democrat, thereby controlling everything, and then blame anybody but themselves for the results. Satanic, really, but shrewd operating procedure if you don't give a shit about anything.
Now I'm a fan of Burning Man but someone should clue Grover in. It's a fucking vacation. It's not a model for anything. It can only exist on resources from outside itself, just like Grover, but that is the model. Hell, the Groverites have even got it structured so they don't have to tell you where the money comes from. It's a secret.
I guess it's understandable, though. Grover's life has been one long vacation. They say Ronnie Reagan got the movies mixed up with real life. A working person wouldn't make this mistake. So with Grover. A working person can tell real life from a vacation, but Grover can't because his life has been one huge, College Republican suck-fest.
The simple test is to ask if a way of life would work if everyone embraced it. This takes you in the direction of Scandinavia. That wailing was a tenor practicing the Grover part on an important song in the opera addressing this conundrum, "THEY'RE ALL FUCKING COMMIES, BLONDE COMMIES, BLONDE COMMIES WITH HEALTH CARE."
The song actually rocks, though I know you can't tell it from the title. I will say, in Grover's defense, if it's a defense, that he makes one hell of a subject for opera. The self-importance alone gets you there. Picture him singing with his mouth wide open and head thrown back, completely the center of his own universe. A buffoon, of course, to those who know him.
It may have to be a comic opera in the end, Falstaffian, but with a touch of Wagner for pathos.
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