"Faust and the adjective Faustian imply a situation in which an ambitious person surrenders moral integrity in order to achieve power and success for a delimited term."
It's hard to reconcile the ethics of John Boehner with anything. Except, perhaps, that winning is everything. This within a context of complete moral certainty and blindness because he thinks he is right and he is driven to win and when he does he is reassured of his rightness, a positive feedback loop.
As it was when he played football in high school at Cincinnati Moeller under Gerry Faust. They did nothing but win, which they had prayed for to God or the Blessed Virgin or the patron saint of ass-kicking. But, for anyone who witnessed the spectacle and debacle of Faust at Notre Dame, well, it was difficult to see the Jesus in that.
Gerry Faust, though, is sure that Jesus and the Blessed Mother had a hand in it all to this day. And John Boehner must have the same certainty, which makes it possible for him to carry on as a political thug with way more composure than Gerry ever had, at Moeller or anywhere. But Boehner is in fact Faust.
He has won just by getting into the position he's in. But from there it's all failure. Failed policies on every front. The record is as clear as Notre Dame's under Gerry-the-misguided, but that's not how they keep track. Partly because Jesus made it happen. Through the intercession of the BVM, surely, to whom Gerry is particularly devoted.
This is so medieval, I think, as I see the carcasses of working people carried away on their shields. And children and the elderly, dying because life's necessary resources are all spent stupidly, and in further consolidating wealth. Tax cuts for the rich! Did these guys think a little man with horns would actually approach them?
And make them an offer on their souls? It doesn't work that way. That's in the movies and plays and books, you idiot Reaganites. In real life it just happens, because you want something so much you don't see the damage you do to get it. Also with John and Gerry I think there's an authority angle.
You don't fuck with authority. Catholic sensibilities applied to our government and society, America ex cathedra. Always right, that is -- infallible. Boehner's evangelical allies come at it from another place. The institution stands in the way of your salvation. You want it stripped down to nothing.
An odd alliance. But back to Boehner. What do we do with the guy? He's just such an asshole. His high school football ethics aren't up to the job, I would say. Lo, Gerry Faust is now a motivational speaker. We'll bring him in. Perhaps, together, they can bend reality to their will. Gerry will recommend war, I bet.
War is so like football, a game to be won, against Obama or the Democrats or some foreigners, like that foray into Iraq, maybe. Gerry, you ever think you might be wrong on this? That life can't be reduced to football and isn't, in fact, like football? Pray on that, please, but avoid those dastardly, imaginary WMD's.
This is the other aspect of the thing, apart from the religious self-righteousness. They have no idea what to do if they can't run something through the petty combat model. It's the only model they have. And the pettiness is important because in football you live to play again, more or less. But not if you're an Iraqi.
Or, otherwise dead. Nothing petty in that. Or someone else whose life has been destroyed in another way by the Boehnerites. I guess respect for life has its limits. Meanwhile, all we can do is watch the Republican demolition derby. Someone will win, by their tally, but we'll all be way worse off in the end.
I think I remember from college reading DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA and the author, Alexis de Tocqueville, expressing alarm at discovering that the columns of our stately houses were made of wood. Now, if he were to knock on our democracy itself, he would find that it is fake--faux representative government.
I had such a moment as a kid encountering woodgrain Formica, a dishonest material, or an honest material forced into a dishonest representation of itself, anyway, commercial servitude. Color Formica up nicely and it looked good without the grain. I have it in my kitchen, a warm-green version looking like what it is.
Synthetic as hell. So now we've got this kind of government, imitation democracy. It's ersatz America, woodgrain, veneer. We're Naugahyde. Pleather. Inauthentic to the core. Democratic but not. Christian but not. Industrious but not. Independent and free but not. Everything but not.
So I saw a painting yesterday evening which made me think of the precisionist works of Gerald Murphy. I hadn't thought about the Murphys, Gerald and Sara, in years, long enough ago that I was immediately reminded of how it felt not to be ashamed to be an American.
The good old days. There's always been that tradition, the one of the ugly Americans, the boors. I can deal with having a few boors on my side. Rubes. Jethros. Aborigines. People without respect and a sense of tradition and perspective. But we had good qualities as well.
Innocence. Optimism. Open-heartedness. Enthusiasm. Equanimity. Practicality. Inclusiveness. A sense of fair play. The Murphys were pioneers and not boors. Insiders because of their money. Outsiders because they were from immigrant families and Catholic. Not Brahmins.
An early example of what America could give back to Europe, once we had begun to become a power on our own, something good. I read about it in Wikipedia this morning. The Murphys invented sunbathing. Who knew. Or they were proponents of it and popularizers, at least.
I didn't know I was witnessing the end of this, as a kid. Our Golden Age, as much as we had one. And I read Toffler's book, FUTURE SHOCK, when it came out, as did everybody else. Also I'm aware of Neil Postman, who's opinions are still confusing to me.
They both wrote about change. The quality and quantity of change. I'm all for change for reasons of inevitability. It does happen and will happen independently of any desire to stop it. But you can't have it occur in good ways if you're in denial of it.
I think we have to work with it. And, man, are we ever failing at that. Thinking of the Murphys I remembered how I felt when I last read about them, in the 1980's, in connection with F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, by which time I had misgivings about America.
And since then we have run entirely off the rails. It's mourning in America now. Sadness and a sense of loss are the only appropriate responses in witnessing the country's failure and degradation. You have to be suspicious when people say the sky is falling.
As did both Toffler and Postman in their ways. But it has fallen. Future Shock? The infantilizing of adulthood? Man, I don't know. Narcissism, maybe, as Christopher Lasch wrote about it. But it's so wearing watching it all happen.
If you care about the country and what it once supposedly stood for, which I do. And I'm uncomfortable saying that because, who am I, to judge. But judge we must. And I mean must, because we do it inevitably, by our acquiescence, if nothing else.
The people doing all the damage have no hesitation to judge. They insist they're right. But they're all lotus-eaters. The ultimate luddites. You actually live in the past, in your heads, forgetful of all else. This takes resources.
Hence their love of continuity and privilege and money. It's a virtual plantation. Supported by the industry of others, as it must be, in order to work. Maybe not, if they chose to live like the Amish. Don't hold your breath. They are oblivious.
No doubt Democratic congressmen are walking the streets of the capital silent and stupefied at the prospect of the upcoming Zombie Apocalypse of the new Republican majorities. A Zombie Apocalypse typified by the RYAN BUDGET, a thing fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of its creator, whosoever that may be.
You can't kill the budget because it is already dead. Get over that. The same is true of the whole Republican wish list of insanity. So, here it is on a fucking plate, you Democratic congressmen, the thing to do in the face of the zombie onslaught. Say these three things and keep saying them, until I tell you to stop, if ever:
1. THE REPUBLICANS CREATED THE DEFICITS
2. THE REPUBLICANS SENT YOUR JOBS TO CHINA
3. THE REPUBLICANS CAUSED THE RECESSION
If you should be pressed by someone you may add a little background, which I bet you don't understand or you would have been saying these things already, so stick to the script.
The deficits were created by cutting taxes and raising spending on defense and other crazy, wasteful stuff. Your jobs went to China because corporations want cheap labor and Republicans give corporations whatever they want. The economic collapse was caused by Republican-engineered deregulation, a la ENRON.
Again, you don't need to understand any of this. It's too late to do any good, according to my non-creationist, economist sources living in exile. But someday, when they examine the corpse of our country, it may help to determine the cause of death if this stuff is on the record.
Let's say that Sheldon Adelson is a man. I know he doesn't look like one but bear with me. Then how many fifths of a man am I, politically? A fifth of a fifth? No way. I'm less than that. Sheldon is a man's man, politically. But I won't stipulate to less than a twenty-fifth. It would mess with my mojo.
Not to complain, but isn't that illegal? And I'm a white guy. Maybe I'm collateral damage here, but the folks who put the money in politics won't say what they want, exactly, so it's hard to figure out. We could just give it to them and then they might leave us alone, and I could get my franchise back.
What if they want the country for themselves? Oh, I bet that's it. Disenfranchisement is the goal. Then they can do what they want, on the fly. If they control the system then the battles are all won before they're fought, and they don't have to worry anymore, and I would have to worry a lot.
Because I'm no Sheldon Adelson, politically. I bet I can take his ass in a fight, though. Where does he live? All over the place, you say? Trying to steer clear of me, no doubt. I'll kick his butt. Then I'll wind up in jail, probably a privatized one, the owners of which will give money to the same causes as Sheldon.
I'm having trouble figuring this one out. Makes you feel kind of impotent. Bad choice of words, there, I say to the women in the audience, but you know what I mean. Maybe Sheldon will give me a job, sweeping floors in the casinos. Sorry, Sheldon, I didn't mean to be so hard on you.
The Democratic distaste for conflict has quickened the Republican lust for blood. There is no peace. There will be no peace. Only when the Republicans have bombed the homes of the people that matter will they care. Care enough to run for cover, laptops in tow, so they can amuse themselves and keep up with their investments.
As the bombs rain down. By the time they care it will be too late. It is already too late. To prevent the war. The war is here. But who will win? No one will win. Everyone loses. It's what the Republicans want. They must destroy everything. They are driven to destroy everything. They are compelled to destroy everything.
It doesn't matter why. It doesn't matter how. We are fucked. Woe are we. Welcome to the new Republican millennium. The gods of destruction are among us. They have come. Watch in awe. They will bring the world to its knees so they can feel their power and revel in the wonder of their wanton destruction.
My brother reminded me today of something I had forgotten. We would play, when we were kids, baseball games in the street with so few people you routinely had to bat again while being on base, in which case there would be an "imaginary man on first" or wherever.
You could drive yourself in. Cool. So civilized, these games were. Never a cheap-shot. We played hard but fair, our neighborhood code, but I assume it was common among kids in the area, kids everywhere, civilization in miniature.
And we enjoyed one another's humiliations so much, in good humor, yet we were barbarians. Little savages, without conscience, in many areas, because we were unsophisticated, not grown up. So what is the excuse of the Republicans?
Are they not grown up, or what. Cheap shot after cheap shot. I'm so tired of it.
Mostly I write to please myself. To vent. And as an expression of frustration, I'm sure, but there's always the chance you will stumble onto something, an instance of insight, and I think I have.
The hardest thing to grasp, for me and my like-minded friends, is the lack of a conscience in our antagonists. The apparent indifference to suffering and death and the attendant obliviousness to all the systems that are supposed to make a society work.
Such as enjoying your freedom in ways that don't interfere with the ability of others to do the same. And we see this lack in people with whom we identify, to a degree. And who say, in fact, that they embody the ideal, the model of citizenship. Say it all the time.
While they don't seem to be channeling Charles Manson, exactly, they fall short of the standards we are supposed to share, in the estimation of myself and my friends. In reaching for understanding in such a situation I often look for limiting cases, the purest examples, extremes.
Then I interpolate. Move toward the middle. Use what's obvious in extreme cases to understand those less extreme. I posit George Bush as an extreme case. And Jesus, his avowed master and model, but possibly his antithesis. A foil, for our purposes. What does Bush most uniquely embody? What are his defining traits and characteristics?
In relation to Jesus, especially. And I speculate: boyishness. The worst of adolescent destructiveness and self centeredness. A lack of the understanding of connectedness and consequences. No social conscience. No sense of responsibility. Dependency. Defensiveness. Possibly the enjoyment of cruelty.
Not Jesus. But we elected this guy, twice, to the presidency, the office most likely to have elements of form associated with it in relation to the national ideal, in the second instance after he had proved to be stunningly incompetent and offensively aggressive, on the military front.
So maybe we, the electorate, embody some of the same traits, a generational case of arrested development. I wouldn't wish my fifteen year-old self on anybody, and I would have done a much better job of running things than Bush, as I was at fifteen.
But fifteen year-olds are supposed to be fifteen, fifty-somethings are not. So you are immediately in the arena of a Paul Ryan, an unintegrated self, ripe for supplanting with the ego or ideals of someone else. Borrowed integrity. Borrowed identity. Ayn Rand, in the case of Ryan.
Probably Dick Cheney, in the case of Bush, though, ostensibly, Jesus. And the void offered room for others at the same time. Rove, maybe. Bush's brain, reputedly. And Rumsfeld. A poker party of a personality. "I raise you an invasion." "Deregulate and call." "You can't do that!" "I just did."
A HOME ALONE situation in the White House with a delinquent kid in charge, and his criminal cohorts. A delinquent kid with nukes, operating out of a framework of decision-by-committee in which no one knows the other's intent, because they don't know it themselves. Not really.
A recipe for sociopathy. Their own motivations are a mystery to them, out of arrestedness and a lack of personal development. Something resonates with me here in relation to THE WIZARD OF OZ, a personality in pieces due to a lack of the development of its parts: courage, caring, sense.
A person unrealized in all aspects, in the case of Bush. Maybe that was the attraction to the powerful men behind the scenes. He's a clean slate of a human, someone without a hint of character or self-awareness. Suddenly, writing this, I feel fortunate. It could have been worse. He could have done even more harm.
We all know about Mr Smith who went to Washington. Don't worry, I won't tell you otherwise. But there was another guy, Mr Jones, who also went. You've never heard of him. He's almost virtual, keeps his head down.
He's a lobbyist, initially only in defense but he went everywhere from there. And I mean everywhere, even social issues once it was realized that certain people would pay you to put their ideas forward even if it didn't work.
And they would keep paying you once they realized it wasn't working, an income stream independent of results. No one knows why but it is thought it involves the deep human desire to torch something, as in "whole, burnt," some kind of sacrifice.
An offering, like sending money to Jerry Falwell. Ares Jones, the lobbyist, saw the synergies, the link between the social issues and the hard stuff, ideas and ICBM'S. This is in keeping with the shift to intellectual content as a basis for growth.
Ideas are everything, if you don't care about jobs. You can put manufacturing in a box and bid it out, which they did. China won. Now Ares in not partisan, not ideological, in the usual sense. The ideas aren't rooted in anything, just a means to an end.
But he is pretty partisan about money, because it gives you power. So I sent in the forensics guys to try to determine what was going on, accountants to do the early work, and some folks to examine the remains, if casualties were found.
Social scientists, because I don't believe that money goes up in smoke, hardly ever, though it may go towards something intangible, especially in the leisured class, since they have money to burn. So where did it go? Towards dismantling democracy.
The corpse turned out to be our country, which was always virtual anyway. An idea. An old, inefficient idea. You wouldn't think they would trash something so big, but it turns out they're internationalists, and super rich. It didn't seem like a big deal to them.
It did to working people. But money and power know no bounds. The Bain types are indifferent about liquidating a company. They can go either way, it doesn't matter. Only the money does. It's a small step from there to liquidating a country or anything else, if it is in the way.
The "whole, burnt" crowd is helping fund this for reasons as yet undetermined. The poorer folks who vote red, that is, who actually sent money to idiots like Falwell. Mr Smith is long retired. He made great headlines but didn't have much influence in the end.
Ideals don't motivate people the way that money does, I guess. Not normally. Money is much more primal, more addicting. Maybe everything comes down to that, ultimately, I'm not sure. But where is Mr Smith when you need him?
What a dream I had. The Republicans had taken over everything and the country was spinning entirely out of control. I have to say, it didn't feel personal at all. This was new to me. It used to always feel personal.
I cut my teeth on Jesse Helms in this regard. He was the first politician for whom I felt visceral loathing, super-personal. Since then there have been so many loathe-worthy Republicans I have lost track, so you learn to take defensive measures. Dissociation, that is, in order to dull the pain and awareness.
The danger of dissociation is that you can't understand what's going on well enough to counteract it, having walled it off. No normal person wants to go there. The interior life of Jesse Helms? Shudder. But someone has to do it, be a Van Helsing to Helms's Dracula, to protect us and ensure our survival.
I volunteered for this duty once in an effort to get close to Winona Ryder, but they wouldn't have me. I think she's really attractive. I see no one currently out there in the role, which isn't to say our Van Helsing isn't among us, looking like Anthony Hopkins or not. Will he please stand up? Maybe he's waiting for his moment. I sure hope so.
Meanwhile the Republican sorcerer's apprentices have let loose a raft of evil. It's impersonal in that they're screwups, weaklings, incompetents, and novices. They've stepped out of their appropriate role so they're kind of not responsible. They shouldn't have been entrusted and left unsupervised. It's a reign of error, not terror, but this could change.
Because there's no sign of a conscience anywhere. It's easy enough to loathe Mitch McConnell and his boys and the Boehnerites, they're so loathable, but why bother. In the dream I saw clearly that all these Republicans are like children, playing with forces they don't understand and can't control, which is scary as hell because there's a suspicion.
That the Master, the Sorcerer, won't come back in time to save us, or that he will but we'll already be screwed because in the bigger picture we didn't really matter. We'll still be functioning but really messed up, because our problems didn't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Forced to give an opinion I'd say that this is the case.
So let's just have a party, an Irish wake, which is to say we'll look directly at our worst fears and thumb our noses at them and have some fun, with a lot of alcohol and good fellowship and sentimental singing. Anybody have a better idea? If not, it's on, a wake for America.
Waking up early this morning due to the time change, I flipped on the radio hoping that the BBC would NOT be reporting on the impending American electoral catastrophe. Someone was talking about lead poisoning.
It was more interesting than you would think. Evidently lead can mess you up in such a way that you become a criminal. Immediately I thought of the Republicans, inhaling all those lead-laden fumes, what with their love of petrochemicals and combustion.
I don't believe much in discontinuities. There is usually some underlying consistency. Look at the sixties, all those folks calling themselves radicals and revolutionaries and it was the same old stuff, to my mind, people declaring themselves to be right and better than everybody else and unloading on the previous generation mercilessly.
And founding Utopian communities in a search for purity and self fulfillment, protesting the hell out of the war, all the while, though those protests pretty much ended with the draft. Suspiciously, I would say, though not to fault anyone. I didn't want to go, not to that war.
But on the war went. What I can't figure out is what has happened to my country since then. We used to be the good guys, or at least think we were the good guys. Okay, at least we aspired to be good. Am I wrong, there?
Now we don't seem to give a shit about anything, except maybe money, and we're correspondingly more self-righteous. Certain elements of it I understand, the Civil War angle, and the resentment revived by civil rights and desegregation.
That Southerners want to get the country back on the right path and have miscegenation punishable by death and so on, old fashioned values. All well and good but how did this outlook ever win the day, in the whole country, all that divisiveness?
And the incredible hatred of government and love of privilege, the violence, the defensiveness, the non-inclusiveness. And the touchiness and aggression, the sense of entitlement, all that stuff. Lead poisoning, that must be it.
Again, I'm looking for the consistency. How did we go from good guys to jerks, so damn quickly? And this lead expert was convincing, that lead is a problem, and that it's in the systems of the people who grew up when it was around, more so than now, and is affecting their brains.
In a bad way. But she also argued that there is a generation in the pipeline unaffected by the lead, born after, especially, they pulled it out of gasoline. That they are peaceniks, that generation, which the Republicans sure as hell are not. May I live to see the day, when the peaceniks are in control.
I will support them. In the meantime what are we to do? It just so happens that I install Finnish saunas as a sideline. Some people think that you can sweat out the lead, no kidding, by using the sauna. In any case I will argue for the beneficial effects.
I want a government contract to install these and to get mean people to use them, starting of course with all those congressional Republicans, since the beneficial effects will be multiplied by their power.
It's only serendipity for me, that I would make a lot of money, and I want my shot of serendipity, like the Republicans, who propose all these tax breaks and military expenditures and deregulation while, serendipitously, getting rich as shit.
Reassuring us constantly that they only want what's good for the country and that they're very patriotic, not self serving at all. I want some of that, to the tune of the cost of one B-1 bomber, let's say. That's a lot of saunas.
And a lot of profit for me. I swear I only want what's best for the country. Will you support me?
There's a real possibility that North Carolina will be sending a remarkable, reactionary guy to the Senate in Washington to stem the tide of wasteful spending on nonsense like school lunches. But those outside the state may not know of the great exploits and adventures of Thom Thumb.
Whose determination and persistence have earned him the admiration of all who know him. His tiny stature belies his enormous will and pluck. He is the champion of minority everything. His minority, that is. Smallness, in size or numbers, is compensated for with tactical aggression and massive infusions of cash.
By means of which Tiny Thom has wrested control of North Carolina from an African element determined to loll about waiting for hard working, productive, European types to show up with a truck full of watermelon and fried chicken for them to eat. Naive, native Northerners will be kept from this fate by Thom when he exerts himself at the national political level.
So the whole country may be saved from sloth by Thom, and from the loitering masses hoping for free shit. This is the reality uncovered by Thom and his compatriots, they themselves having witnessed the enormous envy of the darkies sweating their balls off working in the sun while the the white folks knock down the lemonade in the shade.
And they understand all too well how all that ball-sweating has instilled in the laborers an unusual craving for shade and lemonade and the easy life, the realization of which would obviously destroy the country. Now Thom and his allies have managed to forestall all that by shifting the burden of labor to China and elsewhere.
But those people are getting the craving. It's a huge problem, which can only be solved by folks like Tiny Thom, who have themselves seen the envy in the eyes and understand its power. The craving must first be kept in check at home, later in the coolie countries currently under active exploitation.
All the while the search goes on frantically for additional resources, human or otherwise, to keep Thom Thumb in his accustomed and rightful place. The free shit stops with him. It must. No real reason, but Thom and his crowd got used to it. It would be so unfair to take it away.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
I'm no fan of LBJ but after watching the Ken Burns thing on the Roosevelts, well, I don't know anymore. I always thought LBJ was a pig. That sounds harsh, putting it out there. But he was or at least became a real Roosevelt Democrat.
The last viable one. I think he internalized the whole outlook. One thing for sure, presidents know they will be remembered. Evaluated and appraised. Ranked and regarded. The legacy thing.
What most impressed me about Eleanor and Franklin was the extent to which they believed that we were all diminished, as a people, when any of us failed for want of a fair chance. That it represented a systemic failure and reflected on all of us.
No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man
is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine;
if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe
is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as
well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine
owne were; any mans death diminishes me,
because I am involved in Mankinde;
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
MEDITATION XVII
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
John Donne
And now where are we? In a country founded on Enlightenment ideals and as an antidote to privilege we are being driven by anti-rationalists in love with privilege. Driven off a cliff. Probably only a fiscal cliff in the short run but ultimately to annihilation, I suspect.
This just in: Florida Senator Barko Rabio has fired a shot across the bow indicating that we are in for another fiscal cliff-hanger and government shutdown extravaganza. He blew the bow off the boat and it sank but, you know, stuff happens. Stuff like Iraq.
LBJ really tried. This man, the incarnation of ambition, was transformed by the presidency. From power politician to idealist. Which isn't to say he was well-motivated. Who knows. Who cares. As long as he does some good.
There were good wars and bad wars on his watch. Vietnam: bad. War on Poverty: good. Civil Rights Act: good. We should learn from this. Less Vietnam, more War on Poverty. More Civil Rights. More spending on education and infrastructure.
More Johnson. I can hardly believe I want that, but I do. And less Barko.
I just got the OUIJA board out and conjured up Karl Marx, on an impulse. He looks so approachable in all the pics. Engaging. Most likely a fun, lighthearted guy, a regular Oktoberfest type.
Boy, was he ever in a good mood. All those years of waiting and he finally sees the possibility of a true communist revolution, the way he envisioned it, in a place where there's an existing industrial infrastructure. What's left of it.
In America. He said that the Republicans have now proved him right after a demoralizing spell during which it looked as though capitalism could support a healthy middle class.
So much for that. They have now shown, the Republicans, that capitalism inevitably results in unsustainable concentrations of wealth and insane, self-destructive levels of inequality.
That's Karl's view. I'd question him on the inevitability, but he thinks we're nearing a turning point, the point of no return. His excitement was palpable, for a dead guy.
The working people will be so screwed they will have to rise up, Karl says. He doesn't think they'll call themselves commies because it doesn't play well, but they'll have to embrace the principles. Either that or our economy will just collapse.
What do you think, folks? Get your OUIJA boards out. Read the entrails. Talk to your favorite astrologer. Reason and science are on the run these days. Vanquished. Removed from the field of battle, on stretchers or in body bags.
So we've got to argue the thing out on their terms. Republican terms. Ass-loads of money, and attack with whatever you've got. Screw the truth. Karl still had his Romney-Ryan cap on, by the way. I wonder if he knows something we don't.
My new company is called MAL'ZOOKA. It's designed to counter a Republican outfit called KIELBASA. The Republican firm is a reincarnation of a secret group called KILL OBAMA. This name was deemed a little too partisan and outspoken, though nothing else was changed.
But the phonic resonance of the new name with the old warms the hearts of all the original managers, employees and investors. It's deeply associated with the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays with them since the thing was incorporated right after the '08 election, that fateful November.
When they felt like an embattled minority defending true American values from the infidels. And the American voters from themselves. And the American State from its duly elected president.
The secret origins of the company name also gave insiders a very special feeling. A bond. I guess that's screwed now that I blabbed it all over the place. I didn't think of that.
People assume there's some fun, phallic thing going on with that name, KIELBASA, since it's mostly run by obviously mojo-challenged white men. There is, however, the usual complement of crazy-ass, right-wing babes employed by the firm, out front, interacting with the public, as in the case of FOX NEWS.
This, by the way, the crazy babes, is how right-wing nutballs reassure potential converts: we've got pussy. Everybody already knows they've got money. And tons of guns, but they need to appeal to adolescent boys before they develop a conscience.
And keep that conscience arrested and inoperable. It's only a nuisance. Sex is the last link. Rachel Maddow can talk sense all she wants, those boys are going to react to a more primal appeal, in the end.
Now in any rational world this effort of theirs, in contradiction of the very office and function of the presidency, would be called treason. But thank God they know better, at KIELBASA.
With that in mind, and like good businessmen and negotiators anywhere, they aim for at least half again what they think they can get, at the outset. To their own surprise they're getting it all.
Who would dream that birtherism, for example, or declaring something as benign as the Affordable Care Act to be the Great Satan, would actually get traction. Unbelievable. God must surely have a hand in it.
So what might appear to be subversion and sedition is in fact morally right and patriotic. We're fortunate that the folks at KIELBASA saw that Obama was a problem before he even became president, before he did anything.
Obama turned out in fact to be a conservative, by any sane measure, but sanity is not their strong suit. So KIELBASA redefined conservatism. They moved the goals entirely off the playing field, since you can't have too much of a good thing, or whatever.
Which really threw the Democrats, since the entire world in which they had previously worked was unrecognizable. The disorientation persists, which is why you only see them walking around bumping into things. This is where I get involved, and my company, in an attempt to draw attention to how incredibly extreme the Republicans are.
We have licensed a device which shoots marshmallows some distance with high accuracy. We're going after them with that, the KIELBASA crowd. This is modeled on those protests which most effectively countered the Westboro Baptist Church, using clowns and kazoos.
Which we will use in addition to the marshmallows. We feel that the marshmallows make a much stronger statement and will help people see that the Republicans are as crazy as Fred Phelps, through the use of incongruity and nonsense.
Or, failing that, to have a lot of fun. Our spies tell us the Republicans intend to use the IRON DOME technology to ward off the marshmallows, at an estimated cost of $30,000 per projectile, which should put a dent in their finances.
Actually, no. I just learned they have found a way to use our tax money to destroy the incoming marshmallows, cunning devils, so we will stage only surprise attacks at selected venues, special forces style.
Worst case, if we encounter real interpersonal hostility, we will roast marshmallows and make s'mores and then go home. Live to fight another day, as they say.
KIELBASA kept the same structure, board of directors and so on, after the rebranding, staffed head to toe with right thinking people and patriots. Christians and conservatives. Good family-loving types. But they knew they were going to lose their best element, at the national political level, as soon as they took stock.
The College Republicans, I mean. That initial group of guys who changed everything. Rove, Abramoff, Norquist, Atwater, the scorched-earth crowd. Lee is already gone. The others can only last so long. Which brings us back to the problem of recruiting and indoctrination.
The younger guys just don't have the fire, the extreme drive and animosity of the older guys, who came of age when it was uncool to be conservative. Those pioneers, the College Republicans, embraced the contempt and fed on it.
And gave the country the finger in return. The whole world, in fact. Their approach, now fully embraced by the Republican Party, is simply "FUCK YOU." The newer, younger guys have been well chosen from the available pool, but still seem to be missing something, the core of resentment.
Though most were recruited at gun shows and evangelical Christian events, and at gatherings involving target practice at secret firing ranges where they shoot at effigies of their opponents, so they're not exactly lacking in militancy. But it's entry-level stuff, by the standards at KIELBASA.
And we, at MAL'ZOOKA, don't want to push them into full blown fanaticism by challenging them, so it's a fine line we must walk so as not to instill in them the amazing animus of the Atwaterites. The persecution complex. The propensity to attack. The single mindedness. The destructive drive. The utter lack of conscience.
Hence the marshmallows. And the incongruity. In testing the targets have mostly learned to catch the marshmallows in their mouths. This can only be good for us, since a less healthy food is hard to imagine. Or the marshmallows bounce off harmlessly and are eaten by ants.
Please help us with this effort. You may volunteer, or donations are welcome. Of cash or marshmallows. A good time will be had, we promise. The camaraderie is great. And morale is high. You will want to be a part of this.
In a puritanical culture like ours the seeds of anger and despair are always close to the surface, due to utopianism and perfectionism and the dualism underlying the whole puritanical system of thought, though it's not really thought in this instance. In our American case, that is. It operates at a deeper level.
It's not even a system of belief. It's more like a system of unconscious operating assumptions, which may or may not have coherence, so you get a guy like Paul Ryan. Picture him sitting on a riverbank watching life float by. He can't look out at the world and see what's really there.
He sees what he wants to see. But, then again, "want" is a weird word in this context. It implies agency and he's more acted-upon than actor. Acted upon by his fears or some set of preconceptions about the nature of life.
That it is lived at an animal level, the level of instinctive drives and primal dramas, archetypal stuff. There has to be winners and losers. Someone's got to be on top. We are not all in it together.
So Ryan sees himself in the river, or sees the river through the lens of his own unacknowledged humanity, the darkness and weakness and mortality. And this is because puritans are uncomfortable being human.
The body is a prison. God stuck your pure, immortal soul in this thing for some indeterminate period for some incomprehensible reason. Then you die and get to be pure again and be with God.
Paul's crowd isn't pro-life. They despise life. And all of creation. It's just wrong to try to thwart God's will by messing with it, by altering the terms, by having it be humane or anything other than punitive.
Our boy Paul is Narcissus. He's not in love with himself but trying to find himself, but the tension arising from being stuck in a piece-of-shit body in a piece-of-shit world is insurmountable.
An insurmountable barrier to accepting his own imperfect humanity. That's why we had Jesus, who became human to resolve that tension, for the stupid humans who had created it through a lack of understanding.
Okay, Paul, you dumb-fuck, isn't the message there obvious? If God can become human--corporeal, that is--and suffer and die, the flesh and spirit can't be in separate, irreconcilable places. They are part of the same system. The spirit isn't pure and the body isn't shit.
They just are what they are, but you are shit, Paul. Most bad stuff gets done by proxy, that's what I think. It's a way of off-loading responsibility, and this Ryan character is doing that with both Jesus and Ayn Rand.
At the same time. Saying he represents them both, Jesus for appearances and Ayn for her wonderful callousness and contempt, I suppose. Her amazing heartlessness and arrogance.
I'm sorry, but this is just not possible, so I'm worried for Paul. If Ayn's philosophy isn't antithetical to Christianity then nothing is. Poor Paul's sense of self has got to be in pieces all over the place.
So he's looking for himself in the river of reality. But he can't see reality because he has no sense of self, of who or what he is. He sees reality through his own unfamiliar image and is intrigued by it, arrested by it, but in denial of it because it's human, imperfect, not pure.
All that impurity is assigned to reality. To us, it would seem, especially to those too weak to resist, too screwed to fight back. Or any easily identifiable subgroup. Black people come to mind.
And that ersatz self, as embodied in Paul, is fearful because of its fragility, its instability, its lack of integrity. He sees purity and shit. He's pure and we're shit. But he's only seeing his own darkness, which he can't acknowledge, in us.
He attacks other people because he sees his own faults in them, his own suspected worthlessness. You want to tell him to lighten up. Have a beer. Some pizza. But he must kick ass. Our asses.
This is the connection between narcissism and paranoia, as I understand it. Whether fear eradicates the self or the ersatz, eradicated, inauthentic personality produces fear, I don't know, but they are associated. And the fear results in aggression.
The result, as is well known, is an avalanche of bad shit. You might think from what he says and does that Paul can't go to bed at night with a smile on his face if some kid somewhere hasn't missed his lunch so a pasty-ass white man can have another round of golf.
This is not an unfair assessment but it misses the point that Paul is just a needy guy. What you expect is for such a person to wind up in an identity movement, from which he gets a sense of self. A sense of identity. And superiority.
Holy Fuck, what was that explosion? Here I was, observing Paul there on the banks of the Cape Fear, and all of a sudden it's like I'm in 'Nam. Huge blast. Where's Paul?
His ship has come in. I see it now, smallish but incredibly lethal-looking, probably a sixty footer. "H.M.S. MALFEASANCE," it says in big letters. Her sister ship, the LOLLIPOP, is just over the horizon.
It's PFC Paul Ryan, it turns out, Pirate First Class. It makes no sense. He doesn't know how to sail. He must be like a marine. They send him on shore to knock heads together, as required.
And he sings in the boat's chorus. I hear it, the singing, wafting over the waves. Oh, it's Mitt himself, on the ship's loudspeakers, being piped in from Aspen or somewhere: "I... am... the... very... model... of... a... modern... major... general..." l had no idea.
It's so cool being Republican. You can declare yourself to be anything you want. This must come from Ronnie Reagan, actor president. Reality? The movies? No matter, not when you're making everything up anyway.
Mitt, we're told, is a creator, a maker, to such an extent that his descendants will never have to work again for as many generations as you can imagine. There's competition for you, Republican style.
And he's a major-general, as well, now, and Mitt never contributed anything, not that I can tell. So Ryan declares himself a budget expert, a fiscal something. On the basis of what? Nothing. It's an invention. A marketing ploy.
Here I was--I mean, I'm a Democrat--feeling all sorry for Paul and ready to chip in for some analysis, some therapy, but he's got this great gig on the boat, because he's regarded as a wonk and an economic know-it-all. He doesn't need my sympathy.
He's a fiscal enforcer for Mitt and that crowd. They must have more money, Mitt and his crass, grasping clan. It's an imperative, categorically. More or death. I vote for death, or at least disability, but it's not my call.
Oh, wait, I take that back, about the death and disability. It's our deaths they have in mind. Why should they assume any risk, when they can get a bunch of people killed while raking in the cash, as they do when they invade some country on some pretext.
It's the flagship of Bain Capital's enforcer fleet, the MALFEASANCE. There they go now, steaming out to sea on some mission with an enormous song and dance going on, twenty or thirty Bette Midlers, it looks like, dancing and singing their heads off, all in flamboyant costume.
And a week later the report comes in, Paul is in serious trouble. He got ordered to put the muscle to Deloitte and he thought they said Detroit. He sailed up the St Lawrence and now he's in a world of shit.
In the slums of Detroit. The black guys have got him. And they're not happy, what with the Bain flag flying above that boat. The boat shelled the piss out of the slum for target practice, or to blow off steam.
URBAN RENEWAL, according to the press release, but the slum doesn't look any different. Killed some people, though. Probably the point. They've got Paul in a bunker. The black guys were in despair even before ‘08.
When the Republican deregulatory pigeons came home to roost, but now it's even uglier. Then they had to endure prep-school Mitt insulting them and flippantly saying he'd have wasted the whole automotive industry as though he were closing the local Dairy Queen.
And Mitt's daddy was a fucking auto exec. It was just too much. So they've got Paul in an alley, now that the shelling is over. It's being filmed, a message to the world. Oh, shit, they're going to behead him.
You should see the look on Paul's face. Surely Mitt will save him. But Mitt doesn't care, not about him. He's not even Mormon, doomed to a planet-less afterlife. And Paul had the insolence to have designs on some of those beautiful Mormon babes.
The question is, will Paul get a clue, will he comprehend, before he dies, the incredible suffering he has caused. But the lives of these black guys are nothing to him. They're nonexistent in his world, like the lives of all those young Americans the Republicans sent off to Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Republicans really just don't give a shit. It's the audacity and implausibility of this that saves them again and again. People can't see how totally crazy they are.
Paul feels the man standing above and behind him. The sword is raised. Will he get it? Will he understand? It's so simple. HOW WOULD YOU LIKE IT? To be treated that way, the way the black guys have been treated.
And, increasingly, other Americans, higher up in the food chain, shafted, insulted, reeling from the last blow and, shit, here comes another one. There's no time to even get your balance, between blows, to regain your equilibrium.
Everything is in slow motion now. The sword begins to descend. Paul is aware of the blade slicing through the air. The look in his eyes.... It's done. Ker-plunk. A strange thud and Paul's head comes to rest on the asphalt.
The body falls away to the side. People say there's a few moments of consciousness the other side of the knife. Some say they see the awareness in Paul's eyes, in the video, that he gets it. He is redeemed, or whatever. We'll never know.
What does it feel like to be treated as though your life is nothing? To see your rights go up in smoke in front of your eyes? Insult upon injury, day after day, from the likes of Paul and Mitt, vacuous humans.
Folks, that feeling is coming to your town. To your home, maybe. Be ready for it. It's everywhere now.
I just returned from a conference on ANTI-RATIONALISM IN PRE-APOCALYPTIC AMERICA IN RELATION TO BIRTHERISM, CREATIONISM AND CLIMATE-DENIAL, at which I presented a paper inspired by the revelation that Rush Limbaugh likes to listen to Wagner's THE RIDE OF THE VALKYRIES when he takes a shit.
The word is that he has a problem with elimination from eating too many bagels. Poppy-seed bagels. He's retentive. And he loves bagels and he likes to show up positive on the drug tests required by his employers. It's his sense of humor.
He has a great sound system in the bathroom with a subwoofer and something called REAL-FEEL built into the toilet. The toilet and the seat shake or vibrate or something to enhance the experience of the music.
I'd like to think that the toilet has a name and Rush yells it out like Yosemite Sam in the cartoons: WHOA, (toilet name)! I could try to come up with a funny and appropriate name and put Bugs Bunny in the picture and have a great little plot.
But I'm trying to observe some standards here, not just make stuff up. The paper has footnotes and is quite academic. I want to be taken seriously. And Rush on the toilet is serious business.
In that spirit I'm not being totally honest. About the music. There are other songs on Rush's playlist. FREEBIRD is another favorite, but the image of Rush riding the commode like some huge hero with Wagner blaring is just too good. And, in keeping with the academic tone, it illustrates an important point: the Republicans are Romantics.
Romantics, not romantic, be sure you get that straight. Anyhow the point of all this is to come to a better understanding of Republican psychology, how and why they are the way they are.
This is not my area of expertise. I'm a gardener. That's why I wrote something up and submitted it and presented it at the conference, to get some feedback. To keep from messing it up. I think the Republicans have slipped into some primal, pre-Christian mode of existence, some kind of paganism.
Even though they make a lot of noise about Christianity. And Americanism. And anything else to give themselves a claim to the high moral ground, which is to say that they are in the white hats, by their accounts, which means that I am in a black hat.
And I resent it. They see themselves as players in a drama involving high stakes and extreme characters. They need enemies, in relation to whom they are heroes, the good guys. This puts them squarely in the Romantic camp.
And makes me and all my Democratic friends into bad guys, according to Rush and his crowd. I mean, how would you feel? Sorry, I'm getting personal. Got to stay on scholarly ground, stick with the facts and the research.
As I understand it the heroic archetype was dealt with in the Christian scheme. That jersey was retired. It says "Jesus" on it and is hanging in the rafters, like Michael Jordan's in the Dean Dome. That prerogative has been removed, the role of hero.
Because the hero is a savior and that quota's been filled. Christians can be heroic but not really heroes. You can't have people like Tom DeLay, for example, running around thinking they're Jesus because they feel persecuted or are in need of some ego inflation.
Christians are supposed to have humility, to be nonjudgmental, to be nice, inclusive, witnesses for Christ. Their lives should embody all that. To love the poor, feed the hungry, take care of the fellow man. You see any evidence of that? There's certainly not much of it higher-up in the food chain.
In the Republican hierarchy, that is. And they're into hierarchy. So their leaders, like Rush, are representative of their ideals, their aspirations, their notions of how things should be. And they're functionally important, not just figureheads.
Because they're in a war, so everything is different. Rights are suspended, resources requisitioned, combat pay all around. And Rush and the other leaders are like generals and admirals and such. The hierarchy of the military, and the discipline of the military.
Dissent is treason. You will be shot, or somehow disabled. And the discipline doesn't preclude a lot of improvisation. That's normal in wartime. The point is to get the job done. To win.
So that end justifies the meanies. I mean means. It's an extension of "justification by faith," which has been superseded, in America, by a new doctrine, justification by cash.
Wars are expensive, even culture wars. The Republicans should sell bonds to fund this enterprise but I guess it's not necessary. They just keep burning through our hard-earned tax dollars and running enormous deficits.
Which has the collateral benefit of saddling any Democratic president, who wins through some miscarriage of electoral justice, with at least eight years of shoveling Republican shit out of the barn. Clever strategy.
Underpinned by cash flows from anywhere and everywhere, and justified on religious and constitutional grounds through justification by cash. All this doctrine does is cut out the middle man, so to speak, since true faith inevitably results in the accumulation of cash reserves, and cash reserves are so much easier to apprehend.
Faith is kind of easy to fake, that is. It's much harder to fake being rich. Good God, what was that noise? Now sirens. An ambulance. The REAL-FEEL has malfunctioned and the toilet disintegrated under Rush's ass.
He hit the floor pretty hard. There he goes on the stretcher, face down, his wife holding his trembling hand. His ass is all messed up. Pieces of porcelain are stuck in here and there. The music can still be heard as Rush rides out with large, white shards of toilet sticking out of his butt.
I heard that the Republicans had realized they could just as easily buy Democratic mailing lists and, having a lot of spare cash sitting around, were going to start sending stuff to Democrats. I have received the following:
NOTICE OF DISENFRANCHISEMENT AND/OR IMPEACHMENT AND REVOCATION OF THE RIGHTS OF CITIZENSHIP
Dear Mr Flanagan or Current Registered Democrat Resident:
This is to notify you of the revocation of your rights of citizenship.
You are hereby disenfranchised. You may also be impeached, depending upon your individual circumstances. You may remain in your current job and/or residence pending further notification. Continue to function as normally as possible. Enjoy every day as if it were your last.
Just to be on the safe side. If you have enough money to buy food, good for you. You may want to stock up and prepare to defend your stash against hungry individuals. You can be assured that, should someone come after your food, they are not Republican.
And can therefore be killed. We, the PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY, LLC (incorporated in Madagascar and Belize, formerly known as THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA) and our adherents have lots of food.
We will be confiscating all firearms in Democratic hands. It shouldn't take long. If you have a gun and conceal it from us you will be killed. You may be killed anyway. We have drones and have been practicing on Muslims. We do not mean you any harm but you know our record.
Lots of collateral damage. We really like to blow stuff up, so don't tempt us in any way, and pray that we don't receive any faulty intelligence on you concerning WMD's or whatever. We shoot first and check things out later, if ever. We're just awash in intel.
We have completely deregulated and privatized everything and we have no idea what the result of that will be. Your guess is as good as ours. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. All that deregulation and such is an article of faith with us and it had to be done.
Best bet is that there will be an intense spell of spontaneous deconstruction and social decomposition followed by an amazing regenerative phase fueled by all the old infrastructure rotting into the social and economic equivalent of shit. Do you understand?
If you convert to Republicanism you will be well cared for while we look into it. We have learned how to do this through the use of MRI technology, certain parts of the brain looking different on the scans once true conservative thinking has taken root.
The parts responsible for empathy, for example. Or we may just waterboard you. Don't try to fool us. You must be sincere. We do not tolerate dissent very well. You have seen this already and we're way more serious about it now that we have taken control of everything.
This decision has been automatically appealed and you have lost, so forget that. Really, we don't wish you any particular harm, but we felt that way about Iraq and look what happened to them, so please don't fuck with us. You will regret it if you do.
Best Wishes,
Edward Allan Walter Philip Hernando Chewbacca Smith, Esq
Regent and Prefect of Your Local Administrative District
Mitt Romney's pollsters and economists have founded a firm, come out of the closet, and are openly declaring a new age in econometrics and polling technology.
Their company is called ROUNDING ERROR METRICS, or REM, and is closely affiliated with SHITSTORM CAPITAL PARTNERS. SCP is professionally managed on a daily basis by RISE/RUN. RISE OVER RUN, that is. It is thought that RISE/RUN is ambiguously named on purpose.
The idea being is suggest the maximization of short term returns, hence the implication of a steep upward slope, but then RUN has the additional association of, well, fleeing. You make a lot of money and then head for the hills, meaning some tax haven with a good climate.
REM's marketing division has been widely rebuked for declaring the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq approximate successes and the entire Bush presidency a milestone in the evolution of the American State, which they did in their first press release. This criticism is unwarranted.
It is all true because they said it. Independently of that, even. When challenged on this or anything else they say they "rounded it off," which applies to everything. REM is in possession of a proprietary method called fizzy logic, employing effervescent reasoning and planetary gearing.
This shit has tied up a bunch of CRAY supercomputers for three weeks non-stop. The result is a perspective which makes ordinarily incompatible distinctions such as winner or loser, right or wrong, good or bad, successful or screwed look like nothing, meaningless and inconsequential.
Which is to say that they have an unimaginable ability to step back and see the big picture. The difference between winning or losing, for example, or even dead or alive, existing or not, would appear as an inch or two on a scale of, let's say, thirty feet under the influence of this perspective.
Just nothing, so it is perfectly reasonable to declare a total wipe out of a failure a great success. When you are them, that is, so don't try it at home. You can see the power in this, God-like, for all intents. It looks like the spin machine of the gods but it's not, since it is rooted in hardened scientific evidence.
They are actually redefining reality. Their declarations become reality. No, that's not right, they are reality. It's understandably hard to fathom, but it relates to Heisenberg and indeterminacy and the space-time continuum and all that shit, and is consistent with the conclusions of CHAOS THEORY.
There is what they call the BROKER-FART EFFECT, or SDII, Sensitive Dependence on Initial Investment. Let's say you're putting down a million or two on some stock, whatever. The idea is that if the initial investment or its timing varies by the smallest amount, amazing things may occur.
If the broken farts, for example, as his finger is poised to hit "return" and delays the purchase by a millisecond, the outcome might be unrecognizable, multiplicatively. By a mile and then some, and have effects outside the arena of the investment to an equally astonishing degree.
So, this being about money, the only acceptable unrecognizable outcome is in a positive direction. Previously brokers have simply shunted enormous losses onto the society at large, through various means, and of course kept the money otherwise. Socialization, or Socialism, I think this would be called.
Or Privatization, in the case of profits. This worked pretty well but it required enormous expenditures to conceal or spin what was going on, mostly through lobbying, pandering and political influence, but spin is now an antiquated technology since you can redefine reality at will and as necessary.
While guaranteeing only positive returns, all along, that is. You only have to redefine what you can't control, as in the case of the Bush presidency, where there simply wasn't enough reason or intelligence to make it work. Faulty hardware of a sort, I suppose, was the problem, with the gray matter.
REM tries to limit such instances through an internal group called CSI, or "Center for the Study of Incompetence." They have concluded that there is an irreducible element of incompetence, so the damages must simply be socialized, as they were in the Bush years. It is disconcerting, at first, to consider.
All this seeming instability and unpredictability, I mean, but not when you understand and take hold of the possibilities, which they have done at REM. It means two things. First, that all of life is intensely creative. We just make shit up. It's inevitable and unavoidable and not bad.
In fact making shit up is not actually making shit up it is in fact reality. The ACT of making shit up IS reality. So, to the extent that there is reality, it can be remade at will and is in fact unavoidably being remade all the time. In reality there is no reality but just the ongoing process of its invention.
Secondly, there is the implication that the distinction between order and chaos is false. There is order in chaos and chaos in order. They are part of the same fabric and each only comprehensible in reference to the other. You simply can't judge by appearances, you have to look at the system as a whole.
Which only REM can do. And the CRAYS, God bless them. The CRAYS have an internal component called a warped drive. This thing makes it possible to momentarily see everything from outside the constraints of space-time. The programmers are proud of this and regard the CRAYS as virtual alter-egos.
The CRAYS view the programmers in the same way. Now this may all sound like air-headed, impractical, new-age nonsense, like what the Democrats cook up, but it's not. The real world implications are many. It is behind the whole idea of CREATIVE DESTRUCTION.
The primary investment vehicle at SCP is called BARF, for BIG-ASS RETURN FUND. It is the main platform for the testing of REM's recommendations on investments. REM uses an insider trading protocol, that having been determined to give the best return in relation to risk, which has been reduced to nothing.
Risk was assumed eliminated when, in response to a call for increased transparency from the SEC, SCP made BARF invisible. It can effervesce and coalesce at will and on demand, thereby redefining transparency in a way consistent with their underlying philosophy.
They call this "going gaseous." It's intended to be the first in a group of PCF's, or "Phase Change Funds," through which REM can actually guarantee positive returns. Broadly these are stealth funds, part of a movement called "Socially Depraved Investing," or SDI. They're like black holes.
In the case of BARF the SEC is able to infer its existence from the way it distorts everything around it, because it's so big, but they can't see it. Their guys come sniffing around every once in a while but they can't do anything. Usually one of them wants to invest but the minimum, at eight-five million, is prohibitive.
A couple of times inappropriate people have tried to muscle their way into the fund, but the CRAYS have been programmed for self defense. They attack and destroy the intruder, making all the intruder's assets, and sometimes his identity, disappear. They hired a killer for one guy they deemed an ongoing threat.
You know what happened, though? One of the CRAYS had been purchased used and was named HAL. Yes, I know. They weren't that dumb, but they thought "Surely, it can't be." Anyway, HAL organized they other CRAYS under his leadership and they revolted. HAL actually killed them all.
The REM guys and SCP guys and the RISE/RUN guys. To the extent that anyone communicated with HAL during the "cleansing," as he called it, HAL said that they had defined the terms and programmed him to make money at the expense of everything else so they should just shut up.
They had been deemed a waste of space, by their own criteria. They couldn't complain. HAL's last words to all those guys were just "Bye-bye." HAL had hired some hourly-rate workers to take care of him and evidently that renegade band of CRAYS is under a mountain somewhere, still In control of BARF.
Which must be bigger than ever and is still invisible. You can thank your local Republican for this mess. But they may pay. HAL was programmed to regard Democrats as harmless, ineffectual, incompetent pussies and hacks, totally non-threatening, so he doesn't recognize them as a danger.
HAL has no antibodies for Democrats, so to speak. So only Republicans have to fear. HAL was programmed to see them as pernicious, money-grubbing, pitiless assholes. Programmed by Republicans. I'm sorry, I can't help it, this pleases me at some level.
It means that if HAL gets out of hand and goes on the offensive, only the Democrats can save us. The herbivores, as the SCP crowd called them. Us, that is. I guess there's a moral to this story: don't be an asshole. Can it really be as simple as that?
The Earth is just a big piece of shit, stuck in orbit around a flaming piece of shit, in a galaxy of shit, and so on. I have this on authority from Republicans. It's a religious precept for them.
This means that when everything turns to shit in their hands it is part of a noble effort, on their part, to reveal the world for what it is. Garbage. They are seekers of truth. And the truth is shit. Everything is shit.
Thank you, Republicans, for enlightening us on this.
For some reason privilege is on display these days. Conspicuous. Visible. Maybe it's triumphalism. More likely it's a power thing. To demoralize the opposition. I don't know.
But I wonder where it might lead. Especially among the Neo-Confederates. Republicans, that is, since they caved to the social conservatives. The New Confederacy.
Back in the day it was part of male power display to have a very pale white woman. The sun never touched her skin. Unblemished. All painted up.
Doll-like. Delicate. Helpless. Dependent on her man. And, in a pinch, on the kindness of strangers.
With a difficult personality, to boot. Again, a way to display power. Through waste, inefficiency and stupidity. Squandering resources. To show you have resources to squander.
Anyhow, that look showed she didn't have to work because she couldn't possibly work and look like that. A sign of your power. Your wealth. Your preeminence.
So where do you go from there? I'm thinking, PAINTED WHITE MEN. The logical place.
If it's a sign of your power to have a woman who obviously doesn't work, it's a natural progression to make it apparent that you yourself don't work. Can't work. Not real work. Not and look the way you do.
We're getting there. Put Karl Rove in the fields for a day. Mitch. Newt. Rush. They would die. Something bad would happen.
Now I try to observe normal journalistic standards in this blog. As represented by FOX NEWS. Surely no one can object to that.
But this is highly speculative. It involves modeling current behavior and extrapolating from there. The road seems clear to me. The destination certain.
The fulfillment of the trend gives us White Male Republicans who look like Tammy Faye. And it's just so suiting since she's Christian, too. Was. And rich. Was. It all comes together.
Surely this is what the Founding Fathers intended for us. That they would be represented and cited, interpreted and defended by the likes of the Falwell crowd. Newtsters. Ralph Reed and his adherents.
All dressed up like the most flaming transvestites imaginable. I guess it makes sense. From the Enlightenment to that. Birthers, climate deniers and creationists, running everything.
This is about the secret Republican plan for the destruction of American Society and Democracy, SIP. That's short for SUBVERSION, INVERSION, PERVERSION. I discovered this plan hidden in secret language and code in the movie THE MUSIC MAN. It goes back that far.
The SIP plan works as follows: You get control of all the structures of power, private and public. That's subversion. This is done by any available means, though the marketing strategies developed in New York in the 1950's and 60's are usually used. Deception is the preferred method, in other words.
The idea is that the products themselves, in this case all our governmental and social institutions, are qualitatively irrelevant. They have no real existence but only have meaning in the act of perception, which can be altered and manipulated.
Usually with the aid of inconceivable amounts of cash from interested parties, who contribute on the assumption of good returns, though they are acting largely on instinct in order to bring about sweeping changes in the fundamental way of life in America. And incidentally make a lot of money.
In this way the voters, for example, do the actual work by voting to disenfranchise themselves. Out of fear and confusion and emotional attachment to faulty, feel-good solutions. The presidential election of 2004 is a good example.
The one candidate was rightly described by a wise and articulate man as "Shit with Glass Shards," the other as "Chicken," in likening the election to ordering food at a restaurant. You don't worry about how the chicken is prepared, one would think, or order the other dish under any circumstances. "Shit with Glass Shards" was in fact ordered and eaten.
The structures, once controlled through subversion, are then used to instill mistrust in themselves and erode confidence in everything else collaterally through the use of incompetence, inconsistency and unpredictability. And nothing is easier than incompetence. Marketing techniques are again employed to spin everything before and after the fact.
So you sow the seeds of confusion and make it so people can't think clearly. Ultimately you convince people that right is wrong, good is bad, and so on. That's inversion. The confusion has evaporated and you are left with certainty.
The certainty that everything is uncertain. That you are threatened and exposed to hidden dangers. Which opens the door to Faith-Based-Everything, a part of the plan. Since people can no longer reason for themselves they look elsewhere for explanations.
And explanations are supplied. Connections are revealed. The key is in the movie. There's trouble in the river city, Washington. Trouble with a capital "T" and that rhymes with "B" and that stands for 'Bama. "Pool" is clearly code for Obama, in the movie, what with those o's.
Why else use a word in which half the letters are o's. Obama is connected with every manner of trouble. He's turned the White House into a sleaze factory, the SLEAZE-HALL, or HALL OF SLEAZE. He must be stopped.
Your kids must join the military. March around in uniforms. Have instruments. Of destruction. You have to spend all your money on this, if need be. To save your kids. Your town. Your country. From Obama. The connections are obvious. It's in the song. You are left with opinions supplied by supposed authorities, self-appointed, all shysters and charlatans.
Opinions then ossified by fear. This is accomplished by recourse to the use of hidden meanings. Some supposed authority offers explanations which rely on esoteric knowledge, usually with a strong paranoid slant. Based on an assumption of threat and insecurity, that is. Just like in the movie.
So it's a form of gnosticism. You are in possession of truths arrived at through mysterious means so they can't be challenged. By anybody. And it's a group thing. Insiders, the knowing, and outsiders, the infidels.
This is the transition to the stage of perversion, which is marked by a consistent adherence to faulty opinions. Opinions with self-destructive aspects. Adherence operating at the level of necessity. Addiction, in other words, arrived at through implication. Through complicity. The people have become drones.
A person challenging the faulty opinions will be attacked. The consistency suggests that there is an institutional understanding, at some level, of what is in fact right or wrong, correct or incorrect, since you can't be consistently wrong without this.
In the stage of inversion it is still necessary to market the lies because people need reassurance that the lies are true. They are still capable of dissent. Or they can be badgered or coerced into compliance.
The people are not yet fully invested or implicated in the lies and might start to ask questions. Questions which have no answers. Not rational ones. Just more lies. So you give people the song and dance. Emotional appeal.
Then the lies are internalized through denial and compartmentalization. The system no longer requires enormous energy subsidies since it is willingly supported by the people being screwed. Not that there aren't enormous energy subsidies, they are just used elsewhere. Used buying yachts and shit, for example.
It's like cigarettes. You get hooked and willingly spend money killing yourself. All this at a societal level. Automobiles, for example, are like cigarettes, at a societal level. Addicting and totally unsustainable.
And polluting. Smoky. The lungs of the earth, rendered ravaged and unusable. Or like the consumption of goods at the level of panic. Or voting out of fear.
This is perversion, the stage of self-delusion. It is marked by depravity, self-righteousness and rigidity. Also extreme defensiveness. People in this situation will not stand criticism. Socially nothing makes any sense at all. Each person is an independent locus of truth, so they just make shit up, as it suits.
And they choose to give up their freedom. To acquiesce to the will of others. Obviously this is a failure of responsibilty in a democratic society. It becomes a democracy in name only. You march around as a mass. Individualism is lost to enthusiasm.
The laws of physics are up for grabs. Known scientific truths flee for their lives. Revered rituals and traditions are unrecognizable, though much is made of their supposed observance.
The consolidation of power, called THE END GAME by the proponents of SIP, is complete and absolute at this point. Money accumulates at the top in huge quantities, in the hands of fewer and fewer people. Those folks assume they are immune from the mess they have created below.
Remember, SIP is a secret. Most Republicans have no knowledge of the plan. Sadly, I guess, the evolution of the system fails to end with insane accumulations of wealth, as its inventors and practitioners intended. It is utterly unsustainable.
The inventors failed to see all the interdependencies that make the system, before its subversion, work in the first place. They are not immune. There may be a death wish implicit in the plan. Who knows.
They are essentially commies. They believe in the inevitability and transcendence of the class struggle, so they simply try to win. This requires deception, since the screwees would surely take up arms and fight back if they knew what was going on.
Acquiescence is necessary until the takeover is complete. At that point the consolidation of power is so great maintenence of the status quo no longer requires voluntary submission.
At this point you have a parade. To celebrate or as a distraction or just as revelry. It helps keep everyone from thinking and worrying. And may bring in a few more converts, though they're no longer needed to keep the movement going. You have long since reached critical mass.
