The Lost Episodes #3
Nigey --
What can I say, history here in the Western World (on the Western Wall) is out of wack big time. The pace picks up merrily, the images jumble, disintegrate, re-combinate before our eyes. It leads to a fatal kind of cultural solipsism, while at the same time, the other half of the universe, the Inscrutable East is growing at the opposite direction, busting at the seams. Our consumer-driven culture is getting to be so adept at selling and distributing newer and newer drugs but ignorant and unheedful of what they really do, these handy consumer drugs. And the way time is displayed and digitalized, and CRT screens are the major distribution outlet, it's no wonder that people are starting to feel the effects of not having any center of equilibrium, or only a transient one which depends on the latest advertising sampling techniques, so cool and slick we don't even have to think about it much. Yes, of course it must be election time in America if I'm feeling like this. Happens like clockwork, analog not digital time.
It's a wonder that we even bother to have elections anymore since it too seems to be the province of market researchers, "focus groups", and statistical sampling. Everyone's so twitchy watching the graphs and the figures, and like good college students we all seem to forget what you learned in psychology 101 what Mark Twain said a century ago, that there are three types of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics, and yet the papers and the airwaves are full of statistics 'bout how we're supposed to act to or to on a significant issue. They're only good for the time they're asked, that instant because things change so fast. Now if they can get the statistical consciousness of politicians to be more attuned, they won't do anything at all except sit riveted to their specialized screens and data, unable to do anything at all, death by nostalgia if there ever was one.
And of course the real question is when does or how can our delegated representatives voice how they really see fit after taking our information and preferences to mind. Does he any longer have a mind to think?, or is every vote the result of a delicate balance of forces with no long-standing consequences--- "well boys, we dodged the bullet again, hang that up in committee so long it won't come out until after the fall elections." We Americans may give lip service to the idea of "horse sense" but only as long as it supports our positions. Then again there's not much of that inside the Beltway it is said, too dangerous, unpredictable. Anyway, history is what happens after the polls are released and the vote is taken and last long enough until the commissioning of a new one with "better" statistical bases.
I'm sorry but this recent round of primaries got me started, just that time of year every four years in these Unknighted States that I think like this. I can't imagine what all of this looks like form the outside you know? What the world thinks when every four years this country spews and seethes. It's gotten so bad that there are whole sections of the paper of record that I skip because generically they're all the same stories trotted out every four years, "campaign prose", is like football season or something. If they started to do elections like pro football, I'll bet they'd get better ratings, and if they add in the merchandising, then you've got something. Have you ever found an economist that factors political spending into the gross national product? Put it down there right next to consumer goods.
This is a country which has absolutely no interest in history other than as a background from which to flog the future as seen on tv or in the magazines. And the world seems to buy it. Jeans and tv, big cars and glossy magazines, around and around they all go in search of a Big Mac in Malaysia. Knowing what we know, those Islamic fundamentalists might have something, but like the proverbial eggplant that ate Chicago, they'd just better watch it don't eat them too (wack-a-doo-wack-a-doo). Fundamentally I don't like the idea that someone thinks of me in terms of food, which is what all this political focus group shit is all about. Haven't you ever thought that one day the Us of A would turn into a theme park run by Disney with Mickey as President, Scrooge McDuck as the Secretary of the Treasury, Minnie in the Department of Human Services, Health and Welfare, Huey, Duey and Louie in charge of the CIA? Or maybe to save money, they could just "out-source" all the pr that's generated, Saatchi and Saatchi, the guys who do the Bub Commercials do pr for the state department, you get the picture.
It's going to rain up here, the air has shifted, and I can see the clouds starting to bunch up near Mt. Greylock, and the front is moving through. Rain tonight will wash away more of the snow here, or contrary-wise we might get a dusting more. It's been a hard winter and the roof in the house has taken a beating, more work for me in the spring upon the roof. I just can't wait.
So nu, Nigey?
David
Howdy David --
Yessirree, I know it must be election time because whenever I turn on the radio in the car and tune in my friendly local public radio station, somebody or other is droning along earnestly about Proposition This or Candidate That as if there's any real relevance to any of it. Well, I suppose there might be, but really, when you take a good long hard look at it, we here in the UAssofA are owned and operated by ConGlomCo Universal a cabal comprised of CocaCola, RJ Reynolds Co., Exxon Petroleum, MTV, Sony, Rupert Murdoch, the CIA, various generalissimos in countries below the Equator, the Pope, Queen Elizabeth II, and/or Bill Gates. We have ceased to have a 'government' per se, and are really just the toiling minions of a large, faceless, placeless corporate world government that calls all the shots in the White House because, hey, they own everything already anyway, so why not? Poor Bill Clinton can't talk back, even if he were so inclined, because he's just their employee, and if he steps out of line well, remember what happened to JFK, Bobby, and a host of other victims of lone crazed assassins. Yup, there's probably a nifty little factory out there in Reston, Virginia or Rangoon, working around the clock cranking out Manchurian candidates and Colombian candidates and Palestinian candidates and Siberian candidates you never know when we might need one to save the world from democracy.
As my crusty old Stalinist pal Carl Kessler might observe, monopoly capitalism is in the same boat Russian communism was in a few years back teetering on the brink of collapse. And yet there doesn't seem to be any successor on the horizon. Oh, as a nice namby pamby Social Democrat, I dream cozily of a nice mixed economy municipal ownership of banks and utilities, epresentative taxation, free education for all, cradletothegrave safety net Ha! and meanwhile the Prez can't even get it up to speak out against NAFTA and GATT, no matter how many workers wind up living the life of Riley in the unemployment line. And all the while our old pals Newt and Bob, and their mouthpiece Rush ("what's the difference between Rush Limbaugh and the Hindenburg? One's a flaming Nazi gasbag, and the other's a dirigible") Limbaugh, are diligently hoiking up their revolutionary' platform. Greed -- make that 'enterprise' -- has at last become extremely fashionable. After almost a decade of genial fascism with Uncle Alzheimer and Aunt Priss, and less genial fascism with Georgie boy, most Americans have forgotten that civilized societies recognize the need for a social contract -- isn't that what that pinko Roosevelt did way back in grampa's day? But you're not likely to hear anybody under 45 mentioning FDR, because reading about political history ain't gonna entertain you, and it certainly ain't gonna get you laid. And USA Today probably isn't going to be publishing any political retrospectives.
I dunno, Dave, I'm sure you didn't mean to pull the pin and launch this explosion of flaming rhetoric. I apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused. And yes, like a lot of other bemused, irate, semi-demented citizens, I will make my way to the polls and dutifully punch out the little square ("please remove hanging chits") next to Billy boy's monicker. But also like my fellow citizens, I will be wondering how much worse things can get before everything collapses in screaming agony and the waves engulf this latter-day Atlantis. God help me, I'm starting to think like a Republican -- I'm beginning to believe that maybe we deserve it after all.
Salud!
Nigey
