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by Phil Rockstroh
If voting could change the system, it would be
illegal.
--Theodore Adorno
"I can't go on. I'll go on.
--Samuel Beckett
One's actions grow out of one's beliefs. Beliefs grow
out of the ecosystem of our collective lives known as
culture. In this way, cultures are organic: they
germinate, sprout, grow, bloom, bear fruit, then fade
in accordance with the climes and terrain of the
times.
America now grows: paranoid delusions and wishful
thinking. These are our national plant and staple
crop, respectively.
A strange genus of the former has overgrown the land.
It began as a small hybrid, a member of the Bush
family, growing mostly in southern and western states.
Some theories hold that its origins were in
Connecticut; although, when it was transplanted to
Texas, it spread, unchecked, due to the fact that
there are few herbivores in the region to limit its
pernicious growth. There, in the dry Texas soil, it
grew dense and thorny, and thrived when watered with
blood and oil.
Left unpruned and unregulated, it grew thicker than an
ancient oak, larger than a redwood: It became a
Paranoia Sequoia, growing ever larger in the hot
greenhouse gases of global climate change; its massive
branches spread across the world, casting a shadow of
fear and revulsion beneath it.
And it has bore strange and terrible fruit, indeed –
as well as proliferate assorted nuts.
Unfortunately, its oily wood limits its use as timber
that might be used to built anything constructive: Its
wood is mostly suitable for crucifixes and coffins ...
Yet, due to its aforementioned oily base, it can be
used to build a bonfire large enough to set the world
ablaze.
At present, the people of the United States are lost
in a dark woods overgrown by these sun-occluding
trees. Some among us have taken to ingesting
hallucinogenic mushrooms (the aforementioned staple
crop) sprouting from the forest floor. Upon ingestion,
they tell of having strange visions involving a covey
of Democratic dwarfs who will fell the dark forest
with their K Street provided axes.
In addition, borne of our desperation, many of us
dream, two years hence, Prince Biden the Bland or St.
Hillary, mounted upon her triangulating donkey of war,
will come to our rescue and lead us from this dark and
terrible place.
Such foolishness is understandable within the context
of American culture: Our decaying empire has become an
over-the-counter culture for legally medicated Lotus
Eaters. Yet the effects of the meds are palliative...
Prozac poops-out. Rush Limbaugh's Oxycontin
certainties transmogrify into detox deliriums. The
Republican Woodstock of the so-called "Clash of
Civilizations" becomes the Altamont of Guantanamo.
Moreover, the comedown is going to be a real bitch ...
Heads will throb; stomachs will churn, when the
realization arrives: we've become addicted to a
corrupt system, rigged for the benefit of a few,
ruthless corporatists -- and maintained and enabled by
both our political parties; accordingly, the lives of
us ordinary Americans (who are dependent on this
system because we have no choice in the matter) are no
longer in our control ... Somewhere along the way, our
freedom to chose went missing -- was waylaid -- as we
were pimped into wage slavery for the profits of the
corporate class.
I must confess: I wish there existed drugs that
provided an effect powerful enough to allow me to
hallucinate visions of hope.
Instead, I will proffer this stark fantasy: I believe,
at this late hour, the second best thing that could
come to pass in our crumbling republic is for the
total destruction of the Democratic Party -- and then
from its ashes to rise a party of true progressives.
Now, I believe the best thing that could happen for
our country would be for the leaders of The Republican
Party -- out of a deep sense of shame (as if they even
possessed the capacity for such a thing) regarding the
manner they have disgrace their country and themselves
-- to commit seppuku (the act of ritual suicide
practiced by disgraced leaders in feudalist Japan) on
national television.
Because there's no chance of that event coming to
pass, I believe the dismantling of the Democratic
Party, as we know it, is in order. It is our moribund
republic’s last, best hope -- if any is still
possible.
Regarding this, I hope I’m proven to be dead-ass, Flat
Earth Theory, WarrenCommission wrong.
How have I come to this despairing conclusion?
First a caveat: While I harbor little affection for
nor feel any affinity with the corrupt establishment
of the Democratic Party, I don't believe, as is the
case with the present leadership of the Republican
party, they're a klavern of insane, death-smitten
apocalypticists. However, I do believe that a craven
desire for power and privilege has transformed them
into morally bankrupt, lickspittle, corporate stooges.
For this, I believe, they have disgraced themselves as
well. Does anyone believe that the denizens of K
Street have, as of late, begun enriching the coffers
of the Democratic Party because the lobbyist class now
harbors a secret desire to create a system where a
greater diversity of views can be promulgated? Yes,
and Jack the Ripper stalked the streets of East London
because he wanted to draw attention to the wretched
plight of underclass women in class-stratified
Victorian England.
Ergo, regardless of which political party controls
congress, the empire will continue to unravel.
Corporate "leaders,” like feudal lords, will continue
to ruthlessly wield power and have dominion over our
lives no matter the outcome of the midterm elections
of 2006.
The mind-shredding propaganda of the so called "free
market" will continue to be our culture's defining
mythos; its corrupt priesthood will continue to fleece
their dazed and hapless flock.
American roadways and so called freeways will remain
as clogged as the arteries of the junk food bloated
commuters, sitting stalled and stupefied in traffic,
within their grotesque motor vehicles, in the
time-grinding limbo created by the international
petroleum state.
Wealth, power, and privilege will continue to be
consolidated by the already wealthy, powerful, and
privileged. Public schools will continue to fail to
educate. The over-fished, pollution-afflicted, global
warming-decimated oceans and seas will continue to
die.
Official lies will still proliferate like swarming
locust. As a result, the public will grow outraged and
demand more of their own rights and civil liberties be
curtailed. The poor will disproportionately suffer
while the rich will sleep the untroubled sleep of the
kleptocratic class.
As, all the while, our fabled Shining City on the Hill
will suffer ongoing brownouts and power outages.
Amid all of this disorder and dissolution what
possible difference could it make to vote for either a
corporatist Republican or a corporatist Democratic
candidate? -- The runaway entropic decay of the
present system cannot be reversed by political cant.
Ergo, this year, the voting public is being offered a
choice between imbibing the Empire Lite of the
Democratic Party or the Republicans' Empire Mad Dog
20/20. Accordingly, we've been provided with choice
number one: stick with the Republicans and continue on
with our planet-destroying bender (that will end in
either the detox hotel named the Limits of Imperial
Power or our being fitted with a toe tag in the Morgue
of History reading, "Deceased. Cause of death: expired
after succumbing to Acute Empire Intoxication
Poisoning"). Or choice number two: the Democrats'
covert flask-sipping, internal organ-rotting, problem
drinking of the heady drafts of corporate corruption.
In short, both of the two major political parties have
been privy to the bacchanal of bribery that passes for
business as usual in the present political/economic
system.
A vivid illustration of the hopeless mindset of
chronically diffident Democrats is their failure to
demand the use of traceable paper ballots this
election cycle. In this way, they're analogous to a
timid, denial-ridden spouse whose mate returns home,
with smeared lipstick and disheveled clothing, sans
undergarments, reeking of Jack Daniels, all the while,
defensively asserting her fidelity -- after an
impromptu road trip with an outlaw motorcycle gang --
and her credulous spouse believing the whole episode
has strengthened the relationship by building trust
between them.
Yet dread gnaws beneath the surface of the collective
awareness of liberals and progressives. What belies
Democrats inability to agitate for meaningful change
is: At a deeper level, they, as is the case with most
of us Americans, realize that, in order to live in the
manner to which we have become accustomed, we must
continue our complicity in the crimes of empire.
Hence, they realize they would be politically burned
at the stake if they ever ventured to utter such
heresy aloud.
For, deep down, we know that our actions are not only
unethical, but unsustainable as well. Our minds have
difficultly grasping this fact; its ramifications are
too overwhelming ... The knowledge -- that we maintain
"our way of life" on the bartered blood of the
innocent -- is too unnerving. Its implications are too
damning; therefore, we banish such thoughts to the
darkest regions of our unconscious.
It would seem: We can't see the forest through
ourselves.
We whimper into the abyss for reassurance.
The abyss replies: "It's always darkest, right before
... it goes completely black".
In this manner, we unwittingly carry the darkness of
empire. Perhaps, if we Americans were to unburden
ourselves of the illusion of our exceptionalism, our
load would lighten. It would be easier to support the
load, if we relieved ourselves of the weight of so
many lies, self-deceptions and rationalizations, as
well as the other onerous byproducts of our denial.
At this point, given the abysmal levels of mass
ignorance, self-deception and delusion at large, are
we Americans even up to the task? Or has our pervasive
disconnect from civic life deteriorated to such an
extent that a majority of us are even capable of
apprehending the dire circumstances confronting the
nation? (It would seem that not only have we chosen to
ignore an elephant standing in the living room of our
collective awareness, but we have chosen to cover him
over with nondescript upholstery and now regard him as
part of the furniture.)
My motive for bringing this up is not to be merely
provocative; I'm asking because I'm chilled to the
core of my being afraid. Regarding it all, I'm in the
thrall of a sitting bolt upright in bed, quaking with
night sweats terror.
Nor am I coming from a lofty moral plane on this one:
I'm coming from a pounding upon the ground despair --
a scanning the line of the horizon searching for any
signs of hope desperation -- a shaking my fist at the
indifferent sky rage.
As you may have surmised: I'm outright mortified as to
where we as a nation are headed, regardless of the
outcome of Tuesday's midterm elections. Given the
bender of destruction we've been on, our nation needs
far more help than a simple changing of the party
affiliation of our corporate enablers -- it needs an
intervention.
But that line of thinking would probably lead to a
seizing of power by an Oprah/Doctor Phil junta -- and
the empire would still collapse, beneath the weight of
self-help platitudes and positive affirmations.
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