2005-02-09

Warning, the following rant may be about Bush.

�W�, angers me so much, I feel I hate him more and more each day. Is that possible? Are my perceptions clouded? Does he really mean well for our country, and does he place Liberty and Freedom ahead of everything else? Would it make more sense to me if I moved to Texas?
This country is so dogmatic. So boardroom conclusion. We laugh at ourselves and how ugly we can be. Last year Home Depot opened two stores in Manhattan. This year Wal Mart and Ikea are trying to infiltrate Queens and Brooklyn, respectively. It makes me sick; I come to the city to get away from that garbage. Hey people, listen up: �Lower Prices� means �lower standard of living for us all!� When you replace a neighborhood full of jobs with 400 at WalMart, eliminating income for hardware stores, interesting clothing stores, variety; you make it a race to the bottom for a day�s earned pay. �Work harder, and your replaceable� is the new reality for non-corporate America. And where go our values when we work so hard? Values are built from meaningful work coupled with reflection and trust in a community. The �ownership society� was doing fine and dandy until Big Box Store Co-opted it and bought it out.
Bright Eyes said voting for Bush is like shitting in your bed. So are a lot of things in today�s world. Slowly and subtly we are sliding into Sparta. War is the answer to our grievances . . . to hell with the rest of the world. We are transfixed by web spinners on tv, but the web spinner is also the tv itself, the mechanism of spectacle that reduces meaningful questioning. In favor of what? Slickness, production, facility, pixelization. Slogans and emotions fit on bumpers. I hate the new magnets of support our troops ribbons on the back of cars. First of all they are magnets, so you don�t actually ruin your beautiful automobile�s paintjob. Second of all, they are meaningless, childish anecdotes that explain that said owner is somehow more caring about the abstraction of war overseas than his neighbor. They are tokens, replacing actual feelings which are of course more complex. It is the American Slogan today that because we are now in a war, that we cannot be worried about the nuances of Why we are there. That�s true of every war, but then this war is unending, as Mr. Rumsfeld already warned us. It may take 50 years to fight . . . How long will people sit and take this? The main reason America is in Baghdad is to leave a major military presence in the middle east, permanent outposts. Do you Really think we will stay out of Iraq�s political processes, as a democracy would to another democracy? We have been in the politics of small countries in every hemisphere for over 40 years! How then can what we bestow upon Iraq be called liberty or freedom? Who ever received freedom looking down the barrel of a gun? History is older than America, ladies and gents, and she will teach us a lesson or two about overextended empire.
You say, ah but David, they just had an election, and it went well, 70 percent showed up. A couple of problems with that;; the Kurds and the Sunnis showed up, most Shiites did not. If that particular group feels underrepresented or distrustful of the resulting government, then the violence continues. Our own generals predict possible civil war. Also, most people voted in the hopes that the country would be theirs, and that American troops would not stay for long. No one in our administration is talking about us leaving, and I don�t think they will for a while, because we are not there to give them freedom. It was not the reason given when we entered Iraq. The reason then was WMD�s, and mushroom clouds. It is eye candy, a distraction. And what kind of freedom is it when it�s insincere? Its a mockery of freedom. That�s disgusting. You have to consider the motives, not the expected results. You have to look at what meaning there is in this war, not the spectacle of televised personal accounts, compromised embedded reporters, flip-flopping reasons for being there given by Bush. Oh the drama! Living stateside and reading the headlines is a bit like watching a magnificent opera, with its daily twists and turns in what is going on. How can you believe a media like NBC (owned by General Motors), or Fox, mouthpiece of Karl Rove.
I want to talk about this to you, but I truly let my anger get in the way of cogent paragraphs. But I do know this as deeply as I know that I have never trusted commercials � my anger is Right, it is on the side of truth.

I talk to people my age, and people that feel the same way, sort of, against the President. Too often I hear resignation in their voices. But what can we do, people say, to change this? The powers that be are too big, things will never change. Today I was talking to a guy at work, from Iowa, who also moved to NYC like me, to pursue art. He said that yes, he was reading a Howard Zinn book, but eventually just put it down and felt like that the atrocities of our government were all known, but unstoppable. Well, I feel like saying this: They are stoppable! Get the fuck outside and protest. Everyday that you can. Talk to people and get them involved in your neighborhood! Work on the local level.
But then I too, resign myself, afterall, they have mastered the art of stealing elections (if you so believe, as do I, that it has happened twice in a row), they have mastered public opinion, they have their opposition cowed (the democrats are just trying to keep up with the dialogue that Bush sets, but have yet to signifigantly present alternatives to the American public on how to talk about terrorism, energy, economics, etc.), and they have marketed their views the cheap and easy way, using Vulgarity and misinformation.
(not lies, I won�t say lies, though they do that on occasion too; but usually the isinuation that television gives between the lines does the work that amounts to a lie)
Hey, have you noticed that everyone in the media is writing about Hillary Clinton, and how she has the nomination in the bag for 2008 If She Wants It?!
Who the hell decided this? How is it possible that the news writers can read public opinion 3 years ahead of time? But yet, they are right! Just you watch, it will happen.
And what does this mean for our decision-making ability, our concentration? Have we fused together with our televisions? Of course, this happened to the Romans, and they had no TVs. Interesting that when you are invaded by the Barbarians, you ultimately slip into Barbarianism pretty quickly. It infects your language, your way of seeing. You become obsessed with one thing. Blah-dee-blah blah.
Anyway, my point is we will go from a Bush to a Clinton to a Bush to a Clinton, and in case you haven�t gotten yet, maybe then you will understand that our country of liberty is an empire of caste system, where the well-to-do sit and make interest on your invested �privatized� social security. Where they rape your liberties, freedoms, not to mention leisure time with one hand; and offer puny grape to your hungry family as pittance with the other. Where they dance on the backs of the poor, let them eat cake (wait, there is no cake), and everybody (rich and poor alike) just get ignorant.
Emotion and logic are the hardest things to combine, but in future postings, I will try to make my point more cogent and understandable.