Saturday, January 2, 2010
November 22, 1963. President John F. Kennedy is assassinated. Two days later his alleged assassin is gunned down on national television. The entire nation enters into a state of mourning that eventually succumbs to depression and paranoia. By 1968 the American military is deeply committed in Vietnam, a quagmire it is unable to escape until the mid-1970s. Not even a change of presidential administrations is able to resolve the war; Nixon in fact escalates military involvement when elected. Throughout these years American faith in government is weakened by revelations of various illegalities associated with the war, as well as the illegal actions of the Nixon administration. The costly war, along with over-dependence on foreign sources of oil, leads to economic collapse and recession by 1980.
September 11, 2001. The World Trade Center and Pentagon are attacked by alleged militant Islamic terrorists. Hours later the twin towers collapse on national television. The entire nation descends into a state of grief and mourning, followed quickly by rampant fear and paranoia as some unknown individual terrorizes the nation with anthrax-laced letters. Months later the American military invades Afghanistan and overthrows the Taliban; in 2003 the US military overthrows Saddam Hussein, long a burr under the American saddle. By 2008 the nation is deeply committed to two military occupations in two countries, stretching the military dangerously thin, increasing nationalist fervor, and revving up the fear and paranoia to Cold War levels. Not even a change of Presidential administrations is able to provide any hope of resolution, as Obama escalates involvement in both conflicts upon election. This period of time sees citizen faith in government almost devastated by incompetence and corruption at the highest offices of the Bush administration, and delivered a near killing blow by the broken promises and corruption of the Obama administration. Two costly wars, coupled with over-dependence on foreign debt, lead to economic collapse and recession by 2010.
Everything old is new again.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
I love this woman. She IS America. Corrupt, corpulent, lazy, dishonest, anti-intellectual, defensive, given to simplistic knee-jerk responses, inordinately blameful, devoid of accountability or responsibility, lacking in philosophical depth, empty on empathy, self-centered, delusional, and destructively selfish. If she runs for President in 2012, I… Read more will vote for her on these grounds alone: a nation such as ours, steeped in the history of individual liberty and democracy, deserves and needs a leader who reflects the qualities of its citizenry. Yes, I love her, the way one loves the pit bull who goes mad every time you walk past the neighbor’s yard. You admire the verve, the tenacity with which the dumb beast continually propels itself into the chain-link fence, as if physical reality will bend to its canine passions. She’s quite insane – you can see it in her eyes, and you don’t have to look too closely either – and it is the same madness that possesses this country now: the insanity that comes from having all the wrong ideas about how the world works now and being continually frustrated that these wrong ideas somehow fail to propel us toward progress; but rather than change the wrong ideas, Palin and America both insist on continuing to perform the same actions while expecting different results. This is of course a hallmark of religious thinking (a stubborn faith which refuses to allow for fact or reason, i.e. a reality-denying belief), as well as an indicator of insanity. (Originally posted on Facebook.)
On the first day he was out of prison he sat in the sunlight so long his face burned red. They used to let him outside for 30 minutes every Sunday. Days it was raining he still went out and stood in the yard until his uniform was soaked through. A half-hour of sunlight a week is not enough to activate skin melanin so he was pale the day he was released and the sun did a good job on him after four hours of direct exposure. It was when he was paying for his barbecue at a roadside stand that he realized he had raccoon eyes from his brand new sunglasses. He raised the glasses to count out pocket change and caught a glimpse of his face, a beet crimson that enhanced the glow of the ghostly halos around his eyes. The girl behind the counter smiled nicely at him. He wondered about her for a moment but then drove the thought from his conscious mind. She had a portable radio back there and was listening to the oldies station. He caught a line from the song that was playing. He’d heard the song before. “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” He walked a few feet away from the window to wait for his food. The sunlight was hot on his back and the skin of his face was beginning to sting a bit. I should buy me a cowboy hat when I get to the city, he thought to himself. Two kids played tag around the back of a station wagon parked nearby. The rest of the family sat inside the wagon eating sandwiches and fries. Whoever wrote that song didn’t know what the hell she was saying, he thought. Whoever wrote that never lost their freedom and then got it back. He was free and he had a lot to lose. He was free. He had that.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Journalists have always slandered dead artists. If you’re anyone at all, in the weeks after you die some little gnome at the Weekly or the Times will go to your detractors and spurned former lovers and compile whatever malice their hurtful hurts display as truth. This is why everyone in Hollywood is such a bastard: when you die, they are going to say you are a bastard whether you are a bastard or not, so you might as well enjoy the benefits, however dubious and few, of being a bastard while you’re alive. And if you’re lucky, you’ll get to be a bastard to one of those victims of failed imagination who populate the tar pits of local journalism, who will perhaps in turn write the post-mortem wherein you are dubbed a bastard, proving that there is some rough justice in this world, no matter what the bastards tell you.
Jack and Jill were injured today when they fell while fetching water from the hilltop well.
Jack received severe head injuries and is listed in critical condition. Jill received only minor abrasions.
Witnesses said Jack rolled down the hill ahead of Jill and may have broken her fall.