frontpaged at My Left Wing
I made mention to some folks the other day that I have a habit of collecting jokes that are awful, disgusting, and tasteless. Really, many of them can only loosely be called "jokes" since the primary reaction isn't laughter. Or, if it is, it's not laughing at the humor, it's a kind of startled, disbelieving laughter that people can come up with such perverse things. (Yeah, I know, it's a bizarre hobby. Well, at least I don't correspond with serial killers in prison like you do. Yeah, you, over there.)
In any case, I'm going to share one of these terrible jokes because I think it accurately illustrates how I--and I suspect many others--are feeling these days. Then I'm going to expound a lot and hopefully come to some kind of coherent point.
Brace yourself.
A 35 year old man and an 8 year old girl are walking through the woods. The girl says, "I don't like these woods, they're dark and scary."
The man says, "You think you're scared? I have to walk out of here alone."
What's the matter? Why aren't you laughing?
However, there is nothing that better conveys the sense of awful, impending doom I feel in the country these days than the above "joke."
Take a look around you.
The usual screamers of the right-wing stripe are in the process of raising another tempest in a teapot about Coretta Scott King's funeral. How vile. How low. How disgusting. There is no depth will they will hesitate to stoop to in order to make political hay.
Here's a question: are they angry about what was said, for certainly not once false word was spoken. Or are they really angry about the fact that their chosen King had to hear it?
Meanwhile, our media, including some formerly good reporters, dutifully dances to the GOP tune.
On the political front, Bush insists on making his tax cuts permanent which will only add to the astronomical, incomprehensibly huge national debt. To counteract this, he widows will be denied the already disgustingly inadequate Social Security death benefit while the soldiers he purposely sent to death and injury in Iraq are forced to pay for their own body armor.
How can they sleep at night? What have we as a country wrought? What has happened to us that we should produce and elect such a "man"?
I am unemployed and for the present unemployable. A few dollars in my pocket, the clothes on my back, an oil-leaking rusting car, a couple of maxed out credit cards, and the computer I write these words with constitute almost literally the sum total of my assets in this world. And yet, even here in a country with wealth for which "obscene" is all too mild a word, I'm not even close to being among the most destitute. I can sleep in a bed with 4 strong walls around me at night.
Which is a great deal more than the displaced survivors of Hurricane Katrina can say. Abandoned by the government to die in the city, they are now being abandoned again, presumably because the government is resentful they didn't do the decent thing and die when they were supposed to.
No money for soldiers. No money for Katrina's victims. No money for the unemployed.
Gotta make the tax cuts permanent.
Aristocracy, aristocracy, ARISTOCRACY.
My friends, be not deceived by the nature of the current struggle. It is not Democrats vs. Republicans or liberals vs. conservatives. It is the vast majority of us all against those whom have been dissatisfied ever since 1215.
Birthright. Good blood. Divine favor. These are things the Bushes understand and love. This is what they hate:
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed.
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is in the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
I digress. Back to doom.
Our military is broken and shattered. Enlistments are at a standstill. Yet, perpetual war must continue. Bleed the serfs down. Bleed them and they will be weak and divided.
War with Iran is coming. Somehow, despite all evidence to the contrary, it is inevitable. Why do I say this?
Because Scott Ritter says so. Three years ago, he was laughed at and dismissed as a crank or even ignored outright. But guess what? He was 110 percent absolutely fucking right about it all. And now he's beginning to lay out the inevitablity of war with Iran. Be not deceived, my audience, by the illusion that any significant popular opposition will stop the forthcoming bloodbath in Persia.
After all, kings and emperors--those chosen by God to rule over us--need not consult the opinions of mere mortals to guide them.
Some have even speculated, given the crippled condition of the U.S. army, that Israel will be allowed to use nuclear weapons on Iran. I need not dwell on what that will provoke.
Why don't I feel like laughing?
Armageddon is difficult to giggle at.
One final story to illustrate my point:
I delight in the new American version of "The Office" on television. Trust me, I love British humor as much as Yank and I've seen every episode of the original BBC series. But the comedic brilliance of Steve Carell and Rainn Wilson (plus the almost absurd adorability and cuteness of Jenna Fischer) make the American remake a true joy for me to watch.
During the most recent new episode, Carell's character ended up unintentionally inspiring the employees of the company warehouse to form a union. When informed of this, the Corporate Office flunky stormed down to the warehouse and read them the riot act, running down unions and declaring that official company policy was that the branch would be shut down rather than allow the workers to unionize.
I felt like someone kicked me in the gut. I barely laughed the rest of the episode.
It's fiction, yes. But it's art imitiating life. I realized that what the actress playing the corporate hack had said was entirely true. Companies would rather--and in truth are in positions to--cut off their noses to spite their faces than allow their employees to band together for protection. It had never truly hit me how far America had fallen until I saw this appalling truth demonstrated so casually in a silly TV sitcom.
In a similar vein, some of are you probably familiar with my writings on the American Civil War I've posted to this site and others. If you're not, suffice it to say that the study of it is my single greatest joy in life. Nothing else does, ever has, or ever will come close.
I derive no joy from it anymore.
The actions of modern Americans have made the war a sucker's game fought by idealistic, easily led fools in my eyes now. What was the all pain, all the blood, all the agony expended for?
Nothing. It's all a joke now. Reading history now, the words on the page seem to blend together and feel cold. Sterile. Not alive and vibrant and immediate like they used to.
You bastards. You miserable fucking bastards. You've taken away my one true joy in life.
Hate is a once powerful word that's lost its meaning and force. We use it for everything now. I hate the color on that car. I hate that I broke a nail. I hate when the mail gets here late.
I say this will all the old force and vigor the word used to communicate: I hate them.
Can you feel it? The hot breath of doom on the back of your neck? You should.
That's why I'm not laughing. Because it's hard, if not downright impossible to anymore.
What will happen? We're engaged in a race now between the breath of doom and the flow of rattlesnake wine.
Strap in and try to smile. But I'll be surprised if you can laugh.