The State We're In...

So, there are 20 million unemployed Americans with no unemployment benefits. The country is bankrupt both fiscally and morally. We are now robbing the once sacrosanct Social Security stash to keep funding perpetual war in the Middle East. Politicians keep favoring the kings of capitalism with their bills and laws. And the middle class is decaying faster than road kill in an Arizona summer. That at least describes the tip of ice berg. (At least the part that Sarah Palin can see from her backyard.) So how did we get here and what are we going to do about it? The answers would be simple if they weren’t so complicated.

Certainly politicians seem more intent on shedding blame than accepting responsibility. They have ignored the president’s job bill, choosing rather to focus on making the phrase “In God We Trust” part of our official branding. Well, these idiots better trust in somebody because they don’t have a clue what is really happening. Or, scarier yet, they do but they choose to remain inert and dysfunctional. And isn’t that a frightening prospect; when your elected officials are busy bumping into furniture rather than turning on the lights.

Of course Americans also have to take responsibility for the state we are in. After all, we gave George W. Bush eight years to mess around with this country. That was like giving a five-year old kid a loaded .45 hand gun and telling him to go have some fun. (Unfortunately, out kid didn’t shoot himself.)

I can hear all or you moderate/Republicats saying that this is just another “Blame Bush” diatribe. You’re damn straight it is. When President Clinton left office, we had money in the meter. When "Daddy's Little Cowboy" left office, not only had our meters expired but our cars were being impounded.

Thank God the Earth is more resilient than its inhabitants. This rock knows how to bob and weave like a veteran boxer on the ropes. It is programmed to endure; humans are not. We are, alas, ants busy running our maze to nowhere. But what do you expect from the culture that created MTV, speed-dating and TV dinners: if it isn’t satisfying in less than 4 minutes, we are just too busy chasing the American "dream" to deal with it.

In the eternal conundrum of whether the glass is half empty or half full, I ask who the hell drank half the glass when I wasn’t looking and what are we going to do about it. Yes, I’ve become a curmudgeon. (Andy Rooney R.I.P.) Back in the 60’s one of the anthems was “don’t trust anyone over 30!” Now it’s become “don’t trust anyone!”

Since this country’s leaders have adopted a philosophy based on lifeboat ethics or social Darwinism, reason, logic and rational thought have become as rare as a Pentecostal minster at a Slayer concert. The fortunate ones ask “why all the whining and moaning” while those staying afloat by hanging onto whatever debris is left of their lives after the flogging by King Bush ask “who the hell drank half of my glass of water while I wasn’t looking?” That whole concept about a nation “of the people, by the people and for the people” has floated into polluted waters never to be seen again. But perhaps it was just idealistic rhetoric the old guys needed to sell the deal back in 1776, too naïve to ever survive the test of time.

Even our founding fathers argued over the benefits of a lais·sez–faire economy. Is the republic responsible for the quality of life of every citizen? It would seem not, unless you are an unmarried mother or a recovering drug addict. Who decides who is worth saving: the party in power, of course.

America was designed to be constantly at war with itself. Unlike many older countries in Asia and Europe who have acquired wisdom from their mistakes, America looks to its future with all the savvy of a juvenile delinquent waiting for his parents to bail him out. We were designed to be a country divided and so we are. And so we shall remain until revolution alters our matrix.

It seems our founding fathers, being largely Free Masons, had a keen sense of weights, balances and the absurd. Apparently they envisioned the two-party system as a good thing. A way to police ourselves when one party got too powerful; that whole checks and balances thing. And so it goes to this day: one party pontificates their policies for 4-8 years, while the other party relentlessly objects. Unfortunately, because of this continual turmoil, the psyche of the populace is kept in a continual state of upheaval. We are always in a state of flux with one party insisting they speak for the good of the people, while the other party prays for a slip in rhetoric so they can pounce upon the opportunity to make the same claim. What’s a citizen to do: who are we to believe?

This continual friction creates the energy to turn the turbines of this beast we call America. And this two cylinder party makes sure this machine never rests. It is perpetually creating energy through chronic dissent. And through this inherent lack of equilibrium our country stumbles forward like a drunk leaving the bar at closing time. On the rare occasion when the machine is finely- tuned and running with majority approval, it can thrive. Unfortunately, this baby’s drive train is straight out of a British sports car, which means constant maintenance.

The machine that is supposed to drive America is continually breaking down. We are in the shop more than not. And what is the result of this constant aggravation:  thuggery against ourselves and the rest of the world. Hey, we have to take our failures out on someone.

After all, America is the ultimate bully. We have a wretched legacy of beating up on the little guy JUST BECAUSE WE CAN. Just take a look at the most popular video games and you will get a sense of the “Rambo” mentality that infiltrates every home in this country. And, for most Americans, what they see is what they believe. As the media serves up, so we consume. After all, we are America, the country that kicks ass all over the globe and leaves logic bleeding by the wayside. If truth is the first victim of war, then logic is right behind.

But what about the terrorists, you ask? Don’t they hate America? Of course they do. And not just the terrorists, who are certifiably insane, but the people of the Middle East and most of the world wonder at our penchant for misconstrued violence.

Take a group of people from divergent backgrounds, divide them up according to their beliefs, and you’ll discover that our forefathers were right: people’s feelings, are grounded in nothing more than the tainted rhetoric and prosaic prose  , will indeed fuel their beliefs, which in turn creates dissent against those opposed to those beliefs, which in turn moves the great machine.

But unfortunately, this constant turmoil dumbfounds much of the populace. Sitting like the kids in the back of the class, stoned out of their minds from huffing glue bags, these lost souls find lonely solace in agreeing with the person sitting next to them, who in turn does the same. And so begins the process of dumbing down society.

(TO BE CONTINUED) 

The Value of Hard Times

I just passed the highway sign again: HARD TIMES 30 MILES, PROCEED WITH ANGST AND LOATHING. I’ve been here many times before but the place is perpetually changing, like a soliloquy written by a schizophrenic. Of course I come with the requisite baggage: a 24-pack of self-loathing, a Styrofoam cooler filled with interminable doubt, several aged bottles filled with abandonment and parental injustice, a matched set of antique but functional dueling pistols and a well-rehearsed PowerPoint presentation containing a compelling array of my reasons for making this journey. With all of those plus 3 cases of Pacifico and a sandwich bag filled with “shrooms” I should be able to hang on long enough to reconcile my predicament: trying to find comfort between a rock and a hard place.

As I cruise down the main drag, I see that the town looks pretty much the same as the last time I was here. Battered and bloody women running and screaming through the dusty streets; grown men huddled by the side of the road, boldly weeping into their beards; a distant cacophony of shrill screams and soul-drenching moans that create a bizarre yet compelling libretto that welcomes me back to the place that loves to beat you down.

There is no point searching for friends for you have none here. This is a town fueled by loneliness and despair; heartbreak and frustration. I stop the car, take a seat by a business man with a broken spirit, and begin the process of unloading my baggage. He turns his head as if wanting to ask me a question, but immediately realizes the futility and returns his gaze to the garbage blowing through the street. We sit on the curb, each of us drinking in the bile, filling our lungs with all the rancid catharsis that Hard Times has to offer. For me it is the death of wonder, brought on by the weight of no longer being able to make my way in the world.

A woman in a torn and dirty sweater appears at my side from nowhere, whispering the same phrase: “Why can’t I be loved?” My momentary desire to console her passes quickly as she shuffles away, confronting another despondent old man down the road with the same unanswerable question. Unfortunately, Hard Times is a place filled with questions, not answers; filled with despair not resolution; filled with bitterness not joy.

For me, the inability to find work in spite of diligent effort skewed the context of my life so badly that all that I believed became a question, not an answer; a condition welcomed by the despondency that fills the air like a putrid fog in Hard Times. The struggle to regain stasis in my life eventually wore me down, becoming my reality. I expect the woman wanting love had gone through a similar process. The twisted bodies along the side of the road attested to the fact that accepting Hard Times as your home would eventually kill you. Confronting that reality was one of the main reasons to visit this awful place.

I think we all visit a section of Hard Times during our life. The trick is learning to use the pervasive misery and sadness there to awaken the love and hope that lies dormant inside us. It is not an easy task, often equivalent to slaying a monster with a pebble, but it is possible. For me that night in Hard Times was all about recognizing that the present does not equal the future. That each day I continued to endure might indeed bring me closer to a new vision of my life. One filled with compassion and love, not fraught with frustration and anger.

The struggle against the darkness that exists in Hard Times will always be there, for how can you appreciate the good times if you haven’t sampled the bad? The trick is to remember that the only constant in the universe is change and that humans are incredibly adaptable beings, able to re-create their realities at will. To bring about change, all one has to do is immerse themselves in the paradigm, and there is no place better to do that than crawling through the desperate throngs who fill the dusty streets of Hard Times.

Oh To Be Ordinary

I thought I'd write just a little tonight about the plight of being too creative, too sensitive and too removed from the status quo. If you spent twenty years with one person how would you feel if he/she never truly understood you? If you found yourself wandering a frontage road that divided the life you should have lived and the one you got stuck with how would you deal with it? Would you run for the hills that held your life's purpose or would you stay the course, do the "right" thing and fulfill your responsibility to someone to whom you would always remain a stranger? Would you let lust drive your destiny? Would you let it drive you insane?

Just like a square peg whittled down to fit into a round hole, those of us who acknowledge the absurdity of maintaining a palsied status quo run the risk of being ostracized by those who would maintain this paltry level of living at any cost. The majority rules that those emotionally confused folks need to squelch their desires and stick to the rules of the game: marriage, career, children and retirement in some state where the sun shines more often than not. Unfortunately, once you commit to the plan, the only exit is leaping from the status quo into loneliness, despair and desperation, or so they want you to believe.

The truck driver who always wanted to paint, the attorney who wanted to write, the waitress who always wanted to dance; they've become commonplace cliches in our modern machine that worships value only in monetary terms. Sure, stardom is idolized - America is after all a cult of personality. But what about all of those unfortunates who lost grasp of their dreams along the way? Where are they to stash their angst created by unfulfilled potential?

Once again I refer to Canada which recognizes the importance the artist brings to its culture and accordingly subsidizes their development. Socialism our status quo yells, quaking at the thought of actually giving government money to someone following a creative path. Artists don't feed the machine, truck drivers do.

Of course, America has no money to subsidize the arts anyway; we are too busy trying to convince the Middle East that we are their friends. We are too busy paying back favors for votes committed. We are too GODDAMNED BUSY GIVING SENATORS FREE HAIRCUTS!

So the next Martha Graham is left to take orders for food at some backstreet burger joint, the next Jackson Pollock is left to drive 18-hours to deliver plumbing parts to Pittsburgh and the next John Updike is left to plea bargain a three-time loser off of death row. And so it goes for the criminally inane.

America does not savor the artist unless they are a commercial success, because then they become a part of the process that drives this imperialist lunacy. America is a country lost in its own complacency. No one dare step out of line since fear rules the day. The status quo has become the symbol for modern-day stoicism. America is drowning in the mundane. Watch any channel on your television for 10 minutes and proof of that claim will become obnoxiously obvious.

America has created a population that worships the status quo, that thinks no further than their credit limit, that equates success to how much money you make, that sees creativity in the familiar, that refuses to challenge their own cultural bias, because they see it all as just one thing: maintaining the status quo... and so the machine rumbles on, using every ounce of energy fed into it, never moving, never evolving, just providing that familiar matrix for which the country needs to survive.

Reagan: America's Greatest Nazi

From Letters to the Editor, Grass Valley Union, January 25th Edition:

The unfortunate death of “transient” Mark Rye during our arctic blast is a sad commentary on the state of our nation, our state and our city. Misspent revenues and intense infighting have created a condition of lifeboat ethics where you are either on the boat or under it.

Those of us still afloat or clinging to the sides simply have no room for people like Mark Rye who likely wandered into oblivion in the 1980s when Governor Reagan closed all the mental health facilities in California.

Calling them a superfluous drain on our economy, this single heartless act created a perpetual tsunami of misery and fear. Millions of Mark Ryes, who in a civilized society would be given basic health care and shelter, are left to battle their demons alone, hunkered inside dumpsters, curled up in makeshift tents pieced together from found plastic or shivering in skimpy sleeping bags worthless against sub-freezing weather.

Armed with nothing but a pint of rot gut whiskey and shards of memories both real and imagined, they challenge our humanity with a simple imperative scribbled on crumpled cardboard: Please help me! It is a very sad commentary on a very sad time in America.