Fastened to a dying animal: A jeremiad regarding that affront to the nation's dignity known as the US election process
By Phil Rockstroh
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Apr 30, 2008, 00:20
Here in this crumbling empire once known as the American
republic, here in a nation that, at present, for all practical purposes, only
produces Cheetos and killer drones, whose architecture is being winnowed down
to thriving rural meth houses and foreclosed upon suburban McHouses, whose
corrupt corporate culture has bequeathed upon our suffering planet dying oceans
and the hyper-caffeinated tsunami of Red Bull Capitalism -- the essential
question confronts us -- how does one retain (not retail) one's humanity amid
the catastrophic machinery and inane accouterment of our age?
"Show your wounds," exhorted the late 20th Century
artist Joseph Boyce. The wound becomes the womb, poets tell us. Out of painful
truth, beauty is born. But, antithetical to the orthodoxies of consumer
capitalism, there are no shortcuts. According to legend, Faust sold his soul
for a glimpse of eternal beauty and the hidden knowledge of the world. Sadly,
we've done likewise (but worse, pathetically) for a glimpse of Paris Hilton's
privileged (but hardly gated and guarded) cooter.
Here, now, sprawled upon the detritus of our dignity, we are
confronted by the exponential dynamics of decay known as the US Presidential
Election cycle. In this, all three corporate candidates are of little use to
us. Although all three have done very well for themselves by the present and
prevailing arrangement known as Disaster Capitalism.
What motivation do they have to change the system by which
they've thrived? McCain, Clinton, and Obama must serve the interests of the
corrupt corporate class -- or else they would be marginalized. Paradoxically,
as we have witnessed, as of late, if they make even the most minute rumblings
to the contrary -- as for example, blundering into a steaming pile of the
obvious such as the observation that the battered laboring class of the nation
might be embittered by their lot -- they risk political immolation by being
labeled an elitist.
Of course, Obama is an elitist. (As are Clinton and McCain.)
And he has been put on notice by the Powers That Be that they have no problem
with him being among their ranks, as long as he doesn't go rattling off at the
mouth about those the rigged system benefits and those it kicks daily in the
gut. Because in a political culture as far down the rabbit hole as is this one,
the surest way to be branded an elitist is to refuse to serve the elite. (Not
that Obama threatened any such thing.) This is the modus operandi of the
lacquered, autoerotic dudes and dolls of the corporate media and the K Street
cash-flushed phonies of the American political classes: Pose as protecters of
the beer-bleary multitudes, as, all the while, carrying vintage Cabernet for a
privileged few.
This is not a situation fraught with layers of ambiguity in
which any deeper meaning can be mined: Below the corporate media's electronic
cloud of nebulous phoniness lies a dense core of calcified phoniness. Thus it
is difficult not to harbor contempt for this cartel of narcissistic strivers
who have networked the nation into a perpetual state of cataclysmic ignorance.
Seemingly, their creed is: Let the ignorant multitudes languish on the low
nutrient, junk news we serve them from the drive thru windows of our corporate
media outlets, while the political and business elite cannibalize what is left
of the republic.
The ongoing tragedy in Iraq and the ecological and economic
turmoil roiling the globe are consequences of the domination-driven mindset
that the mainstream media protects. Ergo, increasingly violent responses from
outside forces, both of the human and natural variety, are rising across the
planet. America, many shocks and sorrows are coming soon (probably sooner than
you think) to that vacuous bubble known as "your way of life."
It should be increasingly clear to see that the corporate
media's job has never been to be unbiased chroniclers of the events and
circumstances of a free republic. Rather, they are active agents serving to
protect and promulgate the pernicious myths of free market capitalism. And they
are a highly partisan lot. Moreover, they have been highly successful in their
mission. Hence, our lives, both inner and outer, have been conquered and
colonized by the corporate empire, and a resultant forced occupation dominates
our days determining the trajectory of our brief lives upon this earth.
"[S]ick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity."
-- W.B. Yeats
Yet, we, against all evidence, believe we are free actors in
a spontaneous, unfolding democratic drama. When, in reality, we have been cast
as dehumanized supernumeraries in a lethal farce that renders all concerned
both oppressor and oppressed. This is the central paradox that binds us. And it
is why the average American cannot see our imperial occupation of Iraq and our
increasingly dangerous belligerence towards Iran for what it is. How can we
have a modicum of empathy for the people of Iraq when we refuse to even glimpse
our own degraded condition and our complicity therein?
"God Damn America," the people of Sadr City must
rage, as the bombs shake their homes and tear the flesh from their friends and
family. "God Damn, America," I mutter, echoing the good Reverend
Wright, as I witness the indifference of the American people to the war crimes
committed by our nation's leaders.
By the insidious technique of propaganda by omission, the
public has been manipulated into a state approaching criminal obliviousness.
"What is this crazy talk about the calamity of class stratification that
defines and divides the nation, and what sort of demented, leftist loser would
even raise the topic among decent company?" our present mandarins of media
scoff when the topic of class inequity is broached. Add to that the ongoing
ruse of the ceaseless dissemination of fear perfected by the right-wing media
noise machine and then parroted in the mainstream media that goes something
like the following: "There are evil entities afoot in the nation known as
radical liberals who scheme to take away your guns and give them to
Islamofascist terrorists so that those agents of Satan over at Planned
Parenthood will be free to rip fetuses from their mothers wombs in order to
expose the unborn to porn."
This is the reason for the cacophony of inanity that
dominates the coverage of the political events of our time: It serves as white
noise that drowns out unpleasant truths. It is the mood music piped into our
national bubble. Accordingly, trivial and specious narratives drive and
dominate our national political debate and it has, as a consequence, rendered
the nation's public too shallow to even apprehend the extent of the damage
inflicted by official treachery, professional cupidity, and the degree of their
own degradation therein.
Otherwise, the collective psyche of the nation would be
shaken to the core. Tragically, there is no longer any core to be found. There
is merely the surface sheen of the American bubblescape . . . its surface taut
with inner tension as it is stretched to its limits, as, all the while, reality
bristles ever closer to its over-stretched skin.
Phil
Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet,
lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at phil@philrockstroh.com
Visit Phil's website, http://philrockstroh.com.
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