A little bit ago I took one of those facebook quizzes that supposedly tells you something about yourself, or categorizes or baffles. There is no way the tests can be "scientific." It's pop fun. And that's the spirit I see it in. This one was what kind of an old person you will be. Some of the questions don't have an answer in the multiple choice selection that I can affirm having to do with me, so I click on anything. This does, however, account for the unknown, which encases everything. Naturally, I got, "Grumpy next door neighbor." It rang so true I had to laugh. I emailed my next door neighbor, Allan, telling him to get ready. I've felt aggressively grumpy in the mind ever since. Looking at various posts on facebook, one of the anti-fascist sites I get memes, articles and cartoons from was saying Sarah Palin said at an NRA gathering she's all for baptizing terrorists by water-boarding. The darling of stupid white men. I started cussing a streak a mile long, out of patience with her public monotony so full of pride and so blatantly ignorant, the superstar of stupid. A bunch of white men pay her a few hundred thousand to talk dirty to them and blow smoke up their asses. The face of police state. I tell myself over and over to let it go, don't fill my mind with other people's stupid. It's a nuisance to see her spacy eyes, somebody who takes clichés for reality. I think I'm still reeling from the disappointment of growing up and seeing what I learned in school about USA and democracy and the supreme court and patriotism was all bunk. It's not anything like we're taught. Not anything like television points out. I've come to see our history as propaganda---the winners of wars write the history books---and what we had in the name of democracy became popular police state, patriotic police state. Hooray for 31,000 gun deaths a year. Hooray for corporate prisons. Hooray for beating the shit out of college students, pepper spray in their eyes in the name of The Law for practicing their constitutional responsibility to protest.
I can't stop laughing at the flag waver in Nevada claiming he does not recognize the US Govt. Maybe somebody needs to tell him he's carrying flag of a non-existent country. He said he recognizes Nevada law, so why isn't he carrying a Nevada flag? Maybe because nobody will know what it is? Not dramatic enough? Requires explanation? It makes me crazy that so much is made of him as a "racist" and a "terrorist." Why not just call it like it is: ignorant. Add a whole lot of ego to a whole lot of ignorance and he's what happens. The part that makes him interesting to me is that he is so perfectly the part White Man. He's a cliché of himself. His ignorance is specifically white man ignorance. He'd make a good movie, though he's on tv enough now a movie could be made from the news clips featuring him. He may be featured along with Palin at NRA rallies to blow smoke up white man's ass. Is he the next American face of ignorance? This list of the many faces is so long by now, he'll fade out of sight. Won't he hate that. Republicans have exploited the popular appeal of ignorance, which has worked very well for them. The party has a case before the Supremes requesting legalization of lying in political campaigns. It's the same as done. I can see it passing, 7 to 2. Political campaigns amount to television commercials now, devoid of substance as a sleeping pill commercial. Talking with a woman I know in the coffee shop, she said, "I'm a con-SER-vative!" I could only think: You embarrass yourself. She said, "What are you?" I knew exactly the gossip circle my answer would be reported to within the hour, and said, "Socialist." I said it to see her jump, but she didn't jump. She looked at me with a glance that said she already knew it. The conservative / liberal divide right now purports volumes of ideologies, but they boil down quite simply to conservative: not caring, and liberal: caring. It's been that way all my life. In the Sixties it was called hawks and doves. Now it's conservatives and liberals, words totally meaningless.
I remember when Ralph Nader gave his support to the republican coup by judicial fiat saying, the republicans will get us there faster. He meant police state. He's been seeing it come on for several years, since before Nixon times. He saw that both parties, two wings of the Business Party, were marching us into police state, consciously with intent. The democrats are slower taking us into police state. Nader wanted to get on with it. Sooner it starts, the quicker it will be over, or so it looked from there and then to his perspective. I have an idea he was mistaken in his thinking that the American people would have a new revolution. Don't count on it. Maybe a civil war, but no revolution. It is a third-world truth that whoever rules the television stations rules the country. Liberals do not rule USA. Even MSNBC is not liberal. Television has become the beloved propagandist in our midst. It has become the authority, sacred. And I feel very uncomfortable in a world where television is sacred. I've never been comfortable in television world. They talk about red states and blue states in terms of absolutes, like NC a predictably red Southern state, I can live in a red state as well as a blue state. Either side is in relation to television. They are just participating in television. I avoid political talk with everyone, even liberals. Liberals disappoint me when they show parrotry like the republicans. I'm ashamed to identify liberal, so I don't. I am a socialist. It's a scary word to television viewers. Nobody knows what it means because it does not get explained on television. On tv, the only thing it means is enemy. I can go with that. The Lakota tribe of plains Indians became known as the Sioux, their word for enemy. They liked being called the Enemy and adopted the name. A constant reminder to them that they are indeed the enemy. Q: What tribe you from, boy? A: The Enemy.
I, myself, have never been the enemy of ways American. They are my own. I saw an article about something like 3,000 people expatriating from USA last year. I gave it some thought in the distant past, never seriously with intent, weighed the benefits and deficits, just a subject to think about. Where would I go? Wherever I might go from New Zealand to Turkey, I'd be "The American." Here, on Waterfall Road, I am an American, but not The American. Problem of being The American would be in getting taken for an apologist for American foreign policy, domestic policy. It would always be, "your people." I'd be called upon to answer why gun stores sell out all over the country the day after a schoolhouse massacre. At home, I'm not expected to be a branch of the State Dept. I would be asked to explain American policy, the supreme court, none of which I even care to think about, certainly not be taken for a representative of. Asked, How do Americans like police state? I could only answer, They love it. Television politics has become the same as television sports, commercials, another television event. I find it curious American democracy went away, like the Ottoman Empire, without a whimper. A very few noticed. The ones that noticed knew it was a fake democracy anyway, so nobody is beating the drum over democracy gone. Makes me wonder if capitalism will fall away like democracy did, television pretending it continues, the television viewer slow to catch on. Possibly this is the nature of transition from one Age to another, from the Age of Fire to the Age of Electricity. There is more to it than the light bulb instead of whale oil lamp. It is a natural process we go through collectively. It is bigger than the participants that keep it going, like the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We focus on the people that keep the belief system going, judge them with praise or blame, missing that it is a process of change, the players filling roles like on a stage.
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