AS SEEN ON TV

    found art by tj worthington

Something serious has broken in our American society. Just about every day, someplace in America a young white guy kills several people and himself. It's like the guys with guns are people that want to die, saying, By God, I aint goin down by myself. I'm takin as many with me as I can. It says we have a lot of white men in our country who want to die. The black men are killing each other. White men are killing white children and crowds of white people. Most of it doesn't make the news because there is too much. Husbands killing wives, wives killing husbands, that's yesterday's news. Killing is our disease, not gun madness. A gun is a tool used toward the end of killing. A pipe wrench is a tool. It can very easily be used to kill. Easier than a knife or a pillow. Our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq are killing themselves more than they are being killed in gunfights or by bombs. Something is wrong in America and guns are not it any more than a burning tire around somebody's neck in South Africa is it. Because we have guns we don't do that. Assessing what it is about America in this time when we have a civil war of terrorism going on, this civil war is looking like it is working out as everybody against everybody. Somebody by surprise goes out and kills several people. Going postal. That's not an act of love. It's hate. It's hate for self and it's hate for others.

The people anesthetized by television don't see what somebody who looks at it every once in awhile at somebody's house can see. I'm amazed by what I see. Violence to the most indifferent extreme. Not just violence in killing, but a violent tone of voice that runs through an awful lot of it. Like the reason you need a new Lexus is told in no uncertain terms. The flash, the glitz, demanding attention by sound and by sight; explosions, guns going off, people falling. The anonymous people Arnold kills never have funerals, never have kids, family or anything. They're faceless, nameless entities, like the people in a crowd some shooter lights up with machine gun fire. All my adult life, everybody has said, It's not television. Television is not the problem. And I'm saying, It's sure as hell not guns. I see football games once a week, and what I see around the games in commercials, news items and a lot of talk is the tones of voice and attitudes of aggression. Scripture used to be the glue that held us together in civilization. In America now, what scripture is paid attention to is twisted to political agendas by gross misinterpretation and manipulation.

Television is the American religion. When it comes to looking at causes of our social ills, mention television and the din of the uproar teaches one never to do that again. It's sacred. Everybody I know claims commercials and television attitudes have no effect on them. Then why do multi-national corporations spend so much money on commercials? Big money. Like millions for a Superbowl half minute. They know the power of television to manipulate. Television is even more sacred than guns. I get laughed at and derided whenever I point to tv for influence on behavior. It's the ONLY influence. I don't even dare mention a book for any reason. You want to see faces fall, say something that makes reference to reading a book. Television is the American mind. Period. It is easy to tell when somebody gets their information from Faux News. It's in their attitude, tone of voice and subjects of interest. Rant is often their form of conversation. I see the American span of attention narrowing down to nothing. Get around a bunch of people and silence becomes the dreaded monster. Everybody chattering as fast as they can go, talking over each other, saying nothing, filling in the silence with noise. Like on tv, doesn't matter what the noise is as long as it's noise. We're getting so bad about acting like we're on tv, I see lights on top of heads flashing, ON THE AIR.

In the late 1980s I visited San Diego, where I came into this lifetime. I noticed people were dressed like on tv. I came home and saw the school kids dressed like California kids, walking like them, carrying a skateboard around. People in Sparta live just like people in California, New Jersey, anyplace USA. Television is our ideology that holds us together. Buy this, buy that, pay no attention to your intelligence, go by what you want, let desire run free, indulge yourself, use the tv noise to drown out your thoughts. Tv is the propaganda organ we buy and put in our homes of our own free will. It's subliminal and who notices and who cares? Without the television fix we're blind and searching in a dark room for a black cat that isn't there. The New Normal. Why are zombies so popular in pop culture now? Are the young identifying with the living dead, being dead while alive? There is no life in television. It is a flickering light, Mammon's cathedral. Because tv is sacred we don't hear anything about television in the corporate media-led examination of whether guns kill people or people kill people, or whether more guns will make America a safer place. Anybody who mentions television as an influence is quickly shut down. We are not powerless against television. We have free will. The same button that turns it on turns it off.

Since the early 80s when the Reaganistas lit into our population with the divide and conquer strategy bent on destroying the democrat party, we the people have divided into two camps that have become intolerant of each other and focus attention on each other while the corporate police state positions itself off camera, and how many questions are asked? And so what if questions are asked? Police state rules with guns and propaganda, not logic, reason or popularity. The Patriot Act deleted our Constitution. Where did it come from? Immediately after the imploding of the twin towers on tv, every senator and congressman was given a copy of the Patriot Act so thick even a crew of aides could not have it read through by next morning when the vote on it was scheduled. Again, where did it come from? It was written over several years and strategized over several years as the new constitution for the police state. It was printed, bound, boxed and ready to go. Then guess what happened. EMERGENCY. Hmm. Pretty good timing. Advertising now "targets" us. I'm remembering the time I called Ted Stern the night of the democrat convention. I asked if he was watching the convention. He laughed. "No," he said, "I'm ninety-nine. I don't care who wins." He'd rather watch basketball. And I didn't listen to the convention on the radio.


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