The American public eye; where the size of the trumpet doled out by an adoring populace is directly proportional to how little you have to say. -
– Arlo Stone
I’ve had enough of being a slave. It’s been happening for so long now we’ve almost begun to lose track of just how many ways in which we can be bought and sold daily.
Unfettered capitalism; the whole thing reeks like spent plutonium, somewhat akin to the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme and I’m flat out sick of it.
Enough with the endless stream of telemarketers calling my house constantly, having purchased my name of from the phone company.
Enough with the phone company conveniently then offering me call screening, call blocking, caller ID, caller F- you, (all for a small fee, of course) to “remedy” the very problem they’re solely responsible for.
Enough with the “For Sale to Highest Bidder” sign around my neck.
Enough hunters with guns, extolling their “sportsmanship” as they drench themselves in deer piss and tree limbs while curling up inside a salt lick: “Here, kitty kitty kitty. KA-BOOM! You pussies. Try a week in grizzly bear county alone WITHOUT your gun, and then tell me about the “hunting” mystique. Pussies.
Enough with seeing “Honor Student of the Week” bumper stickers on mini-vans. Grooming another number adder for the State? Yippee! Nobody gives a rats ass your stupid kid somehow pulled it together for a week and finally figured out how to count to four at Bugar- Eater Elementary School. Put a “I’ve got a honorably sweet, smart and loving child on board who got that way because of home school” bumper sticker on your car and we’ll talk applause.
Enough of being treated as if we were nothing more than walking wallets.
Enough cancer everywhere, George Bush spending TWO TIMES more money on Daddy’s missile defense boondoggles than cancer research. How many people do you know who would still be alive today if only we had installed an inter-ballistic missile shield in space? Compare that to how many you’ve loved who’ve died from cancer. (The current Vegas odds have the over/under at four.)
Enough of the TV being wielded by the wealthy as a weapon of enslavement, the nightly news propaganda as meticulously crafted as the missiles it exalts relentlessly, leaving in it’s wake like a twister nothing more than the splintered remains of what used to be consciousness and objectivity.
“After seeing Jews and Arabs clash on TV for twenty seven straight days in Israel, Jews and Arabs in America began to dislike each other as well…” Shocking.
Enough of our interests, as people, being viewed by our “representatives” in Washington as secondary concerns to those of Big Business.
Enough with the so-called genetically “improved” world. I’ll take the one Nature produced instead, thank you very much. “Look! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! Oh my God, It’s neither! It’s actually a fifty pound genetically altered super-chicken, produced for the sole purpose of being a slave!” Just like us.
Enough.
Enough dune buggies, jet skis, monster trucks, chainsaws, snowmobiles, ATV’s and SUV’s. Anything with a loud, gas guzzling engine and the people who run them. Why are women still fucking these creeps? Shitting all over nature, spraying chemicals and exhaust everywhere: RRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! No respect for a single thing on the entire planet, but hey ladies, I’m sure he’ll be real kind to you. In fact, that explains it; he only has a finite amount of respect, and he’s saving it all up for you. Welcome to a great life, dune-buggy head lovers: “Where’s my dinner, bitch? Hurry up, wrasslin’s on!” Thank God for Karma. Enjoy, ladies.
Enough misdirected sympathy in this overcrowded rat cage. I cheer now whenever I see any kind of TV speedboat crash footage…”Wheeee! Woooo – hooo! Yes! Right on! Thank God! One less tailpipe in my drinkin’ water.” Another SUV rolls off the Interstate and explodes in a ball of flame? “Wheeee! Woooo – hooo! Yes! Right on! Thank God!” Everyday I call Firestone at least once. “Good job boys, keep making those shitty tires! Don’t stop now, you’re finally doing something good for the world, keep it up!”
Enough.
You too?
I think it might be time to do something different. I think it just might be time to fight back. I think it’s time to take a stand, as more and more of Uncle Sam’s jack-booted thugs step on our necks. Ready to join me America? Had enough potholes and parking meter maids? Or are you going to hold off for a while longer yet? After all, they say it’s going to be better soon.
Excuse me while I laugh.
I hope “Our leaders said it would all be OK” will suffice when it’s time to explain to our children why have to breathe air from tanks and can’t go outside anymore.
Enough.
Listen up, you state sanctioned terrorists in Washington DC, and listen well.
I am not a slave; to be drained of my life and pimped to whomever happens to be fucking you in Washington currently. My child is not a ” target” for whatever TV generated gadget you dream up. (Pokemon, Beanie Babies, Pogs, Tickle-me Elmo, Cabbage Patch Dolls, etc…) Why? So you can get a bigger yacht and hire more slaves to do your laundry and cook your food while you dream about how much money you stand to make by allowing more Coke and Pepsi vending machines into the local school?
I hope they’re paying you enough money to quiet your consciences.
I don’t have any money to buy you out, but I do have a message for you, and it does come straight from my heart. Here it is.
Fuck you.
Fuck You George Bush.
Fuck you Congress.
Enough. Where’s my pesticide soaked spinach? Because “I’ve had all I can stands and I can’t stands no more!”
Are you hearing me you state sanctioned criminals? Until you take me out, I will make it my life’s work to expose your bullshit. All of it.
You see, I want to be able to look my grandchild/ren in the eye thirty years from now. I want to be able to tell them I cared enough about their lives and their future to fight for an existence somewhat more rewarding than buying more plastic crap from Wal-Mart so some rich, white southern slave owner can buy himself another baseball team. Just what the world needs more of, rich white men trading the black ball players around like baseball cards, because they can’t get their “slave owner” fixes anymore now that the civil war’s over. (Technically, it is. No, I swear. That’s what they teach in school anyway.)
You see, I’d like to be able to do that.
For my child.
And if it’s not too much to ask from my government, I’d like to do it without skin cancer and an oxygen mask on.
Fuck you George.
Screw us while you can, ’cause we’re comin’ for your job.
We, the People. An actual government. Ring a bell?
Remember? That’s how it’s supposed to work, asshole.
Or was that one of the papers Daddy hired some real student at Yale to write for you?
Enough.
Good Morning Afghanistan!
Terrorism? Don’t believe it… Oil? No way…
Drugs? Yeah, right…
The real reason?
TV.
Seriously. Need proof? OK, this week it was announced that for the first time ever in the war torn country of Afghanistan, American style programming will air, debuting in the form of a new show laughably titled “Good Morning Afghanistan”. Finally! No doubt the entire country of Afghanistan is breathing a collective sigh of relief, having finally procured some good American style TV programming to accompany their delicious American style TV dinners. (Mmm, macaroni and cheese. No doubt the perfect foodstuff for the Afghan digestive tract. Don’t forget the Du Pont yellow dye # 3!)
“Allah is good… How good? Find out this Tuesday, on a very special “Just Don’t Shoot Me” when Dhaviidhad Spahdihazikstash, complete with a sporty new Nike turban, trades his old, sweaty camel in for a shiny new American-made garbage disposal. Coming soon to an Afghani rubble field near you…”
Sure. Why not? I’m sure those new Northern Alliance TV Execs are drooling all over themselves as they eyeball the yet untapped Afghani, bearded and extremely disgruntled male four – to – 84 year old “death to the infidels” market. No doubt the ‘Afghanis’ (Afghanistan money; at 4,700 to a dollar, almost as prized as the Peso) will be flowing like Old Milwaukee at a High School kegger once the Northern Alliance resumes that once lucrative poppy and opium racket those Taliban evildoers did away with a few years back. What were they, stoned? No, the other kind. You think Old Spice sales are brisk in the US? Just wait until those filthy, unwashed heathens half a world away get wind of their new aromatic destiny, courtesy of the tube, the great glassy Allah of America. Plus, once the joys of capitalism are unleashed on the unsuspecting rabble of the Middle East, Afghanistan’s petty and annoying claim of mass starvation will be nothing more than a minor inconvenience. Nothing quiets annoying hunger pangs quite like an evening chock full of must see TV, Afghan-style!
“This week, it’s an all new ‘Real Dusty World’, number seven. Watch the artillery fly when we stick three Pashtoons, two Uzbeks and eight newly veil-less Afghani hotties in a two story cave outside of Kandahar. Brought to you by the many good folks at Unocal and the White House.” (Good luck determining who’s who)
“And let’s not forget Walker, Texas Ranger starring Chuck Norris. This week, Walker, the ‘Texas Ranger’ takes on . . .John Walker, the ‘Taliban Ranger’. How much resistance can a confused 20-year-old 150-LB malnourished Central California kid possibly offer up against Chuck and his tenth – degree black belt? Find out this Friday as these two not-so-distant cousins fight to the finish!”
Hatred of America abroad is about our unyielding allegiance to capitalism and our long-standing practice of arrogantly imposing it upon other cultures as an improvement to their inferior and substandard way of life. That’s why we’re hated. That the Pretzel-choker and co. has neatly pinned it on jealousy of our “values and freedoms” without so much as a whimper of protest speaks volumes to the degree to which we’ve already lost those “values and freedoms.”
Values? What values? I sat in a crowded movie theatre yesterday, surrounded by 200 people, enduring the now mandatory twenty minutes of advertising, theatre rules and trailers before the feature. One of the trailers was for the latest Denzel Washington vehicle, “John Q”. The movie’s plot? A man’s son is unexpectedly felled by an unknown heart ailment, and unless a transplant can be arranged quickly the child will die. Unfortunately, his insurance won’t cover the operation, and hospital policy is to release the child anyway, thus sealing his fate. Denzel, AKA “John Q.” (His hands tied by what must surely be considered an anomaly in the rosy panacea created by merging America’s values and healthcare for profit, right? Hardly. But I digress. Anyway…) John Q/doe now heroically takes the hospital staff hostage, tearfully screaming about burying his son, etc…Fact or fiction? Without Denzel Washington, who could say? Certainly none of the two hundred people I was with seemed to find the movie trailer a reach. A health care system more committed to profit than health and all it’s attendant lack of “values” seemed to be no more of a disurbance to the crowd than their 4.75 bucket of popcorn, (.04 cents to make) oozing with chemicalized artificial butter flavor, (don’t forget the Du Pont yellow dye # 3!) being washed down with a refreshing tub of carbonated sugar water. (Another .04 cents to make)
Those values?
Or is it’s our freedoms? What freedoms? You know, the ones currently best exemplified by Enron, the upper execs all waving cheerfully from the “sell now” lifeboats to the rank and file, gasping for breath handcuffed to Enron’s 401 K Titanic? Whoops! Sorry about the lifeboat shortage, but you know the rules, women and children… last. Not to worry though, a few scapegoats will be found, a few planks will be walked and ultimately nothing will be changed, save for the usual the realignment of legal loopholes; have to do our part to keep the nation’s lawyers out of the soupkitchens! (See the Savings and Loan bailout, junk bond fiasco, etc…) And why should anything be changed? In the greatness of America’s “free market no matter what” philosophy, you’re going to have to break a few of the peasantry’s retirement eggs to make that “anybody in upper management can get rich here in America” omelet.
Thank god there’s enough Lottery Winner pictures, Don Beaupre commercials and Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes envelopes to keep the riff-raff compliant.
As Alexis de Tocqueville (who says the French are worthless?) so insightfully pointed out in the late 1800′s, at least in an aristocracy or a monarchy, the people know up front the reigning, ruling class is out for itself. The most frightening aspect of America to him was the government’s potential to get away with so much more, thanks to the illusion of a government “of, by and for the people.”
Of, by and for the people indeed. I’m sure Afghanistan can hardly wait to exchange their ability to be satisfied with so little for the shimmering oasis of unfettered capitalist consumption.
Mirage my ass!
“Let our backward Afghani brethren emerge from the Dark Ages to watch TV with us, and so too let them graze freely at the limitless trough of capitalism,” we say. “Let them also eat cake!”
Or at least some of Du Pont’s yellow dye # 3.