The Discriminator Revealed 

Potatoes Steam the Sinfully Blasphemous Bungee Cord

Lurge is one of those Gen-Y kids, all bleach-blonde hair spikes, odd piercings and not-nearly- abstract-enough tattoos. But his looks are the least off-putting thing about him. It's one thing to look scary - especially to someone like me, teetering on the precipise of middle age - it's a whole other thing to actually be sacry - to anyone at any age. And when I say scary I don't mean like the kind of scary you get from some freakazoid on a reality TV show. I mean the kinda scary you take home with you that keeps you from sleeping and peeing and stuff. I mean really fucking scary.

I know it's the height of underachievement to be a 40-something short order cook. Not that this isnt' a good job for a newly arrived immigrant without papers, but I have papers, three of them showing my educational achievements at major universities. And, no, I didn't buy them off the interenet or at a flea market. I paid for them with $60,000 in student loans that at this wage rate I won't pay off until well after retirement age. Of course writing about my situation only makes things worse. At work I can measure my daily achievements by the 22 dozen eggs I cook. But sitting down to chronicle the aggregate meaninglessness of 20 years of grease, sweat and fears is not positive therapy.

Lurge thinks I'm the coolest person he's ever met. He's in awe of my ability to deny the cycle of earn and spend insanity so many of my peers are trapped in. I tell him my condition is purely accidental and not in anyway part of a grand life scheme or trend-bucking philosophy. Somehow my desperation is invisible to him. Somehow he continues to celebrate my, how does he say it, "liberationist determination?" This sounds vaguely like some mid-20th-century heuristic I studied in quest of my PhD, though I can't, at this great temporal distance and intellectual atrophy, put my finger on who might have been responsible for this bit of wisdom, so I give credit to Lurge.

It's nice to have a fan. Everyone wants to be awesome to someone. Perhaps it's my desire to be awesome to someone a little closer to my erstwhile peer group that is disappointing. Eightteen-year-old videogame junkies seem like an easy group to impress unless your in an opposable thumb coordination contest.

<> So as I spend shift after shift clogging the arteries of truck drivers and answering Lurge's nearly unintelligible queries about life at my age, the reality of my life at my age becomes more dismal and depressing. I could become what he believes me to be, an incredibly brave and grounded-in-reality liberation determinist, but boy would that require some serious attitudinal adjuistment. And when you're as mired in masochistic introspection as I am it's nearly impossible to determine which attitudes need adjusting first. Liberation is a luxury I can't figure out how to afford.

Well, after about six months of dour responses to his sincere inquiries, Lurge blows my mind. No, he didn't put LSD in my coffee. Yes, he did give me the key to life fulfillment. Just like that. In the blink of an eye. Without my even being aware of what was happening this scrawny lamebrain presented me with a puzzle that I feel certain will unleash my full human potential once I unlock its mystery.

As we were leaving work last Saturday, Lurge invites me over to his Mom's house to this new game he's playing with a bunch of Scandinavian kids over the internet. I'd never really thought about Lurge having a home of any kind. He seems to just appear out of the dark each morning to immediately begin his inquisition. Nine hours later he's gone just as quickly. So, this particular morning I think 'Why not check out Lurge's place? I can skip Sally Jesse, Rosie and Jerry once."

I drive Lurge to Fontana, a fairly disreputable industrial suburb known mostly for the amazing variety of after-market auto parts manufactured there. The house is small but tidy and identical to the three hundred or so houses we pass in the subdivision. No one else is home. Lurge's bedroom is startlingly tidy, the walls covered in In-Sync, Brittney Spears, and Los Angeles Lakers posters. In the corner next to a large window is the computer. Lurge starts up the machine and logs on to the interenet. While he's busily rousting competitors halfway around the globe he explains the general rules of internet gaming and the subculture it has spawned. Well at least he's not out shooting heroin like I imagined all kids his age doing.

There is a knock at his bedroom door. His Mom enters the room carrying two bowls of steamed potatoes. Normally I don't eat potatoes. At my age, the starch turns immediately to tummy fat, but I didn't want to be rude. Afterall how strange must it seem to her that a strange, middle-aged guy is in her son's bedroom with the door closed.

<>
After his Mom leaves, and at the very moment I take my first bite of steamed potatoes the start-up screen of the game appears on the monitor: "The Sinfully Blasphemous Bungee Cord." That's an odd name for a game.

A Melon Screams Briskly in a Friendly Las Vegas

“Fourteen. Fuck! Do I stand, hit, split, double down?”

<>Back home he would have known what to do. There the scale was easier to read.

Here a global artifice is crammed into four square miles. You’d think that would make the whole thing comprehendible. But you’d be wrong. Bookended by shrines to terrorist culture and centered around celebrations of old-European treachery, this whole place stinks. But the drinks are free. And he needs as many free drinks as he can get.

Unwinding. Whoopin it up. Cuttin loose. As long as he avoids actual decadence everything will be okay.

<>“Sherry’s sweet, you know. She’s great with the kids, a great cook. But sometimes you just have to look the devil in the face.” The dealer deals himself a nine - fifteen showing and flashes an automatonic smile. “Sherry’s one of those…..yeah I’ll have another Jack and Coke. Thanks, Hon. You know what I mean, don’t you?” Four, seven, jack and a two for the dealer.

“Business is a little slow, but the networking’s been good. You remember Steve Pardee from Tuscaloosa? Yeah, the guy who sells the Christian garden tools. His booth is hoppin’ and he’s sending people my way. We’re meeting up tonight for dinner. He’s expanding his catalog. I think I can talk him into a consignment. Okay. I know it’s time for the kids to get to bed. Kiss ‘em for me. I love you, too. Good night.”

<>“Sir, you’ll have to leave now. If you don’t leave now security will have to remove you.”

“Get the hell away from me.”

<>“Okay, buddy. Here we go. You can make this easy or hard. Which will it be?”

“Can I take my drink?”

“No, but you better get your jacket. It’s pouring outside.”

<>Too drunk to be embarrassed. The flashflood baptism rolled over him. “Jesus!!” the melon screams briskly in a friendly Las Vegas.

A Grandiose Trampoline Loiters Touchingly in Death Valley

<>So what? It's raining. Lloyd never let a little rain get to him. As for the 13 strange passengers he was chauffeuring on a tour of Death Valley, well, Lloyd didn't give a rat's ass about this particular crew of sniveling Japanese ne'er-do-wells. In fact, were this 10 years ago the tour would have been over 2 hours ago.

<>Back in ‘89 Lloyd could have paid his drinking buddy, Half-Wit Cherokee Shoeshine, three bucks to drop a couple of his extra-ornery scorpions at the Meteor Crater 45 stop, and one ouch later they'd've had 'em one helluva medivac carnival on their hands.
<>
As the "Death Valley Near Death Experience Tour" contract clearly states, "At such time as a near death experience, the definition of which shall be defined solely by the operator(s) of the Death Valley Near Death Experience Tour coach, is experienced by any member(s) of a Death Valley Near Death Experience Tour, all tour experiences, near-death or otherwise, shall immediately cease, and no refunds, full or partial, shall be offered by, or demanded from, the operators of Death Valley Near Death Experience Tours, their heirs, assigns or creditors."

<>Well, those were the days. Half-Wit's gone all Mormon Missionary and Lloyd's been left too his own devices so long he hardly gets a thrill out of exposing himself to an unsuspecting front seat passenger anymore. Life's gone from surreal to super-real in less time than it takes a desert rat do whatever it is desert rats do. Ah hell, things have become so predictable for Lloyd he's actually thinking of giving up his dream job and hopping the Ringling Brothers'-Barnum & Bailey's Circus train as it makes its annual "Greatest Show on Earth" wobble across the hottest place on the planet.And why not?

It wasn't so long ago that Lloyd's future shown like a heatdistorted jewel on the horizon. He was, after all, Chintzy, California's synchronized, underwater trampoline star. Was it his fault his father lost his job at the uranium reprocessing plant and couldn't afford to buy Lloyd a top-quality nose piece for the state finals?

<>How many times had Lloyd replayed that fateful day as he coaxed the decaying Super Shuttle cast-off through the miles of rocks, rocks and more rocks? Was it really so sad that he might never have the chance to turn the tables on the these mysterious eastern transients by spending two weeks trampling through Roppongi and ambling up Mount Fuji?

No.

Lloyd had created a place for himself. Built from the 'what-mighthave-beens' of his life. Festooned in year-round Christmas lights and plastic Halloween doo-dads. Lloyd's catapult to fame rests. A grandiose trampoline loiters touchingly in Death Valley.

Rainbow Stirs Briskly Noisy Maniac

It was one of those days where I could feel every photon that touched my skin, or passed through my cornea. I thought back to my favorite class in college. Perception. How is it that we are able to perceive the world around us? Converse and commiserate with our fellow man? Savor the pugilistic deliciousness of fetuccine putanesca? How indeed? It was one of those sublime surprises to find this course listed in the voluminous catalog. The professor, Dr. Spectacular, encouraged our outrageous speculation and the only indication that a student had stumbled outside the bounds of reason was a wheezy gutteral utterance he produced.

As I gained full consciousness I was momentarily startled to find myself stretched out under the nearly impenetrable canopy of one of West Hollywood's old Ficus trees. In the intervening 20 years since I had religiously attended Dr. Spectacular's class I had passed through several phases of my life with little more than fleeting notice. I was well prepared to grasp the nuances of lives I observed, but had developed almost no ability to objectively perceive the consequences of my own actions. I suppose this isn't such a rare occurance. But, here I was awakening from a deep slumber, outside, in a park, on a Thursday afternoon, and I was damp.

Now this would require some explanation.

It's one thing to nap in a public park. After all, there were many people in various states of repose all around me. It's an entirely different thing to assume that I am the only one who has no idea how or why I find myself in this place and in this condition, damp. And those pesky photons keep making me itch.

As I gather my belongings: book, newspaper, bottled water, walkman, sweater, picnic basket, bird seed, pajamas, assorted cutlery, frisbee, hoola-hoop, table saw, tennis ball, chess set, blanket, palm pilot, keys, cell phone, spare tire and blood-soaked umbrella it dawns on me that not only have I been mysteriously sleeping outside, but I am naked, and covered in a startlingly crimson rash.

How would Dr. Spectacular perceive this? Were my circles of confusion more confused than usual? Had my rods and cones been suddenly replaced by spheres and polygons? Had my cochlea been purloined? Where are the police?

Thursday is my favorite day the week, filled to overflowing with the promise of the quickly approaching days of rest. Thursday, as I perceive it, is the last opportunity of a work week where any actual work might be accomplished. Friday is for shit. Well that explains something.

A sudden breeze scoots through the ficus' branches and a

luxuriant cascade erupts all around me. Now I hear the gentle cooing of the neighborhood pigeons as they gaily splash in the

puddles formed on the sidewalk. Three toddlers gurgle happily as they toddle by tethered to the tail of a candy-striped cur.

And the itching becomes unbearable. I flash back to one of Dr. Spectacular's particularly enthralling lectures.

And now, I must scream.

When Close to Enough is Enough

OK. So you got all the tax cuts. The bathtub is full. Corporations have been nearly completely freed of the evils of regulation. ANWR is open for drilling. The average IQ has dropped 30 point (though I suppose this is an unintended consequence). Real wages continue to decline. Oil hovers near its record high. Fine. Dandy.

Now we find leading Christofascists colluding with the T-State Terrors, Frist and Delay, to defund the federal judiciary. Is this getting close enough to enough?

And, no, you can't pass this off as liberal media bias, or elitist hysteria. There's an audio tape no one is running away from. There they are, the slick-as-shit Tony Perkins and the evil-grandfatherly James Dobson, sitting on top of mountains of 501 cash planning the demise of the courts. Of course Frist will do their bidding to get the zombie votes for President, and Delay will obviously crawl into bed with any slimy thing with fewer than 6 legs just for the hell of it.

So now, Burlington Resources finds itself getting the shaft from the only Indian Tribe that Abramoff hasn't swindled the last dollar from and needs its day in court. But, there's no court except the Supreme Court. And, although it's populated by sarcastic Scalia clones screwing every little guy who survives the 30-year wait, big business with all its myopic, labor-destroying conservative credentials intact still can't get its hearing in a timely manner. Is this anywhere close enough to enough?

But, I think I've figured out what you guys are actually after - your final solution, so to speak.

Who needs courts when what you're actually after is the total destruction of American society. The second amendment is sacred, the rest of the constitution be damned. The one with the biggest gun wins (and to think it's the irony of all the homophobia that's killing me). Why take the Indians to court when you can just shoot em? Who's gonna stop you?

So, I say let's skip the painful second movement and move directly to the finale of this mephistophelean symphony. Install the Dobson/Perkins ticket in the White House. Gas up the chambers. Line up the Kikes, Fags, Dykes, Fornicators, Mongrel Races, Gimps, and all the Unlucky ones. History is cyclical, but I really think we can accellerate the cycle. After all if the guiding principle of this nation is 'shoot 'em all and let God (you know the angry white male sitting on a puffy cloud with his right arm falling asleep because that lazy Jesus has just been sitting there for 2000 years instead of getting ready for the rapture) sort 'em out', let's get the shooting started.

This really should be close enough to enough, but who knows what unimaginable evil this unGodly nexus of money, politics, polyphobia, greed and ignorance will dream up. I know their god has bullet with my name on it. If my God has anything to say about it, I'll catch it before the final, final solution is revealed.

Happily Left Behind

So Tim Lehay and his doomsday cult have ignited a cutural fire. Now millions of otherwise mentally droopy Americans are holding fast to hope that they will soon be removed from this miserable mortal coil. I hope so, too.

No, I don't long for the rapture, for I am certain that I will not meet their vengeful God's standard. Rather, I can hardly wait to be rid of all the pious-punk-ass-judging-Christianist brats. Their cynical misuse of the Gospels and jihadist ways leave me praying for their disappearance at the earliest posssible convenience.

Leave me with the sinners and scientists. Leave me with the heretics and historians. Leave me with the blasphemers and biologists. Leave me with the reasonable.

As the righteous are spirited away the world will blossom into that which it should have always been a riotous playground of progress.

Flowy, flowy, flowers 

MoneyTalks 

Math, beautiful math. 

Getty Skylines 

Ancient Snapshot Preservation System 

Disney Hall 

WPA 

You Know Who You Are 

Whaaaa? 

Waterworks 

Arboreal Divergences 

Lebanon Leads the Way

How many disgusted Americans, camped out on the Mall in D.C., would it take to bring down this 'government'?

Would one million patriots give a month of their lives to occupy the great public lawn and demand accountability for the lies and basic evil of the Bush regime and its Democrat accomplices?

What is the minimum number of people required to not be intimidated by rhetorical assault or police batons? How many people would it take to create a spectacle so large and public that Bush simply could not attack or ignore it?

I say May is a lovely month in our capital. Average high temperature of 76 and low of 56 - perfect for camping.

If 25,000 people in Beirut can bring down the Syrian-backed despots in a week, surely 1-million Americans can force the dismissal of our buffoon in chief in one month.

In a Deep Dark Future

All the neo-conned masses are smiling smugly in the bright glow of four more years, four more years!

Boy! Aren't they going to be surprised when, in the blink of an eye, they find themselves toiling side-by-side with the unwashed liberals they have hated for so many years. They bought the cheap twin savations of debased Christianity and corporopatriotism and this is their reward. How did this happen? What is this hell?

This hell is the logical end of their game. First they crossed the one true God by living a life of greed and hate in the name of his prophet, Jesus Christ. Second, they hung their economic futures on the rollercoaster of international corporate capital and its pathalogical necessity of labor destruction.

Their hell is shared with a bunch of I told you so-ing hippies - the liberals who failed to find a useful point in all their hating of George W. Bush. They never believed in God anyway and declaimed the farce of conflating corporate fascism and patriotism decades before.

Now they must share the cramped dark space where they create piles of useless crap for the 27 people left with any ability to consume.

The liberals are animated by their continuing ability to hate the 27. The conservatives are animated by their ability to hate the liberals for not understanding that the 27 are simply better, more deserving beings.

The Accidental Fascist

You know? All he really wanted was a tax break. It was 1979, and just as our little guy was beginning his adventure as an adult American he could already see inflation and 'malaise' stifling the opportunities that were his birthright: consumption, consumption and more consumption. Real wages were already in decline. Gone was the pretense that control of oil prices were within the grasp of the American economy. And, that good-for-nothing Jimmy Carter had allowed the good-ol'-US of A to become a mockery on the world stage. Hell, if it wasn't for Uncle Sam those ragheads would still be under the thumb of the pantywaist Brits.

Recouping his pious indignation in the form of a taxbreak seemed just the tonic to lift his spirits.

So it began. The heroic b-movie star strode onto the world political stage tonic jug in hand. Threatening to beat every malingering bureaucrat or Cadillac-driving welfare queen into submission with its crockery heft, Ronald Reagan would deliver to our little guy the miracle of economic grace through the mechanism of income tax reduction.

Our little guy was easily distracted by the never ending variety of diversions that were his other birthright - the new-fangled cable TV with its endless variety, the new mall with its endless variety, the hour-long commute with its endless variety. Who has time to think about what that income tax pays for with all the varieties of distraction demanding his attention? Plus, he just really needed that tax break to pay for all these, and all the still-unimagined, diversions just waiting to be unleashed upon his wallet.

So, he took his taxbreaks and he bought a few more distractions. Then the tax cuts and the defense build up caused the economy to crumble. His real wages began to decline even faster and even with his tax cut he fell further into debt at the behest of all those shiney new credit cards that appeared, as if by magic, every time he needed new batteries for his walkman.

Now Reagan was no fool, and, as a conservative, he knew which scapegoat needed to be slaughtered to assuage the economic gods. It must be those damned, lazy, entrapped, worthless, and mostly 'colored' welfare cheats! Yes, that's it! Let's blame our irresponsible economic policies and the near-depression they created on the poor.

Well, hand it to Reagan, this one really worked. Before you knew it market psychology had been unburdened of racial consciousness and everyone was free to feel good about being white again. Who knew that feeling good about being white could cover for a decade of declining economic growth, and busting-at-the-seams budget deficits. Our little guy was just giddy about being able to watch the 'miracle economy' launch him into economic heaven on 24 of his 112 cable stations. Just when he was thoroughly distracted from the fact that he still couldn't pay his bills, the powers that put granpappy Reagan in the White House told the old fool that it was time to up the ante.

Really, how long could this miracle not be seen for the bubble it really was. Our little guy would eventually catch on that the government he had been mildly supportive of just a few years earlier was emerging as a hell seen through the jaundiced eye of a proto-racist. Sure, they had to play the race card as a distraction so he wouldn't see them lining their corporate pockets with unnecessary military spending. But our little guy would eventually see them for the evil they are, and the destroyers of the American dream they were becoming. So let's up the ante one more time.

And it was that Reagan was reelected in a great landslide victory. Looking younger than ever, and preparing for that trip to Bitburg, his illusory brilliance had never shown brighter. There were WWII commemorations to attend, a couple of Central Amercan nations to toss around, and the privatization of the American Commonweal to complete.

Finally our little guy would have his ultimate distraction. Now that the problem government was finally, fully off his back he could laze about as the recipient of the great largesse that is American capital. How could he not love the efficiency of the market and its rationalizing of all economic, not to mention spritirual, processes. Our little guy was just orgasmic over the simple pleasure his life would become once he paid off his bills which were still, somehow, piling up.

Things thumped right along for the next few year. The market continued to be freed of government's burdensome regulations, and that had to be good. Right?

Well, it was good, right? I mean how could it be anything other than good, right?

Something happened on the way to the unregulated market, a little thing known as the big recession of 1991. Out little guy was caught offguard, but, unlike so many of his friends, he held fast to his belief in the invisible hand while they voted Bill Clinton into office.

Bill was a genius at talkin left and workin right. He could make you swoon on his bridge to the 21st century while continuing to put the screws to working class. He tried a couple of things that really pissed our little guy, and all of maniacal right, right off. First he raised taxes, then that uppity first lady, Hillary, proposed a plan to socialize healthcare! Well, that the end of bipartisanship. Gore cast the tie-breaker for the tax increase which paved the way for the longest economic expansion in US history and the helthcare plan was defeated soundly in both houses of congress.

Over the next eight years our little guy would suffer under expanding economic horizons. Suddenly he could afford to send his kids to good colleges and paint the house. He bought a couple of new cars and payed down his bills. But every evening he would watch the screaming Clinton-haters on Fox and before he knew it he had joined the screeching mobs in their pathological hatred of all things Democrat, not to mention democratic. He learned to demand the privitization of the electoral process, and to support the supression of the minority vote. By the time 2000 rolled around he would do everything he could to make sure that liar Al Gore would be defeated.

On election night he watched nervously as Gore seemed to be moving into the White House, but suddenly there was a bright shining light rising in the southeast. Despite all the voting problems and an unprecedented intercession by the Supreme Court, our little guy was convinced that finally his messiah had come in the form of George W. Bush. Anyone who complained about the process by which he arrived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was a communist or worse. How could you not love the new cowboyPresident and all the true Christian American values he stood for?

Now the gloves were truly, and finally off. The Fox punditry, with help from the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page, regularly supported the less-than-truthful Republican publicity machine and encouraged all of their viewers and readers to become adjunct offices. The message was coordinated on a daily basis through the voices of millions. Our little guy was again drowning in debt, but he knew who to blame - everyone who disagreed with him.

Then there was September 11, 2001. A day when thousands of innocent Americans would lose their lives, was soon transformed into the greatest opportunity to loot the public treasury and make a final stab at starving the beast of government. But Bush and Co. knew that the little guy was truly saddened by the events and was beginning to wonder if they weren't, just possibly, an indication that The USofA had lost its way in the world. Something big had to be done, and fast. With a cabinet staffed by corporate fatcats and vice president steeped in the oil and services business it wouldn't take long to figure out ways to aggregate the remaing tax revenue into the hands of the corporate plutocracy and curb the rights of the people to complain. Within days of 9/11 our fearless leader would propose and find support for The Neverending War on Terror and the USA Patriot Act.

Our little guy finally had specific things he could cheer for. It had been a long time since he had anything other to do than bad mouth democrats. Now he was part of a positive force for change. The War on Terror and its adjunct War on Iraq made him feel swell. The government was his to love again! But he still had to hate everyone who disagreed with him, right? Yes, of course. There were still a few pesky liberals out there struggling for truth to out. Fox turned up Ann Coulter's mic another notch, and now our little guy was sad about being happy.

In the blink of an eye protesters were taking to the streets demanding no death to innocent Iraqis. It was the 60s all over again. Before you knew it our little guy's wife and herAfrican American co-worker friend would be burning their bras and embarrassing him. He didn't want to hate everyone, but it seemed the only possible thing he could do to maintain his sanity. So he did it. He felt worse, so he hated some more. Then he was clinically depressed and he hated more and more. He thought about hating himself, but Fox hadn't told him to...yet.

Late 2003: the Democrats had this crazy-quilt array of presidential hopefuls, all multi-culti and a woman thrown in for good measure. "God! What do they want this nation to become?" our little guy asked as he considered the possibility of unburdening his hatred. But, his hate was comfortable. He'd felt it for so long he couldn't actually remember any other feeling. So, even though the economy was in the crapper and the War on Iraq was reaching quagmire status he puffed up his hatred to unknown proportions and voted for Bush.

Now he's part of the new American Final Solution. Completely blinded by hate, and without a compassionate God to turn to (the churches have all caught the hate bug, too), he is alone with his dwindling 401(k) and a permanently dismissed empathy. He won't be getting any empathy in return, either. After all the years of bile spewing, even his kids, who voted for Kerry, want nothing to do with him.

He got his tax cut, and several more over the years. Now the government he learned to hate hates him right back. They never really cared for the little guy. They just used him and his anger to make sure they got what they really wanted - him in poverty with not rights left to demand the return of his dignity as a citizen of the greatest nation the world has ever known.

The accidental fascist, living next door to you.

The Civil Culture War

*Note to the reader: Sincere, though easily lableled as

elitist-pseudo-intellectual-bullshit, commentary ahead!

Hi,

Just thought you might like a little laugh. It's so rare that a lefty

actually gets it right, as in this cuture war screed.

http://fuckthesouth.com

It's a little unnecessarily profane (kinda like the chit-chat at

dinner with Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity), but after all the years of

libel and slander I guess this guy just couldn't control his fingers.

Probably death throes at this point. After the November 2

hornswoggling the lid's nailed down pretty tight on the Dems. Now if

some reasonable (I know The Enlightenment is totally passe, but can't

I dream?) Republicans could locate their balls and put the screws to W

and his neo-con braintrust before Greenspan's (I figure he's the

epitomy of elite, intellectual snobbery. How the hell does he keep his

job in Philistineville?) lipflappin plumb drives all the international

debt-carriers out of our value-depleting market, we might not have to

actually re-enact (not that ritual where all the Bubba's drag out the

stars-n-bars, and force the short-straw-drawers to dress in blue for a

day, but the real thing with boomin uzis and spewin blood) the Civil

War.

As bad as I'd hate to have to go through customs at SAT, I think this

guy might be onto something.

I could use some clarification from the conservative perspective. Once

Norquist gets really close (2007, perhaps?) to drowning the government

in his bathtub who's gonna be crying the loudest, the givin blue

states or the takin red states? (BTW, who's idea was it to coopt the

color of international communism for the American right? I mean, you

guys are the masters at creating a purely symbolic reality, but this

really takes the cake! What's next? Barbara and Jenna sporting a Mao

jacket/Che t-shirt/Kim Jong Il hairdo ensemble? That's the look

that'll make the new K-Mart Sears a smashing success.)

The Blue State Bother,

Robert

P.S. I appreciate how you avoid the culture war in your column. How

long can you hold out as it's clearly becoming the only thing (I

hesitate to call it an issue, as it's hardly a point of debate.) that

moves the truly, though unnecessarily, frightened, angry masses?

David Blackmon to me

Well, I guess that guy is one of the Kerry fans who had to seek psychiatric

help following the election. It is pretty funny, though.

But the South is far from the Democrats' only problem here, brother. Take a

look at that Red/Blue map you mention (I don't know who picked the color

scheme, but frankly, I'd rather have blue, thanks) - especially the

county-by-county version, which is most instructive.

The South is solid, sure, but so is the Midwest, the Southwest, and the

Rocky Mountain states. Not only that, but Bush won about 75% of the

counties in "blue" states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and even

New York. He also won most of the counties in California.

So basically, this guy pretty much needs to fuck everybody who lives outside

of a major metropolitan area on the East or West coasts. That's what it's

boiling down to for the Ds. Not a pretty picture, especially when one

considers that they will almost certainly put up yet another Northeastern

liberal senator (Hillary) as their nominee in 2008.

Now, Hillary will no doubt spend the next four years pretending to find God

(I can just see her now, getting dunked in the river by an evangelical

preacher with James Carville, Paul Begala and Big Bill standing on the

banks), and getting to the political right of the Republicans on as many

major issues as she can (she's already doing this on military spending and

immigration), but pretty much everybody outside of the major coastal metro

centers already recognizes the Clintons for the frauds they really are,

which is why everyone they campaigned for in 2002 and this year lost.

I see the "Culture War" differently than most folks do, apparently. IMO,

it's not a breakdown between different races, or different sexual

orientations, or different views about God, it's a far more comprehensive

breakdown between rural/suburban areas and the big cities.

Sure, the Gay Marriage issue was voted down in 11 states, but I believe

Janet Jackson's bare breast brought far more people to the polls than those

ballot items did. I believe Michael Moore and Whoopi Goldberg and all those

leftist airhead movie stars who think their opinions should matter more than

some poor slob working as a welder's helper in Crystal City cost Kerry far,

far more votes than any racial or religious tensions did.

The Democrats, rightly or wrongly, have come to be identified by these Red

County voters as the party that supports the "Hollywood" culture. They have

only themselves to blame for this. They will continue to lose election

after election after election until they do something to change this, and

frankly, I don't know what they can do.

I saw one of these mini-debates on Chris Matthews' show last night that I

thought perfectly symbolized the real nature of the cultural divide in this

country, though probably unintentionally. The topic was the "Desperate

Housewives" promo that led into Monday Night Football last week, and the

furor that has caused.

Representing the political "right" in the segment was this 40-something year

old, chubby but pretty housewife from Wisconsin who represents some

"concerned parents" group whose name I didn't get. Representing the

political "left" was a loud, obnoxious white guy from the Communications

School at USC who kept calling the woman names, shouting her down every time

she tried to make a point, and just couldn't understand why it is that

parents of small children might have been a little upset that they thought

they were tuning in to watch a football game, and got 60 seconds of nudity

and sexual innuendo instead.

The point here is not to judge who is correct and who is not on this

particular issue (Terri and I watch Desperate Housewives every Sunday night)

- the point is that there are a hell of a lot more of those 40-something,

chubby but pretty housewives in this country than there are loud, obnoxious,

sanctimonious communications professors, and all of their votes count

exactly the same.

That's the basic problem the Democrats have - they've become a party

dominated by the communications professors of the world. That Party is run

out of three places: New York City, Washington, DC, and Hollywood. That's

the truth. The Republican Party is run by people from Midland, Texas,

Butte, Montana, Casper, Wyoming, Cincinnati, Ohio and Memphis, Tennessee.

That's why the Rs relate far better to the housewives than they do the

communications professors.

That's why the guy who wrote that screed has a whole lot more people to fuck

than just those who live in the South.

David

Robert Blackmon to David

Hard to disagree with any of this. Not that I would want to. The

Democratic Party is practically irrelevent to my concerns. I hope

they do nominate Hillary and that she goes through the 'spiritual'

machinations you describe. This process will hold a mirror up to those

sanctimonious partisans cashing in on their debased Christianity whild

demanding (c)(3) status.

Anyone who believed Kerry could beat Bush, with or without Diebold

delivering Ohio, should have sought psychiatric care in the spring.

The inevitability of simplicity is the right's greatest intellectual

achievement. The reductive nature of the propoganda allows everyone to

claim part of this triumph of real-man reality over effete theory, as

surely as a momentary lapse into spiritual ecstasy gets you the E

ticket to Heaven. It doesn't matter what your vote brings, or how you

tend to your morality, as long as you can crow about your two great

salvations.

There's something a little ironic (the liberal's favorite vice) in

writing this today. As the Longhorns beat the Aggies, it makes me

wonder if all those conservative Texas Exes know just how truly hated

they are by all the super-conservative Former Students. Wearing their

cosmopolitan Orange apparel, redolent of fall - a season so weak its

only purpose is to usher in winter, the Exes with their affinity for

Austin's (a tiny spot of blue in that sea of red) drug-addled,

hippified culture still begging to 'Keep Austin Weird', is the

greatest proof to an Authentic RealTexan of the work still to be done

to purify the state's soul. Don't get me wrong, I'm really glad UT

won, and I'll be lifting a few brews if they get a bowl bid, but every

year they defeat A&M it's just adding fuel to the backlash bonfire all

the Exes will eventually suffer through.

UT isn't just a football program. It is the official Texas outpost of

the East Coast Liberal Establishment. It is exclusive, even with

50,000 students. It brags about its number 15 ranking in The Times of

London's recent list of great world universities, even if it is still

second to Cal Berkeley in US public schools that made the list. The

average SAT score for entering freshmen is 46 points higher than at

A&M. It is the home of at least 4 Nobel laureates. While I'm sure the

breezy 40 Acres are roiled regulary by conservative hot air, at least

three of my favorite radical professors are still there brainwashing

the undergrads. And, it is still the place where young people from

hundreds of Beevilles will meet their first real live Jew, homosexual,

nihilist or homeless person. Hell, they might even befriend a couple

of these heathens!

From the Aggie perspective it is as plain as day that anyone who

cheers on the Longhorns is an inauthentic Texan - read Communist. The

best these traitors deserve is a never-ending stream of baseless, ad

hominem attacks. If that doesn't bring them to their senses, baseball

season is coming and with it a handy tool for beating some sense into

em.

On our current course it won't be long before we face a

peddle-to-the-metal-NASCAR-styled economic race to the bottom and a

justice system meting out Biblical sentences. At that point all the UT

poseurs are gonna wish they'd actually learned to ride a horse and

shoot a gun rather than simply magpieing their devotion the 'realness'

of it all. The really RealAmericans' ears are fine-tuned to

distinguish the difference.

Sure, the Dems don't speak to the welder's helper. Neither do the

Republicans, really. Soon enough, just as he was deluded into

believing that the welfare state was the cause of all his misery, he

will realize that his unquestioning devotion to hollow

corporopatriotism has left him just as miserable. He is legion, and

loopy liberals will be lucky to have been consigned to the dustbin of

history when he figures out that, once again, the joke's on him.

When will someone on the right spill the beans on the big plan? What

is the big payoff hidden in mass impoverishment? Who ultimately

benefits? When the opposition has been vanquished, their socialistic

apparatus destroyed, and the nation is still bankrupt, who do you

blame?

As the Democrats are held in thrall by University Communications

Departments, so the Republicans are the creators of the most

sophisticated professional communications apparatus the world has ever

known. Hell, they've managed to make the NFL promo and Janet Jackson's

breast into major cultural transgressions, giving the chubby (though I

absolutely believe well-meaning) housewives the ability to deny what

they really were: crass, calculated events to create interest in, and

income for, giant entertainment corporations. These 'degenerate'

Hollywood corporations, despite the political leanings of their

producer clients, operate from the same free-market pathology as

RealAmerican companies like ConAgra, Halliburton, Caterpillar, Bank of

America, ExxonMobil, ADM, Enron, etc. Viacom, Time-Warner, Disney-ABC

are just as pushy at the public trough. Their employees might tend to

vote for Democrats, but that doesn't mean their boards don't

understand, and participate in the construction of, the great public

disadvantage that is their bottom line.

Anyway, hope you had fun at the game. Best to Terri and the kids.

Robert

Leave the 'Christians' to the Christians

If 80% of the 20% of voters who placed moral values at the top of their list of reasons for voting voted for Bush, and your average progressive voter is an avowed secular humanist, and moral values are actually part of the language of the christian right, and progressives have bought into the idea that liberal is actually a dirty word, I say leave the conversation over moral values to progressive Christians.

The rest of us should focus our energy on the invisible issue of economic justice. As the right has successfully coopted all of the language of 20th-century populism and liberalism they have removed class struggle from the common discussion of politics.

Economic justice is the groundfloor for true progress in the modern world. As long as the majority are focused on blurry moralism let the rest of us begin to battle over the essentials of life in this world.

RealAmericans - Why RedStaters are Smarter than BlueStaters

Here it is. My epic description of the RealAmerican mind.

Working class people who insist on voting for George W. Bush know something Kerry voters can't begin to fathom - the gig is up.

Yes, despite all the exhilarating rollercoastering of the stock market, and the neutered reporting of job creation, the end of the American Century has finally dawned. RedStaters don't necessarily understatnd this on a conscious level, but the years of psyche bashing to which they have exposed themselves provide a visceral understanding that their future only shines as it is polished by unswerving dedication to corporate demands of consumption and religious demands of thought-free fealty.

The unrelenting meanness of right-wing propoganda has created mass infantilism in its believers. While it might be expected that all the toughguy neo-cons would demand endless rounds of tough love to break the cycle of childish political dependency, they, in fact, have created a system that perpetuates the parent-child misbonding to further their own evil intentions.

The helpless whining of RedState conservatives shows that, as with any spoiled child, their sour codependence can be cultivated through the creation of bogeymen. Constant ranting about the pernicious evils of a mythical liberal elite has proven the most effective lie in the conservative book of fairy tales. Afterall, it wouldn't do to frighten the RealAmerican with the reality of corporate crime that will doom many of them to old-age poverty, the truth that the accelerating destruction of the environment that will doom their children to diminished life expectancies, the fact that unchecked US militarism breeds terrorists. No, these are truly frightening realities that, if considered fully, would probably bring the RealAmerican to apoplexy.

And the neo-con right can't have that. The only way it can complete its program of mass impoverishment and capital consolidation is to have all of us working harder for less and completely distracted from the reality of their Machiavelian scheme.

So, I say to all you shell-shocked liberals, find your spines and start spanking the RedState crybabies. Throw off your anti-Bush hairshirts and realize that the Deomcratic Party is an even more compromised piece of shit that the Republican Party. The Republicans have simply distilled their allegiance to unfettered capitalism, while the Democrat thought police have demanded that their adherents erase any memory of social purpose for which the party once stood. If you want to live in a rationally governed republic rather than a theocracy you're going to have to do the hard work without party affiliation. There is not enough time or energy left to both mend a failed machine and save the soul of the nation.

Finally, liberals need to be fully aware of the truth the RealAmericans only suspect. We've had our turn as masters of the universe. It is now time for the less fortunate of the planet to have theirs. Just because we can't continue to dominate the other 90% of the world's population doesn't mean we hate America. We are not unpatriotic for accepting the fate that awaits all great empires. Let the virtues of liberal thought and practice make what appears to be a bleak future of declining economic fortune into an opportunity to live in greater harmony with the world as it is becoming. If George W. Bush is a liar, and liberals have a lock on the truth, the only way to be proven right is for liberals to actually live the truth. You can't decry the depridations of global capital while wearing Nike sneakers. You can't protest the privitization of essential resources while drinking bottled water. You can't protest the war in Iraq while driving an SUV. You can't question a RealAmericans religious convictions while praying for a way to pay your credit card bills.

The Endearing Power of Hate

Every four years I'm amazed that a bunch of bullies who've flunked out of anger management therapy can sweep American voters into their arms and carry them off to polling places. Once deposited at their stations, nearly half of these democratic decision makers choose to bind their futures to a party stewing in averice and hate.

Now the vast majority of these voters don't cherish these socially corrosive values as their own. They are by and large your neighborly working stiff or good-hearted mid-level striver. Their personal values include some smattering of Judeo-Christian charity mixed with the traditional American concepts of individual liberty and personal responsibility. They're not especially simple people having navigated the worlds of child-rearing, frequent career change and mortgageg refinance. Surely in their hearts they appreciate similar effort and struggle in their fellow citizens. Empathy must be present in their consideration of the lives of others.

Despite this recognition of the interconnectedness of the trajectory of their lives and those of citizens who will make another choice in the voting booth, they make the seemingly rational choice to subject themselves and everyone else to another quadrennium of sorrowful descent into festering division, hate and fear.

It's a simple equation to solve. Quick and easy, vote for the draft dodger and deserter to keep you safe in a time of war. Elect the candidate ordained by God to safeguard the separation of church and state. Place in power those who don't even pretend to have anything in common with the people they will subject to the strictures of ever-diminishing opportunity. Buy the lie. Cast the vote. Believe your reward will be waiting with your next paycheck.

If these people stopped to dismantle the lies that overlay the truth perhaps they would make different choices. Not that the viable opposition offers anything more than a tepid imitation of failed policies - they might offer the hope of a slowing rate of decline. But, isn't this actually a better choice? If all we actually have to hope for is the inevitible convergance of an exploding poverty class and a destabilized middle class, the conservative ubber-value of personal greed would demand that we choose the slower course. Grabbing the last bits of what you can, while you can is the best hope of a civilization in moral and economic decline.

Vote for John Kerry, not because he is a better candidate with considered solutions to the depressing effects of global competition. Vote for John Kerry because he'll retain a woman's right to choose, slightly adjust Bush's tax cuts away from his wife's wealth, and put a thin coat of paint of the US presence in the world.

Log Cabin Republicans Reveal the Future

So it seems the Log Cabin Republicans will hold a press event today in NYC to scold the Republican Party for drafting a homophobic platform. Now this is truly newsworthy but not because Log Cabin's oppostition to the Federal Marriage Amendment is new. No, the media should be focused on this event because it objectifies the mass delusion of America.

When a group of people who have been targeted for discriminatory treatement by the political party they support financially and ideologically do anything less than renounce fully their association with that party they display a debased political desperation that should be heralded for its visionary clarity.

This could be any group of people who by nature, economics, race, religion, geography, sexual orientation, or any other force, feel a political affinity to one another and continually lend their support to an institution that exists primarily to harm them and diminish their future porspects. In fact, the Log Cabin Republicans could be any group in the US protesting the mean-spirited GOP. The Republican Party as it is currently constituted serves the interests of no one, not even the corporate fat cats who will eventually be forced from the privately secured mansions by the impoverished mobs demanding a return on their Republican investment.

The fact that homosexuals are in the vanguard of this revelation is not surprising. We've been known to set trends in every area of culture - usually for the worst as we see here.

Let's just hope the Log Cabins surprise us and break fully with the party and begin its unraveling before it's too late.

The Israeli Pentagon Spy

As the Bush administration, buttressed by the neo-conservative ideology of Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, et al, vascilates again toward unwavering support of war criminal Ariel Sharon's Israeli government we are faced with the question of why does Isreal need a mole in the US government?

The US has always been an unfair dealer in the middle-east conflict, siding with persons and plans that would continue to marginalize Palestinians and their rights to land, liberty and life.

If this latest flap ultimately leads to Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities or simply stokes the fires of American fundamentalists to fully stock the Promised Land with Jews, the outcome for the larger world will be the necessity to increase US military aid to a state that becomes less and less viable.

Getting rid of Sharon, tearing down the apartheid wall, guaranteeing the Palestinian right of return and emptying the refugee camps are the only rational steps toward peace in Palestine. In the US, AIPAC must be replaced by an organization of American Jews who seek peace and want to use the billions of US dollars targeted for Israel to find a truly just settlement that recognizes Jewish, Arab and Christian right to seek a harmonious existence.

Unseating Bush and sending his neo-con clique on their way to historical obscurity is the great responsibility of US voters this November.

When in the course of human events....

it becomes necessary for a people to wake the f(*& up and take back control of their nation, it is probably too late.

Who among us really believes that a Kerry victory will turn the inexorable tide toward third-worldism for us workin' saps in the good ol' USofA?

Let's face it we're being gobbled by the global economy and this would have happened with or without the World Bank, WTO, GATT, NAFTA, et al. Our demand for ever-cheaper and more abundant crap to decorate our lives makes it ever more impossible to actually achieve desired level of visual spendor.

Oooops. I'm late for the Beer Bust at The Faultline. See ya later.