An Early Morning Rant

Sometimes the general stupidity and injustice of this crazy world of ours is too much to fathom, and all a thinking person can do is launch a rant to purge the system and restore some perspective, compassion and humanity.

A line from a song sticks in my head -- “I want a reason for the way things are…” -- or something like that. It’s quarter to six in the morning and I can’t pull the precise quote from my tired brain; it’ll come later, rising from my subconscious when I don’t need it. I’ve got Springsteen’s new album, Devils & Dust, playing at low volume, and a cup of java at my elbow.

Indeed, give me a reason for Tom DeLay, a morally corrupt sonofabitch who rose from exterminating vermin in Texas to leadership of the House of Representatives, where he employs his awesome powers to service the whims of wealthy campaign contributors.

Give me a reason for the stark disparity of wealth I see when I stroll past Santa Barbara High School on my way to the job; Mexican kids pouring off the MTD bus while their white peers swoop into the parking lot in sparkling VW Jetta’s BMW’s, Range Rovers, Volvo’s, and Mercedes SUV’s – sixteen and seventeen-year-old kids coming down from the high ground off APS and Sycamore Canyon or the super exclusive private lanes of Montecito. Life is good in those locales, money no problem, possibilities almost endless, college a near certainty. Daddy will provide. Daddy will rescue when the trail turns rough or the world strikes back.

With no wealthy relatives to call my own, or any money to speak of now, a twenty-three year old rattletrap Honda in the driveway, I have trouble understanding where the money comes from. How do the parents of those fortunate kids make the jack in the first place?

And then there’s Arnold, the celebrity Governor of California, who appeared on Sean Hannity’s conservative echo chamber the other night to denounce the evil “special interests” who have our state in a death grip, failing to mention, of course, the millions of dollars he has taken from Big Business, millionaires, car dealers…Arnold is either stone stupid, delusional, or a better actor that most of us have given him credit for. To sit there and claim to be the “people’s” Governor with a straight face…Jesus…

When will we learn to see through the celebrity flash and dazzle and pass when people like Arnold decide to leap into politics? Such people are ill-equipped to handle the rough and tumble that politics entails. It requires mental agility to make the switch from the movie racket, where a bankable star is fawned over, pampered, served like a pasha, and deferred to at every turn; where the media offers nothing but cream-puff questions about trivial bullshit, and nothing you do really affects people’s lives.

Arnold’s a doofus, out of his depth in Sacramento, out of ideas, reduced to ranting about greedy public employee unions and incompetent teachers. You know damn well he longs for the days when his crowds were happy, adoring, and eager to “Join Arnold.”

Hey, pal, those days are gone. Welcome to the real world.