Reading Barbara Ehrenreich

Got nothing that important to say. Who has anything important to say? Hasn’t it all been said, by poets and writers and mystics and seers? Henry Miller, where are you now? Watch the NBA Finals on the tube or the Daily Show or some dry-ass government access program that features white right-wing Republicans pawing over thirteen-year-old Thai virgins. Vapid, no wonder millions of Americans take anti-depressants, sleeping pills, bladder control pills, blood pressure pills, etc. A nation of pill-poppers and Bible thumpers, and no hypocrisy anywhere in sight. We babble for hours about gay marriage, how immoral it is, how dangerous to the national moral fabric, but it’s perfectly acceptable to drop 1000lb. smart-bombs on innocent Iraqi civilians. Morality, American style. What a country! It’s a wonderful place to be really, really rich.

Sorry, been reading Barbara Ehrenreich again, and while she stimulates my mind, she always depresses the hell out of me. Are we fucked, Barbara, royally fucked? “Definitely, my friend! Definitely!” Yeah, I know, I was just hoping for a light in this cave, a way out of and beyond the Wasteland of Bush Jr. It’s a carnival house of mirrors, with two-headed clowns and men with three arms roaming about with scythes and loaded pistols. Hear ye, hear ye, if you are not white like Tom DeLay, and worshipping with Pat Robertson, and banging Ann Coulter on the side, forget about making it here. We will eat you alive if you’re lucky, or let you die slow if you’re not.

Right, this is the American Dream, to roam the landscape freely and without official interference, to own the freedom to break the law from time to time, drive a little tipsy, puff a fat joint at a Neil Young show, perhaps engage in an extra-marital affair, and still live to tell about it. Christ, these days there’s some addled Christian avenger at every turn. Smoke some dope? Fifteen years. Drive drunk? See you in the lethal injection chamber. Covet another man’s wife? Death by dismemberment. Yes, this is our age in all its perversity. And that’s only the bad news from the social front, wait till you see what we have in store for you on the economic side. Oh, boy, we are going to ream you so thoroughly that you will beg for more. We will shut your factory, outsource your job to India, beat unions into submission, and oh this is great, transfer the maximum amount of risk from the shoulders of government to your shoulders. Oh, baby! Health insurance…gasoline…four walls and a roof…you know what? You’re going down to the bottom rung of the ladder. We’ll preach the gospel of self-reliance and free trade and global competition and rig the system so it’s You’re Own Your Own, Dude, all across the land, and then watch you slink your poor, stupid ass down to the corner Wal-Mart to buy some shit made in China by a twelve-year-old kid who is chained to the fucking machine, with a cup of water and a bowl of rice to eat. Yeah, you’ll forget all that harsh reality when you come into our Hall of Bargains. You’ll gasp, you’ll drool, you’ll beat your chest, you’ll jump up and down, you’ll scream, you’ll pass gas, you’ll belch just like your Uncle Clem does after every meal. Your pig eyes will pop out of your head and your teeth will rattle in the gums.

America. America. America. Can you hear me now? You’re in Good Hands. In God We Trust. (And in his holy name we steal, maim, destroy, rape, violate, penetrate, eviscerate, you get the picture.) Yeah, it’s just another night in the burbs, middle-American bliss, staring slack-jawed at American Idol – or some hyperactive couple in the midst of remodeling a ski lodge in eastern Wyoming. Doug, should we vault the ceiling or demo the living room? Brought to you by Chevrolet! Ask your doctor about Cialis. Old men in retirement homes, amped on Viagara, chasing male nurses down the brightly-lit halls, pawing underage volunteers sent over from the high school. Seventy-nine-year-old man with a hard-on that lasts four hours. Hard as when he was seventeen! It’s a miracle. How do them smart people do that? Make a limp dick rise like a skyscraper. Maybe it’s God’s will. You remember what Tom Waits said about God and the devil, don’t you? “There ain’t no devil/that’s just God when he’s drunk.” Thanks for clearing that up, Tom. You’re probably right. God on a bender and messing with his little invention, the human race. I’m drunk and angry and I think I’ll pour some molten lava on ‘em, just to see what they’ll do. He he he. Laughing when he snaps his fingers and makes it happen. Sound of steam hissing from the Earth.

Barbara, baby, this is all your fault.