Tale of the Smart Globe

My son has a “Smart Globe.” It’s an interactive globe filled with something like a million facts. Press “Angola,” and the smart Globe will reel off facts like a madman in church on Sunday. Fact after fact: “Uganda’s population declined 66% last year.” The thing is, you can plug the Globe in and download facts from the Internet, new, updated facts all the time. Touch Washington D.C. in the present day: “The majority of the American public finally woke up and realized that George W. Bush is an idiot who high-jacked the United States from its citizens. Almost all its citizens except those fortunate enough to have a trust fund, a big-ass inheritance, or a smart-fucking stockbroker. Most of us have sucked dry tit since Bush and his Junta overtook the country, way back when, in quieter times, before the Dogs of War went chasing innocent Iraqi’s. But that’s an oil story, baby, big business babble, share prices and Wall Street mega-deals, instant wealth, almost out of thin air, future predictions based on insider-information, a rigged game. But hey, why are you complainin’? it’s a level playing field, Bubba, the same for everyone regardless of race or creed or Heaven Forbid, sexual orientation. Dog-eat-dog-eat-chicken-eat snapper-eat-octopus-eat-lion-eat-polar bear-eat my obnoxious next door neighbor…The American food-chain. Big got bigger got biggest, until they had all the power in their hands and called all the shots. It was relatively easy. Citizens were stressed out, arguing about abortion, about gun-control, about “reverse discrimination,” and suddenly, before they really knew what had happened, they looked around and their entire town was changed; gone was anything organic -- good-bye street corner market and the little farm where they sold fresh peaches in the summer. Lemon orchards, avocados, walnuts. Quieter times and all that shit…

My son plays with his Smart Globe by the hour. At his age, all I cared about was sports. He’s way smarter than I was at that age. His access to information has increased, shit, math isn’t my gig, 500%? It’s a big number, that’s for sure. It’s just astonishing, mind-blowing, to sit back and think about all the technological gadgets that have appeared in your lifetime. The information, entertainment, news, advertisements, images, sounds, and speed with which it all comes, is mind-boggling.

But anyway, I drift off-point like a tired working stiff on Friday night. Nancy Pelosi, history-making Nancy Pelosi, she of the San Francisco values, whatever the fuck that means, talking with that blonde dingbat, Diane Sawyer, indescribably obnoxious, vacuous, someone you’d abandon all pretense of sensitive manliness and just smack upside the head. “Shut the fuck up, bitch. Your voice makes my head ache. One more word out of you and I’ll fling you off that balcony. That’s fifteen stories, in case you’ve lost count. One-Five. A long fast drop, first step on your journey to becoming a full-blown self-hating cockroach. Or something like that.”

Ye gads, my mind has gone off the rails…violence…eerie thoughts…why is that vicious dog creeping up behind me…who are these people and why are they x-raying my mail…It’s like being scrutinized and ignored in the same instant. Modern life. We all scurry like rats in the proverbial maze. Some run faster, some slower, and some croak by the roadside. Is it really hard and cut and dried like that? Fuck, where was I, and why? I started off with a point, a single point of light, and now it has gone up in crimson smoke.

Ah yes, Nancy Pelosi, talking with Diane…about the War in Iraq, which, if you start with that term, “war,” dooms the dialogue to spin down BS Avenue because, well, the US never declared “War” on Iraq, did it? An inconvenient fact, perhaps, but a fact nonetheless. We Invaded, Poland and Togo at our side, and then we Occupied. And all kind of terrible shit happened, so many young dead, so many more maimed, and for what? The Bush people said it was WMD and Al Qaeda and bringing the light of Democracy to the besieged and despot-ridden Middle East. When none of these justifications held water or made sense, this president -- who slavishly clings to his illusions, like a drowning man to a ball of twine offered from the deck of a cruise ship -- and his brain trust simply created another reason, another justification, another grand cause, when underlying every inch of every ruse is our thirst for that liquid gold buried beneath the sand. We need it, they’ve got it; our beautiful system of wealth concentration runs on that dark, sticky liquid, and we’ll lose millions in the intermediate run if we don’t figure a way to control it. This is heavy, top shelf raging Capitalism; immorality justified by the end game, the Grand Objective of the Powerful. And the young people and the Reservists go over and get blown apart, and there’s not much discord on the home front, no angry mob at the White House gates, no laws you need respect or obey, not even the Big One, the Great One, the majestic United States Constitution, that amazing, flawed document that guided us far and in relative peace, no, you don’t even need to lose sleep about trampling all over that.

When there’s no sheriff in town, there will be mischief.

And Nancy Pelosi sits there chatting with Diane and states in all sincerity that our soldiers haven’t died or been disfigured in vain. What have we gained, Nancy? Tell me, and be real, remove your political mask and speak from your heart. Has Iraq made us better morally, stronger militarily, and more secure economically? Is our standing with the other nations that we are doomed to live on this planet with higher? Is the bottom line that Conservatives always yammer about better now than it was in 2003? Better fundamentally? Better strategically? You stretch the parameters far enough and twist the truth long enough and our dead might seem not to have died in vain…

I go over to my son’s Smart Globe and touch Iraq. The Smart Globe says, “Lost cause…”