Notes on the March

I marched on State Street on March 17th, marched against war with an enthusiastic crowd, many young, many more my age or older, Vietnam-era folks, who have deep and lasting memories of another failed war, another lying Administration that widened war on false pretenses. Many of the same people, myself included, marched back in 2003, when President Bush, Dick Cheney, Hillary Clinton, and a compliant, lazy national press were beating the drums for the invasion of Iraq. We marched as Shock & Awe unfolded on Fox and CNN, and retired generals gushed about the supreme firepower of the United States military. Predictably, the US rolled over Saddam’s pathetic forces, our tanks rumbling largely unimpeded all the way to Baghdad. We found no weapons of mass destruction, of course, no chemical stores, no missiles pointed at Washington or Tel Aviv. Saddam never posed a threat to the United States – and millions of protestors around the world knew it. We knew that Iraq was a third-rate military power at best, even as Bush and Cheney were comparing Saddam to Hitler. Pure fear tactics, a shell game.

Now that we’re mired in a civil war, the talking heads and Administration mouthpieces tell us that we cannot up and leave; disaster will result, enormous bloodshed, the US will lose all credibility (as if we have any left to lose), our vital national interests will be irreparably damaged. The same false choices were offered during the Vietnam conflict, but lo and behold, none of those horrible predictions came true. Yes, the Communists overran the south and forced the US to evacuate, and unleashed a flood of refugees, but today the US has nearly normal relations with Vietnam; we sell the Vietnamese Coca-Cola and iPods and GAP jeans and financial services and god knows what else. Vietnam is not a threat to its neighbors.

What the anti-war protestors knew in 2003 the majority of Americans know now – that on the basis of trumped-up intelligence and fear-mongering, the US invaded and occupied a sovereign nation that posed no military threat to our country. We knew the Invasion would not be a cake walk, and that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were wrong; we knew that Iraqi children would not throw flowers at the feet of American soldiers; we knew that age-old sectarian hatreds, bottled for decades by oppression and suppression, would erupt.

Millions of us knew that history was about to repeat; our political leaders refused to listen, and now, we are doomed to suffer the consequences of their vanity and ignorance.

FEAR WITHOUT LOATHING

Bet on Fear, it’s a sure thing
Renewable and inexhaustible
The moving shadow at the edge of our campfire
The unknown sound in the middle of the night

If it’s not hate-filled Muslims
Child predators
Catholic priests
Male-pattern baldness
Impotence
Germ-laden hotel carpets
Identity theft
Credit card fraud
Computer viruses
E. coli
SARS
Avian flu
Arthritis
Discolored teeth & foul breath

It will be some old Fear made new
Trumpeted on the Tube
Echoing on the radio dial
Be afraid
Very afraid

Second-Rate Power

I was listening to Noam Chomsky on KPFK today, good leftist radio, and Chomsky was talking about Iraq and the results of a US-sponsored poll that revealed that 87% of the Iraqi population wants the US to end its occupation on a set timetable.

Of course, the US regime could give a shit about this poll, even though Bush and his posse are committed to fostering democracy in Iraq. Democracy? Isn’t democracy concerned with the will of the majority? Not in Bush’s twisted Universe. Let’s not forget that Bush lost the popular vote to Al Gore in 2000, but got bailed out by the Supreme Court and installed in the White House.

Chomsky went on and on, detailing US misdeeds, crimes, schemes, machinations, lies, mostly in connection with the Middle East and control of oil, the liquid that makes the global economy go round. If the US loses control of or access to oil, it could easily become a second-rate power, little better than Italy or France or Portugal; and how would Americans, encouraged by decades of official myth-making, deal psychologically with second-rate status?

That will be a hard pill to swallow, but it certainly seems that we are headed that direction. Sooner or later we will lose our ability to call the shots and rig the world for our own benefit. Then we’ll be like the San Francisco 49’s or the Oakland Raiders, once iconic teams that have fallen on lean times and can’t rise out of the cellar. Other nations will heap ridicule upon us the same way we have for decades heaped ridicule upon them. Hugo Chavez will drop his pants and piss on the White House steps.

Comeuppance is a terrible thing.

When did JFK’s New Frontier become this shit-train run and ruled by Bush and Cheney? What happened to our idealism? Or was all that stuff a hoax, a smokescreen, a big fucking lie? Camelot will not rise this time, not from the nuclear dust. Bush has set us on a collision course with disaster, and if you think there’s a savior in the wings, forget it. John Edwards is a fag, remember? Hillary has bigger balls than Barrack Obama. John McCain is a wingnut. Rudy G is impotent.

Meanwhile, Noam Chomsky drones on. I wish more people were listening.

Everywhere

The bastards are everywhere
Like lice or locusts
They come and go
In swarms

Chop off their heads and three more grow back
They are indestructible
Immune to poison gas and cyanide
To reason and moderation

Is there peace?
Or solitude?
Or silence?
A moment to commune with God or the Big Dipper?

Does anything we do matter?
To what do all the tears and agony amount
When we’re dust in a box in the ground?

The bastards are everywhere,
Turn around,
You’ll see

The Best the OC has to Offer?

We don’t watch a lot of Tube on the Balcony. Incessant Tube chatter drives the Proprietor mad, makes him irascible, and somewhat dangerous; he’s been known to throw empty beer cans at the screen, particularly when he sees the ghostly image of George W. Bush or Deadeye Dick Cheney. “War criminals!” he screams. “Asshole-motherfucking-shithead-bastards.”

It can get pretty ugly. American Tube fare mirrors the emptiness and vacuity of the nation. The average, unthinking, moronic American is captivated by crap. Just last evening the Proprietor, after reading the latest edition of the Nation (depressing news about inequality and official indifference to the rule of law, genocide in Africa, etc.,) was channel-surfing in search of Mexican League baseball or highlights from Spring Training, when he happened upon the Real Housewives of Orange County on BRAVO. Within twenty seconds he was muttering, “Sweet mother of Jesus, what the Hell is this?” His instinct for self-preservation told him to switch the Tube off and flee, but his feet disobeyed his brain and his eyes remained fixed on the absurd, pointless spectacle.

Orange County? Since when does anyone give a fuck about Orange County? And if these shit-for-brains women are the best the OC has to offer, if they are the poster ladies for the good life, then we are doomed to stand outside the Gates of Hell with our brains on fire. Talk about taking the trivial to a new level! Word up, OC housewives: excessive use of Silicon and Botox and hair care products can stunt your intellectual growth and turn you into a pathetic excuse for a human being. Your daily comings and goings are simply not that interesting, and filming them doesn’t make them more dramatic or arresting. Should I brush my teeth or take a crap? Wow! Should I shop at Nieman Marcus or the GAP? Corn flakes or granola? Should I get a Brazilian or have my asshole bleached – or both?

Up in Heaven, in a dark corner of the All Saints Bar & Grill, Charles Bukowski is laughing, Henry Miller is saying “I told you so,” and Hunter S. Thompson is filling a bong and placing a bet on the Knicks-Pacers game.

Liberal Forms of Torture

Wouldn’t it be funny, not to mention appropriate, if old Teddy Kennedy bent Ann Coulter over a chair and fucked her from behind? Would Coulter consider being fucked from behind by an old Liberal a form of torture?

Interesting to contemplate, though I don’t give people of Ann Coulter’s ilk much thought, except to wonder why anyone with a moderate IQ gives what she says or writes any credence. Do they give her the benefit of the doubt because she’s thin and blonde? How do they know she doesn’t spend her evenings sucking on a crack pipe?

Coulter is the poster-girl for this dumbed-down, sound-bite age. If you read newspapers or listen to radio broadcasts from other countries, the world looks completely different than it does from the commercial perspective of the American corporate media. The American media treats citizens (consumers) like morons, too stupid to consider the many sides of an issue.

Instead of background and context, we get the carnival life & times of Anna Nicole Smith. While the world around us burns, we get American Idol. While George W. Bush and his criminal posse rape the middle class and invade other nations, we get frantic over Dancing with the Stars – all of whom happen to be has-beens. We get Diane Sawyer and Robin Roberts fawning over one another breathlessly, like a couple of teenagers who recently discovered that they are attracted to members of their own sex.

Now, suppose Dick Cheney got to feeling frisky and decided to bend Ann Coulter over a chair and fuck her up the ass. Would that be OK with Ann, even considered an honor? I don’t know and don’t particularly care. As Bob Dylan so aptly put it, “People are crazy and times are strange.”

Amen, brother.

Poem - She's Dead

They know the contents of her stomach
Speculate on her state of mind
The father of her child
As if her death is the last piece of news
On the last day of life on Earth
They interview old friends, ex-friends, bartenders and cab drivers,
Attorneys, photographers, manicurists, and hypnotists;
Her image clogs the Tube night after night
Platinum hair and ruby lips
Blowing kisses for the cameras
Sad and tragic and dead
Her body cold, cold, cold

Why can’t they leave her alone?