Everyday Madness

Ordinary everyday madness, the DOW is up, the DOW is down, investors are wary, investors are jubilant, the recession is over, the recession is just beginning, racism is a relic of the past, racism is embedded in our DNA.

The eagle cries and the raven squawks, a caterpillar must run a gauntlet before it becomes a butterfly, water wears down rock, stupid is as stupid does; Texas Governor Rick Perry has a nice head of hair but before long his Jesus shtick will wear thin. Mitt Romney believes that every dime a corporation earns (steals, siphons, extorts, you decide…) ultimately returns to the people – yeah – Mitt said that on one of his campaign stops. Which people? How much dough does Wal-Mart return to its grunt line employees, the very same ones, mainly women, who are encouraged by Wal-Mart to apply for food stamps and any other government assistance for which they qualify? How slick is that? Are those the people Mitt is talking about? Mitt wants us to think he’s a regular guy, a can of Bud and a ballgame Everyman, but he’s a millionaire like most American politicians and his view is marred by gilded glasses. Mitt thinks the rich deserve everything they have no matter how they got it, just as he believes the poor are responsible for their own fate, their own poverty, their own ills, their own health care, their own college tuition.

In gleaming glass-enclosed Christian churches God wants you, me, every body, to be rich and blessed with a nice head of hair. But many are poor and many are balding, so there is a difference between what God wants and what God delivers. Money on the table, blood in the gutter, Woody Guthrie is trading his guitar for a pistol and Mother Theresa is sharpening a machete. Tempting fate yet again, the armadillo sets off across the two-lane blacktop, just another crapshoot, another turn of the deck, another roll of the dice. Few win, most lose, ageless, timeless, back to the garden and the fall, the primordial swamp, the Big Bang, the meteor shower. Don’t forget, Mr. Bigshot, that you lost your virginity to a 300 pound whore in Tijuana. You’ve come a long way since college: house, luxury car, stock portfolio, purebred dog, trophy wife, young mistress, lovely children and a cholesterol reading below 200. You the man! America has been very, very good to you and the gifts keep coming. Generous tax cuts and free airline miles, the complimentary first class upgrade with champagne and strawberries. Hotel maids earning minimum wage pay more Federal tax than you do. You’re one of the winners.

Ordinary everyday madness, garden variety, as common as bird shit on a statue. A woman in Florida drowns her infant in the bathtub; a man in Texas rapes his daughter because Jesus told him to; ordinary and mad, mad and ordinary, madness from the pulpit, madness from the judge’s bench, madness in the maternity ward and the Governor’s office. Only the graveyards are calm and serene. The captain of the cruise ship has gone AWOL in port and the ship is drifting on the outgoing tide. The passengers are oblivious and the entire crew is below decks, drinking pilfered booze from paper cups and dancing to Lady Gaga.

Summer is almost over.