NOTES FROM SRI LANKA.
(September '04)
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9/5/04
Hel-lo.
Are you who you claim to be? Okay then. And how about me? Am I the person I should be, or just a cheap knock-off made in Aldebron? Can't answer that one? Neither can I, damn it. But I've got a hunch... just a hunch.
Actually,
I think I am the real me, and the doppelganger Joe Perry is gone -- faded into
the ether, thanks to Mitch Macaphee, Big Green's chief mad science advisor, and
his latest invention... the entropic therapy hero. That's right, it's a
sandwich. Mitch took the culinary discoveries he made last 
week
and worked them into life-giving medicine that heals the metaphysical rift that
produces the Sustained Super-Light Entropy Syndrome (SSLES™) doubles I've been
telling you about. Sure, a hero may be nothing but a sandwich, but I'm told one
(or two) a day helps keep the antisocial doppelganger away. Works for me.
How did Mitch do it? Jarlsberg. Simple as that. A man with a truly encyclopedic memory, Mitch dimly recalled reading a monograph in a mad science journal (in Swedish, no less) that identifies Jarlsberg cheese as a binding agent for human beings experiencing molecular displacement of various kinds. Of course, the piece didn't mention the SSLES™ phenomenon because it hadn't yet been discovered, but Mitch applied the theory to the new circumstance in his characteristically bold fashion. The overstuffed entropic therapy hero (really more like a club sandwich... or poor boy, perhaps) calls for a good 4 to 6 ounces of Jarlsberg -- enough to shove the two halves of a SSLES™-affected sumo wrestler together, no problem. It took a couple of days (I was splitting my two sandwiches with Matt, who claimed the coleslaw) but my delinquent double disappeared and hasn't darkened anyone's door since. Mitch tells me a maintenance dose of one (or maybe two) hero a week (no chips) should suffice.
I
threw myself into this miracle cure before thinking through all the implications
of my double's disappearance ... like who is going to show for his arraignment?
Something tells me it's going to be me. So I get the rap for 
all
the mayhem (or hooliganism) he's engaged in, because all my doppelganger alibis
are now useless. From now on, any crime committed by someone who looks like me
is down to me. I hope they have a recording studio in the Colombo central
jail... and I don't mean those interrogation room cassette machines you always
see on British cop shows ("Deputy chief inspector Flanagan has entered the
interrogation room at 18:03..."). I suppose if I keep my nose
clean, they may allow me to use the police commissioner's editing suite... when
he's not hip deep in a project, of course. (Ever since the songmeister general
John Ashcroft rose to international prominence, top cops, wardens, and police
court judges everywhere have been trying their hand at music, with fairly
predictable results.) Otherwise, it will just have to be "sing along with
Mitch" until my hitch is up. (I have a feeling Mitch might end up in the
slam with me if word gets round about his experimental sandwich therapies --
around here, that's practicing medicine without a license. Ask any sandwich
shop. No really -- go ahead.)
It's
a lot quieter around here since the Jarlsberg iced the doubles. (Now that's
complex scatology.) In fact, the only double left is that of Marvin (my personal
robot assistant), who is not a "humanoid life form," but a
"machine". In spite of this obvious fact, Mitch did the sandwich
therapy on him, sliding a hero into his front service access cavity. But that
rash act 
simply
turned our mechanical friend into a walking lunch box (or medicine cabinet,
depending on whom you ask). His double is still dropping in at irregular
intervals, scaring the neighbors with his unorthodox arrangements of porcelain
miniatures. We've been trying to make the best of a bad situation while Mitch
completes his study of the robotics dimension of SSLES™.
It's slow going. (Though he did find the time to put some refrigerator coils in
Marvin's service cavity, so that stuff stays fresh longer and Mitch can reach
for a cold one while he's experimenting.)
No News Is Good News. Well, sort of. We're still proceeding on our sophomore CD effort, albeit slowly (hit a few bumps here and there). Patience, my friends...all will be revealed...
Live
From New York. I confess that I did not watch even a single minute of the
Republican National Convention this week (though I did see part of Sunday's
enormous peace/justice march on C-SPAN). This is probably the first election
year in god knows how long that I didn't see at least one RNC speech. The reason
is simple -- these fuckers have been in my face for the last 3-1/2 years, adding
to their astounding record of perfidy and deceit virtually every day. Everything
they do or say is amplified a thousand times by the reactionary multi-media echo
chamber manned by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and other seemingly drug-addled
morons. I don't need to listen to their shit even one more time, thank you very
much. Still, from what I 
have
been able to glean from excerpted highlights, it was a remarkable freak show --
one that portrayed a party faithful that has seriously lost touch with anything
that resembles reality.
I mean, the Democratic convention was strange -- kind of contrived, like a rock festival -- but the RNC bordered on the surreal. That enormous video screen directly behind the rostrum constantly running patriotic images made some of the speakers look like characters in an animated cartoon. (I'd have to say that Zell Miller was the Spongebob Squarepants of the show, delivering his incoherent rant against the backdrop of a bizarro animated circle of American flags.) Then there was the amazingly inappropriate spectacle of the entire hall of delegates singing along with the Army Air Corps theme while the screen shows a video montage of soldiers and high-ticket military gear on the roll. I could only think of my old man, who had been so filled with patriotic newsreels by the time he reached Germany as an infantryman in 1945, he was wondering where the music was as they marched into harm's way. This type of demonstration in self-delusion does remarkably poor service to those unlucky bastards slogging their way through this insane Iraq adventure, particularly with the dramatic recent uptick in American casualties -- more than eleven hundred in the past month alone, with attacks on U.S. soldiers running at around sixty a day. It was a bit like Dubya's "mister dress-up" appearance on the USS Lincoln last year. (When it comes to real war, fuckers like Dubya, Cheney, Ashcroft, and Wolfowitz wave their flags quite far from the shooting, rest assured.)
It
bears remembering that this crowd spends a good part of its day scoffing at war
wounds as "superficial." This is the Rovian line of attack against
Kerry -- one you would think might hold substantial risks for them, given the
fact that severely wounded people are coming home from Iraq by the hundred. Not
so -- once again, the reactionary media machine ensures that even their most
ludicrous assertions get positive play -- a massive orchestra against the
opposition's kazoo. And then there are Democrats like Zell Miller, whose best
performance wasn't on the rostrum, but rather afterwards when he flew off the
handle at Chris Mathews, virtually challenging him to a duel (!) Now THAT's good
television. One would hope Dubya's team trots out old Zell quite regularly on
the campaign trail from here on in. Maybe he'll even make White House press
officer one day.
Of course the real news of the week was that someone came within ten feet of the malodorous Dick "5 Deferments" Cheney. I think that may be a new record.
luv u,
jp
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9/12/04
Say what?
Greetings from beyond the great waters. Hail and welcome, o inquisitive vagabond on the byroads of cyberspace. Pull up a packet and I'll regale you with tales of mirth and intrigue, all guaranteed 99 and 44/100 percent true... on this you have the assurance of all your trusted friends in Big Green. Take that to the bank. So what if they laugh? A little ridicule is good for the character.
Landed
in the dock this week, as predicted. Had to face the music for all that shit my
evil twin did a couple of weeks ago. I tried to get our mad science advisor
Mitch Macaphee to invent me an airtight alibi, but that proved beyond even his
estimable capabilities. (It's one thing designing a hatch seal that can maintain
the integrity of a pressurized cabin in deep space; quite another to maintain
the integrity of a squat-house rock musician who claims to see everything
twice.) I've got to tell you, I sounded like a babbling idiot trying to explain
Mitch's Sustained Super-Light Entropy Syndrome (SSLES™) phenomenon and how it
could create a "meany-me" who did all these nasty things I'm being
accused of. Naturally, the first thing the constables did was put me through a
battery of drug tests. I won't discuss the findings (positive for Jarlsberg),
except to say that it more than confirmed their suspicions about me... namely,
that I am a "goof ball", or what the court psychologist refers to as a
"major ding-dong."
So
what's the rap? Twenty years hard labor? This ain't the states, my friend.
They've given me six months probation, putting me under the observation of a
specially trained psycho-constable. That turned out to be Marvin (my personal
robot assistant). I have to report my movements to him for the
next six months, during which time he'll work up a profile on me to determine
whether or not I should be remanded to the local psych ward for closer
observation. (I was wondering about those night courses Marvin's been taking...
I thought it was pot throwing or something.) Talk about humiliating! Reporting
my movements to an antiquated automaton who doesn't 
know
shit from a tree. Still, I suppose it beats the provincial lock-up, which I
understand has undergone a recent makeover with a little help from CACI
International. (I don't respond well to dog collars and electrodes, quite
frankly.)
Actually, in practice, this new probation regime hasn't been all that bad. There's a better than even chance of getting Marvin's double as my minder, for one thing -- he's a hell of a lot more forgiving than the genuine article. Doppelganger Marvin actually lets me do what I want, when I want, so long as I spend a little time with him every day, helping him arrange his porcelain miniatures. (He's really serious about those little things. It's...well....weird.) After that, I can go down to the pub or up on the roof of the Cheney Hammer Mill... whatever. The real Marvin, on the other hand, sticks to the letter of my probation order. I think he's bucking for a promotion. (Whenever Matt and John want to get me into the studio, they have to pay Marvin the standard bribe, not a penny less. Hard-ass.)
But
enough about me. There have been some changes around here while I've been
grappling with my tedious personal problems. Our friend and colleague Trevor
James Constable has departed for his California home. Even Mitch Macaphee is
making noises about leaving... and who can blame him? Just a few days ago, the
man-sized tuber ran amok, driven to hysteria by Mitch's repeated 
testing
and sample-taking. Tubey broke a bunch of test tubes and stuff, then rode up and
down main street on a street sweeper, chirping the tires and taking corners at a
bone-chilling 15 mph. We very nearly had to borrow one of our neighbor Gung-Ho's
tranquilizer guns to get him under control. In the end, the local constables had
to restrain tubey and take him over for questioning. Next thing you know, Mitch
is looking through travel brochures. Damn -- it's going to be quiet around here.
Unless Marvin's double finds those bagpipes again.
WEEKLY RANT.
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
Childhood's
End. Does this election seem familiar to you? There is a kind of depressing
sameness to them all. Despite the specious claim that this is a whole different
world post 9/11, nothing much has changed in presidential politics, except that
the prices have gone up a bit (i.e. the corporations have to pay more to get
their way than they did in 2000). There's the same kind of fear-mongering we all
enjoyed so much during the cold war, the same infantile ad-hominem attacks, the
same determined avoidance of critical issues. What's changed? Bush/Cheney would
tell you that now (post 9/11) we know that oceans can't protect us... but when
did anyone ever think that in the last 60 years? My generation grew up in
the shadow of the 
long-range
bomber and MIRV'ed ICBM, a shadow that has never truly dissipated. You mean,
someone felt safe?
I've said it before in this blog, I know, but I was gritting my teeth in anticipation of an explosion years before 9/11 for the plain, undeniable reason that our government has made it its business over the last century to meddle in the affairs of an astounding number of other nations, either through direct military force, covert action, or economic and diplomatic pressure -- and quite often all three. It still amazes me when people talk as if the U.S. has been walking around on tip toe or that it has only sought to "do good" in the world, in the idiom of old zig-zag Zell Miller. What assertion could be more easily disproved? And yet, even if they were so inclined, our politicians cannot speak of it because they would be cast as "blaming America first" and calling our troops nasty names, like "occupiers" instead of "liberators," etc. (When you criticize the policymakers' bad choices, they always make it sound like you're criticizing "America" or the poor fuckers sent to implement those bad choices.) It is this inability and unwillingness to look honestly and critically at our international policy that is allowing it to go so desperately wrong all the time.
No
politician wants to be the bearer of bad news, but honestly -- it's time for us
as Americans to get with the program and stop clinging to all this "feel
good" bullshit about how our nation can do no wrong and how nothing ever
needs to be paid for. This kind of self delusion is kid's stuff, and it's
killing us, quite frankly -- over 1,000 in Iraq alone, not counting stateside
suicides and other deaths. There'll be many more if we don't compel our
"leaders" to face facts and be accountable for what they do. I just
heard Doug Feith on NPR 
blaming
the burning catastrophe he helped create in Iraq on "Baathist tyranny and
misrule". That little snot-nosed bastard is one of the geniuses who thought
up this Iraq enterprise. As Naomi Klein has so helpfully pointed out, they had
a plan for post-war Iraq and were able to implement it quite as intended -- a
fee-market, shock-therapy, mass privatization bonanza that's now fueling the
growing two-front insurgency. This is key: It's not that their plan to do good
went wrong -- it's that their plan to do bad went right. Now
they're planning sequels in Iran, Syria, and quite probably elsewhere (which is
what all this passing intelligence to Israel's Likud leadership is probably all
about...comparing notes on planned future operations). These wars won't be any
prettier than the current one.
Reward these people with re-election, and they'll treat it as a mandate for more pointless wars. Trust me on this.
luv u,
jp
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9/19/04
Landa goshen...
Jailer? Hey, jailer! Let's have some water over here! What the hell is this, Gitmo? I got my rights, even if I done my wrongs, though that's not the way it happened. Wasn't me. In the immortal courtroom words of Warren Oates on The Big Valley, "Nobody coulda' seen me do-it!" (Never say that at your own murder trial.)
Well,
as you've probably surmised by now, my psychological probation has proven to be
a bit more demanding than I had originally anticipated. Of course, my probation
officer is none other than Marvin (my personal robot assistant), and while that
may make it sound as if I'd been blessed with good 
fortune, it is not the
case. Yes, Marvin is technically my robot. Yes, he was built by Mitch Macaphee
to serve me. But Marvin's personal history (painstakingly chronicled in this
column) includes substantial experience in law enforcement... experience that
has molded him profoundly. He now follows the orders of his superiors in the
constabulary, not of me, and being a robot, he executes them rather inflexibly.
So when they suggest that he put me in an 8 x 10 room for the night with no
water, no illumination, no shoes, and a tin can to piss in...well... he does
it. Not a lot of wiggle room there.
This
is the third time this week I've been put in "solitary" -- actually,
just a little annex that was once the foreman's office at the now abandoned 
Cheney Hammer Mill. There's an old conference table in here, a couple of wooden
chairs, and some dented old filing cabinets stuffed with ancient records of
hammer-making days long forgotten. Sometimes I'll sift through these files in a
vain attempt to entertain myself. Looks like 1949 was a pretty good year for
hammers; so was 1956. '53 and '59 not so good. (They had a fire that last year.)
And then there was the great hammer blight in 1962, which almost wiped out the
whole industry. Heads were falling off hammers all over South Asia, and the
Cheney Hammer Mill was put under quarantine for three full months. (I found
these textbook slides of the various stages of this deadly disease -- basically,
if it gets to the advanced stage, the hammer 
is
screwed.) One memo talks about an incineration pyre in the courtyard that burned
night and day for weeks on end. If the company hadn't added a line of
screwdrivers, its doors would have closed right then and there.
Yeah,
so... as you can see, I am going a little stir-crazy in here. Who wouldn't? But
I guess the experience will make for a colorful and engrossing psychological
report at the end of my probation. Hell, a few more days in this room and I'll
be wearing a chicken suit and 
playing
a banjo -- that should look good to the officer on duty. Marvin's much less
serious double will at least lend me his banjo, so I can make a convincing try
at it. As for the real Marvin, well... I've talked to his inventor about how I
can get some measure of control over his decision making. Of course, Mitch has
been busy preparing for an extended academic gathering in Europe, writing
papers, making phone calls, renting laboratory smocks and other mad scientist paraphernalia,
and so on. He has agreed to look into it before he goes, but so far no potato.
(Matt tells me he's been tinkering with TV remotes, pointing them at Marvin and
punching numbers in, then swearing. Sounds promising.)
Somebody
just slipped a note under the door. Maybe it's one of those Amnesty
International letters -- you know, "You are not forgotten," or 
something
like that. Hmmm. Strike that. It's a pizza flyer. At least the delivery guys
know I'm in here. Trouble is, I haven't got a phone. (I'm one of those Luddites
who isn't yakking into a microscopic cell phone through every minute of my
existence.) Maybe I should get me one -- one of them schmeenzy ones with a
television, video camera and ice box. Then I can have my one phone call... and
it would go like this: Pizza man pizza? This is Elvis. I want a couple of
large pies. No make it four. No, six, double cheese....
WEEKLY RANT.
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
Talk
Is Cheap. Things have been going pretty septic in Iraq, you may have
noticed. Three hundred Iraqis dead over the last week; the U.S. employing the
tactics of Ariel Sharon (firing missiles on crowds and ambulances with
helicopter gunships) while implementing the strategy of Ariel Sharon (invade
Iraq, then Iran, then Syria, then...); a bloody mess all around. What is the
topic of choice this week on yak radio? Dan Rather and the radical
anarcho-syndicalists at CBS, who will stop at nothing to visit defeat upon the
house of Bush. I got treated to a two-hour dose of radio noise this week, and
I've got to tell you -- these fuckers are obsessing. They're like 
CNN
with OJ's white Explorer. Limbaugh, O'Reilly, and on down the line, it's been
blather about Rather, the flaming liberal. Is this the same Rather who, not so
long ago, called Bush his "commander in chief" (Private
Dan Rather?) and said that if Bush told him to jump he'd ask "How
high"? The same Rather who, along with his fellow "radical" news
anchors, dutifully met Dubya's plan to invade Iraq with spiffy logos, more
generals than the Pentagon, and a total lack of skepticism about some very
questionable administration claims? Yep, same guy.
Pssst -- you "conservative" talk show listeners out there. Prepare yourselves for a little shock. Ready? Back in the sixties and seventies during the Vietnam War draft, wealthy and politically connected people actually had special options for helping their kids avoid military service. I know this is hard to believe, but there you have it. And though many of you probably want to believe that Dubya magically jumped 100,000 places ahead in line to get into the Air National Guard with aptitude test scores that were barely above tree-level, well...he most definitely had a little help. Cheer up. He's president! Get....the fuck...over...it. I mean, frankly, this Dan Rather conspiracy is pretty thin gruel, even for yak radio....but then most of those clowns keep running around the same four rhetorical bases over and over again anyway. (And two of them are called "Hillary"). It would be hard to exaggerate how moronic these shows are, but that's the secret of their success. Simple answers to every question. Anger catharsis. Xenophobia. We're the best-ism. And no factual support necessary.
Listened
to a little bit of Mark Levine on WABC the other day. First thing I heard was
some rant about our "god-given democratic rights" that made it sound
as if they just fell out of the sky. Then there was some boilerplate 
Hillary
bashing. After that, he talked to a 12 year old ("My class is full of
liberals!!"), a 15 year old (another young conservative), and somebody
fishing for free tickets. The one person who disagreed with him got cut off
("Get off the phone!"). Then the Rather rampage. Finally, the last
thing I heard was Levine playing recordings of the four armed services theme
songs, calling out the name of the service at the start of each one. (Something
like what they did at the RNC.) Now that's quality programming! I'm glad
kids are listening to this. Then I heard Michael Savage, who complained about
the inclusion of Caesar Chavez in a school textbook under "Great Men"
(He was just a "political organizer" and an "agitator" --
what's so great about that?) and claimed that the Clinton Administration
was controlled by Communist China. Whoa.
Didn't hear much about the 1027 dead Americans in Iraq, or the fact that we're fighting Sunnis, Shiites, and Turkmen now. No easy answers there, I guess.
luv u,
jp
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9/26/04
Hengist? Horsa?
Where am I? Man, what a strange dream! I was designing counterfeit mortgage bond certificates for two men named "horse" -- not Dan Blocker. Then there was this black out, see? And a juggling bishop on a unicycle sang this champion song about how there was "a little chicken in the moon." Ever get one of those? No? Oh, well.
Well,
I'm out of the sweat box, and high time, too. Kudos to good old fashioned
scientific know-how... and more specifically, to the 
dogged
efforts of Mitch Macaphee, now on his way to a cushy international conference on
something or other. Our faithful mad science advisor modified a common TV remote
in such a way that I might use it to punch a clue into Marvin (my personal robot
assistant), whose strict interpretation of my probation order resulted in
prolonged solitary confinement under the meanest condition. (You know, rice
without a-roni, and all the rest of it.) Hey -- just a few keystrokes on the
remote put an end to that nightmare pronto, and Marvin has been more than
accommodating ever since. It's pretty clever the way the thing works. Press one
button and he walks forward; another sends him backwards. Hit "eject"
and his refrigerator door flies open. "Menu" makes his brain glow. You
can even get fancy with it -- hold down mute and press the volume key, and
Marvin yanks out the bagpipes to render "Danny Boy". (Mute + channel
selector gets you the theme to Hogan's Heroes.)
Anyway,
it's good to see the light of day once again, not to mention the now somewhat
unfamiliar faces of my friends, neighbors, and musical comrades. Funny how just
a few weeks of confinement can make strangers out of even those closest to you.
Hell, Matt's my brother, and I almost didn't recognize him -- if it
weren't for the trademark Amish headwear and the binoculars, I would have walked
right past the fucker. John looked different, as well -- he wasn't 
wearing
his Cat in the Hat tee shirt; that threw me a bit. (Must be in the wash.)
And the man-sized tuber had some kind of makeover... his husk seems much redder
and...well... more husky. I think that may be the unintended result of
all that micro-biological testing that Mitch Macaphee subjected him to. He's
like a whole different kind of vegetable, now. (Also, he seems to have acquired
some kind of dolly-like conveyance which he uses for a pleasure vehicle. And
yes, it does look strange.)
There
seems to be some sort of maneuver going on at our neighbor Gung-Ho's place. His
firing range has been shaking with explosions since a couple of nights ago. This
might be one of his annual mock battles, but it's a little hard to tell, since
no one really wants to get close enough to ask him about it. The best we can
manage is to climb up to the roof of the Cheney Hammer Mill and peek through
periscopes from behind the massive brick parapets, but of course that doesn't
afford much of a view. Once in a while, a surplus Mirage jet streaks overhead
like a refugee from an air show. Our interest remained quite casual until some
stray mortar rounds started landing in the vacant lot behind us -- obviously one
of Gung-Ho's "contractors" had pulled the wrong lanyard or something.
In any case, the vacant lot was getting rather 
pitted
and as the explosions gradually walked in our direction, we decided we should
probably do something about it.
We tried the surplus 40's vintage field phone Gung-Ho gave us to use as a "hotline," but the line was dead. In the midst of all these explosions, sending up a flare seemed kind of silly. What to do? Then Matt recalled that Mitch Macaphee used to exchange emails with our militant neighbor using his personal computer, which he kept locked up in the sub-basement of the mill. We went down the cargo elevator as far as it would take us, then down a few cobwebbed flights of stairs and through an iron door to Mitch's inner sanctum, now quiet in his absence. His personal computer seemed a little dated, quite frankly -- almost shockingly so -- but we did manage to squeeze off an Arpanet communiqué to Gung Ho. Whether it will reach him before his mortar unit reaches us is...well... a question for the fates to answer. (Come on, fates!)
(Note to readers: for those of you only interested in my political ravings, start here. For those who only wish to inspect my band-related ravings,...well...you get the drift.)
Experts
Agree: Everything's Great. We're up to 1,039 Americans dead in Iraq and god
knows how many Iraqis... and that clapped-out CIA-nurtured hit man we stitched
onto the helm of the unelected Iraqi government is trying to say that things are
going well. Sure they are ... for him. He's leader of the fucking
country, and all he had to do was wait until we got enough people killed to put
him there. Someone should tell junior Bush that $1 billion a week in taxpayer
money is a lot to pay for yet another cockeyed optimist on his 
re-election
bandwagon. Allawi claims the problem is in just 2 or 3 provinces -- mind you,
one of those is Baghdad, home to 20% of the population -- but I notice he
doesn't travel a lot in-country. He's basically king of the "Green
Zone," and not even that, since we call all the shots. I have to think that
even Allawi knows that you're taking your life in your hands on just about any
major road in just about any part of the country. This is South Vietnam ca. 1962
trying awfully hard to happen again.
The Bush gang is counting on things in Iraq to stay relatively level until after the election. They surmise -- correctly, I suspect -- that this war is not yet affecting a large enough segment of Americans to provoke a major backlash at the polls. After all, not much is being asked of the vast majority of our countrymen in the prosecution of this war. No one's asking them to fight it. No one's asking them to pay for it. (In fact, some Americans just got their tax breaks extended, and business got some new tax breaks this week, as the deficit broke $420 billion.) Pretty much all most people have to do to be a "patriotic American" is put one of those honking "Support our Troops" ribbons on the ass of their SUV and vote Republican. Never before have so many sacrificed so little for so stupid. So aside from that gradually increasing number of U.S. families who've had their worlds ripped apart by Bush's "catastrophic success" in Iraq, most of us can treat this war as a matter of casual interest, like we might a reality TV show. Well, I don't really like it much, but I'll watch it anyway, just to see how it turns out...
I
still contend that 9-11 did not change everything, and I think my fellow
Americans are proving this to be right. We've been here before -- the
"threat" from abroad and within, the implacable international
conspiracy to destroy our freedom, the constant fear-mongering. It's nothing
new. And frankly, people just don't seem that scared to me. That's why
the Republicans (and, to a lesser degree, the Democrats) have needed to be so
crass about drawing a direct line between terrorism and the election -- you
know, "vote for us or DIE!" and "bin Laden wants Kerry to
win!" All this rattling people's cages, and still the election is split
pretty much down the middle. I really think people were more scared
during the early Reagan years, when being wiped out by nuclear weapons seemed to
more people like a real possibility (which, of course, it remains today).
Sometimes they just seem like the gang who can't shoot straight. I mean, could
Homeland Security and the Justice Department appear more ludicrous if they
tried? Justice has had all of its major, major post 9-11 cases fall apart, and
now they've pulled off a hair-raising last minute diversion of Cat Stevens.
(Man, that was close!) Kitsch like this rivals Dragnet reruns.
If they can win on this record...then the record just doesn't matter.
luv u,
jp