USA: Fastened To A Dying Animal
By Phil Rockstroh
30 April,
2008
Countercurrents.org
A short jeremiad regarding that affront to the nation's dignity known as the US election process
Here
in this crumbling empire once known as the
American republic, here in a nation that, at present,
for all practical purposes, only produces Cheetos and
killer drones, whose architecture is being winnowed
down to thriving rural meth houses and foreclosed upon
suburban mchouses, whose corrupt corporate culture has
bequeathed upon our suffering planet dying oceans and
the hyper-caffeinated tsunami of Red Bull Capitalism
-- the essential question confronts us -- how does one
retain (not retail) one's humanity amid the
catastrophic machinery and inane accouterment of our
age?
"Show your wounds," exhorted the late 20th Century
artist Joseph Bueys. The wound becomes the womb, poets
tell us. Out of painful truth, beauty is born. But,
antithetical to the orthodoxies of consumer
capitalism, there are no shortcuts. According to
legend, Faust sold his soul for a glimpse of eternal
beauty and the hidden knowledge of the world. Sadly,
we've done likewise (but worse, pathetically) for a
glimpse of Paris Hilton's privileged (but hardly gated
and guarded) cooter.
Here, now,
sprawled upon the detritus of our dignity,
we are confronted by the exponential dynamics of decay
known as the US Presidential Election cycle. In this,
all three corporate candidates are of little use to
us. Although all three have done very well for
themselves by the present and prevailing arrangement
known as Disaster Capitalism.
What motivation
do they have to change the system by
which they've thrived? McCain, Clinton, and Obama must
serve the interests of the corrupt corporate class --
or else they would be marginalized. Paradoxically, as
we have witnessed, as of late, if they make even the
most minute rumblings to the contrary -- as for
example, blundering into a steaming pile of the
obvious such as the observation that the battered
laboring class of the nation might be embittered by
their lot --- they risk political immolation by being
labeled an elitist.
Of course,
Obama is an elitist. (As are Clinton and
McCain.) And he has been put on notice by the Powers
That Be that they have no problem with him being among
their ranks, as long as he doesn't go rattling off at
the mouth about those the rigged system benefits and
those it kicks daily in the gut. Because in a
political culture as far down the rabbit hole as is
this one, the surest way to be branded an elitist is
to refuse to serve the elite. (Not that Obama
threatened any such thing.) This is the modus operandi
of the lacquered, autoerotic dudes and dolls of the
corporate media and the K Street cash-flushed phonies
of the American political classes: Pose as protecters
of the beer-bleary multitudes, as, all the while,
carrying vintage Cabernet for a privileged few.
This is
not a situation fraught with layers of
ambiguity in which any deeper meaning can be mined:
Below the corporate media's electronic cloud of
nebulous phoniness lies a dense core of calcified
phoniness. Thus it is difficult not to harbor contempt
for this cartel of narcissistic strivers who have
networked the nation into a perpetual state of
cataclysmic ignorance. Seemingly, their creed is: Let
the ignorant multitudes languish on the low nutrient,
junk news we serve them from the drive thru windows of
our corporate media outlets, while the political and
business elite cannibalize what is left of the
republic.
The ongoing
tragedy in Iraq and the ecological and
economic turmoil roiling the globe are consequences of
the domination-driven mindset that the mainstream
media protects. Ergo, increasingly violent responses
from outside forces, both of the human and natural
variety, are rising across the planet. America, many
shocks and sorrows are coming soon (probably sooner
than you think) to that vacuous bubble known as "your
way of life."
It should
be increasingly clear to see that the
corporate media's job has never been to be unbiased
chroniclers of the events and circumstances of a free
republic. Rather, they are active agents serving to
protect and promulgate the pernicious myths of free
market capitalism. And they are a highly partisan lot.
Moreover, they have been highly successful in their
mission. Hence, our lives, both inner and outer, have
been conquered and colonized by the corporate empire,
and a resultant forced occupation dominates our days
determining the trajectory of our brief lives upon
this earth.
"[S]ick
with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity."
-- W.B. Yeats
Yet, we,
against all evidence, believe we are free
actors in a spontaneous, unfolding democratic drama.
When, in reality, we have been cast as dehumanized
supernumeraries in a lethal farce that renders all
concerned both oppressor and oppressed. This is the
central paradox that binds us. And it is why the
average American cannot see our imperial occupation of
Iraq and our increasingly dangerous belligerence
towards Iran for what it is. How can we have a modicum
of empathy for the people of Iraq when we refuse to
even glimpse our own degraded condition and our
complicity therein?
"God
Damn America," the people of Sadr City must
rage, as the bombs shake their homes and tear the
flesh from their friends and family. "God Damn,
America," I mutter, echoing the good Reverend Wright,
as I witness the indifference of the American people
to the war crimes committed by our nation's leaders.
By the
insidious technique of propaganda by omission,
the public has been manipulated into a state
approaching criminal obliviousness. "What is this
crazy talk about the calamity of class stratification
that defines and divides the nation, and what sort of
demented, leftist loser would even raise the topic
among decent company?" our present mandarins of media
scoff when the topic of class inequity is broached.
Add to that, the ongoing ruse of the ceaseless
dissemination of fear perfected by the right-wing
media noise machine and then parroted in the
mainstream media that goes something like the
following: "There are evil entities afoot in the
nation known as radical liberals who scheme to take
away your guns and give them to islamofascist
terrorists so that those agents of Satan over at
Planned Parenthood will be free to rip fetuses from
their mothers wombs in order to expose the unborn to
porn."
This is
the reason for the cacophony of inanity that
dominates the coverage of the political events of our
time: It serves as white noise that drowns out
unpleasant truths. It is the mood music piped into our
national bubble. Accordingly, trivial and specious
narratives drive and dominate our national political
debate and it has, as a consequence, rendered the
nation's public too shallow to even apprehend the
extent of the damage inflicted by official treachery,
professional cupidity, and the degree of their own
degradation therein.
Otherwise,
the collective psyche of the nation would
be shaken to the core. Tragically, there is no longer
any core to be found. There is merely the surface
sheen of the American bubblescape ... its surface taut
with inner tension as it is stretched to its limits,
as, all the while, reality bristles ever closer to its
over-stretched skin.
Phil
Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic,
gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher
bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at
phil@philrockstroh.com Visit Phil's website,
http://philrockstroh.com/
