gallstone

I was cleaning out my home directory yesterday and i found this fossilized rant in a file dated 2000/01/17.  I get the feeling that i left it lying around because it was unfinished.  It's a bit emo.  Anyway, here you go.

I write this sober of any foreign drug, drunk only on my anger, my bitterness, my despair.  The steaming heap of shit that our world has become reduces us to bacteria and parasites that feed on it.

Here in this country of freedom, this land of opportunity, we choose to elect our leaders from among a pool of select candidates, not unlike choosing a chicken at the market for our dinner: Does it look fresh?  Is it on special?  Has there been any recent report of a poisonous outbreak of disease that was blamed on this brand of fowl?  We don't KNOW these people, yet we want them to affect our way of life in ways we cannot control beyond the vote.

Hell, we don't even know our neighbors!  Those goddamned antisocial backstabbing little slugs that live next to you, yes, them.  They are the humans with the closest vicinity, yet with whom you have no affinity.  What, make friends with THEM?  Their rotten brats drive you insane, their snooty attitude spawns violent thoughts in you, and their dog ripped up your amaryllises again.

The tribe is dead.  Once people lived together, breathed the same air, took a dump in the same pit, and, horror of horrors, cared about one another and worked together for the good of the tribe.  Or did they?  Is my romantic mind filling itself with happy delusions, to either torment me with hope or pickle me with cynicism?  Can either survive alone, or is their symbiosis unbreakable?

Is democracy truly the biggest joke foisted on us by the ancient Greeks?  In this country, where only white landowners could once vote, candidacy has always been slanted towards the rich or powerful.  Yet you can't escape a basic tenet of democracy: Give a luser a vote and he'll elect a luser.  Clinton was elected after he actually managed to nurse some fledgling hope in the hearts of many to overturn the Bush-Quayle mandate.  What has he given us since?  Monica Lewinsky, "don't ask, don't tell", and Hillary for Senate in NY.  Bush offered us a lip-reading exercise and a continuation of the Reagan mindfuck.  He gave us the Compleat Works of Quayle Malaprops, "this will not be another Vietnam", more Iran-Contra ghosts (hey, he followed through on the Reagan mindfuck continuation!), and his sperm in the form of Gee-Dubya.

Am i glad that Reagan's mind is deteriorating into mush? (Is anyone certain that he wasn't already sick when he was elected president?) I've never been big on Schadenfreude, but i have to admit that there is a certain perverse joy.  It is rather empty, of course; at best, it could be considered karmic retribution or poetic justice.  But that isn't going to fix what he broke.  He fed the notion that America is invulnerable, accountable to no one else in this world.  He fed the War on Drugs with high-and-mighty Nancy.  He presided over the biggest expense on Defense this country has never needed.  He tried to sell us the belief that giving the privileged more leeway would somehow benefit the downtrodden.

gallstone

I was cleaning out my home directory yesterday and i found this fossilized rant in a file dated 2000/01/17.  I get the feeling that i left it lying around because it was unfinished.  It's a bit emo.  Anyway, here you go.

I write this sober of any foreign drug, drunk only on my anger, my bitterness, my despair.  The steaming heap of shit that our world has become reduces us to bacteria and parasites that feed on it.

Here in this country of freedom, this land of opportunity, we choose to elect our leaders from among a pool of select candidates, not unlike choosing a chicken at the market for our dinner: Does it look fresh?  Is it on special?  Has there been any recent report of a poisonous outbreak of disease that was blamed on this brand of fowl?  We don't KNOW these people, yet we want them to affect our way of life in ways we cannot control beyond the vote.

Hell, we don't even know our neighbors!  Those goddamned antisocial backstabbing little slugs that live next to you, yes, them.  They are the humans with the closest vicinity, yet with whom you have no affinity.  What, make friends with THEM?  Their rotten brats drive you insane, their snooty attitude spawns violent thoughts in you, and their dog ripped up your amaryllises again.

The tribe is dead.  Once people lived together, breathed the same air, took a dump in the same pit, and, horror of horrors, cared about one another and worked together for the good of the tribe.  Or did they?  Is my romantic mind filling itself with happy delusions, to either torment me with hope or pickle me with cynicism?  Can either survive alone, or is their symbiosis unbreakable?

Is democracy truly the biggest joke foisted on us by the ancient Greeks?  In this country, where only white landowners could once vote, candidacy has always been slanted towards the rich or powerful.  Yet you can't escape a basic tenet of democracy: Give a luser a vote and he'll elect a luser.  Clinton was elected after he actually managed to nurse some fledgling hope in the hearts of many to overturn the Bush-Quayle mandate.  What has he given us since?  Monica Lewinsky, "don't ask, don't tell", and Hillary for Senate in NY.  Bush offered us a lip-reading exercise and a continuation of the Reagan mindfuck.  He gave us the Compleat Works of Quayle Malaprops, "this will not be another Vietnam", more Iran-Contra ghosts (hey, he followed through on the Reagan mindfuck continuation!), and his sperm in the form of Gee-Dubya.

Am i glad that Reagan's mind is deteriorating into mush? (Is anyone certain that he wasn't already sick when he was elected president?) I've never been big on Schadenfreude, but i have to admit that there is a certain perverse joy.  It is rather empty, of course; at best, it could be considered karmic retribution or poetic justice.  But that isn't going to fix what he broke.  He fed the notion that America is invulnerable, accountable to no one else in this world.  He fed the War on Drugs with high-and-mighty Nancy.  He presided over the biggest expense on Defense this country has never needed.  He tried to sell us the belief that giving the privileged more leeway would somehow benefit the downtrodden.