Look, the mainstream media would have you believe that Chimpie is having a good week because:
Chief strategist Karl Rove did not get indicted.
Chimpie had to secretly sneak into the Green Zone in Baghdad wearing 25 lbs of body armor and a helmet
They manage to kill the umpteenth "Number Two Man" in al Qaeda.
Hardly a call for a victory dance, but spin isn't spin unless it's constant and high-speed. Is there really any good news for this gang of incompetent thugs? If it wasn't for the rosy veneer of the corporate-owned media, there would be riots going on over this shit.
7 comments:
Olaf, your picture makes you look like God... is that intentional? Anyway, I know why there are victory dances at the White House... They ARE winning the Hearts and Minds of many of the soldiers stationed in Iraq. The ones I know have said over and over that they "wish we could just carpet bomb the whole fucking place," or "all of these people are terrorists..." and "there are no innocent Iraqis."
How do you make intelligent people talk this way about other human beings. It makes me very, very sad, Olaf... Deeply and intensely sad.
We have to face the unfortunate reality of our educational system in that it destroys critical thinking ability as well as consideration that other people deserve the same rights and protections as we do. Americans are, as a group, the most ignorant, unreflective people in the industrialized world, and with Chimpie in the White House it reveals that we're no smarter than children with guns let loose on the town.
Anyway, my attitude is fuck 'em. Our country is beyond the point of no return. The collapse of the American empire will be as swift and as shocking as the Soviet implosion.
And yes--I decided that looking like God was wholly appropriate. Why can't I be God?
Gee, Olaf, I was hoping you would have something more inspiring to say.
Inspiration comes from the individual--it's the ability to say, "Shit, the world is fucked, there is no justice, suffering goes on and on...and yet, look at this beautiful day." Again, it goes back to the Dalai Lama: "Every day, you must try to make the world a better place. And, if in the end, it is to no avail...no hard feelings!"
The fundamental buddhist principle that existence is suffering and that only release from desire can alleviate it strikes me as the only alternative to insanity, which is the refusal or inability to participate in the dominant symbolic system. By understanding that simply altering the symbols, no real change can come, one is released from the system that itself creates suffering. When every individual finally relinquishes desire, all suffering will end, but not before.
In plain terms, I think this means that we cannot expect politics or religion to save us or the world. If every person in his or her own heart cannot effect change, it can never be imposed from without.
So, perhaps I am not optimistic about the state of the country or the world, but I know that there are forces transcendent to it, and that long after we have had our wisp of existence, the universe will sail on, just as perfect and happy as it ever was, with or without us.
This God talk is cracking me up. I just set Olaf's pic to my wallpaper and it got stretched and warped, which in the end, I suppose is fitting. There is so damn much humor here. Rage and humor twisted together like a swizzle stick. Good God, is it that damn bad? This is like a car crash that's gone on for a few years. You drive by once, look at the fucker, ewww...glad that wasn't me, fascinated, culturally obsessed with looking at the suffering of others, and then you're driving by the next day, same accident, same place. You look on with a mixture of curiosity and horror, rub your eyes, try not to believe it. Then the next day, same place, you drive by, same accident. It sinks in. After about the first week, you realize you're going to look at this every day, or else find another route. But you don't. You keep checking. Day after day after day after day. Will this accident ever get cleaned up? After a year you become resigned. Nope. It's there to stay, and it's totally weird. A place you used to drive by every day, smell the clean air, the leaves and grass, is now filled with this accident. The same bent fender. The same person laid out on the same stretcher. The same smasked house. The same whirl of the same sirens. The same smoke. The same news announcer's lips and head moving with the same words. After a while, you can't help it. Wish you could...you accept your American fate: you become numb to it. It gets funny. And sad. And tragic. And somewhere in there, the absurdity of it all makes you grow....
Scotchyogi, you said it! With this bunch of lunatics, the country is going through what Edna St. Vincent Millay described so succinctly--"It's not one damn thing after another; it's the same damn thing over and over."
And over, and over...
But as you said, there's a point one reaches where psychic preservation demands detachment and bemusement. Oddly, the same phenomenon happens to people under continuous and prolonged torture, rendering it totally ineffective.
I don't really like that it's happening to so many of us, but perhaps it gives a perspective that is both valuable and otherwise unattainable. Perhaps beyond detachment lies wisdom.
Or maybe not. No hard feelings!
...but spin isn't spin unless it's constant and high-speed.
Wrap a neocon in copper wire and put him in a magnetic field, we could generate enough electricity to compensate for the inevitable demise of the oil economy. Maybe these guys have a better grasp of physics than I gave them credit for.
---Naaah, they're way too dumb, I was just kidding.
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