This Magic Moment

Hey, sports fans, it's cold outside! So let's put another log on the fire, sit back, relax, and savor the many joys and heartaches of this – as the song says -- “magic moment”. Bush & Co. are being ridden out of town on a rail – in the virtual sense, at least – and Obama is about to make his triumphal entry into Washington on a chariot of fire, while scantily-clad virgins scatter palm fronds and rose petals in his path. (Said virgins, BTW, were imported from Arkansas, where their numbers have recently recovered to pre-Clinton levels.) The problem, of course, is that George W. Bush's dream is about to become Obama's nightmare, and we can expect the “honeymoon” to last about five minutes. The Obama administration is already showing every sign of being Clinton Redux, except for the soap-opera shenanigans in the Oval Office... he is already cozily ensconced with Israel, which eliminates any possibility of serious change in our foreign policy vis-a-vis the Near East... and, perhaps most ironically of all, he has been relieved of the burden of transforming our economy into a command-style, fascist enterprise because that has already been accomplished by his predecessor, in just a few short months (so much for the myth of government “inefficiency”). Never in history has one administration made it so easy for the one following, of the other party, to get a head start on its agenda; all that's missing is a mint on the pillow in the Lincoln Bedroom. Bush & Co. will be handing over to Obama, on a slightly-tarnished silver platter, what used to be referred to as a “free enterprise” or “capitalist” economy, but which has now, for all intents and purposes, been turned into a government enterprise. And make no mistake – with this as a baseline, we can expect the Clintonites to press their advantage and strive for even more totalitarianism. And who's going to stop them? Certainly not the Neocons, who have settled nicely into the behind-the-scenes power structure and are not about to be uprooted. They will continue to influence, through whatever means possible, the Obama administration, making sure no one wanders off the Wilsonian-cum-Zionist reservation. On the domestic side, people will be so grateful that here, finally, is someone who really seems to be in charge and really wants to change things for the better, they will accept any sort of temporary (ahem!) impoverishment in the meantime, in the name of ultimate progress.

There is one thing, at least, to be thankful for, and I've mentioned this before. Obama isn't dragging a train of mouth-breathing, bucolic shitkickers along behind him as he moves into the White House. The most that can be said in this regard is that he may have brought along a few Chicago cronies... but hey, they can do much better by staying in Chicago, right? So the bulk of the administration will be made up of Clintonites, who have been waiting, like 8-year locusts, for a chance to re-emerge and continue their campaigns of collectivization and oppression. And they will have, as a spiritual leader, none other than the secretary of state... and the ever-present face on the wall, i.e. Bill Clinton, will continue to lead and inspire from his “nonprofit charitable” redoubt.

The message, of course, is, and has been, that once the rascals – i.e. the Busheviks – are thrown out, the rudder of the Ship of State will be safely back in the hands of kind, caring, considerate, humanistic liberals. What is forgotten in all of this is that:

(1) the government is bankrupt, and has been for decades;
(2) the lion's share of the budget is in “entitlements”, which are going to be impossible to reduce in any way other than intentional inflation;
(3) the “bailout” money is rapidly disappearing into a black hole, and before long all the beneficiaries will be back for more;
(4) we are stuck in the Middle East until either (a) Israel disappears because Palestinians out-reproduce Israelis; or (b) the Second Coming;
(5) the popularity of abortion has accelerated the demise of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other like Ponzi schemes, because there are simply too many old people and too few (working) young people;
(6) there are too many “bigs” that have a death grip on the economy, the legal system, health care, agriculture, and the education system – Big Business, Big Labor, the legal profession, the teachers' unions, the AMA, Big Pharma, and Big Agriculture, to name a few;
(7) corruption and structural flaws have rendered the whole notion of “democracy” -- with its attendant delusions, e.g. the “right to vote” -- quaint, outmoded, and generally ignored;
(8) the “balance of powers” in government has become a laughing stock, what with the ability of the president to single-handedly wage war on anyone, at any time, anywhere... and likewise, the failure of Congress to assert itself against the courts has rendered it basically no more than a social club and a big waste of time and money;
(9) “global warming” is in contention as the next major world religion, now that communism has become a bit shopworn;
(10) we have become a nation obsessed with “rights” and totally apathetic with regard to duties and moral obligations;
(11) we have become a nation afflicted with litigation madness, hypersensitivity, and a serious dearth of true masculinity and femininity;
(12) the moral grounding upon which the Founding Fathers predicated all of their actions and founding documents has, for all intents and purposes, vanished;
(13) the American media are, by and large, afflicted with terminal lap dog-ism and shy away from asking any tough questions of our leadership;
(14) the Chinese are taking over our economy one trade imbalance at a time;
(15) communism is on the rise again in the Western Hemisphere;
(16) the entire population of Mexico, and much of Central America, is poised to pour across our southern border at the earliest possible opportunity;
(17) our armed forces are hobbled by political correctness, humanistic fads, and the “low bidder syndrome” when it comes to materiel;
(18) our major corporations are being run by power- and money-crazed con artists;
(19) the entertainment media are designed to encourage and reinforce brute violence and sensuality, and not much else;
(20) the whole world hates us, except Israel, and they despise us because we keep falling for all their scams;
(21) our children have been turned over to “trained experts” who only want to produce compliant citizens for the Servile State;
(22) the largest part of that thing most necessary for the perpetuation of “the American way of life”, namely oil, will remain in the hands of Arab potentates, and they'll charge any amount they like for it;
(23) ever-worsening pollution of oceans, seas, lakes, and waterways is threatening the world's nutritional backup for the land-based agricultural sector;
(24) said agricultural sector is become more fragile, with the overuse of growth stimulants, antibiotics, and pesticides, and we are already seeing “blowback” from this in the form of disease and new, resistant strains of microorganisms (Agriculture may be the next big “bubble” to burst world-wide, as these opposing forces come together and cancel out the artificially-high level of productivity so much of the world has come to depend on.);
(25) race will continue to be the defining issue in American politics, and its effects will, as always, be largely wasteful and destructive.

And I'm sure much more could be added to this list. But here's the point. None of this is going to change on Tuesday, January 20, 2009. None of it! Not one iota! Obama is going to wake up on the morning of January 21 with a lap full of crap – and it won't be because he ate too many undercooked shrimp at the Inaugural Ball. And the source of all of this unpleasantness is... well, it's many things. For one thing, we have always underestimated the extent to which this nation, structurally, is predicated on a populace with a baseline of traditional morality – which means, “morality”, as opposed to “ethics”, which can be argued until doomsday. We take it for granted that our “system” is going to work just as well whether the citizenry are morally competent or moral imbeciles – but unfortunately that's not the way things work. It's like those old “Star Trek” episodes where, for some reason, every planet they “beamed down” to for exploration purposes had breathable air. Every one! They never had to wear space helmets! Which is more than one can say for Fernandina Beach, Florida. So they took air for granted... and we take it for granted that the system is, somehow, autonomous, unconditional, and unrelated to the moral health of its components, i.e. the citizenry and their institutions. Not so! It is possible to have a “sick” government with healthy citizens – at least temporarily. But you can't have a healthy government with sick citizens – not unless that government is completely removed from contamination by the citizenry (call this the “colonial” model) – and I don't think we're at that point quite yet. Plus, what leader with any moral sense is going to want to rule over a country that resembles a devastated, third-world moonscape? (Would the mayors of Detroit, Oakland, Newark, etc., please proceed to the nearest, um, white courtesy phone?)

But in addition to the invincible ignorance of so many of our citizens – and voters! -- we also have the complementary phenomenon of being a democracy more in appearance than in reality. Think of the fate of third parties, and independent candidates. Think of the non-mainstream media, who are once again being threatened by the revival of the “Fairness Doctrine”. Think of “political correctness”, which is nothing more than a club with which the Regime can intimidate anyone attempting to exercise their “right” to free speech. Think of things like the Patriot Act, which threatens to turn us all into gray, marching robots out of “Metropolis”. Think of the dumbing-down process that is the primary agenda of public education, and how much it contributes to turning us into unthinking serfs. Are these signs of a society concerned with true liberty, human achievement, and the individual? No – they are signs of the urge to level, to collectivize, and mostly to rule. We once had leaders who delighted in presiding over a free people – despite the occasional aggravations that entailed. What we now have is leaders who want to be petty royalty and rule over illiterate, barefoot, burlap-clad serfs, who plod around with heads ever bowed. The question of which came first, the moral deterioration of this country or the deterioration in the quality of our leadership, is worth serious study – but not right this minute. In any case, the notion of an American experiment, in which all classes would be united in the pursuit of common goals, and for the common good, has evolved into a strict stratification, by which we have the rulers and the ruled, and ne'er the twain shall meet. In this sense, we have gone to a much more Medieval model – but with the “merchant class” divided between the rulers and ruled, i.e. Big Business (privileged) vs. small business (persecuted). In addition, economic trends over the past, say, 80 years or so, have not so much raised the working class to middle-class status as they have eliminated, for all intents and purposes, the old middle class and replaced it with a slightly-better-off working class. This, what I call “proletarianization”, or moving toward a two-class society, is another way of looking at the neo-Medieval, or collectivized, or Regime model.

Then, on top of the concupiscence of the citizenry and the deterioration of the democratic model, we have the – again, complementary – trend by which the United States is not so much self-determining as a society as it is exploited by a, by-and-large unseen, power elite, for its own purposes. In this, the U.S. has become like a very large beached whale, with the natives coming along and slicing off a chunk or two to take home and cook for dinner. We see this in bold relief in the economic area – and the government is perfectly candid about the situation. The dialogue with regard to immigration is a bit more politically fraught... and the issue when it comes to foreign policy is on the “forbidden list”. So clearly the idea of economic colonization and invasion from the south is less sensitive than the idea of someone else using us as a source of cannon fodder – which kind of shows you what the priorities of the Regime are. Now, of course, one could question how edifying the results were when we were self-determining. The Civil War, Spanish-American War, and World War I were certainly not good advertisements for the benefits of being a constitutional democracy, with a Bill of Rights, safely an ocean away from the follies of Europe. But, you see, that's the problem with what is called a “propositional” society. For the first few decades of this nation, it was enough to believe that what was good enough for us was.... well, good enough for us, period. And if a few characters like Simon Bolivar chose to look to us for inspiration, well, fine and good, but it wasn't what one would call a “vital interest”. But that all changed with Woodrow Wilson, and suddenly what was good enough for us was also, by gosh, good enough for everyone else as well, and it was our job to convince them of that, by diplomacy if need be, by preferably by force of arms. So we went out and created a galaxy of supposed clones – pseudo-democracies, if you will, the way the Soviets went out and created their own clones, the “people's republics”. Well, of course, ours were far superior, because – well, those votes really meant something. Except when we didn't like the outcome, we wasted no time enacting “regime change”. But hey, at least those people got to enjoy the benefits of “free enterprise”. Um... like United Fruit Company, maybe? OK, they got Coke and McDonald's. Ya satisfied? Yes... except then why did so many of them turn, or attempt to turn, communist, or, later on, Islamic fundamentalist? Can it be that the blessings of the American system are not all that universally desired? Hey – maybe it's just that some people know their limits, whereas we don't. We “fancy” that we live in a democracy, whereas they know they don't, and maybe that means they're actually freer, in a way. They don't have to spend every waking moment propping up delusions. But of course they have their own forms of propaganda – their flags – their soccer teams – etc. Maybe we should try just leaving them alone, for once. (Right, fat chance.)

So there you have it, President Obama – the Big Three: the concupiscence of the citizenry, the deteriorated state of democracy, and the fact that, guess what, you work for the Regime, so nothing you personally want is going to happen without their OK. So don't be surprised when that face in the mirror starts to look more like George Bush's (or Jimmy Carter's) each day. But hey, you're living in the prime piece of real estate in Washington, rent-free. For a kid from hardscrabble Chicago, that ain't too shabby.