An older American truck driver came up to me and said, “I
made more money in 1972 than this year. With all these new regulations, they’re
squeezing us out of jobs, and let me tell you: you won’t like the people coming
to take our place. Ah! I’m set to retire in a few months anyway.”
In that statement you have the American mentality summed up
quite nicely. One could easily blame the Baby Boomer generation for the spread
of this disease, but all you have to do is read D.H. Lawrence’s poem “The Evening
Land” to realize the symptoms were there already in the twenties. And if that’s
the case, maybe they were there from America’s conception. Maybe the true story
of America is not the epic fairy tale of the champions for freedom, but the
first bogged attempt by a nation to design a future without a past.
So the real question becomes: was it a genuine attempt?
Given the current landscape one must assume either that the
experiment was hijacked at some point in time, or, it never sought from its
inception what the history books claim.
Perhaps what we see if we look at the relatively short
history of America, as a child might, or better yet as an aloof
extraterrestrial, is the canvas on which we find painted a dangerously
misleading deception where, occasionally, a genuine hand took up the brush and
attempted to make the country live up to its principles only to end up
assassinated.
As I am now midway through life’s journey, (like Dante when
he wrote his Divine Comedy) I have shed my idealism about many things,
including America, because I have learned the hard way that such idealism, as a
belief system, which is all that it truly is, is anathema to my survival. So,
when one’s taught a belief at school, only to find that it doesn’t hold up to
one’s actual experience, the logical decision is to chuck it all out and start
over by using observation to make inferences about what is really going on in
this circus called America.
That is, in fact, what I love about D.H. Lawrence. His body
of work is drawn from personal human experience and nothing else. No matter how
painful to the human psyche, or how it flew in the face of societal assumptions
and beliefs, Lawrence told it how it is. Unlike his contemporaries, who
probably mark the first generation of desperately self-aware, self-involved
shit-talkers, (yes, I mean your heroes James Joyce, Virginia Wolf, T.S. Eliot,
et al.) Lawrence was from the school of hard-knocks, and that’s why he stands
alone.
I mention Lawrence, because, like him, I have observed
American behavior and now, nearly a century later, have come to the same
conclusion. And it terrifies me.
Dark,
elvish,
Modern,
unissued, uncanny America,
Your
nascent demon people
Lurking
among the deeps of your industrial thicket
Allure me
till I am beside myself,
A
nympholept.
Are the American people as a whole, as a nation, in
actuality, soulless demons waiting to be awakened by some Dark Prince to
instigate a new Dark Age?
If America was once the nation that forged its future
without a past, then it has devolved into the Trojan horse of all liberty. One
gets the distinct but eerie feeling that if the federal government offered
guarantees to its citizenry of a comfortable retirement package in exchange for
engaging in thermonuclear war with Russia, the American people would be fine
with that. They might not admit to it publicly, but many would secretly sign
the deal. Clearly, that’s what their representatives in Congress have done.
Nobody is batting an eyelash at the fact that such an
escalation would lead to massive extinction across the planet. Nobody seems
perturbed that the players in this game have made a bold statement with the
shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Nobody is out of harm’s way. But
wait, if you retire within the next few months, you’ll be A-okay. You can bow
out from the public arena and live off your hard-earned savings from the safety
of your home, and kick the bucket down the road for your grandchildren to sort
out. After all, you’ve done your part, right? You’ve worked hard all your life
for this retirement, voted for who you hoped could set the country right; what
else can be asked of you, for Christ’s sake!
The idea that the whole purpose of life and of working hard
is to save enough so you can kick back and self-indulge during your Golden
years is purely an American creation. And it is infectious. Like a cancer, it
eats away at the work ethic of a nation until you have an “easy money”
mentality that dissuades self-development into skilled trades and professions,
and destroys the concept that we are working today for our children’s future—something
that has value way beyond our own retirement. You become not just a nation
without a future anymore, but a nation who is not even present—soulless demons
who have yet to step out into the light of day.
I have witnessed it time and again. The only thing you can
bet on is an American’s astuteness for self-gain. There he will employ his wit
to every sort of creative way by which to screw everyone over for his own
personal gain. Capitalism at its most brutally honest. “The end justifies the
means.”
The problem there is that there is no fruitfulness in a nation
of vultures. Vultures feed on carcasses. Vikings plunder. Capitalists profiteer.
Someone still needs to produce carcasses for the vultures or become one
himself. The problem is: nobody is producing in America. The alpha vultures
will move to new feeding grounds. I guess that’s Russia and Asia. And they will
leave the minion vultures to feed on each other.
I hope this paints the picture clearly. The problem is not
that we have a Democrat for president. The problem is not that we have a man of
color for president. The problem is that we have the kingpin alpha vulture for
president, and he means to leave us nothing but bones by the time he’s done
with us.
I say this with complete peace of mind for I no longer carry
the delusion of belief. I do have faith, but that is another matter, and not in
the American people, because they have never been and do not choose to be a
people. They cannot be. So long as they are drawn together by their mutual
greed for the American dollar, they can only be a cluster of sleepy demons, stirred
into a rage by all who stand in their way of financial security—family, friend
and enemy alike.
In this respect the Gospel of Thomas seems highly
prophetical:
For there
will be five in a house:
There’ll be
three against two and two against three,
Father
against son and son against father,
And they
will stand alone.
Therefore, as a failed experiment, does America prove that a
nation cannot forge a future without a past?
Without the blood-ties of the clans of the Old World, can a
people stick by each other for the important decisions pertaining to their
mutual survival: such as avoiding thermonuclear war with Russia, or
incarcerating the alpha vultures and getting back to actual production?
The answer is, that in the absence of blood-ties, a brotherhood
must be forged, under extreme duress, that adheres to a strict discipline where
the gains of the day never precede the future of our children—a future destined
to be devoid of gods, kings, presidents and warmongers, where every man is his
own master and conspires only to assure his brother’s freedom. Not the freedom
to indulge himself, but the freedom to contribute to the future in whatever way
he’s most suited.
This must be the new faith of all mankind should they wish
to survive and prosper on this planet or any other. The Rubicon must be
crossed. Failure to do so invites extinction.
I know my words will invite the wrath of the American. How
dare I criticize, question and think for myself! Crucify me. Show your cruelty
for what it truly is. But don’t expect me to cower and bow before your
insolence! Prove me wrong. Impeach your president, clean the House and the
Senate, and purge yourselves of the Fed. The fight against terrorism is on our
home soil, in our own White House, not abroad, and certainly not in Russia!
Not every American need awaken. Just the ones willing to do
something! I give you the gift of Brotherhood, bound by the creed of
discipline, obeying only the love that rules over your hearts. With it you can
build a nation that crosses all borders and spans all denominations. Give the
remnant of humanity a future they can have faith in. Live for today but work
for tomorrow. Greatness awaits you.
No comments:
Post a Comment