Contemplations from the Cheap Beer Zone

[razors edge]

Highly entertaining essays. Not for the thin skinned.

From the site "Deer Hunting With Jesus, Dispatches From Americas Class Wars"

You could say my friend Virgil Jenkins is an erudite and insightful student of American culture. You could say he has honed his understanding of America through decades of serious reading and contemplation. But it would be a damned lie. Mostly, Virgil does just what I do, drink and talk and watch television. Still, the dirt-eating truth of the situation is this: He's got more common sense and insight than 99% of the people who run this country. We seem to have gotten different results from the same regimen.

snip


Don't get me wrong. Just like you, I would vote for Al Gore in a friggin heartbeat. Especially given that neither Dennis Kucinich nor Hugo Chavez will never make the ticket. Deluded as Al is that "national policy" can ever do more than possibly slow down the corporate takeover of civilization and seizure of world resources now in progress, I would vote for the new fuzzier, more lovable Al Gore Americans are not allowed to vote on national policy, heaven forbid! Otherwise a helluva lot of us would vote for a policy that matches up Louisville Slugger Prostock baseball bats with selected Republican kneecaps. But instead, we vote for personalities and fraudulent media issues such as gun control (both sides are hawking media baloney on that one) and threats such the legal union of Brian and Geoff destroying good Christian marriage -- this, despite that the Bible crowd set seems quite capable of doing it for themselves -- their divorce rate is no lower than we onanist librul fetus killers. And when it comes to halting the American suckdown of the planet's paltry remaining resources, only global revolution or an environmental collapse can get American faces out of the Cheetos bag, much less rock the ExxonMobil Wal-Mart Starbucks Microsoft Citigroup McDonald's Time Inc. Monsanto bastards out of the saddle they own and occupy regardless of who is in the White House. Using media to fight these guys is like threatening a rapist with a water pistol. Hell, they own the water pistol too. Media is just too pervasive, cheap and malleable to have any real effect on Americans, other than distraction and escape, and of course to stampede them in the general direction of the mall, the sports arena and the next battlefield. We will doubtlessly continue to swim around like trained guppies in the soup of pop culture as politics and well managed news, though. None of us has the neurological equipment to function without the life sustaining glitter and muck, much less see outside the fishbowl or express a unique personal identity. That atrophied long ago. It might be a good idea to return to the Amphibian Age and start over again. But then the ecosystem seems to be doing that for us.

[blindpig]

1. You need a link

Here: http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2006/09/madmen_and_seda.html

Joe's the real deal.

[razors edge]

2. oops, thanks. n/t