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Edited on Mon Feb-20-06 03:14 PM by arendt
“Nothing so concentrates the mind as the prospect of being hung in the morning”
– Samuel Johnson
Over the past week, I have momentarily looked into the abyss being prepared
for us by our neocon overlords; and it has certainly changed my perception of
reality.
Each commonplace luxury - a pleasant home with modern utilities,
well-kept parks and nature reserves, the ability to still access
science and news if you are internet literate - each of these
things I taste like the condemned man tastes his last meal, like
a person with foreknowledge would have lived in July, 1914.
As the neocon wardens unlock and relock each gate on the procession
from our comfortable, couch-potato cells to the death chamber, I look
with sadness on the life that I have known. It is all going to vanish
in an eyeblink.
One more phony, staged terrorist attack or one more trumped up phony
war - this time with nukes for sure - will destroy the good America
and the occasionally semi-decent, global civilization built up over
the last half century.
Of course it won't be the end of human life, just of privileged middle
class life in a free society. The sociopaths in charge of lobotomizing
the middle class out of the peasant mind are in very little danger
of actually starting a major nuclear war, if for no other reason than
that the only other countries capable of major nuclear activities
(Russia, China) are already run by their own local sociopaths - and
these dogs have sniffed each others' butts and marked their territories.
The future world is some horrid hybrid of Mad Max, Rollerball, They Live,
and the Handmaid's Tale. Fiefdoms of ignorant peasants controlled by high-tech
weapons and brainwashing, feeding the appetites of a global elite as
miniscule, debauched, and insane as the 200 families that dined out for
centuries on the corpse of Ancient Rome. We are well on our way there,
importing Hispanic laborers to the deliberately unsafe coal mines of
Kentucky, buying most of our necessities from sweatshops in Asia.
Whenever I can hold my mind on the utter irrelevance of politics as
usual in such a moment, I find myself wanting to do those idealistic
things that I never did. Its just that instinct to make a difference
while you are still alive. It will pass. Politics can't stop these nuts.
They are barricaded in the missile launch silos behind yards of concrete,
with Christo-fascist military zombies protecting them. They pipe their
calming propaganda through the media as they slowly, deliberately ready
the weapons to blow apart our middle class existence. To paraphrase Stalin,
how many divisions does the DNC have?
But my lack of enthusiasm for yet another bit of worthless, posturing, politcal
theatre doesn't mean I'm suicidal. In fact, my recognition of the futility of
making such a predictable and ineffective last stand proves I am not suicidal.
I (like most of DU) am just one of the last few neurons still awake after the
pre-injection of sedatives before the final, lethal injection.
So, what shall I do in this lost war, to save my soul from self-loathing?
At the moment, all that comes to mind is Solzhenitsyn's admonition (paraphrasing
because I have unsuccesfully searched all three volumes of Gulag) that, when
the secret police come for you personally, fight them. Try to take as many
of them with you as you can. He theorizes that if enough people had simply shot
the GPU or NKVD thugs who came in the middle of the night, the terror and the
Gulags would never have worked.
Do not go meekly in the local police car, believing that your law abiding past
is some guarantee, your loyalty to even the GOP some kind of get out of jail card.
Do not think you can bargain with them or keep some shred of your possessions,
your family, or your decency. Bargaining is surrender. I hope I have the courage
to act on such brave words; but the slime running our country has a way of never
making the decision that clear-cut, never making the choice that stark.
That is why I ruminate (in the current instant between the firing of the detonator
and the explosion of the bomb) on all the scifi stories I have read about exploding
planets and civilizations blasted apart by aliens - the well-written scifi, where
humans don't have some cutesy, Hollywood escape from their fate.
The emotion that always seizes me is an overpowering sadness at the passing of
something alive in a cold, dark universe. A feeling of my own mortality, of my
species' mortality.
Perhaps after I come to terms with that mortality, an emotion most scrupulously guarded
against by the flood of consumerist, youth-centered propaganda we are drowning in, that
I will be able to do some of those brave things I mentioned above. If the degree of avoidance
shown is a measure of its danger to the corporate regime, genuine bravery - considered resistance
in light of near certain death - is something they don't really want to face.
But, please, the corpse of the First American Republic is still warm. Give me some time
to mourn it. Do not berate me for a momentary slacking of activism. A great actor on
the historical stage has been foully murdered, we are all in mourning. If they allow
us the privilege of a funeral, we may even find a modern-day Marc Anthony speaking an oration.
Please, please do not curse me for being aware of the depth of my predicament. It should
not count against me that I know Kubler-Ross's stages of grieving. Give me time to mourn.
The Republic is dead, long live the Republic.
arendt
P.S. to propitiate the activists:
Does anyone know where Haliburton is going to build their concentration camps?
My guess is as far away from a major city as possible, to prevent the citizens from
trashing the place. A good first start would be to make sure these horrors never get
built.
ON EDIT: Mark Anthony, not Brutus!!!
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