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Last Updated: Oct 22nd, 2008 - 01:51:57 |
The news has been unfortunate of late, which should come as no surprise to anyone. Each time I make an attempt to focus in on any particular issue, 12 more come rumbling to fruition. Today the economy became unforeseeably more imperiled, yesterday 80 million more people than usual went starving, and tomorrow AIDS will evolve into an airborne poison capable of wiping out entire populations in a matter of days, like a plague of super-powered locusts.
Those are not comfortable circumstances for a simple columnist, especially when I am chewing the cud of an overdue column early on a rainy, Tuesday morning after having read a vicious “letter to the editor” alleging that I was never qualified to write this goofy thing in the first place, and that I ought to be fired, castrated and mocked for writing such immature and terrible things about politicians.
But I remain in good spirits, despite being ridiculed by my own team. Indeed, some people who read this column seem to feel that I am unstable, morally deficient, without integrity and utterly incapable of doing whatever it is I am actually supposed to do here, something which I have never pretended to know, but I receive a generous amount of criticism about the manner in which I choose to do it nonetheless.
There is a misbegotten notion among letter writers that I am, or at least pretend to be, a journalist. How that impression was circulated, I cannot say, but I will set the record straight. I am not a journalist. That is a ruined and stinking profession filled with schizophrenics and soulless mutants under the command of Arthur Sulzberger or Rupert Murdoch or some other warlock with purely selfish and evil intentions. Stepping into that forsaken business is like wandering through one of those hysterical mazes at a carnival where giant clowns laugh and scream at you and stalk you from the shadows, where huge mirrors distort the world making it unrecognizable, and where you begin to wonder why death refuses to seize you right then and there.
Which brings me back to the news.
And on that front, politics continues to reign supreme. The McCain campaign has extended its policy of scoffing at anyone who doesn’t live in a town with a population of less than five thousand people. According to the campaign, yokels, drunkards and plumbers are the only people left in America with any sense of pride or patriotism. It is all stupid political rhetoric, obviously, but it is terribly insulting to those of us who drink responsibly and whose lives depend on more than simply knowing that shit rolls downhill and that payday is on Friday.
But as Paul Krugman recently suggested, John McCain’s campaign strategy is based on the classic Nixonian idea that Republicans can still manage to convince the voting public that after eight years of being totally robbed, it was not the plutocratic Republican Party masquerading itself as the party of the common citizen that is responsible, but Democrats, who for the past two years have done nothing about it. That is, done nothing to fix the problems caused by a bunch of overzealous conservative thieves who have been robbing the treasury and the people for some time now. Yes, damn them all.
Both presidential campaigns are being associated with possible voter fraud and manipulation, something which further endorses many people’s decision not to vote at all. Very troubling.
But for those who are planning to vote, the polls, if you believe them, suggest a growing margin in Sen.Obama’s favor, which means Sarah Palin may finally be forced back into whatever ice cave she emerged from and John McCain will no longer be forced to struggle to raise his arms in order to wave at people and refer to them as his “friends.” That ought to be considered a blessing, because that whole facade is becoming more and more disturbing every day.
Death and Hatred are still running rampant in Southwest Asia and in many other parts of the world as well. Mexican school children are being made witness to drug warfare occurring in and around their schoolyards. The security agreement between the U.S. and Iraq is faltering and on the brink of abandonment. The British, of all people, are denouncing U.S. militarism in the War on Terror and scientists from all over the world are soon planning to smash particles together in order to create miniature black holes on the French/Swiss border. If it is not the relentless greed of the rich and powerful that will consume us all, it will be a man-made black hole.
That would be a fitting end to a novel centered on the hysteria of man through the ages. Here, as we arrive in the 21st century, we finally develop the capacity to build nature’s most powerful destructive force. A weapon of unfathomable power. And in doing so, destroy everything between here and Alpha Centauri. Yeah, that sounds about right.
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