From My Own Outpost of Tyranny

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 13:28

The days of America as Oscar Wilde’s “friendly giant” sharing his secret garden with children for a renewed lease on life are as much a nostalgic memory as is reading that old childrens story. Today it’s America the dimwitted Orc from J.R.R. Tolkiens Lord of the Rings books. What is such a disappointment is that America the blundering land of the oversized Orcs riding around the landscape in SUVs are not even caught under such a spell as interesting as Saurons. The character of Sauron for the land of the American Orcs isn’t just one way cool sinister dude of a bad guy in a long white beard with flowing white robes but a boring group of people who dress like health, wealth and happiness Christian bankers sporting cowboy boots on occasion: The disappointing Bush II second term administration.

Strange though to see recently on TV here the “last march of the Ents” on CNN International during the rerunning of the California flood disaster with scenes of huge swaths of forest greenery caught up in a mud slide in what has to be the most underrated video news clip of late. Ents if you aren't up on your Tolkien mythology are a rare species of walking and talking trees and in these days of parking lots, freeways and endless sub-urban sprawls, trees are as rare a Tolkien’s Ents. It’s hard when you live in or come from a parking lot strip mall of a state like Ohio to feel sorry for a garden of a state like California suffering from bad weather. It is rather amusing though how for Californians Ohio isn’t on their map because their map has one big foreign country in the middle of it called the Fly Over States before reaching the East coast of California - New York City capitol of East Kalifornia.

Where is Gore Vidal in the media these days? Even though I could easily pick up a book for some consoling word from him I feel a need for him in the media talking some sense to the masses along with Noam Chomsky. Even I am guilty of being a part of the collective United States of Amnesia. I would sincerely like to shake hands with Gore Vidal and peer into his eyes and have a few drinks with him – I’m not so certain I would like him but I would like to find that out for myself and anyway I like what he writes. The thing is I could probably use more of John Waters wit and epigrammatic observations to cheer me up. Funny how it is that John Waters is now a figure of compassion and defender of the working class which must be an unintentional by product of not loosing his sense of humor.

All day yesterday I spent Googling online to find an interview I once read about an actor researching a part where he was to play some character out west so he didn’t shower for two weeks and it was the first time when he would go for a piss and got his dick out that he could smell his own cock. For some reason I have the memory of having read that article rattling around in my head and yet I can’t remember what magazine or actor despite remembering all those details from when I read it. That article amused me because Hollywood (male) actors always seem to have no apparent sexual equipment unlike women actors or if they do like super sized cod pieces with room for the whole family’s collection of the jewels.

Did I ever tell you (keep in mind that for the most part the US TV programming that comes to Belgium is quite a few seasons behind the times so we here are still viewing West Wing episodes made by Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme). One of my most favorite characters on the west wing is cup cake craving Ainsley Hayes the republican woman played by Emily Procter – although I really like every West Wing character a lot and the actors who play them but hers really stands out in my mind. I like her southern accent and her virtues of the republican party that are such great theories but that are certainly not anything the Bush’s are involved in much less practice or that Ray-gun guy or Nixon for that matter were up to. Speaking of repugs…..

Condoleeeeeza Riceez used the term Outpost of Tyranny to describe the new satellites to the Axis of Evil. I wish if the states were going to be so BAD that they could do it with style and class instead of like an episode of the evil Beverly Hillbillies or an inbred Andy Griffith show. Hysterical words from Condoleeza Rice: “we will spread Freedom and Democracy though out the world” – which ends up sounding like a bull dozer of a threat to flatten the world rather than an actively elected choice by citizens of far away places. Well good thing then she is so completely high IQ-ed and educated, musically accomplished, African American and a woman to be the new mouth piece for US Ministry Propaganda, Lies and Misinformation.

Perhaps its time the Bush II second term administration just sort of drifted away like a lost helium balloon and carried on being the “Democratically Elected” (huge tongue in cheek) President of the Planet so that the Americans could get on with electing a leader, preferably a woman for change, (I hereby nominate Martha Stewart) to run the country at home. Preferably they could start rising up, up and away in their beautiful balloon, before the good people of the states are dragged into invading Iran under the auspices of Nuke control so that Israel can feel safe at night. Meanwhile no one much worries about North Korea but then it is so very far from these issues and not really harming anyone anyway. Isn’t it time the US got on with building a better landscape within the US? Isn’t it time the US began building an infrastructure that was concerned not with various wars but with building a nation from within again to tackle issues of education, health care, homelessness, unemployement, under employment and the care of the enviroment. Isn’t it time the US once again began trying to be a nation that could be a light and beacon for other nations to model themselves after. Isn’t it time to build a nation of citizens rather than automotive based consumers and trapped inmates? Maybe the Bush II second term administration can pack up their bags and just go manage their world view from some concrete compound in Israel and leave the Americans alone from being held hostage by extreme corporatist multi national security agendas: Security agendas based on subconscious fears arising from foreign policies lacking a basic awareness of the complexities of humanity.

Dream on Dude…..

Meanwhile I get daily mass emailing proffering Xanax, Vicodan, Valium and the like. Remember Quaaludes? Then amongst all that I get junk mail offering ways to get off pain killers. I used to get junk mail to increase my penis size - that worried me – what did they know that I didn’t? Then I got emails to get and maintain erections. Whenever I scan these junk mails I get instantly paranoid of the names of the sender and I begin to feel the power of suggestion and want drugs and then alternately worry that I’m becoming like the mother in the film Requiem for a Dream or that eventually that will be me. That movie broke my heart because the mother really reminded me of my mom except my mom was alive back then and on chemo-therapy. In between all that history of junk mail in my inbox were north African originated emails from desperate types who wanted to share millions of dollars due to inheritance banking schemes to protect the money at stake – I think those emails, including all the pharmacological resources were really phony CIA/Zionist originated emails for god only knows what reason. The junk emails I get about erection tablets made me curious in experimental ways. More and more though I just feel seriously mentally deranged and suicidal thoughts are presenting themselves to me during the day and at night even though I don’t really feel like doing myself in. It seems too messy and stressful and complicated for no real gain to bother with conniving fail safe techniques to turn the lights out for good. The thing is I do need some help with some of the worries on my mind but I can’t seem to communicate with anyone and it’s not just a consequence of the omni present language dysphoria of living here that I actually take comfort in. It’s just at the moment I feel a bit trapped not within languages but within my own inability to communicate beyond myself. Then all the news from the states just really breaks my heart and mind to hear. More and more I feel deranged and marginalized on planet earth and given the facts of this political planet perhaps that is healthy. Still I can help wonder what is in my gut and my mind that bothers me so... more and more I fear it is some sort of alien implant.

Sometimes to slap some sense into my self pitying tendencies l open the book Time Suspended by Jerman Asselberghs, Els Opsomer and Pieter Van Bogaert. I look at pages on Ramallah and I try to consider all the nameless shattered lives and fragmentary places of old Palestine. There is nothing I can do for their tragic story except think on them and thinking about their situation reminds me that I have so much more to be thankful for. (The thought of which makes me think that these unnamed Palestinians are even in this virtual writing way giving me something good and yet what am I doing for them?). I wonder why Hollywood hasn’t made some sort of documentary on life in present day Palestine. And if not obviously Hollywood then why hasn’t someone else somewhere else made a film about what is going on in Palestine from the Palestinians point of view. So I have this weird thankfulness for things way beyond my idea of control about where one is born and the consequences of location on birth. I can’t explain it but we all live with this consequence to some degree or another whether we choose to see it or not. Humor and not loosing or misplacing ones sense of humor is the key to surviving these weird days no matter where you are on Planet Earth. Maybe it’s time for the Selfish Giant to consider why spring hasn’t yet arrived there for the last four years.

From My own Outpost of Tyranny: Conclusions Now That the Great American Experiment in Democracy is over.