August 4, 2005

after this there will be no one


he's got game, by robin rhode, 2001

* Of Karl Rove, Nixon's Gray Ghost, Pinball Proto-Fascism, Muscle Car Imperialism, and the Gong Show of the American Political System. excerpt:

"Accordingly, if there is any presiding spirit possessing the current zeitgeist, it is the gray ghost of Dick Nixon. During the Watergate Era, Karl Rove apprehended a fact the rest of us pushed out of our minds, due to its troubling implications: Nixon wasn't brought down because Americans were troubled by having a sick, corrupt bastard as their president -- we simply found it embarrassing to have the White House curtains pulled open, thus allowing the world to witness Nixon pacing the floors, draped in a dingy bathrobe, muttering expletives at the yellowing, West Wing wallpaper.

"Moreover, Rove perceived that Nixon's paranoia, rage, envy, and resentment merely mirrored those of the American middle class. Nixon knew from the depths of his black spleen to the tips of his twitching nerve endings the dark side of the American character and how the pathologies therein could be exploited for political gain. In 1972, Rove watched and learned as Nixon was reelected in a landslide victory. Nixon showed Rove that the American middle and laboring classes feared and hated those spoiled brat, college campus radicals and uppity blacks that they saw every night on the evening news more passionately than they loved their own freedom.

"Nixon realized the concept of freedom was (and remains) too vague for many of us. Where exactly can freedom be located? But, in contrast, just go down to any shopping mall and you'll find envy; just visit any suburban subdivision and you'll find fear; and just set yourself down on any stool at any neighborhood bar and you'll find hatred and resentment."
...
"Rove, Rumsfeld, Cheney -- these ruthless men are all Nixon's progeny. They all got away scot-free. In fact, they prospered in the cynical post-Watergate era and they continue to perpetrate their crimes right up to the present time. Moreover, it is we, the American public, who bear responsibly: we conjured these psychopaths with our ceaseless incantations of denial."
...
"Yes, the empire is as noisy, distracting, and meaningless as a vintage 1970s pinball machine ... as smart and self-aware as a baby boomer, suburban pothead teenager, who, as the years have passed, has transformed into a self-absorbed Starbuck's Latte-slurping, SSRI-popping consumer zombie, afflicted by a mindless appetite begot by a inner desolation that threatens to devour the resources of the entire planet in the manner he devoured the food from his mother's pantry when he had a bad case of the reefer munchies in the 1970s."

"Yes, it is high time to strike the gong for Karl Rove and his pathetic, dancing, feces-flinging pet monkey act that is presently stinking up the stage of The Gong Show of the American political system. But next, we should turn off the TV, walk to the closest mirror, look ourselves in the eye, and repeat the risible (as well as demonstrably false) phrase, “I am not a crook,” -- and then, at long last, face the Richard Milhouse Nixon within, and thereby come to grips with the reason we Americans are, at present, as popular and respected worldwide as Richard Nixon was in the Summer of 1974."

* From the file of bizarre policy: Indiana Bureau Motor Vechicle bosses have decided that hiding clocks is a great way to make long waits seem shorter. excerpt:

"Without clocks to watch, people standing in long lines supposedly won't be able to complain about just how long they've been waiting.

"I'm not kidding. Someone who collects a paycheck from Indiana taxpayers actually came up with this idea.

"At first I thought the idea was part of a plan by Gov. Mitch Daniels' administration to dampen the furor over daylight-saving time. Just hide all of our clocks! But no, this is actually a serious attempt to reduce customer complaints at the BMV by preventing clock-watching."

* "We accept too damned many things on the explanations of people who could have good reasons for lying." --Frank Herbert

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