By this coming Monday I will make a pleasant announcement about a writing contest I won; it is a good start for the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. I will have more to say about that next week. Ironically, I submit stories and prose pieces to the Society of Southwesterm Author’s yearly contest. I won first place in 2005 for an essay. Since then fiction and essays have been rejected. However, whenever I lose this contest I win big time elsewhere; I am thinking of submitting work here on a regular basis, for it has become a lucky charm. Two short stories and two essays were shot down and then published shortly after. “Cameras as Remembrances of Things Past” lost this year’s contest in prose but just won at a literary ezine. More on that win this Monday.
Watching Fox news and the conditioned minds of Hannity, Von Susteren, the pontificating Rove, the fire hydrant personality of O’Reilly, I am sadly amused how they throw around the word “socialism.” In their minds it really means Communism. I recall as a history major studying socialism in Contemporary Civilization at Queens College. For most of the 19th Century western civilization was moving in that direction. It all ended with the Bolsheviks in 1917. In other words Socialism is distinct from Communism and has a respectful and honorable history. The American public has no mind for distinctions — never did, probably never will. And if we are a nation of Joe six-packs as Palin pitches her woo, woe is us.
Palin appeals to the Neanderthal in us. Smart women are appalled by her. The fact that she has ovaries does not make her suitable for vice president. Compare her to John Adams. Well, that is unfair. Or Jefferson. Unfair, again. Compare her to Quayle and now you are talkin’. When Quayle pressured that kid in school to add an “e” to potato, I knew we were in deep trouble. So Palin appeals to what is base in us, what is empty in us, what is diminished. Here, as a people, we are rightly indignant about the bailout for Wall Street which is, in effect, our collusion with the marketeers. Yet, Palin appeals to our nether selves and we buy into it. So-called educated pundits just reveal their narrow biases and reality becomes so distorted that I feel I am reading Animal Farm, that socialistic novel! Ignorance is strength, baby! Palin’s latent bumper sticker.
Our plutocracy has been caught with its drawers down. And now we will begin to regulate, once again, a la Roosevelt, rampant capitalism. And we call that, in some quarters, socialism. I wouldn’t mind that for a while as a countervailing response. The real culprit in all this is human nature. The stock market is human nature on bi-polar spins. Palin is a true believer, reared on pablum, superficial American dreams, unbridled ambition with the mind of a conquistador who is pressed to pee. She will lose, one hopes. It is not my faith in America that makes me feel that. It is my hope that reason may still hold sway. After the Holocaust, nothing is unacceptable — or impossible. We are an exceedingly corrupt culture and that is my take on this civilization. Georgie will go off to Crawford, Texas and barbecue his Texas brisket while over 4,000 Americans will lie mouldering in their graves and over 30,000 wounded — wounded for life. He will build his library, filled with Harlequin romances, give it to Laura every 9 days and go to his death unalarmed or aware of his hideous actions. The American Dream.
Long ago I gave up having expectations of my fellow man, and I have begun to feel less stressed. I am a human being stationed in a country called The United States of America. My allegiance is to the planet, not a nationalistic state. I am always working on deconditioning myself, to be free of the lacquer that is applied to us by parents and patriots (really scoundrels). Thank god that there is the grim reaper. At least it ends the travail. If I were a parent once again, I’d rear my kids (I did) to work on being free of the pollutants of television, religion and politicians, the crud of this culture. And thankfully, most of my meaning in life has come from this — especially that my kids are free of me. After all, I don’t own them. I lease them.
The trouble with me is that I care. Gee, I have to work on that!
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