(Inspired by liberalamerican’s fine front-paged diary Chain of Fools on My Left Wing. Aretha knew…)
Welcome to my world.
ALL our worlds, really. Forced upon us by the Corps.
“Bar the door, K-K-K Katy!!! ‘N circle them SUVs!!! We’re safe in here!!! We got AIR CONDITIONIN’ !!!”
Well…not “my” world exactly but a world in which I am forced to live regularly. ( I travel for a living, sometimes.)
Read on for more.
I am the spy who comes in from the hot. The hot Bronx, to be more specific. Hot NYC. Into this refrigerated system we call mainstream America.
BRRRRRrrrrrr!!!
Das’ COLD!!!
Yup.
Junk mail America.
Junk mall America.
SpamAmerica.
Always friendly, never nice.
“Have a good day” America.
THIS is the America that allows clones like the BushCo Boys to run the country.
THIS is the real “red state”.
Dentured nature, red in plastic tooth and sanitary glove.
Dentured, denatured and indentured.
Chains of debt instead of iron.
Snafu City, Missouri.
The Show Me Up State.
Situation normal. All fucked up.
Red Alert and have a nice day.
It takes a corporation to raise a child.
This is the state that has become so calloused to televised violence that Katrina, Fallujah, 50 shots fired into an unarmed car in the Bronx or Brooklyn, Abu Ghraib an’ li’l Ms. Lynndie English the leash girl…”Thumbs UP for torture!!!”…
Whatever…it’s all one.
Just another video game and what’s for supper at the culinary multiplex next door?
Has anyone ever been found guilty at a Food Court?
How about The Hague?
Crime rate’s up again? Well…what’dya expect, lettin’ all ‘a them brown people in here? We TOL’ YA!!!
We have to raze corporate America to the ground if we are to survive.
Only…it’s made out of fireproof virtual wood.
Tough job.
Job One.
Whatever happened to Ford, anyway?
Or…
(Groucho Marx in Duck Soup)
“I wonder whatever happened to me. I should have been back here a long time ago.”
Back? But where?
Nowhere.
THAT’S where.
Because in most of America, “here” is GONE!!!
Paved over and corporatized.
There is almost no here OR there left anywhere!!!
We on the left tend to blame the country people for the fix we’re in, but you know what?
Senator Tester is “country people”.
He and HIS folks know that this:
is just a photo-op.
The the closest “Bush” ever really gets to gets to “Brush” is when he thinks “I ‘R’ the Preznit.”
It’s those fools in their SUVs cruising the interstate in search of a better shopping mall that we have to worry about.
And they are EVERYWHERE.
“ZZZZzzzzzz.”
“Turn right here, Johnny. LOOK!!! A WENDY’S!!!”
Maybe they’ll all die of E. coli poisoning and we can start over.
But I doubt it.
They are too full of preservatives.
They’ve all got a half life/shelf life of centuries.
Bet on it.
And anyway…how would they know they’re dead?
AG
P.S. Sorry…I just did an overnighter to St. Louis.
Middle America is in BAAAAAAD shape.
Trust me.
VERY bad.
I was put up in a brand new Ritz Hotel that looked like it was built yesterday until you went inside, where they had PAINSTAKINGLY recreated the ambiance of say a 1910 San Francisco hotel palace. Old wood, the works. Millions. For fake “authenticity”.
The famous society bandleader and PIONEER of false, Lester Lanin, when asked if he was Jewish by a society matron answered..and I have this on eyewitness testimony…”Not necessarily.”
So I get up to my room, look at the room service menu and there is nothing less than $25. For lunch. Plus tip and service charge. Ditto the restaurant. I ask the concierge to direct me to a”simple restaurant” within walking distance. I had been up since 5 AM, it was early afternoon and I wanted some sustenance, not a dining experience…and he kindly pointed out two MORE ripoff joints on the same block. Plus they were both closed.
So I kept walking.
And walking and walking and walking…this is St. Louis, America on a beautiful, warmish 21st Century Saturday afternoon. YOU know…”Meet me in St. Louie”…” The World’s Fair. The Arch. Yeah. That one. Gateway to the West. Riiiiight.
I saw nothing except places selling “health”. I swear…massage, acupuncture, meditation, exercise, doctors, drug stores…plus a few ripoff antique places and a few more closed ripoff restaurants.
I finally found a chain store area with a Panera’s in it…at least the bread is fresh…and stocked up for the duration.
But St. Louis itself?
Dead as a doornail.
I played a party for a Christian-run auto aftermarket warranty company. Lots of “God bless” this and “We are SO lucky” that in the pre-show speeches, and as soon as the really pretty good NYC-based swing band began to play (The Cab Calloway Orchestra with all of the original arrangements for those of you who might know who the first MC/Rapper in America REALLY was. Complete with a zoot-suited close facsimile of ol’ Cab hisself.), all 300 people got right up and went out to the other room where they had erected some sort of legal casino setup. Casino games only you bought tickets and won prizes or something.
A trip to Branford. MO. DisneyWorld country-style. Chicken-fried McDonalds complete with that whitish gravy glue they use to hold the biscuits together.
The only people with any soul in the whole joint…black white or any hue in between…were the help. The musicians and the kitchen staff.
“The artist is the elite of the servant class” said George Bernard Shaw, and he was perfectly correct.
But the “servant class” is the only class left that has any class in America.
And they done been declassified.
Denatured.
Untoothed.
Defanged.
Hustling travelers for tips.
I wonder what Miles Davis would think? He was from St. Louis.
Duke Ellington. He wrote St. Louis Toodle-Oo. A masterpiece about East St. Louis…the Harlem of the Mississippi at one time. Now a great big crack house, or so some of the black workers at the hotel and local musicians were saying.
Mr. or Ms. liberalamerican…the one who wrote the diary that got me started here..had not confronted BushCoAmerica for a number of years and (s)he was surprised.
We should all be not only surprised, but outraged.
And guilty, too.
To whatever degree we have unnecessarily supported this scam of a society…”necessity” being the mother of survival, NOT the mother of unnecessary luxuries…we are guilty of its success.
And we are guilty of its crimes as well. Which have been done and CONTINUE to be done in our own fat-assed names.
So ask not for whom the the Taco Bell tolls.
It tolls for THEE.
Bet on it.
“GETCHA hot Unnatcherl Nachos, right HERE!!!”
America…I got your Burrito Burger.
Right HERE!!!
