Just a quick word from my latest incursion into Middle America. I have been on a band bus for well over a week. On interstates, in small city theaters, suburban culture centers and nasty-spirited casinos, eating in rural truck stops, chain fast food joints and upscale bar/restaurants, staying in shoddy, rundown motels and semi-glitzy hotel chains, playing for a commercial act that attracts the media-tranced out, clomp-clomp-clomping, dead center, USA Today-reading thirtyish to sixtyish Omertican middle class like artificial sweeteners attract robotic flies.
From Massachusetts through Maryland and right on into the Great Plains heartland.
AIN’T no “recession.”
Sorry.
Just more hype.
I watch out the bus window as BMW after BMW rolls by.
I see thousands of fools giving their excess money away to casinos.
Thousands more swilling down fat and chemical-laden food and then belly-rolling out to their credit-bought cars full of cheap gas…yes, cheap, at least compared to prices in less militarily inclined powers…to go see a stupid movie or semi-fixed ballgame. (Yes, Virginia, there is a Fixer. It’s called wealth. The wealthy teams win, the less wealthy teams lose. Duh. Just like in politics. Duh!!!)
“Recession?”
It’s just the disease of the month, writ large.
“BIRD FLU!!!
“PIG FLU!!!”
“RECESSION!!!”
“THE INVASION OF THE BROWN WORKING CLASS!!!”
“EVIL FOREIGN TER’RISTS!!!”
Like dat.
Wake the fuck up.
Read on if you dare.
This country’s wealth is so vast, so overreaching on a global level that no amount of stupidity seems to be able put a serious dent in it. Half a step back in the Long March of economic imperialism-driven capitalism and the hired boobirds and faux Chicken Littles have yet another facet of the media control mechanism with which to control the masses.
“YER ALL GOING BROKE!!!”
“BE AFRAID!!!”
“BE VERY AFRAID!!!”
“SHOP!!!”
“EAT MORE CRAP!!!”
Like dat, too.
Bet on it.
When Preznit Bush urged all American to go out and shop after 9/11, the scales should have fallen from all of our eyes.
But…eyes glued to the media trance machine don’t drop no scales.
Too busy glomming the latest crisis.
Too many worries.
Gotta eat, before the seafood all dies.
Wake the fuck up.
The sea will outlast us all.
Turn the fucking thing OFF goddamnit!!!
Step away from the mainstream media…all of the mainstream media, including Google News, etc…with your brains in the air.
NEWSSTRIKE!!!
MEDIASTRIKE!!!
CULTURESTRIKE!!!
VAYA!!!
Don’tcha wonder just a little about why the holders of our so-called “national debt” haven’t already pulled the rug out from under our SE Asian-manufactured sneakers?
We are the designated consumers for the producing world.
Chomp Chomp Chomp.
Professor Chompsky, I presume?
Have another bite.
Please!!!
Like dat, too.
Bet on it.
Lady Gaga my royal fucking Irish ass.
Just Sharron Angle all gussied up in S+M drag.
Everybody’s got an angle as far as the media is concerned.
They use any angle they can grab until it runs out of corners and then drop it like a cold potato.
Whatsa matter wif you clones?
Drop the fuck out!!!
Station WTFU signing off.
Gotta go over to The Denny’s across the street with my complimentary USA Today and suck down some genetically altered eggs and potatoes.
When in Rome, don protective coloration, don’tcha know.
Wake the fuck up.
AG
Sure I see beemers on the road all the time too. I see a lot more ancient cars all taped together with bondo.
I know people too, who are buying shit like that on credit; and then figuring since their about to go chapter 11 or 7 or whatever the fuck, it will be wiped clean.
Recession my ass… its a fucking Depression, dude. Sure, when you are working the people who can still afford concert tickets of any ilk, you see our upper echelons.
But the fact remains I don’t know ONE household anymore that isn’t either unemployed or under-employed by one of its members.
Drive the sidestreets not the mainstreets and see the foreclosures every third house…. See the fucking homeless camps springing up.
I do. EVERY fucking day… and the “Will work for food” people on every corner.
You think there is no monetary problem here? Our food banks are overwhelmed. People are freecycling clothes at Churches, and garage saling for the rest. People are dumping all their former toys, boats, jet skis, snow mobiles, even bicycles.
They “recession” isn’t making people buy more, its making them trade more among themselves…. making families move in together, crowded as hell.
A drive by and your some middle america expert?
This is beyond recession, maestro, we are dying here… a slow death that will only get worse as the numbers PROVE my opinion…. the class and asset division between the haves and the have nots have risen exponentially this last decade.
I’m wide awake, my brutha… and just cuz you drove by my window and smelled the stew, don’t mean you know how many I’m feeding inside or when they last ate.
Middle america ain’t buying shit. We may watch TV, but we are already THERE by necessity; and don’t need any outsider telling us how good we have it. We already know we are doomed, and are setting up to survive it alone.
Fuck capitalism. We are already there in an army of jobless migrants.
Your rant is totally tone-deaf, babe.
Tone fucking deaf.
Are people paying some dues?
Sure.
I’m one of them. Been scuffling…with short periods of relative prosperity…since I dropped almost completely out of the mainstream Omertican scene in the late ’60s.
By choice.
In a criminal society, the honest human is if not criminalized at least marginalized.
Money is the domestic sword of this system. Go along to get along and you will be taken care of.
Rebel?
Question?
Your ass is outta here.
My point is that…back and forth and up and down this country…the majority of people are thriving.
On credit?
Yup.
That’s the way (Uh huh, uh huh) they like it. (Uh huh, uh huh.) (The controllers, that is.)
Is this system headed for a dead end?
I dunno.
I doubt it, myself.
The rest of the world…the whole enchilada, the big, big picture, the gestalt of it all…needs us to keep sucking down their goodies.
The continual economic dirge being sounded on the mainstream media? Night and day, day and night, deep in the (dark) heart of it?
A ploy to keep the rubes running scared.
Buying scared.
And “we”…the smart ones, the best of the best in some respects…swallow the line whole.
I call bullshit.
Sure, there are some people paying some dues.
Always have been; always will be.
BUT THE MACHINE JES’ KEEPS ON A’ROLLIN’ ALONG!!!
I am here to tell you that over the length and breadth of this country, the clomp-clomp-clomping middle class is out spending money.
On cars.
On houses.
On entertainment.
On bullshit of all varieties.
This is an undeniable fact. I have seen it with my own eyes.
In NYC I recently walked past a 60-ish group of tourists on 44th St. near 8th Ave…the edge of Times Square. As they went by me I overheard one…looking around at all of the taxis, the people headed out for a night on the town, the hotels and parking lots being constructed…say to his wife “I thought there was a recession going on!!!”
I have seen the same thing on the highways and byways of America over the past two weeks.
Everywhere.
Shocking but true.
Sorry, folks.
You’ve been had once again.
Ain’t no “recession.”
Just an ongoing control mechanism.
Too big to fail.
Bet on it.
AG
downsizes, it expels and evicts some people while keeping others. Those who are kept are encouraged to believe they are doing fine–in fact momentarily they are doing fine.
Even at twenty percent unemployment (or whatever it is at this point) most people are still in the system.
Also, it would be interesting to know the extent of the default rebound: When people discover there is no longer any reason to make payments on the mortgages of their under-water houses, they suddenly have a lot more money to spend.
The US is actually not wealthy on balance, rather we are under water, yet it is true that our creditors have yet no way to close in on us and seize physical assets.
And yes, we will all be surprised at exactly how long our Ponzi scheme economy can be kept going.
Sorry Arthur, this is the stupidest diary you’ve ever posted. You’re like a musician in the court of Marie Antoinette who finishes your set, strolls back towards the servant’s wing, stops by the kitchen to eat some leftover cake and remarks to a footman, “Why are the people complaining? I don’t see any poverty.”
Wake the fuck up. Indeed.
I didn’t just “stroll through the servant’s wing”, I traveled through the heartland of this country on a bus. For two weeks. Eating at Denny’s, staying at middle class/working class motels, looking out of the bus window as the astounding wealth of this country…held by its people in large part, despite he depredations of the bankers…flowed by.
Please.
You have been hypnotized by the fear hype.
You are a fear addict, and your mind no longer sees what is right in front of your eyes. Step away from the TV and the rest of the mass media-based news system…yes, including the increasingly corporate-domnated internet…and take a fucking look around!!!
You are being hyped into defeat and slavery.
Wake the fuck up.
AG