In a post about my recent trip to Cuba, I wrote:
Cuba.? What can I say. It’s not working. It’s just barely surviving, to be precise. Is this the Cubans’ fault? Not entirely. Caught in the warp and woof tickets of Euro-American imperialism for 500 years, the Cubans endure. But not by much.
I have seen these faces before…in the stark, failed Russia of post-Gorbachev/Yeltsin, in cocaine mob-ruled Bogota, in contemporary, politically faux Islamicized Cairo and Morocco. Mouths set thin and straight the people trudge slowly through their lives, their myths almost gone, lost without a well-functioning set of dreams to support their hopes, lost without some overarching set of ideas to give them reason to live past sheer survival.
When a country’s myths dry up and blow away most of its people are left to deal with the plain facts of life and death holding no beliefs whatsoever past the need to survive. Emotionally homeless, they plod through each day, waiting for something…anything… that will once again give them reason to believe that life is worth living, that there is some intrinsic logic hidden the seemingly random occurrences that surround them.
Revolution, democracy, religion, belief in the natural superiority of one race or tribe over another, Manifest Destiny, class and caste systems, the upward-striving American middle class dream,…there have been so many myths that have functioned well enough to give people a reason to live throughout mankind’s history
This week in Arizona a myth-crazed boy…and that is what Jared Loughner is, an immature, relatively unintelligent 22-year old who had his pick of literally hundreds of mythic raisons d’etre as he grew up in contemporary, culturally shattered America in the late 1990s/early 2000s…chose to take a gun into a crowd and kill a number of people in an attempt to…
In an attempt to do what, exactly?
In an attempt to fulfill his mythic upbringing, lame as it was.
Read on.
Let us examine his cultural…his mythic…upbringing in some detail. Now we have no specific information about this upbringing, but anyone who has dealt with boys of his generation, class position and relative lack of talents knows damned well what was offered in the way of mythic guidance during his formative years.
Several hundred TV channels from which to choose radically different expressions of “myth.”
The sexual freedom myth.
The various drug myths.
The macho male adventurer myth. “Kill `em all and let God sort `em out.” Turn on your premium cable TV channels and marvel at the predominance of that particular kind of movie. Who’s watching that shit? Jared was. Bet on it. And he’s not alone.
The middle-class white centrist myth. (The major TV broadcast networks’ specialty and until just before Loughner was born by far the dominant myth in the United States.)
The “Fuck everything; let’s party!!!” myth.
The current Fox News-driven right wing myth.
The relatively small MSNBC/Comedy Channel left-wing “Real democracy will out!!!” myth.
The fundamentalist Christian myth.
Etc. ,etc., etc., ad nauseum. Channel changer roulette. Choose yer poison, nod out and get programmed.
Add to that the one “myth” that I would bet most strongly programmed him, the video game myth of invulnerability and lack of real pain.
Slice and dice them zombies!!! They cain’t hurt me; I’m invulnerable. And…they ain’t human, neither.
Yup. And then go get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from Momma’s fridge and play another game.
Totally emotionally detached violence rammed into his inert brain by the time he was 12 years old, festering there until eventually he looked at his possibilities and saw…nothing. He had no particular talents, apparently…a community college kinda guy, someone who was headed for the educational dust heap that our failed system has created to take care of the people that it has failed but not failed so badly that they are totally w/out use. I saw some of his posts…couldn’t even spell. Talked about “conscience dreaming.” So unconscious he couldn’t spell “conscious.” Unconscious poetry, really.
Where were his meager talents going to to take him in this rapidly shrinking American dream? Working for WalMart or the army, probably. But there he was, watching “Entourage” and “Jersey Shore”, seeing assholes no better than he living the high life.
No wonder he was angry.
So he went out and shot him some politicians. A female, a child…? Sure. They’re easier to hit, dontcha know.
The deathless scene from “Full Metal Jacket:”
Door Gunner: Git some! Git some! Git some, yeah, yeah, yeah! Anyone who runs, is a VC. Anyone who stands still, is a well-disciplined VC! You guys oughta do a story about me sometime!
Private Joker: Why should we do a story about you?
Door Gunner: ‘Cuz I’m so fuckin’ good! I done got me 157 dead gooks killed. Plus 50 water buffalo, too! Them’s all confirmed!
Private Joker: Any women or children?
Door Gunner: Sometimes!
Private Joker: How can you shoot women or children?
Door Gunner: Easy! Ya just don’t lead ’em so much! Ain’t war hell?
Like dat.
Now…Mr. Loughner is a monster. Of that there is no question.
But…he is not alone!!!
Remember that.
He is everywhere.
Living in your neighborhood.
Working in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Attica and all the other Apocalypse Now/Full Metal Jacket hellholes of the crumbling American empire.
On your local police force.
Watching television next door late last night. You know…when the good stuff is on?
Yup.
Armed to the teeth.
Bet on that as well.
All of us who have passively watched TV for 20, 30, 40, 50 years? Let our culture devolve into a morass of shitstink?
He is OUR monster.
And we…all of us…are the real Drs. Frankenstein.
Mea culpa?
Shit no!!!
Nostra culpa!!!
Bet on it.
You bet your life.
NEWSTRIKE!!!
MEDIASTRIKE!!!
CULTURESTRIKE!!!
VAYA!!!
When’re y’all gonna get it?
Frankenstein America.
Nostra culpa.
Bet on it.
Wake the fuck up.
Station WTFU signing off.
Sigh.
Yet again.
Sigh.
Later…
AG