This past month I have become a news addict. The idea that our economy may fail, is failing, is , well should be , an idea that fills one with dread, worry, nail- biting, insomnia, drunkenness, fear, titters, reading and re-reading Barbara Tuchman, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, Nostrodomus, the track winnings, horoscopes, Gibbon's "The Decline and Fall"; the thought that our society is on the verge of collapse should make us sweat... So sayeth the pundits, the hucksters, the tear- mongers. But, I don't sweat. I care. I do. Don't get me wrong, I just don't care if America crashes. Every "civilization" is thrust out of the muck and babel of a cultures aspirations. Every empire strives to be important, provocative, cutting edge. In Britain, the sun was called democracy, cultured, advanced. Civilized. The Soviet Unions revolutionary sun was "progress". Britain and the CCCP , France, America, Habsburgian Vienna, the Incas, Belgium, Germany, Spain, China, Japan, etc...built their empires with the bones of "outsiders", the blood of "others". In America, there will not be a mass Native rebellion. We are barely here. From NYC to San Francisco, whole nations were exterminated while the Great White Father spoke of the Constitution, the Declaration. "All men are created....crack!" Bullets, not ballots, created America. Stolen land. Lies and disease, not Lincoln and Jefferson, made America what it is.
An empire that spends more on space research than it's rural poor, urban poor. An empire not unlike so many before it----but, minus the gilded laughs and curtsies of the Habsburgs, an empire foul, but nevertheless an empire that gave us the Pleiades of Music, Klimt, Freud, Herzl, and much more. Strauss is enough. But, us? What, in the name of Beulah, have we given to the world?Eminem?Madonna? Bob Dylan?Donald Trump, Oprah, a crooked mouthed Empress with biceps of a lesbian bricklayer, our "cultured" president? People forget that Wiemar Germany was also very literate---so what? The Constitution, while not perfect, is not perfect...ok, pal, it isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's what we call a wish list, from men who were human, meaning they were good and bad.
Jefferson spoke Greek, yet likened the American Indian to vermin. Empires are built on lies. Lies told on a grand scale. Believed by millions. Retold. But, I think that it is the ghosts that Empire murdered which kill empires.The Ghost Dance was invented to rid this land of a pest: us.
Whites thought it was a joke, and at the same time, were scared it may work. Ergo, Wounded Knee. Americas Kristallnacht. Night of the Long Knives. As a boy, I often wondered if it actually might work, this Ghost Dance.
As we spend billions to find dirt on other planets, we still have no clue as to why we dream, why we act more like monkeys than humans, more like savages than a cultured population.
As Emperor Obama gives trillions to corporations and banks that don't deserve a helping hand, rural counties revert to wildernesses, people flock to cities. One need not consult the stars, nor the bones to see what lies ahead.
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Its 2011, Ive left the Tea Party and wander, partyless, no man on the left or the right to feel aligned with. I take nothing back. Except, I would like to add that when confronted with a Eurocitizen, I can become very patriotic and make Palin blush a nice Chippewa Red.However, I do remain unpatriotic, matriotic? Maybe. The gummint aint moi. I aint the gummint. The ideas of America, the ideas haphazardly implemented and stopped and chopped up, I believe in----yet, if 100% freedom creates the robots I see around me, what good is this?The pudgy Tea Party folks spitting out the words "socialism" and "tyrrany" like they know what the hell they're talking about? I was part of this little clique. I was. I am ashamed to admit it, just as Im ashamed to admit I was a Communist , or that I voted for Bush 1. Now, Im back to my little odd self, part anarchist, part right wing dictator, Christian, pagan, white trash riff raff, ruffian and tatterdemallion, raconteur extraordinaire. A palaverer. Thats my party: The Palaverer Party. We have soothsayers, prophets, madmen, artistes, poets, whores, hermits, junkies and were-manatees schlocking around in our steampunk Party. Not the hipster goggle wearing shite, no, uh-huh....no, we're steamdriven, like an old Steamdonkey, we're punk, as in curmudgeonly rebelling against nothing. Anarch,as Ernst Junger says. We're too cool to vote, too fine to care, too busy keeping up appearances to even read a goddamned book.We are dumb as a water buffalo. We want you to come and join our party. It sounds like a circus here, an orgy of chatter and laughter, not to mention coitus. We play a chipper song as the White Line ship "Americanic", sinks down,down,down to the depths of Davey Jone's locker, where we will rest up against other Imperial ships. I cross my fingers and pray to Alaskan mosquitos that we nudge up against the Habsburg Empire. Franz Ferdinand and George Bush will have much of nothing to talk about.The ghost of Richard Strauss will fly from the ghost of Michael Jackson and Michael Jacksons nose.I will find Geza Csath and smoke opium, we will greet Herr Kraus and Herr Salten. Coffee will be ordered, Turkish style. Or, Serbian. We will jibberjabber in half German, half English. We will walk among starfish, as the sun above becomes weaker and darker.
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