Ladies and gentlemen,
What is a country? I don’t know. I can’t say. Is a country a group of people? Absolutely not — I mean, a country does contain people, but it’s bigger than that. (A church is more than its organ.)
When I think about the past, I get bored. I find it hard to care about the people who are long dead, who lived in places with unfamiliar names. Those places no longer exist. But the strange thing is that these places still exist, they just have different names and squigglier borderlines. Like, we talked about Egypt in yesterday’s entry: Egypt exists at present, but it’s different from the Egypt that existed in ancient times; so if you read about Pharaoh (Egypt’s old leader) in the biblical book of Exodus, and you start to dislike the way that he rules his country, you can’t just round up a bunch of underage girls & force them onto your private airplane & then fly them to modern Egypt expecting them to berate the government while freeing its populace on your behalf. Cuz, like I said: today, it’s a whole different ballgame.
And not every bygone place maintains the same name. For instance, here’s a direct quote from the encyclopedia: “Sparta is a town and municipality in Laconia, Greece. It lies at the site of ancient Sparta.” THAT name changed so drastically that it worked its way back and came full circle to the name that it was born with. (The joke is that Sparta did indeed maintain the same name: it was a bad example, but I kept it because I get paid by the gaffe. I should have instead pointed out all the things that a professor might profess regarding modern Iran’s former life as Persia, or rather as one of the many actors required to operate the costume of the role of ancient Persia upon the World Stage; likewise Iraq’s as Mesopotamia.)
What I’m trying to get at is this: You hear about the people of the past suffering hardship, and you don’t care because they’re already gone; whereas, if you hear about the people of the present suffering hardship, you care intensely, because you can ease their burden by simply opening up your billfold: you could purchase an ocean and quench the thirst of all sleepers. However, when the Only True History ends up being written by the Fascists who win the Last Global Battle, the readers of the future will not care a fig about your charity, because they will not recognize the people who were suffering in the United States of America as genuine humans: they’re only names on pages, from futurity’s perspective. So it sux to be living inside of the USA right now, cuz whatever hardship you feel is not only unimportant to the past and the future, but you’re just causing yourself to appear less voluptuous by whining about all this in your journal. Talk about something snazzy, that people can swing with, like how many children you’ve fathered in how many books; and don’t forget to mention how many pages each novel possesses.
I once fathered thirty children when I was a governor of a small tribe in a novel of about 300 pages. Then I fathered five children in the next novel, which was about a family living in the mountains; that novel was 462 pages long and rather dull. My most esteemed performance as a literary anti-hero was when I fathered 1,713 babes upon various inhabitants in a region called Gold City in what is now North-Northwest America: I was a king in that novel, and I could do whatever I wanted, so everywhere I went the harems came out to greet me in such a friendly fashion that I ended up impregnating almost everybody; and, out of all those births, not a single child died. And not one was a sinner. That last novel was 120 pages.
But if your present life sux, it’s cuz you’re not in a novel. You must first live out your allotted sentence (not a written sentence but like a prison sentence) in the real world, and then some god shuffles by and etches your story on marble headstones (thus converting your fulfilled sentence into literal sentences); and if the agents at the publishing company like what they see, they’ll draw up a contract, and your offspring will receive residuals, which are basically a type of royalty, that is: “payments made by a licensee to the owner of a particular asset, for the right to ongoing misuse of that asset”.
Thus if I attend interviews of the candidates who are competing for the Democratic nomination, and some of their speeches rile me up, I need to withstand the temptation to voice my reaction, lest I bore the future-folk. Cuz in the future there are no more Republicans or Democrats, and there is no more Office of the President; so futurity couldn’t care less about who challenges the titleholder in 2020 AD. They already know how the movie ended. And that country’s name sounds funny to them: USA?—they can’t even think what that stands for. They don’t care about whether or not we ancient citizens “lost our democracy” or if we ever even had one to begin with (hint: it was a sham all along). The future’s doing fine: they’ve reverted back to the trustworthy system of kingships. They have the Kingdom of Heaven, with Tertius Christos at the helm. And the meek inherited the Earth, cuz everyone else moved to New Athens, on Venus. Archilochus was born in Paros. He’s reading this now. He is you.
But it does piss me off, for exactly the reason hinted at above, when candidates yodel: “We must preserve our democracy!” This country was built ingeniously to WARD OFF democracy. It was made democracy-proof, for a very good reason. True democracy, where all the people directly choose the way the country functions, would bring equality, fraternity, and liberty, which is an unattractive state to those who possess great wealth and would rather avoid sharing it.
So instead we are encumbered with “representatives” who act fast on behalf of the affluent while ignoring the remainder. Representatives are like so many mommies and daddies, and so it’s like we people of the regular laboring rabblement get to choose our babysitter, from a lineup preapproved by financiers. We don’t have transparency and democracy, we have privatization and overseers. All the rules of this country were established in a way that is nearly impossible for the working class to change, and all-too-easy for the big-moneyed class to change right back.
So the best hope that the human beings have for representation in this current Inferno is the candidate Bernie Sanders. But even if we elect someone like Sanders, who promises to revamp FDR’s ideas, then we will be treated barely humanely for a sole generation, and the rich will only lose that single generation of would-be pillage while the underlings grow comfortable; yet soon enough the uppers’ll begin the process of undoing all the people-centered stuff. This is no fluke: this is the expected pattern. That’s why Sanders must already re-vamp the plan that was first vamped a generation ago: the rich un-vamped it over the interim. And this is designed to reoccur forever. The only solution is a brand new system.
Look how stupid I am: I’m so saturated by the lousy market-culture that I can’t even talk about escaping it without employing its concepts: brand new system. Everything is branded like cattle. Let’s go purchase a system from the system manufacturer. Get some Big System Business to sell us a genuine democracy. We’ll pay with our lives.
I don’t like to protest — I don’t like to go out there and walk around holding a sign. It feels so base. Like we’re children begging for love. I don’t understand why we don’t just curse God and die.
And I don’t like voting for politicians; I only like voting for concepts. Or it would be good if instead of these multiple-choice ballots, everyone could write their own essay answer. So the question would be “How should our country define what is guaranteed unconditionally to every citizen, no matter how ugly they are?” And I’d answer:
Food, clothing, shelter, and medical care — these are basic needs, and they should be supplied without the citizen having to do anything: no labor: nothing. And whatsoever is desirable beyond these basics should be labeled “luxury”, so that if you want more than just the healthy meals, modest clothes and fine living quarters that come with citizenship, you can WORK to get money to pay for fancier things. So if you ever see a man dressed in garish attire, you’ll know that he labored to achieve that level of fashion. But homelessness or starvation will not be levels that anyone can sink to. And as society grows increasingly stronger, we the people will keep redefining for ourselves what we mean by “luxury”: in other words, what was considered a luxury yesteryear shall today be added to the list of “guaranteed basics”. Ultimately I’d like to see us reach the point where the poorest citizen is living like a king.
But how are we going to get people to do the work that produces the goods and services of the “guaranteed basics”, as well as all the regular functions of society like water processing and trash collection? The answer is that whoever wants luxuries will do this work gladly; moreover, the jobs will be made very easy, for the shifts will be short — no more than two hours each — and only once per week, because we’ll have so many people who are desirous of attaining further luxuries, so they’ll be eager to do their part, & instead of one poor soul slaving twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week, we’ll chop that job into many little shifts and hire multitudes to fill them… and we’ll pay a generous wage: so for a normal month of working, which totals about four days at two hours each, you’ll get $6,250 dollars. And all the things that money can buy will remain the same price that they were back when they were cheap; or actually their cost will probably drop significantly, because everyone will be so happy, even businesspeople.
Yes, the economy is now so robust and healthy that accountants can just kick back and relax at their desk, trusting that all the numbers are taking care of themselves: there’s no need to track them. All graphs and charts have gone the way of the horse and buggy. And you never hear anyone cite statistics anymore, such as “veterans make up ninety percent of all homeless people in the U.S. (etc…)” because, first, there’s no more homelessness, and, second, there’s no more veterans, cuz there’s no more military, cuz there’s no more war, cuz there’s no reason to fight, cuz everyone’s so darn happy (as it is written: even businesspeople). Take one look out the window and it’s obvious that everyone’s doing quite well — so it would be a waste of time to gather statistics: you’d be better off enjoying your afternoon: go hang out at the beach; play with your kids; walk the robotic bull.
However, what if I’m wrong about the above? Say that everyone’s so content with just sitting at home and watching televised miniseries that it’s hard to find anyone willing to perform the tasks required to sustain society — what then?
Still, that’s not a problem: I myself will do the chores. If the rest of the country wants to lean and loafe at their ease, I’ll gladly work at the water plant myself, and drive the truck to collect the trash — I’ll throw each can in the hopper, pull the lever that moves the blade to mash the refuse; then replace the lids on the cans, jump back in the cab, and wave goodbye while I drive off.
And if someone needs back surgery, I’ll do it. I’ll read up online about how the nerves and bones connect, and where the muscles are located, so that I can make the correct incision and remove the proper vertebra. And once you’ve healed from the operation, you’ll need physical therapy to help regain your former strength; so when you visit the wing of the hospital where this takes place, you’ll be surprised to note that the same guy who performed your surgery is also your physical rehab doctor: Bryan Ray — I’m the one who’ll be assisting you on your journey to a full recovery.
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