An Open Missive of Anger and Hope
by Phil Rockstroh
 
Recently, we've been plied and pummeled with the absurd proclamation that "the system worked" -- that our congressional representatives listened and took note of the collective, antiwar fulmination of the people, registered in our faux republic's latest, sham plebiscite … Yes, I suspect, the political classes of Washington did hear the people's thunder -- and then went running for cover within the comfort zones of their sheltering smugness, constructed of the brick and mortar of arrogant power and inequitable privilege. Just ask Joe Lieberman: He's the self-satisfied fellow seated comfortably upon the large, plush lounge chair, stuffed with campaign dollars, nearest the door with access to K Street.    

But we must not let ourselves -- the true beneficiaries of empire -- off so easily: Our national tragedies (from all the corpses amassed, buried and forgotten in our imperial wars -- to our intransigence and denial regarding Global Warming) are a collaborative effort with our leaders: A joint and living lie of the mind -- made manifest by collective desire and remorseless pursuit.

Upon the occasion of our cultural confabulation of colonial hagiography dubbed "Thanksgiving," a tradition when we stuff our overweight bellies by devouring big, growth hormone-injected, flightless birds in order to celebrate, what in truth was, a Thanks-taking of this land by our ancestors from its original inhabitants -- (but a hearty salutation of "Happy Genocide Day" doesn't exactly stimulate the appetite, does it?) -- I will address the following missive to you -- my fellow unindicted (perhaps even unconscious) co-conspirators in the crimes of our country.

Let's begin with the things nearest to us: The structures and objects we see before us, everyday. And it's not a beautiful sight to behold.

Due to the banality, blandness, and flat-out ugliness of the stripmall/big box store/fast food outlet, prefab nowhereland of our contemporary landscape, life in the US under corporatism is as seductive as the glare of florescent tube lighting in a convenience store.

The architecture of the US looks as if Aldophe Eichmann grew bored endlessly calculating the human weigh capacity of death camp bound boxcars --rose from Hell--and went into the prefab structure design business.

Now, don’t get ugly, you admonish.

Tell me: What is truly ugly -- the composition and dissemination of a heartfelt, political jeremiad (or even an angry rant) – or the squandering of the passing hours of our finite lives within ugly suburban subdivisions, oversized, ugly-ass motor vehicles, soulless stripmalls and sterile office parks.

Man, have we let ourselves go: and its not only the sprawl around our middle: it’s the phony way we comport ourselves in manner and deed. Our shallowness – our hollowness – our lack of conscience, self-awareness and conviction ...  all of which, the architecture and accoutrement of our commodified nowhereland merely reflects.

Worse yet, we no longer even see it. We are inseparable from our environment in the same manner e-coli bacteria are inseparable from feces ... The nowhere-scape before us exists in equal measure to the nowhere-scape within ...

It seems as though: Our landscape has become so vapid and banal, it can't even rise to the level of being tacky … Whatever the case -- even an attempt at tawdriness would show some kind of low-grade involvement. Instead, there is an overall feeling of flimsiness — a sense of a world devoid of substance. And the pervasive unsubstantiality creates an underlying aura of anxiety — the feeling that all of it can and will be leveled and scattered in some approaching cataclysm ... In this way, we hear the death rattle attendant to a closed system in entropic runaway ... The system is still replicating itself, exponentially -- yet, in equal measure, it bears and spreads the seeds of its demise.

This is why I have come to squat in your comfort zone, until you take notice.

Because the manner we're living is as salubrious as a tsunami.

And is about as sustainable, body and soul, as Elvis Presley's final binge.

Our emptiness is compensated for by the gigantism we see everywhere around us: from an epidemic of obese children to bloated McMansions. But whether its wooly mammoths or SUVs -- or Elvis, stuffed into a sequined jumpsuit -- or the fate of unwieldy armies of over-extended empires, bogged down by local insurgencies -- gigantism is a precursor to extinction. Worse, at present, this phenomenon is transpiring on a global basis.
 
Corporatism has rendered us analogous to the last days of Elvis ... Puffy, bloated -- we wheeze our way through our set ... Guarded gate communities are our own private Graceland where we die in excess and isolation. The electric lights sequined across the entire planet, now glow from space like one of Elvis's Las Vegas costumes. But does no one see the dying man beneath the jeweled jumpsuit? The land and The King are one.