American Pastoral # 13

Halladay pitches play-off no-hitterFred Phelps, Christian, Topeka, KansasConey Island, NYCOhio Representative,House Minority Leader John BoehnerCalifornia forestFlorida Everglades in droughtFlorida Airstream copy-cat “art”Sacramento delta, CaliforniaWayne Thiebaud painting of the Sacramento delta

When America built things, the Golden Gate Bridge under constructionPhoenix, AZ, sky, thanks to Joe PodlesnikSing-sing, New York, execution chamberJob search room, unemployment office, OregonMemorial for Marcelo Lucero, Patchogue, NY,  2 weeks after he was killedCabela’s gunshop, ColoradoTennessee bar OK for gunsJoseph Cornell, Lauren BacallKatherine Heigl, movie starTwo women, painting by Wayne ThiebaudLos Angeles RiverPostcard of Edward Hopper’s painting, Approaching the CityBarnett Newman painting in gallery

With less than a month before the mid-term American elections, the airwaves are flush with the sounds of campaigning, this year more strident than ever courtesy of the Supreme Court ruling opening the floodgates for corporations to invest all they wish in manipulating public opinion in the name of “free speech.”  One buck, one vote.  We once would have called this “corruption,” but in present-day America this concept no longer applies: money talks and bullshit walks, as ever, and as in other parts of the world, there is no longer any pretense that anything else applies.

America has bifurcated into two distinct worlds – that of the 2% hyper-rich and their fellow-travelers, those 20% or so who imagine themselves rich, though by comparison they are poor, for whom the magic of Wall Street still works, and the shuffle of money, huge amounts of money, can be heard stuffing the ballot boxes, and the bank accounts of their enablers at Fox – Rush, Glenn, Palin, et al, as they eagerly move the herd of gullible victims toward the cliff.

The other America, asleep at the wheel the last decades, in thrall to the cheap stuff of malls and plastic credit eagerly urged upon them by the most venal of banks – no less venal than PayDay check loan outfits – suddenly finds itself evicted.  The credit’s been cut, and the knocks on the door are to pay-up the 12-38% interest on the past money loaned.  And if you lost your job, tough luck.  Those doing the knocking these days get their money almost interest free from the Fed, so anything they collect is icing on the cake of their bonuses.  Too big to fail.  But millions of others are too little to help.  But not too little to smother in fraudulent campaign lies, to get them to vote to slit their own throats.

After decades – to say more like a century – of constant governmental and school and media propaganda, the broad American public is against almost anything that might serve itself, and is ready to rail against anything that hints of social welfare, the common-weal, even if the most obvious logic in the world makes clear that these things are necessary for their individual lives.  Dumbed down and brain-washed, our public is seemingly ready to commit hara-kiri on the altar of the magical free market economy – the one that down-sized them, shipped their jobs off to cheaper labor, less environmental restrictions, and other profit-oriented reasons, and basically shafted them royally so that the 2% could watch their stocks go up and up and up until they owned almost all the wealth of the nation, and certainly had bought the government, lock, stock and barrel.  A government which now is of the corporations, for the corporations and by the corporations.

Dutifully it seems these voters will go to the polls, disgruntled and angry on Nov. 2, and in a fit of pique, slit their wrists to write in blood their choice to support those who are most  against their interests, who spent the last months selling them such a bill of absurd goods that even Barnum would blush.   Such a finale was anticipated by de Tocqueville quite some time ago.  However, as is well known, the great unwashed American public has a dim view of all things French, and most of all, intellectuals.  Fry your freedoms.

Dallas Tea Party