No

 Utopia
  .. ....W H A T ' S . A . S W E E T H E A R T . L I K E . Y O U . D O I N ' . I N . A . D U M P . L I K E . T H I S ?


 HOME  COMMENTARY  ESSAYS  POEMS/SONGS GRAPHICS   ARCHIVES  ANALECTS  LINKS CONTACT 


OF GOLUMPKIS AND OTHER CONCERNS
by Jim Culleny -8/25/03


I don’t know about you, but I’m having a hard time with this coming election. I worry. I worry and I wonder... if George Bush "wins" again after having had his way with us, will he still respect us in the morning? I worry about necons with dark halos chasing sincere but slow-witted liberals in dreams; the liberals run furiously through molasses never making any headway. I worry about kamakazi photo-op pilots in jumpsuits diving us into Stephen King deadzones. I worry that if we have one more of what Our Great Leader himself calls a "catastrophic success" –even an itty bitty one-- history will be scraping us off the face of the globe with a handi-wipe preparing the way for the next planetary over-reacher.

It’s at gloomy times like this I fall back upon the teachings of my old mentor, Roshi Bob, who's quick with a peculiar insight into things no matter how screwy they get. I won’t waste time giving you background on Roshi’s (if you’re interested you can find that at www.noutopia.com ), but I'd like to share some glimpses of Roshi’s inner world as they inform current events.

For instance consider this news from columnist Molly Ivins, who tells us John Ashcroft now wants libraries to destroy five publications he says are inappropriate for "external use." Two of these are texts of federal laws. He wants to restrict the content of federal laws to the legal elite. And who would these "external users" be? You and me of course. Why would the Attorney General want to cut info off from common citizens? It's the war on terrorism, stupid.

But in Analect 170 Roshi Bob says, "Often, the answer blowing in the wind is not the scent of safety and security, as some would have us believe, but the whiff of a dangerous narcotic. Those with noses to smell, let them smell.

"In the 1960s a lot of incense was burned --sandalwood, lavender, patchouli. This was often done to pleasure the nose and to be cool. But many times it was done to cover the smell of marijuana and stay out of jail.

"Governments burn incense too, and have their own special scents --liberty, democracy, war-on-terror. Sometimes these are used to cover the smell of totalitarianism.

"If you're not going to bother smelling with your nose, why don't you just cut it off to spite your face and donate it to somebody who'll use it."

Then there's the general muck and mire of the campaign. Lie upon lie, spin upon spin, half-truths, innuendo, dirty tricks, fabrication. This is not new, of course, nor restricted to one party. The problem is Republicans have honed it to a fine edge. And now that the news media has sacrificed it's independent watch-dog status and hopped the corporate gravy train, our democratic system is being sliced and diced big time by neoconservatives with their tax-cut-and-take-of-with-the-loot machetes.

As Baba Bob points out in Analect 130: "There are many different kinds of lies and politicians know them all; complete with addendums, appendixes, and footnotes.

"Politics is, first, the art of the verbal manipulation of reality. It's part an actor's game, part linquistic prestidigitation. Skirting the truth with a straight face while seeming to make some looming contradiction disappear and all the while not breaking into a sweat are tools of the trade.

"Not being able to fool all of the people all of the time is not as crucial as being able to fool some of the people some of the time.

"You only need some of the people to get elected."

See, you're probably feeling better already...

...and speaking of the role of "journalists" in our present state of affairs, we have (as recently reported) the phenomena of Fox News --the 24-7 mouthpiece for the right-wing corporate class-- out-rating network news by millions in its coverage of the Republican convention. That's bad, but it's not to say that TV news in general is much better.

Roshi Bob's take on TV can be found in Analect 6. He says, "Any head raised on a steady diet of TV would not stand out in a room full of cabbages."

"In modern times, a person's perception of what's happening in the world is colored by many things, but the main one is TV. If any nation's grasp of reality hinges upon TV news coverage spouted by pretty heads in great clothes and perfect hair, or the bouncing attributes of babes in thongs, it can say goodbye to its future."

Note: Referring to cabbage-heads raised on TV, Roshi has more than once been heard to mutter, "Golumpki". More often than not the person referred to thought this was an esoteric Polish incantation.

But the thing I worry about even more than terrorism is the threat to our liberty resulting from being deceived and mislead. I worry about our freedom being steadily compromised by our fear of terrorism to the point of finally being usurped --as Vladimir Putin has just done in Russia under the umbrella of a Bush-like rationale: defense against terrorism. It's been said in many places that the Bush administration is the most secretive ever. It appears not to respect opposition and thrives on unanimity of thought. But this is never what America has been about. The Republicans may have paraded diversity before the camera at their convention, but plurality of thought, at least, is not on their agenda. The signs are there for all to read, one of the most alarming being the manipulation of the faith of the religious. But being religious shouldn't be about being thoughtless, and believing in god does not require a lobotomy.

In fact, reflecting upon the pitfalls of like-mindedness Roshi tells us in Analect 1: "Being a guru, people often ask me, 'What's it all about, Roshi?' and I'm nonplussed. I'm thinking, how am I supposed to know what it's all about for them if they don't even have a clue themselves? Am I them? 'No,' I answer myself, and go on about my business hoping they'll eventually get to theirs.

"Everybody's looking for answers from somebody else. This is the wrong tack. If God wanted everybody to get their answers from somebody else, God wouldn't have needed to invent so many people. One person, like one giant media conglomerate, would've been enough. We can infer from the fact that there are so many people, that God sought to encourage diversity of thought. Then along came the first dogmatician with his calipers and sacred book."

So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut and Roshi Bob liked to say. But let's work like hell to make sure it doesn't go really badly


 HOME  COMMENTARY  ESSAYS  POEMS/SONGS GRAPHICS   ARCHIVES  ANALECTS  LINKS CONTACT 

  <