It's catch up time in a bunch of arenas, not the least of which is re-energizing this blog; I've been pretty spotty over the past week or so. And then there's all the blogs that have to be read . . . friends and relatives and my regulars. Of course, there's no way on God's green earth I keep up with all the blogs I dip into. There are few I read religiously, very few. James Kuntsler's "Clusterfuck Nation" is one of the exceptions to this rule (off the top of my head, I can think of only one other: "Baseball Time in Arlington" about the Rangers). Kuntsler and Matt Taibbi are writers who employ what I'd call the slashing style. No pussyfooting around with language niceties or foggy expression of their beliefs. And so Kuntsler begins his piece at the beginning of this month thus:
Portents of winter and the toothless chatter of flag-draped traitors vies with a fog of lies spread by Koch Brother messenger boys, Reagan nostalgia hucksters, suck-ups in office, Murdoch empire servlings, Banker PR catamites, and Jesus terrorists to occupy the national mind-space with a narcotic Jell-O of half-formed wish fulfillment scams. The nation is hostage to a confederacy of racketeers. Banking. Big Pharma. The Higher Ed / Loan nexus. GMO agri-biz. Fast food. Mandatory motoring. You name it. What a disgrace we are, and the worst of us are the least to know that.Is there a clearer expression of the calamity that is our current state of affairs than "hostage to a confederacy of racketeers?" Is there a stronger expression of condemnation of what we've become than "disgrace"?
His outrage at the Penn State sex scandal is near boundless. He begins "Rudderless" like this:
The Penn State football sex scandal, and the depraved response of the university community at all levels, tells whatever you need to know about the spiritual condition of this floundering, rudderless, republic and its ignoble culture.Correctly, trenchantly he interprets the hideous affair as a metaphor for America. And he's right on. He's revolted by every aspect of the scandal: "The intersection of America's fake warrior culture of football with the nation's fake moral and ethical culture is instructive. It has many levels . . . " from the cover-up by the university higher-ups to "the pretense that college football is a character-building endeavor." From "the phony 'prayer' session held in the Penn State stadium just before Saturday's 'big game' with the University of Nebraska" to the student demonstrations of support for Paterno and the football program to cable news wall-to-wall coverage of this event while several other earth-shaking events like the European debt crisis hardly got mentioned.
No, Kuntsler's not happy. He's angry and disgusted. Who can say these are unwarranted emotions?
2 comments:
In economics and politics, our highest aspirations are to emulate "The Godfather" and his less desirable friends, while in the realm of the pleasures of the flesh, we are all about de Sade (who would blush at things in our entertainments) or Stoker and the erotica of vampires.
We are able to become enraged at the Penn State affair, but a child dies from abuse every 6 hours or so in our fair nation.
Actually, we are not slaves to our desires... but those desires are severe tests to our "better angels"...
Are you as disgusted as I am by the "recovery" of the Christmas lust for goods? A people in thrall to material things are easily manipulated. They will buy any specious argument, and they will dismiss criticism of powers that assure them everything will remain the same.
I have a quote somewhere about this. Somewhere. To the point that all you have to do to turn the American people into sheep is say you will protect their property.
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