Most of the cats that you meet on the street speak of true love
Most of the time they’re sitting and crying alone
One of these days they know they better get going
Out of the door and down on the streets all alone — Grateful Dead
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you — Pablo Neruda
A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long. — e.e. Cummings
One day we will look back at this night, the eve of destruction, and not remember anything. It’s as though our child, America, was an invention, an invention that invented things, self-inventing. And it’s not like this is the last day she lives, she’s always been a train and we’ve always waited at the station wondering all the things one wonders on the platform.
Or maybe it’ll just be another four years of the same old shit. Probably. The hardest truth is that it might not matter. I think what disturbed people the most when Gallileo built a globe was not questioning their belief in a flat world, but the belief that we might not be the center of the universe. We being Italy, or, now, we being the US. Us the U. S.
We, the human race and more particularly the Western Mind, have pushed the geographical bounds of manifest destiny, pushed them centuries ago. Psychologically maybe just now is when we push up against the border; it’s a bit like nipples on a man. I don’t know why we have them but if you pinch them the why doesn’t matter quite so much.
We might not be the worlds police, or, if we are we might not be the good cop any longer. We certainly aren’t leading the world in health care or education, two things that might seem like liberal luxuries to the healthy and ignorant, but the most important things for the next generation to not have. What separates the first world from the third world? Money? Perception? Flatness or an orb?
I think I might have said this election is a question of the lesser of two evils. I was trying to be simple, populist, something or other. I don’t really believe that. I think it’s an election of a politician and someone arrogant enough to think on the job training will work. I think we can survive the politician. I think we can survive the other too, but neither address the crumbling of the empire. Of late neither have addressed anything but the others shortcomings, and, granted, those are fertile fields, Rome burned long before Nero ran out of tunes on his fiddle.
Sure, maybe you got in a request for Shady Grove and Nero fiddled the shit out of it, but your home was still in ashes. Yeah, Italy was the center of the world for a long damn time. It fell into decay over and over and in between people like Constantine spread manifest Christianity much further than Christ did, even on this flat old earth.
The third world is less concerned with the shape of earth, grand destiny or moon landings than it is with food, tyranny, shelter. The third world isn’t concerned with immigrants at the border or Roe V Wade or who to blow up next.
Rome and Greece both played with democracy after a fashion. Perhaps if we remember this, the eve of destruction, we will place the thought in our heads, in hindsight, post-humosly, that sometimes the will of the people is stupid, that the framework of democracy needs something fair and just as a foundation. A great many people think this election is about the lesser of two evils; how can you possibly believe that and believe, too, that democracy is healthy and alive here in some fraction of the first world?
Is Russia still the first world? And what exactly is Russia now? If this empire crumbles who and where gets to call itself America? These are not rhetorical questions. A small anecdote; the agency I worked for, CSD (children services division, state of Oregon) was so hated by the public that a ballot measure was signed and passed to get rid of the agency. The state of Oregon did that by changing it’s name, I was already gone, but I kept my name. What are the actual borders of what calls itself Russia now? Italy? And the USA?
Yes, this is hyperbole, or it is today, but it is the stakes. For the past sixteen years we’ve been in a nosedive, and whereas I don’t think either candidate is evil, I also don’t think either is the kind of pilot that can right the ship.
Sorry, I know you’re whistling Truckin’ and pinching your nipples. We will forget that when we look back at this night. I might look at this entry to jog my memory. Heh. That never works. In three days I won’t have a clue what the fuck I’m talking about let alone in three years.
The first time I voted for Obama the major reason was that I thought Bush jr had destroyed our credibility with the rest of the world and Obama would represent a more diplomatic America. Also McCain had a nutbag as a running mate. The GOP has been hijacked and now Palin looks moderate. I don’t regret voting for Obama, but he failed to meet any of my expectations. This time around my only hope is our rate of descent slows down.
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