OF AMERICANS, BY AMERICANS, AND FOR AMERICANS
(AS LONG AS THEY’RE RICH)
To Begin
W.B. Yeats put the case starkly. “This is how the world ends, this is
how the world ends, this is how the world ends---not with a bang but a
whimper.” This land is so full of wealth, so bursting with the hum of
yum and the thrum of fun, at least in the surreal “Reality TV” versions
thereof, that imagining ourselves as on the brink of self-induced
destruction is difficult to countenance. “What horseshit” is probably
a typical response. But underneath the self-congratulatory,
“Team-America’s-Number-One” macho, even the most jingoistic Babbit
boosters have moments when they know that doom is around the corner.
They may even secretly celebrate this eventuality, as in the
“end-days,” but “we’ll-be-among-the-elect” fundamentalist folderal so
popular now.
I have a question for those believers, though, and for the rest of us
who feel more than a bit of discomfort when the conversation takes what
appears an apocalyptic turn. “What did the Nazarene mean, when he
said, ‘The kingdom of God is at hand.?’” Lord knows, whoever or
whatever actually incarnates this ‘all-that-is’ energy, I am no true
believer in any doctrine, especially not a strict Christian
representation of said same. But I have an inclination that,
historically, the man we now call Jesus said something very like this,
that he meant this statement in a way that few today understand, and
that on the comprehension of his words our survival may depend.
Before anyone reads further, then, take a minute---or a day or a
month---to think about what these words might have meant. I’ll return
to what seems to me the only interpretation of this sentence that
comports with the character and commands of Jesus at the finish of what
I’m posting today, along with a presentation of the paradoxical
parallel belief, opposing the man-from-Nazareth’s optimism, that the
‘Father’s’ world is upon us, that biocidal ‘catastrophic occurrences’
are also about to explode in our faces.
The Saddest Thing About the Carnage and Chaos
Anyone with a functioning brain in his head and the ability to perform
rudimentary arithemetical functions in her repertoire of skills
recognizes that every single social ill, that people loathe and about
which they complain vomitously, is amenable to vast improvement and
alleviation immediate, if not(ever, perhaps---shall we be real?)to
elimination or cure. Health insurance, obesity, addictive scourges of
every stripe, thievery and muggery and buggery of all conceivable hues
and flavors, PICK A BUGABOO!!! We could, by this time tomorrow,
address them all in such a way that, at a definite and predictable
point in the future, the practical presence of that difficulty would no
longer exist in anything akin to the dire fashion that it does now.
And why doesn’t this take place? A complex and nuanced deconstruction
of why democracy has failed to manifest in “the world’s greatest
democracy,” and why in fact its failure here has supported efforts to
crush majority rule everywhere else on earth, would take forever and a
few additional eons. However, simple explanations are part of the
hugely tangled and horribly mangled complex of reasons, one of which is
especially critical for today’s anecdotal examination of this phenomena
in action.
Of import for today’s story is the classic capacity of the brilliant
fools in charge of the world to divide and conquer. Thus, the working
class---the average people, the wage-earners, the ones with debts
instead of portfolios, with dreams instead of stock-options ---turns
against itself---men against women, old against young, brown versus
pale, etc.---rather than acting in its own behalf.
Again, all but the morons and pretenders will admit that the vast
majority of any power that is real lies in the hands and hearts and
heads of the ninety-plus-per-cent of humanity who have little or
nothing other than their blood, sweat, and tears to offer. They ‘own’
everything, they ‘create’ everything, they ‘control’ everything, that
is, in the apparently fantastical future in which they stand with and
for and by each other. On their division, therefore, on their
selective and methodical scapegoating and victimizaiton and
crucifixion, depends the continued control of the rulers over the ruled.
Every moment of every day, in numbers that are for all practical
purposes countless, folks come close to the understanding necessary to
shift this lack of consciousness, and thereby to take responsibility
and control of their own fates and to create the conditions for their
own happiness, not to mention for their children’s survival. Why they
don’t make the short step from near-consciousness to
consciousness-in-action is also complex and multifaceted. Suffice it
so say here, that a clear look at real events may help individuals who
approximate self and class awareness to bridge the gap, narrow but
deep, that separates whining from winning, that divides complaint from
empowerment.
Another Sad Story That Observers Fail to See Accurately
At times, the BIG events receive so much misleading and downright
false attention that bringing awareness about the Palestinian Question,
or about Air Pollution, or about---again, choose a big-picture point of
personal chagrin!---is no easier than dialing God-the-Father on a cell
phone. But various vignettes, if we attend to them, if we follow my
Grandpa Hickey’s basic SOP and “pay attention, will ya?!” will lead us
really to notice what in the hell is happening in a way that encourages
us to act of, by, and for our personal interest, which can only take
place when we find a way to organize and act collectively with folks
who are fucked in the same way we are. Today, a very ‘little’ tale
admirably fills this role, which any of my readers who are paying
attention will realize is my basic modus operandi, as the saying goes.
What could be more common than worthiness deprived, than hard-work
denied, than the one who deserves the kudos of promotion and victory
receiving nothing but another turn at the oars in the galley of the
slave ship? We have all seen such situations, and many of us refuse to
tolerate such unfairness, personally, without some sort of comment or
protest. But if the basis for the continuance of the general problem
is structural and not individual, programmatic and not mistaken,
systematic rather than accidental, planned-brutality rather than
bad-management, then this personal willingness to take the part of the
underdog will have no more lasting impact than giving a can of beans to
a food bank will help solve the problems of hunger.
A friend of mine’s ambitious and yet empathetic daughter, a young
woman who may one day achieve great success, wherever her path happens
to lead, confronted just such a situation recently. She has been
working for a few months for a marketing firm that handles various
sorts of promotions, in many ways a prototypical company in today’s
economy. The firm chose a corporate form as its organizational basis,
so its performance is to an extent public knowledge. Since its
beginning in 1995, the establishment has shown a profit every year,
even eking out a small return in 2001, and the even worse period of
calendar year 2002.
Recently, the company laid off a middle manager, whose $50,000 per
year salary now contributes to the bottom line. This downsized,
insourced, outsized worker’s tasks now fall on the woman who is the
heroine, though others might say the victim, of this tale, for purposes
of exposition whom we may call Ms. Darketta Doe. She has appreciated
the largesse of this little firm for over eight years, since early
1996, aboard with the company since six months after its inception.
Although the manager now departed didn’t perform that much work,
actually quite typical in such situations, leaving most of the
supervisory effort that was his to do to Ms. Darketta, the inevitable
small increase in Ms. D’s already draconian workload has cut down her
capacity to serve her family. Her husband, and the father of her
children, has long departed the scene, at least functionally,
exercising a lotto and drug habit while working at the only kind of job
he can get, something menial and often sub-minimum wage, including day
labor and landscaping. One son is fully independent, but the other is
in jail on a combination of charges that essentially add up to flight
from police, one marijuana cigarette, and a failure-to-appear, this
last more often than not the dragnet which pulls people into the
enslaving arms of what Afican Americans call “the INjustice system.”
Her final child is a girl, mildly retarded, capable of sub-minimum
wage employment but otherwise without the ability to make her own way,
who relies on Ms. D. for most of her necessities. Not only have her
employers expanded Ms. D.’s job, they have failed to add a single cent
to her wage rate. In fact, the matter came to my attention because my
friend’s lovely girl could not believe that in eight years of
increasingly productive and responsible employment her coworker had
never received a raise.
Daughter-dearest found such “bad management”---so opposed to the
human-resources wisdom she imbibed at UGA---difficult to comprehend, so
she decided to ‘help’ and encouraged Ms. D. to write a letter making a
simple request for something to indicate her long contribution, her
increased effort, and her tremendous need. I came into the picture as
someone who might improve a draft of an appropriate document. My sense
in such situations is always that the worker should be very careful, so
as to avoid being the “example” of what happens to those, who like
Oliver Twist, have the gall to “ask for more.” But I complied,
producing a document that I pray combined both respectful and
respectable begging, which is the only possible way of making such a
request---in the right-to-work terrorism against unions that prevails
in Dixie---without being exceedingly likely to have a boss hand back a
sack with the pleader’s head inside.
What happens now is up to fate. My compadre’s middle child is an
awesome bargainer, and her heart is pure platinum. Clearly Ms. D. is
at a level of desert comparable to Billy Budd, and with luck her
victimization will not be so gruesome as the young sailor’s. This is,
obviously, merely a little note, a grain of sand, not even a ‘blip’ on
the most finely tuned social radar. But this tale has in it elements
as important as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, the coming “useable”
nukes our government plans.
The reason this story is so important is quite simple, though it is a
reason that as a matter of course most better-off Yanks miss
completely. Until the likes of all the Ms. Darketta and Darkon Does
have a real reason to believe that we, of the idiotically and obtusely
named “middle class,” recognize our common plight with them, then ANY
hope of a political solution to the sociopolitical nightmare and
economic concentration camp that the U.S. has become is, at the very
best, crazy and laughable. H-bombs and war will ALWAYS accompany a
divided and disembowelled working class.
What Would Jesus Do?
As promised, very briefly, I’ll make a case for a spirited and
liberating Christianity, in examining what the man whom we call Jesus
meant when he promised that God’s presence was “at hand.” Anyone who
wants to look into such matters would do well to investigate the work
of the historical Jesus project. I love talking with fundamentalists,
because a real opening exists in imagining what really happened, what
he(whom, of course, they think of as “He”)truly said.
Every indication from the work of these stalwart Christians, all of
whom have stood up against vastly powerful organized religious forces
much more attuned to embracing the “shut-up-and-do-as-your told”
Catholicism of John Paul, is that Jesus wanted people to see that
heaven was our lot in life, not some treat that God passed out after we
died. To experience this glory---gathered in ‘His’ name, living like
Jesus and thus ‘reaching the Father through him’---we would enter
paradise through a gate of our own opening, with love and forgiveness
the only additional requirements for us to stay for the eternity of the
present that would open up to us in such a place.
I would bet money: that ‘Ms. Darketta Doe’ understands this; that most
‘middle-class’ folks don’t have a clue; that it will makes sense to
most people who consider tha matter with an open heart.
A Finale of a Couple of Pertinent Points
Two important notions command my attention in the social charnal pit
that characterizes contemporary America. These ideas reflect the fact
that this is the land of Prozac, the hometown turf of Public Relations
and brainwashing, the enclave of a so-called-suburban hypocrisy and
pretense that mirrors the ruling-elite gheist which in turn rules the
culture. The world has not winessed such a level of double-dealing and
bad-faith since at least the sixteenth century, at least in the extent
of falsehood’s manifestation as the necessary champion of security and
victory, or in the lack of any widespread, organized opposition.
Both of these points are simple to state. The first concerns the
nature of “mistakes,” which many native Americans or African Americans
understand more clearly than most other groups here. So many people,
like my good friend’s daughter, ascribe the difficulties of the
beknighted, even when that unlucky category includes them, to error,
mistake, bad management, or similar development.
Two types of “mistakes” exist. The first is in the nature of an
accident, a plane crash due to a random lightning strike. The second
sort, and the overwhelming majority of what we hear are mistakes
today---such as the situation noted above---are not at all accidental.
They are much more like a planned rape with an apology delivered,
according to a preestablished schedule, in the immediate aftermath.
Such violations will never find a cure by addressing mistakes or errors
that never took place, that only have credence because of the need to
obfuscate the systematic and brutal violation which fuels and underlies
every aspect of established corporate culture.
The second closing consideration, and the comprehension that is
utterly crucial for Americans to understand, who consider themselves
“liberal” and “middle class” or well-off, is that this matter is not
about some dusky-hued ‘other.’ The Hiroshima-and-Folsom-Prison society
that has shaped up around us has everyone in the crosshairs, although
the real owners and rulers of the society at least have an excuse to
think otherwise, what with their hired flacks and their real property
interests to protect. Ms. Darketta Doe above, in other words, is all
of us. Until we get that, we are exceedingly unlikely to see the first
point. Self interest is the first rule of politics and survival, and
more importantly, it is a first step toward any kind of consciousness
that is other than facile and futile.
In any event, as I hope you all know by now, “THAT’S MY STORY AND I’M
STICKING TO IT!!”
This article was written by JIMBO
to see other articles by JIMBO, go to http://freebirdspindoctor.joeuser.com/