decision

i hope no one infers that my recent silence here denotes i have crossed the void into complete Luddite. this is certainly not the case. i will share my findings from that unsurprisingly difficult day of disconnect in due time; i’ve been discussing it with folks so as to present a coherent summation. but i wanted to voice something that in my opinion (and hey, guess whose blog this is) takes precedence.

lately feelings of hopelessness have befallen me as i watch the world around us fall into further chaos and clusterfuck – the Middle East further unraveled, Iraq disquieted, North Korean sabre-rattling, Hillary and Huckabee gaining in the polls. my older contemporaries and mentors who have seen and survived what i view as much greater tribulations have unanimously remarked to me that this is the worst state of earthly affairs to which they have ever borne witness. on top of this, the other night i saw Morgan Spurlock’s (“Super Size Me”) newest documentary, entitled “What Would Jesus Buy?” which recounts the prevailing materialism that has, like an anaconda, encircled and suffocated Christmas out of any of its original meaning. As things worsen we succumb to further decadency; as our economy falters and is expropriated to faraway places with slave labour and private contractors, we rack up excessive, insatiable debt as the rich get richer and the poor, poorer.

Jefferson firmly believed in cyclical history, as do i, and remarked that things had been worse before and would be better (or worse) yet. many of my contemporaries have assured me of the same. i have been resolute in the opinion that balance, like Tao, restores and maintains itself through the ages.

yet, as of late i am guilty of beginning to fall into the black void of hopelessness that surrounds our dejected and misguided material society, one that borders dangerously upon the grey shores of the sea of apathy that seems to characterise our generation, at least to outsiders.  but now i am more aware that the fragile balance of existence is actually our responsibility.

Native Americans prophesied that the Seventh Generation would enter the fray and begin to heal the rifts and destruction caused by previous generations, and would at least temporarily (as history and time are a wheel ever spinning, not linear, and one never knows what lay around the bend) begin to drastically improve life on Earth.

we are the seventh generation, and at the risk of sounding pompous, dramatic, solipsistic, or all of the above, it’s up to us to make the changes we wish to see in the world.

our generation may have been labeled apathetic by the media, who themselves do little but dissolve the world of its common sense and propagate desperate events with little or no concern for the consequences, and continue to perpetuate the divisions between peoples. but this assertion fails all those of us who struggle with a shotty job market, dehumanising cubiclezation, exorbitant housing prices, college loans, and a failed political system. just as Italy struggles between a 68 and 71 year old, we have still entrusted leadership to an aging bunch of baby boomers who, 30 years later, are still kicking the same dead horse, and have blinders on to the struggles that modernity has propped upon us.

it’s time for our generation to usurp leadership from this peanut gallery of incompetent assholes and start fulfilling the prophesy and realising our responsibilities. this is why i’ve decided to support Barack Obama for President in 2008. he is the only candidate who, though he is not of our generation, doesn’t belong to theirs.  he is not bound by their Sisyphean struggle. we need hope and courage and unity, and from familiarising myself with his past and policies, i am increasingly certain that he, if anyone, can produce these.

i recommend Andrew Sullivan’s article from The Atlantic to further explicate my position. again, not to sound dramatic, but the fate of a whole lot of shit is in our hands, people. wake up and let’s be what we’re supposed to be.

yes, please shut up, ass wipe.

i have come to believe, as have many other progressive folk, that Hugo Chavez, self-proclaimed ‘populist’ president of Venezuela, is little more than an autocratic, delusional megalomaniac.  he seems to have been infected from the start with the Latin American ‘Il Duce’ contagion that has swept the region in the many decades since european and american colonialism and imperialism bastardised the political elite and robbed the indigenous people of all their rights.

but yesterday, he received a well-deserved rebuke from one of the remnants of his country’s colonial legacy – King Juan Carlos of Spain – who told him to shut his face in the same manner one speaks to a child in Castilliano.  i have to admit, i was pretty amused to see it happen.

i’m now every bit as annoyed when idiots like Papa Chavez, Mah-moody Ahmadinejad and Comrade Vlad “Impaler” Putin throw around words like “Imperialist,” “dictator,” “tyrant,” and “fascist” with the same ease that Premier Bush uses American buzz words like “freedom,” “insurgents,” “terrorists” (pronounced “tersts” for my unenlightened foreign readers) and “enemies of democracy.”   I am by no means a violent individual, but I would like very much to invite these and other shit heads of state to my imaginary castle for a tea party, and then beat the crap out of them.  I will need help with Mr. Putin as he apparently knows some serious Kung Fu shiznit.  Any takers, please feel free to let me know.

seriously, has the word “freedom” been forever contaminated in anyone else’s mental lexicon?  I’ll never be able to walk through a “Freedom Plaza” or look at the much-maligned and prudently dreaded “Freedom Tower” in Lower Manhattan (anybody want 80th floor real estate?  If you want to buy that, I will sell you my fingernail clippings, because you are a moron) without conjuring up a mental image of our “folksy” president speaking with his stupid “commander-in-chief” windbreaker speaking in front of droves of tanks flanked by dozens of strikingly similar looking photoshopped troops.  I am angry that in my unfortunate mind he has usurped a word and a concept that i love and uphold and associated it with the invasion of another country.

speaking of idiots, unless you have been living in a black hole (or the East Coast) you may have heard that the Chinese have gifted our lovely Bay with 58,000 gallons of oil, just in time to seriously fuck up wildlife and delay the start of Dungeness crab season. apparently the jackass captain (who, it should be told, was not actually Chinese but a Bay Area based pilot) has a history of stupid shit like crashing into big bridges.  anyway, the incident probably caused a backlog of tankers all the way back to China full of lead-based toys, cheap colour TV sets, crappy garlic and slave-labour underwears.  just in time for Christmas shopping season!  which reminds me, note to self, see this movie when it comes out.

but alas, as i’ve argued time and time again, we are unable to sever ourselves from the incessant I.V. of cheap Chinese shit.  people wouldn’t pay $700 to include our fair-labour costs for a 24-inch CRT television made in the U.S. of A., not when they can get a perfectly good Chinese one (and the quality is improving quickly) for $150 at Wal-Mart (Wal-Mark, if you’re from Philly).  so the realpolitik can continue to bitch and moan about how China is becoming the next world superpower, whatever the fuck that means, while meanwhile we do our part to ensure it happens, and watch more and more oil-soaked Cosco Busan tankers head towards the sunset back to Shanghai to pick up more cheap underwears, whilst all we can do is watch them take the U.S. economy away with them.

as my brother is keen to point out, we have succumbed to decadence.  as with other empires in the past, this marks a heady downfall into dissolution.

i love conspiracy theorists. the insidious bastards, they’re even in australia! and look, we’ve taken England!