I begin to understand why the death of Ferguson, Mo, teen Michael Brown
sent such shock waves through America last year. He truly symbolized our
country: an overgrown, oafish, wannabe thug making one bad choice after
another until his final, suicidal lurch against authority — followed by all
the exculpatory lying on his behalf: the “gentle giant,” hands up, don’t
shoot! This is exactly how America acts on the world stage these days.
We are the Michael Brown among nations, high on exceptionalism, stoned on entitlement,
swaggering moronically from one place to another grabbing what we feel like,
smashing things up as we go.
Also, as in the case of the actual Michael Brown, supposedly sentient
observers do not have the guts to call bullshit on all the excuses we make
for ourselves. Has any self-styled presidential candidate made a peep about
America’s idiotic campaign to make Ukraine the 51st state? Has
Hillary (“It’s Her Turn”) Clinton asked publically why the US is egging on
NATO to stage military exercises on the Russian border? Do we still have a
senate Foreign Relations Committee, and does it convene once in a while? Is The
New York Times so preoccupied with its “Gay Cities” index it forgot that
the world is full of serious conflicts and hazards that extend beyond the
choosing of apartment décor?
Likewise, there are obvious reasons why we’re so busy demonizing Vladimir
Putin. He’s the only serious adult on a stage full of special ed students.
When Vlad goes on vacation what does the American media do? It launches into
raptures of speculation about his “love child” — because in this country any
political leader foolish enough to step out of the spotlight for a few
minutes will be gleefully unmasked as a “cheater,” a lothario (because,
despite our ultra-pornified 24/7 twerk-o-rama culture, we apparently think
sex is bad), so then the peanut gallery can enjoy the grotesque spectacle of
apology and the inevitable punishment that follows despite any apologies.
Vlad walked out of a winter Olympic venue fourteen months ago and said,
simply, “I’m divorcing Lyudmila….” End of story. Oh, and Vlad also doesn’t
subscribe to the current American notion that being homosexual is a major
life achievement. That truly offends!
This also explains America’s obsession with cartoon superheros, and
especially characters who enjoy high-tech prosthetics for projecting power —
all those robo-soldiers and cops, and the fabulous American Sniper with his
thousand yard kill-shot. Without all this magic we’d be revealed as
weaklings, our vitality sapped by decades of Froot Loops, Cheez Doodles, and
Pepsi, our brains shriveled by untold hours of conditioning by way of Grand
Theft Auto, Dark Souls II, and Keeping Up with
the Kardashians. What do foreign leaders think when they have concluded
their mystifying sessions with our Secretary of State, the
haircut-in-search-of-a-brain, John Kerry. Do they look around the floor of
their ministerial offices to see if any sawdust leaked out of his head?
Has anyone actually looked around and noticed what a scabrous sight
American towns and cities present these days? There are places here in the
old Yankee northeast that Borat would be ashamed to call home. We live amidst
so much delaminating plastic it’s a wonder that virtually everybody doesn’t
have cancer. The squalor is awesome, and to make matters worse, we’re even
too lazy to clean up the stuff that is just lying around on the ground —
and certainly too lazy to try to grow anything in that ground if it
didn’t promise to grow up looking like a pepperoni stick or a corn dog.
America’s moment of getting kicked to the curb by other nations is at
hand. I don’t think it will be a kinetic war, not right away, but it will be
a hearty financial beat-down, and many of the members of our insane clown
posse in Europe are going to feel the beat-down, too. America tried, at the
very last moment, to join the new BRICs development bank. Who finally decided
that? Barack Obama? John Kerry? Jack Lew: the Three Stooges? Get gold. If you
can.
