More of The King and His Wondrous Clothes.

Today has been a most instructive day, inasmuch as I have again spent it in the world of the cyber-geek. Those who read my Mongoose Trick Opinion Page know that I live in reality, the world first forced upon me in childhood by bullies who couldn’t resist a target as easy as a puny classmate recovering from polio, then by my country’s military industrial complex and its CIA, and finally by the Internal Revenue Service. The world of the realist is a microcosmic one, using the comparatively tiny universe provided me by my senses, together with the equally small world of my capabilities both physical and mental, to relate to and cope with the far, far larger world of society, nation, and world.

Today, I saw the nation in précis, miniaturized in a manner that prevents it from hiding what it is to the honest and unimpeachable, just and logical eye of the realist. The United States of America, of course, is a moribund nation, writhing and lashing about in its death throes. The disease killing it is closest in its nature to cancer, metastasis. The body – the body politic, to be more precise - is attacking itself, having forgotten what is part of it and what is foreign, who is friend and who his foe. “A house divided against itself cannot long stand,” the man called Christ said.

Today, I spent the time between breakfast and supper – the last meal to a Midwesterner like myself – trying to deal with the microcosm of our society and nation that is computers and computer systems. For the how-manieth, umpteenth time, I sat down to interface with a system gone from neurosis to psychosis. Stark, staring crazy, and by a process very similar to one killing the nation it feed on.
As usual, I sat down to find that, for some reason known only to them - Microsoft, Symantec, and all the rest – those who have access to and control over my computer, had changed everything. Nearly all the screen displays – “windows” – were different. Everything I attempted, moreover, required a newer version of something. Companies and persons with whom I was to interact, on the other hand, explained when finally it occurred to them, or the urge hit them, that they still had one of the older versions of this or that. I couldn’t use what I have – and now have no way to change – because they don’t have it.
Maybe you recognize Catch 22.

Time and again, once I fired this cranky lunatic dratfangle mother up, instructions from my publisher failed to produce the result expected – by me, anyway. E-mail correspondence, of course, is no better than any other attempt to communicate with the semi-literate “American” of today. Instructions for anything are so miserably written as to draw only mirth from my high school seniors English teacher spouse. Faulty pronoun reference, garbled word order and diction, Malaprops, and the rest can be very funny, and Rita damned near fell off the couch laughing.

Yeah, sure – nonsense is comical. For instance, I recall nearly falling off the couch some time ago, at reading in the local paper an editorial stating indignantly “children who have been artificially inseminated should be informed.” I thought about sending that particular example of fracture English to Jay Leno’s segment dealing with such nonsense.

Yes, stupidity is funny - but not when you’re trying to deal with something as frustrating already as computers. I have the patience of a rock, but this is trying, even for me. It’s like dealing with Washington, D.C. and the federal government. In fact, it’s so much like dealing with the bureaucracy that no possibility remains for mistaking federal influence. King George really didn’t have to have someone blow the whistle on his having compromised the World Wide Web, it was apparent. Nothing this FUBAR is non-governmental.

And now that I think about that “for some reason known only to them” remark of mine a minute ago, it occurs to me that mental cases seldom know why they do anything or why they’ve done something – usually, it’s just to DO something. Like Washington on the Potomac.

Something else I noticed today is the fact that it’s becoming very clear that the Big Clean-up of the Congress Lobby and the Congress is going to be a lot like a down load from an Internet service provider, a “step by step” manual for a computer program, or the like. When the blizzard of pleonastic pedantry, self-serving and self-aggrandizing verbiage and nonsense are through, nothing will have been accomplished. NOTHING?

But just like the hoards of morons who tolerate the race to the tawdry, the sensationalistic, and the mediocre being run by today’s captains of industry, the same multitude will allow themselves to be convinced by a pandering and pimping media that “democracy has worked again.” The king’s ministers have assured us that the king has purchased new clothes made of a wondrous fabric, a fabric visible only to persons of great merit and worth.

“The government the people deserve” will have succeeded once again, all right – succeeded in yet another swindle.

Just like the instructions or anything having to do with computers or the Internet, everything in the decaying United States is other than its seems. Each time we are threatened or attacked by an enemy, whether foreign or domestic, the end result is that government attacks us, too. Its solution to terrorism, for instance, is to put US, the prospective victims, in prison, spend money “reserved” – “entitlement’ has a Schroedinger’s Cat meaning, too, these days – for social programs like social security, veterans benefits, and the like on weapons whose omnipotent capabilities are rivalled only by their cost, and, of course war.

Like the Vice-President paying no attention to what was beyond his target the other day, George VII and this government attack people without the faintest idea of the consequences. Absolute power, apparently, not only makes one absolutely corrupt, it makes him absolutely stupid.

Come to think of it – “come to think of it,” hell; the prurience pandering media just can’t get enough it, such that every time you turn on the T and V it’s being crammed up you nose – the United States and its FUBAR government resemble nothing so much as the feminist female of today. She wants to go anywhere she chooses, dressed – or undressed – any damned way she chooses, doing any damned thing she chooses (even killing the kid she conceives while she’s doing whatever the hell she chooses); but when the inevitable since the dawn of time thing happens, and she’s found used and thrown away like a condom, there is consternated wonderment.
When the sexually maniacal guy - or guys - has her cornered against a dumpster, it probably – the feminist female isn’t the brightest bulb in the holidays tree, you know – comes to L’il Annie Fannie that she has overdone her militant female role somewhat. When she is naked and spread-eagled on that dumpster being raped, it’s pretty certain she has second thoughts about that “I am woman, hear me roar” horse manure she’s been reciting. And I’ll bet her last thought before being strangled when her abuser is through with her is something other than how she can do anything a man can do. Reality is like that.

It’s like that for a damned-fool society, too. In the first edition of my book, the primal scream version, I said, speaking to my country, this:

“You’re a big fucking deal on a conventional battlefield, tough as the junkyard dog with the missiles, the carrier-based jets, and the rest. Pushing buttons, working computer keyboards, and wielding those arcade-game weapons, you’re a great shooter. But otherwise you’re a pussy, and when somebody shuts off your lights, to come after you in the night with a knife, you’ll do what any other pussy does. You’ll try to call a cop. But there won’t be a cop, because the guy with the knife will have killed the cop already. And the phone won’t work, the lights won’t work, the climate control won’t work, and nothing your decadent life depends on will work, because the guy with the knife will have cut the power, too.

“Everything you depend on, technology, climate-controlled buildings and vehicles, apotheosized government, your whole, hyper-civilized effeminate world come effectively down to one electrical cord and plug-in. Pull it, and you are up shit creek without the proverbial paddle.”

Oh, Hey – the news just reported that Tom (‘The Hammer”) Delay has won the Texas Republican primary! Talk about rich! How’s that?! “I don’t care is he’s a slime-ball, he’s OUR slime-ball.” If you still don’t get my Schroedinger’s Car reference, try that one. We profess to want clean government; we DEMAND it. Then, when the slime-ball we’ve sent to Congress to steal as much of the taxpayers’ money for our district as he can gets caught with a lobbyist’s dick in his mouth, we refuse to notice. The honesty and integrity cat is both alive and dead, depending upon whether we’re looking or not. Get it?

And one, last thing. A few nights ago, FoxNews whatever-is-the-latest solecism for pundit Bill O’Reilly chided the White house for not doing more to improve King George’s public approval ratings by “damage control.” The White House should obfuscate, torture the language, and transmogrify things like the blatant lie used to justify war, in other words. Right in your face, the perpetrator of the “No Spin Zone” demanded better “spin” from his leader concerning their tarnished (“tarnished’ did I say – this is tarnished like a cow yard is soiled) and battered crusader image.

So, in other words, expect O’Reilly, Hannity, and the administration’s Greek Chorus at FoxNews to trot out another massive round of nationwide media praise for the king and his wondrous suit of clothes.

Remember Yackoff Smirnoff? “What a country!”