THIS OLD (WHORE) HOUSE

Here in the early months of the pivotal year 2006, the United States of America is like a dingy, decrepit, dilapidated, crumbling, creaking, and condemned whorehouse fixing to keel over at the first suitable opportunity. What, you don't happen to care for a cheap metaphorical exercise that shamelessly equates our gloriously wonderful country with a house of prostitution -- one that's on the verge of collapse, even? What's the problem? I would think that describing Bush's America as a debased and disgusting screw-shack, held together with little more than chewing gum, bad intentions, and an effluvium of sweat glands, and packed to the rafters with the most corrupt gaggle of pimps, cutthroats, and whores the world has ever seen ... is, well, actually less a foray into metaphorical fancy than an example of sheer, brutal honesty.

Well, whatever. It would be a stretch to suggest that I had a point here. If I did have a point, it would probably not be that the United States presently has the dubious distinction of being the world epicenter of whorish corporate and political malfeasance, which, at any rate, is all too plainly obvious. No, at the moment my interest is directed toward the edifice in which all the pimping, whoring, thieving, and other felonious larcenies are allowed to take place -- the shaky, ill-kept, and dangerously undermined structure of representative government itself.

Maybe this country, at least as represented in the ruling class and its institutions, has always been -- to greater or lesser degrees -- nothing more than a motley conglomeration of opportunistic hosebags ready and willing to sell themselves to the highest bidder, for some perceived advantage or other; while also being simultaneously prepared to step on the windpipe of anyone unfortunate enough to get caught between themselves and their greedy, self-interested ambitions. That's all a given, pretty much. It's also a given that the current regime in Washington, as well as its enablers and accomplices among the corporate class and other priviledged elites, has more fully embodied this basic MO than any other administration in history. No prior American administration has ever breathed such vitality into the very concept of whorishness, pushing it with so much maniacal intensity and single-mindedness of purpose that the institutional framework within which they perpetrate their criminal swindles and cynical, swinish aggressions is, itself, in mortal danger of collapse and dissolution -- or, at the very least, of being drastically altered beyond all recognition. Previous incarnations of the ruling oligarchy's greed and power-lust, apparently, had been kept under just enough control to allow for the continued existence of the cultural/economic/political apparatus they so effectively manipulate and profit from -- in other words, the centers of power have usually known, almost instinctively, just how far they can bend and warp and generally exploit the system they feed upon. In contrast, today's Neo-Con Nazi-wannabes lack even a bare modicum of the self-discipline and measured control that are sorely needed if the machine they so wantonly plunder is to survive at all. They are, in effect, a political demolition outfit, primed to lay waste everything within their field of vision -- including, oddly enough, the squalid whorehouse that provides them the means and opportunity to conduct their misguided campaign of destruction.

OK, a couple of deep breaths ... So the critical question intrudes itself at moments such as this: what do we do when the befouled house of ill-repute -- which happens to be the country we live in -- has become so compromised that it's beginning to fall down around our heads? Well, I myself am going to have another drink, give it all a few more minutes of serious thought, and then shelve this whole stinking mess until next time.

My head hurts.