COFFEE HOUSE MUMBLINGS: ONLY IN AMERICA

Typical quasi-suburban coffee house tableau, American style, circa 2007: the doddering old fuck with the loose-leaf notebook is singing to himself again, pausing periodically to marshal his apparently limited supply of wind; just outside is a true hard-case homeless guy dressed in rags; across the street, of course, is the exercise emporium surrounded by SUVs; the dramatic Bosnian cashier projects her huskily compelling and rather stentorian voice into every corner of this painfully cheerful room; a steady stream of retirees, determined-looking corporate scumbags, and Valley Girls with cell phones troop in, chock full of empty righteousness and a completely misguided and erroneous sense of purpose ...

A symphony of superciliousness, a stunted stage-play of stupidity, an obscene caterwaul of hollow activity and wasted motion -- and now, it’s pushed even further along the one-way track straight down the swirling center of Beelzebub’s favorite commode by the sudden appearance of the slightly confused-looking business freak who plays with tarot cards. Tarot cards?

***

No doubt about it -- we live in a weirdly fucked-up country. All you have to do is walk around with your eyes open to realize it. Where else in the western world would an ambulatory carbuncle of religio-ideological toejam like Jerry Falwell be eulogized as some sort of “great leader” of the overwhelmingly misnamed “Moral Majority,” who proudly “led evangelicals to the GOP” (Sacramento Bee, 16 May 2007)? Nowhere but here. Where else on this dilapidated jalopy of a planet could ostentatious ignorance be held up as a worthwhile goal to which one should aspire, whether you’re the fat wobbling loudmouth chomping your diseased gums over “American Idol” (“There’re only three left! Oh my god!”) or the Supreme Meat-Puppet Stooge himself, George W. Bush? Why, the good old USA, naturally. What other society on earth so prides itself in being a living embodiment of Walter Lippman’s psycho daydreams of a technocratic dystopia administered by corporate executives and public-relations hacks, those he termed the “responsible men” who might “live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd”? Yes, you guessed correctly -- the United States of America.

It’s dfficult to fathom why we even bother to continue with this experiment, this notably failed exercise befouled by falsehood, distortion, misconception, misunderstanding, larceny, bigotry, ignorance, stupidity ... Actually, upon reflection, it’s not all that hard to figure out; so long as you can sincerely subscribe to one (or all) of the above characterizations, enthusiastically accepting your bleak position among the “bewildered herd” while the “responsible men” go about the business of dictating what you should do and think, then there’s really nothing to figure out. That is the crux of the existential dilemma we face today, why so many reasonable people out here are constantly bashing their skulls against (mostly) virtual brick walls of sheer rage and frustration: the institutionalized lack of inquisitiveness, bland credulity masking an appalling depth of ignorant disregard, energetic bubblings while gleefully feeding at the corporate dog dish ... all as practiced by the “herd.”

Well, anyway. Only in America ...