Just guzzling coffee and staring out the window, mildly considering the where and when and how we’re all to be Chertoffed this summer -- or is that Santorumed? Perhaps being “Cheneyed” is a more apt descriptor. Whatever.***
Sometimes I can’t help but wonder: which is stronger, stupidity or fear? Ignorant dumbness must be, given that nobody I associate with seems particularly fearful about anything, really; on the other hand, the great majority is about as swift on the uptake as a sack full of claw-hammers. I suspect there’s some sort of connection here.
***
Congress passed a “defense” authorization bill that requires a withdrawal (of sorts) from Iraq, to commence in -- what -- a few months or so. I’ve always had a soft and fuzzy spot for Vaudeville, especially when it involves “elected representatives,” political apparatchiks, and thuggish goons lusting over dictatorial power. However, one of the problems with such cheap theater, as is the case with popular entertainment generally, is that the ending is, always, invariably the same -- in this case, Chimpy vetoes another feeble, largely symbolic non-check on his death-cult ambitions, his media enablers crank up the noise machine and brand TRAITOR on the seamed forehead of every Democratic “lawmaker,” and the Dems in turn bleat like goats with their gonads caught in a barbed-wire fence before they cave completely. Happens every time, it seems.
***
Is it just my imagination, or is the appalling, insufferable, overbearing, crap-vinyl-bound, bully-boy bullshit practiced by midlevel supervisor/managers -- ambitious mediocrities and sycophantic reamers promoted out of the grimy swill-pit of lowly wage monkeys, for the most part -- usually spewed forth in direct proportion to the pointlessness and/or uselessness of the work at hand? (If this comes uncomfortably close to a confession of the derelict nature of my “professional” life, I apologize.)
***
It could be worse -- I could be in the military, which is no place for thinking people these days. When I was an enlisted Air Force nobody back in the late 1980’s, I and my firefighting compatriots never could’ve imagined being stuffed into a bottomless sausage machine like Iraq, or becoming lost and abandoned in the lunar deathscape of Afghanistan; daily existence was trying enough, after a fashion, particularly in Germany, where the mostly fictional “Soviet threat” was hung around our necks like a dead pigeon on a string made from entrails and bad intentions. Within the framework of USAFE (United States Air Forces in Europe), we chuckleheads were burdened by quarterly “Operational Readiness Inspections,” periodic NATO exercises, endless fire training, far too much alcohol consumption, and an anemically weak US dollar against the West German Mark. To be perfectly honest, it was a semi-artificial, faux-military experience at best, particularly when compared to today: endless deployments, compelled participation in an ongoing war crime, Republican middle fingers, sudden violent death ... We had Ronald Reagan, that noted doddering old fuck. Now they have -- holy crap -- Bush and Cheney.
***
Oh, well. It’s now mid-morning -- time for a drink. Bottoms up, people!
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