Sunday, March 7, 2010

War and Turds

Why are the messages of "conservatives" so ... sophomoric and ugly? Well, my suspicion is because so many seem to hold preposterous beliefs about human nature and human relations. For whatever reasons, I've met individuals who hold beliefs that seem clearly indifferent, inhumane, and even cruel who also seem to believe that they are the "good guys." I think there may be a more penetrating way to say just how out of touch with the human condition some seem to be, though. Whenever I hear an argument in favor of, say, government privatization, this is the message I hear:

"You know that turd I just deposited in your toilet? I believe it represents goodness. I believe it smells good. I believe that it tastes good. I believe that a turd-rich diet improves cardiovascular health and creates emotional wellness. I believe jamming shit under my fingernails is hygienic. I believe soaking my toothbrush in diarrhea every night and brushing with fresh feces immediately after every shit will prevent tooth decay. I believe God created the capacity and necessity to shit because He loves us and wanted to enable us to be entirely self-sufficient by using shit in creative and innovative ways to satisfy all of our needs and desires.

Conversely, I believe drinking clean water is the beginning of the slide down that slippery slope into the cesspool of heroin addiction, pedophilia, and government assistance for the poor. I believe that there is too little smog in most American cities. If the air quality in Chicago, Illinois, was as bad as most similar-sized industrial Chinese cities the average lifespan for both men and women would increase by 30 years. If we allowed lead-based paints again then there'd be more mining (good for the environment, sort of like a facial for the land) and more children with lead-poisoning in the United States. Little known fact: Lead poisoning cures attention deficit disorder.

The United States should start more wars in the Middle East and then invade countries all over the world in order to defend American soil. There is no good reason not to be actively bombing countries on every continent in the world. War saves lives. That's right. No one dies when there is a war. Everyone is happy. The end of war always results in political instability and thus the resumption of war. War heals the wounds of peace.

War and turds. War is wonderful. Poop is purity. I am in love with both. We're having a menage a trois, if you will. It's a long story that started moments after a conical brown treasure emerged from my asshole years ago and I fell in love with her. I intended to use the stinker as toothpaste, as usual, but as I was reaching into the toilet to take the bowel movement into my hand, I ... I saw her. As she was. As she really was. No pretending she was just an everyday turd, just a run-of-the-mill toilet torpedo. Now, there was ... life. Her vitality was palpable.

My God, I remember how beautiful that log of love was when I first saw her. I have photos of Poopy floating free in urine, darker brown than anything else I'd ever seen and absolutely riddled with non-digested corn. Some shit-lovers believe corn is like acne on a turd. They prefer silky smooth, uncreased, perfectly rounded snakes of shit. I thought I wanted my crap to be like that as well. I was wrong, though. It just goes to show how crazy some of our thoughts can be, you know?

But I digress. I shouldn't even get into how the Iraq War showered me with affection. But I will. At first I thought the Iraq War might be a stalker. I mean, he was everywhere for awhile. I couldn't turn on a TV without seeing another of the bouquets of violence he'd made just for me. But, in time, I realized he sincerely cared about me. I began to see the tenderness of his love expressed in videos of 'smart bombs' striking buildings and in photos of the aftermaths of IED explosions.

After awhile, I even became jealous. Whenever I turned on the radio I heard the voices of other admirers singing his praises. It drove me insane! I called the Pentagon and left messages telling him how much more I loved him than everyone else, that I'd always be there for him no matter what, that I was proud of him, that he deserved more credit for making the world a better place than he was being given. Inside, I was so afraid he would fall in love with someone else, some other admirer who was just as head-over-heels for war in Iraq as I was. I mean, why choose me? Who was I to the Iraq War? He could have anyone he wanted any time he wanted.

Well, that's not really true. There were detractors, those who didn't trust him, thought he was vile. Evil even. I went into a rage whenever anyone suggested such things about the love of my life. I began to admire the others who loved him as much as I did. I was still wary of them, wondering if I should really trust them not to take Iraq away from me somehow, but ultimately we had our love for him in common. A great man, the Iraq War. A great man. I'm so proud he's a part of my life. Without his existence my life would have been so much less meaningful. What would I have done with myself if it hadn't been for the Iraq War?

You could say how about Afghanistan, but, what can I say? Afghanistan never made the effort Iraq did to attract my attention. Look, I'm not saying the Afghanistan War is bad or anything like that. I'm sure the war there is tremendous, but you don't get to choose who you fall for, you know? I'm just saying that without that love in my life, where would I be? Who would I be?

As I said earlier, there is also Poopy. How could I say my life would be empty without the Iraq War when I'm also in love with a piece of shit? It's complicated. Love usually is. But there are different types of love, you know? With Poopy, it's more intimate. I mean, we interact. Well, not through touch. Not for years. I had to emulsify her pretty quickly to preserve her in that state of freshness. It's maddening, though, being so close without being able to smell her pungency. She reeked. Her odor overwhelmed me.

There are sacrifices in all relationships, though. I still talk with her every day. There isn't quite the romance there was early on, but there was a lot of infatuation intermixed with that love, anyway. A bit of lust, too, I suppose. But how could I ever have sex with a piece of shit without destroying its form? I wouldn't have been able to live with myself. There may not be sex, she may be encased in glass on the coffee table, and I might be a little impatient with her at times, but our love is stronger now than it ever was. Love is ... it's a lot more than a punch in the stomach and a two-by-four to the head. You might think that's all there is to it, but there are also red-hot pokers being shoved up assholes, shotgun blasts in the face, dismemberment of bodies, and body parts being mailed to mistresses. Love is everything we always dreamed it would be, but it's so much more than that, too.

My love for the Iraq War, for example, has grown to such a degree that I believe all Arabs should be shot on sight. I'm capable of giving on that level now. More importantly, I'm willing to love like that. It takes courage to think of others when it's so much easier to think only of oneself. But I don't want the needs of Arabs to go unmet. And it's so obvious that they need to be annihilated. My Iraq War would agree. He clearly wants to grow beyond those borders, to spread the love to Iran, to North Korea, to any country needing to be cured of peace. Loving the Iraq War has made me a better human being. I've learned how to extend my love to not just Arabs, but all peoples of color and even others who don't believe what I believe. I know it sounds a bit like a boast, but I believe I will some day learn to love even those who agree with me and do what I want them to do when I want them to do it. You think I love them, but I haven't yet wished for them to be attacked by the U.S. military, have I? I mean, violence is medicine. There's nothing but misery in life for those who haven't had a limb blown off.

What I wonder about now, though, is if I'll ever be able to love myself that much. I'm like anyone else, I suppose. Most of the time I tell others that I wish I was the target of a smart bomb in Iraq. Sometimes I even sort of believe it. But I'm not really there yet. I'm ashamed. Secretly. For being a coward. Still, look where I started? I used to think war was bad. Back when I was a kid. Hey, it takes a lifetime to develop. We don't learn to love all at once, you know.

Nevertheless, it pains me not to be able to wish to be waterboarded in Guantanamo. I feel so ugly inside because of that. I know there's something wrong with me because I don't pray to fire a bullet into the brain of a Muslim or fantasize about shrapnel ripping through my gut. The first step in healing, though, is admitting you have a problem. I look to my loves for strength. The Iraq War provides the model for how to live. Poopy uses motionless stoicism as a means to encourage me to keep trying, to not give up. I'm so grateful for that support. I really am lucky. Two great loves in one lifetime. I'm humbled by it. I certainly don't deserve it. But God is forgiving, God is merciful, and God is generous. He expresses His Love for us through endless war and shit.

Amen."

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

A little juice


I got a little juice today. Orange juice. From a convenience store. That syrupy orange juice that tastes like it was squeezed from plastic fruit.

I was listening to the radio in my car while I was sipping this sugary shit and heard the whole litany of what's wrong with the country. Obama wants to fire teachers and principals at impoverished schools. He wants nuclear power plants built in Georgia. Republican Senators Jim Bunning and Jon Kyl want the unemployed to starve to death. The insurance industry is alive and well and, provided there is no public option in any health care bill, should manage to bankrupt every single American in the coming years.

What else? Mossad agents are suspected of assassinating a Muslim in Dubai. The war in Afghanistan is heating up ... again. Sectarian violence is ongoing in Iraq. Chechnya is Chechnya. Massive earthquake in Chile, hundreds dead, some infrastructure devastated. Nothing like Haiti, but pretty bad. Hawaiians were warned about a possible tsunami so that should give a clue about its power.

Just more of the same shit happening everywhere in the world.

But there are also things like the coffee parties (the racially and ethnically diverse poor and working class versions of the white middle class and wealthy tea parties) popping up here and there. Some have given money to help the victims of the earthquakes and others have volunteered.Good people--those with few financial resources, influence, or power--do care. Some individuals try to help even when doing so is futile.

Despite all of the advances in technology, all of the scientific discoveries, and the whole of the research that has developed, those who control the structural ways in which capital is used refuse to improve the lives of the world's poor. That's what makes the futility of individual help from those with compassion for the suffering all the more tragic. If only "regular folks" made decisions about how capital was used then perhaps their values would direct the use of resources.

I'm just trying to figure out the goal of the economic and political systems that have dominated the world during my lifetime. It seems fairly obvious that the goal is to funnel ownership, control, and use of capital to a very tiny privileged smattering of individuals and families scattered throughout the world, each managing or ruling organizations in the context of relationships to other organizations, all within a byzantine hierarchy that is both formal and informal (which is why measurements of formal institutional relations give nothing but a distorted picture of reality: if the transfer of money in the drug trade goes unaccounted for in economic models then those models are useless in the real-world. A trillion-dollar global industry that everyone knows about ... that is not a factor in economic policy decisions?).

Really, what story of the world should we be telling ourselves? When all of that shit is weighed out on just about any ethical scale it's impossible to deny that injustice is dominant. There are no lullabies for babies abandoned in dumpsters. Just rats ferociously devouring the flesh of living infants until the baby's dead and there's nothing but bone and blood-soaked trash left behind.

Then again, that's all the more reason to make love in the middle of a busy intersection or interstate entry/exit ramp during rush hour. I mean, really, sexually sharing love with another human being while holding up traffic to halt economic and social routines seems like one of the best possible responses to injustice that I can imagine right now. Well, I should get going. It's about 3:20 right now. Traffic's probably getting pretty thick by now.