suicidal, it can become homicidal as well. Because as the absolutist
system continues to grow more insular, inflexible and chaotic, the
world outside of it appears increasingly hostile, dangerous, and
threatening . . . an attack seems imminent.
This is how an isolated terrorist attack is viewed as a prelude to
permanent war. Hence, the paranoid fantasy of the "clash of
civilizations " is born.
In the United States, even before 9/11/2001, before the invasions of
Afghanistan and Iraq, corporatism, suburbanization, and class isolation
had already created an insular, bubble culture.
Daily, bubble-butt consumers sit isolated inside their bubble-butt
cars, trucks and SUVs. Bubble-circumscribed suburbs and exurbs float
farther and farther away from civic life and communal engagement. The
corporatist classes, including elected officials and media elites, most
of whom seem to harbor a thinly-veiled contempt toward the public they
self-righteously profess to serve, continue to separate themselves from
the rest of us by fostering increasing gaps of wealth and privilege.
Today, the gap has widened to such an extent that they have come to
inhabit a self-serving, self-referential universe informed
predominantly by careerism and cynical opportunism.
The Bush administration is a mere reflection of the bubble-wrapped
people of the US and their outright disregard of anything on earth that
does not serve their selfish, short-term needs and cravings. Bubble Boy
Bush merely mirrors our hidden aspirations and agendas -- which can be
summed up thus: of paramount importance -- the end all, be all of all
things -- is my comfort level. All things in creation exist solely to
serve this end.
Yet a dreadful knowledge gnaws beneath the surface of our awareness: at
a deeper level, we Americans realize that in order to live in the
manner we have become accustomed, we must continue to plunder the
resources of the world at a rapacious rate -- and we know that our
actions are not only unethical, but unsustainable as well.
But the implications of acknowledging these realities are too
overwhelming. The knowledge that we maintain "our way of life " on the
bartered blood of the innocent is too unnerving and damning.
We banish such thoughts from our minds, yet they arise as a host of
diffuse anxieties and distorted fears. In addition, the dilemma is
steeped in bitter irony: for the more anxious we grow, the more
desperate we become for reassurance. And what do we find reassuring?
Well, of course, the bubble-enclosed life we have always known. It must
be maintained at all costs.
Therefore, we crave even greater levels of comfort: Our gas-guzzling
motor vehicles must be made larger; our food portions bigger;
anti-depression and anti-anxiety medications must be made even more
widely available. Meanwhile, the bubble swells to the bursting point.
Of course, for us to remain in denial the world's resources must be
plundered at an even faster rate and by even more ruthless means,
which, in turn, causes us to suffer yet more underlying unease. This
creates a feedback loop whereby we crave even more of what has been
destroying our peace of mind in the first place. The skin of the bubble
stretches to its limits.
Against this canvas of mutually-reinforcing cultural madness, our
delusions of absolute power are punctured by the realities on the
ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, while on the domestic front, rising oil
prices plus the looming consequences of oil depletion, ever-expanding
personal and governmental debt, and an inflated housing market (to cite
only a few examples) threaten to burst our comfort zone bubble.
All around us, here in The Land of the Bubble People, the sharpened
tips of reality bristle as we Americans, borne upon a tailwind of
governmental/corporate lies and the airhead currents of our complicity,
drift ever closer to our moment of reckoning with the pointed edge of
penetrating truth.
Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is
a poet, lyricist, and philosopher bard, living in New York City. He
maybe contacted at: philangie2000@yahoo.com.
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