While a more efficient and natural form of communication of humanity with their environment, we Americans tend to characterize this most ubiquitous form of communication as weak, as lacking of a necessary modicum of ego, as being ambiguous.  And yet, we characterize water as soft and formless until it tears apart our beaches, our homes and our lives in a torrential flood of obvious underestimation that mere words can not abide.

The intent of my message was simple enough: stop expecting males to fall all over themselves to agree with the proposition that females are always right and good and males are forever reprehensible representatives of the beer-bellied portion of the bell-shaped curve.  This anti-male sentiment is just more of the same covert Victorian mystique that while it may have sprouted the suffragist movement, it could not, and can not, sustain it.  What women like Mary Shelley, one generation removed from the earliest and most well-known suffragette, had to say was so far beyond what their mothers had taught them that it has taken well over 100 years to even recognize that the human species has a serious case of indigestion over relevant matters of fact.

Progressives lay claim to the intent of wanting to move humanity forward towards a more perfect union, towards a more evolved state of appreciation for themselves and their fellows.  To be, in effect, “ahead of the curve.”

It is only when confronted with the sentiments and proclivities of the fattened mid-section of true diversity of thought that progressives lash out against the ignorance and inanity of the common man or woman.  So they rush backward with the best of intentions to educate and intervene in the lives of the mediocre so that even those viewed as the most forward-thinking of their generation become the most commonplace and boring constituency imaginable.  The rationalization for this generosity of spirit is that the continuum of human thought has no limitation, knows no end, nor has ever come across a paradigm that it could not stretch and shift on toward greater realization and self actualization.

And then Jack Kennedy gets punched in the nose by a fellow rich kid named “Geillerup” at boarding school.  Geillerup goes on to become a player in the “reverse mortgage” market and Jack Kennedy gets a nice headstone and congratulations for a hero’s job well done.   Time passes, by and by, and Geillerup becomes an impossible drunkard.  Jack Kennedy’s legend grows to mythic proportions, galvanizing not only the hopes and dreams of Progressive America, but also the denial that a sharp-bladed pendulum has swung and cut us through our midsection.  In bifurcated confusion we elect a President whose autobiography was entitled, “Where’s the Rest of Me,” an homage to one of his better played roles as a B actor in Hollywood, but a pitch-perfect representation of said President’s place in the modality of sentiments among the one of two general segments populating the American psyche.

And, eventually, out pop the labels.  Segment one is “conservative” and segment two is “liberal,” or, “progressive,” depending on who one talks to on a given day -- phase of the Moon and orientation of the Sun against some constellation beyond our reach notwithstanding.

Neither modal point in the bimodal distribution dares to fully concede that we’ve lost each other, that we’ve become a “house divided against itself.”  Both sides insist that their sentiments, thoughts and perspectives best embody the way forward, the way home, the way towards our greater salvation, but neither side has an actual plan for acknowledging the ugliness of our divided condition.

When I began having these thoughts this morning, I was remembering the sight of the photos of the homicide of Elizabeth Short, the so-called “Black Dahlia Murder.”  God bless Rotten.com for continuing to rub our noses in the fact that our Victorian tendency to ignore or deny our savagery is not the same as transcending, or evolving, beyond it.  No more clear depiction of America, of Lady Liberty twenty years later, was ever crafted, nor a more multi-layered attempt at communicating the nature and distress of psychic disease made more apparent.  This murder captivated the American media of 1947 and horrified, of all places, Hollywood -- and for obvious reasons.

The surface message of the crime scene is clear enough: America hates women and thinks nothing of brutalizing them, advertising that sad fact for all to see.  The sight of a dismembered corpse, particularly female, is a sickening and disturbing sight for anyone to behold, let alone the adult child of a violent childhood.  No,  nothing that sordid ever took place in the household I grew up in, but no four year old should ever have to see his mother’s blood splattered on the walls of his parents’ inner sanctum and his 13 year old sister, whom he adored, scream bloody murder before fainting to the ground before him.  Adults have no problem engaging their nervous system and sorting through what is relevant and what needs to be done in that sort of situation; children, however, tend not tolerate harboring even the thought of such things without going slowly, inexorably, mad.

From this place where the angels of madness reign supreme, one discovers quite accidentally that perspective is a matter of choice and that such choices do not have to be set in stone.  I can be horrified at the sight of something one day, see the incredible artistry of the same picture the next, and then be totally sickened by my ability to see both perspectives at the same time in a third day that passes for sanguinity among friends and relatives.  But dare I speak of such things in public?  Dare I let it be known that a country,  one of whose revered founders penned the weighty tome, “Fart Proudly,” could hatch a madman who trapezes from one paradigm to the next to the utter dismay of those who can at best only say, pithily, “you need to focus better on what you’re trying to communicate.”

It’s how I roll, people.  If I have to accept you as a member of my human family, you damn sure better accept me.  But we both have to figure out a reasonable and safe manner through which we can ground out our apparent differences without showing one another the backs of our heads as a matter of course.  I rant and I rave because I am, like so many of you are, mad as hell and have no choice but to take it over and over again.  We’ve been driven mad by a devil’s brood of rich people who actually believe that tracing their bloodline back to the “baby Jesus” makes them worthy of leadership and admiration en perpetuity – that they may one day show us all how to become one of the risen dead.  What sort of fucktard nonsense is that?  Of course we’re angry and of course the first target will be the next issue on our own personal calendar of corrections to be made on points missed.

Award winning poet, writer and refugee from the educational testing industry. Richard agitates, supports and motivates activists of all kinds, the most well-known being Cindy Sheehan. Web developer and designer by day, writer by night, Richard has the disposition of an observer and essayist. Richard has fallen in love, one day at a time, with the writing of Raymond Carver, while sparring, verbally, with the flying monkey right since 1998. Richard built his first computer from scratch in 1977 and had his heart broken for the first time in 1980. It has been stomped on and dragged behind a Chevrolet for many miles since that time. Thanks in no small part to Republican partisan politics and internecine policies.

	Contact Author
	Contact Editor
	View Other Articles by Author

Bookmark this page: (what's this?)

                                                 (More...)

How would you rate this? You must be logged in (if signed up) to do ratings. It's free to signup! And easy. And takes just a minute or two.... Click Here to Login (or Signup)

View Ratings Here are the current ratings Must Read (0) Well Said (0) News (0) Touching (0) Funny (0) Supported (0) Interesting (0) Inspiring (0) Valuable (0)