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July 12, 2007 at 08:09:46
What Lies Beneath: Privileged Grotesques, Ordinary Monsters and the Iraqi Deathscape. by Phil Rockstroh Page 1 of 2 page(s) |
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How did we come to be a nation of vampires who live by sustaining ourselves on the blood of others? Is our mode of collective being so toxic in the United States that a writer must bandy about metaphors culled from Gothic horror fiction to describe it?
I'm afraid it's come to that: We are a people who psyches have grown monstrously distorted from an addiction to imperial power and personal entitlement. (Imagery of Smurfs and Teletubbies won't rise to the analogy, albeit as terrifying as those demons of hell-bound cuteness are.)
The corporate culture of exploitation has begot a hellscape of narcissists. It is an authoritarian culture riddled in kitsch and cruelty, in nationalistic hagiography and displaced rage -- all the distortions of national character inherent to privileged grotesques and ordinary monsters.
A narcissist's actions are monstrous because his only love is the image of himself wielding control and power. (Does this remind you of anyone, perhaps someone who struts about in a flightsuit -- someone prone to proclaiming himself "the decider" -- someone who grows intoxicated to the point becoming insensate from a whiff of his own pheromones as he swoons in macho-narcissistic self-worship?)
And what about the everyday monsters, those who feel nothing -- not outrage, not remorse, nor sorrow -- by the conscience-devoid attempt made by our vampiric leaders to sustain "our way of life" on Iraqi blood? Are you not a monster as well when you feel nothing before immense human suffering? If you are impervious to, grown inured of, or have chosen to remain ignorant of the agony of the Iraqi people, then you might as well join the ranks of the undead -- because the distant landscape of corpses in Iraq and Afghanistan matches your internal deathscape.
In short, our empire's dependence on the resources (the life's blood) of others renders us a nation of vampires. Moreover, the corporatist character (our national character) is defined by the vampire's trait of taking, never giving. Accordingly, what do the big monsters at the top take from us, the little monsters?
To name one: our time, the precious hours of our finite lives. The corporatists are Time Vampires: For a moment, reflect on all the hours of life you've wasted away -- in office cubicles, in commuter traffic jams, in the addictive pursuit of consumer dreck, or simply numbed-out and exhausted, rendered inert from the incessant, soul-sucking stress of the corporate state.
The corporacracy devours our time and, like the charges of a vampire, has made us dependent and slavish in return. In our bloodless enslavement, we lose the vitality borne of existing within life's inherent mysteries and grow estranged from the deep resonances of participation mystique.
How does one begin to take back one's soul from these elitist usurpers? Start with this: The ebullient skepticism engendered from calling out soul-numbing, self-serving authoritarian lies.
In an era as perilous as ours, it's imperative we act with utmost urgency. Yet, tragically, the exigencies of our age are being played out against a panorama of longer, more stressful work hours, superficially ameliorated by a mass media culture comprised of ceaseless trivia and mindless distraction.
This pathology began years ago when our ancestors offered up their life's blood to the early corporatists of the Industrial Age. Henry Ford was a gray ghoul who measured out our flesh with his productivity-measuring stopwatch; he was a cunning practitioner of the black art of convincing human beings they're mere cogs in an inhuman machine. It was only a short trudge from there through history's slaughterhouse to Adolf Eichmann, insulated within his vampire's coffin of cold calculations that shielded him from the horrific implications of the system of mechanized extermination he devised.
The corporate vampire's creed is defined by ruthless efficiency; the fear of a "loss of productivity" is the driving force of the death machine. The system is so ruthless and inhuman that it must conceal its true face, hence the rise of the telegenic undead known as the corporate media. Do not look to them to report the facts of our condition: After all, a mirror can't reflect the image of a vampire. A vampire is empty to the core; therefore, there is nothing to reflect.
Furthermore, his emptiness is the progenitor of his destructive nature. Rather than face himself, his appetite for death will devour all in its path: rain forests, Arctic glaziers, the people of Iraq, the hours of your life, as well as your inner being.
It is the force that holds Democratic politicians in the thrall of their own fecklessness, because they answer to the same blood-sucking, corporate masters as the rest of us. Quite simply, they're afraid of their bosses too. The Washington Beltway is a version, in miniature, of the entire soul-dead, American corporacracy. The careerist politicians within the Beltway are afflicted with the same diminution of choice -- the same hyper-attenuation of the will to freedom -- as the rest of us.
And what remains for us: an existence (or lack thereof) within this hierarchical hellscape of narcissists. What sort of a pathetic mode of being is this, a life shackled to the service of a monstrous system wherein one must evince the obsequies of a vampire's bloodless lackeys? 
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| 8 comments |
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Very good, Sir. But remember the price of herrings
http: //www.opednews.com/maxwrite/diarypage.php?did=534 The above is something similar I wrote here in the Y2004(!). ( Delete the space after http:). It seems to be old news, though. In the ancient Greek comedy Aristophanus describes the event during the devastatiing Peloponnesian war ( which eventually brought Athens down). There, he says on the forum the Athenians were discussing peace with Spartans when somebody shouted, 'Hey. folks! Since we got into war the price of the herring was never lower!'. They immediately adopted a resolution to continue the war. There are no more ancient Greeks. Tells you something. You take care of yourself. We need you. by Mark Sashine (72 articles, 19 quicklinks, 269 diaries, 4103 comments [131 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Thursday, Jul 12, 2007 at 12:32:08 PM  (0+)
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Reply: To paraphrase (and with apologies to) Bob Dylan,
,All the cheap herring you buy will never buy back your soul. by Phil Rockstroh (29 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 42 comments) on Thursday, Jul 12, 2007 at 12:59:01 PM (0+)
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Reply: I did not invent the quote
It was from the 'Peace' by Aristophanus. Apparently a true episode most likely. Among other things in the same comedy the protagonist Dickeopol scathingly gives a speech about the proceeds of that war. That speech could be very relevant now. Only now none of us can what Dickeopol did-he negotiated a peace for himself only and his family. We cannot do that. It was herring at that time and gas now; the issue is the same. Dickeopol said in his speech among other things that Athenians should have started with the perception that they were the same as everyone else. We should start with the same perception. Unless the US people understand that they are the same, they will be destroyed ( that is we will be destroyed) as those who first ran after the herrings, then organized a Syracusian expedition and ended being sold to slavery by Spartans. by Mark Sashine (72 articles, 19 quicklinks, 269 diaries, 4103 comments [131 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Thursday, Jul 12, 2007 at 1:17:27 PM (0+)
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Reply: Sorry for the confusion
I didn't mean to imply you made up the quote. I was just riffing off the Dylan lyric, from Masters of War, that lambastes war profiteers that goes, "All the money you made will never buy back your soul." by Phil Rockstroh (29 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 42 comments) on Thursday, Jul 12, 2007 at 1:30:10 PM (0+)
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thaz right
and the soulless ones make no reflection in mirrors >;) always good to know the adversary. somewhere Dante is laughing... nice one phil. by k kelly (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 182 comments) on Thursday, Jul 12, 2007 at 3:11:12 PM (0+)
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Thank you
Your vocabulary is beyond me but I feel the spirit of your pain/my pain. by carl (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 133 comments) on Thursday, Jul 12, 2007 at 4:01:46 PM (0+)
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Thank you
Your vocabulary is beyond me but I feel the spirit of your pain/my pain. by carl (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 133 comments) on Thursday, Jul 12, 2007 at 4:15:48 PM (0+)
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Phil...
Ahh, once again you hit a Grand Slam, walk-off homer! Great job, the pain some of us feel at the plight of those poor people, if the Almighty is listening, their blood and pain and our humiliation at what the nation has wrought, is almost too abominable to bear, and it indeed cries out from the ground. Oh, where, oh, where is FDR when we need him most? (Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?) God Bless, you Phil for having a great mind/pen. by Professor Emeritus Peter Bagnolo (144 articles, 1 quicklinks, 95 diaries, 1317 comments [5 recommended, 0 rejected]) on Thursday, Jul 12, 2007 at 5:04:03 PM (0+)
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