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The End of the Paved Road
By David Glenn Cox
So, now we come to the end of the paved road, where the sixty-vote majority is no more, to be replaced by the mud flats and dirt roads of subterfuge. Now our corporate interests must do battle with their corporate interests in a blood bath of champagne, money and shrimp cocktails.
Oh, the pundits will froth at the mouth to tell us what this means and what that means when all this really means is that a pompous ass in an overpriced three-piece suit will waste electricity on national airwaves, explaining to us something about which he has little or no understanding whatsoever.
I think that I could take over television if I could come up with a game show that combined sex, cooking and murder. America’s three great loves, only the joy of lying about them gives us greater pleasure. Getting your news from television is not much different from one of those roadside psychics in the converted farmhouse along the highway with the green and red neon sign in the window. “Stop here!” I shout. “That psychic across the street is a total fraud!”
So, what will the world be like without the sixty-vote majority? What sixty-vote majority? With the likes of Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson, with friends like that who needs Republicans? Lincoln is an advisor to Brent Bozel’s Parents Television Council, which warns parents not to let children under twelve watch High School Musical 2 because of bare midriffs. Pretty dangerous stuff for the mentally twisted and the emotionally crippled who don’t get handicapped placards for it and must use congressional plates instead.
It should be remembered that Joe Lieberman is just your average senator with a poor PR man. Is there anyone out there thinking that Lieberman is shunned or ostracized in Washington? He is greeted as just one of the boys in the Washington version of the WWE. “Hey, Joe, come on in. Whatcha drinking? Get John McCain to tell you his joke about the three lesbians and the gooks! It’s a corker!”
It is the ultimate Country Club, without a golf course and with three hundred million caddies. While I wish that Coakley had won the election, instead we will have Brown, just one more dumb fuck in dumb fuck land. Rest your palpitating heart and wipe the sweat from your brow, the health care legislation will pass because the insurance industry loves it like a drunken frat boy loves a freshman virgin. The trick now for Republicans will be how to keep the President from taking credit for it before he is blamed for it in 2012.
The healthcare legislation is a big, beautiful tractor trailer that promises relief but will only be used to haul away the cash, and Brown’s election will be used as an excuse to pass the Senate’s worst version of a bad bill. The health care industry will blow its horn, heading for the highway and looking for the shortest route to park its cash on Wall Street. Then a TV anchorman will point to rising stock prices as proof positive of a rising economy.
Chinese government officials have pulled the movie “Avatar” from 1,600 theaters because the movie was interpreted as too popular and was presumed to hurt the Chinese film industry. “Avatar” will be replaced by the equally popular life story of Confucius. Of course it is protectionism, and only in America is protectionism viewed as a dirty word. Just ignore those few million mud-splattered Americans walking the dirt roads of unemployment as the big rigs blow past, headed for Wall Street.
The only difference to be seen in Washington today will be a genuine and palatable fear that the suckers are on to them. They will cry that no seat is safe when what it really means is no conservative Democratic seat is safe. If, given a choice between a real Republican or one that only plays the role on TV in Washington, voters will choose the genuine article every time.
Brown’s election isn’t a referendum on Massachusetts or Ted Kennedy, but about Barack Obama. The public sees the President riding shotgun in that big rig headed for Wall Street and hope and change has turned to smoke and mirrors while they see his face disappearing in the distance in the rearview mirror. The wars will go on, the defense budget will grow and the boogey men will jump out and yell “Boo!” periodically during sweeps week.
Prisoners will still be tortured and detained indefinitely; innocents will be bombed and strafed in the name of good government. The network anchors will plead for relief supplies in Haiti, a land that had disaster “Made in USA” written across it long before the ground began to shake.
Casey Jones had better watch his speed; the road of non-reality is washed out ahead. The wars and the torture continue, and the insensitive, insulated, slobbering TV-trained masses might send us into double overtime, into a sort of super dumb-fuck land. While on the other side are the sixteen million, buying groceries with food stamps or not buying groceries at all. The jobless, the homeless and the educated masses are graduating from the University of Hard Times.
The ultimate reality isn’t about good government or bad government, but the abdication by the government and its detachment from the issues that affect real people across this land. My Representative in the House has an unlisted phone number, e-mail, or "Take a hike, pal." It’s not just that they don’t care what you think, it’s more about not giving a flying fuck what you think. They're all in a sort of Kinder-Care for millionaires, a House of Lords where ne'er do wells go to nest.
There aren't many jobs where the occupant can goof off six days out of seven. Like Homer Simpson sitting at the console eating doughnuts, but when the red light comes on that is the test. Well, the red light is on, the road is dark and the bridge is out. Can they save themselves or will they become captives at the Winter Palace?
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