Apolitical America: Nightmares of the Preventive Paradigm

"In the past, politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this, but their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered their people. Those dreams failed, and today people have lost faith in ideologies...But now, they have discovered a new role that restores their power and authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians promise to protect us from nightmares...But much of this threat is a fantasy, which has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It's a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, security services and the international media." BBC Documentary Power of Nightmares

As George Carlin said, "You have no choice, you have owners." Yet, before I heard the words of this comic genius, I had an inkling that America was having its way with me, and I desperately needed to get out. When the twin towers came crashing down, I was a teenage male, bent up in a corner, with only one response, the one I thought my American family wanted to hear, "I would kill to get revenge." As I watched the growing stores of books on international post-Cold war espionage supporting the drama of "war on terror" dialectic, I became more and more sickened and disillusioned. Bush's maddeningly insane propaganda machine of backwards language and foolish bad humour turned my stomach. I fled America, to live in the Middle East. I needed to hear the breathing from "the other side". I found human hearts, not enemy minds. I found a camaraderie so naturally human, and so deeply universal, that I was fulfilled from my need to be "American" at all. With Obama's "war on terror" claim to fame at finally finding success in hunting down Osama, I remain ever firm in my convictions. American "terror" propaganda is so deep-seated that it is truly beyond politics, it is the very lifeblood and backbone of American society. 

See my post: Flightless Dreams and Dark Humour of a Post-W.orld...

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A gargantuan supply of Spanish rice, washed in a tantalizing array of chiles and spices galore, wades in a fine cream sauce. A team of cooks work with exceptional efficiency in an open kitchen. The dining area is of a posh nightlife design. Smoke wafts among whisky inhalation in the metropolitan air. 

New York Restaurant by Edward Hopper

As I stare into the blaring kitchen lights from the dim seating area, I notice a cook saunter over to a telephone on the wall. His white frock is stained with stout culinary effort. Taking another sip from my snifter, eyeing a fantastic belle at the table across from me, the dining lights suddenly dim uncomfortably. The kitchen light glares out over the tables with the stillness of an all too noticeable silence. Everyone is motionless. 

At the Moulin Rouge by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

My eyes survey the room with blundering anxiety. The white frock of the cook at the phone reflects a brutal white light over fearing eyes. His mouth opens, and out emits a breath so hot I can feel it nearly twenty feet distant. His eyes become two open holes. The man falls, and I can see his frock begins to stain red. Crawling along the open floor, he is steaming hot. As he unbuttons his cook's clothing, his chest pours with ashen blood, a red so crimson it floods my eyes with a blinding hue. In my mind, I kneel to help him. I sit, frozen. 

Triumph of Death (detail) by Peter Bruegel the Elder 

All realize the man will soon die. One cook slowly meanders over to a phone, shakily dialling to quell the emergency at hand. In a last gruesome attempt to breathe, the man on the floor has almost completely undressed himself. Swelling with heat, blood pours from his chest and mouth. Staring at me with empty, soulless eyes. I faint. 

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"Fires beneath the throat, hand and breast of a reflected sky
Inside the single-eyed, whose perfect clock chimed roughly over the groundless

Patience, dusting off wine bottles
Into Californian eternity
...

The idealistic round elegized by madmen before indulgent crowds,
A folklore, pained to vulgarity in the thick mire

Soaked with herbal grime,
That dream-forsaken wine of the ancient, pours

Sending women to mind thankless law
In the first civil war before nationhood or tragic mores

The fallacy in and out of sight,
Instantaneous with thoroughly flushed wives, fanning themselves awake

As the flies descend and drink their salivating gore-fest tirades,
The Queendom, saved by the ranting duration of a minor apocalypse

When all the rest of the world lies in tears
Shaken only by worldwide fame"

excerpts from "Co-creative Wondering"