I have been wondering what in God’s name I could write that would be earth-shattering, mind-numbing, historic, outlandish, weird, and thought-provoking, but after trying hard and wondering what I could possibly do I simply gave up. I don’t care if I write another thing that is entertaining or thoughtful. In fact, I just want to sit back and watch as the whole damn thing unravels and people fight with each other. Yes, it’s quite a sight to see.

The fact is I don’t have the answers. I never said that I did. And in fact, I don’t give a rat’s behind about politics. All of it makes me sick to my stomach. Getting up and setting out a course whereby one weasels their way around the obvious facts of life is to this writer nothing short of mind-boggling in itself. I don’t even have to write or say one single solitary word in order to get that point across.

And so, to everyone who believes that the country is either going to hell in a hand basket or is on the “precipice” (to quote O-what’s-his-name) of something outstanding and marvelous happening where we all join hands in utter bliss and sing Kumbaya and just praise the Lord (or whatever you believe in or don’t for that matter) and sing and dance joyfully reminded of our pleasant little delusion we call life…

Oh yes, we are all SO in charge of this place, right? That’s the whole joke, don’t you get it. The point of politics is to persuade people using crude psychological methods devised to create false “groups” of people with “opposing” points of view. The point of which is to keep people arguing over largely inconsequential and frankly ridiculous things that in the end don’t amount to a hill of beans – and all the while the politicians have a giant party and get rich at our expense. Lovely. Wow. Is this the best that human evolution has to offer? If so, count me out. Show me the way to the next whiskey bar…

I promised myself when I was a child that I would never wind up being some old, crotchety asswipe who sits around and yells obscenities into mid-air. But I’ll be a sonofabitch if that isn’t what I am about to turn into. After all this work of telling people over and over again that I don’t give a shit about most of anything and don’t know much about why shit happens in the first place, all I got was even worse resistance. It is as though I am in some kind of reality show where after each round of something awful happening and surviving it, I have to go on to some bigger and badder demon than before. Where do I get off of this, and how does one exit?

Where does one go with their accumulated experience in life, in which combined with a heavy dose of sarcasm, skepticism, and yes, orgasm – it all adds up to one giant protectionist dream come true. The walls around my fortress of life are largely impenetrable at this point of my life. Frankly speaking, most of the conversations I have on a daily basis go right over my head like nothing ever happened. I find myself continually having to edit them afterward if I let people just ramble on. It’s just too much work for me, who spends practically every waking hour trying to detect, isolate, and eradicate bullshit. There’s just so much time in the day, if you catch my drift.

And so to all those people out there who yammer on day after miserable day about the country going to hell, I have but one simple request. Shut the fuck up. The country is just fine – YOU’RE the one that’s fucked up. Go look in the mirror like the rest of us do and face the fact that this shit is bad. It’s awful. It’s miserable. Nobody’s enjoying it – not even the rich – they’re getting hammered so bad every day that they can’t go anywhere any more without having a video immediately available. And if that doesn’t happen, then the National Enquirer is all over it.

I used to think my mother was nuts for reading the National Enquirer years ago when I was a child. I don’t think so any more. She used to hide it in the bathroom and read it there. I would sneak in there after she got out and find it there in the little newspaper holder next to the toilet. (Don’t ask my why there was a newspaper holder in the bathroom. Too much meat eating I suppose….) For a child it was like the first time you went to the circus or the carnival. It was odd yet real at the same time. Stories that you heard nowhere else. The real honest to goodness, down to Earth kind of stuff that ordinary people can relate to: Greatness, drama, and failure all wrapped up into one giant Tiger Woods, John Edwards crapper we call life.

There next to the toilet I found my religion. It was the realization that life just happens. Find a quiet, protected place in your life, and build a porcelain cathedral of truth out of the smelly depths of reality. Finding this quiet place within myself has carried through with me to this day. It is the only thing that can get the rest of us through all of this madness together. Perhaps the greatest missed opportunities in life are those which spur the growth later on that is rich and meaningful. Without becoming overly indulgent in semantics, let’s just say that this is one of those times.

We are all disappointed in others and in ourselves. It is okay to admit that, too. In fact, we should all really apologize to ourselves for not understanding that for all that is wrong and fucked up about this country, the fact that we who are still alive have one more chance to understand what this all means should be proof enough that someone is very lucky. Who cares how much money you have or don’t have? Who cares how powerful and influential and smart you happen to be? The answer to both of these is nobody. Nobody cares. Nobody is going to read your resume or FICO scores at your funeral. Nobody really will remember many of us who are here now. We are all tiny little struggling creatures on a distant planet far into space, who want to be heard and seen and noticed.

It seems so ridiculous, but it is true. America is a beautiful country. Take a look at it and think about it for a second. If you had to be crazy, fucked up, angry, bitter, jealous – you name it – wouldn’t you rather do it here? We have created an alternative universe within a land that is vast and beautiful. For that alone we deserve to be humbled in our vainglorious ignorance of the obvious. Isn’t it time that we start trying to understand the meaning of our actions, as opposed to submitting to the system of reward and punishment to keep us in line? I am convinced that this particular opportunity in history is one in which for the first time in a very long time, people have a chance to relate their lives to one another in meaningful ways. The message of this glimmer of opportunity is that for better or for worse, this experiment is interesting to say the very least.

-TDN

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 09:16 and is filed under Free Speech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.