Living in the Future

Roy Edroso put me on to this article:

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/05/31/232182/rand-paul-criminalize-speech/

Has to make you wonder why little Rand obstructed the re-passage of the Patriot Act.  If I had all day I'd hunt up Burl Ives pontificating on mendacity in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."  No one could say "mendacity" better than Burl Ives.  It comes, perhaps, with the heft.  Possibly Orson Welles could have won a Say Mendacity contest.  You'd have to allow the sort of coloring only Welles could pull off--that nasal intake of air at just the right milisecond after the word was done.  The point of the contest, at any rate, would be the "Mendacity Gadget", which would easily fit on the top left corner of any desktop, and could be evoked with the mere flick of a finger whenever one finds such utter vomitous mental behavior as actually one finds almost hourly if one cares to look around as the day flows by.   And of course all this factual evidence leads to the obvious question--what has happened to the mind of the American citizen, to put such mendacity in political office after office.  Turn away from little Rand and you find the 21st Century William Howard Taft in the form of NJ Gov. Christie, waddling to and from his helicopter.  The GOP back room boys see the impossibility of Palin and dream of what?  Fatty Arbuckle for President?  Really? 

On Wednesdays I treat myself to a Subway sandwich.  They seem fairly healthy.  Went into the place this past Wednesday and noticed that the "muzak" was Neil Bortz.  Dear god.  Perhaps you've not heard him.  I think he sits behind a mic in Atlanta maybe.  Wednesday he was parroting the basic Nazi line about the parasites in society, the people among us who are some how unjustly sucking up all the gravy while us working stiffs (including I supposed a fat guy sitting behind a mic in Atlanta who gets paid handsomely for sweetening pure bitter bigotry until, if he succeeds, it goes down the body politic like koolade laced with arsenic).  It could have been Berlin, circa 1930.  All Bortz did, really, was remove all references to "jews" and replace them with "people on welfare."  This is why he's a minor league Limbaugh I guess.  A 9th Grade Young Republican could have pulled off his essay.  Or one of those nice Italian boys in Night of the Shooting Stars--the ones with black uniforms who run old men headfirst into trees.   I was almost disgusted enough to say something, but to who?  The nice girl making my 6" BMT was an East Indian, probably 20 or so.  I can't imagine she put the damn station on.  I'd think she doesn't really listen to it--she's focused on the work.  So it was her manager I guess, if not some dictate from the Subway Home Office, where ever that is.  "Make the People Listen to Bortz."  Maybe it's in Bortz's contract--you sell Subway sandwiches, we'll sell you.  I didn't say anything but "yeah, make it a meal today."  And "great looking sandwich."

Mr. Bortz wants to convince us to "eliminate" the people "on welfare."  What an idea.  It's just a major chord version of Palin's "position" on the Dream Act.  (You can go look that one up if you want.)  Scapegoats.  Hate.  That's pretty much it.  But you can't go get a damn sandwich without experiencing just a little of that "sugar" in the air.  And eventually it works well enough to put a charlatan like Rand Paul in the Sentate, or a posturing phony like Mr. Christie in his state's helicopter.   Hell, medically he probably needs a helicopter to get up the stairs.  And who pays for that, Mr. Bortz? 

Orwell was predicting the future when he wrote 1984.  That year, which when I read the book seemed so distant as to be surely beyond my life span, we re-elected both Reagan and, in my beloved North Carolina, Jesse Helms.  We've been in the future ever since, and getting deeper by the step.