When is the GOP finally going to die, and where do we bury it?

"Climbing the eastern wall as it had come, the colossus went to and fro for many hours, no longer wreaking a hellish wrath and rancour, but searching, as people thought, for the various tombs and graves from which the hundreds of bodies that composed it had been so foully reft. From charnel to charnel, from cemetery to cemetery it went, through all the land; but there was no grave anywhere in which the dead colossus could lie down." --Clark Ashton Smith, The Colossus of Ylourgne," 1934.


Come on GOP, you know you want to take that gun and...you love that gun, oh yes you do, and you love to use it. So use it. The problem with you being gone is that then the Democrats will have a free hand to become even more corrupt than they already are, and boy are they, just like you. But they hide it better. In a short time, they would look exactly like you do, possibly worse. Granted, that's a short walk off a short pier, and God knows they want to stay in Afghanistan too and give us an Orwellian war without end, but they're a smidgen more realistic than you, GOP. Just not very much, and they like falling on their swords when it means a pro-business agenda will be secure.

And those dumbbells that come at you with assault rifles at presidential speeches--they're you're rednecks! I didn't make 'em, their stupid parents and a bad educational system did. The worst part of you--GOP--is the smell: it's there, all the signs of decay, of putrefaction, are present. You stink. Small wonder that the national elections are held in the first week of November, so close to All Saints Day, today, which is then followed by All Souls Day, for the departed. Everything about the Republican Party is death. What does the GOP have left but dead ideologies? The stiff's still walking around, going through the various stages of mourning; give it time to realize that it's dead, just let it die. Martyrs? There have been no martyrs in the Republican Party since Abraham Lincoln, so they might have to create a few, and they're willing to. What does the GOP have besides a bunch of free market extremists and racist psychopaths yelling their heads off until nobody listens?

Their disconnect from reality is both genuine and terrifying: just this week Rush Limbaugh claimed that former VP candidate Sarah Palin was somehow prepared to be president, that she's capable and educated enough in geopolitics, economics, world history, and so on, to serve adequately in the Oval Office. Never mind merit, I think she can win, so who cares? He sounds like Franz von Papen when he urged President Paul von Hindenburg "hire" Hitler and make him Chancellor (Hitler lost the election, look it up, Vonnegut was wrong), and at this point she doesn't have a chance unless the economy crashes even further without further government intervention and someone burns down the Reichstag again in a terrorist attack.

My guess is the Saudis are waiting for someone to rebuild the World Trade Center so they can blow it up again. They have a long wait. Oh yeah, and Dick Armey (unfortunate name) is William Jennings Bryan (in a sick way he really is) as William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes Monkey trial, not the one that defended Eugene Debs and other unionists. We just keep coming back to the 1920s-30s! What business elites (and Libertarians) want is to drag us back into the 19th century when there was no regulation of much of anything, the good old days that never were. It's not so hard to believe when you take into account that the rich in America never accepted the New Deal.

When are we going to cope with modernity? When are we going to finally accept that we cannot go back to some arboreal Eden, that there never was a golden age, and that we're stuck with technology? There's no sticking the Djin back in its bottle once it's gotten free. History doesn't work that way; it means moving forward, and we should do so cautiously. We must change. If we go forward as we have, favoring corporations, subsidizing fossil fuels and concentrated wealth, and continue to move away from democratic traditions, all is lost. The real threat is coming from misguided Populism, as it always has, because it can be used against the rest of us. That's right, lack in others is a threat to everyone. Pointing these dummies at hot button issues and progressive targets and letting them run amok works. When people already hold irrational beliefs and attitudes, it's not such a long walk off that short pier. Now, where are we going to bury the GOP? We might want two graves for both major parties. Anyone? A shovel?

Woodstock, 40 years later

WWW--Well, it gave Carlos Santana, Richie Havens, and Mungo Jerry (I jest), a great career, and CSN is now charging $100-a-ticket (and up), so it must have accomplished something. Beyond that, I couldn't say what. Captain Beefheart actually had a chance to play at both the Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock, but declined. Perhaps he was wiser for it, and hey, Squeaky Fromme's been released, it's a good vibe week in general.

It doesn't bother me to say that Jimi Hendix was probably the only reason I would have been there, but that many people in one place always bothered me. Did I say I was one at the time?

No, the real question is this: of all the people who lied about being there since August 1969, how many got laid? Hey, at least they say the acid at Altamont was good--OK, maybe a little too good. And sure, lots of people got their asses kicked at Altamont, but at least the Stones were properly amplified, they had monitors, and only one person died at each event, granted that it was murder at Altamont.

All I can say is thank God for John Waters & the Dreamlanders; thank God for the MC5 and the Stooges, bringing us punk rock; thank God for the Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention for calling a spade a spade; and thank God for Burroughs' healthy dose of skepticism as a strong coffee-antidote to Ginsberg's hopeless utopianism.

Underneath every Guilded Age is the real era, the rot, the effluvium. And when you look at many of the psychedelic posters of that bygone era, you'll see that strange fixation on the Edwardian, that moment right after the Victorian era that the 60s counterculture was also obsessed with, that moment before the fall. It's that sad and irrational American Utopian notion that America can be the redeemer of the world--partly true, but for other reasons--when it's quite the opposite. Myths won't deliver Americans and the rest of the world from American-style theocratic capitalism, that's the work of actual adults.

But more importantly: how many people got laid when they lied and said that they were at the Colombian Exposition of 1893 when they were not? Hmmm? There were no golden ages of human history. Sentimentalism is one of the single greatest threats to human survival, besides America's two party system and their shared values of Manifest Destiny. Who cares about a stupid rock festival?

Postscript, 08.15.2009: It seems to me the best thing to celebrate would be some kind of arboreal, tranquil moment in one's life. But that's just me it seems. ;0)