The Irony of the Ecstasy

Maybe we can — but why bother?

Personally, I viewed the whole thing like a boxing match (CNN or FOX or whatever even had an advertisement for election coverage featuring McInsane and Bareback Obama faced off in profile, like fighters). Say, Holyfield versus Tyson (the re-match, after Holyfield’s ear was sewed back on). Ignored the hype qua hype, but once the “bout” began, consciously or unconsciously “took sides.” Just like I wanted Holyfield to give Tyson his “come-uppance” (and just as I wanted the similar thing when Clinton took away the 12 year Reign of Terror by Reagan/Bush I for the heavyweight title in ’92), I “rooted” for Obama.

Then I had second thoughts. Since, like any other sports event/entertainment, the outcome wouldn’t make much of a difference to this huge sick planet, I thought it might be funnier, more hysterical, just for kicks and guffaws, if McCain was actually “elected” — then succumbed to his melanoma after a few months to issue in the “Palin era.” Also, I actually prefer an outright bully/gangster/thug, like Dubya or John Gotti, who lays his trick cards on the table, to a “friendly executive” like Clinton or the fictional Michael Corleone, who’ll “let you win” then stab you in the back as you’re leaving the Casino.

Then again, what do I know, other than for me, Obama represents the latter?

Regardless, the whole circus reminds me of ’92, when I was still “green under the apple boughs…”

“Nobel Laureate” (I read once that Nobel created the prize because he didn’t want his legacy to be that of the inventor of the — then — ultimate weapon: dynamite; I think the “Nobel Propaganda Prize” is far more of a danger to all living things) Al Gore, warming up the crowd as opening act for Bill Clinton, having everyone in Madison Square Garden (broadcast to the world) repeat the refrain, “It’s time for change…” after he’d announce, point-by-pithy-sound-byte-point various failures of the Reagan/Bush era, pausing as the “home crowd” chanted, “it’s TIME for CHANGE.”

Yeah. Tell that to one of the dead Iraqis whose murder was “worth it.” Or a Palestinian in Camp Gaza. Or a Serbian in the once-beautiful city of Belgrade. Or a “welfare queen” forced to leave her kids alone so she could be an indentured servant to “work-fare” when the whole reason she went on “welfare” was cause she couldn’t both support and nurture her kids while working 60 hrs a week for “minimum wage” at McDonalds etc. etc. etc.

Meanwhile. MEANWHILE…

Dionysus reigned supreme last night in Union Square park. They — mostly NYU students — were partying till 4AM. Thousands jammed the park, chanting, singing, whooing, hooing and hee-ing and haw-ing (imagine if “they” had done that four years ago, but in protest, when BushCo. stole the election). Worse, the cars, trucks, buses. Honking horns as they passed to the delight of the drunken crowd. I guess I don’t blame them, in a way. I remember being young and stupid and so fucking happy when Clinton ended the Reagan/Bush Reign of Terror that so dominated my entire young adulthood. They’ll sober up when Obama cancels their guaranteed student loans to help pay for the Wall Street bail-out, the noble “wars” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and soon Iran. As for the car-truck-bus crowd: their oil has peaked, I think, or is damn close to it. Again, I understand people’s need to feel part of a “group,” a “celebration” of “change” and the “official end of racism” etc. But I couldn’t help thinking how ironic it was that thousands of people expressed “political commitment” not by gathering together to soberly plan the Next Move (i.e. putting the president elect in the hot seat), but by behaving like a bunch of typically arrogant, indulgent, selfish, drunk, overbearing Americans….

I mean, my wife had to get up for work at eight, and I had to DO work — I do both my “paid” writing: hack copywriting, ghost-writing etc. and “leisurely” work, such as this here, at night. WE sure felt the ramifications of “change…”

The irony is…

My wife works at the Digital Animation Center at the NYU Film School. Those were some of her own students keeping her up all night. While she, like me, is a “gym rat” and in better shape than most 20 year olds, she, like me, is in her early 40s, and just can’t “party like it’s 1999″ till 4AM and get up “for class” at 8AM like her students, who will no doubt be full of pep and energy and good cheer, awaiting “change” as I was when Clinton ended the Reagan/Bush nightmare to create his own. Well, I wish them well. But I wouldn’t wish the kind of “change” Obama (now the number one corporeal representative of the invisible, immortal corporate body known as THE MAN) will be bringing on anyone…

Bad news that the New Prince-in-Waiting made some unfortunate veiled threats to the REST of the planet in his Live-From-Chicago acceptance speech, a more corporate, user-friendly, lawyer-ish version of “yer either with us, or against us.”

Often think of the millions of people who lived entire lifetimes — 70, 80 years — thousands of years before Homer was in baby booties. Moments of love, fear, happiness, pleasure, pain, etc. experienced by REAL people, who just didn’t have camcorders to record it all for the infinite boredom of posterity — Humanity’s Home Movie; interesting if you’ve never seen any type of movie before, or suddenly found 30,000 year old DVD and spent an evening watching “a day in the life” of our ancestors, but if passed along like our own over-recorded/photographed/digitized antics, a yawner for sure…

Ah, for the (allegedly) good ol’ days of Matriarchy, before some dudes got together with a bunch of sharp objects and realized, with some verbal acrobatics, they could “rule forever and ever look on these works ye mighty and despair.” On the other hand, there are non-matriarchal tribal cultures like the Sioux, Navajo etc. in which men and women were “separate but equal,” each having their own work, responsibilities and value. The whole Judeo-Christian-Islam (and other “civilization” religions) scam is a waste of life-energy and a royal pain in the ass for all involved. Not to mention the near absolute exploitation of women either as phony Hillary/Palin type “feminists” (absolute opposite of what my friend Barbara Mor, wrote about in The Great Cosmic Mother — terrible title; Harper-Collins’ idea; her real title was the excellent: The First God) trying to be like men, who themselves have long since become “machines” or cogs in THE MACHINE, or generally downtrodden sex slaves, house-keepers and/or shielded from all light in burkhas. Why would any heterosexual man want women to be dressed in lampshades? Then again, why would any sentient being want women with plastic breasts, silicon buttocks and faces “re-invented” by surgery????

On the other hand: “Yawn.”

Adam Engel lived for your sins -- and he lived well! -- in Fear-and-Trembling, Brooklyn, one of the last gangrenous toes of NYC not yet severed and replaced with a prosthetic gentrification device. Engel has traveled the farthest regions of cyberspace, where Dark-matter meets Doesn't-matter; and Anti-matter, despite its negative connotation and dour point-of-view, excercises rights of expression protected by Richard Stallman's GNU/Free Software Foundation and CopyLeft agreement, if nobody and nothing else. Having spent many years studying Boobus Americanus (Summum Ignoramus), allegedly the most intelligent mammal on earth -- after its distant relative, Homo Sapiens -- in various natural habitats (couch, cubicle, bar-stool, ball-game -- televised or 'real-time') -- Engel has thus far related his observations of and experiences with this most dangerous of predators in three books -- Topiary, Cella Fantastik, and I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague (the combined international sales of which have reached literally dozens, perhaps as many as seventy, with projected revenue to top three digits by decade's end! Truly a publishing phenomenon). Engel is Associate Editor of Time Capsule Books, a division of Oliver Arts & Open Press, published in limited editions for a tiny, highly specified, though eclectic, target-audience: people who actually read books. He can be reached at adam@dissidentvoice.org Read other articles by Adam, or visit Adam's website.

This article was posted on Friday, November 7th, 2008 at 7:30am and is filed under Democracy, Elections, General.