OF NIGHTMARES AND DREAMS

OF NIGHTMARES AND DREAMS: By all accounts it’s been a year of rude awakenings for most Americans. But now that we have your ear are you going to continue to pay any attention?

Doubtful. Although the pendulum has swung back and opened the veil on the abject stupidity and obstinate self-defeating precepts of the Americanism many still won’t listen to those of us who have screamed from the rooftops for years and now have to be satiated with a particularly unsatisfying “I told you so”.

Is this to be the beatific new era of the death of consumerism and greed? Is it to be a time of peace through non-aggression and anti militarism? Is this to be the era of sustainable living, non-polluting renewable energy? Is this to be the time of collective responsibility and a renewal of the social contract?

Don’t bet on it- or at least not yet.

It most likely has to get a whole lot worse for self-indulgent, self important, self destructive American morons to wake up to the fact that they could have had healthcare for all for 50 years if they hadn’t pissed it away by acting like morons in launching a plunderous war and acceding to the deregulation of an anything-goes Ponzi-scheme of a financial system that no one but a complete imbecile thought was in any way sustainable.

As the fake value of everything you own- worth and wealth that was never there to begin with- plummets during next year and the government attempts to slather super-glue over the rapidly collapsing house of cards remember that this is just the nightmare side of your American Dream.

If the long hard slide from millionaire to pauper is happening to you then by definition you are one whose personal avarice and attempt to steal the sweat of the brow of those who actually do the hard dirty work while living in abject poverty caused your own demise.

Is your crackerjack mansion now only an un-resalable place to live? Is your once bulging stock portfolio now full of empty promises? Are your once indispensable luxuries- ones paid for by the investor-profit-driven plundering of productive places of employment for the masses- now suddenly beyond your means?

Is your dirty little imperialistic Iraqi war blowing up in your face as you plan for a new improved even dirtier one in Afghanistan and Pakistan?

How does it feel, to be on your own? The hearts of those who are one step from or two steps beyond joblessness and homelessness pump dirty dishwater for you.

By December 31 of next year will you still be scrambling for ways to prop up an economic system that creates millions of losers for every winner?

But you don’t have to be a fallen fat cat to accept some responsibility. Were you ok with all this in the hope that you would someday win the lottery or claw your way up by stepping on your neighbors and become one of the winners? Was it ok to be a doormat because you dreamed of cleaning your goose-stepping boots on the backs of others?

It’s been said that a recession is when your neighbor loses his job and home and is living in his car. A depression is when it happens to you.

In the next year a whole lot more of us will be calling it a depression. The last one woke people up to the depravity of the entrepreneurial, free-market economic system. How much worse will it have to get before people see how they’ve been deceived?

We’ll let you know when we get there. Meanwhile America enjoy the long ride down the razor blade of life Americans created.

Someone said it a lot more poetically almost 30 years ago so we’ll leave all you “Volunteers for America” with this.

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Eskimo Blue Day (by Paul Kanter Grace/Slick

Snow cuts loose from the frozen
Until it joins with the African sea
In moving it changes its cold and its name
The reason I come and go is the same
Animal game for me
You call it rain
But the human name
Doesn't mean shit to a tree
If you don't mind heat in your river and
Fork tongue talking from me
Swim like an eel fantastic snake
Take my love when it's free
Electric feel with me
You call it loud
But the human crowd
Doesn't mean shit to a tree
Change the strings and notes slide
Change the bridge and string shift down
Shift the notes and bride sings
Fire eating people
Rising toys of the sun
Energy dies without body warm
Icicles ruin your gun
Water my roots the natural thing
Natural spring to the sea
Sulphur springs make my body float
Like a ship made of logs from a tree
Redwoods talk to me
Say it plainly
The human name
Doesn't mean shit to a tree
Snow called water going violent
Damn the end of the stream
Too much cold in one place breaks
That's why you might know what I mean
Consider how small you are
Compared to your scream
The human dream
Doesn't mean shit to a tree