- Another day on the midway as the clowns with hatchets
on the local, domestic, and international scene go about their plundering,
hacking, and destroying of all that is majestic, good, and noble.
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- The United States of Apathy, the United States of Arrogance
has each being given their assigned seat. Leering, plumed clowns in costumed
designer suits, cheaper middle management imitations, and moth eaten, mildewed
military attire direct the ordered chaos of the day to the apathetic herd;
disoriented, fearful, bleating, waiting their turn at the fun house, and
various side shows.
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- This carnival of the bizarre, the mad has something for
everyone. There's the unemployment booth, soup kitchens, shelters, and
pink slip tickets to nowhere. For the sick we have medicine men in their
snake oil wagons promising life for a hefty price. For the jobless we have
an assorted array of contractors working the crowd offering McJobs, Walmart
security, prison guard, blackjack dealer, migrant worker, waitress, maid,
ski waxer, snow maker, parking lot attendant, groundskeepers, soldier,
lift operator, clerk, dishwasher, toll booth collector or helmeted club
carrying Ninja troops to keep the herd contained and silent.
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- Music crashes, colors swirl in this Carnival of Bedlam.
Cheering multitudes can be heard from the various arenas offering the gladiator
sports of one's interest. Show Time brings the excitement of dry humping
and bare breasted thrills! So much to do and so little time all for a
price. Concerts, symphonies, theater, club life, reality TV in the land
of fantasy. Movies, and gouging at drive through slop, with therapy groups
for those on the edge. Pills for sex, for that anxiety attack, pills for
mistakes made in the night. Pills for depression, for acid and gout--what's
a carnival if your not having fun?
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- For those with the loot there's the specialty areas.
A fantastic array of exotic goods, designer attire to set one apart. Gaudy
casinos of pyramid wonder invite gamblers in to squander their plunder.
Rare jewels and watches, furs of all species, lizard boots, and cars of
specialty making. Yachts, and Trophy homes for that getaway weekend, rare
wines and liquor for those intimate dinners.
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- The mantra given every hour on the quarter demands that
one spend in this affluenza of splendor. Fortress malls filled with specialty
shops have plastic card money delaying the cost. Escalators jammed with
obedient spenders encased and engulfed in a ginger bread house where buying
is done not out of need but simply because they are people of greed.
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- With the crescendo of sound, lights, and displays there's
no one to hear the carnage of war. Some awful happening on some distant
shore. No one to see those in back lots, limbless and blind so that others
might spend. No one to hear the anguish of shredding, of cluster bombs,
missiles, and melting inferno. No one to hear or not even care of the tons
of nuclear waste poisoning whole lands forever. No one to think as they
finger their silks of those in sweat shops made to labor for pennies. No
one to care or give a thought to a once great nation being dismantled and
sent abroad. Millions beyond the excessive spending in the outer darkness
in their own lands of terror.
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- Textile, steel, auto plants, fishing, mining, machine
shops, ship yards, foundries closed and shuttered. Echoing towns across
the nation filled with the haunted and fear filled workers of a nation.
In the red, white and boo of electioneering, slogans, and more empty rhetoric
one wonders where all this concern was when trade agreements signed our
lifes blood away these past decades? Economic Summits, NAFTA, GATT, FTAA,
all dutifully ignored by the media and voted into being by those in Foggy
Bottom. Powers outside our realm have decided our fate in walled gatherings
of faceless corporate entities and world leaders dividing up the resources
of the globe. From African villages, to desert oil, to water and timbers,
minerals, and labor.
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- And out behind the gambling, malls, and gala sports arenas
sits the President's booth called "Job Retraining". A flimsy
affair with a snake oil salesmen telling scared mill workers, farmers,
fishermen etc, that now, with computer technology shipped abroad they can
now train as "scientists and medical personnel". This insanity
presented by those who have never known a day's labor in their lives. Who,
through inherited wealth, connections in high places or ill-gotten gain,
have never known the inside of an unemployment office, a empty refrigerator,
shut-off notices, evictions, or having to pay up front for medical care.
The pure lunacy of it all leaves one stunned. These are the same ones who
have taken us into forever war with the mantra of 'weapons of mass destruction'!
A rusted mill, a demolished auto plant, a foreclosed on farm, no medical
coverage, a company sent abroad, an eviction notice, a shut-off notice,
hungry children, unemployment run out, etc. These are the 'weapons of mass
destruction' that exist for those who've labored the whole of their lives
in building a nation. Something these think-tank, powdered pampered ones
know nothing about nor worse yet do they need to.
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- The carnival of bedlam continues from the local to the
domestic level. Tourism, casinos, mega-stores, prisons, the military industrial
complex and oil are the new economy. Sure the economy is improving, for
Wall Street and their investors. Funding for war has billions going to
the few who profit from mayhem and death. With funding cut for vital programs,
infrastructure, schools and the insurance and pharmaceuticals benefiting
from the recent fraud of a medicare bill those on the local level have
seen not a tax break but a tax shifting as they are made to bear the brunt
of all costs. In this carnival of clowns with hatchets of every ilk and
persuasion-certainly non-partisan it is simply a time for North and South,
for the states marked red and blue, for electoral votes to come together
and not be thus labeled. When people are out of work , hungry, and suffering,
the color is gray, a forever haunting shadowed world left outside the carnival
of bedlam. Echoing and forgotten.
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