Week of 05/03/2010

The Disjointed States Of America
– by David Matthews 2

Did you hear the shocking news?

It’s BIG! It’s EARTH-SHATTERING!

Sandra Bullock has a son! In fact she’s had him for THREE MONTHS now!

Well, no, she didn’t get pregnant and conceal the nine months and then have the baby and keep everything a deep, dark secret for three months. That would be next-to-impossible given her status as a Celebrity-American. She did the “pop” thing… she adopted.

But STILL… to conceal THAT from the ever-watching gaze of the media??? Why, why, why… that’s just… WRONG!

Isn’t it?

Well that is what the media would have you think is THE MOST TOP PRIORITY STORY EVER!!!

Until you change the channel. Then it becomes about the economy. Or what President Barack Obama allegedly did according to some overpaid media personality. Or it’s about sports. Or it’s the weather.

But I couldn’t help but notice that world of entertainment was so FIXATED on Ms. Bullock and her soon-to-be-ex-husband Jesse James and with his affairs. And there really was NO REASON for them to! At least with golfing celebrity Tiger Woods there was an EXCUSE.

You really have to wonder if the world of entertainment is living in some bizarre alternate reality where none of the problems that plague the rest of us even exist. Why should we care that an actress on an MTV show that pretends to be real went through extensive plastic surgery to make herself look like a living Barbie doll? Or what the cast of “Twilight” are doing? It sometimes makes you wonder if the “Josie and the Pussycats” movie was a comedy or really a documentary masquerading as a comedy in order to expose the “hidden agenda”.

But then I realized that some other parts of America are also seemingly living in a parallel world.

Wall Street, for instance, lives in a strange Bizarro universe where the Great Recession seemingly STARTED and ENDED in October of 2008. It was business-as-usual BEFORE the White House declared it to be a “crisis”, and then business-as-usual immediately AFTER the bailout was passed and the money started flowing. They certainly behave as though it was only about THEM, and they get extremely agitated when people start focusing on THEIR roles in this recession. Do they honestly and pompously believe that the sun rises and sets only by THEIR grace?

Then of course we have the conservatives and neo-conservatives, especially those trained parrots of talk radio and the cable news channels, who think that they’ve somehow awoke in Paris circa 1940. They operate under the delusion that a “foreign tyrant” has “invaded” the country, took it over, and transformed it into something straight out of the worst fear-mongering propaganda film this side of Joe McCarthy. In fact they freely invoke the very World War II comparisons that they had previously and venomously objected to hearing just three years ago.

And at times it is next to impossible for this commentator to link what they claim with anything in the real world. They oppose ideas that they once championed. They complain about the same spending programs that they once said were needed. They claim a bill would allow something that it explicitly says it CANNOT. They deny saying things they earlier said on record. They claim innocence when called out on their violent overtones.

One has to wonder what kind of demented parallel world they mentally reside in, and whether or not such a place has medication.

But they all are a part of that much larger problem… the overall balkanization of America.

Let’s get brutally honest here… it should be no surprise that America is subjected to a maddening number of schemes and frauds and why nothing seems to get resolved in society. We are being torn apart by the schizophrenic demands of various groups for their own self-important purposes.

Entertainment moguls are not content with having the talent serve as their trained monkeys. They pompously feel they can also include the audience into their menagerie of control, and get them to throw their money away on any TV program or movie or video release they wish just by convincing them that it is “hot” or “popular”.

Self-righteous Wall Street Masters of the Universe have long believed that the world revolves around their greedy narcissistic lives. The problem is that they have become so big and so involved into the lives of others that we can no longer ignore their effect. And unfortunately, that largesse is making it impossible to bring in those needed fixes.

And as for the power-mongers in the halls of governments? Well the conservatives and neo-conservatives have lost face and lost their credibility, they have long since abandoned any sense of honor or decency or even basic morality, but nobody wants to put them in their places. People fear a confrontation when, sadly, the longer this problem continues, the more and more that a confrontation will be inevitable.

America already suffered one Civil War because it failed to put the power-mongers in their place. If we cannot get everyone on the same page to deal with the problems that NEED to be fixed, then a confrontation will be the LEAST of our worries. Soon the choices will be either bedlam or collapse.

And to those who are engaging in this divide-and-conquer tactic for their own gains, I have to ask…are you REALLY prepared to see everything come crashing down in flames just so you can have your power? Because that is what you are doing.

Sandra Bullock has gained one boy and is trying to lose another. Good for her.

But don’t try to tell me that this is more important than a collapsing economy, or a failed social institution, or, for that matter, the price of rice in China. You are not insulting MY intelligence when you pull that stunt. You are insulting the intelligence of the people who ultimately pay your salary.