Privileged
Grotesques, Ordinary Monsters and the Iraqi Deathscape.
By Phil Rockstroh
07/17/07 "ICH"
-- -- At present, George W. Bush is unpopular with the
majority of the American public not because of the murderous
mayhem he has unloosed in Iraq; rather, his standing has
plummeted, due to the fact, he didn't deliver the goods.
Americans are fine with fueling our republic of road rage
using the blood of Iraqis (or any other distant and darker
people) as long as "the mission" doesn't drag on too long or
reveal too much about ourselves.
How did we come to be a nation of vampires who live by
sustaining ourselves on the blood of others? Is our mode of
collective being so toxic in the United States that a writer
must bandy about metaphors culled from Gothic horror fiction
to describe it?
I'm afraid it's come to that: We are a people who psyches
have grown monstrously distorted from an addiction to
imperial power and personal entitlement. (Imagery of Smurfs
and Teletubbies won't rise to the analogy, albeit as
terrifying as those demons of hell-bound cuteness are.)
The corporate culture of exploitation has begot a hellscape
of narcissists. It is an authoritarian culture riddled in
kitsch and cruelty, in nationalistic hagiography and
displaced rage -- all the distortions of national character
inherent to privileged grotesques and ordinary monsters.
A narcissist's actions are monstrous because his only love
is the image of himself wielding control and power. (Does
this remind you of anyone, perhaps someone who struts about
in a flightsuit -- someone prone to proclaiming himself "the
decider" -- someone who grows intoxicated to the point
becoming insensate from a whiff of his own pheromones as he
swoons in macho-narcissistic self-worship?)
And what about the everyday monsters, those who feel nothing
-- not outrage, not remorse, nor sorrow -- by the
conscience-devoid attempt made by our vampiric leaders to
sustain "our way of life" on Iraqi blood?
Are you not a monster as well when you feel nothing before
immense human suffering? If you are impervious to, grown
inured of, or have chosen to remain ignorant of the agony of
the Iraqi people, then you might as well join the ranks of
the undead -- because the distant landscape of corpses in
Iraq and Afghanistan matches your internal deathscape.
" Bush is unpopular with the majority of the American public
not because of the murderous mayhem he has unloosed in Iraq;
rather, his standing has plummeted, due to the fact, he
didn't deliver the goods."
In short, our empire's dependence on the resources (the
life's blood) of others renders us a nation of vampires.
Moreover, the corporatist character (our national character)
is defined by the vampire's trait of taking, never giving.
Accordingly, what do the big monsters at the top take from
us, the little monsters?
In short, our empire's dependence on the resources (the
life's blood) of others renders us a nation of vampires.
Moreover, the corporatist character (our national character)
is defined by the vampire's trait of taking, never giving.
Accordingly, what do the big monsters at the top take from
us, the little monsters?
To name one: our time, the precious hours of our finite
lives. The corporatists are Time Vampires: For a moment,
reflect on all the hours of life you've wasted away -- in
office cubicles, in commuter traffic jams, in the addictive
pursuit of consumer dreck, or simply numbed-out and
exhausted, rendered inert from the incessant, soul-sucking
stress of the corporate state.
The corporacracy devours our time and, like the charges of a
vampire, has made us dependent and slavish in return. In our
bloodless enslavement, we lose the vitality borne of
existing within life's inherent mysteries and grow estranged
from the deep resonances of participation mystique.
How does one begin to take back one's soul from these
elitist usurpers? Start with this: The ebullient skepticism
engendered from calling out soul-numbing, self-serving
authoritarian lies.
In an era as perilous as ours, it's imperative we act with
utmost urgency. Yet, tragically, the exigencies of our age
are being played out against a panorama of longer, more
stressful work hours, superficially ameliorated by a mass
media culture comprised of ceaseless trivia and mindless
distraction.
This pathology began years ago when our ancestors offered up
their life's blood to the early corporatists of the
Industrial Age. Henry Ford was a gray ghoul who measured out
our flesh with his productivity-measuring stopwatch; he was
a cunning practitioner of the black art of convincing human
beings they're mere cogs in an inhuman machine. It was only
a short trudge from there through history's slaughterhouse
to Adolf Eichmann, insulated within his vampire's coffin of
cold calculations that shielded him from the horrific
implications of the system of mechanized extermination he
devised.
The corporate vampire's creed is defined by ruthless
efficiency; the fear of a "loss of productivity" is the
driving force of the death machine. The system is so
ruthless and inhuman that it must conceal its true face,
hence the rise of the telegenic undead known as the
corporate media. Do not look to them to report the facts of
our condition: After all, a mirror can't reflect the image
of a vampire. A vampire is empty to the core; therefore,
there is nothing to reflect.
Furthermore, his emptiness is the progenitor of his
destructive nature. Rather than face himself, his appetite
for death will devour all in its path: rain forests, Arctic
glaziers, the people of Iraq, the hours of your life, as
well as your inner being.
It is the force that holds Democratic politicians in the
thrall of their own fecklessness, because they answer to the
same blood-sucking, corporate masters as the rest of us.
Quite simply, they're afraid of their bosses too. The
Washington Beltway is a version, in miniature, of the entire
soul-dead, American corporacracy. The careerist politicians
within the Beltway are afflicted with the same diminution of
choice -- the same hyper-attenuation of the will to freedom
-- as the rest of us.
And what remains for us: an existence (or lack thereof)
within this hierarchical hellscape of narcissists. What sort
of a pathetic mode of being is this, a life shackled to the
service of a monstrous system wherein one must evince the
obsequies of a vampire's bloodless lackeys?
To reverse this situation: Now is the time to drag the lies
of the corporate state into the sunshine where they will
writher to dust. We are not powerless: We live in a world
where our collective, hidden intentions are made manifest by
our outward actions.
This is why Gothic -- even b-movie -- metaphors are not an
overwrought description of our present condition. Ergo, by
the vehicle of cultural collaboration, we are a nation of
world-destroying, b-movie monsters -- we are a
hack-scripted, second-billed feature at the drive-in movie
of existence -- a laughed-off-the-big-screen of the cosmos,
box-office poison of a people.
We are soul-sucking creatures of kitsch. Flesh-eating
zombies of conformity. Road-rage werewolves. Right-wing,
talk show demons whose wrathful voices rage into empty air.
Hungry ghosts wandering the aisles of supermarkets,
convenience stores, restaurant chains and the food courts of
shopping malls.
We are: The Fat, Mindless Blobs That Ate the Planet.
To survive, first, we must find the monster within, then
drive a stake through its heart
Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag
monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living
in New York City. He may be contacted at:
philangie2000@yahoo.com
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