Not to Worry
Me seemes the world is runne quite out of sqaure
From the first point of his appointed sourse,
And being once amisse, growes daily wourse and wourse.
—Spenser, The Faerie Queene
It looks like the economy is going bad, but don’t worry. Congress will make sure the bankers and speculators don’t suffer.
Could military failure in Iraq have anything to do with this being the first war fought with rap music? (At least in every movie about the war, the soldiers are always listening to rap, and we know Hollywood never lies.)
There must be a lot of traditionalists left in Hollywood, though. I hear they like a lot of Coke. I have not heard anything about them liking Diet Coke.
Maybe the Department of Homeland Security is better than we thought. At least they had Nelson Mandela on the terrorist watch list.
According to the Census Bureau, minorities will be the majority in the U.S. in 2042. Will we repeal affirmative action then?
Speaking of affirmative action, the U.S. Constitution forbids the creation of orders of nobility. Nobles are people who are given special status and privileges by reason of birth. If the U.S. Constitution were still valid, this provision would prevent affirmative action.
Football season is here. But, not to worry. With a new cable plan you can get twelve games at the same time.
I sometimes wonder whether American decline is most due to Northeastern greed and hypocrisy, Southern inertia and cynicism, the simple-mindedness and gadget-mania of Midwesterners, or the solipsistic nihilism of Californians. At any rate it is a deadly mixture and the ingredients ought to be separated out for the good of Americans and of the world.
Not to worry. Diversity is working. It is reported that nearly 200 U.S. cities have active Mexican gangs. My town just had its first machete murder. No estimate was given of Russian, Asian, or other Latin American contributions to the Proposition Nation.
American business is noted for its customer service. Some companies even let you "unsubscribe" from e-mail advertisements that you never subscribed to in the first place.
Let's keep reminding ourselves, as often as it takes, that it was the venerated Ronald Reagan who empowered the neocons.
The U.S. has jumped into the middle of civil wars in foreign countries before before—Vietnam, Nicaragua. But Junior Bush is the first actually to start a civil war without knowing which side he was on.
Americans have long boasted that they are pragmatists, a practical can-do people not bound by theory. I suppose that explains "global democracy" and "the indispensable nation."
But not to worry. With Obama we will enjoy exciting "change" or with McCain comforting continuity.
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Dr. Wilson, this is your funniest post to date. I'd laugh to tears if it wasn't all so pathetically true. Perfect expample of 'Southern inertia and cynicism'?
"Could military failure in Iraq have anything to do with this being the first war fought with rap music? (At least in every movie about the war, the soldiers are always listening to rap, and we know Hollywood never lies.)"
The Germans fought WWII to the sounds and style of Wagner. Wagner versus Rap; perhaps there lies therein a dissertation for some liberal studies department at just about any U.S. university. The disseration will be published and become a New York Times Bestseller and finally make its way to the late afternoon NPR shows on which experts will discuss its relevance for the alienated post-modern person.
the simple-mindedness and gadget-mania of Midwesterners
As a Southerner, to my eye the South has become very Midwestern.
'Southern inertia and cynicism' - a whole article or even a book could be written on that subject, what caused it, and it's evil effects.
Cynicism about what? Neo-conservatism? The Republican Party? The latest Protestant huckster preaching nonsensical eschatology on the jumbotron at the local mega-church?
Where is this fabled Southern cynicism?
When I was at a church conference at Calvin College in Michigan I tried to go to this site on one of the public computers but it was blocked by the Internet filter for being "extreme."
Southern cynicism? Anybody? Bueller, Bueller?
Cynicism is perhaps the wrong word for what I was trying to describe. Perhaps pessimism (realism?). Have you ever heard the song "I'm a Good Ole Rebel"? In Henry James's "The Bostonians," the Mississippian hero Basil Ransom, surrounded by Yankee dogooders, remarks. "Progress? I don't believce in it. I never saw any." A genuine Southerner knows that you might have to fight a war but you are never going to save the world for democracy. There is a good scene to this effect in the film Blackhawk Down," of a conversation between a Southern soldier and an earnest, doing good regular American soldier. Of course, the film has a British director. American society has been moving heaven and earth for over a half century under the sad delusion that it can solve the racial problem. A Southerner knows that the problem can never be solved---it can only be ameliorated. In New England and its Deep North colonies people are always getting together to change the world and "doin' good ain't got no end."
Thank you for your reply Dr. Wilson. However, the typical Southerner:
lives in a gadget-filled exurban house that is mortgaged to the 2x4 framed hilt;
votes reflexively for whomever the Republican Party tells him to, even if it's a crazed old man who wants to jump-start Armageddon;
cheers insanely for the football exploits of his alma mater's affa-leets, 'scuse me, student-athletes;
attends a church that preaches a ludicrous and nihilistic eschatology, as the decades roll by and the Rapture stubbornly refuses to occur.
And I could go on.
In defense of the South, I guess Reconstruction and the civil rights juggernaut have finally done their work, but when I see all the discretionary income and energy spent so enthusiastically in the pursuits listed above, I do wonder about Southern cynicism.
Here in the South Georgia backwoods where I live, people aren't into any of that. Almost every house has a satelite dish, but other than that dogs, guns, four-wheel-drives, and tractors is about as high-tech as it gets. I rarely see a cell phone. In the Southern cities, Yankee 'progressiveness' may exist. But not here in the woods, thank God. If I had a dollar for every confederate flag I see, I could retire.
MAP,
Just curious, is your internet connection at home "in the backwoods" or at the office "in the backwoods"?
Backwoods, with internet connection, is a relative expression, right?
Thanks,
H.F. Wolff
I have dial-up. Broadband is unavailable. A few of my neighbors have computers. Not many. We have one TV station that's mostly snow. We do have several radio stations. Of all so-called hi-tech gadgets, I have the least derision for computers. I don't think anything has been created that so undermines ignorance and propaganda. Most of my neighbors merely rely on commonsense (which works to an amazing degree). Most of my posts are done at the office, while I'm busy at work. There are only 7000 souls in the entire county in which I live. I think what Dr. Wilson was referring to is an obsession with gadgets, though. Here, that would be the tractor more than probably anything else.
You were right Dr. Wilson concerning Hollywood's affections for Coke.