[Mb-civic] Hey Michael, I don't know if you've heard of this writer, but I like most of his stuff.

[dean crandell]

The Real State Of The Union 
How to address a bitter, war-torn but still somehow giddy and deeply horny nation 
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, February 1, 2006 

My fellow Americans, we're not as royally screwed as everything Bush has done during his miserable term in office would have you believe. 
Yes, we are on the brink of epic destruction involving war and sweaty religious nutballs and a mad grab for the planet's few remaining gurgles of oil and the general appalling lousiness of the new TV season. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Destruction can be healthy. A positive force. Destruction sweeps the place bare, scrubs out the spiritual colon, cleanses the palate for what's next. And besides, have you seen "Grey's Anatomy"? Totally cute. 
But here's the best part: No one really knows what's next. Oh sure, we have prognosticators and pundits and professional fearmongers from the GOP and the religious right who want to tell you that the apocalypse is nigh and God hates everything you do and if the terrorists don't get your fresh innocent white babies, the gays or the pot smokers or the rappers will. 
But the truth is, we really haven't the slightest clue what's going on. Hell, 20 years ago, who could have predicted the insane rise of the Internet? The success of the Toyota Prius? Five-hundred-dollar Gucci iPod cases? Polyphonic ring tones? Dark matter? The baffling success of Ashlee Simpson? Puggles? This much we know: We don't know squat. Except, of course, that there is one hell of a lot more to know. 
Yes, the Bush administration has done more to harm the economy and decimate the national spirit and rape the notion of patriotism than any administration in 100 years. It might very well be true -- hell, we all know it's true -- but is that all there is? 
Juicy progress has occurred, despite Dubya and his ilk. Hell, in 1942 you couldn't buy a vibrator to save your life, much less your marriage. People were playing scratchy 78s on their steam-powered turntables and danced in heavy girdles made of bailing wire and lost hopes. Merely uttering the words "double soy mocha latte" in some states would get you shot for being some sort of Communist. Life was brutal. Thongs had yet to be invented. Radiohead didn't exist. Telephones were made of wood and string and lots of yelling. People ate meat from a can. Power steering was science fiction. 
This much we know: Progress is measured in fits and hurls and recoils and lurches. We are certainly not where we were, but in some ways, we are stuck there like a pig in quicksand. It's a conundrum. Make that a paradox. A cosmic knock-knock joke. It is merely the way. 
Here is some interesting news: Only about 74 percent of Americans call themselves Christian nowadays, down from 86 percent about 15 years ago. What's more, it seems the numbers are dropping steadily, a little less than 1 percent a year. Which means, in about 30 years from now, Christians could be a minority in the United State. What are we to make of this? Here's the most fascinating aspect: God is smiling about it. 
Although there's a desperate need to cling on to the old, unenlightened ways, a deep trembling fear of change and progress, a need by the PTB to force everyone into little manageable boxes of identity and function, all while absolutely refusing to allow intellect and gender and belief to be as fluid and fascinating as they so desperately want to be, the good news is, the cat is out of the bag and she's sprinting for the border, singing Led Zep's "Black Dog" and laughing maniacally. 
Art will not die. Gay rights marches awkwardly on. Wicca is the fastest-growing religion in America. Sex keeps us more giddy than ever. New galaxies get discovered. Women laugh. Communication evolves. Vibrator quality improves. Wars end. All this pseudo-Christian panic is merely the last spasm of a dying dogma. Which is to say, conservatives may wail and religions may pule, but love winks and shrugs and evolves anyway, despite them both. 
You see, magic abounds. Change can blink clumsily to life even in the dankest of corners. Take health care. You will hear much about health care this year. Health care is a nasty, bloated mess, a massive crisis, bigger than any other fiscal issue facing the nation, could very well bankrupt the U.S. government. One reason costs are so high and HMOs are so abusive is because the health industry has powerful lobbyists and the industry CEOs are cronies of the president. What are we to do about this? 
Maybe not as much as you might think. Because now a funny thing is happening: Ironically, the powerful crony CEOs of all the other major American corporations, like GM and Wal-Mart and even Starbucks, have become royally furious about how much of their overhead is going to pay for employee health care and are letting Congress feel their wrath, forcing a change. It is the battle of the BushCo cronies! 
See, sometimes positive change can happen, even when it's not borne of decent or humanitarian purposes. Of course your current gummint doesn't care a whit about you or your health or well-being. They care about power and money and control. But sometimes even that works out sort of OK. Weird. 
A sort of chaotic, forward-lurching equilibrium prevails. Even powerful, seemingly ironclad secrets cannot hold. The Bush administration is the cagiest and most morally abusive in decades, and we've worked like paranoid ferrets to narrow the extent and application of America's landmark laws regarding open government, including the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Advisory Committee Act and the Presidential Records Act. In other words, they don't want you to know crap about how deep their lies go. 
But look. In one short year, the sneering, all-consuming GOP has gone from master of all domains, from owning every aspect of the federal government and launching multiple failed wars and abusing all laws and spying and wiretapping and torturing and lying, to one of the least stable parties in ages. Scandals, indictments, arrests, Abramoff, Enron, DeLay, thousands of dead U.S. soldiers and nothing to show for it but more enraged terrorists, an economy running on fumes. Regimes built on lies and religious fearmongering never last. It's like a genital rash -- it just seems to take forever to heal. 
Are you not reassured? Because this is the amazing thing. There are languages left to learn. Countries you have still not visited. Musical drumbeats you have not felt deep in your tailbone. There are sexual positions and tongue-related sensations and deep longing stares you have yet to hold in your body the way an open palm holds a small bird. It might take another lifetime or three. This is just fine. We have time. Lots of it. 
Did you know every religion in the world has some variant of a belief in past lives, in reincarnation? It's true. Most believe that this earthly plane is merely an intense cosmic schoolroom for our spirits, albeit one of the harshest and meatiest and most spasmodically radiant in the galaxies. And yet we keep coming back here, over and over, millions of times, to learn all the aspects, dark and light and murderous and blissful, so we can move to the next level, help the universe hum that much brighter. 
My fellow Americans, I am here to tell you I have no freaking idea why it's set up this way. But I can tell you one thing: It sure makes for one hell of a ride. 
Thank you and God bless America. 


Thoughts for the author? E-mail him. 
Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate and in the Datebook section of the SF Chronicle. To get on the e-mail list for this column, please click here and remove one article of clothing. Mark's column also has an RSS feed and an archive of past columns, which includes a tiny photo of Mark probably insufficient for you to recognize him in the street and give him gifts. 
As if that weren't enough, Mark also contributes to the hot, spankin' SF Gate Culture Blog. 

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2006/02/01/notes020106.DTL 


dean crandell
dizz007 at earthlink.net
EarthLink Revolves Around You.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20060201/093e6d11/attachment.htm