As some of you may have noticed, I haven't posted in a
while. Between gardening, raising the chickens,
and taking care of the orchard, Maggie and I have had our hands full. We spent
most of 2012 editing, promoting, and writing a story each for Biohazard -- and unless you've done it yourself, you cannot imagine how much work goes into publishing a single title,
especially for a company the size of ours.
Earlier this year, we edited and re-released Dawn Scovill's first novel, Immortal Bonds, and I'm still working on
an anthology of my own short fiction, which I hope to have in print by next
year.
I haven't posted a political rant in
ages, and I don't know when or if I'll post another. The last straw for me,
insofar as news and politics are concerned, was the City of Roswell quite
literally driving Andrew "the Chicken Man" Wordes to suicide. My wife
and I were on the scene, covering the story for the Examiner when Andy incinerated the house (and himself along with
it). The experience left us burned-out and bitter. At that point, we realized that the system is
fucked up beyond repair, that the Great Unwashed are more concerned with
sports, television programs, and celebrity gossip than they are with reality,
and that the American political scene is an overflowing cesspool.
The talking heads whip the mouth-breathing "True Believers" into a
frenzy with trite, partisan rhetoric, while both major "parties"
(although arguably, the Democrats and Republicans are merely two factions
of a single party) work ceaselessly to expand the size and power of government
at the expense of the ordinary citizen.
If (and God help you if this is the case) you actually believe that the Democraps and
Repblicunts are mortal enemies, locked in a Manichean/Zoroastrian struggle
between light and darkness, you need to spend less time in front of the TV and
more time under the Gold Dome when the State Legislature is in session. You'd
be surprised at how chummy some of the dirtbags are with each other when the
cameras aren't rolling. (When, as in 2010, a gun-grabbing Jimmy Carter-style
Democrat stumps for a Republican gubernatorial candidate, the more intellectual
of us -- and here in Georgia, that means those of us who can
read without moving our lips -- tend to scratch our heads
and ask: "What the fuck?") You'd also be surprised at how adept
career tapeworms lobbyists are at working both sides of the aisle. Machiavelli 101: when the political
process consists entirely of stage-managed "controlled opposition,"
which side wins is irrelevant. Or, as the British saying goes: "It doesn't
matter which way you vote, you still end up with the
fucking government."
On a more disturbing note, Maggie and I discovered that the political scene is
a maggot-covered shite heap because the
American people like it that way.
Since we became active in politics three years ago, we've noticed that in
any given election, the vilest, most corrupt and self-serving candidate usually
wins. Sadly, the American people equate moral bankruptcy and pathological
aversion to truth with political acumen. Consequently, they end up with exactly
the government they deserve, to paraphrase Adlai Stevenson.
When one spends twenty or more hours
a week checking voting records (the fact that Horatio P. Hunderfünundsiebziger
claims he'll vote a certain way while
he's trolling for votes is no guarantee that he will), filing Open Records Requests, and sifting through various
politishits' financial disclosure forms, it's impossible for any but the most
mindless of the Party Faithful to harbor illusions as to the moral worth of the
Political Class. 99% of them are predators, bottom-feeders, and psychopaths ¾
exactly the kind of people one would expect
to seek power over others. End of fucking story.
And the moral crabgrass is hardly
confined to the patch of real estate inside the Beltway. Its roots extend all the way down to the
municipal level; the very level most people ignore, and the only one over which
Joe Sixpack has even a modicum of real control.
Here's how it works: the lump of corn- and peanut-studded shit upon which
our City Councils and County Commissions germinate is the starting point. From
there, many if not most of the weeds seek bigger and better things. Therefore,
if you really want to clean house, start on the ground floor. If nothing else,
you'll discover how the political process actually
works, as opposed to the empty theory you picked up in your high school
Civics and college Political Science classes.
Worst of all are the mamby-pamby bullshiters
who pass for "resistance" in this country and abroad: the
"Internet Warriors," "Paper Patriots" and others of that
leprous ilk; the "Teabaggers" ¾ altogether too fucking
stupid to realize that their "movement" has been compromised from the
beginning; the jerkoff conspiracy theorists who conceal their testicular
deprivation"(how's that for a PC term?) behind the "gravity"
(chuckle…) of their "mission," and the sensationalists and
opportunists. (I won't mention names, but Maggie and I approached several big-name
"anti-NWO" types, begging them to cover Andrew Wordes' story. With
the exception of one health-food site, they ignored us. Apparently, the story
was small potatoes -- or "small
chickens," if you prefer. No
surprise, that: shortly before his death, Andrew told us that he'd tried
contacting two ostensibly "freedom-loving" local talk-show hosts,
with identical results.
For the record, two of the ghouls
made a stink at City Hall, but only after
the smoke had settled. Fat fucking lot of good that did: yet another classic
example of closing the barn door after the horse has escaped.
Although Andrew had become cause celebre in a few Internet circles,
his was a house built upon sand. When the shit hit the fan, when the Fulton
County Marshalls were knocking at the door, no one turned out to support him.
No chants, no placards, no slobs bellowing into megaphones. Maggie was
there. I was there. Mike Petchenik of Action News was there with his crew, and
the nerdishly cute (the nerdish cuteness being, in my estimation, no less cultivated
or calculated than my own Druid/Hillbilly image) redhead from CBS Atlanta was
there with hers. That was it.
I may or may not compose an
eyewitness account of that singularly nasty day in the future. God knows, I'd
be one of perhaps a dozen people qualified to do so. (Another reason I've
withdrawn from the political/news arena: the sheer volume of utter bullshit
that has since surfaced on the Internet, courtesy of the very cowards and
phonies who refused to lift a finger -- or
even apply one to a keyboard -- when Andy most needed
them. ) That, however remains to be seen.
As for the "scene"? For my
part, I've had quite enough, and I wash my hands of the entire mess.
Unfortunately (and rather like durian), the stench tends to linger.
