October 31st, 2009 by Hoopleton

Will be out of service for the next several days as I change abodes. Expect hoopleton to be back up by Wednesday (hopefully).

October 27th, 2009 by Hoopleton

With the Northern Hemisphere trapped in the malaise of Fall, bracing itself for winter and the healthcare debate dragging on without end it’s time to reexamine once again how we, the people of the most powerful nation on Earth (that’s still accurate isn’t it?), are being screwed over by those who would rule us. So, without anymore introduction, I present to you this updated short list of how you’re being fucked by America.

1. China. All right, so China isn’t exactly America, but God knows that everything in America was made in China so it may as well be. The booming, ironically named People’s Republic has had quite the last couple of decades. Unprecedented growth. Massive capitalization. Frantic industrialization. Host to the Olympic Games. China, the country that invented everything from gunpowder to the printing press and yet failed to take credit for any of it has seemed determined of late to regain it’s status as a cultural and industrial powerhouse. The government of China is a Communist one. They enslave entire nations. Many of their citizens disappear on an almost daily basis, tossed into political prisons and concentration camps. Try Googling “Tiananmen Square” in Beijing and you’re likely to get a blank screen. But the products they produce are cheap and plentiful. So what that the toothpaste contains radioactive waste and those baby toys are dipped in lead paint? It may all be disposable crap that falls apart after a week, built by the hands of children and women living in conditions well below anything resembling poverty, but did I mention it was affordable? Also, let’s not forget that China is America’s biggest savings and loan. Currently, as of July 2009, our favorite exporter holds 24% of our public debt, or $800 billion. Some in the defense industry have warned that this could potentially threaten America’s security interests. That it leaves us vulnerable to economic extortion. That our foreign policy decisions might be compromised by our lender status. Wait. Walmart’s having a sale you say? It’s funny, isn’t it, how all that talk of democracy and human rights, of pushing back against Communist and defeating the Great Satan seems to dry up as soon as they can sell you a cheaper toaster? Many Americans have been brainwashed to believe that providing a “public option” in healthcare would lead to socialism and dictatorship, but we seem to have no qualms about selling our souls to a repressive, quasi-Stalinist, totalitarian state. We buy their cheap, disposable, dangerous products, we gleefully sell to them our debt, we turn a blind eye to their treatment of minorities and neighbor states, we demure to their interests even in the face of genocide (see: Darfur), and for what? Save a dollar today only to pay a pound of flesh tomorrow.

2. Food. The American obesity epidemic is well documented. We’re growing fatter and fatter with each passing year. As I’ve written about extensively on previous occasions obesity is close to surpassing smoking as the number one cause of preventable death. It is estimated that by 2015 nearly half of all Americans will tip the scale. This will further drive up healthcare costs and may result in the first major decline of life expectancy figures in the United States. My generation, those of us in our thirties and late twenties, may be the first to die younger than that of my parents. The main culprit for the fattening up of America is our over reliance on corn. We use it in everything from our breads to our sweeteners. Our beef is corn fed. Our potatoes are corn fried. All of this is thanks to the Federal government, which since Nixon does not subsidize farmers but the crop they grow. Without tax dollars being pumped into corn, maize would virtually disappear from our diet. But unfortunately corn is only part of the problem. The use of chemical pesticides has been linked to the increase of cancer rates. Leading some scientists to declare that we are seeing an apocalyptic scale event. The antibiotics given to animals as a way of treating the diseases that come from a corn-based diet have crossed into the food supply making people more resistant to medication. Each year more of us die from simple infections because the antibiotics we’re given are simply not effective anymore. But wait it gets worse. The United States is the leader in genetically modified foods. Banned in Europe, GM foods need not even be labeled on American store shelves. These modified foods include nearly everything we eat and often are a major factor for our increasingly poor health. Any attempts to reverse these food trends have been stone walled by corporations, lobbyists and the public officials meant to protect us. And the worst part is, that even if there was the political will to stop or slow the prevalence of genetically modified foods in our diet, many agriculturalists have warned that it may already be too late as modified crops have spread on their own, seeds carried by the winds, by animals to every corner of the globe. When you add to all this the growing lack of biodiversity in farming, the reliance on single varieties of a crop, you get a national food reserve that’s not only dangerous, but also more susceptible to disease. Ironically, as we get fatter and increasingly unhealthy we face the potential for crop failure and starvation.

3. Wall Street. If you’re not getting fucked by foreign powers, the food in your refrigerator or the various products around your home you’re probably being fucked by the business establishment. Wall Street, and the various institutions of capitalism that it represents, is no stranger to cheating basically anyone it can. That’s the nature of the beast. They take away your pension. They take away your healthcare. They take away your home. They’ve always done it if there’s profit in it. But whereas once they did it all in the hopes of creating long term gain, or at least of gaining power, now the idea is to take the money and run. Whereas once the robber barons built infrastructure, libraries, museums and hospitals, now they leave only a wake of destruction in their path. The ongoing housing and banking crisis is perhaps the most recent example, but lest we forget that Enron and Worldcom weren’t all that long ago. For every Bernie Madoff in jail another hundred are still walking the streets. It makes you wonder if they know something we don’t. Is the ship sinking? Are the lifeboats already full? In the 1950s and 1960s a family of four could live a comfortable Middle Class lifestyle on one income. One income. Two cars in the garage. A dog. Summer vacations and weekends off. Food was more expensive then (thank you corn!), so were many of the products on the store shelves, but incomes relative to inflation were higher. People could afford more then. Today that same family of four has two incomes to live virtually the same lifestyle. We’re more isolated from eachother. Rates of divorce are higher than ever before. Unions are corrupt and beaten down. Corporations lay off workers by the tens of thousands while the salaries of CEOs are astronomical compared to what they were even twenty years ago. Retirement age gets pushed back further each year while our life expectancy grows shorter. There are more elderly Americans working today than since the introduction of Social Security. The entire system is designed to put us into debt. To make us buy crap we don’t really need. The GDP, the basic measure of a country’s economic performance goes up not when you save money, it doesn’t count the value of domestic work or the inequality of wealth distribution, but it does add points for every patient diagnosed with cancer or every casket that’s sold. It’s not anyone industry. It’s not just Big Oil. It’s not just food. It’s not just Walmart. It’s all the bastards. Modern capitalism at its core. We once had made great strides in our economic relationships. In the regulation of our financial industries. In evaluating our worth. But more than ever we seem to be reverting to an owner class society in which most of us will likely be owned. They won’t stop till they take everything away, and once they do they’ll sell you a dozen times over until one day you’ll get a letter from your masters in Beijing. You’ve been bought and paid for, fat, diseased body and empty soul.

4. Military-Industrial-Complex. Let’s just put it out there, Eisenhower was right. For a man who spent most of his time on golf courses, the 34^th President of the United States left office in January of 1961 on a note of terrifying brilliance. Speaking to the American people he warned “against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” A cabal of sorts, comprised of the Defense Industry, the Military and Congress that would turn the land of the brave and the home of the free into a glorified arms factory, exporting only war and militarism throughout the globe. The Military budget of the United States for the 2009 fiscal year was $515.4 billion. Adding emergency discretionary spending and supplemental spending brings the sum to $651.2 billion. This does not include many military-related items that are outside of the Defense Department budget. Overall the United States government is spending about $1 trillion annually on defense-related purposes. In other words, we Americans spend more on the business of war than every other country in the world combined. Increasingly military solutions seem like the only solutions and we tend to most often fight the very monsters that we create. Creating new monsters in the process. The frightening trend of the last several years has been the privatization of the military. Mercenaries trained by tax dollars. Corporations like Blackwater and Halliburton have taken over many of the duties once performed by soldiers. Often time above the law and motivated purely by profit, these groups operate with impunity abroad and at home. Blackwater doesn’t only operate in Iraq or Afghanistan. If anything their increasing role in domestic security makes foreign operations look like pocket change. How does this translate to you and me? A permanent war economy means permanent war. We’ve been in Iraq for six years now and the war in Afghanistan is just reigniting. If we ever leave the Middle East new conflicts will arise simply because they have to. Peace may be nice for reasons of longevity but it hardly justifies the largest defense budget in history. More war means more debt, more death, increased instability and an Empire in freefall. The Europeans will complain but won’t ever do anything about our love of war. They can’t. We are their army. All those social programs are nice as long as you don’t have a defense budget. Though China may feel intimidated, more spending here means bigger profits there. There will always be a new enemy. There will always be another war. Conflicts will breed conflicts. Young men and women, inspired to fight for country will die never knowing why.

5. Government. There is perhaps no way to adequately capture all that’s wrong with the United States of America without mentioning its political system. It’s the bastards we elect, supposedly there to represent our interests, who are most directly responsible for all the misdeeds mentioned in the points above. Our public institutions are not part of the problem. They are the problem. In fact, the government is not only guilty of negligence but I would go so far as to say that they are guilty of willful criminal acts against the people. Should we start with scandals? Watergate may be the most obvious example but we need not travel that far back in time. In the last decade we’ve seen a torrent of scandals involving corruption, thievery and sexual misconduct. Alabama Governor Don Siegelman (D-AL) found guilty of bribery. Connecticut Governor John G. Rowland (R-CT) pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and tax fraud. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (D-IL) charged with conspiracy to commit mail, wire fraud and solicitation of bribery. Illinois Governor George H. Ryan (R-IL) found guilty of illegal sale of government licenses and contracts as Secretary of State. Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards (D-LA) convicted of extortion. New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey (D-NJ) resigned from office after admitting his homosexuality and the inappropriate appointment of his alleged male-sex partner to a government paid office. Ohio Governor Bob Taft (R-OH) guilty of four first-degree misdemeanor ethics violations. Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC) who had voted for the Bill Clinton impeachment, admitted during a press conference that he had traveled to Argentina to have an extra-marital affair with an Argentinean woman. I could go on. The list is quite extensive and this is only a partial look at what’s going on at the gubernatorial level. Local political scandals list in the hundreds. Should we try Federal? Karl Rove, Jack Abramoff, NSA Wireless Surveillance, Lawyergate, Ted Stevens, Tom Delay, Jim Traficant, Sarah Palin. Those are just the big ones. Just the ones who got too greedy or too stupid and got caught. And even now, some are still respected names in politics. Some may even stand for President someday. Bribery, graft, patronage, nepotism, embezzlement, kickbacks, every last member of every branch of government is guilty, if not by direct involvement than simply by association. Our government is run by a pack of shortsighted, self-serving crooks. The mob has gone legit and it’s writing legislation. When not stealing from the coffers to enrich themselves or to pay for those high-class hookers, our government fucks us with the legislation they pass. Again, the list is too extensive. They’ve dismantled nearly everything good in the last thirty years. Labor protection. Oversight. Clean air and water laws. They subsidize a corn diet that will kill us. They turn a blind eye to an ecosystem in collapse. They spy on us. They take away our basic rights. They use double-speak and change the meaning of language. The Patriot Act. No Child Left Behind. At this moment John Mccain’s Internet Freedom Act, a piece of legislation meant to provide the exact opposite of what its name implies is finding popular support. They think we’re stupid. They think we’re saps. And the sad part is we are. We are stupid. We are saps. We reelect them over and over again. We give money to them. We buy into their bullshit. We let them distract us with fear mongering and race bating, with abortion and homophobia. The Chinese will never be the superpower they crave to be because they don’t understand that the illusion of democracy will triumph over brute force every time. This country was founded by a slave owning wealth class and it remains so till this day. They raped and pillaged the land and when that was all gone they started in on us. We are so stupid we willingly fight for them. Die for them. We provide moral justification for their crimes. And when they finally leave office where do they go? They become consultants, CEOs and members of the board. Because it’s the corporations they serve. Not us. Not us. At this moment the United States has a national debt of over $11 trillion dollars. That translates to nearly $40,000 per person. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security could be bankrupt in ten years. If Congress manages to pass a healthcare bill you better believe it’ll be overpriced, corrupt and ineffectual. We’re long past the days of the New Deal or the Great Society. What we have here is a free-for-all. Pork and shit sandwiches, hypocrisy slathered on thick. Maybe I should vote for a third party? HA! Go ahead you idiot, throw your vote away!

6. Media. It’s the circus, baby! If the politicians and the business interests are guilty of criminal acts, the media is responsible for letting them get away with it. As newspapers close down across the land, journalistic ethics go the way of the dinosaur and the trend of media conglamerization continues unabated we are left with little in the way of real information. All we have is a sideshow of pundits and bloggers more interested in winning an argument then telling us the truth. Facts get twisted out of shape or go unreported all together. MSNBC and Fox scream to the fringes while networks like CNN report opinion as news. In a 24-hour news cycle there’s no room for content. All stories become old stories as soon as they’re reported. Spin rooms become credited areas of expertise. News broadcasts become infotainment and platforms for cross-promotion. Disney has a new movie coming out? Expect full coverage on the ABC Nightly News. But we give the people what they want, every media executive will be quick to say. The problem is that you can’t give people what they want. People would gorge themselves into the grave if given half a chance. What you need to give the people is what they need. Not that it’ll happen. It’s all part of the show. A ruling class happily in bed with the political elite. John Mccain’s new bill? Who do you think sponsored that piece of prose? The government leases to the media the public airways as to inform and guard the public trust. The fifth estate exists, in theory, to protect the fragile institutions of democracy. But instead they aim to destroy them. What we have is “news” organizations sponsoring white fear protests. Movie stars peddling dangerous drugs on the market. Commercialization run amok. Whereas China sensors its media our media sensors itself. That’s the beauty of the American system. Delusion built upon delusion. Lie upon lie. And where does that leave us? George W. Bush liked to say that people crave freedom, but the truth is all that people really want is entertainment. As long as you distract them enough they’ll happily swallow whatever pills you feed them. And so here we are. Fucked from all sides. A fat, ignorant populace with neither the power or desire to fight back. God bless America.

October 24th, 2009 by Hoopleton

An aristocrat of the servant class. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. So we were walking down 48th Street and right there and then a singularity formed between two slabs of sidewalk. No one noticed at first. Most folks couldn’t see much past their poverty to notice a black hole suddenly begin to swallow a whole thirty feet of pavement and a bus stop. By the time anyone thought of calling the police most of the intersection was gone. By the time the physicists arrived it had deconstructed half the block. I imagine that by now the entire neighborhood is in some other reality but I stopped paying attention hours ago. I can’t see much past my own poverty either.

We used to make lists of jobs we’d want to have someday. Now we draw up lists of occupations we’d hate to get stuck with. Most of which we’ve worked at one point or another. So far I’m on the second volume and I doubt there’s enough ink in the world. That’s the joy of living in the future. Long removed from the days of careers and pension plans. Gold watches and golden parachutes. We’re all migratory workers. Wandering aimlessly through the wilderness wondering how we’re gonna keep from starving at retirement age. Let’s not even talk about the specter of death. Though I can’t imagine anyone living in the Midwest makes it to the age of thirty without at least once contemplating suicide.

Artists are highly regarded. Apparently. I always see their eyebrows peak whenever I introduce myself as a writer. As though I just told them I could juggle or blow smoke rings from my ass. Not that they ever want to read anything I’ve written. That would require commitment. Genuine interest. One would have to assume they even read to begin with and there are certainly no books on their shelves.

I wonder if on the other side of that singularity things are any different. If when I eventually pass over the event horizon I will find a better world or just a copy of this one. I imagine they’re all better worlds. Things always seem that way from a distance. Outside looking inside. And if I do find myself there, standing in an orchard of glowing, living greenery, will I feel a longing to return home?

We tend to leave it all behind. We should leave it all behind. But still we make lists and still we yearn for all the things we could’ve had. Should’ve had. Probably deserved. We’re the servant class. Cleaning and picking up for a handful of people with the clarity to see how the game is played. They build relationships. They destroy lives. It’s a good thing there’s so many of us. Eagar and willing to take out the trash. Resumes stacked to the rafters. You’d need a goddamn machete just to get to the door. And outside, in the bright sun, you’d see a cosmic event tearing across the length of 48th Street. Lamposts and mailboxes flying past. Pimps and credit dealers holding onto the bricks of tenement buildings for support. Fingernails bleeding.

Maybe back when we had an economy there was something to say. A complaint to be filed. A protest to be had. Now it’s charity. Now we’ll gladly bend over and ask for a few lashes more. Thank God All Mighty I’m a writer. An aristocrat of the servant class. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

October 19th, 2009 by Hoopleton

It’s fascinating to me that we live in a world of high sea piracy and virtual reality. A world in which you can plug into the data stream one moment and find yourself being held for ransom the next. While millions of people spend countless hours grinding away inside massive multiplayer online games slavery is seeing its largest resurgence since abolition. While millions update their Twitter feeds via iPhone millions more struggle with poverty, hunger, disease and a lack of basic resources.

It’s the way of the world. For some few to prosper many more must lag behind. As the basic building blocks are of limited supply and the rules of distribution are written by the biggest, strongest kids on the street. What is fiction becomes reality. What is reality becomes entertainment.

Reality entertainment. In what other age of mankind could the drab existence of others become a business of such substantive determination? Human beings, regular, flawed human beings become caricatures. Base animals with price tags attached. Price tags we attach ourselves. Because love, real love, is when strangers want to know you. Want to touch you. Want to post your photo on their Facebook wall. Celebrities are just more real, or so I hear. Their opinion really matters.

Are you interesting enough? Are you funny enough? Crazy enough? Selfish enough? Are you willing to kill your children? If so, how many? If not, why not? Would you be willing to fake their death? Their abduction? Their disappearance via hot air balloon? Everyone’s for sale. No price is too low. Former governors. Former senators. Former convenience store clerks. This is reality baby. You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried!

We have our pastimes. We have a thousand channels of television. Hell, even the news is made up, or makes it up as it goes along. And as we muddle the divide between what is and what isn’t the rest of the world begs, struggles, yearns to catch up. Our greatest export isn’t corn. Our greatest export isn’t ingenuity or the promises of prosperity. Our greatest export is our capacity for self-delusion.

Don’t you feel sorry for those poor people in those god-forsaken countries we can barely even find on a map? In time they’ll catch up and when they do we’ll be leagues ahead. We’ll have constructed new worlds out of binary code in which we can torture ourselves anew. Forever. Just when they’re erecting their first satellite on-demand megachurches we’ll be uploading ourselves into pixilated composites that reflect none of our physical flaws. Cheating death not through cryogenics or facial scrubs but by the power of our nearly unlimited debt potential. Thirty-year mortgages? Please. What’s one-eighth of infinity?

It’s as it’s always been. While the First World moves on into the next epoch the Third World begins to enter the last. When we were industrialists they were tribesmen. When we will abolish death they will know what it is to live past seventy. And yet, as time marches on so it loops back around. The more things change the more they revert. How long, I wonder, till Sub-Saharan Africa is producing reality TV and the West is throwing gladiators into the Coliseum? A Coliseum composed of ones and zeros of course.

October 17th, 2009 by Hoopleton

Out of the throat they go. Rolling. Tumbling. Falling. Right down into the shimmering light of it. Each one of them grasping onto bits of memory as though they were life preservers. Meant, I suppose, to keep them above the surface for a while. To remind them of who they were. At least till the waters overtake them and pull them down into the depths of forgetting. Far from the light and the daydreams that brought them here in the first place.

There were stories at first. Shared among the few of them that clung together in great rafts. They spoke of past lives and a yearning desire to reach beyond all that they knew. As often happens much was lost in the effort.

Stories turned to myth and reverted to legend. Now little is spoken but everyday more of them come falling into the water. Grasping onto memory till they drown.

If you walk from the pools and follow the river you can sometimes find their remains washed up along the banks. The last thoughts they had float among the reeds. You’ll be tempted to touch them and when you do you’ll be flooded by waves of emotion. Sometimes fear as you’d expect but more often than not a feeling of acceptance so powerful that your knees will buckle and you won’t be able to help but fall to the ground and sob.

Eventually the river empties into the ocean and on a clear day you can see them floating out toward the horizon. Eyes closed and faces turned toward heaven. It’s here that the vast majority finish up. Their bodies swept out on the tidal currents.

I don’t know what ultimate end awaits them. If they reemerge to sink again or to be swept onto some distant beach. I lose sight of them watching from shore. I haven’t a boat to follow. But I like to think that they float on forever, dreaming of better worlds than the ones they left behind.

That’s what most people never seem to grasp. Even here there’s mystery. So much yet to be revealed. Layer built upon layer. It’s as it should be. Silent and immutable. Eternal and without the prejudice of truth.

October 16th, 2009 by Hoopleton

October 15th, 2009 by Hoopleton

The people of pre-Columbian Peru, known to us as the Inca, linked corn to blood.

On the fourth month of their eighteen-month calendar the Inca honored their divine maize gods with a festival. It began with the distribution of food and drink by the emperor. The people would gorge themselves, dancing wildly in long processions. Young girls carried ears of corn and deposited them at the temples as a show of devotion. Men got drunk off corn alcohol and were said to have visions of the spirit world. Spirits walked the Earth. Animals spoke.

At the center of the festivities was a woman selected to serve as the honorary host. The ritual companion of the head priest. She was dressed in a magnificent gown and jewelry. She wore a carefully crafted tiara of feathers on her head. Her face was painted yellow and red. As she danced and sang she embodied the sensual connection between the mortal and divine.

At the climax of the first day this woman would climb the steps of the temple. She would sing and dance. Her body twisting and curving with the music. Her eyes wild. Her lips parted. The priests would lay her down. They would remove her clothes and gently take the jewelry from her neck. As the voices of the onlookers came to a pitch, as the music swelled and the fires flared, the priests would take her head. They would skin her body and drain her blood.

For the next nine days her blood was mixed with the cornmeal that the revelers ate. Her skin was worn by the high priest who had been her escort. And in the end what remains were left of her, were buried along with her head. A sacrifice to the crop that had made American civilization possible. An offering of corn and blood.

The Inca understood the power of maize. Its capacity to bring prosperity. Its capacity to destroy.

Today, North America, and specifically the United States is the greatest producer of corn in the world. Through modern farming methods a single acre of land is capable of producing some two hundred bushels, nearly ten times of what was possible just a hundred years earlier, four times more than what was possible just thirty years earlier. That equates to about fifty tons of food per acre.

In the past, the American government offered subsidies to farmers as to stabilize market prices and limit the amount of corn entering the market. Today the government pays farmers for every bushel that they grow as corn is too cheap to be profitable. The result is a crop so plentiful that it has permeated nearly every industry. From plastics and synthetic fuel to livestock feed and food additives.

Increasingly the Western diet is a corn diet. The greater majority of US cattle is corn fed, producing beef with ten times the fat as that of cattle raised on grass. As the animals can’t properly digest grains they are fed over seventy percent of the nation’s antibiotics as to keep them alive long enough to make it to slaughter. Whereas thirty years ago corn based sweeteners were too expensive to produce, today high-fructose corn syrup can be found in everything on the supermarket shelf, from soda to bread. The over-consumption of corn sweeteners has been directly linked to climbing cases of diabetes and a plethora of other conditions associated with obesity.

As corn has become a bigger part of our diet so too we’ve become bigger ourselves. The obesity epidemic is close to surpassing smoking as the number one cause of preventable death. It is estimated that by 2015 nearly half of all Americans will tip the scale. This will further drive up healthcare costs and may result in the first major decline of life expectancy figures in the United States.

My generation may be the first to die younger than that of my parents.

Today this nation is locked in a healthcare debate. The argument used most frequently against any sort of “public option” is that the government would take too much control. Ordinary citizens, it is argued, would be so powerless when it came to their health issues that the result would be premature death. The irony is that our government’s system of corn subsidies, paid and sustained by tax dollars, is directly responsible for our increasingly unhealthy, increasingly shortened lives.

I am paying my masters to kill me. Perhaps the Inca would appreciate the symmetry. My sacrifice in blood.

October 14th, 2009 by Hoopleton

The blacktop is cracked and turned to grey by the frost. The cycle of warming, freezing and thawing will eventually turn it to dust. Only the imprint of the road will remain, driven below the soil forever a scar just under the surface of skin. In a future time archaeologists may come here and find the traces. They will say that we were a remarkable civilization. That is if there will be anyone left by then.

I stand on the center median of the blacktop. The wind rushing off the mountains hundreds of miles from here building speed across the vast plains chills my skin. This is my country. The open flat expanses have shaped my identity. The cold winters have changed my voice. I could never know what it would mean to have lived somewhere else. To have known a different landscape. To be a different person than I am.

The surface of the Earth seems to stretch forever from here. The sky looms heavy and eternal. The only sound is the wind.

I put my hands in my pockets. I glance behind me to where it is I came from. I turn to look up ahead. I can’t force myself to take another step. It’s only in this place, here on the road, surrounded by desolate winter fields, that anything makes sense to me. In some manner I’ve always been here. Everything in my life has built toward this moment. And here I’ll always remain, frozen in time under the changing hoop of heaven.

This is my country. This road my road. If only for this brief moment that I exist. I am of the soil of the Earth and through it come the fading stories of all those who had once stood where I now stand and felt the sorrow that I now feel.

Ten yards of rope. A shovel. A hundred bushels of corn for every acre. Weather-beaten hands digging deep into the black ground. Crystals melt into water against warm flesh. Stained leather faces working under the blazing sun. And in the midst of it a fissure in the fabric of time. Indians and buffalo hunters, homesteaders and sharecroppers pouring out of the void. Custer’s men were just massacred at the Little Big Horn and in five minutes time three feet of top soil will be irradiated by the poison of nuclear waste.

I don’t know where it is I’m going. I imagine it looks nothing like what it is here. The exodus started long before my birth. It’ll end before my death. But for the moment I will remain. Bracing myself against the cold, witness to the blacktop crumbling to dust. I’ll stay and mourn what was. I’ll mourn what will inevitably be. And I’ll nourish the flame of memory, passing it over to the next person down the line. Maybe in a future time they’ll find me buried here.

October 13th, 2009 by Hoopleton

Living in Chicago one accepts certain inalienable truths. Rush hour lasts all day. Parking is ridiculously expensive. The buses smell. The trains are slow. The river is green 365 days out of the year. The bars around Wrigley Field are obnoxious. The bars in Wicker Park are pretentious. The summers are too hot and the winters are unbelievably fucking cold.

There’s good with the bad of course. Chicago is one of the cleanest cities you’d ever visit. The neighborhoods are vibrant. There always seems to be something to do, somewhere to go. On a clear warm night the skyline is magnificent. World-class museums and restaurants. Hidden gems around every corner. Surprises hiding on every block by block.

Balancing the ledger is difficult. There’s a lot to love about Chicago. There’s a lot to hate about Chicago. But what tips the scale aren’t the music festivals or the homicide rate. Not the improv or the overcrowding.

As the line goes, Chicago is like a whorehouse at low tide. Forgiving for the moment the sexist connotations of that statement there is perhaps nothing more foul than the politics of the Second City. Chicago is built on greed. Conceived by organized crime and sustained by graft, it’s a city that reeks of corruption and cronyism. If shortsightedness is sown into the fabric of the American system then Chicago represents the first stitch.

Our politicians sell office space faster than they can build it. Public assets fall to the highest bribe at every turn. Our toll roads. Our parking meters. Our public works. Everything is for sale and everyone skims off the top. It’s the Roman model. For every dollar collected in taxes perhaps a nickel gets to the treasury box. Dynasties rule our elected offices. Budget deficits loom with every fiscal year.

But our streets are clean.

The beauty of Chicago is that in this city the corruption somehow works. Detroit and Baltimore fester. Newark and Gary decay. But somehow, despite rising prices, fees, the incompetence of local government, the predilection to borrow and spend, Chicago manages to grow, expand even prosper. It’s a city that reinvents itself over and over again. You can return to Chicago and not recognize it as the city that it was. In this sense it is Gotham. The quintessential picture of what is America. The competitive, awkward, self-conscious, self-serving embodiment of youth. The embodiment of humanity. Never perfect. Never knowing. Selfish and immoral. Violent and dark. And yet, capable of superhuman feats that both intimidate and inspire.

Living in Chicago one has to remain forever vigilant. It is the cross-section of the American experience. Hyper-capitalism. Ultra-liberalism. Conservative morality mixed equal parts with urban disdain. It’s a green city built out of the foundation of industrialization. A social experiment undone, but forever vibrant.

I love Chicago. I hate Chicago. It is both my home and in the same instant the place I most want to leave behind.

October 7th, 2009 by Hoopleton

It’s hard to understand today’s politics in the United States. Was it always like this? Is our perception of the past skewed by the power of hindsight? When looking back do we miss a plethora of failures for the bright glare of milestones? Or are we truly living in an age that is witness to the decline of our modern political system as we know it?

In the last twenty years, it seems, our elected officials have become increasingly ineffectual. Whether it be the Clinton era of inaction or the Bush era of criminal mismanagement or the current administration and it’s impotence of power, we seem to be strapped into free fall. Scandal follows scandal in the national headlines. Hatemongering and race bating take on the guise of intellectual debate. The sophists have commandeered the Assembly as the once mighty American Republic slides deeper into debt and shortsightedness.

Barack Obama, a man swept into office on a message of hope, on promises to remake the United States into the global leader that it once was, a President with unbeatable majorities in both chambers of Congress, although having moved on minor issues has dropped the ball on anything of substance. His major campaign promises have either been laid aside or discarded completely. His leadership seems increasingly weak and cowardly. He is a man out of his element. Someone who likes playing President but who has neither the will nor the understanding to actually be President.

The Democrats, the party that gave us Civil Rights, most of our social safety net and who still claim to represent the interests of the disadvantaged, have degenerated into a disorganized mob. Empty of message, platform or any of the ideals that once put them on the right side of the ethical divide, they are nothing more than a mirror reflecting the GOP’s worst criticisms. Whereas sixty years ago the Party of FDR transformed an isolationist frontier backwater into a superpower, the Democrats of today seem determined to destroy the United States out of sheer incompetence.

And as for the Republicans, the Party of Lincoln has increasingly become the last refuge for extremists, bigots and warmongers. A fascist, reactionary minority party more interested in tearing down the opposition than creating a sustainable future. Loud and angry, the Grand Old Party claims to love this nation while undermining its interests at every turn. The prevailing philosophy among Republican leaders seems to be that if they can’t sit at the controls they’d rather see the entire apparatus burn.

Is this our 476?

Our civic institutions are crumbling. The dollar is not what it once was. Our great military is bogged down in two conflicts that may just go on forever. Our political and financial leaders are too busy robbing us to see that end is coming and our media, the fourth estate, in existence, one would assume, to protect us, is only stoking the fires of our discontent.

Is the answer here a third party? Is it even worth fixing all that’s broken? Or should we just let it all fall apart?

If human beings have proven anything it’s that our systems of governance can never endure forever. As we erect a structure it immediately begins to topple over. We may slip into a dark age or just skim over the surface of one, but in every case we have to reassess, rework and rebuild. But I wonder if we’ve been going about it in the wrong way for all these thousands of years. Maybe these concepts of nationality, ethnicity, tribe, god and country are at the root of the problem. Maybe a clean slate is what we need. Scorch the earth and try from the beginning again.