January 7th, 2010 by Hoopleton

As we move further from those gagged days of the Second World War and as the last of that generation which bore witness passes from the living world we see a significant rise in interest in Hitler’s Third Reich. The memorabilia of National Socialism is in higher demand than ever. The most popular play of war reenactors are the battles of the Waffen SS. Nazism has become fodder for a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry. Extreme Right-wing parties which romanticize Fascism are appearing across the globe. Just a few weeks ago the iconic sign which hung over the gates of Auschwitz, Arbeit Macht Frei (work will set you free) was stolen by a gang of thieves at the behest of an as yet unknown collector.

Our attitude toward Hitler’s Germany is increasingly complicated. On the one hand the Nazis remain the epitome of evil. A pack of racist mass murderers with illusions of world conquest. It’s impossible to think of the Third Reich without imagining newsreel footage of bulldozers pushing hundreds of naked corpses into mass graves. They are the quintessential boogie men. Used (to a nauseating degree) by politicians as shorthand for everything that is wrong between Heaven and Earth. On the other hand we exist in a world sixty-five years removed from the initial shock of such crimes. Our world is one that is both all too familiar with and also increasingly indifferent to the realities of genocide. In short we are desensitized. And so for many people living today the Nazis have become little more than caricatures. Fictional super villains. The bad guys of Quentin Tarantino movies and video games. Dressed in their Hugo Boss tailored uniforms, silver skulls shining from their caps, they have almost become cool.

Speaking of Hugo Boss, one needs only to look at the rise of “Nazi chic” in the world of high fashion. With military inspired styles dominating the marketplace (a sad statement on the values of our society in itself) we’re seeing a cornucopia of suspiciously Nazi-like apparel on the runway and the rack. Schott of New York for example, a clothing company that boasts outfitting American bomber crews during World War II offers a double-breasted “military-style” leather jacket for sale that looks like it slid right off Himmler’s back.

I’m not suggesting that Nazis have as yet crossed the line into the realm of acceptability. I couldn’t conceive of a time in the near future when someone strolling down the street with a swastika on their arm wouldn’t face a hostile reception (though stranger things have happened). As yet reenactors sporting War-era German uniforms go about their play discretely. Collectors of Nazi paraphernalia (legal and otherwise) are staying mainly in the shadows. However their numbers are growing. Prices are rising.

All of this comes at a time of increased extremism. Deeply nationalistic and fascist political parties are gaining power in governments across the globe. Even the European Parliament is today led by a coalition of far right parties, many espousing veiled bigotry if not blatant racism. Though perhaps such things are inevitable given enough time. Especially when a band of murderous thugs is made into caricature for the gain of political agendas and movie ticket sales.

At first we reject evil, but given enough time we commodify it, fetishize it. History defaults to whoever has the larger marketing budget. It’s not unthinkable or without precedent. Our history celebrates slavers and mass murderers. They appear on our currency. Our cities are named for them. Up is down. Black is white. The victims blame not their tormentors but each other. African Americans are said to “get handouts.” Native Americans become mascots. Jewish history is called a “propaganda tool.” Auschwitz is called a “Polish death camp.” Hitler’s willing executioners become the new cool. Absurdity becomes reality. Such is life in Naziland.

January 2nd, 2010 by Hoopleton

It goes without saying that if people judged the worth of a film star by their political views then most Midwestern movie theaters would only feature the work of John Wayne, Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger. In fact, I doubt even Kindergarten Cop would be easy to find in some parts of the Bible Belt given Arnold’s Californian attitudes on social issues. The Blue States would have a much wider selection of talent although I imagine that Tim Robbins and Sean Penn would become insufferable after a point. The amount of Michael Moore movies alone would be enough to drive one to Texas.

Although we obsess with stardom to a point of cultish devotion, picking apart their personal lives, spending obscene amounts of money on their films, albums and memoirs, we seem to care very little for their politics. Although Richard Gere might have been really great in Chicago (just stay with me here) that does not mean that anyone in the world cares anymore for Tibet (I’d argue we care less). And honestly, seeing Ben Affleck at the Democratic convention did not convince anyone to vote for Barack Obama beyond perhaps Matt Damon who was going to vote for the guy anyway.

In a not wholly indirect way this brings us to Robert Downey Jr. who in a 2008 New York Times interview said, “you can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal.” What Downey was referring to was his stint in the joint and his conversion to a conservative mindset, as, from all indications, he found himself a punching bag on more than one occasion. In other words, having fallen from the heights of stardom the former Clinton liberal once faced with the ugly reality of privileged poverty went through a Bush-tinged secular reawakening (he reportedly has a photo of himself with W. in his kitchen).

Now again, as most of us, I have little care for what any movie star thinks politically. I like Robert Downey Jr. as I always have. If I were to force myself to choose movies based strictly on ideological alignment I’d probably be reading more. However Downey’s statement struck me as interesting.

With poverty comes an expectation of privilege. An idea that one deserves something for having nothing. On the other end of the spectrum is privilege born out of wealth. An idea that if one has a lot he deserves more. Both views are repulsive in that they share the same critical flaw. A notion of birthright. The conflict of all societies is what happens between those born high and those born low. A conflict fought right in the middle, a back and forth consumed by need and greed. It’s when the two come into direct contact that politics are born most usually on a bloody floor.

And so comes the inherent flaw of our system. Capitalism creates such vast gaps in the modes of life that it invariably conceives hostility. Those of the top are repulsed by those of the bottom for their apparent scheming, brutality and laziness, while those of the bottom are repulsed by the upper caste’s unabashed extravagance and apparent indifference.

So we come back to Robert Downey Jr. and his transformation. A man from the heights confronted by the worst, most needy elements of the bottom. Blood was spilled and political ideologies rewritten. And as in all cases, the pendulum finds no middle ground, but swings wildly from one extreme to the other. Which is why former liberals or conservatives never land on moderate or independent. Why the laws of the land are written from the fringes and not something better resembling universality.

It’s for the best that we don’t put much stock into the political views of films stars. The kind of lives they lead are so immeasurably different than ours that to trust in their guidance would be an exercise in myopia. However, lessons can be drawn. As we are a fame obsessed society so too our politics is at the least a reflection of that unreal strata.

November 17th, 2009 by Hoopleton

Sarah Palin wrote a memoir. I think it’s best we accept the fact and move on.

A blog is no place to ridicule people. It’s not a place to point out obvious flaws and shortcomings. Sarah Palin may appear to be an idiot. Some may go as far as to assume she’s illiterate. She doesn’t strike one as a “reader,” they may say. How does someone who’s illiterate write an autobiography?

Sarah Palin is not illiterate. Besides she had help. She had a ghostwriter. However the publisher informs us that she was very involved. Of course she’d be involved, it’s a memoir. Duh.

The title of the “autobiography” is Going Rogue. I do not plan to elude to the obvious pornographic double meanings of the phrase. I will not drag this blog into the gutter. I will not sling filth over the internet. In the same vein please do not expect any tangent dealing with the very many hugely popular x-rated films inspired by the former Alaskan governor, nor any mention of Levi Johnston’s (the nineteen-year-old father to Sarah Palin’s grandson Tripp) upcoming Playgirl photo spread. I will not mention any of these things because Sarah Palin is a serious, respectful person deserving of our respect.

Sarah Palin is not a breathing, walking, talking punchline.

Sarah Palin is not some high and mighty, elitist, intellectual, tax and spend, inside the beltway politico. She’s just like us! She’s Jane-sixpack. She’s a hockeymom. She may not know how to find Iraq on a map. She may not who the President of [fill in the blank] is, but she’s good God-fearing people.

We all know Katie Couric is most likely an embittered old shrew, a soulless cog in the vast liberal media conspiracy. We all know that the McCain campaign was out to derail their own nominee from the start. That the Republican Party forced her to wear expensive designer clothes. She didn’t enjoy any of it. She didn’t ask for any of it. It’s not as though she gained personally or politically from it. She would’ve made it on the cover of Newsweek all by herself. Darn right!

Sarah Palin is not a colossal hypocrite. She doesn’t even know the meaning of the word. I refuse to add the word “literally” to the end of the previous sentence. I refuse to comment on her apparent utter lack of experience, intelligence, empathy or forward thinking. She doesn’t buy into any of that Stalinist labeling anyway.

I will not comment on Sarah Palin in this blog. I’m not a hatchet man and this is not the forum for slander, finger pointing, name calling or settling personal scores, that’s what a memoir is for.

November 10th, 2009 by Hoopleton

Quitting smoking after twelve years is about as fun as going through heroine withdrawal. Night sweats, chest pains and a bizarre obsession with watching holocaust documentaries. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since the weekend but at least I’m better informed on the history of Auschwitz.

World War II and the crimes committed during those six years is one of those subjects that never seems far from our public imagination and I wonder whether it’s turned to unhealthy obsession. Whether vows such as “never forget” turn more into slogans than conviction.

The lessons of the largest genocide of the twentieth century have hardly led us to greater wisdom or to embrace any semblance of universal brotherhood. We still allow genocide to take place. We nearly encourage it. Our leadership in places like the United Nations Security Council plays politics with people’s lives allowing us to fetishize the dead. Genocide becomes consumer marketing. To passively “demand justice” becomes a defined lifestyle choice. We don’t actually want anything to be done, certainly not if it has direct impact on our daily living, we’d just like to wear the moniker of humanitarianism around our necks like a fashion accessory.

Reference to Hitler permeates our social discourse daily. He’s become mainly a caricature. A shorthand for evil. Politicians use him to denounce dictators or slander one another. The media uses him to slander everyone they can. Protestors use his image and his deeds to attack everything from the WTO to Universal Healthcare. Stories of the man run weekly. Documentaries about him air at least once per day. With every appearance the claims grow wilder. Hitler was Jewish. Hitler was gay. Hitler was a coprophile. And all the while he grows larger than life. He becomes almost glorified.

We’ve built so much romanticism into the Third Reich and the figures who operated its levers. Flipping though catalogues you find many pieces of clothing that might have been designed for the German state by Hugo Boss back in the 1930s. Nazi chic has been around for a while but it’s never been more readily available. Reenactors roam the forests of nearby suburbs dressed as members of the Waffen SS, pretending, one would think, not of exterminating “undesirables” but fighting with honor for the Fatherland. Collectors scour estate sales and online ads hoping to add to their secret backroom Nazi collections. Proud is the dad who completes his History Channel Hitler video collection. He can sit back in his study, empty of books of course, and feel proud that he has assembled a complete record of this now legendary man.

What will it be in fifty years? With the Greatest Generation gone will we still strive to remember the atrocities of the past or will our culture even more glamorize the era of National Socialism? As time marches on it’s harder to say.

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 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 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.

September 7th, 2009 by Hoopleton

In the Dark Ages the Catholic Church ruled over the European continent with an iron fist. The Holy Inquisition terrorized women, intellectuals, ethnic and religious minorities with torture and murder. Clergymen stole from the poor and gave to themselves. The Church at times even assumed temporal authority, establishing its own governments, armies and states. The rationale for such tyranny was protectionism. The Church saw itself as a bulwark against the forces of darkness, mainly those external, but also those manifest from within.

The issue is not whether or not the Catholic Church acted cruelly. Several popes have apologized for the conduct of the Holy See. The history is well documented. The real issue, perhaps, is whether in some, murderous, blind, intolerant way they may have been right. Stripping away the deep layers of vile sexism, anti-semitism and general bigotry there is the sense, and ultimately the argument of most religions, that people need protection from themselves. That we are a species ultimately incapable of natural morality or empathy. We are born of sin and will revert back into our natural state if even given half a chance.

There is an argument to be made in defense of this utterly pessimistic worldview. One needs only to crack open a history book or tune into a twenty-four news network to see who we are as a species. Murder, torture, even genocide are served up daily as has been the case for ten thousand years. We often seem in desperate need of saving from our base instincts, from our seemingly inexhaustible ignorance. From fear itself.

America’s recent decline is a case study in the human capacity to do the wrong thing. Whether we talk about the greed that led to our current fiscal mess, the spectacle that is the healthcare debate or the general ignorant bile that is our politics, we exist now in a perpetual state of self-interest. America crumbles not because of crime or poverty or the Democrats or Republicans, but because we look to our own selfish needs ahead of those of our neighbors. Myopic colloquial concerns become the only concerns. Selfishness and greed are good, to some even becoming the very testament of God. As we become more polarized and inward gazing we also become increasingly incapable of reason, and where there is a lack of reason there is also a lack of good.

We are selfish, brutal animals and so all that remains is to impose brutality upon us. Such was the reasoning of the Church, as well as Machiavelli and many a Russian Czar.

But human beings are interesting not because we are inherently evil but because we constantly strive to be good. Instead of just accepting our nature we fight against it constantly. We erect religions, we codify laws, we write happy endings. We are obsessed with justifying our actions, with being regarded, remembered favorably. The most evil men in history did evil only after convincing themselves that what they were doing was just.

So perhaps given the chance we claw our way into the light, or, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, we do the right thing after exhausting all other possibilities. If this is true than maybe in the history of civilization we were simply never given the chance to prove our capacity for natural morality. We’ve been imposed upon for millennia. By religions and rulers, by financial systems and racial/gender divides. Perhaps, just perhaps our natural state is just something we’ve never trusted ourselves enough to develop.

August 13th, 2009 by Hoopleton

When FDR was pushing through the New Deal or Johnson was moving the Great Society through Congress, often by the sheer power of their stubbornness, politics was certainly full of venom. The opposition was full of sound and fury, but there always remained, or generally there prevailed, a sense civic courtesy. Despite the turmoil brought on by the Great Depression or the 1960s, despite murmurs of fascist or communist uprising, or a youth movement ready to reshape social order, the system continued on as it always had. The nation changed, as it should have, and despite the omnipresence of extremists on both sides, the discourse of the public sphere was always generally calm and rational.

Looking back from our present political environment, as born out of those decades of necessary turmoil, it’s difficult to find examples before the 1990s of a time when American politics and greater American society were so consumed by bitter, violent divisiveness. The current healthcare “debate,” featuring angry, ignorant mobs screaming for blood, whites sobbing over an America that once was, may be most immediate in our mind, but the bile that is the modern town square extends to everything. Abortion, gay rights and education, guns, immigration and taxes. I don’t recall another President in the last hundred years so dehumanized. A foreigner, a radical muslim, a socialist. I don’t remember the media ever being so militant, so quick to incite unrest.

One has to go back to the days of the American Civil War to find a climate so rife with tension, bitterness and vitriol. A society on the brink of self-destruction, it’s undoing centered around the ugliness of slavery, which for many represented an entire form of independent culture. A vanishing America. Then too the citizenry of this land was bitterly divided, then as now the media stoked the fires of disunity, the representatives of the people not only held one another in contempt, but at least in one case, brutally attacked their fellows on the floor of Congress.

Are we on the brink of such times? Is America descending into the maelstrom?

Although anything is possible it seems unlikely that in this day and age our society would collapse into a second civil war, but things never need to be so dramatic.

In 1968, Edward Luttwak examined the whys and hows of planning and executing a coup d’état, or an usurpation of a legitimate government. He stated that a “good coup country” would be one in which politics were well organized, but polarized into hostile factions and where the country itself was completely independent of outside political pressures. Obviously, he added, the best opportunity for the seizure of power would be during a time of crisis, whether real or merely perceived.

Coups are nothing new to global politics nor to these shores. In 1933 a group representing some of the leading business interests of the United States approached retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler as to higher him to lead an overthrow of the Roosevelt administration. Butler turned out to be a patriot and immediately reported what has since been dubbed the Business Plot to Congress and later investigations, although confirming Butler’s story, concluded that the plot was far from ever becoming a real national threat.

But if we follow Luttwak’s formula the climate was not right for such treason. Although the United States certainly faced a crisis in the guise of the Great Depression and was quite isolationist, politics was not as bitterly divided as it is today.

As an aside it may be worth noting that Smedley Butler went on to become a voice against war profiteering, calling his own thirty-three year distinguished military career as that of being a “gangster for capitalism,” while Edward Luttwak, the man who in the 1960s came out as a voice against the dangers of political polarization, was quoted in 2008 as calling Barack Obama a muslim who would unhinge America’s standing in the world.

So here we are. The patriots seem to be of an older generation long since gone and those we’d look to for expertise and reason have instead taken on the banner of partisanship. If the conditions weren’t right for an overthrow eighty years ago, whether violent or bloodless, how do we fair today? Are we a people united, or does the tree of liberty need to be refreshed yet again?