The Poet's Eye
commentary by Lightning Rod
The Poets' Eye is skeptical without being cynical, innocent without being naive and critical without being judgemental.
Speak in Secret Alphabets
(posted 02-16-04)
This is a time when the average man is buried to his nostrils in baloney. The arts of advertising and public relations, ok let’s call it what it is—propaganda, have reached such a state of perfection that your alarm clock can’t go off in the morning without bombarding you with bullshit. It’s a world of brand-names, logos and outrageous claims.
When you try to get the evening news you are asked to buy a medicine chest full of flim-flam placebos to cure your every ill and never mind that the list of side effects is longer than the list of symptoms that this slick packed dope is supposed to remedy. They are touting a long-lasting viagra now with the clever warning “if erection lasts more than four hours, consult your physician.” It conjures visions of guys trying to slap the pup-tent down.
We swim in a sea of pooh-pooh and prevarication. It doesn’t surprise us to hear lies. Why should it? It’s the air we breathe and if you hear a lie often enough you forget to question it and in a perverse way it becomes true.
This is how the Bush regime is hoping to maintain its corrupt and thieving existence—by repeating the lie and repeating it again, repeating it until it sounds true. Four sentences can’t come out of the mouth of our parrot president without you hearing ‘weapons of mass destruction’ or ‘terrorist threats’ or ‘evil doers’ or ‘threats to our security.’ These endlessly repeated slogans are designed to keep us in a state of borderline panic wondering what powder we will find in which envelope. It is to their advantage that you are worried about your safety, your health, your security, your job. It makes you more pliable and vulnerable to believing the rack of lies they are trying to sell.
George Bush Jr. is not a good liar, but he is persistent. His handlers extoll his ability to ‘stay on message.’ This means that he has the unimaginative tempermnent necessary to repeat the same banalities and catch phrases over and over without becoming sickened by his own saliva.
Our president is a recorded message from a seedy telemarketing tank that you have to listen to every day at dinner time. Over and Over.
The Republicans have two hundred million dollars to spend this election year in order to make sure that you are offered the lie a dozen times a day. You’ll hardly notice it before it’s over.
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