Nausea
for release 02-09-06
Washington D.C.
I sat down this morning to write a column about the Abramoff scandal. But I don't know if I have the stomach for it. The whole affair is so sordid and stinking and vile and reminds me of everything that I would like to forget about our way of life and government. Money rules.
I don't want to see the mockery that our representative democracy has become. Just when you think that things are as sleazy as they can possibly get, some slime-bag comes up with another way to pilfer, lie or peddle influence. It makes me sick to look at it.
We're not talking about petty theft here, folks. Government contracts and subsidies and tax benefits reach into the billions, no, the trillions. This is not chump change. One sentence in an appropriations bill can make or break a company or a whole industry. It's no wonder that they line up to pay brokers like Jack Abramoff millions to put a bug in the ear of some Congressman or Senator.
I don't want to write this column because the whole subject is just so disgusting. It brings to mind the very worst in human nature, greed, ambition, vanity and cronyism. Did I leave out hypocrisy? Did I miss something in civics class? Isn't this supposed to be a country where the elected representatives serve the interests of their constituents? Welcome to the real world, Lightning Rod. Your vote counts for a whole lot more if you can also buy your congressman a cabin cruiser.
9/11 illustrated to us the fact that you can't protect yourself against a fanatic or an idiot. You can't protect yourself from the insane. Talk to John Lennon about this. You can't protect yourself against a nut who is willing to die for a cause, be it religious or secular. You can only protect yourself against reasonable people. Locks are for the honest. A committed thief will figure out a way to either cut or pick or break the lock.
The same principle applies to our government. When you give 535 people the power to spend $2.77 trillion dollars per year, you are bound to have some graft. That's a little over $5 billion per legislator, so you can understand why lobbyists are anxious to curry favor with them. If what it takes to get a lawmakers attention is a tee time at St. Andrews or an expensive party or meal, or hookers and jet airplane rides or free-base cocaine, the lobbyist is more than happy to provide these things with his clients' money. Why can't we call lobbying what it is?--bribery.
This is nothing new. As long as there has been government there has been graft. We have come to expect it. Anytime there are taxes collected, we know that a certain percentage of them will be stolen and the rest will be misspent. And anytime there is nearly three trillion dollars in the pot, you can bet it will get the attention of thieves.
I live a scant twenty miles from Washington D.C. and from this distance I can fairly hear the hum of dollars being exchanged. It's the sound of your tax dollars on the move. It's the life-bread of the economy here, the scramble for the lipids of our society. This town lives on the fat of the nation. The eunuchs operate from Avenue K. They are trusted because they are castrated and hopelessly enslaved to the revolving door system between government and corporate interests.
You must understand that I don't want to write about this subject. It makes me nauseated in a way Sartre could not have imagined. I don't want to think that my government is controlled by thieves and whores, not unless they are MY thieves and whores.
I could belabor the old adage about letting the fox guard the hen-house but things have gone beyond that. The hens have all been eaten and the eggs have been sucked and now our Congress is a clubhouse for foxes who are plotting ways to eat your grandchildren's hens. Oh yes, I know this is America and the foxes are innocent until proven guilty, but when we see feathers hanging out of their mouths......
And now The Poet's Eye sees that paragon of fiscal virtue, Tom DeLay has been placed on the Appropriations Committee, you know, the committee that decides where your money goes. He replaces Duke Cunningham who was recently embarrassed by the fact that he took $2.4 million in bribes. This is the better than Beckett or Ionesco, truly theater of the absurd. But that's business as usual in Washington D.C.
"Objects should not touch because they are not alive. You use them, put them back in place, you live among them. They are useful nothing more. But they touch me, it is unbearable. I am afraid of being in contact with them as though they were living beasts."
---Sartre
sons of whores and thieves
step up receive
obesity in the breadline
mad monologorhythmists
mumbling
all mumbling their formula
if only
if only
if only
--Barry Gremillion, as performed by the Infamous Joy Urchins
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