October 25, 1996
Bill Clinton is right: the era of big government is over. We are now in the era of huge, over-reaching, bloated, ravenous, slothful, thriftless, over-taxing, authoritarian, complex, over-spending, useless, tyrannical, immense government. We left "big" behind long ago.
There are some people who think that everything that one does with a serious face is sensible.
... G. C. Lichtenberg, Aphorisms
"Give Bill Clinton another term, and [Vice-president] Al [Gore] and I will feel free to be our true selves and do what we really want to do." [Text approximate, loosely transcribed from a tape aired on a radio program.]
... Hillary Clinton to a group of Democrat supporters
We should never let our fellow citizens forget: we have a portrait of the Clintons' vision of America in The Health Security Act. This immense plan for the nationalization of doctors' and hospitals' services was proposed after lengthy reflection and planning, in a process that excluded outsiders such as doctors and hospital administrators. In view of this exclusivity, the whole horrendous monstrosity can be fairly ascribed to the Clintons themselves, not to low level staffers or aides; it was their personal project, from first to last. This therefore represents what they personally want for America: everyone waiting in line for rationed health care; no one able to stir without the government's OK; the nation's healers and the sick, frozen solid in a nightmare of bureaucracy (except for the nomenclatura). All of this is done on behalf of a perverse Gospel of Codependency, preached at every turn, propounded for the sake of a purely imaginary fairness.
Equal Misery for All.
By the way, the US government is for sale; wanna buy a piece? Send your payments to the DNC; someone will contact you.
[In a departure from what has become standard practice so far in the evolution of FRATRICIDE, this month, we welcome a guest homilist, Patricia Neill, who has prepared for us the following essay.]
by Patricia Neill (c) 1996
The other day I was listening to a call-in show, and I heard a caller say "us the people." "Us the people"? One can hope that the poor sot of a caller was simply nervous rather than completely witless, but one cannot be sanguine. All the same, "us the people" sent me rollicking in a snoot of laughter. It was an absurd and awful moment of the rare kind that can exemplify what has gone so wrong in our America.
"Us the people"--who the heck are they? My guess is that they can only be all the people in America who are going to vote for Clinton. "I'm a liberal, of course I'm gonna vote for Clinton." I was a liberal in another lifetime, but there is no way in hell I would ever have voted for Clinton! The man is a middle of the road, big-banker Republican, that is, when he is not being a lying snake of a sell-out globalist. I can see no reason why the left should be pleased with him whatsoever, unless they just happen to like financing illegitimate children through welfare and/or killing babies while they're being born. These are, after all, big issues for "us the people."
"Us the people" no doubt went all the way through our public school system and liked it. There they were taught how to feel and how to express an earnest need for self-esteem. History lessons centered predominantly on the Holocaust and how awful white folks are, and so, to be fair, perhaps they have never heard the phrase "we the people" or from whence it came. "Us the people" were not taught to read, write, or think, or at least not with any believability. They were taught that "identifying" was the only valid technique of literary or other criticism. "I'm, like, I identify with Captain Picard" was a phrase I heard in the hallowed halls of this august university just the other day. The student was discussing an upper level writing class centered on the importance of Star Trek in American Pop Culture. (This used to be an English Department. I'm not sure what it is now.) "Us the people" have watched enough MTV to rot their cerebral cortexes to compost, although you won't catch me spreading it on my garden.
"Us the people" didn't have the advantages of a religious upbringing either, since their parents were too busy taking drugs and experimenting with open marriages, that is, when they weren't down at the corner bar slinging down their sorrows. When "us the people" go to church these days, it is one of those fancy, upscale drive-in churches where everybody who is some body goes, except God and Jesus. "Us the people" don't know the Ten Commandments and indulge themselves in the Seven Deadly Sins every chance they get. Couch potato sloth and junk food gluttony have aided in the well-known chemical process of turning brain cells to catfood. "Us the people" are dedicated to the proposition that convenience is king and shopping is a valid human endeavor, worthy of time expenditures far beyond that dedicated to the raising of children or the reading of books. "Us the people" love to whine, and consider it performance art, for which they should receive government grants and subsidies. "I'm against poverty" goes one whine, while they spend themselves into deeper and deeper debt.
"Us the people" are the perfect audience for our beloved free press. All agog, they will watch the OJ Simpson Trial Show II: The Replay while the world crumbles around them. They'll watch when Oprah interviews the $200/hr prostitute frequented by Dick Morris, Clinton's ex-advisor on "family values." They'll watch when she interviews all the other whores who claim politicians as their pets as well. They will believe everything they are told to believe and go along with whatever horror comes down the pike, while they dream of becoming "stars" so they too can make a lot of money out of illusions and delusions. "Us the people" are vaguely aware that Clinton is a lying, thieving, murderous adulterer, for there actually has been a mention or two in the mainstream media of the multitude of scandals that erupt with such regularity from this White House. They've heard the term Whitewater and are envious of Hillary's magic touch at turning $1000 into $100,000. They'd be glad to pay for a self-help book on How to Get Rich by Having Corrupt Friends--but they'll neither buy nor read "It Takes a Village." That concept is too deep for them, although they'll espouse it because their brains are made of the fuzzballs I store under my bed. It probably *will* take a village to raise whatever hapless offspring are born to "us the people," if they can make it through the abortion years of their parents (16 to 37, whereupon the female of the species hears the ticking and gets the itch).
"Us the people" are also the perfect audience for Clinton himself. They love this slick son of a bitch, and they'll vote for him because he is cool, he plays sax while wearing shades, he jogs in shorts and because "Like, I can identify with the dude." Ain't *that* a fact. No matter what this man has done, they like him and by golly, they'll vote for him. Clinton looks so good on TV, it is as if he was created by a Hollywood special effects department. With all the grand delusions of adequacy fostered by this "free democratic system" of ours, "us the people" will dutifully waddle down to the polls and cast their vote for a swine.
Is there any solution to this problem of "us the people"? Not before the 1996 election is my guess. And post-election America is going to be a scary place, run by dictate of the Commander-in-Chief of "us the people." Perhaps only then, when the iron fist shows through the velvet glove, will "us the people" grow into "we the people." And that correction, grammatical and otherwise, no matter how difficult, should be welcomed.
On the other hand, maybe we could just poison the water supply.
[Patricia Neill has been a paper boy, field hand, factory worker, house painter, sail boat crew, zoo worker, courier for a law firm, researcher, writer, editor, model, and costume designer for theater productions. Besides that she likes to write. Her day job is Managing Editor of Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly, a scholarly journal on the English poet and artist William Blake. She is a gardener in the summer, cross country skier in the winter and lives with her two cats.]
The Family Leave Act was such a big success, and according to Hillary Clinton it "didn't cost a cent," that we are bound to see its successors in the near future. Here are some of the acts that we can look forward to debating:
Family Leave VI -- a bill to enable workers to leave work early to help their children with science fair projects.
Family Leave VII -- a bill to enable workers to fire their immediate supervisors without the possibility of appeal, in cases of sexual harassment, discrimination on the basis of race, religion, gender, age, or sexual preference, or pique.
Family Leave VIII -- a bill to enable children of workers to demand raises on their parents' behalf.
Family Leave IX -- a bill to require employers to provide playgrounds on company premises for children of employees, present or future, fully staffed at all hours.
Family Leave X -- a bill to close down the three remaining businesses that has survived the first nine Family Leave Acts.
Last Sunday, I got to hear Richard Stoltzman perform a work titled Fantasma/Cantos for Clarinet and Orchestra, by the late Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu (1930-1996). Stoltzman was terrific, and the performance was a unique experience.
People are so funny: one of my friends was at this concert also. He and his wife both complained that one should not do things like that to a clarinet in public. But I thought it was a marvelous piece of work. Takemitsu's score was full of lush colors, soaring passages of great beauty, in a musical language that was both modern and ancient. Like Messiaen, he took sounds from nature and recreated them with the orchestra. I should make allowances for taste, of course, but for me there is a special charm in Takemitsu's work: he blends western and eastern musical ideas together, not just mixing them, but making each an integral part of the whole.
I have long held this admiration for Takemitsu's work. His work has had a terrific variety. Among other things, he wrote the score for the film titled "Ran", directed by Akira Kurosawa, a very disturbing work. I have enjoyed numerous other of his works, and his music has now been played all over the world. The loss of this great talent, as he passed away last spring, was a moment of sadness for me and for the entire race. Alone, this self-taught musician saw how the confluence of east and west could be achieved. I wish we could have had more.
All contents © Copyright 1995, 1996 by Redmon Barbry ¶ 10:28 AM
