TV Time

I would like to tell you about the ancient, stone knife blade I came across during my last camping trip in central Nevada. I would like to tell you about the chilling crossroads we re-visited near Area 51. At the moment, I can’t. I just spent the last few days in Oregon and my mind is completely polluted by the Brain Drain (television). My god! I’m so glad we don’t have a TV. The feverish spin of the election “news” is so polluting. I found I was watching more television to counter act the effect of watching some television. At home, I get my news online. I control the sources and the pace. The dis/ease spewing from the propaganda machines of Fox and CNN etc. is really unsettling. After a couple of days of being force fed poison pap, I felt ill. I can see why TV is the preferred brain-washing tool of Corporate Amerika and its agents in Washington DC. It works.

The first time I voted, I voted for Ronald Reagan. Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t because I thought Reagan would make a good president. Even though I was living on a religious commune and barely knew what year it was, I knew Reagan was an asshole. I just didn’t care who was president. However, it was the opinion of our spiritual leaders was that voting for Reagan was good because “preaching would be so much better after the war” (he would start). So I voted for Reagan.

The other night, instead of sleeping, I lay awaking thinking that maybe Bush should win this election. After all, he deserves shit on his face, for all the shit he’s hurled at the fan. Maybe after four more years of his ever increasing shit storm, people would wake up…. blahblahblah. But, the fact is, we don’t learn “later”. We either learn or we don’t. Plus, it already is later and the behind the scene guys running the Bush administration are the same guys that ran the Reagan administration…the good old boys over at the Project for the New American Century, moldy wine in new bottles. They are everyone’s enemy and Bush is merely their latest poster boy.

But the brain dead dummy christian religious fanatics have fallen for an illusion of security, sweetened with the promise that gays will go away and creationism will be re-enthroned as the state philosophy. These dopes are simply the well-fed counterparts of the muslim (etc.) fanatics. In fact, the evangelicals, whatever name they give their “god”, are closer to each other than to anybody else on the planet. And the christian and muslim extremists are out of the same pod. And what particularily erks me is that they are both lopsided, oppressive patriarchies claiming exclusive access to The One and Only True and Jealous God who just happens to want men to control women, for their own good of course.

But for however smart they claim to be, people who can but don’t vote are no better. Silence is compliance. After I left the commune, I was dejected for a long time. For all the soul sucking, it’s hard transitioning out of the safely cloistered world of a religious community. I was pretty numb but it life returned. Eventually there was evan a local measure on the ballot I actually felt strongly about. A first. About fifteen minutes before the polls closed I found myself directly across the street from the library where the voting was taking place. But instead of going over and casting my ballot I gave in to the old thought, “Oh well. Why bother? One vote won’t make a difference one way or another.” The measure I would have voted for lost by one vote. So vote, damn it.

Oh, and if you want to watch the so-called debate online and comment afterwards go to Talk Left.