Chris Herrington, Contributing Writer
A report from the near front: If you were to drop your proclivities, dispense with your preconceptions, and eradicate your expectations, you might find yourself in a deliciously alien world where the former choices you might have made now seem foreign and foolish, odd and merely sanctimonious to you, and slightly banal and having little temptation.
I’ll exploit a few rounds of in-the-news, on the tube, and up your bagpipe to illustrate my thesis, and I’ll begin with the bus tossing of the political debates. Have you noticed, if my eyes and ears are still functioning, that the debates have brought out the worst in people? They not only slam their opponents, the ones on the other team, but there seems to be a cornucopia of friendly firing going on. Romney, Gingrich, et al, have been battling it out for months and the holes they dig for each other simply get deeper and more demeaning. By the time the debates are ended and the Republicans have named their man, that is if no woman steps forward for them, I am pretty sure the Democrats will be able to simply roll tapes of the previous debates and sound bites. The oddest thing is when a candidate ducks out and names one of the remaining in the pack that he previously dissed as a low life blood sucking so-and-so as the next great President of these United States, fully endorsed. “I am that bastard’s wing man,” does not really give me a sense of real encouragement.
And it really is, in the fullest sense of the word, a battle for legitimacy; Obama has been on trial for having received the crown as a socialist, un-American, liberal Nazi, undocumented worker since before his inauguration. He seems to have given away the farm, been bested in every battle, and lost the war on all fronts in the news, the polls, and at the water cooler, and yet what do we have to work with to oppose him? We seem to always face the best of the worst in every election, and still we tell the world that we are the bravest, smartest, most morally righteous, best of show dog-eat-dog capitalist country that lobbyists can buy. The liberals are godless. The capitalists are greedy. The churches are judgmental. The mom and pop stores are under siege from Wal-Mart, and the liberation we were expecting at the hands of the free market has plunged us into a race to the bottom of quality in search of the perfect product that costs nothing to make and reaps 1000% profits. The lottery ticket is the wave of all future success, along with our slot machines, bake sales, the black market, and our (shhh!) offshore accounts. Thank God for valium.
And then we have our adoration of all things emotionally charged and hyper-stimulating, the harpies of persuasion and the passion of all good do-gooders in the making, entertainment, especially games and computer worlds, but not holding back the endless hours of balls that get tossed, thrown, kicked, or passed into holes, nets, and slots. When we have finally gone the way of all living beings, we can put our scores on our tombstones. “I put the ball in the hole __________ times.” There is something odd about playing a game your whole life as a metaphor for avoiding dealing with your emotional life in your relationships. You’re just checking the score, the stats, the game, the season, the total, the tally, the progress, the whatever it is that shows that it happened to advance to the next level of eating a hole in your entire life. I don’t mind getting up off my butt and actually playing, but simply spending 15 hours a week end watching grown men move a sperm-shaped ball up and down a field to see who can tag the other end is tedious. Go out and run or play but sitting and watching a game and another game and another game and not knowing if your child can read a book or write an essay or add a stack of numbers is really missing the chance to help your child survive in the world. How many professional athletes do we really need? None. It’s a habit of society that we even care.
Man, what a bummer that was! Taking the “j” out of joy, eh? Well, after we have used up our days watching some goofballs throw each other under the bus and then watch other goofballs throw a bus on top of other goofballs, we’ve got endless hours of games that people play on line. I just want to do something mindless and relax, right? Sure. 3 hours a day of gaming is 82,125 hours of play. It takes 10,000 hours to become an expert in a field. The average person puts as many hours into his entertainment as it would take to earn 8 PhD’s. 8 doctor’s degrees.
We don’t lack quality minds; we lack qualifying them to keep us afloat in a complex world. And if they do make even the smallest hint of a change in the process to help make everyone safer for democracy, the Republic, Federalism, or States Rights or whatever, they want to make a mint off of it in royalties.
One of my students told me a year ago that she wanted to be famous. I asked her what she would be famous for. She told me that she would be famous for having her picture taken, like Paris Hilton. Hmmmmmm.
If we are all standing on the street corner getting our picture taken, who is going to make the camera to take the picture with and who is going to snap the photo? What are you doing here? I’m here to get my picture taken. Me to. And you? The same…….
America, the land of the photogenic. We play games, yelp like dogs, throw each other under the bus, and we smile for pictures wearing fabulous clothes. Wait for it……
I’m sure the founding fathers saw this coming…..Cheese cake! And we are all naked! We have finally reached the point where we recognize this story…The Emperor’s New Clothes!
