We Have Met the Enemy…

What we hear from our co-workers, friends, family, conspiracy theorists, news organizations, and others is that a large majority of the people are unhappy with the state of our nation. Why? Because our country has big problems that need good, solid, answers from informed, hardworking, no-nonsense people to figure it all out, or to at least let us know who to blame. But, when it comes to blame in these matters, there is often a problem with subjectivity, and perhaps, there just might be too many villains to choose from. Sometimes discussions of politics and matters of governmental policy in terms what needs to be done and who is to blame become so embittered they makes us wish for those simpler, better times…when they forbade the sale of alcohol on election days to prevent fist fights and destructive mobs.

We decided it was our civic duty to determine who truly resides at the heart of the legislative and media darkness that festers in the sole of our country’s shoe and makes us limp. Because, like everyone else, we love knowing who to blame and we want to unite our nation in a grand torch and pitchfork parade to run the bastards out.

We knew conventional methods of investigation would not succeed. There is too much unbalanced, reactive disinformation flying around like winged monkeys to see through the problems without going beyond our conventional perceptions. So, we had C² undertake a vision quest. Now, don’t get us wrong, this isn’t because he went to CU (he never took a class taught by Ward Churchill nor thinks his lily-white butt is part American Indian). We didn’t even have any peyote. But, we have our methods. In this case, it involved C² dressing up like a Mad Max character, setting up a bunch televisions in M’s tool shed, strapping C² down in a chair with an IV consisting of caffeine, nutrients, hard liquor, and the ground up remains of our male enhancement pharmaceutical watches, keeping his eyelids peeled back with a device borrowed from A Clockwork Orange, and having him watch all the news channels and programs we could find (including, C-SPAN), simultaneously, until he either went insane or completed his vision quest.

Around the 36-hour mark, E and M heard a barbaric howl and sounds of destruction coming from the shed including the telltale buzz of a chainsaw. When E and M unbolted the door to the tool shed, they saw C² standing amongst the detritus of destroyed televisions and laughing maniacally. The vision quest was completed.

After piecing the fragments of what C² saw when locked in the tool shed, here is what we determined the vision quest showed him:

When it comes to the problems the country faces, we justly, and maybe sometimes unnecessarily, turn to our elected representatives to come up with solutions. However, the entire process often looks like a deranged three-ring circus in which there are no animal handlers and 45 different people are shouting over each other trying to proclaim themselves the ringmaster. These legislative ring-tossers are in a constant campaign mentality, driven by the whims of press and punditry.

In this berserk array of sights and sounds, we found the drivers of clown cars road raging about whether their cars made them more Real-American or were better for the country. In the stands peanut vendors sold empty bags, their emptiness the fault of someone else, and that if you just get them into the center ring of the circus, the bags will become plentiful again, like in a simpler, better time <gag>. Some of the circus performers ran around trying on ridiculous outfits, trying to stay on the edge of the action, scrambling over each other to try to be the furthest outside the box and closest to the crowd, even though under their costumes, just above their butts, tattoos of elephants and donkeys were tramp-stamped there.

Riding through the fray on unicycles were Poll Bears tossing out fliers of the latest results of the audience’s opinions, even though there’s a question if the Bears actually talked to anyone before proclaiming the results. But, even with the dubious data, some political contortionists bent over backwards to try to make these polls prove them right or the other performers wrong, sometimes going to such extremes that instead of sword swallowing they attempted foot-and-leg swallowing with their own lower extremities.

In the audience, the press acted like paid announcers, and directed the audience’s attention to the newest, most brain-defying stunts of logic-leaping. But, any audience member within earshot of two announcers wondered if the announcers had seen the same stunt. In fact, the knee-jerk reactions amongst the press announcers and the performers were so startlingly swift, they were either all trained by Bruce Lee or were so convinced of their viewpoint it didn’t even matter what they were looking at before they started shouting their opinion of the stunt and what it would lead to next. Also, any time one of the 50 sections cheered or jeered the circus action, the announcers would lather themselves up with self-righteous snake oil, distilled from their own spit glands, and proclaimed this was what the other 49 crowd sections thought about the action as well.

Some of press announcers even set up their own dog and pony limbo shows, trying to get the animals to go further under the lowest common denominator bar. These shows were nothing that should have been taken seriously outside of a border-town whorehouse, but like the whorehouses, some of them raked in clientele. Some of their customers even parroted the words of the announcers, squawking like trained birds with mottled plumage.

It would be easy to condemn the entire thing as a farce, demand our money back, and drive the entire show out of town with the fury of a mob. But then, going through what C² saw, was the throw-up-in-your-mouth sickening truth to it all. In spite of the lunacy of the political/media circus, the crowd, the audience, had bought into all of it and demanded more. All the madness occurs because the audience pays attention, purchases their tickets, shouts and jeers along with the show based on their own interests (some of them very, very special) and never demands anything else. If the voting audience really wanted something different, the circus would have to find new acts and new announcers. It wouldn’t be this wretched, hazardous, and absurd cacophony.

We hoped the vision quest would lead us on a pitchfork parade to run out the real villains. But, we’ve decided we can’t do that. It’s not the performers, or the announcers that created this mess. They’re just acting on the desires, or indifference of, the audience that takes them at face value, demands the sound bites, and snuggles up to the platitudes of the dancing politicians and media fiends. Oh, and that fetid aftertaste we had after we threw up a little in our mouths? That’s the sweet sensation of knowing that the voting audience, like true villains, don’t know there might be something wrong with what they’re doing. Even if they suspect it, they won’t look in a mirror and see their own villainy, they’ll just screech about the other audience members.

We’re sorry folks. There will be no pitchforks and torches mob. Not unless we all want to throw ourselves out of the tent. It is like this because we want it to be.

- E=MC²

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” – Walt Kelly, Pogo