Thought That Came Unbidden

Normally I’m not one to flack openly for causes. I try to confine my flacking to unobtrusive buttons (glance down and right under “Do some good”) but one of my favorite indie magazines in in dire financial straits. Bitch Magazine needs to raise $40k by the middle of October or the print-mag is kaput. Since I can’t say it any better than they do, check the video out and give if you can.

I am prone to catastrophic thinking – the headache immediately becomes a brain tumor (though I still maintain that I’ve got family precedent (twice) on my side for that one), current obstacles become “nevers” and “always”-es – but this is one instance in which anticipating the worst can only help.

It’s raining so hard here I can barely see my car parked in front of my house, a distance of maybe 75 feet. According to the National Weather Service the center of Hanna (no longer a hurricane she doesn’t have an “eye” any more) is about 178 miles southeast of my house. She’s moving slow, 24mph, but expected to pick up speed as she moves north and east during the next 12 to 24 hours. I figure we’ll be at the middle of the storm around dinner time.

I got soaked tying down the table on the deck and putting chairs in the garage but I know for certain that if the wind picks up any more any projectiles it finds to throw around will not be mine. But hey, my roof’s not leaking and the electricity is still on. Sounds like a great day for a nap, and I could sure use a nap.

Someone once told me that you could tell where someone came from, their economic background and their attitudes about life, by how they started a “fish story,” you know, the kind of story the one that got away that was yeah big, no really, it was, bigger than anything we’ve ever seen. It doesn’t matter what the actual content of the story is, they all have that same whiff of apocrypha.

Those from the upper classes and striving middle class folks would start a story of this type with some variation of “Now, I know this is going to sound unbelievable” whereas folks from the lower classes, ones with a more earthy outlook on life, would start their story in the way I’m about to start this one by saying the following: Now, this ain’t no shit. The difference, I suppose, acknowledges both the leap of faith needed to believe what you’re about to hear while simultaneously encouraging you to be engaged with the material. This is one of those stories.

It’s both fair and accurate to say that Lyndon Johnson, who would have turned 100 this year, is nearly 40 years after he left office still one of America’s most controversial presidents. On the one hand Johnson’s “Great Society” programs, like Medicare, Medicaid, and the Head-Start program for kids living in poverty that fed me breakfast the entire time in I was in elementary school, legislated desperately needed social changes in America (of course, depending upon your political bent you could also argue legitimately that they solidified the slate of government “entitlement programs” begin by FDR in the “New Deal” but I digress); on the other hand, Johnson bought heart and soul the line of crap being fed to him by both arch conservatives and by the military-industrial complex and escalated the war in Vietnam directly resulting in the deaths of 58,000+ Americans, an uncounted number of Vietnamese, and an unthinkable number of physically and psychically maimed on both sides all because we were afraid of a Communist block in South East Asia.

Johnson was a typical smoke-filled room politician throughout his entire career. Known for twisting arms and bullying his way to the result he wanted, Johnson was the personal equivalent of a Saffir-Simpson 5. But the thing about Johnson was that he gave as good as he got, he knew the value of street cred long before we had a term for it in the popular lexicon.

Coming off last week’s DNC, I’ve been thinking about Johnson a lot. Talk of reforming “Washington,” and yes, I always hear the air-quotes because I look around when a politician says “Washington is broken” and I think “yeah, but you’re not going to do jack shit about the cronyism in city government and you can’t get my street repaved so shut up,” is fine, well, and good but the reality is that fully 75% of the things Obama talked about in his speech last Thursday are legislative changes that require the cooperation of both houses of Congress.

Now, this ain’t no shit.

Sometime in the late-1950s when he was still a Senator from the great state of Texas Lyndon Johnson, and mind you he was a physically big man at 6′ 3 /12″, walked into a room full of lobbyists and other Democratic Senators, looked around and appraised the assemblage and said, “Everyone in this room owes me a favor and I’m here to collect.”

I know this because Mr. H., who was a family friend and the chief lobbyist for the Milk Marketing Board, was one of the people standing in that room.

Influence is how “Washington” and politics function. Is it how they should function? Absolutely not, but when dealing with a large group of people and the word “should” you’re fighting human nature. Lobbyists treat politicians like they are special and it is human nature to want to feel special, to feel like you matter.

It takes a hugely strong personal will to reject that kind of treatment and, even though in the matter of his infidelity he was an even bigger equivocating scumbag than Bill Clinton was about Monica Lewinsky, John Edwards had it right: this veil gets drawn over people. After they’ve been treated like they are privileged for long enough they start to believe that they deserve, nay are entitled, to be treated as if the rules don’t apply or that little something extra isn’t extra but their due because they work so hard or make such difficult decisions. But they don’t. That’s why members of Congress make $169,300/year but will happily reject an increase in the minimum wage that would raise the salary of someone working for that wage to $15,080/year.

I’m forced to wonder: to whom is Barack Obama beholden, and who can he call on for the return of favors he’s granted? I fear no one and that makes me wonder if that dark cloud on the horizon isn’t potentially eight more devastating years of Republican controlled government after a 1-term Democratic President.

I’ve been thinking about myths lately, their place in our modern world, why we crave them so, and how we satisfy our need for them. Appropriate given the highly packaged, minutely stage managed myth-generation factory that is the recently completed Democratic National Convention in Denver, CO.

People with a lot more dedication than I have spend years studying Greek myths and how those archetypes apply to current society and culture but so far in the dissection of what your inner goddess might be and how those myths affected the development of every European culture and religion nothing has yet made it to the pop non-fiction charts that talks about why the need for myth is so pervasive in current American culture. And make no mistake, we do need myths just about as much as we need clean water and oxygen to breathe.

The fact is that American life, and probably life in just about every other developed, stable culture on the planet, is nasty and brutish despite the magnificent creature comforts of indoor plumbing, reliable water supplies, and the 8 hour work day, and it delivers diametrically opposed messages about who and what you should be. In myriad ways our culture tells us that unless you achieve some modicum of celebrity, whether its because you discover the disease or the cure for the disease, become President, go on a multi-state killing spree, or simply because you’ve whored yourself out enough to become famous simply for being famous, you will not be remembered. You are unimportant. You. do. not. matter.

It is this search for import which has extended to a search for existence itself that, I think, drives the currently in vogue constant striving for any bit of celebrity – your video gets a zillion hits on YouTube, your picture from that time when you were drunk and you did that thing that someone posted on MySpace gets circulated around the planet by a bunch of bored frat boys, your trollish, hate filled rantings get you coverage in the New York Times – that justify your existence. It is the other message, though, that really confuses, and that, when combined with this first message that celebrity is the only thing that makes you real, that makes you matter, causes modern life to be such a complete and utter mindfuck.

The other message we get from our culture is that we are vitally important and our culture can not function without us. Everything we do matters, from the kind of light bulbs we choose to the choices we make at the ballot box. Our dollars matter, our opinions matter, what we think, drive, eat, buy, save, spend, and how we amuse ourselves are the engine that keeps our culture running. Every one of us has something valuable to contribute withdrawing from the work-earn-spend grind is the absolute worst thing we can do.

Is it any wonder culturally we’re a disoriented mess?

It is these diametrically opposed messages that drive the search for meaning that is expressed in art and in the better realms of pop culture. The best examples of this in pop culture, like Joss Whedon’s Firefly/Serenity series or his most excellent Buffy The Vampire Slayer are the perfect blend of the everyday, which all of us have in abundance and myth, the sense of purpose larger than your own life, something that Matters and that you know deep down with utter conviction that if you do not do them history will turn that way instead of this way and people, for it’s always people, worse off and the world will be harder, crueler, and life will be exceedingly less pleasant for those with the least power.

The thing is, most of us don’t have myth in our everyday lives. The reality for most of us is that we really don’t matter in that big picture echoing through history sort of way. If we blinked out of existence tomorrow history wouldn’t even notice. Indeed, the mechanics of life down here in the everyday would barely notice as another fungible body took over our jobs and our place in the consumption-excretion-reproduction chain of life.

But here’s the real rub: we do have myth just not on the scale we’ve been sold.

Most of us will do something important, something that qualifies for mythological status in some way even if it is only in one person’s history. The sad thing is that most of us will never see it. We will act casually, concentrating on our own aches and pains, our own grasping for happiness, and will be unaware of the ramifications of our actions. Later, we will lament our lack of import not knowing that we’ve already made our mark.

I think most of us know this in some way, even subconsciously, otherwise why would we place so much cultural emphasis on leaving “the world” better for future generations (quick hint: The children aren’t our future; the children are *their* future. You are your own fucking future.)?

Maybe it really all does come down to bread and circuses to distract us from the fact that the toilets need cleaning yet again or the fact that you have to get up and go to work every morning. Or maybe it’s about making our own myths by opting out of what society deems to be important. I don’t know. I wish I had the answer, though.