Clowns, CEOs and the Gaming of America

Dear George,

You have replaced Liberty’s torch with a newer and more efficient model. The American public now basks in the glow of a Corporate Democracy that reflects the transition of your office from president to CEO. In doing so, you have streamlined the entire process.

Our oligarchy has long understood that political freedom and efficiency are mutually exclusive. Under your guidance, efficiency has moved into the corner office and political freedom is now an exiled beggar shaking his tin cup for whatever pittance the public may chose to drop in it.

No more will the gears of government be clogged with messy disputes between the three branches of government. Gone are the days when a recalcitrant Congress could deadlock the country. We now have a Congress that bows and pulls on its forelock every time you enter the room.

Elections are more streamlined now that they are no longer cluttered by interminable debates over issues. Rather, campaigns focus on defining their opponents in as negative terms as possible through the creative use of sound bites lasting no longer than 7.8 seconds (down from 42.3 seconds in 1968).

I know your minions are planning to “define” bamaobama as not ready to be our commander in chief because in the throes of your Eternal War of the Empty Policy, commander in chief is the only quality a CEO needs since it doesn’t require much reading. America needs a commander in chief who is a clown strutting the boards in an oversized uniform bedecked with medals fashioned out of tinfoil. Bamaobama is simply too honest for such a role.

For that matter, bamaobama is too damn honest to be an effective CEO. The problem is that he is clinging to the outmoded definition of truth as a representation of reality. You’ve changed all that. Truth now lies in the title of the speaker and not in the content of the statement. The office makes the truth, which is why your every statement is true by virtue of the fact that you are our CEO/commander in chief, no matter how false the statement because the statement can’t be false because you said it. Thanks to you, Papal Infallibility has gone secular.

All of this is possible because the American public can no longer tell the difference between focusing and zoning out. The intellect is now an endangered species since it is equated with the indiscriminate accumulation of disparate facts and statistics with no attempt made to synthesize them into a new perspective. Instead of seeing a naked emperor, Americans sit passively in front of their televisions while breathless newscasters describe the emperor’s costume down to the minutest detail.

But the best thing about being a CEO is that no matter how badly you fuck up, you are still rewarded. Texas is going to build a library in your honor, an empty mausoleum that will preserve a record of your accomplishments that will elude future historians. The advance for your memoirs will run to eight figures and it will be all true because you wrote it.

Thanks to you, America is no longer occupied by citizens but by non-unionized employees. She is no longer the land of the free but has become another store in the Wal-Mart chain where employees learn the invigorating sport of grubbing for a living.

The new truth is that you cannot have wealth without poverty. After all, wealth is the result of an upwardly mobile capital that is sucked from the pockets of the poor and deposited in the pockets of the rich. This is why America is still The Land of Opportunity.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones