Saturday, February 16, 2008

The Greatness of Nonbeing

Dear George,

Greatness is not for those with clarity of vision, for greatness requires a marked talent for self deception. Greatness has nothing to do with great acts and everything to do with great illusions.

We claim that our freedoms and liberties define our greatness as a nation. In truth, a fetid bubble of corporatist elitists defines our greatness. Our greatness is the craft with which our elite behave as if they are our greatness and paint their crimes as virtues. The illusion of greatness goes to the demographic with the best flacks, but not just PR flacks. Greatness needs academic flacks, political flacks and media flacks, all busily creating the smoke and mirrors that maintain greatness’s illusion.

Great men are hollow shells, their greatness the products of hair stylists, tailors and shoeshine boys. The costume is all, just as the empty rhetoric is all. Greatness seeks neither immortality nor a place in history, though it may pay lip service to both. Greatness cares only for booty and spoils. To extort and appropriate is the hallmark of greatness; the slaughter of its inferiors is its ultimate trip.

Greatness cares not about the grand vision, but about the day's profits, and its brow is never troubled by the misery the extraction of these profits create. Greatness eschews petty crimes for the grand larceny that brings with it the immortality of the moment. Its spoils go not to build or heal, but to indulge and pamper. Why spend millions creating jobs when the money can build mansions and vacation villas. Why feed the poor when the money can buy a fleet of private jets. Why sink wells in Africa when the money can pay for lavish parties. Why earn approval when one can buy it.

It is all theater. To act great is to be great while flacks sing paeans to the greatness that isn’t.

Your greatness, George, is that you are to statesmanship what Britney Spears is to pop music. The only difference is that you have better flacks to shield your madness from the public.

In the end, greatness is the sane act of a madman.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

5 comments:

Mark Prime (tpm/Confession Zero) said...

Our greatness is the craft with which our elite behave as if they are our greatness and paint their crimes as virtues.

The Picassos of five-finger painting.

It is all theater. To act great is to be great while flacks sing paeans to the greatness that isn’t.

The play's the thing...

Your greatness, George, is that you are to statesmanship what Britney Spears is to pop music. The only difference is that you have better flacks to shield your madness from the public.

Hubris + incompetence + no talent = utter madness!

In the end, greatness is the sane act of a madman.

Wow...

Case Wagenvoord said...

Ain't greatness great?

Phantom Foetus said...

Saddam Hussein slaughtered an estimated 1.5 million Iraqis before the current Bush administration took him out.

People were yanked out of their homes if they were even suspected of Hussein dissent.

Fathers were interrogated and tortured while strapped to chairs. At times, they were forced to watch their own infants be swung into brick walls by their limbs, baseball-style. Iradi nuclear physicists were cattle-prodded and broomstick-sodomized after they denied Saddam's demands for nuclear weapons development. (A&E: The case against Saddam).

Oh, and then there were those pesky mass graves.

Iraqis were being tortured and murdered in Holocaust fashion way before the U.S. invasion. Now they are being slaughtered by suicide-bomb terrorists who want control of an oil-rich country in turmoil.

Oh, but its all a big conspiracy, right? Well, couldn't Bush and his minions of evil-doers simply plant an oil-drum's worth if plutonium somewhere in Iraq? I mean, we're talking about ONE top secret flight by the Air Force, right? (And we all know, that never happens...) Gimmie a break.

Democrats are simply continuing their argument against humanity and individual freedom. It started with slavery, and continued with secession. They Prolonged it with Jim Crow laws and Civil Rights filibusters (ahem, Al Gore, Sr.) Abortion is their latest endeavor in deciding who's really a person and who dies.

And now, a drum full of plutonium carries more weight than mountains of human carcasses.

Keep fighting against humanity, Dems. Republicans have been mopping your ignorant, bloody floor since Lincoln.

Case Wagenvoord said...

It's becoming harder and harder to tell the difference between us and Saddam.

Mark Prime (tpm/Confession Zero) said...

phantom,
You and your ilk are squeezing all the blood, oil, flesh and bone from her now... Iraq is the melting pot's killing fields... You say Saddam did all those gruesome things and we've no doubt in most respects that he did, problem is while he did all of these things (with weaponry supplied by the US) we turned a blind eye to it. That's right. We knew he was doing all of these things and as long as he was our obedient puppet to keep Iran cowed we allowed and aided him in his brutal conquests and slaughter!

Your history is slanted, yet history, real history, is not skewed...

You've been sold, hook, line and sinker on the goodness of the US and the evil of all other nations that do not get into bed with us or crawl in bed and then sneak away from the groping hands of empire...

Keep fighting against the world, sir and our shaky empire will teeter over face first onto the aforementioned bloody floor.