Plunging into the Utopian Abyss

Dear George,

One of the most utopian a states a man can achieve is that of perfect self destruction. It is only the prospect of self destruction that is frightening. But once the process begins and gains some momentum, a condition of serene stimulation follows as an individual watches, with detached fascination, the slow disintegration of his life. Granted, in the earlier stages there are desperate attempts to stave off disaster. Plots and schemes are hatched, appeals are made, experts are consulted, and excuses are made.

Then the tipping point is reached and the shards of a self-destructive trip are transformed into the comforting arms of disaster that promises an end of suffering and the eternal bliss that only total ruin can bring.

This is the sublime state to which your firm leadership has brought America. A paranoid fiction, sixty-plus years in the making, is in the terminal stages of crumbling. We are in the end times of a paranoid security state built as a bulwark against imaginary monsters tucked beneath beds and hiding in bedroom closets.

Our corporatists quickly discovered that there was a healthy profit to be mined in the tunnels of fear that run through the human psyche, and they worked them for all they were worth until the psyche was so honey-combed with tunnels that it was no more than a fragile structure ready to collapse at the touch of a gentle breeze.

We built an economic and military powerhouse grounded in a geological fluke known as the “age of oil”. To service this powerhouse, we created a lifestyle of gasoline powered sprawl to maintain our morbid myth of mobility and independence grounded in the delusion that oil is forever. We leveled mountains, drained rivers, denuded forests, paved over meadows, fouled the air and bloodied whoever stood in our way, all so we could blockade ourselves in our centrally air-conditioned fortresses that filtered out the stench we were leaving behind as our legacy.

There is an initial stab of fear when the repo man knocks on the door, just as he is knocking on ours. Thank God we have you with your bland assurances that the fundamentals are sound. With your reassurances, we know all is well even as he moves our belonging out to the street.

It takes a man of decisive action to accelerate self-destruction’s downward momentum, and you are a man of action, if nothing else. You have God and your gut to guide you.

We are running out of oil, and your solution is to burn an additional 370,000 to 500,000 barrels of oil per day just so you can take control of Iraq’s oil fields. That’s between 4.5 and 6 million barrels per year going up in smoke so we can get our hands on more oil to burn. The beauty of all this is that when we end up with Iraq’s oil, we’ll have burned so much oil to get it, we’re going to have to burn more oil just to replace the oil we burned for Iraq’s oil, which, of course means…

Are you starting to feel the power of it, George? Madness is euphoric. It’s a bum's rush into the abyss; it’s the thrill of bungee jumping without the chord. We are a giant, as bankrupt as we are insane, thrashing through the china shops of the world, so wrapped up in our cloak of exceptionalism that we believe we are bringing salvation to the very humanity we are destroying.

If nothing else, it is a great antidote for the boredom of prosperity.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones