Viagra and power. Perfect together.

Dear George,

Benito was such a sweetheart. It’s a pity they hung him out to dry, and from his ankles off all things! (That’s the problem with allowing the public to participate in the political process.) Anyhow, the guy sure nailed it when he said that the marriage of business and government is a thing of beauty.

We are seeing his dream come true as America’s continues her transition into a market-state. The market-state exists for one reason: to feed its power and its profits. It can only do so by sucking the blood out of those with blood left to suck. The blood of the innocent is its Eucharistic wine.

Effective leadership in the age of the market-state must, by definition, be a death wish because the demand for infinite growth in a finite state will in time, like a cancer cell, destroy the host organ, i.e., the market-state.

Death is best facilitated by an innocent aggression that is divorced from the consequences of its actions. This innocent aggression is commonly found in the arrested adolescent, a subspecies of Homo sapiens, the walks the privatized/public corridors of power. In the arrested adolescent you have an energetic dynamo, untainted by the weariness of morality.

They are able to facilitate death because they deny its reality, just as they deny the ravages of time on themselves. They seek the fountain of youth in their gyms and health spas, drinking their imported water as they rub oil and ointments into their faces to restore the fading glow of youth. Here you find the fifty-somethings who leave their wives of thirty years for their twenty-something secretaries, their Viagra tucked away in their briefcases, desperate to keep their vital fluids flowing through clogged and decaying channels.

A key element in their quest for eternal youth is their addiction to the adrenalin rush that only aggressive destruction can produce. Striking out at the weak is the drug that deadens all of their doubts and anxieties. Killing keeps the Grim Reaper away from their door and helps preserve their fragile belief in their own immortality.

The arrested adolescent runs from his mortality by causing others to die in his stead. This is why maturity is anathema to the market-state, because it is at peace with its own mortality. Death has lost its sting for the mature so they are able to turn their attention to pain-in-the-ass questions about the nature of good and evil.

It is a truism that it is always easier for the immature to lead than the mature because their childish lack of impulse control gives rise to the impetuousness that is often mistaken for decisiveness. The arrested adolescent relies on the bluster and bluff that will always trump the reasoned maturity that tends to speak quietly.

Maturity and wisdom have fallen victim to a youth-culture that favors the gut over the heart or the brain. Your legacy is that you have brought the Age of the Arrested Adolescent to the forefront of leadership.

What America needs is the exuberance of a decayed youth who care more about the thrill of the now than the consequences of a given act. This is why the infusion of corporatism into the halls of government is such a boon. There you find the burnt-out jocks who will order destruction for the youthful excitement it offers. To destroy with state sanction is the dream of every arrested adolescent. Open your arms to them, George. They are the future of America, and you are their role model.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones