Living a Dead Dream

Dear George,

In times of corruption and violence, the losers are the dangerous ones. Those who wield power can only do so to the extent that they are encased in a delusional bubble that magnifies both their strength and their superiority. Losers have no such bubble, hence they see with a clarity that ultimately becomes their strength.

Technological superiority blinds the powerful. They function under the mistaken belief that a laptop in an air-conditioned command center located in the American desert is sufficient to defeat a rag-tag insurgency. It believes the vanquished to be inferior to it even as the vanquished continue to tear at its flanks. What the great power dismisses as mosquito bites is really the introduction of the virus of defeat into its bloodstream.

The vanquished fight for their homes; great powers fight for the corporate bottom line. Eventually, great powers tire and go home.

Iraq is the last hurrah of a white-Anglo global domination that peaked in the late nineteenth century and has been in decline ever since. The white-Anglo mind set is the corpse in the room everyone ignores. So its wake goes on and on because nobody will admit that it’s dead, no matter how badly the carcass begins to reek.

Still, the dream of a Pax Americana continue to float heavenward as even more bombs fall from the sky, each bomb making of the dream a parody of itself.

Dreams of glory die hard, George. They need enablers like you to keep them alive, no matter how weakened their state. In the end, all that is left of the dream is a Hollywood soundstage on which the good guys in white hats vanquish the bad guys in their black hats, while outside freeways clog and children go hungry.

Help us live the illusion, Big Guy. It’s all we have left.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones