Saturday, May 31, 2008

Dirge Beat

Snookums!!!

Stoned!Stoned!Stoned!-----my mind a whirling pinwheel scattering Technicolor zits across the sky, turning, turning, slowly turning as we creep towards our destiny as a culture of death, raining fire from the sky as the furred angel sings its death chant while church and state copulate on dead cinders once vibrant and alive, as stars fade from the bunting to be replace with death heads, and the old man’s laugh is a rasping rattle as zombies wander aimlessly from amusement to amusement, waiting for the dancing screen to stimulate their dead hearts into a pale imitation of life, slowly squeezed into silence as Paula, Brad and Jennifer sing their siren songs and souls splinter on the shoals of boredom.

Tighter, ever tighter, the dance floor is cleared and the night-lights click off one-by-one ‘til only the dank darkness is left, heavy with the miasma of stale booze and the vomit of the of the ecstatic, numbed to the heavy weight of their chains (for the bound man a fraction of an inch is a mile; an inch all of eternity.)

Beat freedom’s drum, snookums! Beat it loud; let their hearts beat as one with the slow tread of the dirge-march of the distracted; a slow beat, a steady beat, while those deaf to its cadence paint vapors on the clouds, dissolved and distorted with each passing breeze.

Yourloyalobedientandhumbleservant

Friday, May 30, 2008

Rock 'n Roll

Dear George,

Isn’t making up reality a gas? What good is an empire if you can’t rock ‘n roll with the truth. The sweetest benefit of the merger of government and corporate capitalism is the way government has learned how to market bullshit.

You tell them your power is forever, our momentum unstoppable. Every fuckup is a smashing success; rampant corruption scales the heights of integrity; brutality is the healing touch of God’s hand.

I love make-believe! It’s better than Pan’s Never-Never Land where old men never grow up.

Truth sucks! That is why it must be neutralized. The easiest way to do that is to quantify bullshit. Drown reality in a sea of numbers; if it can’t be quantified, it ain’t real. This is where our oligarchy shines. The public is convinced that happiness is in the numbers. The larger your credit line, the happier you are.

It’s a hollow happiness that is kept inflated by noise and toys. Both hide the fact that they are on a hedonic treadmill, racing like hell to keep up with a dying prosperity and never noticing that no matter how fast they run they never move forward, but slowly, ever so slowly, are slipping backward.

And they are so very happy it brings tears to their eyes as they lie awake nights, staring at a darkened ceiling, wondering if their job is going to be shipped overseas. It just goes show that a deluded drone is a happy drone.

The only requirement for a successful PR campaign is a squat, a grunt and a plop.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Bomb-Bomb does Foreign Policy

Dear George,

For someone who doesn’t know squat about foreign policy, Bomb-Bomb McCain came up with a pretty good idea. His inspiration is to form a League of Democracies consisting of a group of “like minded” nations who could respond to “humanitarian” crisis without having to cope with a creaky and inefficient U.N. which has an anti-western bias to begin with.

The idea is brilliant. Bomb-Bomb is calling for a diplomatic old-boys club restricted to countries of an Angloeuromerican persuasion. (He’s willing to make an exception for India and Brazil since they’re western enough for his tastes. But let Japan go Zen on him and they’ll be out on their ear.)

To blatantly misquote one commentator out of context, the primary function of his league would be to act as “an echo chamber for an American diagnosis of global problems.” (The writer calls this a “fantasy,” but what the hell does he know. We must establish early on that anyone who disagrees with Bomb-Bomb doesn’t know what they’re talking about.)

And of course, a humanitarian crisis is defined as any threat to western interests. As always, the intensity of such a crisis increases in direct proportion to the amount of oil pooled beneath said crisis.

Such a league is necessary in the face of waning Western power and influence. The locus of power is shifting eastward and it must be reversed. This is especially crucial as the worldwide energy crises increases.

From the time the first well was drilled into the sands of the Middle East, the West has controlled its flow. Cheap oil was instrumental in making the West a beacon of corporate democracy. It is imperative that the world’s corporate democracies band together to keep foreigners in funny robes from increasing their control of this vital resource.

But, more is at stake than oil. All that really matters is maintaining western resolve and prestige. Neocons are in the forefront of this heroic effort to salvage the west’s honor. They wax nostalgic over the days when natives thrived under the benevolent rule of Brits in jodhpurs and both order and stability ruled the earth (if you factor out two world wars).


The bottom line is that although we may be a dying empire, we plan to make one hell of an exit. It will be an exit that will make the final act of Hamlet look like an Oprah love-in.

The Nigerian novelist Ben Okri put it very well when he said, “The end of the world begins not with the barbarians at the gate, but with the barbarians at the highest level of state.”[1]

The world revolves around Western values. There are no others worth speaking of. We are the sole masters of the destructive progress that has lifted the world out of its muck and brought it into the flourescent light of enlightened self interest (if you factor out two world wars).

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones



[1] Quoted in Morris Berman’s Dark Ages America.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Nurturing the Consumptive Society

Dear George,

As expected, our current presidential campaign is shaping up to be another circus in which much noise is made about nothing. In foreign policy the focus is on who has the biggest dick, while discussions of domestic issues are reduced to vacuous promises of “change.”

There is, however, one noticeable improvement: there isn’t much talk about family values. Our Corporatists were uncomfortable with its emphasis in the 2004 campaign. The simple fact is that strong families are bad for business.

Okay, George, this is where I have to get a little thick, so you might want to have Condi or the Big Dick walk you through this.

America is now in the vanguard of a movement best called Corporate Marxism. The big difference between it and traditional Marxism is that the new proletariat is our corporate elite. The goal is liberation through the withering away of the state.

Our new proletariat achieves this liberation through the accumulation of obscene amounts of capital. To do this, they have to sell stuff, lots and lots of stuff, and an atomized market of isolate individuals make the best consumers because they are great impulse buyers. Isolation fuels this trend while groups, such as the family, can discourage it because at least one asshole is going to ask, “Do we really need this?”

Istvan Meszaros explains it in Beyond Capital when he says:
For this reason, the human agency of consumption must be fragmented to the
smallest possible unit—in that such units are the most easily manipulated and
dominated, as well as the likeliest to supply the maximum demand for capital’s
wares. ‘Nuclear’ family relations must be adjusted in the same sense,
narrowed down ultimately to the one-generation basic unit and the transformation
of offspring into ‘sovereign consumers’ at the earliest possible opportunity,
coupled with ever higher divorce rates acting in the same direction, especially
in advanced capitalist countries.

This is where the Religious Right becomes problematic. When they start prattling on about the sanctity of the family, they are endangering our economic growth. Corporate Marxism eschews both family and community. Rather than a family sitting down to break bread together, it need a disparate group of individuals gathered under one roof with each individual so focused on their individual screens, be they computer or television, that they are barely aware of other members of the group.

According to Meszaros, one symptom of our fragmented consumptive society is the demise of the “family car.” He says, “For in order to maintain the senseless multiplication of motor cars—and the corresponding neglect or even willful destruction of public transport services—the system had to devise the absurd marketing strategy of the two or even ‘three car family’…despite the devastating impact of this grotesquely inefficient form of transport.”

The bottom line here, George, is that you’d better pull James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, into the Oval Office and give him a little talking to. In our new age, families are counterproductive. Every time a family falls apart it adds to our GDP.

So tell him to focus on the abortion issue, since every baby born is a new consumer. The sin of abortion is not murder: it is depriving a fetus of its God-given right to consume.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Tripping with the Gods

Dear George,

Smoked some really good shit last night. Man, I was tripping through the cosmos like a meteorite! The highpoint of the evening was when I sat down with the gods for a few hands of Texas hold 'em.

Just between us guys, Jesus is an easy bluff. Every time he and I had a showdown, he folded. Don’t try it with Jehovah, though, the guy really holds a grudge. (Incidentally, Jesus didn’t die for our sins. He died because he pissed off his old man with his radical teachings.)

I did learn was that Zeus is a pretty regular guy who’s received some really bad press. So he throws a lightning bolt or two. At least he didn’t flood the goddamn world.

Anyhow, the chit-chat around the table turned to politics. On the whole, the gods are really happy with all you’ve done. War, famine, pestilence and plague are to the gods what reality television is to us mortals.

All of them are pulling for Bomb-Bomb McCain to take the election since he offers the best hope for keeping their entertainment going. There’s some dissention over what to do about Obama. Zeus’s weapon of choice is the thunderbolt, while Thor is partial to his hammer, Mjoinir. Jehovah, on the other hand, thinks some well-placed boils and pustules would do the trick. Jesus, who’s still bitter over the crucifixion, wants to nail him to a cross.

Above all, every one of them wants you to use your remaining time in office to ramp up your destructive policies. They are hedging their bets against the possibility of an Obama win. The idea is for you to leave such a mess that Hercules’s Augean stables would look like an aerospace clean room in comparison. (Incidentally, Jehovah doesn’t give a shit how much land Israel occupies. But the fact that they think they’re entitled to it gives him a real chuckle.)

Never forget that the gods consider war a sacrament. The stench of burning flesh and rotting viscera is their perfume. This is why they consider you their son with whom they are pleased. When you are finally beamed naked up to heaven you will sit on the right hand of God the Father Almighty. Don’t be upset if the seat looks like a defendant’s chair. It’s all they had available.

The gods are really upbeat about Earth’s prognosis. With a lot of effort, and a good dollop of creativity, there is every reason to believe that we could be a dead planet by century’s end.

Even now, the Gods are combing the galaxies to line up a replacement after humanity finishes trashing Earth. All they have to do is pick up a fresh scent of exhaust fumes wafting through the cosoms.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Monday, May 26, 2008

Redemption

Dear George,

I’m a little embarrassed writing this letter since I’ve never asked you for a personal favor.

But, this is different. I ask nothing for myself, but seek help for a man I’ve admired since childhood, a man whose motives have been misunderstood, who has been the victim for a vicious smear attack, and whose very name is often used as an epitaph.

George, I need your help in rehabilitating the reputation of Judas Iscariot. I turn to you because the Vatican has not responded to my repeated requests that they begin the canonization process.

I’m sure you find it strange that I, a Christian, should ask you, a Christian to help me with this. But, I assure you, there are compelling theological arguments for Judas’s rehabilitation. To wit:

God needed a crucifixion. Without it, the entire redemption enterprise was down the tubes. This meant he needed an engine to drive the crucifixion.

The Greeks have a word, ati. Its primary definition is “divine infatuation.” Its secondary meaning is “ruin.” For the Greeks, to be touched by the gods is to be driven insane.

Comes now poor Judas, a loyal follower of Jesus, quietly minding his own business when out of the blue—Wham!—God zaps him! And, in a fit of divine madness, he does what under normal circumstances would be anathema to him, he betrays Jesus.

Jesus is arrested and the redemption enterprise is salvaged. The deed done, God lifts the spell and Judas is confronted with the horror of his crime. Unable to bear the guilt, he hangs himself in remorse, thus making him the first Christian martyr and a candidate for sainthood.

George, I see a major marketing campaign in the making; I see sweatshirts, T-shirts and bumper stickers that read: “Canonize Judas Iscariot Now!” I see a blockbuster movie staring Russell Crowe as Judas, a man of upstanding virtue who willingly sacrifices his life to carry out God’s will. I see Angela Joelie as his long-suffering wife who mistakes his divine infatuation for a midlife crisis until the Angel of the Lord, played by Anthony Hopkins, appears to her in a dream. Nail Tom Cruise as Jesus, and you’d be talking box-office magic.

This should be enough to force the Vatican to reopen Judas’s dossier. Once they do, he will be a shoo-in for sainthood.

Hell, if PR flaks could get you elected president, they sure as hell can get Judas Iscariot canonized!

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Fighting Peace in the Middle East

Dear George,

I see the Iranians are at it again, trying to ferment peace in the Middle East. They simply can’t leave well enough alone. First there was their 2003 meddling when they sent a peace proposal through Switzerland offering to pull their support for Hezbollah and Hamas, and agreeing to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

The Big Dick did the right thing when he told them to shove it and told the Swiss to mind their own goddamn business.

Now they’re at it again with their “Proposed Package for Constructive Negotiations" that they’ve submitted to the UN Security Council and the Iran Six (the six nations that will decide Iran’s fate),

As expected, you have dismissed it since it didn’t mention the nuclear issues and even if it did you’d still dismiss it because the bottom line is that the last thing the Big Dick wants is a peace settlement with Iran because if we had a peace settlement how in the hell would be ever be able to justify blasting their asses all the way back to the Stone Age, thus making the world safe for democracy and free enterprise.

The bottom line is that superpowers don’t negotiate shit! In a superpower, hubris rules, the very same hubris calcifies the brain and reduces the complexities of the real world to the Manichean simplism of a fantasy world. Rove sank his teeth into a half truth when he said empires create their own reality. The truth is, we create our own fantasy, and our greatest fantasy is that we are invincible.

We are what we think we are, and if we aren’t then we will destroy ourselves proving that we are.

There was one sentence in the Iranian package that should set every alarm bell in the Beltway aringing, and that is Iran’s proposal to fight “poverty in less developed countries and to reduce the divide between social classes.”

The bastards are a bunch of Islamomarxists! It’s the Cold War all over again! That means we’ve got to ink more defense contracts less we allow a missile gap to open up between us and the Iranians.

Happy days are here again!

Wander down to the Big Dicks underground tomb and ask him if this newest peace offer isn’t provocation enough to show Tehran a little shock and awe. We cant' afford to have peace breaking out in the Middle East.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Saturday, May 24, 2008

The NYC school system: a bastion aginst dissent

Dear George,

Doesn’t it just twuddle your toenails when rebellion is crushed the second it appears. Well, hitch your britches up and sit down while I tell you of an inspiring tale that came out of New York City’s South Bronx.

Democracy needs discipline and order to function. Nothing undermines the democratic process like rebellious acts, which are the first step down the slippery slope to a full-scale revolution. Taking the point position in our fight against dissention and disorder is the New York City Board of Education (NYCBOE). It is they who take the children of immigrants and turn them into well-behaved proles who know how to keep their mouths shut.

Immigrants are a destabilizing force. They arrive on our shores with silly ideas and funny customs. Especially dangerous are Hispanic immigrants, all of whom have been tainted by the leftist thought that is endemic to that society.

As you are well aware, education in the United States has but one goal--test the little buggers 'til their brains turn to mush. Chronic testing yields two possible outcomes: either it turns student off learning altogether, or it produces an adult who is a walking encyclopedia of disparate and discrete bits of data that he is unable to synthesize into anything that resembles an original thought. Both outcomes insure a stable society.

I am happy to tell you that the NYCBOE has uncovered a teacher who was trying to subvert this entire system. His name is Douglas Avella. (You will note that his surname is Hispanic. Need I say more?)

Avella is charged with encouraging the entire eighth grade class at a Bronx middle school to stage a peaceful boycott of a three-hour practice exam, which they did. On top of that, the students had the temerity to present a petition to the administration with a list of grievances. Naturally, Avella denies the charge.

It seems the little darlings feel this chronic testing causes them to “lose valuable instructional time with our teachers.”

Well, Principal Maria Lopez wasted no time crushing this outburst. The first thing she did was to yank Avella from the classroom and reassign him to an empty room where the only creatures he can subvert are the cockroaches and rats.

Next, she assembled the entire eighth grade class, mind you not to hash out their grievances, but to find out who was behind the conspiracy. The children must learn that our schools don't educate, they indoctrinate.

Then she issued a letter of reprimand to Avella accusing him of taking “actions [that] caused a riot at the school.” It is a sure sign that we are in a golden age of democracy when a peaceful boycott is redefined as a riot. Had the South employed this strategy during the Birmingham bus boycott, the civil rights movement never would have happened.

Avella signed his death warrant when he made the mistake of saying, “My students know they are welcome in my class to have open discussions. I teach them critical thinking.”

NYCBOE spokesman David Cantor shot right back. “This guy was far over the line in a lot of ways. He was pulled because he was inappropriate with the kids. He was giving them messages [i.e. think critically] that were inappropriate.”

The Belgian songwriter Jacques Brel penned some lyrics that summarize the American school system. You will note that I have suggested a few substitions that purge the lyrics of their francophillic leftism.

It’s the tango of the ages
Little heads bent over pages
In a ring like little sages
Learning Latin[1] by the hour
Drowning dreams with information
‘Till you learn by graduation
It’s you duty to be sour
It’s the dance the priests[2] will lead you
It’s the homilies they will feed you
For the future that will need you
In its endless dance of power.


Tr. © Arnold Johnston, Western Michigan University


Thanks to the quick actions of the NYCBOE, America remains secure and safe. God bless ‘em all, I say

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones


[1] Substitute “Test Taking”
[2] Substitute “Media”

Friday, May 23, 2008

The two are one and shall reign forever and ever.

Dear George,

Evil grounded in passion will eventually exhaust itself. Evil grounded in the intellect continues indefinitely along the linear path of its ideology.

Passion hears the screams of the dying; intellect hears only the hum of an office air conditioner.

The linear evil that goes on and on, driven by its own momentum, is overseen by somber men who grew up in houses with darkened windows in which a smile was considered an inappropriate display of emotion, and anything less than perfection was punished.

Theirs is a sterile evil whose driving force is a fastidious need for perfect order, an order that will tolerate only the straight line and perfect symmetry. It speaks in hushed and measured tones that ooze with sweet reason.

Soldiers say shit rolls downhill. When a somber man raises his eyebrow, thousands die. Their toughness is a toughness nurtured in the hothouse of a bubble that shields them from the real world, making it possible the creation of the virtual world in which their evil flourishes.

They sit in offices bathed in fluorescent lights that cast no shadows, transfixed by the numbers and words dancing across their computer screens, numbers and words that are, for them, the world.

They are our modern-day priests who have restored human sacrifice to its former glory. Where once torn flesh was offered up to the gods, it is how offered up to Mammon, whose appetite is insatiable.

They are practitioners of a new theology that blends God and Mammon. In their eyes there is no difference between the two because John Calvin has told them they are among the blessed, so they believe themselves incapable of committing evil.

They are our Lords and Masters who are leading us into the Valley of Death in which we need fear no evil for their spreadsheets and power points protect us.

Let us continue to offer up burnt offerings that they may grow and prosper.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Wads of Money and Fires of Dung

Dear George,

The only noble death is the death that leaves a wasteland in its wake. (It is my fervent wish that when my carcass is in the ground, the grass above it will rot, its roots will turn to muck and the nutrients will flee the soil, leaving only a sterile mound of sand to mark my demise.)

I think often of death, especially when I meditate on your greatness.

I look forward to the day when we have finished trashing the earth, when all that remains of our forests are sterile fields of mud, when monoculture leaves the world’s top soil blowing in the wind and when the world’s water tables have been drained to produce designer bottled water for the upwardly mobile.

Your legacy will be the sand and mud of creation from which all life has vanished. It will be a world in which emaciated creatures stumble aimlessly about looking for whatever scraps of food remain.

You have set into motion the birth of a democratic world in which the rich and the poor, the just and the unjust are equally wretched. It will mark the return to a golden past in which the struggle for survival will wean out the weak and give all honor and glory to the strong and the brutal.

Life will be an economic utopia in which money will be used as kindling to start fires of dried dung and the outcome of all transactions will be determined by who wields the biggest club.

It will be the era of the natural man, who is one with nature as he competes with the animals for the few roots and berries that remain and experiences the challenge of gnawing on rotted carcasses. We will see the emergence of a new man, created from genes reconstituted by the radioactive dust that will enrich the air for generations to come.

Death is sweet. Its embrace melts our petty problems and puts them into proper perspective. Best of all, death is one hell of a profit center as we turn out its instrument of destruction and accumulate the wads of money that one day will insure that the rich will have bigger fires than the poor.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Flying High on Wings of Feathers and Wax

Dear George,

Isn’t it a gas to live in a world of sociopathic sanity? The bubble that is the Beltway isn’t our nation’s capital, it’s a sheltered workshop that gives individuals, who would otherwise be committed. a chance to live normal and productive lives.

Those who would denigrate sociopathic sanity forget that this disorder is the linchpin of our economic prosperity. The Beltway has but one function, and that is to produce a constant feedback loop of chaos and destruction.

Our economy is a bubble machine that thrives only when a new bubble appears the moment an old bubble pops. Often, the economy goes into a nosedive while waiting for a new bubble to appear. It is then that the Beltway turns to that old standby, the War Bubble to keep things from spinning out of control. Every time capitalism crashes it looks for a war to bail itself out.

The depression of 1893 catapulted us into the Spanish-American War. Both that war and World War I silenced a rising populist rebellion over the abuses of the Industrial Revolution and the rank corruption found at all levels of government. Needless to say, World War II pulled us out of the Great Depression, and that was when we discovered that there was gold to be had in the creation of a garrison state.

One of the characteristics of sociopathic sanity is its self-destructive behavior. As the twentieth century drew to a close, we, in our wisdom, gutted our industrial plant and discovered the adrenalin rush of finance capitalism. So it was that we stumbled into the twenty-first century with bubble after bubble popping.

We are now facing an historical milestone when it appears that capitalism has run out of bubbles. This means that it is time to inflate a permanent War Bubble that must be kept in place until the whole structure comes crashing down around our ears.

For the sociopathic sane, a glorious fall is the ultimate rush. Their inspiration is the Greek myth of Icarus who, with his father, took to the sky with wings of feathers and wax attached to their arms. Who does the world remember, George? It remembers Icarus who flew so close to the sun that the wax melted causing him to plunge into the sea.

Who in the fuck remembers his father, Daedalus, who landed safely?

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Keeping America Safe from Democracy

Dear George,

Forget the delegate count, forget the won primaries, and forget the popular vote. The Lords of America ain’t going to allow Obama to step one foot into the “White” House.

Did you see that freaking picture of his rally in Portland, OR that drew 85,000 people? That’s a mob ready to spin out of control!

The orderly functioning of our monocratic Corporatist State rests on a firm foundation of public apathy. Apathy yields lassitude and lassitude yields the ennui that doesn’t give a shit.

Boredom, George, is the key to “soft” authoritarianism.

As one commentator put it, “Another elite tactic of managed democracy (a code word for monocracy) is to bore the electorate to such an extent that it gradually fails to pay any attention to politics. One method of assuring control is to make electioneering continuous, year-round, saturated with party propaganda, punctuated with the wisdom of kept pundits, bringing a result boring rather than energizing, the kind of civic lassitude on which managed democracy (monocracy) thrives (Emphasis mine).

A bored public sleeps as its freedom and prosperity are slowly leeched off.

The problem with Obama is that he is stirring up the mob. He’s getting them excited and agitated. The worst part is that he’s getting them involved.

It makes no difference how deeply he is stuffed into the corporate back pocket. Once the mob is turned on, he will be forced onto a reformist path and God knows what sort of damage he could inflict on the well- greased machinery of our free, democratic society.

I know your hopes were that HillBill would get the nomination, which would increase the chances of McCain taking the election. But the sad truth is that if Obama takes the nomination, McCain won’t stand a chance. America is a youth culture in which age is divorced from wisdom. In such a culture, dynamic youth trumps the old fart every time.

Nothing less than the future of our free, democratic monocracy is at stake. It is time to policify the big policy. As soon as Obama goes over the top, hit Iran with everything you’ve got. It will be a total disaster for America, but a disaster is exactly what you need to declare martial law.

But, don’t suspend the election yet. A rousing war works to McCain’s advantage. If he wins the election, your legacy in insured, and we continue to maintain the illusion that we are a democratic republic. If Obama wins, then you nullify the election, which you can do as our commander in chief.

Because of the way Obama has stirred up the mob, imposing martial law will be a more of a challenge than it should be. But with our militarized police force and Northcom firmly in place, the proles will be whipped into compliance in no time.

You have accomplished too much in the last seven years to allow it all to go down the drain just because the American people suddenly want to play democracy. The Big Dick explained the new world order with a single word. When a pundit pointed out to him that the majority of the America people were opposed to the Iraq enterprise, he shot back, “So?”

We are, indeed, entering a golden age.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Monday, May 19, 2008

Setting the Middle East Straight

Dear George,

I was thrilled when you gave those wogs what-for in a speech, Sunday, at the World Economic Forum on the Middle East at Sharm El Sheikh. Enough is enough, I say, and it’s time they got with the program.

Your requirements are very simple. All you want is free trade, lower taxes and protection for intellecutal property rights.

Of course, you know and I know that these are code words that point to a deeper meaning. Basically, you’re telling them that it’s time to lose their silly robes and don some God-fearing western-style suits, complete with American flag lapel pins. If English is the world’s lingua franca, then the Brooks Brothers suit is the world’s factio franca.

Then you set them straight on what constitutes the proper political process it when you said, “Too often in the Middle East, politics has consisted on one leader in power and the opposition in jail.” Your message was that they should be like us, with one leader in power and the opposition marginalized, along with the legislative and judicial branches of government.

What you want to see is more free elections like the one in Palestine that brought Hamas to power. Our failure to recognize those election results has everything to do with promoting democracy. All we want is more and more democracy until the Palestinians elect some acceptable suits that behave like we do.

You displayed you usual bluntness when you insisted that those individuals who are fighting foreign occupiers of their lands be branded as “terrorists. “ (Of course, whenever make this statement you cleverly elide over the fact that by your definition, the brave Minutemen who fought in the American Revolution would be branded terrorists in today’s world.)

You have let the world know that you are on a mission from God to bring peace and freedom to the Middle East, no matter how many villages you have to destroy. Freedom demands sacrifice and dead bodies. And it is through sacrifice and suffering that the people of the Middle East will, one day, find Jesus and become world-class mallrats.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Spin Goes to War

Dear George,

The modern imperial war is an exercise in public relations. In truth, imperial conquest is all about controlling resources and expanding markets. This truth must be kept from the masses.

Spin is our ultimate weapon.

The brutal face of war must be slathered with layers of Manichean makeup until it glows with virtue. War is not a power grab to corner a given resource; it is part of a clash of civilizations we must fight to preserve our values.

Values are important to America because she has none. The more “value” is leeched out of the drones’ lives, and the more they are reduced to commodities, the more they are ready to cling to the make-believe values that justify our multiple wars.

Resource wars must become value wars. The spin must say that America isn’t desperate for oil; she is a militant missionary bringing freedom, corporatism and toys to the backward savages of the world, who want to destroy us because we are a free and prosperous people.

You also need labels, George, scads and scads of labels. Labels shield us from reality and bathe our basest instincts in the gentle light righteousness. “The Age of Terror” is a real keeper. Instead of aggressors, we are innocent victims of madmen who would destroy the American Way (another empty label). To preserve our innocence we are forced to send forth the Soldiers of Christ to smite the heathen. We don’t fight human beings with families and aspirations; we fight crazed terrorists who crave wanton destruction.

Bottom line: War is bullshit, and victory goes to he who can shovel the biggest load. This is what makes you such a brilliant commander-in-chief.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Saturday, May 17, 2008

An Ode of Joy to Feral Old Men

O George!

May I now sing a hymn of praise to a secretive and self-effacing demographic without which your eight years in office would not have been the smashing success that it is?

I am speaking of the gaggle of feral old men who surround you and who have both created and carried out the demented policies that have been the hallmark of your administration.

Understand, please, that the “old” in feral old men has nothing to do with age. The “old” is a mindset frozen in time. Some babies are feral old men the moment then are extruded from the birth canal.

The time in which they are frozen was the brief period between 1955 and 1965 when the American Century was really the American Century. It has been the mission of the feral old men to act as if the century was still the century.

Nor does the “old” refer to the wisdom that accrues with time. Rather it refers to the rapacity of little boys who aged without growing up.

The feral old men in your administration have mastered the art of flashing open their raincoats to display their flaccid erections to the world, their ears deaf to the angry laughter such a display evokes.

They have no qualms about destroying America just so they can maintain the illusion of a power and prestige that is no more.

They are perceptive enough to realize that the death of a little girl is a heinous crime if she is blond and blue eyed, but if dark of hair and eye, not so much. In other words, they know where to drop their bombs.

Their strength is their ability to remain oblivious to the historical reality that the moment when an empire seems to be invincible is the moment when the dry rot of decay has set in.

So deluded, they plot policies that contribute to this imperial decay by draining the imperial treasury.

One sage, while speaking of bin Laden was unwittingly describing your feral old men when he spoke of, “…glutting an already bloated Pentagon with even more money, ensuring that all those 'expeditionary forces' would sally forth to cause havoc and not find victory in two hopeless wars, enabling the establishment of a vast offshore prison network (and the torture techniques to go with it, and creating a whole new global 'security' industry to 'thwart terrorists' that was, by 2006, generating $60 billion a year in business and whose domestic wing was devoted to locking down America’’

It is a record to be proud of, and one that sends tears of joy streaming down my face. Your feral old men are America even as America is becoming a feral old man. It is a symbiotic relationship that will surely create an historical black hole down which we will all fall.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Friday, May 16, 2008

Killing the Monsters Under Our Beds by Weaponizing Space

Dear George,

There are some phrases that really thrombulate my follicles whenever I utter them, and one that sends them into an orgiastic spasm is “full spectrum dominance.” It is the latest doctrine designed to insure the prosperity of our military contractors. It promises nothing less than the total military dominance of earth, air, fire, water, space and cyberspace.

Especially space! Doesn’t the idea of a phallic thrust into space set your balls a jangling? We must call this weaponization of space the Chicken Little Initiative, for once we put our testosterone into orbit the sky will surely fall on terrorists, both real and imagined.

Lasers. Mirrors. Sophisticated surveillance equipment. I can see it now: a foggy night, street lamps casting their glow on a rain-slick street. Two terrorists (well, suspected terrorists, or maybe not, but their skin in brown so who gives a fuck?) plotting their plots (or maybe talking about the Yankees, but who cares?) when suddenly a thin red line shoots down from the heavens. There is a blinding flash of light, followed by a puff of acrid smoke. When the smoke clears all that is left of the terrorists (or suspected terrorists or brown skins) are two puddles of ash.

The beauty of the Chicken Little Initiative is that it will never succeed. This means dumping more and more funds down a rat hole in order to guarantee a success that is impossible because it is doomed to failure.

Pork, thy name is Chicken Little. The military-industrial complex is good for another generation or two because Congress still hasn’t mastered a basic rule of poker: You don’t stay in a game with a bad hand simply because you have money in the pot.

The weaponization of space is highly marketable because of the nature of your Global War on Terror. What we are discovering is that it is nearly impossible to decapitate a terrorist organization. If you kill one leader, a pissed off relative steps into fill the void. The only solution is the King Herod Doctrine of aerial bombing: If you don’t know which infant is king, kill all the infants. Raining fire down from space (which we never will because the goddamn system will never work) would facilitate the execution of this doctrine.

Another benefit of the Chicken Little Initiative is that it promotes a healthy mind-set. For the paranoid, all empty space is a threat and must be occupied by a weapons system before someone else gets there first. The demons of Hell work best in a void, so we must fill all voids with our toys. We must weaponize the cracked closet door and the space under the bed where monsters lurk, for everything is an imaginary threat, and our national security demands that we neutralize all potential threats before they can threaten us.

Strike first, George, and strike hard until the space under our beds is free of monsters! And pray to God almighty that we never succeed, because to do so would be our economic ruin.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Spreading Comfort and Succor to the Poor of the World

Dear George,

It is axiomatic that the weak always slander the strong. One of the slanders being directed at the United States is that we have become a warrior nation. It makes for good press and interesting books, but it is simply not true. The warrior is a gore beslimed behemoth carving a bloody path through the enemy with his broadsword.

Picture, if you would, a clean-cut young man sitting before a laptop in an air-conditioned command center somewhere in the Nevada desert. His fingers dance across the keys as he controls an MQ-1B Predator drone. Through its camera he sees a mother shooing her children into a house occupied by militants who have been firing on a coalition patrol. He presses a button and an AGM-114 Hellfire missile screams into the house and reduces both it and its occupants to rubble.

I ask you, is this the portrait of a warrior? After all, he really didn’t kill anybody; the Hellfire did that. All he was doing was following orders.

I bring this up as our brave troops are engaged in some constructive urban renewal in Sadr City, a blighted and unproductive slum in Baghdad. Rather than risk the lives of our brave boys by storming militant strongholds, the Pentagon finds in more cost effective to call in airstrikes and destroy the buildings all together.

A military spokesman contrasted our humanity with the enemy’s inhumanity when he pointed out that, “The sole burden of responsibility lies on the shoulders of the militants who care nothing for the Iraqi people” because they insist on defending their homes that are located in the crowed slum, thus making it necessary for the U.S. military to level their homes in order to pacify the area. The spokesman then went on to ask, “What does that say about the enemy? He is heartless and evil.”

Unfortunately, the author of the above article fails to understand the rationale behind our assault on Sadr City when, in speaking of our troops, he says, “Now, they are headed for nowhere, for the heart of a slum city which they cannot hold in a guerrilla war where the taking of territory and the occupying of neighborhoods is essentially beside the point. They are headed for oblivion, while trying to win the hearts and minds by shooting missiles into homes and enclosing people in giant walls which break families and communities apart, while destroying livelihoods.”


What this writer fails to understand is that you are a thinker who thinks the big thoughts. And one big thought you’ve thought is the dilemma that is now facing humanity: the world population is growing as its resources are shrinking. There is no longer enough to go around. Humanity is afloat in an overcrowded lifeboat. Sacrifice is called for.

There is but one solution to this dilemma, and that is to reduce world poverty by euthanizing it. Our endless war is not against terrorism, nor is it against drugs. Instead, you have fired the first shot in our endless war against the favelas of the world. Food goes further when there are fewer mouths to feed.

Why should we, as a civilized nation, allow a child to die an agonizing death from disease and malnutrition when we can end its life in a split-second with a well-placed explosion?

You are the world’s new Mother Theresa, bringing succor and comfort to the downtrodden and impoverished by giving to them the gift of an eternal life spent in paradise. Surely, God is smiling on you.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

How Public Relations Created America

Dear George,

Have you ever wondered how you and the Big Dick have survived two terms in office without being impeached and shipped over to The Hague to be tried as war criminals? The answer can be summed up in two words: Edward Bernays.

To call Bernays the father of public relations is to do him a disservice. He indeed was the father of that noble industry that gave us the stolen Kuwaiti incubators story that was so instrumental in stirring up public opinion in favor Gulf War I.

But his greatest accomplishment was the creation of the methodology that made Democratic Corporatism possible. His pioneering work gave rise to the Pavlovian politics of Karl Rove in which the repetition of key buzz words elicit predictable responses.

The truth is that Bernays created Democratic Corporatism by accident. His main concern was solving a pending crisis facingAmerican industry. In the early part of the century, all sorts of new products and inventions were hitting the market, inventions like the automobile, the vacuum cleaner, the electric light bulb and roll-on deodorant.

So, here was industry with a plethora of products ready to be sold, but tragically confronted by a traditionally frugal public whose guiding principle was, “Use it up, wear it out; make do or do without.” It was a public that had to be loosened up.

Bernays realized that the problem was that Americans only bought what they needed. The future health of the American economy was to seduce the public into buying what they “wanted” even if it wasn’t necessary.

Had Bernays stopped there, he would have made his mark. But he went on to tackle another problem: corporate America had taken a major hit because of the Great Depression. Its reputation was lower than whale shit.

Bernays was one of the creators of a PR campaign called “The American Way,” that sought to equate “free enterprise in the public consciousness with free speech, free press and free religion as integral parts of democracy.”

It was truly a study in irony, this linking of free enterprise with political freedom, even though the two are mutually exclusive. Corporatism requires a submissive and ignorant workforce willing to fall on its sword if the well being of the economy requires it.

Bernays then made the statement that created Democratic Corporatism. According to writer Jeffrey Kaplan, Bernays felt that “the choices available in the voting booth are akin to those at the department store: both should consist of a limited set of offerings that are carefully determined by an ‘invisible government’ of public-relations experts and advertisers working on behalf of business leaders.”

Edward Bernays gave us the tepid election campaigns we have today in which candidates for office are more concerned with being well manicured than with exhibiting anything that resembles critical thinking. Above all, a candidate must be marketable. This means packaging is of greater importance than content.

George, you are living proof that Bernays called it right. You have shown the world that any airhead with a bland smile can ascend to the highest office in the land as long as his PR is in place.

Your admire,
Belacqua Jones

Monday, May 12, 2008

Finding Strength in Self Destruction

Dear George,

Hegemony is a gas. It is a process of fossilization in which a once dynamic country, having attained the status of a world power, goes into a defensive crouch and becomes more concerned with its preservation than with the productivity that was responsible for its rise to power and influence.

Where once it produced spirited men who loved the sweat and grime of factories that shook with the roar of machinery stamping and forming, it now produces fragile children of privilege who eschew the filth of the factory for the gentle hum of an air-conditioned office. Computer screens have replaced machinery and the movement of capital means more to them then the sweat of actually making something.

Over time its leadership devolves to a gaggle of feral old men cut off from reality by the rank bubble they occupy, from which they systematically tear down the very virtues that made the hegemon the envy of the world.

This is why no power lasts forever, for in truth the acquisition of power is an exercise in progressive self destruction.

To become a hegemon, a country must become a military power, and the process of militarization requires tremendous inflows of nonproductive capital.

Power produces paranoia. The fastest gun in the West is always paranoid because he knows the country is full of young bucks who would love to knock him off his pedestal. The Swiss have the right idea: be the slowest gun in the West and make a fortune selling pocket knives.

The irony of power is that its preservation weakens, yet the feral old men cling to it because they are convinced that losing it would be a sign of weakness which means that the longer they cling to this power, the weaker they become.

Some say God is a God of love; some say He is an angry God. Personally, I believe He is rolling on the floor laughing over the antics of a dying hegemon.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Sunday, May 11, 2008

The Parable of the Third Mouse

Dear George,

When our corporate oligarchy decided it was time to dismantle the middle class, they knew that they needed more than indebted prosperity. What they needed was a parable that would sugar-coat the bitter pill the middle class would soon be swallowing.

Jesus told parables to liberate; our oligarchy told parables to exploit. The one they came up with was a moving tale titled “Where’s My Cheese?”

It is a stirring morality tale of two mice. Every day, both mice must run a maze to find their cheese, and every day the cheese is in the same place.

One day, the researchers moved cheese. One of the mice kept asking, “Where’s my cheese?" while the other mouse, a real go-getter, kept looking until he found it. The moral of the story was that the second mouse prospered while the first mouse starved to death.

Of course, the parable left out the third mouse, the mouse on steroids that reduced the maze to kindling and beat the shit out of the researchers until they told him where the cheese was.

The most effective parables are those that are carefully edited.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Destroying the Family to Save America

Dear George,

If my letter seems a bit disjointed this morning, it is because I had a particularly stellar flight on the sacred smoke last night. That being the case let me digress.

If John Maynard Keynes was correct and the love of money is, indeed, a form of mental illness, then it explains how you and your cronies have ushered in a golden dawn of rampant greed. You have elevated greed from simple goodness to the level of erotic obsession.

A precondition for this rapacious eroticism to thrive is the destruction of the family. Family is the foundation of community and community is the foundation of class solidarity, which is a threat to social stability. People who are members of viable communities get together and talk. Talking leads to bitching; bitching leads to a search for solutions, and it is this search that gives rise to destabilizing influences such as unions and socialist parties.

Two elements are necessary to destroy both family and community: a pervasive atmosphere of paranoia and 24/7 cable news to fan it. Once a siege mentality is in place, people tend to retreat to the security of their houses and park themselves in front of the nearest screen, be it a TV or a computer. This retreat, coupled with the seductive power of dancing screens, reduces a family to a disparate collection of discrete individuals.

And the walls, George! Let us not forget the walls. What a miracle they are working. We have the wall across our southern border to protect us from the creeping socialism of Latin America, we have the walls around our communities to keep life at bay, and we have the walls around our souls to keep out compassion and solidarity.

I should warn you, though, that we face a rising threat, and we must gird our loins to deal with it. The fragmentation of family and community was a smoke screen to conceal from the public the fact that capital was slowly being sucked up the pyramid and coagulating around its apex like the bloody phlegm of a TB patient. The poor proles never noticed it because they were able to maintain an illusion of prosperity thanks to their debt-driven consumption.

Unfortunately, they are tapped out. Their credit lines are maxed and they have a negative equity in their house, if it isn’t already in foreclosure. The boat and trailer sits in the front yard with a “For Sale” sign on it, and they can’t afford to fill their above-ground swimming pool.

Not to worry, though. All of the security and surveillance measures your administration has put into place since 9/11 have nothing to do with the war against terrorism and everything to do with keeping the mob in line when it realizes how royally it’s been screwed.

There will be no New Deal when our economic house of cards finally collapses. And anyone who suggests it will find himself vacationing at a KBR rest camp somewhere in the Arizona desert.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Friday, May 9, 2008

Saving Bolivia from Political Democracy

Dear George,

Let us understand one thing from the get-go: The very foundation of life is democratic corporatism, because life is all about the freedom to accumulate as much as possible and about nurturing the greed that turns financial wizards into financial retards.

A corollary of this ground of beingness is the question of who is best suited by breeding and acculturation to reap the benefits of democratic corporatism. An empirical examination of history tells us that it is males of a northern European extraction who are best qualified to maximize pathological accumulation.

Every pyramid needs a base. Were there no base to be exploited, the pyramid would crumble, and when the dust settled all that would remain would be an Elysian Field. This is why egalitarian movements are a threat to the established order.

This brings me to the problem of Bolivia. For centuries, Bolivia was a model of an orderly society grounded on the tried and true principles of democratic corporatism. Prior to the arrival of the Europeans the country had been a hotbed of ignorance and savagery, overrun by natives who had little or no appreciation for capital accumulation.

It wasn’t’ until the arrival of the Spanish that we saw the creation of an orderly pyramid with the Indians forming the base that supported an European apex. The Europeans thrived; the Indians didn’t. Productivity ruled and latifundios multiplied like bacteria in a Petri jar. In the end, a hundred families of European extraction owned 25 million of hectares of land, while two million natives were given the challenge of making do on five million hectares. It was also the Europeans who so successfully exploited Bolivia’s natural resources of natural gas and iron ore.

In short, Bolivia was a utopia of corporatism and European capital, at least until 2005.

That is when Bolivia elected its first Indian leader, Evo Morales and his Movement for Socialism (MAS). Disaster followed as Morales started to nationalize resources that had, for decades, been under foreign control. Four-hundred and seventy years of tradition went down the tubes. Cast into the dustbin was the established tradition that indigenous peoples are simply fodder that exists for the nourishment of democratic corporatism.

The problem with natives is that they fail to understand the distinction between corporate democracy and political democracy. Corporate democracy stabilizes; political democracy destabilizes.

Well, let me tell you George, when it comes to greed and exploitation, you won’t find many Europeans asleep at the switch. The Bolivian province of Santa Cruz is a hotbed of Eurocorporatism. These good people were not going to stand by and let a bunch of brown-skinned natives take over their land and their resources.

Bolivia’s province of Santa Cruz is crawling with both families of European extraction and natural resources. Its citizens considered it an affront to have some damn Indian taking away property that they had legally stolen.

On Sunday, they struck a blow for democracy and freedom by voting to separate themselves from Bolivia, thus freeing themselves from under the oppressive heel of political democracy.

Sure, the vote was illegal, and was condemned by many Latin American countries. But hell, democratic corporatism always thrives when it is breaking a law or two. Productivity is simply another word for theft.

Now is the time for your administration to show its mettle by arranging for some massive arms sales to the freedom fighters of Santa Cruz as they do their part to stomp out the specter of political democracy that has started to sweep through Latin America. We can’t have a bunch of natives trashing a Euromerican playground.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Keeping the Religious Right Right

Dear George,

Your handling of moral wedge issues is like the mixing of a dry martini by a master bartender. It clouds the mind and impairs the vision. But like gin and vermouth, such issues must be handled with care. Both martinis and moral issues are carriers of a time bomb that could blow up in your face if mishandled.

The purpose of a moral wedge issue, be it gay marriage or abortion, is to enflame the pious. And that is where the danger lies. Piety comes in two contradictory forms. The piety with which you energize the religious right is a self-centered piety that is obsessed with protecting the soul by constructing a sanitary bubble around it. This type wants the air purified, the water filtered, the milk pasteurized and the poor bathed. The fecundity and chaos of life endangers their sterility, and when this sterility is threatened by life, they turn on it with all the savagery of an antibody attacking an antigen.

But, beware of the man whose piety takes him into the favela, who dirties his fingernails by plunging his hands into the pulsating mass of the unwashed and the unlettered. For it is he who would pop the sanitary bubble of the moral majority and let life pour in.

Instead, let him shower and clean his fingernails; let him speak in a church basement as he collects pennies in his alms box. Never allow pious respectability to get any closer to suffering than a slideshow. Let the respectable believe that by dropping their pennies in the alms box they are easing the suffering of the world, even though the very structure that created this suffering remains unchanged.

Should pious respectability ever have a direct experience with life’s flawed and tragic condition, the results would be disastrous. Those opposed to gay marriage because of its threat to family values would realize that supporting family values includes demanding that every child in America be well fed and have access to medical insurance. Those opposed to abortion would realize that their dedication to the sanctity of life applies across the board and this requires them to become peace activists and to fight tooth and nail against your doctrine of preemptive war.

This cannot be allowed to happen! Let their pastors continue to hold angry news conferences calling for God’s wrath to descend on gays and abortionists. Rage is what keeps the religious right on message.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

If Iran won't genuflect, bomb it!

Dear George,

Can there be any question that taking out Iran is our number one priority? The backbone of our foreign policy for the past hundred-plus years has been to bomb uppity natives into the next world.

For years we have been leaning on Iran to give up its quest for the nuclear weapon it’s not trying to develop. We’ve tried intimidation, diplomatic threats and sanctions. We’ve used that reliable nineteenth-century technique of cutting them off from the West, a technique that in the past has meant economic starvation for a problematic country.

So what happens? Does Iran bend to our will? Does it genuflect and pull its forelock? Hell, no! Iran has the temerity to pick itself up by the boot straps and shift to a “look East” foreign policy one commentator describes as “pan-regionalism.”

This same commentator goes on to explain that, “From the Persian Gulf to the Caspian region, the Caucasus, Central Asia, South Asia and beyond, thanks to its unique geographical location, Iran is in many ways an ideal connecting bridge that has not until now fully exploited its advantageous ‘equidistance’ from India and Europe.”

I mean, Jesus Christ George, check out a map of Iran (Look under “I” in the table of contents of your World Atlas—not to be confused with Iraq, through the two may be conflated for policy purposes.) Iran looks like a sleeping camel blocking our access to the Indian subcontinent. It abuts three bodies of water, the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea and the Arabian Sea.

Iran is on the verge of closing a deal for the construction of a 2,600 kilometer Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline that would transport Iranian natural gas to Pakistan and then on to India.

That’s our natural gas they’re fucking with!

Another commentator points out, “The Iranian counter-response to sanctions and to its demonization as a rogue or pariah state has been to develop a ‘Look East’ foreign policy that is, in itself, a challenge to American energy hegemony in the Gulf. The policy has been conducted with great skill by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who was educated in Bangalore, India. While focused on massive energy deals with China, India, and Pakistan, it looks as well to Africa and Latin America. To the horror of American neocons, an intercontinental ‘axis of evil’ air link already exists—a weekly commercial Tehran-Caracas flight via Iran Air.”

Tehran to Caracas! That’s the tossed gauntlet right there! Haven’t these fools ever heard of the Monroe Doctrine? Latin America is our baby and we don’t need no radical Muslims mucking up the works. The ayatollahs are even sucking up to Bolivia. What we’re dealing with, here, is a bunch of Muslim commies.

But it gets even worse. The first commentator goes on to explain that, “With respect to the Persian Gulf, the GCC [ Gulf Cooperative Council], which continues to shun Iran’s olive branch of cooperation, is under new pressure to rethink that attitude as the result of the Shi’ite-led government in Iraq, a potential Iran allay in the politics of the Persian Gulf. It is not far-fetched to think that one dayIran and Iraq will join the GCC states in a new regional cooperative frame work…perhaps better pitched as an Islamic common market.”

It’s simply too much! The European Common Market is already kicking the economic stuffing out of us. We don’t need another one, especially one that controls most of the world oil.

I really don’t know what you are waiting for. America has been on a war footing for sixty-plus years. If ever there was a “just war” taking out Iran is certainly it. We are who we are because we’re the world’s numero uno playground bully. As such, we simply cannot tolerate Iran’s ascendancy as an economic powerhouse.

I know I’ve packed a lot of information in this letter. Usually, I try to keep them nice and simple. However, I felt it was crucial that you be brought up to speed on developments in Iran, although I fully understand that neither intelligence nor facts play any role when you decide to attack a country.

If you find this letter confusing, I am sure the Big Dick would be glad to explain it to you the next time he takes a break from running the country.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

The Impoverished Power of the World's Sole Surviving Superpower

Dear George,

Guess what? Iraq wasn’t about the oil, it wasn’t about WMD s and it wasn’t about bringing democracy to the Middle East. Iraq was a byproduct of the brain rot that accompanies power.

Here’s how it works, so pay attention! When a nation is in the process of climbing the ladder of power, it is fully cognizant of just how unstable each rung is. It is when it reaches the most unstable rung of all, the top rung, that delusion sets in. Perhaps it’s the thin air at the top, but for some reason, the powerful nation believes that it is now standing on bedrock that that will support it for all eternity. It promptly forgets just how unstable the top rung is.

The more a powerful nation believes in its military prowess, the greater is the brain rot. The facile mind required for effective diplomacy begins the atrophy and the nation falls under the delusion that there isn’t a problem that can’t be solved by kicking some ass. The fact that this chronic ass-kicking bleeds its economy dry and results in little or no economic return never occurs to the powerful nation because it is so blinded by the illusion of power that it never realizes that it is emptying its treasury in the process.

It finally reaches the point where a martial momentum takes over and drives it from one disaster to another. As one sage explains it:

A rational cost efficient evaluation of the U.S. major and minor military invasions demonstrates the high economic cost and low economic benefits to both the capitalist system as a whole and even many key economic enterprises.

One of history’s little ironies is that the two countries we destroyed in World War II are now economic powerhouses, while we are staring insolvency in the face. Thank God the glare of our multiple weapon systems blinds us to this reality. There is something about killing and destroying that is so uplifting and addictive that a nation is willing to court economic disaster to feed its habit.

This beat will go on and on until we become a well-armed pauper begging for alms so we can buy more bombs that will sink us even future into penury, but who the hell cares as long as we can maintain the illusion that we are the world’s sole surviving badass.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Monday, May 5, 2008

Shedding Blood for All the Right Reasons

Dear George,

One of the more telling differences between the Left and the Right is the nature of their barbarity. The beauty of the institutionalized paranoia that has been the bedrock of America’s foreign policy since the end of World War II is that it has been a bipartisan effort.

What distinguishes the violence perpetuated by the Left from that of the Right is that the Left needs a humanitarian patina to justify its slaughter, while the Right needs none. The Left kills to advance freedom; the Right kills to expand and secure markets.

In the end, a dead child is dead, no matter how noble or base the motive that dropped the bomb.

Both Left and Right need perceived threats to kill. The Left believes its monsters are real; the Right, in its heart of hearts, knows that its monsters are bullshit.

The Right understands that your Global War on Terror (GWOT) in nothing more than an exercise to continue lining the pockets of America’s Defense Contractors. The Left believes it to be a “just war.”

The Right is infatuated with naked power, the left, with virtuous power. The color of the blood spilled by both is the same. However, virtue gives the blood spilled in its name a nobility not found in the blood spilled for profit.

The beauty of aggression, be it of the Left or the Right, is that it provokes resistance that can be labeled “terrorism” or “insurgency,” or with whatever “label of the month” has traction.

The biggest difference between the two is that the Left tries to bring the benefits of civilization to the native. The Left kills to make the native a little Whiteman draped in brown skin. In other words, the Left does not hesitate to destroy the native in order to save him. Salvation has always been a wonderful rationale for slaughter.

The Right, on the other hand, is satisfied as long as its raw materials continue to pour out of the conquered land.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Sound Bites as Props in the Political Theater

Dear George,

All politics is theater, a smokescreen built of empty words and third-rate stage sets. Your mastery of this smokescreen is why you are sitting in the Oval Office.

The Democrats just don’t get it! Where once politics flowed from Aristotle, they now flow from MTV; where once image reflected reality, it is now a departure from it. The music video with its rapid-fire cuts from scene to scene, each scene lasting no more than a nanosecond, has given birth to the sound bite.

Ideology is all. That’s where you have it all over the Democrats. At its core, ideology is a gastrointestinal issue. The Left suffers from intellectual diarrhea while the right suffers from intellectual constipation. Thank God tiny turds make the best sound bites.

And the Right knows how to play the Democrats. The Right’s sound bites come at them like a salvo of spit balls. You let them rip, and the next thing you know, the Democrats are off balance, flailing away trying to hit back at you.

The sole purpose of the sound bite is to force your opponent into elaborate explanations. The more they explain and expound, the sounder the electorate sleeps. An electorate breast-fed on reality TV and game shows doesn’t want substance. They want audacious tale telling. Knowing this, you have dipped into that great American tradition, the folk-tale, and brought it into the twenty-first century. Where the nineteenth century had Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill, the twenty-first has the axis of evil and the global war on terror.

It appears that your successor, HillBill, has mastered the same skill set.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Finding Freedom in Order and Stability

Dear George,

I want to tell you a story.

One day, the Devil and a friend were walking down the street. About twenty feet ahead of them, a third man was walking in the same direction. Suddenly, the third man stopped in his tracks and bent over to pick up a piece of paper. He glanced at it, quickly shoved it in his pocket and hurriedly moved on.

“I wonder what that was?” asked the friend.

“It was the truth,” said the Devil.

“I guess that’s bad news for you,” said the friend.

“Oh no,” replied the Devil. “I’ll let him invent a system.”

There’s a great deal of wisdom in that story, George. Throughout history, mankind has placed more credence in a system than in the truth. Oh, they all say they’re seeking the truth. But let a truth contradict a system, and the system wins every time. They prefer the rigid edifice of dogma to the fluid dynamic of the truth.

Truth gives us chaos and disorder; a system gives us peace, order and stability, which guarantee a social structure that is conducive to economic growth. The reason is obvious. Stability means not rocking the boat. In other words, the first duty of a free people is to keep their mouths shut. Ours is a sanitized democracy, one that eschews the messiness of dissent.

Protecting the social structure is of greater value than morality. Morality weakens and softens; structure provides strength and rigidity. Humanitarian considerations are a factor only to the extent that they contribute to the preservation of the structure. Morality is a marketing tool. Once it becomes a basis for action, the structure is imperiled and peace, order and stability are threatened.

Stability is a rip. Everything is mellow. The river of life flows smoothly between well-fortified banks to the pastoral sounds of singing birds and buzzing bees.

Think about it, George! Once there was the Holy Roman Empire; now there is the Protestant America Empire. Soon we will be marching as one nation to the stirring anthems of peace, order and stability as we celebrate an Empire that will endure for a thousand years.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Friday, May 2, 2008

In Praise of Empty Heads

Dear George,

Let me tell you, Big Guy, the life of a Neocon stoner is a happy life. If the drugs run out, there’s always the ideology to shield you from reality.

Make it up as you go along, I always say. What a heady experience it is to slip the fetters of facts and float free in the ether of fantasy. No more flesh, no more blood, just make believe reduced to numbers dancing across a computer screen as they chant the mantra that explains it all: “If it ain’t a number, it ain’t.”

You’ve shown the world the upside of being a simpleton. No matter how big a whopper you tell, the world assumes that you’re too stupid to lie. This gives you an empty playing field upon which to play.

That is why we’re such soul mates. My meth-addled brain resonates with your booze-addled brain, and together we make beautiful music.

May you reign forever.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Corporatism Reshapes the Cosmos

Dear George,

What a Snap, Crackle and Pop Disneyland world we live in, a whirly-gig of make believe piled upon make believe, all of it a garish Technicolor spectacle of brief flashes of light fading into darkness and leaving in their wake the pungent odor of sulfur.

Take the “Free Market” fairy tale, for example. Believing in its efficiency is like believing in the Tooth Fairy. A free market is all about competition and competition is anathema to the Corporatist State. All Corporatism cares about is building a protective wall of hegemony to protect itself from the bare-knuckled competition of the marketplace. Anything that threatens this hegemony must either be absorbed or destroyed. For the Corporatist, free enterprise is defined as being free to destroy free enterprise through an economy of scale, a scale not of production, but of bullying muscle.

Corporatism is simply Marxism with an attitude. Marx predicted the eventual withering away of the State brought about by the rise of the proletariat. Corporatism also sees the eventual withering away of the State, but through a process of merger and acquisition. Where Marxism would overthrow the State, Corporatism is content with buying it.

Corporatism is on the cutting edge of a new economic reality: The prosperity of indebtedness. When Bear Stearns was able to leverage $13 trillion worth of derivatives with a mere $80 billion in capital, the heavens rang. Rabid leveraging is a necessity when one is doing business with a worthless, fiat currency.

The drones have bought into this new reality as they leverage their paltry salaries into homes overflowing with useless commodities that eventually end up crowded into self-storage units or cluttering the folding tables of the nearest flea market where people sell their useless junk so they can make room to pack more useless junk into their homes.

I mention this because some progressives are under the false impression that their day will come because of our pending economic meltdown. They love to draw parallels with the populist movement that emerged from the depression of 1893, or the New Deal that arose from the ashes of the Great Depression.

They overlook the fact that both movements arose because there was a large pool of pissed off drones who made it happen. You had the Grange for farmers and the IWW for workers. You had writers who were shining a spotlight on the deplorable conditions under which the poor lived. And you had a mass media that was in its infancy, which the elite had not yet learned how to manipulate.

No such pissed off pool of drones exists today. That is the upside of the “me” generation that was that was the ultimate product of the Sixties. The Summer of Love morphed into the Age of Consumption. Solidarity is not part of the consumptive vocabulary.

So, all is well in Disneyland. God is in his heaven preaching absolution through leveraged indebtedness, and our elite have discovered that the War Crimes generate one hell of a revenue stream.

America can sleep well, tonight knowing you are at the helm.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones