Saturday, July 02, 2005
Goodbye, Baby, Goodbye.
Nobody actually has to worry about us ‘murkins or our empire any more.
An empire gets to build one infrastructure before it collapses by dumping everything it has into a war.
The 9/11 boys took us out in 2001. And I mean took us OUT. When they hit us they didn’t leave a nice clean flesh wound from which we could recover, or which we could overcome enough to fight.
What they did was inject us with a nasty, withering disease. A shot of cancer right into the brain, from which it would spread into every limb of government and society.
We already had Empire Rot. Now we’ve got Imperial Paranoia.
The 9/11 lads don’t need to do a thing more, because the spores are spreading through the leviathan’s body. Now they can just sit back and watch our own neurosis and paranoia and war fever grind us down to a nub.
All you need is 50 cents ‘murkin and a phone booth. Call Washington DC and tell ‘em you’re setting a bomb in an American airport – maybe, maybe not – for the next 20 years. It’d lock this country down ‘till 2050. Don’t look at me like I’m sharing secrets with the T’urrists – they’ve probably already thought of this. When we’ve stopped mucking around overseas, somebody’s going to be wandering around with a change-purse full of quarters and a DC phone book. Once an empire has lost it, it’s no problem making it spin in circles like a robot on one leg. Any high-school kid can do it.
And probably will.
And no, we’re not going to recover. America was built with capitalism – cheap or free labor and cheap or free resources. We’ve been so desperate for the former we’ve bought people and bred them like cattle. Every time we run out of the latter, we invade a little further across a continent or over an ocean. In 1941 we ran into another empire invading back the other way – and we’re still whining about it.
We’ve gone through our resources like newlyweds in the bridal suite. The honeymoon’s over. What’s next? Mars? You need an entire planet’s economic engine to back space travel. And capitalism don’t fuel that.
Europe and China can just turn their backs on us and ignore us as an economic rival. We can’t compete economically because everything we have is being sucked into the war machine. We can’t rebuild our infrastructure or care for our citizens or educate our children because we’re so busy destroying everybody else’s. We’re not going to get those resources – if those countries we invade don’t surrender, we can’t work the oil wells. If they do, and become democracies – they’ll ship their oil to China or whoever else will make them a good deal on it. And if they do become fake democracies, we won’t be able to get the bodies in this country to keep them occupied – and their own people are not going to play Scots Guards or Ghurkas and keep their own people down and delivering.
The British Empire experience has taught the occupied how to deal with the occupier (and a lot of these messes we’re in are old British turds we should have the sense not to try to sop up for them. I mean, what is this – nostalgia for the Mother Country?). Vietnam taught American parents how to get their kids listed as official conscientious objectors. The Germans taught us about every goddamn thing else. This time, we see ‘em coming – and the fact that they’re not wearing jackboots is fooling NOBODY. We don’t call ‘em Suits for nothing. Uniform is uniform is uniform. And these pirates have already realized they’ve hit the ship below the waterline – they’re taking theirs before they have to get out along the rat lines and let it go down. They do it to individual industries – including the comics industry – and they do it to countries. Our turn, that’s all.
In the meantime, because we’ve allowed our entire travel infrastructure to either go to pot or not get built, and because airplanes are so expensive to run on oil, there’ll be less and less ability to travel within our own huge territories. Maybe my dream that all conventions will become virtual will come true. Everybody goes online for a weekend and nobody has to get onto those GD airplanes that somebody’s going to target as a flying gas-bomb anyway.
So who’s taking bets on when the exhausted, starved Empire goes down on its face?
9/11 – more bang for the buck. I am so fucking happy I’m living out here in the middle of nowhere and I can catch fish.
And if it will make you feel any better, the reason that humans are slowly becoming more peaceful may be because the violent ones are killing each other off. It’s probably why the Germans are such a very nice people now. So maybe there’s hope for the rest of us – but all you moms and dads out there with mean kids are just going to have to resign yourself to spending a lot of time saying goodbye to the little war-mongers in a national cemetery.
WE won’t miss them, but too bad for you. Think of it as a sacrifice for the future of the race. If that makes you feel any better…
Very pukey: American troops sending back pictures of them playing with happy Iraqi children. After they’ve bombed their homes and killed their relatives ("Insurgents." "Terrorists." yada yada) and are working their butts off to destroy their entire cultural heritage – which is the cultural heritage of the western human race -- simply because the Christian Right is fixated on those lines in their holy book about Babylon.
I guess with the insurgents taking out anybody who gets near an American, the poor kids are grateful for any grown-ups they can get near, even the invaders. Why not? Can anybody say, “baksheesh” or “Hey, GI, you got candy?” or “Now we’ve wiped out these Injuns we’ll send their kids to the Injun school.”?
As Robert Frost said: “War is for everybody, for children too.”
Nobody actually has to worry about us ‘murkins or our empire any more.
An empire gets to build one infrastructure before it collapses by dumping everything it has into a war.
The 9/11 boys took us out in 2001. And I mean took us OUT. When they hit us they didn’t leave a nice clean flesh wound from which we could recover, or which we could overcome enough to fight.
What they did was inject us with a nasty, withering disease. A shot of cancer right into the brain, from which it would spread into every limb of government and society.
We already had Empire Rot. Now we’ve got Imperial Paranoia.
The 9/11 lads don’t need to do a thing more, because the spores are spreading through the leviathan’s body. Now they can just sit back and watch our own neurosis and paranoia and war fever grind us down to a nub.
All you need is 50 cents ‘murkin and a phone booth. Call Washington DC and tell ‘em you’re setting a bomb in an American airport – maybe, maybe not – for the next 20 years. It’d lock this country down ‘till 2050. Don’t look at me like I’m sharing secrets with the T’urrists – they’ve probably already thought of this. When we’ve stopped mucking around overseas, somebody’s going to be wandering around with a change-purse full of quarters and a DC phone book. Once an empire has lost it, it’s no problem making it spin in circles like a robot on one leg. Any high-school kid can do it.
And probably will.
And no, we’re not going to recover. America was built with capitalism – cheap or free labor and cheap or free resources. We’ve been so desperate for the former we’ve bought people and bred them like cattle. Every time we run out of the latter, we invade a little further across a continent or over an ocean. In 1941 we ran into another empire invading back the other way – and we’re still whining about it.
We’ve gone through our resources like newlyweds in the bridal suite. The honeymoon’s over. What’s next? Mars? You need an entire planet’s economic engine to back space travel. And capitalism don’t fuel that.
Europe and China can just turn their backs on us and ignore us as an economic rival. We can’t compete economically because everything we have is being sucked into the war machine. We can’t rebuild our infrastructure or care for our citizens or educate our children because we’re so busy destroying everybody else’s. We’re not going to get those resources – if those countries we invade don’t surrender, we can’t work the oil wells. If they do, and become democracies – they’ll ship their oil to China or whoever else will make them a good deal on it. And if they do become fake democracies, we won’t be able to get the bodies in this country to keep them occupied – and their own people are not going to play Scots Guards or Ghurkas and keep their own people down and delivering.
The British Empire experience has taught the occupied how to deal with the occupier (and a lot of these messes we’re in are old British turds we should have the sense not to try to sop up for them. I mean, what is this – nostalgia for the Mother Country?). Vietnam taught American parents how to get their kids listed as official conscientious objectors. The Germans taught us about every goddamn thing else. This time, we see ‘em coming – and the fact that they’re not wearing jackboots is fooling NOBODY. We don’t call ‘em Suits for nothing. Uniform is uniform is uniform. And these pirates have already realized they’ve hit the ship below the waterline – they’re taking theirs before they have to get out along the rat lines and let it go down. They do it to individual industries – including the comics industry – and they do it to countries. Our turn, that’s all.
In the meantime, because we’ve allowed our entire travel infrastructure to either go to pot or not get built, and because airplanes are so expensive to run on oil, there’ll be less and less ability to travel within our own huge territories. Maybe my dream that all conventions will become virtual will come true. Everybody goes online for a weekend and nobody has to get onto those GD airplanes that somebody’s going to target as a flying gas-bomb anyway.
So who’s taking bets on when the exhausted, starved Empire goes down on its face?
9/11 – more bang for the buck. I am so fucking happy I’m living out here in the middle of nowhere and I can catch fish.
And if it will make you feel any better, the reason that humans are slowly becoming more peaceful may be because the violent ones are killing each other off. It’s probably why the Germans are such a very nice people now. So maybe there’s hope for the rest of us – but all you moms and dads out there with mean kids are just going to have to resign yourself to spending a lot of time saying goodbye to the little war-mongers in a national cemetery.
WE won’t miss them, but too bad for you. Think of it as a sacrifice for the future of the race. If that makes you feel any better…
Very pukey: American troops sending back pictures of them playing with happy Iraqi children. After they’ve bombed their homes and killed their relatives ("Insurgents." "Terrorists." yada yada) and are working their butts off to destroy their entire cultural heritage – which is the cultural heritage of the western human race -- simply because the Christian Right is fixated on those lines in their holy book about Babylon.
I guess with the insurgents taking out anybody who gets near an American, the poor kids are grateful for any grown-ups they can get near, even the invaders. Why not? Can anybody say, “baksheesh” or “Hey, GI, you got candy?” or “Now we’ve wiped out these Injuns we’ll send their kids to the Injun school.”?
As Robert Frost said: “War is for everybody, for children too.”
