Mood's Off

My mood’s off.

I’m riddled by unresolved anxieties; I suffer paranoia that I feel is legitimate, being based on real threats; and I am ridden by worries stemming from imagination and a dark cast of mind instilled by decades of the world’s hostility, from school yard bullies to adult betrayals.

My nightmares are angry, sexual, and political, yet vague, like rock lyrics.

“The Obama campaign has been saying some pretty nasty things about Western Pennsylvania,” McCain said recently, at a stump speech. He paused for booing, then said, “And I’d just like to say I couldn’t agree with them more.”

He went on to try to correct his gaffe but fumbled it every bit as badly as W might have.

The audience waited it out, then obediently applauded anyway, despite the fact that, if he’d said anything coherent whatsoever, it insulted them and patronized their intelligence.

The man is a doddering, surly fuck-up. Palin’s a deranged, delusional beauty-queen religious freak. Of course they’re serious candidates. Of course they may even win.

How can this be?

This is America. We’re all stupid and crazy here. We have an unerring instinct to choose the worst.

And why is America anti-intellectual and opposed to imagination? Goes right back to the Puritans. Their legacy has driven us, as a nation, into self-hating depression and madness.

That dark, ugly street of dread, broken dreams forms America’s mental main street. We all live nearer to it or farther from it, but connected to it always, directly. Its run-offs taint our wells, stain our walls.

Extended Metaphor Theater proudly presents: Puritanism As Sewage -- An American Truthiness. Starring: The Floating Turds Dick, George, Karl, John, Don, Condoleeza, Bomber, and Sarah, and all the others in the Toilet Bowl Ring.

There is already a Palin In 2012 campaign. Only she, it seems, can fix America’s broken soul. Thus is a political genius the likes of Reagan born again among us.

Is Mt. Rushmore ready for boobs? The other kind, I mean.

Anyone who has faced prejudice knows the horror of unexamined assumptions and received wisdom. Yet we allow ourselves to be bashed on the head with our own bigotry every time there is a political campaign. I think it’s apathy more than despair or cynicism that lets us go on like this, even though we all know it’s wrong.

Change -- that jingoistic Pavlovian bell the liars keep chiming -- requires effort and America is long since out of the trying game. If we weren’t all so gluttonous we’d none of us give a shit. Instead, though, we just want more, and more, and more. Paging Mr. Creosote.

My mood’s off and is likely to stay that way.

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