I realized last night, as I made an attempt to snuggle up with Rachel Maddow, that I'd reached some tipping point with politics and elections. I was fried. I didn't care if Bush stayed for a third term, if we elected John McCain king, or if Barack carried every state in the union. I. Just. Didn't. Care. There. I said it. I feel better for letting my unlovely apathy hang out for all to see, even though it was nothing that a good night's sleep wouldn't cure. Unfortunately, I didn't have a good night's sleep.
This morning, as usual, I switched on my computer and bombed through the Huffington Post, BuzzFlash, Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos, and The New York Times Opinion page, just to see what other terrible senile mumblings were attributed to McCain, to get the low-down on just how ghastly Sarah Palin is today, and how many more multitudes Barack has attracted. Politics is my junk food and I should be brain-dead from it, with every artery to my head clogged with dense gossipy fat.
Every day, I read alarmed posts from hyped-up kossacks, I take polls online, I hiss and suck my teeth while reading Paul Krugman's speculations on the crap economy. I check into The Huffington Post three and four times a day, and goggle at the spectacular headlines. When I knock off work, feed my cats, and fix dinner, I've got NPR blaring on my headset. My hub and I sit down to dinner over Keith Olbermann and bomb right through into Rachel Maddow. Then, I race back into my office, crank up The Daily Kos again, and lurk until past midnight.
Yeah. I'm nuts, and I'm nuts in a very particular way. Maybe I'm American nuts.
When I lived in DC, I was the only one in the family who didn't work for the CIA. Come dinner time, my little spook family and I would sit down with a blaring TV arranged for full viewing. Then everyone but me would have a full-throated fight about national security, the commies, the goddamned majority whip, the goddamned senate, and the goddamned president. The difference between then and now was that I knew my family was batshit crazy, like every other DC bureaucratic family.
If you don't work for the government in DC, then you are completely outside the culture. You are, in effect, a Navajo. Being a blanket-wearing Navajo is not all bad, because you, and you alone, are able to see that everyone around you is bleeding from the ears over a construct that has no reality: arsisiety, I call it. I've alluded to it in an earlier post. Arsisiety is made up of newspaper snippets, chunks of blogging, staticky radio noise, talking heads on TV, and lots and lots and lots of colored pictures. And that's all.
I don't know about you, but in my neighborhood there are no hedge-fund managers doing people dirty, there are no Neo-Nazi hate groups plotting to kill Obama, there are no Congo rapers, and the Hague is not located here so Cheney will have to get his come-uppance someplace else. In my blue-collar neighborhood, there are missing pets, the odd but very real gangsta, a dope house or two, old people who are sick, people who are trying to sell their houses, and people who walk every morning. That is my society and it would behoove me to remember that. I could talk to some old people, I could keep an eye open for lost pets, I could phone the cops about that gangsta in his big black car, and I could take a walk.
It's not exciting, and it's not dramatic, but it has the advantage of actuality.
When I touch my particular, slightly beat-up world, I know it won't disappear like soap suds.
(And, hey, here's your kitler.)
This morning, as usual, I switched on my computer and bombed through the Huffington Post, BuzzFlash, Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos, and The New York Times Opinion page, just to see what other terrible senile mumblings were attributed to McCain, to get the low-down on just how ghastly Sarah Palin is today, and how many more multitudes Barack has attracted. Politics is my junk food and I should be brain-dead from it, with every artery to my head clogged with dense gossipy fat.
Every day, I read alarmed posts from hyped-up kossacks, I take polls online, I hiss and suck my teeth while reading Paul Krugman's speculations on the crap economy. I check into The Huffington Post three and four times a day, and goggle at the spectacular headlines. When I knock off work, feed my cats, and fix dinner, I've got NPR blaring on my headset. My hub and I sit down to dinner over Keith Olbermann and bomb right through into Rachel Maddow. Then, I race back into my office, crank up The Daily Kos again, and lurk until past midnight.
Yeah. I'm nuts, and I'm nuts in a very particular way. Maybe I'm American nuts.
When I lived in DC, I was the only one in the family who didn't work for the CIA. Come dinner time, my little spook family and I would sit down with a blaring TV arranged for full viewing. Then everyone but me would have a full-throated fight about national security, the commies, the goddamned majority whip, the goddamned senate, and the goddamned president. The difference between then and now was that I knew my family was batshit crazy, like every other DC bureaucratic family.
If you don't work for the government in DC, then you are completely outside the culture. You are, in effect, a Navajo. Being a blanket-wearing Navajo is not all bad, because you, and you alone, are able to see that everyone around you is bleeding from the ears over a construct that has no reality: arsisiety, I call it. I've alluded to it in an earlier post. Arsisiety is made up of newspaper snippets, chunks of blogging, staticky radio noise, talking heads on TV, and lots and lots and lots of colored pictures. And that's all.
I don't know about you, but in my neighborhood there are no hedge-fund managers doing people dirty, there are no Neo-Nazi hate groups plotting to kill Obama, there are no Congo rapers, and the Hague is not located here so Cheney will have to get his come-uppance someplace else. In my blue-collar neighborhood, there are missing pets, the odd but very real gangsta, a dope house or two, old people who are sick, people who are trying to sell their houses, and people who walk every morning. That is my society and it would behoove me to remember that. I could talk to some old people, I could keep an eye open for lost pets, I could phone the cops about that gangsta in his big black car, and I could take a walk.
It's not exciting, and it's not dramatic, but it has the advantage of actuality.
When I touch my particular, slightly beat-up world, I know it won't disappear like soap suds.
(And, hey, here's your kitler.)
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