Letter from Slim Wolfe
Media – September 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
The August edition Slimbo Award, Return of the Colorado Blowfish, goes to the correspondent who wrote in to cross sabers with Martha’s editorial. The universe is an immensely baffling place, and we blowfish feel less threatened if we can puff ourselves up. But pride in self looks unseemly and Texan-like, so we resort to deflected pride. We praise our school, our church, our team, our nation, when what we really mean to say is I’m the Greatest. We keep ourselves in denial that our nation consists of about 300 million lumps of protoplasm with about three hundred million opinions of what America is, and is never lacking in scoundrels. We bask in trickle-down pride just like puffed up Frenchmen or Egyptians or anyone else. My dog don’t stink.
Blowfish can’t live on a straight diet of denial, however. Since the beginning of recorded history, motivation scientists have known that blood sacrifice is the other key ingredient. Give them carnage and you can pick their pockets and empty their minds with ease. Readings of chicken entrails are good, crucified saviors are better, but wars against the bogeyman are best of all. Boys and girls get to break all the civilized rules their mothers taught them and mothers get to cheer them on, and everyone gets their fill of wallowing in mournfulness. (Before the Christian era, and even in modern times here and there, leaders also knew the advantage of letting the people break the rules and have seasonal wild parties, but that’s another matter.)
Savvy leaders know that war boosts their ratings, so they cleverly set the stage. And the blowfish eat it up. Had the 16th century conquistadors been lacking in mettle, Americans might still be making the blood sacrifice to the Sun God’s earthly embodiment. Present-day blowfish may puff up with the thought of all the wondrous progress we’ve made, but the Inca (and the others) were notably unencumbered. They had meaningful, honest toil and suffered no hanging chads, property deeds, WMDs, or advertising placards, and their children didn’t beg coins to stuff in Frankenstein-like vending machines which had bribed their way into prominent locations in public areas.
There’s a new book on the market about how to renounce your citizenship and become voluntarily stateless. Twenty-five dollars for a paperback seems a bit steep, but there’s a point here. I declared myself voluntarily stateless in 1980 (5 years before the author of the book) when my libertarian candidate, Commoner, was trounced by Ronnie Cheterfield. I divorce thee, I divorce thee. Citizenship implies a contract to pay taxes which support all the legalized murders and other scams the head blowfish can finagle, but I have a pre-emptive contract with the Greater Grandfather Clause which prevents me from buying into blood sacrifice wrapped in uniform.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely and the most absolute power on earth today is the corporate media. The presidency and the future hang on the spin they put on wars and other events. They mess with the minds of all the prideful, fearful hugging-puffing fishlings eager to choose the right hair-lightener and the right gas guzzler to prove their American freedom. Progress, itself, is a blowfish.
If we’d made any real progress since the days of Atahuallpa, we’d have the brains to ask the real questions about terrorism, like what really hit the Pentagon, what blew up the Maine and the warships in the gulf of Tonkin, and who was thick with Timothy McVeigh, American soldier, and bigot.
It’s the bigots among us who’ve gained an opportunity through the so-called war on terrorism, however, making an end-run around all reason, disappearing and harassing anyone with Asian features, never mind if they have valid diplomatic credentials from friendly nations like India. The lowest and meanest minds America has produced, are now puffed up and elevated to vigilante patriot status, or so they imagine, cheered on by Fox and Murdoch newscorps, lowering the bar of intelligence, whipping up the general fear until the population takes on the angry mindset of a whipped animal, which can be tweaked at will by the masters of war.
The notorious American shortness of attention span is paralleled by the lack of capacity for depth analysis of any situation — compared to the educated populations of the 18th and 19th centuries worldwide. We’re myopic and reactionary, on our knees to the church of Capital and unable to see past the dogma of the moment. Let’s hope we don’t rule the world in this condition unchallenged.
Slim Wolfe
Villa Grove
