Blog!

It's a testament to something, my state of mind, the earliness of the morning, that upon opening the MSNBC front page, I was shocked to see this, and immediately concerned for the welfare of Duke's basketball coach. Call it March Madness.

It would seem the malady is catching, spreading beyond the world of collegiate athletics and infecting the public at large. But that's not so. In truth, America is insane all the time, and you just have to push the right buttons to send the whole nation into conniption fits.

If I haven't blogged recently, it's because I've been staring in wide-eyed wonder at the ludicrous spectacle of a government and a society that seems to have severed all ties with the real world. I long ago gave up the idealistic hope that The People would educate and inform themselves into citizen intellectuals, demanding responsible action from their elected representatives. And I long ago gave up the notion that the making of laws and policy was anything unlike the making of sausage, a filthy process best unobserved. But there are still times when the weight of this America's failure presses down on me, and makes me want to, you know, pack.

Pols will be pols, I know, but when was the last time there was anything resembling an honest policy discussion in the houses of Congress? There's not even the pretense now of sincerity in public statements; everyone calculates knowing that everyone knows they're calculating, so that we're on, like, the fifth level of dishonesty, except that maybe everyone doesn't know they're calculating, recent poll numbers aside, and millions of Americans sit at home soaking up propaganda like a sponge. Which, I think, is probably worse. And the media, oh heavens, the media. I long ago turned off television news, and I strictly limit my blog intake, but now I can't even visit my dependable, serious web sites. Slate, the New Republic, all crap, all Schiavo all day long, honestly, if I have to see her pitiful empty stare or Delay's demonic mug one more time, I'm just going to lose it. I've been holing up at the New Yorker, venturing occasionally onto the news pages of the Times and the Post (making an allowance for Krugman and Friedman, and ok I'll read anything Leon Wieseltier writes, that guy rules), and that's it. Which is the media absorbed daily by about one half of one percent of the country, while everyone else tunes, inexplicably to the AM portion of the radio dial, or, god help us, to the television news. Which, and I can't emphasize this enough, is shit.

The thing is, it's not that the government has no business messing with Schiavo or steroids, or that, having inserted themselves, they've behaved like buffoons. It's not that the Bush administration has yet to speak an honest word about its plans for Social Security (or quite a few other things for that matter). It's not that there's no leadership or backbone on the left, or even conviction that what they stand for is, actually, worth standing for. It's none of the rank ridiculousness of a citizenry perpetually enraged, confused, and overtly religious, a government made entirely of people who seem like they're maybe not real people, and a media that's completely forgotten how to do its job. It's not those things that are driving me nuts. I mean it is, but it's also that this mess, it seems so permanent. There's nothing real here anymore, it's all chain stores, and bad recycled television, and retread films and music, and NO new good books, and shouting talking heads, and policy makers that can't utter an honest word, and it's this clean plastic veneer that's become America, and, you know, I don't know how to get rid of it. A thousand Lenny Bruces and a thousand FDRs and a thousand Norman Mailers and a thousand Adlai Stevensons and a thousand people trying to rip up the tangled mess we've made and put in its place something good and true wouldn't make a dent in the holy, self-righteous charade we've all so willingly played. And the thing becomes bigger than those that perpetrate it, so that it can't be knocked down easily. And it's all a huge mess, and I'm tired of this American absurdity, and I certainly don't want to contribute any more to it, so if you've linked to this blog you should remove the link, because this is the end of the Bellows.