F for Fake

Orson Welles once made a documentary whose title befits The Country We Live In … F for Fake.

Because we’re in a whole new country now. We’ve been going in this direction for sometime and … we’re finally here!

Welcome to America 2.0!

This is a country where all we have to do is Go Through The Motions … and that’s good enough.

For most of us we have two similar National Pastimes: Trying to make more money, or … trying to make enough money. For the select few at the top, their amusement is screwing us out of our money.

Here in America 2.0, our capacity for pain and abject horror is at an all-time high! We seem to be able to take anything … and dish it out too!

Why … we can be lied into a war. Just flat out fed a load of easily disproved crap, invade a couple of countries, get thousands of our guys killed, over a million of theirs, get stuck there for God Knows how long, and the Democrats, y’know, the opposition party, they’re trying to figure out how they can continue to get us to pay for it all.

And while the rest of the civilized world watches in stupefied amazement we can rip up any old goddamned piece of paper and torture the bejeezus out of anybody we want to. Torture techniques were demonstrated to, and approved by, the top guys in the Bush Administration and the President admits he knew about ’em too! And yesterday he made a cameo appearance on a game show! He’s not going to be impeached or tried for war crimes … He gets to be on Deal or No Deal! Is this a great country or what?

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/04/22/george-bush-makes-cameo-appearance-on-deal-or-no-deal/

Back here in the “Homeland” over the next several years, two million American families will lose their homes … roughly 20,000 every week … and that’s jest fine as paint for most of us. Especially for the financial institutions that get bailed out with our cash for being unimaginably greedy.

Heck … Why we even still get to have elections here in America 2.0.

Now even though Jonathan Alter writing in Newsweek back in March figured out that if Hillary Clinton won every single primary left to go she’d still be 58 delegates behind Barack Obama. In a Rational pre-America 2.0 world that would mean the superdelegates would vote the will of the people and Obama would be the Democratic contender against John McCain.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/118240

But hold on to your hats because this is America 2.0 Where Anything Can Happen!

Y’see you can’t have a horserace unless you’ve got at least two horses … and we’ve got a Mainstream Media here that doesn’t want anything unless it’s a good show. The first part of the show is a long, dragged out, primary season with a couple of Democrats bashing each other over the heads with pig bladders and embarrassing and boring everybody. The second part of the show is a weakened Democrat going head to head with a Republican crazy man.

I’m betting the Republican crazy man will win because the Conservative Media, the only media we’ve got here in America 2.0, has forgiven every stupid gaffe the Republican crazy man has ever made. But one of the weakened Democrats has committed the unpardonable sin of not wearing a China-Made American Flag lapel pin. Now That’s News!

Now waaaaaay back in the 60’s, that would be America 1.5 I guess, prominent Americans would speak out against the direction the country was going, and masses of people would take to the streets in protest.

Robert F. Kennedy was running for the presidency and according to Martin Luther King’s son Dexter Scott King, “RFK was considering him (Dr. King) as a vice presidential candidate.”

Both King and Kennedy were against the Vietnam war and King wanted to “force major economic reforms – starting with guaranteed annual incomes for all.”

http://www.newsweek.com/id/92026

In 1968 by summer’s end both King and Kennedy had been assassinated. That’s how things were done in America 1.5.

The Vietnam war raged on, and economic reforms wouldn’t be put in place until Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. But of course those reforms were only for the rich. Still are.

But I Digress … All I’m really trying to say is …

Americans used to fight for what they believed in. 8 hour work days, decent pay, a couple of weeks vacation, and the ability to raise a family and take care of ourselves if we got sick. Americans fought for what they deserved. The American dream was that our kids would have a better life than we did. Now the American Dream 2.0 is to have the inalienable right … to buy crap.

We have The Country We Deserve. The Fake One. We didn’t fight for anything. So we’ve got an unreasonable facsimile instead.

America 2.0.

Anybody wanna Reboot?

F for Fake April 22, 2008