Meat Bags



I blame:

• computers
• forthrightness and decency
• bad strategy
• not complacency or arrogance, but merely thinking that for one moment you can ever stop fighting even when you’ve won
• forgetting that vengeance must be swift
• not knowing that even if you choose a low sodium, organic brand, you still need, every once in a while to open up a can of good fashioned whup ass
• underestimating the stupidity of the American people and the need to bang, bang, bang the drum to get your message across. That is, you must bang the drum to get your message across.
• drum banging required.

This morning my computer couldn’t configure some updates and wasn’t starting. Even though the desktop said “DON’T TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTER” as the seconds turned into tens of second and I found myself running out of things to straighten on my actual desk, it was all I could not turn off my computer, throw it out the window, kick it, anything to make it work. Luckily, the configuration finally aborted and the computer started. I see it with my students [I run a private tutoring company], whenever they want to show me something on a computer or do something on a calculator, if something doesn’t work instantaneously, they’ll punch the same button over and over again, demanding it work. There is a panic and an anger that seizes us when our shit doesn’t work; not just when it doesn’t work, but when it doesn’t work instantly. I doubt that people were ever by nature patient, but since the advent of the computer et al. and the possibility for machines or anything to function at the speed of thought, our natural poise/patience has all but vanished. This phenomenon has, of course only served to make us better meat bags.


In sports, it can take years to turn a bad franchise around. It depends on the depth of the problems hobbling the organization, the rules under which the team functions and the management brought in to change things. A loyal fan does not turn on his team if turnabout doesn’t come, say, in spring training. Unfortunately if you run the U.S. government franchise, fans tend to be less loyal and your rivals are playing within and without your own organization. Even your own teammates are out for themselves—like playing for the Knicks under Isaiah Thomas. I’m don’t want to turn into George Will here, so enough with the sports metaphors, but for Christ sake, the guy never really had a chance.


And then he forgot the first rule of sports [ok one more sports analogy]: if you want to beat the Yankees you don’t ever stop fighting. Winning the election was like scoring a couple of runs in the first inning. If you want to beat the Yankees you have to keep the pressure on every single fucking minute because the minute you let up they’ll be up your ass so far you’ll see Jeter’s face in your colonoscopy. No, the only way to beat the Yankees or Fox or health insurance companies is to keep fighting until they are dead, and even if you think they are dead don’t leave them lying there to rot peacefully; no, you must rip their fucking heads off, bleed them, feed their entrails to Bo, sprinkle them with lye and nail gun them into the walls of an abandoned West Baltimore tenement.


Fox and the Republicans knew what tack to take out of the box, “Just say, ‘No.’” They opposed everything on the basest terms no matter how speciously. If Obama tried to help the sick, the poor and the middle class, they called him socialist. If he tried to prop up Wall Street, they called him elitist. If he had cured cancer they would have blamed him for not paying enough attention to heart disease.


If he could have gotten six Democrats to agree to say the same thing, here’s all Obama would have had to have his people do every single minute of every single day. At any point in the day during which they opened their mouths to say anything to anyone, this is all they would have had to say:

Health Care Reform will make everyone richer, freer and more secure.

Say that every day, first thing and then slug it out, explain, spin, finagle. But say that first and often. Go to Tea Parties. Rouse all the Volvo drivers you roused for the election [your base, remember them?] and get them to every town meeting to sell, sell, sell: freedom, wealth and security [never mind actual health]. I swear to Christ it would have worked. But that’s flaming excrement under the bridge now.


Here’s another handy strategy tip: when you’re formulating your administration don’t eviscerate the highest chamber of the legislative branch to do so. You might need them there. Obama’s election took a potent 5% of the Senate out of the Senate, leaving open seats vulnerable to corrupt Governors, special elections and weak fill-ins. Obama, Biden, Clinton, Emanuel and Salazar all left their seats, Kennedy friggin died and the only ex-Senator who could have helped them without leaving his seat, Daschle, was enjoined from entering the health care fray by idiot tax problems. Ugh. No wonder the Senate Dems need a super-majority to so much as requisition toilet paper for the Senate Chambers.


In the end, Obama wanted to be noble. He was noble, but in so doing he gave away the store. I’m a crappy haggler too, but, Jesus, when they let Lieberman keep his committee seats after the election, couldn’t they have wrested from him some agreement not to stomp on the balls of the health care bill down the line? When they gave all our money and our children’s futures to the banks, couldn’t they have stipulated that lending and liquidity be a feature of any return to profitability? The banks ripped us off, recouped their debt faster than even if the economy hadn’t tanked, and ended up laughing their all the way, well, to themselves, all because we couldn’t, wouldn’t or were afraid to stipulate. Leaving these things to people’s better natures will NEVER happen.


My bet is Obama couldn’t stipulate shit. One thing is clearer with each passing day, each nail in the coffin of Health Care Reform and each obscene Supreme Court decision, we are nothing but meat bags. We exist at the mercy of large corporations who have the time and resources to compound their power and advantage with every passing second. It is in no one’s interest for any of us to be healthy or empowered or to have a voice in our government. We exist to ingest food, drugs, entertainment and financial instruments—our mouths, ears, eyes and minds are taken. If they could devise products for us to ingest anally, we’d be getting those too. The more they can keep us plugged into our feed bags, dollar meals and iPods, the greater their power, wealth and influence. Which is why it’s so important for our food and our computers to be so fast—any gap in the intake process and we risk exposure to the world outside our pens: the hemp gray, sunless world beyond the matrix.