01/08/02 12:31:56 AM
on the ground
I am having the worst stretch of bad computer-luck since 1990. The latest is the refusal of Microsoft’s vastly bloated shell program, Explorer.exe, to do anything. Period. Last night I thought it might be a good idea to install Microsoft’s Personal Web Server; I thought since I do not have internet access anymore that I would use the local web server to simplify my viewing of the pages I write. Now, I have not only lost the shell program (which, when working, produces the start button, the taskbar, and the system tray, along with about a million other features of almost every Windows program), but I have also lost IE5 and access to all of the cool little apps which I relied heavily on and which resided in the system tray.
I know how to fix it: I have to reinstall IE5. But I can’t do that because I have always installed it using Microsoft’s Active Setup, from source files that stay on Microsoft servers. It was easy with that fabulous connection I had, once upon a time.
Am I failing to get some cosmic message here? Is my effort to maintain a feeble presence on the web ill-fated? Does some vast higher power want me to stop writing here–or stop posting here and start writing, perhaps?
And since I am cranky anyway, what the fuck is all this excessive use of the phrase, ‘On the ground…’? Whenever a journalist or politician makes any reference to being physically present in a place, the invariable fashion lately is not to say simply that so-and-so is at the battle front, rather they say something like, ‘Dan Rather is on the ground in Afghanistan.’. Oh, if only that were literally true… Or better still, ‘Strom Thurmond is on the ground at the capital.’. In addition to the annoying fact that this stupid blemish on the vernacular is never going to actually effect the demise of either asshole, it is further annoying for the fact that it represents language which captures absolutely nothing aesthetic, poetic, meaningful, emotional, or even utilitarian about reality. It is, in my paranoid opinion, a code-phrase–since it has no other purpose–signalling complicity in the prevailing soup of lies which is being paddled by sinister conservative cowards in a cauldron of social frenzy which they keep as hot as possible. Such a signal is not insignificant, for any one of us who dares not conform to the waxing forces of perception control might just end up in that soup.
This new McCarthyism (not my phrase) is a bundling-bag of dishonesty keeping us from knowing or touching what we have actually become. Somehow, by believing the lies about who is dangerous, about what qualifies as patriotism, and about what constitutes terrorism, we will remain virginal–unsoiled though we roll in the hay with smelly characters of despicable intent, the likes of Bush, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft. Conformity is something I reject for its own sake; that may be my flaw, and it may have cost me many beneficial alliances over most of my life. But in the current tide of events, it may well become a virtue. The non-conformists became the heroes in 1939, in Berlin.
Greenpeace is a terrorist organization, under the criteria of the so-called Patriot Act. The frat party that was the Boston Tea Party was a terrorist act, based on that legislation. What I am writing here is probably breaking numerous federal laws, but that puts me in ‘good’ company, right along with Bush and Ashcroft, and if what I wrote was actually important enough to be noticed (a thinly-veiled challenge to the inaptly named Justice Department) then I might get in trouble.
But I am an American. Maybe I waste my life, behave like a jerk, ride my bike in the snow, and fantasize about being powerful while embracing the role of a victim. But I have something which some on this planet who might read these words don’t have–the right to say them. That has been a jewel of petty value to us Americans; we have undervalued our freedom so much that we deserve now to have it threatened–we need to have it threatened–if nothing else to reveal to us who we can trust, and teach us what our freedom is really worth. It saddens me to see how the majority of Americans seem to care little about who can be trusted, and are exhibiting their indifference by letting their civil freedom be slowly withdrawn from their custody as if they cannot be trusted with it. And it astounds me that they seem to agree; they seem to think that big brother really should keep the treasure that belongs to them–to each of us. If I were a conformist, I’d agree, because in America you succeed, and excel, and prosper (like GE and Time-Warner) by alliances–by winks and nods and considerations exchanged.
But I do not agree, because we hold these truths to be self evident; that all people are created equal and are endowed (by their creator, or maybe just by chance) with certain inalienable treasures. Inalienable; they cannot be removed. So if you try to give it away, you’re lying and you’re participating in a complex of lies that does not merely repudiate some quaintly American notion of freedom. If you try to give away the treasure of your freedom, even by degrees, then you are participating in nothing less than the repudiation of an absolute truth.
So there. Now go play, and be nice. And remember, fear makes you mean, but fear is an illusion. The feeling is real–indeed it is–but there is nothing it can do to you. Nothing. Be nice.