Friday, December 21, 2007

Winter Solstice

Today is one of my very favorite days of the year -- the winter solstice -- because from now on every day gets lighter just a little bit earlier. So each freezing cold morning as we head out to exercise in the dark, we know that we are now on the upswing toward warmer dawns, until June when we actually begin in daylight and it is downright hot and muggy, even at 5:45 a.m. Then the whole cycle starts over again, only then it's in the opposite direction, toward darkness and cold, which gives the summer solstice a bit of a sad quality...

Anyway, I recently got the idea to schedule a special holiday family outing just for us five, since we rarely do anything all together but by ourselves anymore. So I got tickets to Spamalot at the National Theater, and we went out for a nice dinner beforehand.

The play was silly and funny and the girls loved it, but in the end I found it more than a tad disturbing. It may be just me and my recent disgust with the state of the world lately, but I found the final message in the play, that we should "always look on the bright side of life" even when things appear to be all wrong, a little creepy. It reminded me how entertainment -- like religion -- has become another opiate of the masses.

Because while the Bush administration has been chipping away at our civil rights and undermining the very nature of our democracy in its increasingly Big Brother way, the American people are distracted by news of Brittany Spears and Branjelina. We are spoon fed more and more entertainment news – on all the major networks and in the major newspapers and magazines – instead of real news all the time. This is a classic tool of fascism. Numb people with fake, happy news and entertainment while doing your dirty work on the sly.

So I sat watching the play's finale, whose entire tone changed at the end of what had been a satire, and all the people in the audience were clapping and nodding like kindergartners at the school recital, and it was just sort of chilling. Because that message was exactly what the bad guys want us all to do – remain fat and happy, spend $500 to take our families to these silly shows, and don’t worry our pretty little heads about the fact that they are secretly wiretapping anyone they choose without a warrant; that they can lock anyone up as a “national threat” without public charges, a right to a lawyer, or a public trial; and they are trying to foment hatred and fear of immigrants and gays as yet another distraction from what's really going on -- instead of standing up and protesting their clear destruction of the Bill of Rights.

And meanwhile we continue sending money and young people to a losing war that was based on their lies and deception, and the whole presidential election race is a big fat charade too. They -- including the mainstream media -- winnow the field by creating a horserace between their acceptable choices, while marginalizing the only ones (Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul) who are really telling the truth.

But what's a busy, stressed, well meaning voter to do? Even if you had the time and passion to try and fight, the big money interests can bury your feeble efforts through all their high-priced powerful lobbyists, who buy the politicians. That’s why Hillary and Obama and Edwards offer no different choices at all – they all feed at the same exact trough as Bush and co. Kucinich and Paul are trying to buck the system, but the major media – who actually are OWNED by the same big-money interests as the pols – marginalize them totally so no one will take them seriously and “throw their vote away” on a candidate who doesn’t have a prayer of winning. And thus, they have no prayer of winning! That’s where the system is truly corrupted, and there’s just not much we can do about it until people wake up and realize they’re being had. So discouraging.

As long as the vast majority of Americans get their news from Fox and CNN – propaganda machines that the Kremlin would envy – we're all just sheep to the slaughter. Do I sound like a conspiracy theorist nut job? Well I guess I am then -- guilty as charged.

P.S. I did actually enjoy the show and the time with the fam! :)