Economics 101 Read online

  *"You're travelling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wonderous land whose bounderies are that of the imagination. That's the signpost up ahead - you're next stop, The Twilight Zone. There's a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and timeless as infinity. It is the midddle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of the imagination. It is an area we call... The Twilight Zone. You unlock the door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension - a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into...The Twilight Zone. This highway leads to the shadowy tip of reality: you're on a through route to the land of the different, the bizarre, the unexplainable... Go as far as you like on this road. Its limits are only those of the mind itself. Ladies and Gentlemen, you're entering the wondrous dimension of imagination. You've just crossed over into... The Twilight Zone."

  The Distractions pointed to by Aldous Huxley so long ago have rendered our arguments perpetually unprovable, or, at best, merely half provable.

  We fight against the abstract; against each other, while the only real Truth is that We are being crushed by the Imperfect System...

  Yet all is one; all a symbiotic relationship, and when the Upper Two Percent hurt us, the bottom 98%, they hurt themselves.

  We can describe it, describe what the average life is like here, in all its disturbing details, and send it along, up the ladder, hoping for the best...

  Some describe with cold numbers and statistics, which always falls  closer to science than superstition. Some describe with horrors and monsters, heroes and history, which cover all the spaces between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge.

  Trickle up journalism.

  --

  I didn't start out this way.

  We didn't start out this way.

  The past forty years of bad policies, culminating with the Post-9/11 Orwellian Nightmare of the Bush Administration, has done this to us, each and every one.

  --

  -[but let us continue]-

  ...Then, in the very far distance, arcing up from beyond the wall, like fighter jets, official government issued font appeared. At first they were low, heavy and dull and almost too tiny to read, like the the fine print of every important report never read, hurtling and tumbling headlong directly at the small pair of ragamuffin bands at a tremendously unfathomable rate of speed; neither slow, nor fast, but half fast...

  -

  Some, seeing the font, thought they still had time. Others began to run. The font grew in solidity and clarity, and had been flung, they knew, by some tremendous catapult from beyond the wall. As the font grew closer, the words grew to incredible size and blotted the sky, and cut through the atomospheric perspective like a hot knife through butter, or, better yet, like a big, American  fat ass shitting on The Tidy Bowl Man, who had long ago been fired from his job cleaning toilets and had since navigated his boat, penniless,  up Shit Creek, without a paddle.

  Down they came, upon the lines and between the lines; hard as marble, cold as tombstones:

  JOBLESSNESS        HOMELESSNESS        POVERTY      THIRD WORLD LABOR   

  STAGNANT WAGES    PAY CUTS ECONOMIC DOWNTURN

  NO HEALTH INSURANCE      CEO COMPENSATION

  RECESSION DEPRESSION      CORPORATE WELFARE

  ECONOMIC INEQUALITY

  RIGHT TO WORK LAWS

  STUDENT LOAN DEBT    DOWNSIZING    VULTURE CAPITALISM

  PAYDAY LOANS

  TEMP AGENCIES    CITIZENS UNITED      BIG OIL

  CORPORATE GREED      UNFAIR LABOR PRACTICES    SUPERPACS

  WALL STREET AUSTERITY MEASURES

  PRODUCTIVITY DIVIDEND THEFT SELF DEPORTATION

  OVERCROWDED PRISONS

  FORECLOSURES

  POISONED WATER TABLES        GLOBAL WARMING

  DESERTIFICATION        BIG PHARMA

  ACCELLERATING INCARCERATION RATES

  DRUG COURTS   

  PRIVATELY OWNED PRISONS...

  --- 

  And each of these words crashed down, and crashed down like meteors.

  And the bottom half of each and every massive word disappeared beneath the soft ground with shattering force, half burying itself.

  And the scene struck me hard. The words fell upon the ragtag bands, some upon them and some between them, yet the resultant impact and partial obscuring of each word beneath the ground had at first caused me to reach for hope, which was that each word would somehow be defused, and somehow begin to loose some meaning.

  Yet their weight and implications remained, and their terrible meaning only became clearer as each word fell and crushed the life out of many of the poor and unfortunate who'd been too slow, and who'd found themselves under the weight of these words, trying desparately to survive, in our America, in ourUnited States of Distractions.

  And everthing that I have ever regarded as American swept out before my eyes like a video as an aged Johnny Cash strode out from beyond the walls of time, slowly, calmly, dignified, somber, dressed in appropriate black and carrying a guitar slung 'round his shoulder.

  He smiled at us with humane and compassionate gravity, yet, sadly and despairingly familiar to me and to many who live in these trying times, his smile faded away, right before  our eyes and well before its time.

  He began to strum a song on his old guitar, a song as familiar to me as to anyone who is American    -you, me, the Government-  anyone whom is self-critical, half damaged, half wrong, half damned and half neurotic, half introspective, half extroverted, half broken.

  -

  -E pluribus unum, yes?-

  ---

  A symbiotic relationship...

  ---------------------------------------------------------------

  ---Hurt---

  -

  I hurt myself today

  To see if I still feel

  I focus on the pain

  The only thing that's real

  The needle tears a hole

  The old familiar sting

  Try to kill it all away

  But I remember everything

  What have I become

  My sweetest friend

  Everyone I know

  goes away

  In the end

  And you could have it all

  My empire of dirt

  I will let you down

  I will make you hurt

  I wear this crown of thorns

  Upon my liar's chair

  Full of broken thoughts

  I cannot repair

  Beneath the stains of time

  The feelings disappear

  You are someone else

  I am still right here

  What have I become

  My sweetest friend

  Everyone I know

  goes away

  In the end

  And you could have it all

  My empire of dirt

  I will let you down

  I will make you hurt

  If I could start again

  A million miles away

  I would keep myself

  I would find a way...

  ---Nine Inch Nails

  ----