Mcmansions, SUVs, Mega-Churches and the Baghdad Embassy: Life Among Dim and Brutal Giants

In microcosmic mimicry of the plight of the besieged middle and laboring classes, my parent's Atlanta neighborhood, as is the case with many others in the vicinity, is being destroyed, in reality -- disappeared -- by a blight of upper-class arrogance. The modest, post-war homes of the area are being "scraped" from the landscape as an infestation of bloated mcmansions rises from the tortured soil. These particleboard and Tyvek-choked monstrosities loom over the remaining smaller houses of the area, as oversized and ugly as mindless bullies, as banal as the dreams of petty tyrants.

In the surrounding suburbs, in a similar manner as mcmansions eclipse sunlight, throwing the adjacent houses into half-light, mega-churches eclipse the light of reason, leaving their congregations in an ignorant half-light of dogma and superstition. Of course, these true believer lunatics are wrong about everything, except, perhaps, for their elliptical apprehension regarding the arrival of proliferate cataclysms in the years to come. Oddly: Although they promulgate dire warnings on the subject, they seem gleeful at the prospect of wide-spread suffering.

How could they not be? They've seized upon a fantasy that allows them to escape from the tyranny of their own life-suffocating belief system. Attempting to subdue the suffocating dread of their corporately circumscribed lives, they wish for the destruction of the entire planet. Hence, their escapist fantasy, by the necessity of narrative, is huge, outrageous -- apocalyptic. The progenitor of their End Time tale is this: The believer's emotional inflexibility begets a form of ontological giantism -- a phenomenon that arises when one's worldview is too small to explain the larger world. Therefore, a story must be created that contains violence and terror on such a massive scale that its unfolding would kill off the entire, problematic world. "That's right world, there's not enough room on this planet for both you and my beliefs. One of us has to go."

Upon the nation's roadways and interstate highways, the overgrown clown cars of the apocalypse, SUVs, Humvees, and oversized pickup trucks also evince hugeness to compensate for the feelings of those folks inside the grotesque vehicles of being crushed by alienation and isolation -- not only while on the road -- but by the realities of an existence within a hapless, oil-dependent empire which is itself powerless against the changing realities of the larger world.

In the ranks of the exploiter class, the fat salaries of CEOs separate them further from the general population of the consumer state (that they take every opportunity to bamboozle) as the American public itself grows fatter and fatter in body mass, vainly attempting to sate an inner emptiness borne of their perceived helplessness before the predation of corporate culture.

Concurrently, in Baghdad, the U.S. embassy, which, when completed, will be the largest "diplomatic" compound on the planet is, in fact, an inadvertent monument to the mindless colossus the U.S.A. has become. The structure is as accurate as the art of architecture can be in its depiction of the spirit of a nation's people. As big and bloated as our national sense of exceptionalism, it stands in the so-called Green Zone of Baghdad, shielding those who will be bunkered down within it -- not only from the murderous madness unfolding outside its highly fortified walls -- but from reality itself. A massive emblem of the arrogance of power, the embassy is a testament to how the noxious vapors of cultural self-deception can be made manifest in reenforced concrete, armed watchtowers and razor wire.

Through it all, like some eternally slumbering Hindu deity, we Americans dream these things into existence. Far from blameless, we continue to allow the elites to exploit us; therefore, we enable and sustain their titanic sense of entitlement. In turn, we accept their paltry bribes and, as a result, our banal, selfish dreams have conjured forth George Bush from the zeitgeist. Ergo, Bush is a man whose impenetrable narcissism is so grotesque and ringed with fortifications, that all on his own he constitutes a walking analog of the American embassy in Baghdad.

In addition, we Americans continue to believe our fables of righteous power: Big is good, goes our John Wayne jack-off fantasy. Our leaders must be large: Only Mcmansion-like men, such as Mitt Romney, are acceptable. We believe: Dennis Kucinich is too diminutive in physical stature to be president -- with the length of his body being roughly the size of Romney's head.

In turn, our national landscape is stretched to the breaking point: Cluttered upon it, gigantic islands of garish light torment the night, scouring away the stars, estranging us from imagination, empathy, and eros, and leaving us only with the insatiable appetites of consumerism. Thus, around the clock, inside enormous, under-inspected, industrial slaughterhouses and meat processing plants, underpaid, benefit-bereft workers ply their gruesome, monstrously cruel trade, then the butchered wares are transported by way of brutal, double and triple-axle trailer, diesel trucks over stygian interstate highways to sepulchral supermarkets and charnel house restaurant chains. Insuring, we flesh-eating zombies are provided with all the water-bloated, steroid-ridden meat and industrially farmed, pesticide-laquered vegetables and starches -- The Cuisines Of The Living Dead -- we could ever crave ... uum, uum, it's the Thanatotic yumminess of empire's end. Try our convenient drive through window. Would you like us to super-size your order of commodified death?

Hyperbolic ravings, you say. America is not a culture in love with death.

Let's see. Drawing upon just one example: The corpses of well over half a million dead Iraqis testify otherwise. Moreover, the continuing Iraqi resistance to our occupation speaks volumes as well. Yet still, most of us cannot hear their elegy of outrage over the din created by the parade of killer clowns that we have mistaken for the pageantry of nationhood.

How does one slow this juggernaut of psychosis and curb these acts of murder/suicide being perpetrated on a global scale? Truth is, we might not be able to stop it, because this is what lies beneath our unlimited sense of entitlement and self-defeating arrogance: a death-wish that manifests itself as exceptionalism and may well destroy the nation by means of imperial overreach -- which is, of course, the time-established method by which empires dispose of themselves.

Further, this state of affairs is exacerbated by the narcissistic insularity of our media elite. At the end of the day, it's their tumescent egos that are distorting our societal discourse; their vanities and attendant self-serving pronouncements are little more than steaming cargos of horseshit, carried and delivered by one-trick-jackasses -- jackasses endowed with the singular skill of being able to read a teleprompter ... Fred Thompson, your agent is calling: You have an important call from Washington, DC.

Notice this: The more permeating the rot becomes within the system's structure the more huge and pervasive the edifice of media imagery will grow – and the more trivial its content will become. The closer we come to systemic collapse the more we will hear about celebrity contretemps. Cretinous heiresses and shit-wit starlets, with shoddy mechanisms of self-restraint, people the public imagination, because they carry our infantilism, embody our collective carelessness, and, in turn, suffer public humiliation, as we desperately attempt to displace, upon them, the humiliation of our own daily existence within the oppressive authoritarianism of the corporate state.

Correspondingly, there is a well-known (by those who care to look) link between fascism and corporatism. To Mussolini, the two terms were interchangeable. According to rumor, we defeated fascism, during the first half of the 20th century. Yet, at present, we spend our days sustaining a liberty-loathing, soul-enervating corpocracy. To live under corporatism is, in ways large and small, to be a fascist-in-training. Everyday, hour by hour, the exploitive, neo-liberal concept of work devours more and more of our lives. As a consequence, the true self within is crushed to dust and what remains rises as cultural squalls of low-level fear, with its concomitant need for constant distraction. As all the while, the psyches of the well-off (financially, that is) become inflated, gaudy and ugly; in short, internally, they become human versions of mcmansions.

Freedom is a microcosm of the forces of evolution engendered by living in the midst of life -- a mode of being that apprehends and is transformed by the beauty, sorrow, and wit of the world. Conversely, authoritarian societies are collectives of accomplished liars and lickspittle ciphers, where one must conceal one's essential self at all costs and the soul falls into atrophy.

To what extent does authoritarian rule diminish both the individual and a nation? Simply, take a look around you and witness the keening wasteland our nation has become. Furthermore, our emptiness cannot be filled by any amount of wealth or power. This is the reason the obscene amounts of mammon acquired by the privileged classes is never -- can never be -- enough to satisfy them, for their inner abyss is boundless. In a similar vein, no amount of killing can sate a psychopath's emptiness. Dick Cheney will scowl all the way to the boneyard, hoping he can ascend to heaven by scaling the mountainous pile of corpses he's responsible for placing there.

In folk stories, when giants are about, drought and famine withers the land and starvation stalks its people. Accordingly, the ruthless giantism inherent to the Corporate/Military/Mass Media state has withered our inner lives, blighted our landscape, and left us powerless before a huge, demeaning system that devours our time, health and humanity.

The bone-grinding giants of the American corporate and political classes have shot the Golden Goose full of growth hormones, enclosed her in an industrial coop, and hoarded her voluminous output of eggs. Yet, nothing satisfies them.

Meanwhile, online, we struggle in a Jack in the Beanstalk Insurgency, hoping that from things as tiny and seemingly trivial as mere beans -- our postings, exchanges and periodic meet-ups -- the fall of tyrannical giants might begin.

Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist and philosopher bard living in New York City. He may be contacted at: philangie2000@yahoo.com

"Slouching toward Bethlehem to live in a McMansion"


A couple of towns here just outside DC have banned the practice of slapping McMansions in old neighborhoods while the County has set aside about a fourth of the land as an Agricultural Reserve where each house must sit on at least 25 acres and farming is subsidized, it works out OK. But, it just goes to show that a local government has had to regulate the desires of people to have big impressive houses wherever the hell they want.

No rules to preserve farm land. The breadbasket of the intermountain west is growing commuters now.
Guess we can always import our food from china.

That will prove rough going, in the age of peak oil.

To quote James Kunstler: The age of the 3000 mile tomato is over.

Grass has to be the only crop grown on earth that is pampered and not consumed. How vain and wasteful the human species has become.

People water, fertilize, de-pest, all to grow a thick lush lawn. Then they cut it really short and dump the trimmings in a landfill somewhere.

Don't get me started on golf courses.

I live in the mountain west as well. We have nothing but houses going in over old farmland. I'm not that old, but when *I* can say "when I was younger, this was all farmland," there is a problem.

Each house with a sprinkler system and a lawnmower.

Thanks to housing developments and their covenants, you can't even *NOT* grow a lawn in some places. Want to Xeriscape? You'll be sued. Want more than a one row garden in your back yard? Lawsuit land.

I'm saving my money. One of these days, the bottom will fall out of the market, and I'm hoping to buy some decent land somewhere that I can put it to a sustainable use. But I'm just weird.

Jeez, who wants to live in a covenant neighborhood where they regulate the color, density, and height of the lawn on your own property? Sounds like private-sector fascism taken to its logical, loony extreme.
No wonder people are moving out of the suburbs and into downtown areas of cities; its to recover the quirkiness and individuality that exists there, as opposed to the bleached blandness of covenant-land in the burbs.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_4618.cfm



A relative recently moved to a desert area out west because of her job. She bought a house in the middle of desert in one of a multitude of recent developments in that area. Just over 10 inches of rain per year and every house has bright electric green grass. the back yards are hard packed sand utterly lacking in organic matter that would support the grass. water sprinklers not only water the grass but wash driveways and the streets clean of dust in the photos. how can people think this is sustainable? I wonder if any of them think of this at all.

Bought house? Check.
Greener lawn than neighbors? Check.
Better car than neighbors? Check.
Better vacation than the neighbors? Check...

When I owned a house, my neighbors hated me because my lawn was 3-5 times taller than theirs, and it just didn't look right. I said, we don't live on a golf-course green. There is no reason to have short grass. Second, dark green grass on dark brown earth is a lot better for everything underneath the ground than the bright green grass on the hard dusty brown ground.

Guess who got the complaint letters? And when I only watered during the dry season, and let the rain handle the rest? I was the bastard.

Glad I sold.

complete with subsidies for those who can afford 25 acres and a house. It is indeed an amazing country we live in, when this is our example how our local government saves us from our desires through regulation, while subsidizing wealth within a few miles of the inner city turmoil and poverty that defines our nations capitol.

You are right, it would make a nice poem, Requiem of Social Disorder by Political Order.

my favorte line. might have to appropriate it sometime

:spray:

Amerka is exactly how I would put it. Yet, I feel there is still hope in that essay.

I've read a lot of great work here, but yours is the work of Thomas Paigne. I hope it is published far and wide. Every word and every line was careful and deliberate. You were not writing as if there is shame to be had, but facts that have become us. And I still felt hope in the piece. It feels as if you put a lot of intent into your work....

properly credited, with link. I bet it shows up all over the Net by tomorrow--though many won't bother to credit it, of course.

Whew!

:yourock:

that no man is so much better than you that he has the innate right to govern you without your consent? I paraphrase, possibly badly.

It's another take on "government is at the consent of the governed".

I am an irascible anti-authoritarian and super individualist, almost Randian, except for the heartless crap. I also believe in social evolution, and that periods of elitist excess are followed by periods of elitist populism ("reverse snobbery"), which aren't qualitatively much better or more ethical.

At some point though, you have to go from being a victim of the evils you perceive to doing something about them, besides sing a swan song, however lovely. McMansions, SUV's, and petty tyrants have always existed to validate the middle class in one form or another, and certainly not just in our lifetimes. And people have been kvetching as long as there have been fullers and bakers painting their marble statues garish colors and stampeding their fancy palanquins through the agora. What has changed, besides converting some of the want-to-have's to the have-to-have's, to perpetuate dimness and brutality?

The trick is, if you join with power in the hope of changing from within, are you good enough to govern in turn? To resist the temptation of a McMansion, an SUV, and petty tyranny? The road to hell, and all that . . . .

to change society. Quoting from the documentary, "Punk: Attitude<.>" (And myself from a previous essay.)

I viewed , recently, in which independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch posited that art movements (and political ones as well) don't need the masses, they just need a committed 5 percent ... the masses will follow. There is no need to inform the mob; a mob, by its very nature, is uninformed -- and unteachable. The belief in the existence of an informed mob is like believing in the existence of that chimera called compassionate conservatism -- and we've seen where credulity to that sort of crazy talk leads.

As was the case with Punk, which Jarmusch termed, "do it yourself art" -- one needs passion, commitment, conviction -- tempered by an ability to apprehend and uniquely interpret changing realities and circumstances -- plus an inner reservoir of courage and follow through."

Passion and commitment do change things ... but one must not choose safety over the truth of their heart. That's the thing that traps most folks -- shuffling toward the Siren Song of Security after they've been abused a bit by another deity, The Bitch God of Necessity.

:rofl: you turn a mighty fine phrase.

I, for one, could have any of it and choose not to cuz its fucking BOOOORING.

One is rarely (if ever) bored when one stays with the truth of the heart.

It's not a matter of Puritanical or Calvinistic "temptation"; it's a matter of staying with the being-in-the-present urgency of the soul.

it's not "temptation" to excess so much as temptation to convenience. If you have three children under the age of five in most states you need three child seats. Are you including minivans in the SUV category? Or are all good citizens required to have multiple family vehicles and drivers?

Not trying to be crass, but people gravitate towards things that appear to convey convenience to their lives, justifiably or not. Of course, status symbols as well, but a two-income dual professional household that requires two wardrobes of business attire, plus additional casual wear mean that people are going to look for things as mundane as clothing storage, and McWalk-In-Closets seem to fit those bills for many. The "designerfication" of Target makes everyone want the cool glitzy thing they saw representing middle class success on their favorite prime time soap.

I'm not saying that's the way it should be, just the way it is. We have always been sheep, most of us.

And even where apparent excess might seem justified, very few people make personal convenience choices based upon excitement (or boredom).

No, my point really was more that the pendulum swings every couple of decades. Whatever we (the bloated excess people AND the strident "should-be" people) choose to defend, we all feel superior to those who disagree with us, always feel justified in our choices, whatever they may be.

I think if we judge it shouldn't be the symptoms of our ill social conscience, but the causes of it. If we seek to change it, it should be at the source, not the outcome.

People rationalize things out of convenience or out of the need to fit in or that its good for the image or good for the career. Bollocks!

How often have you actually gone over to the house of your collegue? It takes minimum effort to fit in to an acceptable extent...the rest takes just a little spine to stand up for yourself as an individual.

And as for convenience...bullshit. Everything we buy is just another inconvenience at this point.

I'm interested in the vague possible notion that something can be true and lasting...not just a ho-hum pendelum.

I don't get it...I have more money than I know what to do with...yet the last thing I want to be bothered with is buying / building a house...shit buying anything new at this point cuz it just takes time to figure out what to do with. I live in a three room apartment cuz I don't like walking for ages just to find my wife.

*Simplicity is convenience.*

Such an American perversion of thought to talk of all that crap and the need to manage all that crap as convenience. Its like calling it temptation. Both notions are absurd. Those things are burdens. Burdens.

So what is this perceived convenience you're talking about?

Enjoyed this essay almost as much as "The Land of the Bubble People". Our country truly is in danger.

exactly what I see and feel.

A part of me actually hopes for a massive implosion. We deserve it and I think ultimately we need it. Hell, the world needs it to happen. I don't see anything awful that has been put into place being reversed. I think that hope died along with the Alito and Roberts placement. My family is bracing for it. I know some people think we're a little nuts but who isn't a little crazy these days? In my gut I think we're right. In my heart I desperately want to be wrong.

But you know, the supremes keep giving more rights to non-sentient entities and taking rights away from human beings. And here we sit and bicker amongst ourselves over candidates who will not change anything for us in any truly meaningful way. At least none that will get elected in our corrupt system.

I wish more people would see that it's no longer about who will get the nom or win this election or that, but that "we the people" need to get together across party lines (and not just dem and repubs) to really enact some change. I don't know exactly what the right answer is but I do know enough to see that more of what we've been doing doesn't work.


Feeling a little fatalistic today.

K&R

I cannot say the same for the McMansion Slackjaws, who are already losing their massive shrines to spending out of their means because of their shady mortgages and not having a pot to piss in.

We pay for everything outright. If we cannot pay "cash on the barrel," as my Dad used to say, it doesn't get bought. We have a mortgage. No credit cards. Two paid-off cars. Anything that gets charged to a department store credit card (for the extra savings) gets paid off in the same month. We have invested wisely. We have no children.

What a mess the younger generation is inheriting from their moronic elders, to whom American Idol and Paris Hilton was more important than the rape and murder of the United States of America.

I've never seen a better description of the corporate media . . .

"this state of affairs is exacerbated by the narcissistic insularity of our media elite. At the end of the day, it's their tumescent egos that are distorting our societal discourse; their vanities and attendant self-serving pronouncements are little more than steaming cargos of horseshit, carried and delivered by one-trick-jackasses -- jackasses endowed with the singular skill of being able to read a teleprompter ..."

thanks for stating so eloquently what most of us are thinking, but can't quite articulate . . . at least not like this . . .

America will be no exception- the only question is, how precipitous the decline and fall will be.

Wonderful piece, Phil. You certainly have a way with words. :)

Bravo.

I live in the epitome of macmansionville, Naples, FL. This is the land of CEO winter homes and nouveau riche snobbery. This is the new Palm Beach if you will. We just had a record breaking real estate sale last month, a macmansion on the beach went for a paltry $40 million. If you want to see the playground of those corporate whores and hawks of this administration, come on down. Be sure to bring the Bentley, you wouldn't dare be seen in a Ford.

I can't match your words Phil, so please just accept my applause and recommendation.

:applause:

Some of it is a bit extreme, but I find no real faults with any of it.

These two lines are particularly spot-on

Freedom is a microcosm of the forces of evolution engendered by living in the midst of life -- a mode of being that apprehends and is transformed by the beauty, sorrow, and wit of the world. Conversely, authoritarian societies are collectives of accomplished liars and lickspittle ciphers, where one must conceal one's essential self at all costs and the soul falls into atrophy.

Notice this: The more permeating the rot becomes within the system's structure the more huge and pervasive the edifice of media imagery will grow – and the more trivial its content will become. The closer we come to systemic collapse the more we will hear about celebrity contretemps. Cretinous heiresses and shit-wit starlets, with shoddy mechanisms of self-restraint, people the public imagination, because they carry our infantilism, embody our collective carelessness, and, in turn, suffer public humiliation...

Spot-on, and noticing the circus was getting louder/crazier in direct proportion to the atrophy of the mechanism of freedom was something I noticed years ago.

(ever notice Phil, how badly it sucks to take the long view in a world where most are unable to see past next month? to see shit years before others do, and have them dismiss you, then to be proven right so many damned years later they can't even remember you got it correct...bet that's happened to you, too, a few times, eh?)

RE: and have them dismiss you, then to be proven right so many damned years later they can't even remember you got it correct ...

Yep, I've been talking about Global Warming since the 1980s ... Not actually, sought after dinner party repartee during the Reagan Era.

why we attract so many talented writers, artists et al, I don't know. I do know I appreciate them as they emerge!

K&R and bookmarked. I know exactly what you mean about your parent's neighborhood - my mom is now 92, and barely hanging on - and a Yellow Dog Dem to the end.

When you get tired of the Big Apple, come up for a visit. It'll kick start your poetic/bardish genes big time!

...to be having a better time than those ass-clowns. The sad truth is, Americans lack enough imagination to turn off the TV and live.

the 'impenetrable narcissism' which characterizes our government, media and corporate entities.

Quote from your excellent article:

"Through it all, like some eternally slumbering Hindu deity, we Americans dream these things into existence. Far from blameless, we continue to allow the elites to exploit us; therefore, we enable and sustain their titanic sense of entitlement. In turn, we accept their paltry bribes and, as a result, our banal, selfish dreams have conjured forth George Bush from the zeitgeist. Ergo, Bush is a man whose impenetrable narcissism is so grotesque and ringed with fortifications, that all on his own he constitutes a walking analog of the American embassy in Baghdad."

------------------
Exactly.
Once you really understand the condition of pathological Narcissism you start to understand how exploitation works, how it suckers others. There are no boundaries, no brakes. A Narcissist will use, abuse, and exploit without the slightest intrusion of conscience. And they do it while creating the appearance of themselves as fine, upstanding citizens. We are suffering under the reign of a whole cadre of them, and those who admire them.

When will we have had enough?

You've captured the spirit of how the core ills are linked and are conspiring against the natural happy state humanity deserves or at least deserves to strive for in natural freedom.

And welcome!

for so many in the worlds wealthiest society. The grand majority of people in the US no longer realize the difference between wanting and needing, and see not the emotional peril in living a life, when enough is never enough. Instead what they can not have, they dream of having, until their happiness is dependant on escalating material visions.

It was much more simple and real in my grand father's days, when happiness was found in the people around him and the circumstances he and his family created. I remember the simplicity of the happiness he held most dear, so basic and profound. He once said, ...

--- If you are honest, you work hard, and you take good care of your family; you might not always have everything you want, but you will always have everything you need. ---

The mcmansion america today, social and material, is so far beyond the profound simplistic happiness he experienced, as to seem to be of a society of different origin. Is this really the same country, and are we really the progeny of his generation? Can we consider the technical industrial computerized society we pass on to our grandchildren, a better world? If not, why not? Is the root of our salvation in retracing our steps to those more simplistic and viable days, when I was we, when my was our, when contentment was within our own doing?

Your testimony of mcamerica leads me to believe the latter.