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Damn! I can't even go to some escapist movie without
thinking about politics. BTW - the movie is hilarious,
literate, and has great production values. Only a
politics junkie like me could read this into it.
--------
Pirates of the Arabian Sea - The Curse of Black Oil
by arendt
There is only one explanation for repeated, normally-
fatal political errors to have failed to kill the Bush
Administration: they are already dead - as in "damned
souls", ghouls, "the undead".
The undead are increasingly popular at the movies.
This may be because the theme resonates subconsciously
with a populace that feels at the mercy of super-
natural economic forces that magically disappear
their jobs to third-world sweatshops.
"The Matrix Reloaded" had two "vampires" who
could shift between being ethereally untouchable
and physically present. They were exceedingly
dangerous and very hard to kill.
More to the point, "Pirates of the Caribbean" has
an entire ghost pirate ship, whose crew are likewise
un-killable. They plunder the oceans with impunity,
but there is no joy in it because a ghost is cursed to
have no physical sensations. Their curse was caused
by their own greed; looted treasure came with unexpected
conditions attached.
The Bush Oil Cabal is similarly cursed. They have
long since sold their souls in pursuit of oil wealth
and military power; and they have lost contact with
their human compassion in the process. The only
entities to which they are not totally brutal are their
own kind, soulless, lying CEOs and neocon apparatchiks.
(David Brock was dead on target when he labeled the
lynch mob chasing Bill Clinton "The Cult of the Soulless".)
And the neocons have the same code as the Caribbean
pirates: those who fall behind are abandoned. Interesting
how Enron had all those offshore accounts in the Caribbean.
Nobody seems to have connected the dots that the Cayman
Islands banking havens began as pirate havens.
The Cabal's wealth long ago bought the corporate media,
and coupled with the post-911 militarization of U.S. society,
has made their Cabal utterly invincible to public opinion.
George Bush lies and deceives the public about matters
of war and peace - normally a political death warrant.
Many swords of criticism are unsheathed and strike
home; but, in the media-enchanted world he inhabits,
the blows do no harm.
The swordsmen are bewildered. Was that not a clean stroke?
Why doesn't his head fall off? Because the media has selectively
changed the physics of politics for the Bush Cabal. The media
has ordained that the Bush Cabal is unkillable. On the other
hand, anyone who opposes them is quite mortal.
Like pirate raids, George Bush's tax cuts plunder the defenseless
American population to benefit the soulless neocons and CEOs.
They are totally indifferent to the social and economic carnage they
wreak because their riches place them beyond quotidian
considerations, like an economy that functions.
----
It is ironic that fundamentalist whackos are outraged at
the fictional Harry Potter for teaching witchcraft, when the
non-fiction neocon politicians they idolatrously worship are
the biggest coven of media witches and warlocks ever seen
in America.
We mere political mortals need to find the talisman that will lift this
media enchantment. Clearly, we can skewer Bush a thousand
times and do no damage. But at each stoke, we risk a fatal
riposte. He has unlimited chances to kill us, and we still have
no way to get at him. In another essay, I will discuss how to
break the media enchantment.
For now, one meme per essay: the Bush Administration as
pirate ship, the tax cut as plunder, the Cabal as the undead.
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