Page 27 - The Myth and the Moment

Morning

head for some Third World tropical paradise, there to live out my
days in relative ease until I and/or the world terminate? Definitely
out of character. I’d write me out of my own play if I did that. That’s
the beauty of not swimming upstream with the rest of the fish: I
don’t need the current against me to know I’m alive. I don’t need to
be stepping on other people to find my path. And it’s a good thing:
they might step back, and do me some damage.
On your right, ladies and gentlemen, Los Angeles High School.
Really? Are you sure, driver? It looks awfully like a prison or some
kind of fortress. Well, it used to look like a school, but form had to
follow function, you know; especially on the funds allotted to
education in this country; so here it is: a fire-proof, escape-proof,
learning-proof institution. It’s like a television set that’s been gutted:
the box can still be watched, but nothing’s going on. And the great
men, giants of capitalism, captains of industry, where are they?
Philanthropy ended three generations ago. Economy needs cheap
labor now, since not enough jobs: the ‘Iron Law of Wages.’ No
vision. Infrastructure? Building for the future? Maybe they know The
End is coming. Modern equivalent of an orgy: robber-barons’ last
round-up. Grab all you can, the final accounting is nigh.
Was I more amazed or disgusted when I figured out the military-
industrial complex was really a psychological disorder? How could
they not figure out that all the money they make from selling arms to
the government will be blasted into neutrinos along with their art
collections, their summer homes, their Mercedes-Benzes, and, of
course, their own hides? No more cannon fodder when the missiles
are pointed at your own mansion. So there went the hope of the
coat-tails: if the rich and powerful don’t want to die, then the rest of
us can camp outside the castle walls and be protected in time of
attack. It all seems so simple: build a bomb, sell a bomb; build a
bomb, sell a bomb. I wonder if the oligarchs are living the
fundamentalist dream: push for The End, Armageddon will establish
the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. But no. They’re a cynical bunch.
The only dream they live is power, driven by profit and crass
ideology. Grump, grump, grump. I ought to get up on a soap-box
like those orators at the park.
Boy, I’m parched. How am I going to make it out in Death Valley?
Oh, very nicely, in a rented room with a refrigerator full of bottled

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