America twice hitched its star to a drunk, albeit a dry one, and now it’s coming close to closing time.
“Ah we’re drinking and we’re dancing/And the band is really happening/And the Johnny Walker wisdom’s running high,” sings Leonard Cohen in “Closing Time.” “All the women tear their blouses off/And the men they dance on the polka-dots/And it’s partner found/It’s partner lost/And it’s hell to pay when the fiddler stops: it’s closing time.”
Yes, we’re coming to closing time for George W. Bush and his Darth Vader vice-president, Dick Cheney, who are now scrambling to get in one more war before they have to fish or cut bait - and in this case, “fish” means leaving office and (hopefully) getting tracked down in whatever jungle they’re hiding and dragged before a court of law to answer for their crimes.
And “cut bait” means following the lead of their good friend Pervez Musharraf and suspending the Constitution, declaring martial law and giving themselves unlimited dictatorial powers for the rest of their unnatural lives.
O yes, for a while there the bar was hopping; it was quite a scene. The women were tearing their blouses off and the men were dancing on the polka dots. The rich were getting obscenely rich, the yachts were getting larger, the private jets were flying higher, the diamonds were getting shinier, and the square footage of the houses was growing so large that the help needed roller skates.
It must have been fun for Bush and Cheney, the two of them jerking off on power, and for the fat cats who stuck their hands in our hard-earned tax dollars and stuffed their pockets, and for the dictators and tyrants who took this country for every cent they could.
But now the staff’s deserting the ship like the rats they are, and it’s going to be hell to pay when the fiddler stops and the bill comes due for the Johnny Walker wisdom of torture and invasion and bloody murder and mayhem abroad and corruption and bankruptcy at home.
“And the whole damn place goes crazy twice,” Cohen sings. “And it’s once for the devil/ And once for Christ/But the Boss don’t like these dizzy heights/We’re busted in the blinding lights/Of closing time.”
No, the Boss don’t like all these babies who got burned and maimed. He don’t like seeing those poor deluded souls being taught to blow themselves up in the name of Muhammad. He don’t like the way America used its soldiers, who believed in honor and service and thought they were defending their country.
He don’t like the mercenaries and the bagmen and the billions of dollars that went “lost” in the sands of Iraq, or the history of mankind that got lost in those very same sands. He don’t like the corporate greed that brought about the subprime scandal and will soon shake our country into another Depression.
He’s not too fond of the pollution of the Creation, either, or of the rest of the scum and the snakes let loose by Bush, Cheney, Rove and their friends.
No, it’s once for the devil and once for Christ, and the devil’s already got his due, and Christ? Hell, he’s been lost since the beginning of this disastrous enterprise. Turn the other cheek? Just how good did that sound to this “Christian” nation after 9/11?
The question for the ages is simply this: why didn’t we stop them? Why didn’t we stop them after they stole the first election? Why didn’t we stop them when they lied their way into war? Why didn’t we stop them in the second election? Why didn’t we stop them after we elected a whole slate of candy-assed Democrats to Congress?
Why is this still going on, when impeachment is too good for these bastards?
Was it because we were all drugged with television? Was it because there was no draft, so the cruel wars we recklessly started only affected the military and their families? Was it because the cheap and easy credit let us all live beyond our means? Was it because we thought that, given enough luck and time, we could all get rich and famous - or at least get our own reality shows, be famous for being famous, and have a tank full of sharks in our living rooms?
There’s no 12-step program for bombing the world. There’s no way to go around apologizing to every man, woman and child we’ve hurt. One day at time? There aren’t enough days. There’s no sponge big enough to sop up all the blood on Bush and Cheney’s hands.
We didn’t stop them. We’ll have to live with that. Some of us preached and shouted and wrote polemics, but none of us stopped them. Now we’ve got a bunch of lame presidential candidates who either haven’t got the guts to stop them or who want to jump on the gravy train themselves.
We’re counting the days, but we still haven’t stopped them. We’re busted in the blinding light, and there will be hell to pay when this country staggers out of its drunken, wanton, drugged and destructive stupor.
America, you twice hitched your star to a drunk, albeit a dry one, and now it’s closing time, closing time, closing time.
Joyce Marcel is a journalist and columnist in southern Vermont. A collection of her columns, “A Thousand Words or Less,” is available through joycemarcel.com. Write her at joycemarcel@yahoo.com.
Bring in the dancing penguins. Such a dignified, orderly crowd, even in the midst of their greatest stuggle for survival in the history of this planet. Are we to be as animals or are we to be as humans? Are we, as our ancestors in the Donner Party, hungrily deciding who is okay to die and eat? - when help from civilization is only a mile or two up the trail.
Nimby windmills, solar panels, community gardens, and bicycles for all.
Thank you Joyce Marcel.
Good analogy, I guess, about closing time. The real question for us is whether we’ll really start closing or have a hasty grand re-opening in the wee hours to try to keep us patrons drunk for 4 or 8 more years.
You know the answer here. Elect your Democrats and try to start slowly turning the ship, or down the Captain Morgan and rev the engines defiantly at the iceberg.
I know a lot of drunks that would do a far better job than Bush. Of course they aren’t right-wing sociopaths or religious fanatics.
I’ll take an honest drunk any day over somone “hooked on Jesus”!
Yesterday I think I read a story, first one in the morning, but yet it’s so farfetched that I think I must have dreampt it. If anyone else read this, please respond! I think it was an AP story. Did I hear right that California police can now invade the homes of welfare recipients without a court order and go through their entire house looking for….what? I don’t know. Maybe hidden steaks in the freezer, the kind that only rich people can afford? I don’t know. I all seems surreal and I’m hoping I dreampt it. If it’s true, then we are a lot further down the path of destruction than I thought the day before (and that was a pretty dire assessment). I’m actually thinking about buying a gun. Never in my life would I have thought to buy a gun. I think I have to get outta here.
I hear Iceland is a good place to live. AHHHHH!!
If you read the other articles on today’s CD, you will know it is anything but closing time.
If they never loose the power of the pulpit, they will never shed their ways.
And they plan on hang on to the seat, come Hell or High Water.
Love
Zero
Joyce Marcel asks some great questions: “The question for the ages is simply this: why didn’t we stop them? Why didn’t we stop them after they stole the first election? Why didn’t we stop them when they lied their way into war? … Why didn’t we stop them after we elected a whole slate of candy-assed Democrats to Congress?…Was it because we were all drugged with television? Was it because there was no draft…?”
Some of Joyce’s answers are good. TV certainly has much to do with it. But more broadly, we didn’t stop them because both parties, the corporate media, the US educational system, & all institutional centers of power are subordinate to corporate capitalism. The public’s very limited “political consciousness” is largely molded & restricted by these influences. The net result is a populace unable to perceive its own interests clearly, or to think independently — thrown into the ring with a set of institutional structures which are all dominated by corporate power. It’s not hard to see how such a “competition” will end.
The American public is a child of corporate capitalism. It has only been taught what corporate capitalists wished it to be taught. Its only perceived political options are those that corporate capitalism chose to give it. The fact that such a population was “unable to stop them” is the least surprising thing in the world. In fact, it couldn’t have turned out any other way.
I keep flashing on a memory from fifth grade, Miss Snyder’s class, Linden Elementary, Columbus, Ohio. I wrote an essay questioning why the people of Germany didn’t rise up and (in Nancy Reagan’s words), just say NO to Hitler and war.
It’s ironic that my mother-in-law is a German war bride with whom I’ve had many discussions about what happened. At Thanksgiving this year it came up that as a child she joined the Hitler Youth. It was like Girl Scouts, and evrybody joined. You got to wear a uniform and do fun things. I asked her if there was a swastika on her uniform. She really thought about it. And she thinks there was, not sure, but it certainly wasn’t anything she ever gave any thought about at all until I asked her. I do remember seeing a photo of her home in her small country home with a swastika flag hanging from the window. Everybody had them, it really wasn’t a big deal. Sort of like now calling America the “homeland” and putting a yellow sticker on your SUV. Who ever called America the Homeland before 9/11? It just becomes ‘normal’, you get used to it, it’s just politics. You’re just trying to feed your family and survive.
I’m so very sad for our country. And, yes, I will read the rest of CD, thank you ZeroPointField.
“Why is this still going on, when impeachment is too good for these bastards?”
Because conservatives and liberals alike are, like Dubya said, “addicted to oil”.
“There’s no 12-step program for bombing the world…no sponge big enough to sop up all the blood on Bush and Cheney’s hands.”
Nicely said, who knew it applies to BIG OIL?
Joyce Marcel: Thanks for a very well-written article.
RichM adds:
“The public’s very limited “political consciousness” is largely molded and restricted by these influences. The net result is a populace unable to perceive its own interests clearly, or to think independently..”
~From my limited perspective RichM, I’d be inclined to remove a word or two (please excuse) and speak of: “The public’s very limited *consciousness*…”
Isn’t that the very core of the issue? -that so many people, -internationally- are not been helped [by politicians and the mess media] to *expand their consciousness* into new and more fruitful areas, but instead such powerful menaces have actively worked to keep ‘Joe and Jolene Blow’ as misled and as misinformed as they are able.
(-quite a neat trick, in this ‘Information Age’!)
“The American public is a child of corporate capitalism…”
Again I’d be inclined to a little trimming: “The American public is a *child*…”
as in: -a large swathe of the US public appear, thus far, somewhat emotionally and intellectually undeveloped?
The USA is a young country, and seemingly has many ‘younger souls’ to match it’s juvenile status.
This might not be *quite* so much of a problem, if these folk were being truly assisted and helped to grow and mature. But instead, the ‘parcel of rogues’ in media and government circles seek to use and abuse the minds and hearts of such folk, -warping their minds, fostering base emotions, exploiting lowly / innate traits, and using them as ‘cannon and shopping fodder’…
Seems to me that we (here) are on the other side of the fence, trying hard to work in a diametrically opposed direction to the ghouls in power. = An uphill task!
… but then, so were many worthwhile human edifices, both material as well as new thoughtforms, -those built by much striving, arduous toil, patient endurance, lots of prevision, and tons of adversity!
We do as we must, (for many lifetimes if needs be) because that is the only rational way forwards for our ever-evolving race…
Is God the bartender? Why is a “dry drunk” in a bar? If you’re not drinking anyway, who cares if it’s closing time? Why does “fish” mean leaving office? Are they fishing in the bar?
Was this essay some sort of freshman English assignment about mangled metaphors?
D minus!
No, wait…
I just noticed “the Johnny Walker wisdom of torture.”
Give this thing an F and forget it!
some more leonard cohen:
(from “democracy”)
it’s coming to america first
the cradle of the best and of the worst
it’s there they’ve got the range
and the recipe for change
it’s there they’ve got the spiritual thirst…
democracy is coming
to the u.s.a.
RichM…2:20 PM….You’ve stated it as clearly and succinctly as possible. It makes me ASHAMED of my fellow Citizens and myself. And to the men and women who took a stand for this country and it’s Constitution and made that ultimate sacrifice, I ask you to FORGIVE OUR COWARDICE. And, I am not speaking of soldiers, in particular, of past or present wars. I speak of men and women like JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcom X, Rosa Parks, Wellstone…on and on and on……………As for bush and his cabal, your shame is infinite and irrevocable.
A general breakdown of priciple. Too many people lured by the koolaid. (Look, ain’t it purdy and sweet, and it’ll make you feel so good.) When people like Mary Cheney support–actually WORK for–these people to get them into power (in 2000 and 2004) you know something a bit odd is happening. Here’s a woman actually TRYING to empower a group that’s diametrically opposed to her lifestyle. Maybe someone can explain that.
A lack of spirit.
CONGRATULATIONS JACOB FREEZE!
Because of your nasty and opinionated response to this article YOU qualify as today’s “Pearls Before Swine” WINNER!
Unfortunately (or not, given YOUR paucity of taste) the prize you have won is a night in bed with Mary Cheney…..
“The question for the ages is simply this: why didn’t we stop them?”
“We” didn’t stop them because we have a collective death wish brought on by over 200 years of guilt, the result of over two hundred years of denying our true selves. The pain is so overwhelming, the only way out is suicide. But, like most humans, we the people can’t pull the trigger ourselves, so we subcontracted that part out to the craziest Americans we could find.
To Jacob Freeze :
“Give this thing an F and forget it!”
Albert Einstein did poorly in high-school mathematics and Winston Churchill did poorly in high-school English.
Now , in comparison with these two ” F ” men tell me the names and the accomplishments of their respective teachers who undoubtably graded them , the same way you are grading Joyce Martel . Yes it’s grammatically flawed but with your legalistic bias , you completely missed the message and that was to fire up the American people to do something about it.
Do you think the average American can recognize or cares to recognize a hashed metaphor ? Does this essay with all of its grammatical errors still tell the truth ? If American people take up her challenge are you going to still hold her accountable for her ” F ” essay.
Answer all these questions truthfully and express your rebuttal with a better essay.Lead , follow or get out of way
“What have you bastards done to our country” will be the cry when, and if, the economy implodes. This is the only thing that will awaken the sheeple from their slumber. Too bad. By then it will be too late.
Rich M: I always enjoy your comments. You left out one factor though that I think is one of the most important.
One of the major reasons that many Americans haven’t stopped them is because they have been ground down to a state of simple survival. All they can manage is to work endless hours in jobs that do not pay a living wage. The labor movement has been gutted. And NAFTA/CAFTA/WTO and all the other alphabet soup of trade agreements have outsourced their jobs and kept us all on the race to the bottom. Many Americans are lucky to even have time for mind numbing TV.
But, that doesn’t mean we give up. Keep writing those e-mails and making those phone calls. Even though it is futile, I keep doing it anyway…..
magikpowerwoman:
You’re not dreaming that California welfare recipients are now subject to warrantless searches of their homes by welfare officers combatting fraud. Check out the story by David G. Savage of the Los Angeles Times at:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/printer_112707F.shtml
They are just prepping us for the One World Government and the vchip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuBo4E77ZXo
Watch quick before it gets pulled.
Reb Farmer - Thanks — // Yes, the factor you mention is certainly right at the center of it. In effect, it’s a very diabolical “part of the strategy.” The rulers don’t want the masses to be getting any “funny ideas” (ie, thinking independently), so they’ve constructed a concept of “normalcy” that very nearly guarantees this outcome.
On the one hand, everyone has to work their brains out just to survive, just as you say. And on the other hand, they’re offered spectator sports, stupid mind-rotting TV, dumb car-chase movies, consumer goodies, & so on — and all these diversions soak up whatever time most working people have left, after they’ve put food on their family’s table.
When such pressures are “normal” for most working people, it’s easy to see why there’s not much high-quality independent political thinking & organizing going on. How many exhausted people will have the energy, time & dedication to spend their few free hours going to lectures on the economic & political system? To really understand why working people have so little power in a society ruled by corporations, they’d have to study the real history. But it takes time & effort to learn that history — many blue-collar workers will understandably choose to do something else (or just go to sleep).
The gutting of the labor movement — which you also mention — is a far more important part of this (ie, of destroying resistance) than most people realize. Unions used to provide (at least potentially) an environment in which working people could develop a “non-corporatized” perspective on politics. But now that the labor movement has been gutted, this too has been lost. Replacing it with TV is like substituting poison for protein in one’s mental “diet.” This too is part of the reason why “we didn’t stop them.”
Someone I know accused Bill Clinton of being a drunk — “look at the red nose, the rosy cheeks.” While I’m no great fan of Bill, I did feel compelled to make a comment like this: Well, I suspect Bill is a happy drunk. There are happy drunks (like W.C. Fields) and there are angry drunks.
Why haven’t we stopped them?
Because we have no power, that’s why. We gave it away because we could not conceive of this happening here. Not in America.
its the Conservative media stupid.
Get everyone hooked on booze, drugs, sports, (un)reality TV, soaps, Hollywood gossip, long hours at work etc. and you can do what you want.
remember the pics of “Cheney fucking Bush” OR “Bush fucking Cheney” ? try Googling those terms with the quotes on the Google “images” section. Unlike a few years ago, now you will get 0 hits.
More proof the media is NOT Liberal, and this counrty is FUCKED.
The question is why don’t we stop them! The time is now now is the time. They are afraid of the beast. That’s us! All of us.
A sufficient quantity of Truth is now in the light that we have increasing difficulty continuing to imagine that our country is or has ever been ‘The Good Guys’. It is apparent to me that any positive result of the policies of our government (worldwide or national) have been unplanned for. What is planned for is a great scramble for the resources of American and it’s citizens by preditory sociopaths. It is apparently taking much more effort to ignore the enabling role We the People have in this toxic co-dependency.
Sometimes, the correct course of action is to get the divorce papers written up and call the sheriff. Long term happiness sometimes calls for a bit of short term attention to the truth.
Veteran ‘66-68
Why didn’t we stop them? Somewhere around 70% of the U.S. poulation wants to stop them. And no its not TV. Our government is morally and politically broken. The things that used to matter don’t anymore. Its all about greed,oil,political whores,etc. And the bottom line is the average American has no voice!!! Hell! We don’t even have the vote anymore!Thats why we didn’t stop them.
dudleygotitright.
Joyce! We need to boot out this old guard status quo closed ranks semi-permanent clique in Washington and particularly in Congress.
Americans need an anti-incumbent attitude towards our do nothing Congress in 08. These weasels say impeachment is off the table and the whole bunch (most) have their hands under the table. Look at the moralist trent lott. Moral just under the wire?
We need to elect as many new weasels…ahem…politicians to congress. The one we got now and have had a long time… have made this mess. We need need NEW faces in Congress in 08. As many as we can elect.
This go along Congress went along with Bush leading us into this fiasco and possibly a decline in America’s fortunes and a permanent loss of our’s children’s constitution.
The lesser of two weasels? Pick the new guy… the old ones have done a really lousy job. We need new weasels!!!
I wish it was closing time for this whole corrupt goverment that siezed power when President Kenedy was murdered. They will just hand the baton to the next despot.
The only place freedom and democracy exist in this country is in the minds of those who are still thouroughly brainwashed.
Don’t worry the bar will re-open immediately following Mrs. Clinton’s election.
Instead of asking the question: ” why didn’t we stop them ” — how about what are we doing now to stop them!
I share the author’s sense of apocalyptic bewilderment. I’ve been in a state of dazed confusion since 2004. I wrote:
We did this: We voted to institutionalize malignant aggression. We went down to Willard’s little room in the cellar, unhooked his chain and brought him upstairs to join us for breakfast. We ushered him into the sunlight, a big family welcome for cousin Hellboy. Here we are, frozen in the camera’s flash, in flagrante delicto, without a wince of shame.