Because You Never Asked

  

     (Spain, May 2003).

     For an American like myself, who is currently immersed in a political reality that seems to have little relationship to the one left behind in the Disney States of America, there is an unreal quality to it all that confuses the question. It's as if one has slipped through a black hole and found oneself in a parallel world whose existence had gone unknown until now. The average American would be very surprised at the routine antipathy towards Bush's war that exists outside their country. It is greater than they have been led to believe and few of them could ever imagine the black hat image of America abroad.

     In spite of the broken record criticism I've heaped upon the socio-cultural ideas embodied in the American "way of life", as well as the political stance of its government in imposing so much of this cultural dementia throughout the world, it is never easy to have to side with the rest of the world against one's own country. From a personal standpoint, the blow is softened somewhat by the fact that millions of other Americans --- who knows, maybe even a majority --- do not favor what its government has done in Iraq.

     And this magnifies the seriousness of the problem, because it shows that our "democracy" is not working. In Spain, whose government is one of the few to openly support the American aggression (although its material support can only be seen as symbolic), the public's outrage for such, encouraged by media outlets not totally subjected to global economy interests, is palpable, almost as if it were a breathing organism. Contrast this to the United States, where millions like myself have been erased from media consideration, where the "opposition" Party has been so emasculated that one hardly knows where to find it, leaving a contrived panorama of exaggerated patriotism and glorious military accomplishment that does not accurately reflect reality.

     The problem is serious, because the conspiracy to perpetrate the fraud of the "global economy" is so vast and complex, one does not know who to attack or where to strike.

     The first time I ever crossed the United States of America, I remember how eager I was to see the Rocky Mountains. I thought they would pop right up out of the Great Plains, like a gigantic serrated saw on the landscape. I thought you'd be able to see them from fifty miles away and be able to say, "Look, there they are! 

     But it didn't happen that way. The geographic reality of the North American continent --- really, what we are talking about are the dimensions of the Earth itself --- is so vast, so complex, so big beyond our comprehension, that it finally dawns upon the traveler that he or she is now amongst the snowy peaks without even realizing how they arrived there. It is all so disguised, so subtle. One never realizes, as you search for the signature skyline of jagged peaks, that the seemingly flat landscape of the Great Plains is a steady climb towards the foothills of the mighty range. These anterior harbingers of the real heights to come, hide the majestic peaks in a vast web of continental cracks and wrinkles, until finally, the snow covered glory of America's great western "massif" make their surprising appearance, as if they've seen you long before you've seen them. How did I get here? Where did they come from? It's amazing to think that these colossal mountains snuck up on you as if to say, "boo!"

     I get a similar feeling from what I've taken to call the Real World Order. It is too vast a mechanism, too convoluted and laminated, too divided and linked together in a web of relationships that fold over and double back on each other, unravel and regroup in a seemingly anarchic conglomeration of amorphous, mercury-like anti form, that one can never truly find the source of it all. Perhaps the following anecdote can further explain what I mean.

     I write from a place in close proximity to the archaic ruins of what used to be a flourishing salt industry. As a result, there are still numerous areas where the seawater was trapped leaving "salinas", or stagnant pools of shallow water where mosquitoes find their own blissful form of Nirvana. When the little buggers get particularly annoying, almost everyone here uses a clever little gadget, about half the size of a billiard ball, which has a little grill on the front. A thin blue wafer, seemingly cardboard in substance, is inserted in this grill. The apparatus has two prongs on its rear that are plugged into any electrical outlet. Within a few minutes of doing this, the wafer begins to give off a light, perfume-like aroma and the mosquitoes will begin an immediate search for any place in the world where this aroma does not exist. Sweet dreams. I have never seen this device anywhere else in the world, though I'm sure it exists in other places in Spain. 

     Being the ill-conceived, malcontent that I am, I decided to look on the box and see what business organization might be responsible for this perhaps carcinogenic way to combat the ecosystem's contribution to sleepless nights. The people here call these things the "Bloom", a logical reference to the ostentatious red letters plastered across the box, seemingly signifying the company that makes this device. But if one is obsessed enough to go to the side of the box, where only the most socially deviant might look, one finds, in microscopic lettering, the following: This is a product of Cruz Verde-Legrain, a division of --- are you ready for this? --- Sara Lee.

     That's right, the same people who make those chemical cakes you are getting fat on. (I wonder if they use the same chemicals to dissuade mosquitoes as they do to make cakes?) I searched the "supermercado" where I bought the "Bloom" apparatus and found nary a trace of anything edible that Sara Lee makes. You'd be more likely to find Saddam Hussein at a White House dinner party than a Sara Lee cake in Spain.

     And this is how the Real World Order works. It's like a gigantic secret code that only a chosen few --- and who they are is the most jealously guarded secret of all --- can decipher. Nobody really knows who they are buying what from. Who's in charge here? Does the media react to the government or is the government a creation of the media? Does government regulate industry, or does industry run the government? Are there any clear boundaries between government, industry and media? Are they all just complementary parts of the same enterprise? In the past, one could probably say, "Look, this President is a horse's ass and his government ain't worth a discarded nail at a construction site. Let's vote him out." Nowadays, within the confines of the Real World Order, where almost everything operates, the governments are interchangeable. The hole left by the defeat of one is quickly filled by the generic, amorphous, mercury-like substance that is the Real World Order. This makes the omnipotent organism whole and healthy again. The same system of bodily health is used to cure any sickness in the commercial part of the organism. If a business enterprise goes down, the hole is soon filled with basically the same substance, which naturally flows into the hole.

     Which brings me too . (see essay, "Resisting the Real World Order")