By Dan Hagen
Americans wink in that knowing way that says, “It’s all
about being rich, man. Everything else we say is just stuff to con the rubes.”
Build to be rich, inherit to be rich, cheat to be rich, play
to be rich, pray to be rich, preach to be rich, murder to be rich, ruin to be rich — the only two
words that matter in those phrases are “Be rich!” ITCH to be rich.
Americans whistle past the graveyard of their authenticity
by chanting high-flown phrases about their sweet saviors and metaphorical
cities on symbolic hills and traditional American values.
But a wink will serve to nervously remind them that at the
center of all that is nothing, an aggressive emptiness, a moral vacuum that
echoes with the meaningless doggerel that is the detritus of money grubbing.
Two Mints in One. Melts in Your Mouth, Not in Your Hand. Mister Clean, Mister Clean, Mister Clean!
Ancient Chinese Secret, Huh?
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| King Midas by Saturninus |
Dan. You are sure good at packing a lot in a few words. "An aggressive emptiness" does a great job of capturing the psychic void, the dead-ended-ness of our national aspirational quest. The kinds of symbols we present as "winning" reflect a willful consent to a blatantly self-serving ethos. When our version of winning is so obviously its opposite, the center has nothing to hold to---no coherence, no muscle, no virtue.
ReplyDeleteThanks again for being a serious voice in this messy world. It is a constant comfort to see your words and, better yet, that people are drawn to them.
Thanks for the eloquent vote of confidence, my friend.
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