It sucks pretty bad right now....

The AXE often ponders. Idealism and a first rate liberal education got me a rifle, a 100 pound rucksack and a 8th grade dropout from Georgia with no teeth named Jackie Preston Poole as "battle buddy." I've worked hard, got a good professional education, been honest, haven't cheated, stopped smoking, stopped drinking, didn't gamble, don't do and have never done drugs as an adult, am not promiscuous and on and on and on. I work out, read, give to charities and try to be less of an asshole than the next guy. So, I wonder...the significant other worked her way up from Seaman Recruit to Lieutenant Commander and was a triathelete when she collapsed one day in horrible agony with aggressive colon cancer. She survived, minus a foot of intestine and her own odd attitudes. But, so far as I can tell, the only bad thing in her life was, well, me. Mrs. AXE, similar story. My close friends - similar story.  Only the Babbits  and Hobbits ( a  Babbit is a Hobbit who beliongs to the Chamber of Commerce...why are we not reading Sinclair Lewis? Tom Delay and Pat Robinson make sense only in that context. "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." Well, here we go again...)

So, it was all lies. I rarely read Creators.com any more since the departure of Yogi Crispin Sartwell, philosopher/beer sommelier,   and the death of Molly Ivins. But, I read Susan Estrich's colum this morning and I think she summed it up well. The lead was actually incomparable..."Samantha was the name of the woman who finally put me over the edge." It hit a note along the lines of "We were on the edge of the desert, just outside of Barstow, when the drugs kicked in." (HST , F&LiLV, 1971) or "During these last decades the interest in professional fasting has markedly diminished." (Franz Kafka, The Hunger Artist ). (Note the HST link is not to F&L in Las Vegas, but F&L in Elko, which is a minor classic in itself, and seldom seen...) After her discussion, she concludes this way, "Once upon a time, I believed that growing up brought security, that if you worked hard, did well and took the tests you were supposed to, that if you didn't smoke and bought insurance for everything, you could count on having some security. But everywhere I look, it ain't so.

"My friends are getting sick and finding themselves out of work, short of cash and strapped with bills. And they're not in their 60s and 70s. They're in their 40s and 50s. Job security means a couple of years. Personal security means a home alarm system. Staying well means finding out what's wrong with you before it kills you, not when it's about to. National security means only 3,000 kids and a few hundred billion down the drain. And the UPS Store doesn't mean anyone from UPS will help you." If only all the Fox commentators were so perceptive. (And, the AXE has to admit that when perky blonde middle aged liberal political lawyer-commentators use ain't, he finds it seductive...wish they call could be Brandeis girllllllllsssss....)

This isn't the first commentator to get it, of course. And, Estrich at times is very wearying; Dulcinea Dowd handed her her ass in the spat they had during the late, lamentable Kerry campaign. Still, it's worthwhile reading, and passing on to your "tax cuts solve everything, put yourself up by your own mammogram" crowd. And this is worth listening to because it is...

Comments

[I Got Cixous's]

I've just been reading some Anthony Giddens-- Modernity and Self-Identity. Very insightful about the "risk" society and its implication for the existential issues of security, one's "life" and work, etc. We are swimming amidst massive changes of current, and yet the media simply scream about whose buoy is bobbing more beautifully in the water.