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| New Kid in Town: from Spiro T. Agnew to Philosopher Kings |
| Part three of sixteen |
| As Americans we want, above all, not to be inconvenienced. We�re Number One, Goddammit! Lookit our big foam fingers!! We demand Normalcy, and if that means maintaining a State of ongoing national psychosis, of unearned privilege, of sinister brutality, well � We�re Number One!! Our leaders are cardboard cutouts, cartoon characters from an ill national psyche. America hasn�t enjoyed even the facsimile of leadership for at least four decades. On those rare occasions when we attempted to elevate a potential leader, he got snuffed, but quick. Real leaders don�t last in America. Real leaders clog the gears of the Machine. No matter how high the stock market soars, we�re already halfway to hell. The Old King is not only dead, he�s rotting on the throne. He stinks, and can be smelled at every corner of the globe. Parodies of masculinity squat in Jefferson�s chair. Despite appearances, America declines to its dark, violent inner heart. We struggle in dark heat, grunting to make conscious our personal and national shadow sides. In the midst of matriarchal regression, within the psychosis that we have become, leadership in the West is left to servile lads, footmen for the wrong Bosses: corporate crooks, religious fundamentalists, gangsters, oligarchs, and insidious Big Sister. American leadership is the best money can buy. American politics is a scramble of vultures, biting and snapping at one another, stooping down onto Route 666 for roadkill. But no matter how many men our �leaders� imprison, how many �evildoers� they bomb, or how many blowjobs they get, they�re still fuckups. That means we�re all still fuckups. Not to mention Homeless. |
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| Photos courtesy Martin Mathis, the Prince of Route 66, www.lastbandit.com |
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| Old Route 66 near Seligman, AZ |
| Old Route 66, Arizona |
| Running Up Route 666 In America, masculinity thrashes in chains. The need for masculine renewal, for re-birth of a Son, drives the nation�s current maternal regression. Out of prima materia, from the compost heap of American chaos, Lady Liberty as redemptrix must spawn a third option, a paradox, a novelty. She must deliver the New Kid who breaks the deadlock of the opposites, of the Republicrats, of male and female, spirit and matter, angel and human, philosopher and politician. Our seven-starred Lady of the Harbor must find her second wind, new wings. The Old Bird returns to egg, emerging as Kore, crone and mother in girl. Out of descent to the Pit, out of the inferno of feminism, broken and blackened men rise like sol niger at coniunctio, the sun coming up in the West. Squinting into the horizon, it�s unclear whether they emerge from Sol or the delectable curve of the Earth herself. They are cynical children, with the hearts of a giggling magus, and darkness is in their eyes. They are so distinct as almost to appear alien -- a daily assault on our assumptions, self-deceptions, and inner sanctums of power that is so ontologically disruptive as to seem, and be labeled, inhuman. From America�s prisons and gutters, from way out on Route 666 where he�d been dumped years before, from the cinderpit, hope returns. He is Western civilization�s pet project, Plato�s Philosopher King. |