digitalprimate

So there’s a fairly big, Midtown style deli (multiple hot entrees, sandwiches, salad bar, eat in take away - all Mexicans all the time, and yes, we would fucking starve without them) near my office. It has a name, but no one seems to remember it, and we all call it “Tony’s” after it’s gloriously be-maned, loudmouthed owner of indeterminate sexuality.

Anyway, there’s no system to ordering at Tony’s - no take a number device (what the hell are those things called anyway?), no separate line for hot food or sandwiches; you just try to figure out who the last guy in was, and when he’s done ordering, attract attention to yourself as aggressively as possible, preferably without actually injuring anyone around you, unless of course they try to get in an order ahead of you in which case it’s perfectly acceptable to buffet them about the face and shoulders with a hard Italian roll. Or if they’re undercover from the 50 precinct and carrying.

So where was I? Well, here’s what the deli normally looks like:

Usually all we little red stick people line up, more or less at random as you can see from my fine illustration. However, the day in question, people were lined up between two of the aisles of balsamic vinegar and olive oil and potato chips and other deli delights, thusly:

When I first walked in, I found this configuration of fellow primates to be a bit odd, but I figured, what the hell, this is the Bronx. Maybe they’re all together or something. I walked up, said hello to Gilberto who told me he’d be with me in a minute. Then the lady in question (helpfully indicated in the illustration above) said something to the effect of, “Hey, pal, there’s a line here.” To which I responded, “There’s never a line a Tony’s, lady.” She said I should ask the owner, and I replied, I’ll ask Tony when I check out. As she was, in fact, ahead of me, I let her order first, despite the preferential treatment such a valuable, goodchristmastimetipping customer as my self naturally engenders.

The lady in question continued to grumble and give me dirty looks, but I ignored her as she had a wee one with her, probably about three years old, although I did have half a mind to tell her she really shouldn’t be shooting her mouth off around her kid like that.

Now, the dilemma I had was this: The place is a chaos, and often an annoying, conflict producing one, and I’ve told Tony many times he needs a number system, or separate lines - something - but he seems to think the system works fine if only his lazy Mexicans would work harder, which isn’t humanly possible and I’m sure I’ve no idea why one of them hasn’t put a meat cleaver through his sternum yet. I wonder if that line formed spontaneously or if that rather bossy lady manufactured one, preying upon most of my fellow primates’ innate need for order and their willingness to follow the orders of someone who knows what they’re doing. If so, does that invalidate the line solution? Not really, but it as a primate who really, really hates petty tyrants, it really, really pisses me off. I suppose it doesn’t matter as in the end there’s just not enough room to line up an entire lunch crowed between two aisles and there are too many regulars who, as much as it’s possible, know how to work within the current system.

Yet I’m ambiguous about my response to the Bossy Line Lady: she had the right idea, bringing order to the Great Deli Chaos, but she went about it the wrong way with an ultimately untenable solution. Maybe this is why, in a city of nearly unlimited culinary choice and unmatched quality, McDonald’s still thrives: you always know where you stand at a McDonalds. You just might want to watch what you’re standing in.

…as a post about politics since, strictly speaking, I’m not commenting only theorizing.

While discussing the Cartesian Nightmare that our media has become, my friend - a noted ethnobotnist and philanthropist (well, ok, he teaches high school Spanish, but he’s a helluva songwriter and a mean black jack player) - and I decided that the problem with political discourse in this country is an ontological one.

The Neocons, the Dominionists and their state-sponsored corporate backers have, as Lackoff so deftly explains, systematically commandeered the means of distribution of information (and, as payback, the pliant legislature has granted the corporations that own the vast majority of media nearly unlimited copyright power and longevity over the last 15 years).

Slowly, starting in the Reagan/Bush the Elder era, the very words we use to describe things have mutated - terrorist in place of insurgent, “clean skies initiative” instead of “air pollution increase,” to the point where it has become difficult to talk about - and hence think about - issues without the reality warping frames our leaders have set about them.

Concurrently, the events of September 11th provided the needed emotional catalyst to puncture the “willful” part of the willful suspension of disbelief. Whereas before the Towers fell there were plenty of true believers in a the Right’s causes, they lacked the emotional firepower to clean out the corners of dissent both within their own ranks and without. Now that American lives have been lost, here and abroad, now that we’re in a shooting war, one with no end even imaginable, it’s an easy leap from choosing to believe in a reality devoid of facts because you want to achieve certain ends to telling everyone that - since all versions of reality are equally valid and it is in fact a choice - you’d better choose the version of reality that helps our men and women on the ground, the corporations that make us all rich, and naturally our Dear Leader.

Essentially, what the Neocons, Dominionists and their state-supported corporate backers have done is to take post modernism at face value: “facts” are a matter of perspective and reality is plastic. This is why the war in Iraq is righteous despite the lies that precipitated it; why “intelligent design” is worthy of being taught in our schools; why global warming requires more study before the US gets some skin in the game. In the name of “balance” our nation’s media has played right along, and been rewarded with favorable legislation and privileged access; more money and more power, in other words.

I think if you asked most Americans, they have some inkling that the president misled them about Iraq, that creationism is not really what anyone would call a science and that there must be some reason all these foreign countries are willing to spend money to fight global warming. But the brilliance and horror of what our leaders have done is relegate doubts about matters of fact to “mere” subjective opinion. Which means that people can chose to believe what they want to believe regardless of the facts of the situation, irrespective of reality itself. Enough of the electorate believe that the world, that history, is as they’ve been told. The have opted into this reality spun for them nearly out of whole cloth like some pack of Kierkegaardian lemmings.

In other words, if the Bible or President Bush the Younger or those who interpret the holy writ of either say it’s so, it’s so. If the “facts” don’t fit this worldview, well then, sir, the facts must be in error.

Some of my three readers may have noticed that I haven’t blogged in a while. This is partly because I’ve been very busy the last six weeks - I’ve either been in Europe or had house guests (or have been preparing for same) - but it’s more because I’m in a really weird place right now. I’ll try to write more later, but it feels as if I’m at an inflection point of some kind or another but just don’t know what it is or what it’s about. Discussing our weekend upstate with some friends of ours, Mrs. Primate commented that she felt like she was still there, as if something was supposed to happen but didn’t.

More to the point, since my return from the Old Country, I’ve come to the conclusion that the entire nation is at an inflection point. I’ve come to believe that in five years, shortly after the next presidential election, this place will either be on the mend or patently unlivable for families like mine. I don’t really think there’s much any of us can do anymore to influence the outcome. We’re simply going to have to sit back and watch how the forces set in motion since 9/11 play out.

But thinking about this has made me rather nuts lately. Coming to the conclusion that there’s really nothing I can do about it has helped, but it’s rather like the first step in addiction recovery: admitting you have a problem. It’s a step, but only the first of many.

I think, perhaps, I need to keep half an eye on what’s happening (no one wants to cut it so close that they’re on the last boat out of Germany in ‘39), but I also need to stop writing about politics. Well, I’ll never be able to do that completely, but perhaps I can stop offering my personal comments on things. I’m scared as hell of my own government, of their near limitless power and unfathomable willingness to destroy lives in their pursuit of power, so maybe it’s time to scale back.

Besides, what’s the point of living in the decline of a great empire if you can’t enjoy it’s decadence?

Anyway, to assuage my sure-to-be guilty conscious, I’ll at least keep passing on the memes with the following new feature: your daily outrage.