808

So I should be striking like a heroin soaked viper, but no, I’ve been weak and meager. Strength is my weakness and weakness my hate. Papa Bam has been drowning out there. Have I offered my life raft? No. I’ve been wrapped up in my own lies. I’ve been faithful to reality! It’s terrible, it’s tragic. I forgot the only lesson I know: everything is bullshit and bullshit is everything. Why aren’t I swinging harder?

The story I’ve been writing is done. It’s brutal, and real. I’m not a self promoter and am filled with far more self-doubt than anything else. And yet I’ll say this: this story is better than anything ninety percent of the MFA program at Columbia could crank out. And yet, I’m to lazy to do anything with it. I can’t even get it on my own stupid website because I can’t stand to spend twenty minutes and separate the paragraphs.

I wrote this about seven months ago on the night before Obama’s inauguration: “Those in the nasty positions of power are going to look for any leak in the Obama train. They’d love nothing more than to make Obama into a Leftist/Socialist/Minority/ puppet, instead of the leader and thinker that (he could be) and is. Don’t Al Sharpton the man. Al knows what I’m talking about.” At the time, I was drunk on a strange combination of cheap whiskey and expensive Pinot Grigio. And yet, here we are. A black professor gets arrested and Obama says something about it. He says that minorities in this country have been getting reamed by law enforcement since the first drop of ink was drying on the Declaration of Independence. He fucks up.

Everyone knows that only a black man could get arrested for trying to break into his own house. But I think it blew the public’s mind when a president said it. And maybe someone could correct me here, but I think Obama is the first president to confirm this idea. This was a terrible move politically. Obama, and we all had to see this coming, is starting to be marginalized. It’s only half a year into his presidency, and yet, here we are: Obama is tackling an issue that Al Sharpton was supposed to be handling at this time last year.

Fuck me.

And why he chose to tackle health care in this county is beyond me. I realize taking on one of the biggest problems facing America may seem like a noble thing to do, and probably something that a president should be doing, but Papa Bam, how could you follow Bill Clinton’s script to such a mark. You’re doing exactly what he did twenty years ago, and why you’re expecting different results is beyond me.

Health care is a huge problem. Ours sucks. But the only people that are really being reamed by it are the poor and unemployed. And no one gives a shit about them. The people that are making a killing on our current arrangement own most of congress. So what was he trying to prove? The only way anything will ever get done in regards to healthcare in America is if there comes a time when we start flipping over cars and burning Targets to the ground. We haven’t even taken the first step there.

Matt Taibbi (who I grew up reading, and who, in some strange way, sounds so much like me at times that I wonder if I’m writing his blog) put it better: “It won’t get done, because that’s not the way our government works. Our government doesn’t exist to protect voters from interests, it exists to protect interests from voters. The situation we have here is an angry and desperate population that at long last has voted in a majority that it believes should be able to pass a health care bill. It expects something to be done. The task of the lawmakers on the Hill, at least as they see things, is to create the appearance of having done something. And that’s what they’re doing. Personally, I think they’re doing a lousy job even of that. I lauded Roddick for playing out the string with heart, and giving a good show. But these Democrats aren’t even pretending to give a shit, not really. I mean, they’re not even willing to give up their vacations.”

http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/

Killer. Matt’s been obsessed with how Goldman Sachs has been raping the concept of capitalism lately, but I think he’s missing the boat on that: everyone has always known that pure capitalism can’t work.

Anyway, Papa Bam needs to work harder at fitting in. And I think he caught onto this when the backlash over his little “stupidly” comment sunk in (here’s a strange brutal American fact: even the President isn’t allowed to call the police stupid). He ended up inviting both of them to the White House for a beer. Killer. Well done.

This is a country that made Transformers II one of the highest grossing movies of all time (true story, I stood up from the back row of a viewing of the original Transformers in Islip, New York and said “Jesus Christ, I didn’t know they could make a movie that was that bad”, everyone around me laughed, and yet here we are a billion dollars later).

Just bowl Obama. That’s all we’ve ever wanted you to do. Because at this point, until were fighting over bread or vaccinations to a new flu strain, we’re fine with good enough. And we’re scared of hope. I know I am. Although, to be true, I’ve never had hope.