The Untouchables

The almost-complete control the good old boys club has over the thoughts and actions of a large chunk of the population of our country has always been a source of anger for me. It is fairly cut and dried the way the government says something, the media repeats it, and Joe Schmoe regurgitates it verbatim as if it were his nighttime prayer for the last fifty years. This sick game of sheep and shepherd has buried itself in the darkest part of my sentiment, however more and more I find myself wholly impressed by it. It could be the fact that a handful of incredibly intelligent social engineers have billions at their beck and call. It could also be, however, that somehow they have gotten most of us to be okay with that. Even if only in our own individual ways, we accept the Untouchables.

The spectrum of how people deal with their acceptance of the Untouchables and the system in the United States is severely different from person to person and place to place. Inside the beltway alone the diversity of ideas and culture all add up to changing precisely nothing. People sit all day in coffee shops buying cup after cup of corporate coffee, smoking camel lights, and musing about Marx and South American fair trade agreements and wearing Che teeshirts to make themselves feel better. I am no different, as I sit here on my Toshiba laptop with Sony earphones more than likely assembled by children half my age who are paid less in a week than it costs to make the Starbucks drink I had for breakfast this morning. Occasionally we “yuppies”, as we are labeled, get really bleeding hearted and donate to Greenpeace where half of our money goes directly into the pockets of the dread-locked, tie died collector we ran into on the street, and the other half gets divvied up among the administration of the company. Even if we really go all out and subscribe to donate every month the canvasser is given the first twelve months of our subscription immediately upon us signing the piece of paper so unless we donate for many years not a red cent ever hits a freakin' whale. Those of us who try as hard as possible to resist any support whatsoever for the system wind up with the label “crust-punks” and spend so much time trying to find food in dumpsters and a place to take a shower that there isn't time for much more than solemn reflection on the perils of the day.

There’s obviously something wrong and many of us know this, so we blame it on the “ignorant” half of our population who enjoys Budweiser, pickup trucks and the occasional second cousin. The beauty of it is, who are they blaming? That's right, its all the fault of the hippie, tree hugging, Seinfeld watching communist potheads. The government has successfully created an ideological war splitting the country down the center and taking focus off of anything even remotely important and whoever wins, we all lose.

Take for example the most recent news blip in which Bush advisor, and certified untouchable, Karl Rove blatantly leaked the identity of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent and put not only her life but hundreds of others in immediate danger. Rove’s motivation was the destruction of her husband, Joseph Wilson, who accused the administration of forging information regarding Hussein’s interest in yellowcake uranium, and also to make a jab at the anti-occupation CIA. The effect of his outing is that the cover organization she “works” for is blown and with that hundreds of other operatives also “working” for that fake organization are now exposed to the terrorist and otherwise unsavory community they have immersed themselves in. Novak’s piece, which was the public outlet of the information, has been clearly traced back to Karl Rove. This puts Rove in an awkward position in clear violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, however the Bush Whitehouse and Rove himself are successfully dancing around the fire and neither of them are getting burned. In fact, the only people in prison are the reporters who refused to divulge that it was Rove who leaked it in the first place. All of this should add up to a major problem for Rove and Bush, however the only bites out of either of them is Bush saying he would get rid of anyone if they did anything illegal (no action taken so far) and Rove claiming that because he only actually said “Joseph Wilson’s wife”, and not “Valerie Plame”, he didn’t technically do anything wrong. The best part is that they’re going to get away with it and they know it. People just don’t have the drive to do anything but talk anymore. More even-keeled publications such as The Washington Post and The New York Times have buried what could rightfully claim to be the scandal of the century. That is, a wartime cover-up job potentially claiming the lives of CIA servicemen and shooting the intelligence community in the foot. Us hippies are outraged and want Rove’s blood, so what do we do? We go to our coffee shops with our laptops and whine on blogs until we forget about it or the waitress brings our drink, whichever comes first. Heck, we might even use open-source software to do it; we're really bucking the system now!

Another perfect example of complete inaction is the Downing Street memo. We've successfully put out of our heads the importance of physical evidence linking the Untouchables to anything remotely criminal or immoral. The fact that the US population, damn hippies included, have completely allowed the media to pretend it wasn't a big deal and let it slide is solid backing to the idea that we no longer have any interest in anything important and would rather just let the government do what it wants, as long as we get free WIFI and a mochachino. This is playing a dangerous game of “out of sight, out of mind”, when the entity out of sight is gaining serious momentum on the front of the destruction of morality and humanity for monetary interest. The point is, there’s nothing you can do that they haven’t thought of, there’s nothing they can do wrong that they're not prepared for, and in my mind I can find nothing but the most jaded admiration for the puppeteers of this self serving freakshow we call home.

Posted by Cliff Casey on July 26, 2005 at 03:40 pm EST

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