To commemorate the 15th anniversary of the attacks of 9/11 the major media booked the psychopaths, quislings, and blood-suckers who used the attacks as the excuse to launch never-ending wars. The war criminals and their minions were not in prison … they were on television. In addition to all of that the blogger driftglass observed in Crooks & Liars, “Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal has turned a large chunk of its 9/11 editorial page over to one of the worst and most unrepentant American war criminals and profiteers in modern history, and his blood-drunk beast of a daughter.”
Dick fuckin' Cheney blamed Barack Obama for the ongoing hellish nightmare that Dick fuckin' Cheney unleashed in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was a grim reminder of just who's in charge. It is said “History is written by the victors” … but today history is re-written right before our eyes by people who are human in form … but not by nature.
Lists … I used to make lists of the daily outrages and assaults against the country. I thought if I wrote down enough of the “symptoms” I observed I'd eventually see a pattern emerge and understand the nature of the disease. Most of the “moments” I've written since 2007 are attempts to name the disease. I was wrong. And by the way … I don't make lists anymore.
What afflicts the country is not a disease at all. It is a metamorphosis not unlike that of a caterpillar.
A caterpillar eats and grows until eventually it spins itself a cocoon or molts into a chrysalis. Inside a chrysalis the caterpillar releases enzymes to dissolve its tissues and literally digests itself, except for groups of cells known as imaginal discs that survive the digestive process.
The imaginal discs use the protein-rich soup to fuel the cell division required to form the wings, antennae, legs, eyes, and all the other features of the adult insect. By the end of metamorphosis a butterfly or moth emerges from the chrysalis.
The United States of America is in the chrysalis stage. It is eating itself. The 1% are the imaginal discs and the rest of us are the protein rich soup. In this process of “becoming” The Dominant Culture has shed attributes that have been deemed to be no longer necessary. We might think they are necessary … but our wants and needs are not considered in that we are not of the 1%.
I read the news. I know Black Lives Do Not Matter. I know clean air, water, land, and food Do Not Matter. I know global climate change Does Not Matter. I know the lives of my children and grandchild Do Not Matter. Everything I think that is vitally important Does Not Matter. The Thing that is “becoming” has its own agenda … and it is insane.
Fifteen days after the 9/11 anniversary … Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump met to debate who should be the next president of The United States. Each candidate was only emptiness with a name. This election, more so than most, is just a cheap garish distraction from paying attention to the thing in the chrysalis that is “becoming.” Regardless of who “wins” the election … we will still be living within the Dominant Culture.
There is no reason to overtly state what is “becoming.” We've seen it before. Racism, Misogyny, and Xenophobia, are tolerated as the familiar becomes normal. The Robber Barons feed the flames to disguise their actions. We are in a new Gilded Age anesthetized from its brutality with toys produced by slaves. We complain that the Christmas season begins earlier and earlier each year while failing to see Halloween has never ended.
Oh … if only we could dig a grave for our nightmares.
And in the woods, among the maples and birches and oaks, through the spruce and hemlock and white pine, something moved. It walked slowly and deliberately. It knew these woods, had known them for a long, long time. Every footfall was surely placed, every fallen tree anticipated, every ancient stone wall, long overtaken by the renewed forests and lost amid the undergrowth, was a place to rest, to draw breath, before moving on.
In the winter blackness, it moved with a new purpose. Something that had been lost had now been found again. Something unknown had been revealed, like a veil drawn back by the hand of God. It passed by the derelict remains of an old farmhouse, its roof long collapsed, its walls now no more than a shelter for mice. It reached the crest of a hill and moved along its edge, the moon bright above it, the trees whispering in the darkness.
And it devoured the stars as it went. – John Connolly
