DeepState DeepThroat DeepSh*t

I suppose the concept of Deep State started with George Orwell. In his fictional explorations of early 20th-century dystopia, 1984 and Animal House, Uncle George presented the scenario of a so-called Big Brother government that wanted to control just about everything, including not only what people do, but also what they think.

Orwell’s real world of the 1930’s certainly presented a dramatic scenario of escalating DeepState dysfunction. Two gargantuan opposing dictatorships were challenging each other over the question of which one would control the world.

The Nazis, who had wrested control of the German gov. machine, had effectively set up a dictatorship of one man, Hitler. He turned out to be a personification of DeepMad. In other words, he was so mad at the world that he desperately wanted to find someone to blame for all the DeepSh*t. He blamed it all on the Jews and the Communists.

The truth is, however, this. We have found the enemy, and he is us.

All of us. But as I was sayin'. . .

Meanwhile, back at the northern climes, the Soviets were setting up a dictatorship of the proletariat, even though their founding dictator was dead; Karl Marx had dictated the idea that working folks could manhandle the world away from all the rich fuddyduddy lords and ladies who had been running it for so long, and everybody knew that certainly the proletariat could do a better job of running the show.

Now that's an idea whose time has come, the arc of history and all that. Or so they thought . . .

In the ’30’s the whole damned world was torn apart when the Dictatorship of Hitler tangled with the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Oh, and there was a third one—the Dictatorship of an Emperor—Hirohito in Japan, not to mention Mussolini and his goons. Between these four, they pretty much dragged the whole damned world down into a fricking apocalypse preview. Unlike wars of old, such as was conducted by the ancient Greeks v Persians, or David v Goliath, or old dusty militarized monarchs of Europe sending their clueless vassals out to perish, the 20th-century version of warfare was exponentially more destructive than the carnage inflicted by men of old, wielding their legendary sabres and muskets and cannons and those old-school versions of techno-destruction.

Well, by 'n by, we Allies managed, through much blood and toil and sweat, to put an end to all that dictatorial bullsh*t.

It was no easy job, but we collectively mopped it up in the late ‘40s, '50s and thereafter.

But that was just one small historical step, as it turned out, in all the blood, sweat and tears that was yet to come.

Now understand this: there's always a lot more deep stuff going on than we, in our pea-brains, can fathom. That said . . .

By ’n by, a new generation comes along and now all these kids still wet behind the ears are growing up with a TV in the living room, and they’re watching the world through the lens of Edward R. Murrow and Eisenhower and Kennedy and Cronkite et al, and by the time the baby boomers get out and about where they don’t have the restraints of mom and dad tellin’ them what to do all the time—in other words, college—by that time, they had figured out that they knew enough about the world to change it—the world, that is—(haha!). And so they got out in the streets and made a big mess of things until finally Nixon got the message and brought the boys home.

Well, by the time the boys came marchin’ home again hoorah hoorah—this was early ’70’s—the DeepState had gotten the idea that Nixon was a brick or two shy of a load, and so they set out to show him a thing or two by pressing the delete button on his power trip.

And this is how it happened:

That whole protest wave that so confounded Johnson and Nixon—it wasn’t just about the war. No, it was about much more than that. It was supposedly about free love and maybe some free pot and maybe even free food, as the diggers had been trying to do out in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there was a lot going on in America behind the scenes.

That free love thing, you see,  wasn’t really so simple as just shackin’ up; it was also about getting kinky. So when  the reporters who broke the DeepState Watergate dam—Woodward and Bernstein— devised a pseudonym for their DeepState informant, they came up with the nomen DeepThroat.

This development, which attempted to document the infernal workings of unbridled unjustified politics in the white house, was thereby associated in the public mind with the kinky side of the sexual revolution, as represented by the porno movie of the same name which was inspired by a nymph who had turned kinky because she used her mouth for sexual purposes and they called it DeepThroat.

Hence, DeepState, DeepThroat. There's always a lot more deep stuff going on than we, in our pea-brains, can fathom. 

What the Americans did not understand was that the whole DeepState, DeepThroat thing was slowly devolving us into a pit of moral, political and economic depth beyond our ability to rectify all the deep troubles associated with same.

Now since that time, our preoccupation with all this dysfunctional politics and sex has sunk us deeper into political and sexual irresponsibility. This dystrophy has, along the way, blinded us to authentic responsibility, and ultimately imprisoned us in a yet another very deep quagmire. Yeah, I say unto thee, 'tis yet another pothole of even deeper dysfunctional distress:

DeepDebt, trillions and trillions of it.

Nevertheless, in spite of all that, ya gotta find a ray of hope somewhere. I don’t know about you, but my prescription for our dystopian dillemma is quite simple, maybe even simpleminded:

God bless America.

And if you believe that, I've got some deep canyon real estate in Arizona I'll tell you.

What's better is: In God we Trust. But with all the deep sh*t that’s going on, such blessing and trusting could require a higher power for the fulfillment part of it, and maybe even some DeepFaith. 

 

  King of Soul

The descent of man

This is an ironic coincidence, that we Christians build our dogma around the fall of man, while evolutionists theorize about the so-called descent of man, from pondscum or some ameobic thing like it (just kidding). Either way you look at it, the direction is downhill. I suppose downhill is easier than trudging upward, but then downhill doesn't descend forever; there is an end to it eventually, a leveling out.

Maybe that stopping at the bottom is hell, if you view life and its end in religious terms. Or maybe it is poverty, if you've got a humanist worldview.

Although we Christians emphasize the point that man is fallen--depraved--at least our revelation offers a hope of eventual ascent to heaven. These days, our hope--considered naíve by many-- is, I think, more convincing than the humanist alternative. Stalin and Mao proved that communism is hell. Nowadays we're proving that even capitalism is hell. Hitler proved that (national) socialism, which is the commie's evil twin, is also hell. Hell on earth. Watch out; it could happen again.

But the hope of Christ is based not on our faltering efforts (individually and collectively) to save ourselves, but rather, on the finished work of the crucified/resurrected one--his atonement for our shitty sin, and then overcoming death to prove the point that he knows what he's talking about.

If I could write a play to change the world--to wow the Tony people and then garner oscars for the movie version--could it have a more spectacular plot device than some guy resurrecting from the dead? I don't think so. Not even Bruce Willis or Tom Cruise could perform such a feat, much less endure the agony that preceded it. Not even Mel Gibson could endure that.

I mean what could be more convincing than raising up from the dead? But then you gotta believe it, or it doesn't work. Faith is the thing that makes resurrection work for you. That's your part of the story; God's already done his.

God, the Creator, did write such a story, an epic, and he set it in actual history, beginning with Adam and Eve and so forth, and Abraham and Moses and all that, right up through Jesus, Paul and John. Then he had the book published. You've probably heard of it, if you're a bibliophile.

But back to the descent thing (it never fails to happen): While Adam and Eve were falling from God's grace through their sin, outside of Eden the cro-magnon hominids were, perhaps, descending by successive mutations to full homo sapiens descentive glory.

There is a lot we still don't know about the human race, but one conclusion we can make is this: our species has perfected the art of screwing up. Marx thought otherwise; he posited a steady progression through capitalism, dictatorship of the proletariat, and eventually evolved communism. But look what Stalin and Mao did with his doctrine. You can't figure how to make the human society thing work. It always descends, after a pyrric flash in the pan, to dystopia.

I mean, for instance: It makes perfect sense, from a rational standpoint (although not yet a practical one), that we should develop energy generation through solar power technology. We've been talking about it since the 70s for good reason; but no American company has really made the breakthrough that would propel solar roof-collectors to mass market efficiency and low-cost affordability. The wallstreet crowd doesn't seem to be interested in taking a chance on the prospect; they're too busy playing poker with derivatives and credit default swaps. So our gov. finds what seems to be a good solar-developing company in California, and sinks a half bill into it, thinking that Solyndra might be the group to make the difference. But then the enterprise fails, goes bankrupt. Damn.

Why? Because they couldn't compete with the Chinese! The commies! who are doing everything faster and cheaper than we can because so many low wagers work there, while all our people have gotten rich, fat&happy, and comfortably numb, and so we can no longer compete. I mean, these Deng-reformed Maoists are overtaking us with their hybrid Hegelian-synthesis neo-communo/capitalism!

A hundred or so years ago we were going great guns with full steam power, pulling stuff out of the ground and making cool stuff out of it and selling it to each other, making money hand over fist and then selling it all over the world. Now everybody else in the world, except the Europeans, are doing all that wildwest development faster and cheaper. Shanghai, Singapore, Bangalore, Sao Paulo are doing now what New York and Chicago were doing a hundred years ago. What are New York and Chicago doing now? Crying the blues and watching reruns of sex in the city.

We, the Brits and those other European post-colonialists, taught the "third" world pretty well. Those developing nations have learned their capitalism lessons thoroughly. They learned it, like all children do, by example. Their mutant version of capitalist development will survive our fittest attempts to catch up.

And the trains, in China. Don't get me started. I've ridden on a couple of them. Let me tell you they are fast, and they are impressive. Our Prez points out, correctly, that we were building vast infrastructure and railways across America, back in the day. And why we can't we do it again?

It's the descent thing. Our trains have run out of yankee ingenuity somewhere between stations. While the Chinese maglevs whiz along at 200 mph, although they do sometimes run into each other. Watch out, sloppy safety regs ahead.

Our whole damned nation, and sooner or later the world itself, is running out of steam, or out of oil despite the frickin fracking. And runnin out of money, though there's plenty of the printed stuff floating around. Our mph and our gdp is in a long, decelerating descent.

But there is an ascent from the devolving madness. A sufficient tranche of preferred stock has been purchased for me, and for you, if you choose to invest your time. It is a company not of this world, although it is in this world. I will be ascending on its prospectus soon, with a little help from my resurrected friend. I hope to see you there, if not before.

CR, with new novel, Smoke, in progress