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Empire, Jesus, And The Death Gene
by
Phil Rockstroh
In a small, prefab house on the coastal Carolina lowlands, an old man, the son
of a son of tobacco sharecropper, my wife’s father, lay dying. Even though the
St. James Bible had been placed at his bedside, Fox Cable News served as his
Psychopompus, conducting him up from this fallen world towards the flawless
spires of the Beulah Land.
A vision: Across the blacktop highway, beneath a weather-flayed billboard that
proclaimed “One Nation under God—Bush/Cheney 2004,” in a field of desiccated
corn stalks, gaunt, bearded, mullet-haired, crackhead Jesus rose from the
shrouds of coke-smoke and drifted across the blacktop highway to raise the road
kill from the dead.
“Crack makes me feel like Jesus ought to,” the billboard should have
proclaimed...perhaps then an impassioned chorus of hosannas would have arisen
from the country crackies congregated there.
Upon the perch of a mustard-yellow vinyl sofa that had been cast out into the
abandoned field amid the scrawny pine saplings and rusted-out farm tools, the
old man’s grandson brought his bony knees to his chin and began rocking upon his
meatless haunches, then he raised the crack pipe Eucharist to his parched,
quivering lips, inhaled, and gave his life over to the Lord God of Dopamine.
Across the Low Country, the family farms are gone. Brutal trucks fulminate on
the cracked blacktop highways. The swamps are being drained; its lumber
plundered.
As doomed as the drought-dessicated cornstalks, the lives of the sons and
daughters of moonshine-makers are now decimated by crystal meth and crack
cocaine. Dust squalls in the dry fields; the future burns to crack ash.
The swamp has receded: Bear and bobcat are gone. Convenience stores, Wal*Mart
superstores, strip malls and fast food joints choke the landscape where tenant
farmers once struggled to survive.
The surrounding swamplands were once astoundingly beautiful. Even strangling
vines of wisteria draped their dying hosts in exquisite purple blossoms. But, in
the eyes of the human inhabitants of land, the beauty was only
incidental—superfluous—only a relentless drive to survive was needed. All else
fell away.
Presently, that inexorable drive remains only as a meaningless and hollow
appetite. Fat people, clad in stretch clothes, are everywhere, while many of
those who are thin have an appetite that craves the crack pipe.
The hardscrabble survival instincts are gone—but the relentless appetite
remains.
It’s terrifying: The way the urge toward life, when thwarted, can go over to its
opposite, with equal vigor, and reveals the death skull beneath the skin.
Our tragedy: This drive, this eternal appetite that forces life to its zenith,
but instead delivers it to dust…
This is what Walker Percy wrote of that internal landscape:
“Death in the form of death genes shall not prevail over me, for death genes are
one thing but it is something else to name the death genes and know them and
stand over against them and dare them. I am different from my death genes and
therefore not subject to them. My father had the same death genes but he feared
them and did not name them and thought he could roar out old Route 66 and stay
ahead of them or grab me and be pals or play Brahms and keep them, the death
genes, happy, so he fell prey to them.”
That variety of tragic consanguinity is not limited to the doomed hinterlands.
It rules the order of the present day as well. The Death Gene lords over the
American empire. An empire destroys nearly everything it touches, because, after
a time, it begins to exist for no other reason other than to perpetuate its own
existence. Within the empire, its subjects’ lives lose meaning and purpose:
meaningless work and endless appetites define the days, resulting in a decimated
(internal as well as external) landscape—the hollowed-out lives—and the
attendant death cult convergence of religious fundamentalism and soulless
consumerism that follow.
Empire imprints the Death Gene within us—and it is made manifest in the world we
have created. It is as visible as the toxic vapors of pollutants veiling the
horizon line. It shimmers like heat spires above the traffic-stalled
interstates. It reeks like the endless archipelago of overflowing landfills that
span the length of the land.
The Death Gene holds us—as we hold a TV remote in our hands—and when the news
turns tragic it moves us to tremble with excitement and barely concealed glee.
Fox Cable News, like the jackal-headed, carrion-eating god, Anubus, leads the
old man through the land of dead: Through the now dried-up swamplands of his
youth—through the limbo of suburbs that displaced it ... The old man is led past
rural crystal meth labs, and pharmaceutical plants, and Starbuck Coffee cafés
where pale shades receive the libation needed to provisionally pass for the
living; the guide and his charge linger in pawn shops, gun stores (so many gun
stores) and firing ranges—all temples devoted to the true higher power of the
American empire—the God of Death...where the grim God gathers strength and
energy, drawing energy from the nation’s emanations of hatred and fear like a
reptile luxuriating on a sun-heated rock; and finally, they arrive at a small
mortuary where they listen, as a self-satisfied Baptist minister delivers the
old man eulogy—a sermon devoted to the love and worship of God of Death (for the
joys of this world are wicked—and preclude entry in the perfect one to come)—all
the while, the preacher takes measure of the old man’s shrunken corpse, laid out
in his open casket, like a used car salesman accessing the resale value of a
Ford Pinto with a cracked engine block.
The ground now holds and begins the process of decomposing the remains of the
old man’s body—as the neo-plantation system of tenant farming held his youth and
composed the contradictions of his gentle/angry, generous/spiteful,
humble/racist mind.
Those confounding and contradictory traits of the southern psyche will not be
dissolved by the dirt: Traits of habitual submission to authority and of hostile
defiance against any hint of outside interference in their lives...of fierce
loyalty to one’s kin and unquestioning devotion to the place of one’s birth...of
reflexive racial hatred and resistance to change...of moonshine revelry and
anguished come-to-Jesus recantations of sin...will live on through his progeny.
Such traits worked to the benefit of the ruling elite of the Old South and now
provide the same service for the lords of the corporate empire: then as now, our
lives are given over to long hours of exploitive labor and offer little hope of
removing our overseer’s boot from our throats. (From the cotton and tobacco
fields of old feudalist order—to the present-day low pay, no benefits jobs of
the so called “service sector economy”—those hope-decimated, labor practices are
still with us.)
Also, mirroring the values of Old Dixie, so many us Americans, regardless of
region, share an unquestioning loyalty to military tradition—one that glorifies
the squandering of one’s life in wars that serve to profit the narrow interests
of a small, self-serving, aristocratic class. (From the so-called “War of
Northern Aggression” right up to the equally absurdly titled “Operation Iraqi
Freedom,” the mistaking of blind faith for heroic sacrifice lives on.)
Moreover, as was the case with so many poverty-stricken whites in the Deep
South, the inequities of present order have endowed many contemporary Americans
with the sense of nebulous rage and resentment that is created by having one’s
spirit repeatedly crushed by the inhuman demands of a seeming implacable system.
Tragically, those anguished sentiments rise—displaced—as fear, resentment, and
hatred of minorities, homosexuals, reformers, and outsiders. (From Klan
meetings, Jim Crow laws, and the lynching of the bad-old-days then—right up to
the right wing hate-speak of talk radio, the de facto segregation of gated,
suburban subdivisions, and the queer bashing of these bad-new-days—these
pernicious legacies linger.)
But an existence comprised of such criteria depletes one’s life of meaning, in a
similar manner as the repeated planting of cotton leeched the life-sustaining
soil of the old south of vital nutrients. The vitality of existence withers and
falls away and is soon supplanted by the seeds of the Death Gene. The landscape
turns ugly; children grow hollow-eyed, empty, and ignorant; passion and purpose
dry up and are replaced by insatiable cravings and nameless dread; dreams turn
to dust and rise from the arid land as blinding squalls of paranoid delusions.
Thus Empire holds us in its death embrace. We grasp for air. We besiege the
indifferent sky as to how we might loosen its Thanatotic grip.
So then, how might we gain our freedom?
Shall we proffer a polite request to the masters of the empire...that they might
consider, at their leisure, removing their bony grip from our throats? Yes, and
the old man would have about as much success petitioning the devouring earth to
reconstitute his decomposing flesh.
Shall we always take care to speak reasonably, with cautious words, uttered in
measured tones to our betters—then, perhaps, the elites of corporate media will
cease their shilling for the prevailing order and begin to disseminate a modicum
of our perspective? Yes, and the song of cicada will soften into a soothing
hymn.
Shall we bow our heads and humbly ask the mindless mobs of consumer state to
abstain from looting the planet of its life-sustaining resources? Yes, and the
draping Spanish moss of the lowland marshes will henceforth show mercy to the
trees they suffocate.
Then the bright day will dawn when the rulers of the empire will alter the
course of its death-bound trajectory and suffer remorse for the fates of those
they have crushed beneath it. Yes, such an event will come to pass—around about
the time the swamp’s alligators cultivate a fondness from vegetarian cuisine.
The neo-plantation system of the corporate empire stands before us and within
us: It has molded our lives and perceptions as thoroughly as the old south’s
stratified society of landed gentry and tenant farmer rabble molded the life and
perceptions of my wife’s departed father.
We, the subjects of this empire, carry the Death Gene. As my fellow southerner,
Walker Percy pointed out, the best way to survive the Death Genes is to face
them and name them. And do not suffer from the deadly delusion that you can deny
them, reason with them, or outrun them...for you carry them within you.
When we face the empire, we face ourselves. To survive, it is imperative that we
must cease to lie to ourselves about our condition.
But to do so will not prove to be our redemption: Those pat solutions are only
to be found in crack pipes and fundamentalists’ sermons. The Fox News Channel
will not guide us to the Beulah Land. And Jesus will not raise the road kill
from the dead. But knowing a few sad truths about ourselves will allow us to see
the world and its terrifying beauty with greater clarity.
And by this act we are strengthened. It gives us the courage to love. We can
meet one another in spring fields of green corn—where the Death Gene loosens its
grip and the wit of the world remains.
In the early 1970s, when George W. Bush was shirking his National Guard duties
in Alabama, state Republican Party insiders tagged him with the moniker, “The
Texas Soufflé,” due to his habitual arrogance, ceaseless indulgence in
braggadocio, and preening sense of privilege and entitlement.
At present, after nearly half a decade of Bush’s soufflé presidency and the rise
of what could be termed soufflé economics, soufflé energy policies, and soufflé
jingoism, I think those Alabama party hacks were being charitable in their
characterization of Bush, because the composition of any given soufflé is too
subtle and far too much care must be taken in its preparation to be an apt
analogy for his obtuse, crude persona.
More accurately, Dubya should be compared with a bubble blown from a wad of
trust fund bubble gum.
This might explain the reason he sees threats everywhere: The earth bristles
with those who would pierce his bubble of privilege and ignorance . . . would
topple him from his throne of grandiosity . . . would knock the tin crown of
entitlement from his ego-tumescent head.
Bush, insulated from reality and in the thrall of obsessive self-regard and
overweening pride, has never been tempered by the consequences of his actions.
In this, Bush is merely a reflection of an era dominated by the virtually
unfettered power of the military/corporate security state: he is a byproduct of
Viagra militarism and jack-shack economics -- whereby limp-dick, aging men
conflate their pharmaceutically-induced hard-ons into delusions of unflagging
power and potency, if not the mandates of heaven. They believe they have become
the earthly embodiment of the Phallus of God -- the Cosmic Johnson of Jehovah.
They are delusional, yet their flaccid, military/corporatist fantasies have
risen to become the Dick (Cheney) of Death.
Bastard child of this hegemonic cluster-fuck, his majesty the baby, George W.
Bush, throws global-wide tantrums of thwarted entitlement.
Indulged and protected by wealth and privilege, Bush has lived a life devoid of
the depth and compassion gained by the interplay of experience and
introspection. In his world, informed by infantile omnipotence and macho
narcissism, superficial symbols become paramount.
As Bush exemplifies, the childish minds of totalitarian personalities are
particularly enamored with symbols of military power. This is why dictators
swoon over their own reflection when they don over-the-top military uniforms,
and, accordingly, why little Dubya lives to play dress-up. The vestments of
martial power serve as compensation for the despot’s inner sense of weakness and
vulnerability. But, because power is addictive, the relief is only palliative
and comes at a terrible price. Soon, more and more blandishments of
macho-narcissistic armor are required to keep at bay feelings of internal
weakness -- feelings that are only exacerbated when the world beyond takes up a
defensive stance against his belligerence.
However, the world is far too large and intricate -- and the human heart too
complicated -- to be controlled by even the most ruthless tyrants. Throughout
history, even the most cunning and powerful despots -- those who constructed the
murderous mechanisms of absolute power around themselves -- faltered and fell.
Reduced to a joke, a historical sight gag, with their silly uniforms and shiny
boots, inevitably, every last strutting, preening one of them (including George
W. Bush) will matriculate through the university of higher humiliation known as
the vastness of life.
How long did the Thousand Year Reich of the Nazis last -- twelve years?
If you put your ear to the ground, you can hear the dynamo hum of tyrants
rotating in their graves . . . this is the closest thing we will ever have to a
perpetual motion machine.
Deep down totalitarian personality types such as Dubya realize the truth: they
know, in the end, they too will join the subterranean machinery of rotisserie
tyrants.
If we could power hybrid cars with the rage generated when Bush’s and his
administration’s sense of endless entitlement is thwarted by the larger
realities of the world, we could drive Humvee/Prius hybrids to Mars.
Living (or a pale facsimile thereof) within the confines of his self-inflated
bubble is the tyrant’s defense against the threats he perceives from the
realities of the outer world to his grandiose (and therefore fragile) sense of
self. The Bubble Prone Personality (BPP) must maintain absolute control over his
environment at all costs. (Watch how Bush goes into meltdown during those rare
events when he is not protected by the cordon sanitaire of staged and scripted
events.) Accordingly, for control to be maintained, a closed system must be
rigorously established and maintained. Secrecy and ideological rigidity are
essential. Openness creates feelings of vulnerability; feelings of vulnerability
engender paranoia; paranoia creates the urge to purge; purging creates even more
feelings of paranoia; these generate even more feelings of vulnerability -- and
that, in turn, causes those enclosed within the bubble to grow more fearful and
to strive for even greater secrecy, conformity, security, and control. In short,
a day in the life within the proto-fascistic Bush administration.
Yet closed systems contain the seeds of their own destruction: To preserve the
illusion of absolute order, the apparatus needed to maintain the protective
bubble must grow larger and more complex, and, as a consequence, it becomes
increasingly chaotic and unstable. Reacting to the perceived lack of control,
the rulers of Bubble Land, now plangent with paranoia, institute even more rigid
codes of secrecy and conformity. All of this necessitates the establishment of
still larger and more elaborate systems of control, which, in turn, create even
more complexity, and more disorder, thereby, continually expanding the cycle of
instability that, instead of preserving the system, ends by accelerating its
demise.
Worse, the obsessive striving to maintain the closed system is not only
suicidal, it can become homicidal as well. Because as the absolutist system
continues to grow more insular, inflexible and chaotic, the world outside of it
appears increasingly hostile, dangerous, and threatening . . . an attack seems
imminent.
This is how an isolated terrorist attack is viewed as a prelude to permanent
war. Hence, the paranoid fantasy of the “clash of civilizations” is born.
In the United States, even before 9/11/2001, before the invasions of Afghanistan
and Iraq, corporatism, suburbanization, and class isolation had already created
an insular, bubble culture.
Daily, bubble-butt consumers sit isolated inside their bubble-butt cars, trucks
and SUVs. Bubble-circumscribed suburbs and exurbs float farther and farther away
from civic life and communal engagement. The corporatist classes, including
elected officials and media elites, most of whom seem to harbor a thinly-veiled
contempt toward the public they self-righteously profess to serve, continue to
separate themselves from the rest of us by fostering increasing gaps of wealth
and privilege. Today, the gap has widened to such an extent that they have come
to inhabit a self-serving, self-referential universe informed predominantly by
careerism and cynical opportunism.
The Bush administration is a mere reflection of the bubble-wrapped people of the
US and their outright disregard of anything on earth that does not serve their
selfish, short-term needs and cravings. Bubble Boy Bush merely mirrors our
hidden aspirations and agendas -- which can be summed up thus: of paramount
importance -- the end all, be all of all things -- is my comfort level. All
things in creation exist solely to serve this end.
Yet a dreadful knowledge gnaws beneath the surface of our awareness: at a deeper
level, we Americans realize that in order to live in the manner we have become
accustomed, we must continue to plunder the resources of the world at a
rapacious rate -- and we know that our actions are not only unethical, but
unsustainable as well.
But the implications of acknowledging these realities are too overwhelming. The
knowledge that we maintain “our way of life” on the bartered blood of the
innocent is too unnerving and damning.
We banish such thoughts from our minds, yet they arise as a host of diffuse
anxieties and distorted fears. In addition, the dilemma is steeped in bitter
irony: for the more anxious we grow, the more desperate we become for
reassurance. And what do we find reassuring? Well, of course, the
bubble-enclosed life we have always known. It must be maintained at all costs.
Therefore, we crave even greater levels of comfort: Our gas-guzzling motor
vehicles must be made larger; our food portions bigger; anti-depression and
anti-anxiety medications must be made even more widely available. Meanwhile, the
bubble swells to the bursting point.
Of course, for us to remain in denial the world's resources must be plundered at
an even faster rate and by even more ruthless means, which, in turn, causes us
to suffer yet more underlying unease. This creates a feedback loop whereby we
crave even more of what has been destroying our peace of mind in the first
place. The skin of the bubble stretches to its limits.
Against this canvas of mutually-reinforcing cultural madness, our delusions of
absolute power are punctured by the realities on the ground in Iraq and
Afghanistan, while on the domestic front, rising oil prices plus the looming
consequences of oil depletion, ever-expanding personal and governmental debt,
and an inflated housing market (to cite only a few examples) threaten to burst
our comfort zone bubble.
All around us, here in The Land of the Bubble People, the sharpened tips of
reality bristle as we Americans, borne upon a tailwind of governmental/corporate
lies and the airhead currents of our complicity, drift ever closer to our moment
of reckoning with the pointed edge of penetrating truth.
Phil Rockstroh, a self-described, auto-didactic, gasbag monologist, is a poet, lyricist, and philosopher bard, living in New York City.
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