Quandary

I've got a quandary. The presidential election is around the corner. The news channels are filled with talking heads debating the pros and cons of each candidates' every breath and bat of the eyelash. Internet discussion forums are filling up with discussion of whether or not Barack Obama is really the Antichrist and a Muslim terrorist plant, or just a guy running for president (I'm betting the latter rather than the former).

However if I discuss any of this here I just alienate everyone, because my five readers are white males over 30, and that instantly means they're either McCain supporters or disillusioned Bob Barr protest voters. So to point out how Obama is opening up double-digit leads in some polls and Sarah Palin has become a punchline in just a month's time (you can even ask George Will) will only piss them off.

Everyone says they prefer when I write about music, but my posts about U2, Opeth and Minus the Bear drew zero comments. So what can I do?

Guess I'll write about the End Times.

Money Mirage

TIME magazine, the only Web site I can reach on the clock at work, tells me daily of the United States' downward spiral: if China gets tired of watching their American investments devalue they could cash in all their U.S. holdings, making our dollars even more worthless. In fact, other countries may switch their currency of trade to Euros or yen, making it harder for us to borrow and fund our smoke-and-mirrors lifestyle. Not to worry, though: the World Bank and International Monetary Fund think a "world bank" could resolve our issues. New World Order and a thousand points of light, anyone?

But y'know, maybe we don't need to despair. I recently encountered a guy named Walter Lippman who wrote a book called Public Opinion in 1929. In the opening chapter of his book, called "The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads," he tells the story of a remote island populated by Englishmen, Frenchmen and Germans where the mail boat only came every two months. In the last newspaper they had gotten they were following the murder trial of a wealthy society lady. They were eager to find out what happened when the next paper came. But the newspaper had even more stirring news. Lippman writes:

"They learned that for over six weeks now those of them who were English and those of them who were French had been fighting in behalf of the sanctity of treaties against those of them who were Germans. For six strange weeks they had acted as if they were friends, when in fact they were enemies."

He also writes how that even after a truce was called ending World War I, there continued to be fatalities on the battlefields for a week after because the news hadn't come through that the war was over. He's pointing out how the images we get through media can override what we see in reality, and we can begin to act in reality in accordance to the images that have been planted in our minds. "Run around and shoot each other! Good! Okay, now Simon says stop."

So while I hear that the Great Depression II has begun, I go outside and the sun is shining. People are driving back and forth to work. People are eating at Taco Bell and going to the park and the mall. But if I believe what I hear on CNBC and in TIME, I imagine people are dying of starvation already and walking around clothed in barrels.

Maybe this recession, or depression, is really just a media-created mirage to keep us all dancing around the way the Owners of This Country, to quote George Carlin, want us to dance? Is someone benefiting from our fear? Is this all just a hoax to keep our minds occupied and away from what's really going on?

But then I looked and saw my 401k is down $2,000, so I guess something really is going on.