Bad Examples

I've tidied up my grammar in my last few posts. I'm going home to write today's post. It's too crowded here at my neighborhood library branch to work comfortably, but I bet that the much larger central branch downtown will be almost empty when it opens. Will corporate support for crime win love or just more crime? 10:17am: While some Americans may see their state as a modern day Roman republic, it is unwise to emulate the ancient Romans very much beyond their ingenious political system. I personally find it vulgar to equate Hollywood movie stars with the gods and heroes of ancient myths - though I love Harryhausen. Of course, the ancient republic was fascist, with a connecting neoclassicism favoured by both Hitler and Mussolini, but aside from putting well proportioned nude women on parade floats, I consider their style to be a dangerous throwback. When admiring the success of the ancient Romans, we may fail to duly credit the conditions of their time for it. They inherited a world that was uncivilized, at least by our standards. Things like infrastructure and education were largely nonexistent in the tribal domains of their surrounding neighbours. By spreading their technological and civil progress into the lands they conquered, the Romans rightly viewed their expansions as positive and helpful. Today, however, it is not so clear which people are fittest to advance civilization. America is great, but why? Is this greatness merited by a people of superior character or merely of superior wealth? Money is nice, but it does not answer every need. Albert Speer commented in his memoirs on the reading materials of the Spandau guards. He noted that the Russian guards had far more sophisticated taste in reading materials than the American guards. Wouldn't Western style pop culture, which draws us away from well written novels to make room for TV and comic books - and blogs - actually lower the quality of life for such typical Eastern Europeans? Fast food strikes me as culturally regressive. Fast food's contempt for cuisine may infect our people with a general contempt for productive labour. Fast food not only deprives us of the culinary enhancements afforded by taking the traditional steps to cooking a meal, but fosters an unreasonable expectation for instant results. Such instant gratification may be behind the behaviour of all those who expected to copy and paste their way to stardom with my songs and blogs, heedless of the love and labour I poured into my work's construction. (Nonetheless, I love my 7/11 pizza - always ready in well under ten minutes.) 1:56pm: I think stars make poor role models. Frankly, the ancient Romans knew better than to glorify performers, who all too often fall for their own illusions. (I wonder if the ancient Romans own cultural mentors, the ancient Greeks, kept women off the stage to contain an already menacing grandiosity.) Too few stars embody the late Bruce Lee, mindful and protective of their real selves. Do you think Mick Jagger is Lucifer? I doubt it. Lucifer wouldn't let me get away with bashing him as consistently as I've been bashing Jagger and the Kidney Stones since 2007. Self proclaimed deities like Jagger could be in for an excruciating eternity if Part VIII of my poem, the Masterpiece (The Judgement), turns out to be accurate. And good heavens, where would that leave his multitude of fans? As critical as I might be of America, I greatly admire her. She is prosperous and strong. Her people are kind and tolerant and God fearing. As a Canadian outsider to their civilization, I am specially positioned to offer them cultural insights in their own language, or at least in something resembling their own accent, and I think they have been most generous to me with their attention. In my heart of hearts I consider myself an American, one whose pioneering ancestors dared to cross the Atlantic Ocean and stake out a bold claim here in the wild and unpredictable New World. May final success in my struggle against a host of rich and powerful adversaries ultimately prove America's fitness for supremacy among the nation states of our age, as a great champion of truth and justice and as a true beacon to happiness. 5:45pm: When I speak of a true beacon to happiness, I'm not just waxing poetic, but trying to specify the ideal political domination. Good hope is the beacon to happiness, for wherever good hope may exist happiness is possible. While my condition may appear at first futile, opposed as I have been by so many wealthy, high placed stars, consider that I am still here to continue the fight. Being so gives good hope to countless exploited workers like my late parents, whose worst nightmare would be for their children to fall into the clutches of greedy predators like the twisted stars listed in my Copyright Issues page. Beyond that, imagine the euphoria of my surviving the humiliating present to ascend to my own stellar success. Such dreams may only be possible in America. And Nasco workers: if you want to betray yourselves and your children for twelve dollars an hour when I would have paid you a hundred dollars an hour, just wear your Nasco black and keep standing in my way!
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