The Savior Cometh

Who doesn’t love a good prophecy?

Wouldn’t you be thrilled to discover that your tedious life has all been a nefarious ruse, and your true lineage has been hidden from you? And now you must fulfill your destiny to save the world, vanquish evil, and most likely, get laid?

Yes, it’s a beautiful story. Even if it is a common trope, a sad source of wish fulfillment, and a bit racist.

OK, I may need to explain that last one. You see, the “literary canon is lousy with Chosen Ones” because there is “always an ancient riddle to live up to, a monstrosity to depose, and a balance to be restored.” But as you may have noticed, the hero is usually a “straight white boy anointed the arbiter of balance.”

Think about it. What do Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, Jack from Lost, and Neo from the Matrix have in common? 

No, the prophecy never seems to foretell the arrival of a Latino lesbian or a short Black guy who is there to save the world. We continue to gravitate toward stories where white men are not just natural leaders, but divinely ordained messiahs with powers far beyond the rest of us.

Taken to extremes, this is the kind of thinking that leads millions of Americans to look at a bellicose blowhard who is the most obese man to be chief executive since William Howard Taft and think “He’s the most manly man ever!”

Another issue is that these types of stories imply that “a flawed system can be repaired by simply trading out or removing a few bad pieces,” usually in one quick stroke or massive blast from the sacred object or a shouting of the sacred incantation. I mean, it’s cool as hell, but also more than a little simplistic.

Again, taken to extremes, you have a situation where “Americans decided that since we elected President Obama, that meant racism was over and everything was fine.” I’m pretty sure it didn’t turn out that way.

Now, I’m not saying we should boycott these stories, or reject tales where white guys save the day. 

But we need to stop buying into the idea of a godly master plan that focuses on one man who can fix everything.

That shit never happens.

But who knows, maybe the next prophecy will be the one that sticks.

West Coast Style

You can imagine my surprise when I found out that I am expendable, along with millions of my fellow Californians.

No doubt you’ve heard that our extremely popular president, during one of his rambling rants in front of a dwindling crowd of his admirers, recently implied that it would be “a small price to pay” if Iran destroyed Los Angeles (where I live) and San Diego.

Wow, if millions of Americans dying is a small price to pay for the illusion of victory in an ill-conceived and idiotic war, then what of the 19 military members who have already died in this botched misadventure? By his logic, their sacrifice must be miniscule, even insignificant. Let’s ask President Tough Talk if that’s true.

In any case, our demented chief executive’s handlers are already insisting that this blabbering, blubbering octogenarian was quoted out of context, leaving the rest of us to wonder what possible context could justify a president who says we should just relax and go along with Armageddon.

Giving a foreign adversary, whom we are currently engaging in warfare, the ok to bomb not one but two major America cities sounds suspiciously like treasonous behavior to me. But apparently, it is not, because according to this administration, treason consists solely of publishing unflattering stories about the president (and only the current one — you can say all the bad shit you want about those losers who preceded him in the White House).

Once again, we see grotesque displays of disdain and contempt, even outright sociopathic hostility, for America coming from people who claim to love America. 

After all, many in that crowd of red-state conservatives applauded the idea of California getting destroyed. A lot of them likely mutter, “never forget” every anniversary of the September 11 attacks, forgetting at least temporarily that most of the victims of that day were blue-state urban dwellers.

Blowing up California is a fantasy to these people who wrap themselves in the flag and proclaim America to be the greatest country in the world, except of course for all the cities and the biggest states (i.e., most of the nation). LA is particularly loathed in MAGA world.

After our unapologetic chief executive wondered aloud if LA and San Diego are disposable, many commentators pointed out that Southern California has multiple military bases and millions of conservative voters.  

This approach reveals two things: first, every psychotic warbling of this president must be rationally refuted rather than condemned outright, and second, lots of Americans are clearly missing the point.

For that latter group of commentators, it’s not that we have a large military presence and conservative enclaves here. It’s that any president who says he is fine with two of America’s largest and greatest cities getting destroyed is a treasonous cretin, or at the very least, subject for removal under the 25^th Amendment.

At this point, our most prominent California hater has defenders who are adopting a familiar and tiresome tactic. This is to praise a clearly bonkers old man as someone who says what he means, except when he says something horrible, then he was joking, except it’s well known that the man has no sense of humor, and when he double downs on the sick “joke,” it means you’re too sensitive over a little racial slur, threat to destroy humanity, indifference to the suffering of Americans, or plot to enrich himself, at which point let’s all change the subject to how great the country is doing under the leadership of religious zealots, ignorant frat boys, and slimy oligarchs.

The good news is that LA, and indeed all of California, will still be here after these guys are out of power (and possibly in jail). We will still be here, gazing at the ocean, hiking in the mountains, and living our lives in the sunshine.

That’s our long-term plan.

Monikers on the Move

You may still be trying to figure out if you’ve ever swum in the Gulf of America or visited Lake America (hint: you have not because those places don’t exist). 

But before you decide which GPS app to boycott, we must contend with the news that our favorite scowling old man president has decided the phrase “artificial intelligence” doesn’t quite capture the majesty of the technological advance that will create paradise on Earth and/or kill us all.

Apparently, we are now calling it “super intelligence” because… well, who the fuck even knows anymore? The cacophonous residents of the White House are on a quest to rename everything, and possibly everyone, in a bizarre attempt to convince Americans that they are actually accomplishing anything other than jack shit. 

Please note that effective immediately, the phrase “jack shit” is now “banana cream pie.” 

Yes, it’s so much easier to rename governmental departments and draw up new maps and chisel in new titles on buildings and immortalize a petty wannabe tyrant than it is to actually improve the lives of any American who isn’t already a billionaire. That ease is one reason the GOP loves it.

This naming frenzy is courtesy of the people who have long insisted that words are irrelevant. They throw around the R-word and the C-word and even the N-word while shrieking, “cancel culture!” at anyone who points out their asshole behavior.

But laboring under the illusion of power, these incompetent megalomaniacs (sorry, that expression will henceforth be “happy joy mongers”) are trying to alter the term “artificial intelligence” even though over the past few years, Americans have uttered that phrase more often than any other two-word combination, with the possible exception of “Taylor Swift” (who will now be called Geronimo Jones).

Never mind that the descriptor “artificial intelligence” dates back to the 1950s. And ignore the fact that everyone knows what you’re talking about when you say, “AI” while nobody will understand what the hell Republicans are blathering on about with this “SI” nonsense.

The point is that this is truly an exciting time for renaming.

From now on, the sky will be called the ocean. And the ocean will be called the mountains. And the mountains will be called baseball.

Also, if your name is Trent, you will now be Brent. If you like pasta, you better get used to calling it steak. And we’re renaming computers to, I don’t know… how about ostriches?

Once everything is rechristened, and every location in the Northern Hemisphere has some variation of the name “America,” everything will be perfect. It will be utopia.

Actually, it will be cantaloupe, because that’s what we’re calling it now.

The Sweat of Their Brow

So I’m driving down the street, with my phone plugged in and playing music on shuffle, when Billy Joel’s “Allentown” comes on. I hadn’t heard the song in years, and I considered hitting “skip,” but I hung in there.

Now, you will not be surprised to learn that I am not a big fan of Billy Joel. Yes, he has some catchy tunes from early in his career, when he had just the slightest bit of an edge (e.g., “Only the Good Die Young” is a head-bopper about trying to bang a goody-two-shoes Catholic girl).

But a lot of his stuff consists of maudlin takes on smooth jazz. Plus, there is “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” which is second only to “American Pie” as the most insufferable Baby Boomer nostalgia song of all time.

Having said that, “Allentown” has a hooky melody, and it’s an anomaly for a Joel song because it is not about love or Long Island or marrying a supermodel. It’s about the factory workers of the Pennsylvania city of the title.

The song is from 1982. So we’ve been singing about the plight of factory workers for over 40 years.

Does any other demographic get the kind of sustained adulation and deep concern that blue-collar (usually white) Americans receive? 

Hey, when was the last time you heard a catchy pop song about female travel agents who went out of business because of the internet? No, it’s only tough guys who work in steel mills or coal mines that make us weep patriotic tears (and enact protectionist legislation).

Assuming that the post-war factory boom started in the late1940s, the song implies that it was over by the early 1980s. This means blue-collar America has been in decline longer than it was ascendant. This further implies that blue-collar prosperity, which is one of the pillars of the conservative movement, was not a longstanding feature of American values. It was a fucking blip on the cultural radar.

Getting back to the song, the part where Billy Joel sings, “They shoved an American flag in our face” has to be the most punk rock lyric the Piano Man has ever penned. And again, this was during Reagan’s America, which was supposedly a golden age for blue-collar American men. Everything was great!... except for all those factories closing down, which was so prevalent that hit pop songs played on the radio about how shitty it was for these workers.

Ultimately, “Allentown” is telling us that all that mythologizing, all that insisting that manual labor has always been the key to freedom, is not true. In reality, factory workers have been bitching about their plight for decades, even through multiple economic booms.

I repeat, this song is from 1982.

The situation for blue-collar workers hasn’t gotten better in generations and is unlikely to abruptly become magical. Just consider that under an administration that guaranteed that it was bringing factories back, American manufacturing has gone backwards and lost over 100,000 jobs.

If it makes these workers feel any better, white-collar workers will soon become enmeshed in this state of perpetual malaise. For proof, look at the fact that U.S. corporate profits recently hit a record high, while labor's share of economic output has dropped to a record low.

That means everybody who is not a billionaire is getting poorer. And what is the response of the super-wealthy to the economic pummeling that the middle and lower classes are enduring?

Well, they look at how the system benefits them, and they quote Billy Joel:

“Don’t go changing.”

That Old-time Religion

The 1980s pop band Frankie Goes to Hollywood famously asked, “Are we living in a world where sex and horror are the new gods?”

It was a fair question for the 1980s.

Today, we have to ponder if we are living in a world where AI and ostentatious wealth are the new gods. It’s either them or sociopathy and fear.

In any case, the traditional gods of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism seem to be doing fine. After years of decline, attendance at places of worship has picked up slightly for the first time in decades, mostly because more young people are embracing religion than in the past. I’m guessing this has something to do with the bleak future that younger generations face, and that desperation has driven them to the last resort of prayer. Either that, or Gen Z has decided churches are excellent backdrops for selfies.

An exception to these trends is that “young Latinos are abandoning organized religion at a faster rate than any other demographic in the United States.” I have to say that I am not surprised at this statistic.

Now, I’m not hostile to religion, even though I left it behind long ago. Hey, if believing in the guy in the sky is your thing, go for it.

But I find it strange that Christianity, and in particular Catholicism, has such a powerful hold on Latinos that its influence is only now beginning to soften. Yes, plenty of Latinos, like me, were raised in the church, and people tend to stick with the religion in which they were raised. But on a wider cultural level, the whole concept of Christianity among Latinos is bizarre. 

After all, we all know that hundreds of years ago, Spanish colonizers forced indigenous people to convert. If the natives resisted, the Spanish often made sure they met their gods as soon as possible, if you know what I’m saying.

This is not some obscure historical fact or the peeved perspective of a liberal know-it-all. Even casual Catholics know that Christ was often thrust upon Latin America at the point of a sword or the barrel of a musket.

It’s an obvious question but one I rarely hear asked: If this religion was forced upon your ancestors, why do you still follow it?

I understand why a terrified Mexican in the 1500s would say, “Hand me that communion wafer” when the alternative was a flaming pyre. But centuries later, why do so many Latinos continue to worship the god of their colonizers when they have a choice of other religions (or none at all)? Why do so many Latinos go to church 60 times a year when they are not being threatened with execution? The excuse of adopting the customs of the conquerors is no longer valid.

Again, I’m not saying Christianity is inherently vile. Nor am I saying we should bring back the ceremonies of the Aztecs and Mayans. After all, ripping people’s hearts out on top of pyramids is likely to be frowned upon in contemporary society.

But if the main reason you believe in a certain type of god is because you were raised in that religion, and the main reason you were raised in that religion is because your grandfathers of 400 years ago were facing torture, shouldn’t that give you pause?

Clearly, I’m not the only one asking these questions.