Bill LaCroix: We're Off To See The Wizard

Friday, October 11, 2019

We're Off To See The Wizard

Below is a screenshot from the all-powerful Twitter account (let me repeat that very loudly: ALL-POWERFUL TWITTER ACCOUNT!!!) of @real DonaldTrump who has clearly spent serious time in the Land of Oz. Please read it carefully, and be amazed:

There. That should take care of any apostates out there who are not yet awash in the greatness of @realdonaldtrump’s ALL-POWERFUL TWITTER ACCOUNT!!! Now let’s move on to the next item.

This is a picture of Elon Musk’s rocket ship. Well, it's actually just a sketch of Elon Musk's rocket ship, a cartoon really, but I couldn't post a picture of the real one because the image I wanted to use belongs to "Getty Images", who want $500 for the privilege of using it. Mark Getty, the chairman of Getty Images as well as one of the heirs to the J. Paul Getty fortune is, like Elon Musk and donald trump, a billionaire, and his wisdom is probably also great and unmatched, by definition if nothing else. However, I didn't send him the $500 to use his picture, although if I thought he really needed my money to top off his grandfather's oil fortune, I would have surely sent it to him right away, because how else are we going to maintain our great and unmatched rich folks if we don't keep them rich? But I decided against it. I didn't really need his "image" after all, since this is such a teeny-weeny blog and I'm such a good artist and can sketch out a rocket ship in the same amount of time that it (apparently) took Elon Musk's engineers to design a real one. You can see the real one here (Elon Musk's Tinfoil Rocketship!).

Did you look? Tell me if I'm wrong, but I think it looks like what a bored kid with a wad of tinfoil and a half-hour could sculpt to impress her friends at the lunchroom table with. But we're living in a world, aren't we? Where a billionaire president believes he is the Wizard of Oz, billionaire mechanics and build rocket ships with their spare change and billionaire fossil-fuel heirs sell great and unmatched photos to chumps like you and I for $500, all of which is too awe-inspiring to put into mere words. Let's just settle on "great" and "unmatched" then.

Which brings us to human consciousness. Elon says his motives for building his rocket ship are altruistic, that all he wants to do is send human consciousness into outer space (before it's too late, I guess). But who's he think he's kidding? Whose consciousness is going to be able to afford a seat on Elon Musk's rocket ship except a billioniare's? So Elon Musk is building a tin rocket ship to send billionaires into outer space, which, you have to admit, is an excellent idea.

Yusaka Maezawa, for instance, is the Japanese billionaire who bought a seat on Elon Musk's rocket ship. He's a genius, which is self-evident since he made billions selling fashionable ZOZOSUITS online. Who would have known--except a genius--that you could make billions selling suits named "zozo" online? But he did it, and on the strength of that fact alone his consciousness should get what it deserves, which is parting company with its billions here on Earth while his body goes bye bye in the sky on Elon Musk's tin rocket ship. Like I said: this is an excellent idea.

Which brings us full circle back to our Wizard-channelling president, donald trump. Those who may have accidentally read a blog or two of mine in the past, may know that I've been praying for the Rapture for years as the most efficacious way to get these folks off our planet (The Rapture). But I think this is a better, possibly divinely-inspired, gimmick, and we don't even have to pray for it. All we have to do is click our heels three times.

It's true, the actual Oz story does use the narrative device of a hot-air balloon to suck a blowhard liar out of Dorothy's life forever and for good, but I'd argue that the fact that we have to use Elon Musk's tin rocket ship to accomplish the same thing in real life is a mere technicality. Don't forget, trump is a billionaire and, after buying a seat in the Oval Office, where else is there for him to go but up? To "expand his talents", so to speak, all the way into outer space...and beyond. Believe me, he'll buy a seat on that hell-roarer, wouldn't miss it for the world, I'll bet, and, hot air balloon or tin rocket ship, the effect for us will be exactly the same. We will all wake up in our beds with concerned loved ones hovering over us, resurfacing to blessed (non-billionaire) consciousness while realizing that the ugly dream we have been having about evil witches and mean, flying monkeys for the last _____ (fill in the blank) years was the result of a nasty bump on our noggin which wasn't our fault, and that our dog is O.K., too. With proper amounts of dread and veneration, this should righteously be the largest part of any humans’ consciousness who dares to walk the Earth (as opposed to Outer Space) in these most significant times. A happy ending, albeit laced with large doses of Magic.

To repeat: This sending of billionaires off into outer space on tin rocket ships is a most excellent idea. I wish I'd thought of it myself, but I couldn't afford to, so I'll have to thank the great and unmatched Elon Musk and his other billionaire buddies for thinking of it for me! I would only make a few minor suggestions: that some of those billionaires who think chumps like myself owe them $500 for a splotch or two of color should be included on this (hopefully) one-way trip to high-end immortality and that Elon tweek his narrative about "sending human consciousness" into the cosmos to "sending human hubris” into that same void, which, when you think about it, isn’t really such a big change at all and...Voila!

Blast off, suckers!

And do write when you find work.

For further reading on my great and unmatched theories about Human Consciousness, go to: Cows In Space

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Why I Blog

Thoreau and Emerson had a discussion in May of 1846 about the Mexican War--our first war that set us on the course we still track today. Conquest of nation-states and the inevitable Imperialism that follows. Emerson counseled his friend that we can supersede the transgressions of a well-meaning State by the Muse. Thoreau wasn't so sure that the State was so well-meaning or that the Muse alone would be enough to supersede it. But he tried both the Muse and "other means" to our everlasting benefit. Civil Disobedience, in the American sense, has always been his child, in large part because he raised it to the level of Literature. "Other means" requires the Muse to be lasting and effective, and vice versa. How would anyone know what the hell you were talking about otherwise, let alone emulate what you're trying to do?

The problem with Progressives today, I think, is that we have been in the habit of letting other people--Rupert Murdoch, the Koch Brothers, Sun Myung Moon--tell our stories for us, people who do not mean us well. We haven't plugged our muse into our political discourse very much, and that's a big mistake. Mark Twain didn't make that mistake, and he was among the first American writers to use the new-fangled typewriter. Why do we children of Twain, Emerson and Thoreau make that mistake now with our new-fangled computers?

For all its faults, Corporate America understands that people are story-based critters, like it or not, and I think we progressives should like it. By definition, people make many important social (read: political) decisions based largely on who's the best storyteller. It’s in our nature, and Corporate Media is a classic example of how Nature abhors a vacuum. We’ve collectively created a cultural ‘narrative’ vacuum by allowing ourselves to be so easily entertained by—Corporate Media! And Nature hates that. She’ll allow the same garbage responsible for that vacuum (Corporate Media!) to be sucked in and to rattle around until it ruins our cognative motors before she’ll let that sad state of affairs stand. I'd ask any "America Firsters" stumbling on this blog and reading this far to consider: Rupert Murdoch is from Australia. Sun Myung Moon, now-deceased but whose creatures, the Washington Times and UPI still walk the face of the earth, was from Korea. The Koch Brothers, of course, were from the sheikdom of Texas. All of them were, and the living ones still are, so obscenely rich they apparently believed they own America simply because they paid for it, and we collectively let them define who among us are “real Americans”?! C'mon!

Although it helps to strive toward the goal, progressives don't have to be great writers, and I'm not claiming to be one. We simply have to acknowledge that we have the better stories and we’re sitting on our best ones. Our truest ones. Multi-national billionaires have better versions of American Liberalism and Progressivism than the real ones told by real Americans? Us? We shouldn't put up with that. Why do we?

Like any historic attempt, we need to find our Voice. Significant action will come only after our contemporary, progressive political muse matures, which it hasn't yet. Not to paint with too wide a brush, but too much of our positions have been framed in intellectual, almost-didactic prose, which, if you don't identify as an intellectual, means boring. Not all of it, just a whole lot of it, but never mind. If history's still a guide--and I hope it still is--there's hope, because when any progressive movement's Muse matures, it generally becomes the baseline for much of Western Civilization’s meaningful and therefore lasting literature. For example, "Mein Kampf" is still in print but I'll bet you'd have to turn over a lot of rocks to find someone to call it 'literature'.

So, this blog. It's a call, I suppose, to elevate our critical modern discussions out of Fox-news-landia back to where intelligent, caring Americans can find their feet and fight back, either with the Muse, by other means, or both. It’s not up to some politician to change the narrative. That’s up to us. So by definition we still have as good a chance as we ever had. Don't lose hope. It’s always been this way. At least in literate societies.

In other words, like Emerson advised and Thoreau partially agreed with: stories matter, and may the best Muse win.