h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Bored is me.

Time to rant. I can scream my discomfort into the void of the internet. The internet can suck it down with a hollow sort of schlurping sound. The echo will resonate around the little 3x3 virtuality that is my private space on H2G2.

What's worse? Rascist Nazi eugenics nutbars with an army of stormtroopers and gas cans, or paranoid Christian doomsday cultists in control of a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons and the capability to terraform the planet into a watery smog pit?

I've noticed our American neighbours are slowly getting the hang of not being totally intellectually flaccid. Sort of. I mean, at least a few of them are actually showing vague signs of awareness.

It's come to the point where conspiracy theorists are actually better sources of informed opinions than the mainstream media. At least the paranoiacs are actually asking questions.

The crappy little imperialist wars in Afghanistan and Iraq aren't the main concern here. Yeah, it's sucky, but it's nothing new... just business as usual. Think the Splendid Little War of 1895. Ho ho ho.

Gangsters running the country is nothing new either. Sure, this cabal running the White House is a little less idealistic than the guy who hand-picked them, Richard Nixon... but whether its Robber Barons or Masons or whatever calling the shots, the democratic ideals of a nation have never in history survived first contact with the merchants and opportunists, and people have never been able to resist voting themselves handouts from the public purse.

Maybe Stalin's Utopian ideals were right after all; just kill em all, crack people's thick hollowed skulls together and enjoy the coconut sound of stupidity and greed feeding on itself... cuz there's nothing else that keeps people busy.

I'm not even that surprised to see Americans sitting around blinking groggily in the fog of TVland while the star and co-star of The Running Man get elected to governerships, the constitution gets used as an asswipe on airforce-1, NATO shuts down conveniently during a 'terrorist attack' on American Soil, the president votes himself emergency powers, the Nazi Enabling Act is reborn as the 'Patriot Act', etc. etc. Ever since JFK was killed on live TV they've all been afraid to change the friggin channel or go to the john during commercial breaks. See, it's all a friggin action movie to them. Germans in 1933 had myths of supermen too, but they didn't have a multi-billion dollar industry backing it up.

What bugs me is this: people. People. Are. Stupid. I mean they are really heart-breakingly astoundingly vapidly soulless in general.

It all comes down, you see, to pragmatism. Truth is what works.

Hitler treated people like morons. "What luck for leaders that men do not think," he said. And he played the crowd like Hendrix plucking guitar strings. He told them what they wanted to hear, he gave them bogeymen and common sense, and they lined up to salute and shove their neighbours into ovens.

Bush and his government treat people like morons. Lie, lie lie, deny, deny, deny. Rhetoric, rhetoric. Evil, terrorism, terrifying terrorists of terror, axis of evilism, blah blah. And they buy it. The ones who aren't buying it needed Michael freakin' Moore to spell it out to them, and Michael Moore doesn't exactly have a clear idea what's going on himself.

Women who insist it'd be different if the other gender was in charge tend to forget that the Auschwitz camp had secretaries looking the other way while they stamped the paperwork.

Treat people like idiots and they will never fail to rise to the occasion. Know why? Cuz they are. The average IQ is 100. That means you were able to comprehend two-syllable words and differentiate between squares and rectangles on a written test; and half of the population are below that level.

The most fantastic elements of Star Trek were never the costumes, sets, aliens, time warps, or virtualities; it was the notion of people cooperating, behaving ethically as a reflex, and using logic to solve problems that made Star Trek a surreality.

A private insight: I'd really love to experience fatherhood someday. Really. I like kids. I'd like to pass on what I know. I'd like to have that experience of caring for something besides myself. But unless I adopt, I doubt that will happen. I can't imagine professing to care for someone while being the one responsible for their having to participate in this sorry, dying world. It seems ludicrously hypocritical.

And at last I can give a name to this emotion: hate. I hate and resent the doomsday profiteers who have robbed me of the genetic birthright to procreate in good faith that the planet will in some form be around for succeeding generations to play the game of darwinian struggle to the best of their ability. I hate that these planet-raping demoniacs are borne to power by IQ 90 cosmologists who presume to know better than Einstein did what the universe is about, what God wants, and the endless prattle about how everything should conform to their fantast sollipsism.

Watch Crossfire on CNN. Imagine the panelists replaced by monkeys screeching and throwing shit at each other. Notice how much more articulate they seem that way.

It's a metaphor for all politics. For all human behaviour.

As opposed to another X decades or centuries of squabbling over what colour pajamas God likes to wear, maybe a nuclear war wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. For 30 minutes or so at least we'd shut up, look at the sky, and realize collectively what a bunch of stupid assholes we all are. Wherever God is, I think he'd have to smile at that.

Kerry thinks what the American voter wants in this hour is for some straight talk and straight answers. This is why he is doomed. Bush has his finger on the pulse of the average voter, because the average voter is only marginally smarter than he is.

At least you get to watch from afar and distance yourself. I have to deal with these people every day. I even get to go down to the polls in a couple weeks and watch my vote be swallowed up by the ignorant masses.

Well, I am happy to not be an American. Then again, since whoever you guys elect to power will pretty much rule the world anyways, I sometimes think it's an injustice that the rest of us don't get to vote on it.

Most great societies seem to go through an iterative cycle of struggle, success, contentment, narcissim, apathy, confusion and collapse. I think the American experiment was on track to last a good 400-500 years or so before going into serious decline, but the industrial revolution sort of jogged the cycle a bit, not to mention the cold war, the invention of television, and all that good stuff. It seems you guys are coming to the end of the line sometime soon... 10 years or maybe 100... but soon.

The question is whether that collapse is gonna take the rest of us along with it.

I realise the Iraq war is just part of a geostrategic campaign to extend the reach of the global empire. That being said, I find it a curious irony that is rarely commented on this conflict is by and large also an ideological clash between two cultures of rabid warmongering 15th century zealots. Is this the last great war of religion?