Joe,
When I was a kid, I went to the San Genaro festival which are held every year in Italian communities in the summer. It is basically a carnival that raises money for the local churches. Italian food, kiddie rides and "games of skill and chance" are the attractions there. One of the things you can do is play the quarter game. There were about four of these little games built into a little trailer which is attended by some guy in his twenties. Four people could play at a time.
The objective is to win by rolling quarters down a moving chute and knocking other quarters off a ledge. You win any quarters you manage to knock off. You can aim your quarters a little to the left or to the right, but the angle which the quarters hit the mirrored surface is fixed. The angle of the chute is set in such a way that the quarters almost never land where they can push the other quarters off the table. But I did not know that.
I put a few quarters in and did not win any money. While I was trying to figure out when to release my quarters, an older Italian man told the guy running the game that he wanted to win some money. So the guy changed the angle of the quarter chute and made it steeper. The quarters were now falling where they would push the quarters over the edge and into the return chute, like a little waterfall of coins. This little adjustment that was made for the old guy worked like a charm and he made a few bucks. A little light went off in my head. I knew the secret. Did I get a chance to put my quarters down the magic chute? Not a chance. I was told to get lost. The old man had "juice" and I did not. I still don't.
That little racket is illustrative of how the real world operates. Here in America we are raised to believe that everything is on the up and up. But it isn't, probably never was and won't be in the future either. Some people are "juiced in" and some aren't and that is just a fact of life. Is it different in other countries? I don't think so. But I doubt other countries "juice in" the stupidist person they can find to the top job in their country. Only in America, as it is said, can a person fail in every aspect of his life and rise to the Presidency.
Dubya was probably juiced into every school he attended from grade school on up and he was juiced into an officer's commission and pilot school as well. Of course real pilots are all about flying and don't let themselves be grounded for not taking a flight physical. Most likely the wing commander was delighted to have him run off and play hooky rather than have him fly in his aircraft. As far as I know, he never earned anything honestly and failed in all of his business ventures. He was given many chances in life that other people will never get. Finally, he was juiced into the presidency, with the sorry results that you can read about every day. I knew politics was rotten, but did not know exactly how rotten it was until Dubya came along. He should have been impeached, but wasn't. I left the Democratic Party, never to return, because they could have impeached him, but did not. They didn't even try.
I view Barack Obama with extreme wariness. The media likes him and that is a red flag right there, as far as I am concerned. And I am all out of quarters.
My Dad and I like your book.
John
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John,
Yup! If ever there was an example of a half-witted son being "juiced in," we could find no better one than our own Georgie Boy. That's the reason I don't believe in inherited wealth, and that's the reason I'm a socialist who does not much believe in private property at this late age. But that's something people gotta come to understand for themselves. And the only way to do that is to look at the whole world instead of the inside of our own wallets at our rented money. Of course we have this phony system of "enlightened self-interest," in which the enlightened part is lopped off, leaving only the self-interest, otherwise known as greed.
Anyway, I'll take the old mob style juice any day, compared to the institutionalized kind in American society. The ethnic neighborhood style, often being based on rather unsavory criminal activities both large and small, could possibly be prosecuted if it gets out of hand. But the juice of America's elites is rewarded fer christsake, and institutionalized into our system by law and social custom.
I've got a friend in my hometown who never worked a real day in his life, who is worth about 30 million in inherited wealth going back many generations. He'd be richer but the inheritance shares were divided between siblings so, alas, he had to settle for 30 million samolians. He considers this a decline in the family fortune, since each child cannot be effectively as rich as his daddy, or granddaddy or great granddaddy. "A million is nothing these days," he has been saying for the past 30 years.
Anyway, like several other old money tribes here, members of his family have always been on the city council, or in the important positions of local governance. Mostly so they could protect and increase their holdings, keep their labor costs down, steer local planning and building codes in their favor, and generally promote a good environment for their many enterprises. In other words, stay juiced.
This guy had just turned 50 and decided to "Give something back to America and my community."
"So what are you gonna do?", I asked.
"I'm going to run for city council," he says proudly, grinning like a two-year old who has just learned to shit in the potty and expects to be patted on the head and cuddled for his marvelous choice.
And he got elected too, because of the familiarity of his family name and the way Virginians tend to believe their own homegrown human ditch weed is better than anything else in the world -- because by god, Old Virginny has traditions and values. (Helen, let's vote for him. He's one of us, one of our own townsfolk from a "leading family," not like that out-of-town Jew lawyer who is running against him, whose family has only been here 40 years.)
Geesh! Juice. It comes in a million forms, including with Italian pasta sauce or traditional Southern pork gravy or Texas barbecue. It may be served up to us by war heroes in the permanent throes of a "senior moment," wives of ex-presidents whose ambitions exceed their husband's libidos, or as the legacy of Nazi money launderers such as Prescott Bush, or by Obama's Chicago political "king maker" Emil Jones, or Oprah for that matter. But whatever flavor, at the end of the day, we end up doing their dishes.
In the end it comes down to this: The world is ruled by various gangsters and mobs controlling different turf. That's why nations on world map are different colors -- to denote various mob turf sanctioned as "governments." Some are definitely worse than others. Imagine having Kim Jong Il on your worthless currency, on your television, producing your movies and as your nation's numer one author and music recording star. But Americans have more been fortunate, because we have more choices: If we get sick of Oprah, we have a second choice -- Britney Spears. Beyond that, even after all the financial theft and juicing the hell out of everything, our mob has traditionally given us more for our money in obvious ways. Such as WalMart's "Always low prices," and freedom to incur a lifetime of ever increasing debt that can never be paid back, and to do so without ever getting whacked. (Healthcare, and foods made out of, well, food, would have been nice, too. But you can't have everything).
And now the ultimate mob rip-off is in. The mob's ponzi scheme has collapsed. The country is broke (well, except for the guys in the Armani suits on the 50th floor). So the only option left for our financial and political mob, is to see a guy elected who is going to "save our economic system," and yet create economic "change." Which strike me as two mutually exclusive things, but what do I know?
My guess is that they will prop up that old dead whore called American free market capitalism through more bailouts of the rich financiers, simply by divvying up the people's dough between themselves. They'll put new make-up on the moldy hag, then dolly her out onto the dance floor, declaring the bailouts a success. And they will be a success too, for a while, because Americans are yet willing to dance with her for some time to come. Until she starts stinking up the joint so bad they can no longer even enter the ballroom. Then all hell's gonna break loose. We just won't take it anymore. We will rise up in anger and take action. We'll call in to the Rush Limbaugh Show by god! Or write angry liberal rants on the Internet! That's what we'll do!
Then we will sit down and fill out our guest worker visas to become houseboys for the new Chinese middle class. Because the juice also comes in Szechuan flavor. So I'm gonna beat the rush. I'm filling my form out right now, in advance.
On line five it asks: Have own bicycle?
Should I lie?
In art and labor,
Joe
