When a Singular Action Awakens a Nation We Gather in Yankee Stadium to Bow Down to the Pope

Quotes: -"Indians can't hold down liquor, you know."
-[female newscaster] "I think that might be him right there. Is that him? I think that might be the pope coming up right there. I think I just caught a glimpse of the pope. Did you ever think you'd be saying this in your life? Oh! I saw the pope! I SAW THE POPE! Oh, that was like the greatest thing EVER!!!!..." [cut to commercial]
-"People here don't have to try very hard at all to have a good standard of living."


I have yet to talk to a single American who is excited about any of the presidential candidates. Mind you, I’m hitting up some pretty conservative circles and travelling through the down-homestyle Midwest. But the general consensus I’m finding goes something like this: all the candidates are running on platforms of change, and yet, none of these candidates is really offering any actual change in their political platforms. Forcing someone to pay for something they can’t afford is not exactly a realistic solution to a pretty comprehensive problem. So when all you have to work with, and all you can see for miles and miles on end, are lies, oratory, and deceit – I guess you go with the best man for the job – the best speaker. No one denies this man is Barack Obama. And with our man just barely leading the democratic mudslinging heading into potentially decisive Pennsylvania and Indiana, I worm my way through the back ways of Northern Indiana, and hear the tale of a man with a big screen TV and a pool, apologizing for the accumulating mess in his house (like I give a fuck), who is struggling to pay for his cute kid’s brain operation and diabetes monitoring. Things aren’t anymore quite like they once were.

I’ve checked seven stores now, and I still can’t get my hands on a New York Times. And none of the store owners have any sense of where I might find one. We had to go on a mission just to pick up a USA today. The lead story is a piece centered around the pope’s visit, bemoaning the personal devastation of 9/11 from a fairly evangelical standpoint. The Pope will try to make amends for the priests with the STDs. He'll visit Ground Zero and say a prayer over the lingering ashes of the twin towers. And he'll hit that other great centre of American achievement -- Yankee Stadium. America's pastime is the slowest game in the world. And the way it's told, delving into the lives of the faithful and faithless, you’d think you were reading a church bulletin or something. Seriously. No one asks the question “why?”. It’s this tragedy that happened. And it has happened to us (the US). And, of course, we all know it’s the Muslims (Obama and his ilk. “Barack was once a Muslim – and if you become a Muslim, of course, you can never get out, you know. They’ll kill you. That’s how they are.” – I hear this from one of my rides) that brought these horrors upon us. When I was in Ohio I talk to a gas station clerk – a sweet black girl who lives in a house nearby. She doesn’t know where Toronto is. She honestly has no clue. Maybe it’s near the city of Ontario. Probably. And I ask why she doesn’t know. Why wouldn't she have even heard of the largest city in one of the two countries closest to hers. I thought I had a right to be mad at her ignorance if I had wanted. She totally has a rad cute smile. You might see someone like her sitting in the audience at an Oprah taping. And alarm bells explode in my head as I can’t believe I’m actually hearing her say it: “Well I didn’t start really caring about what went on in the outside world until 9/11 happened.” A nation awakened. Singular action. Checkmate.

and so we hang phallic symbols on the pruned trees in our manicured yards

Your buddie with the hydrogen car the next state up that actually works just might be in talks with GM. His idea just might be the key to saving your civilization based on innovation and independence. But you just know they'll probably buy the information off him, tether him down to some non-compete clause, and just sit on the info. Bury it deep in their archives. No one actually wants change here, even though they talk about it.

It's a land based around one simple concept: seek cash TO THE MAX. With the foreclosure crisis sinking its teeth just deeper and deeper -- kicking not just the ghetto mammas out, but giving the boot to big doctors and dentists, separating them from their mini-villas on the lake, you think that developers breaking even might grab a sigh of relief. And you might think that if you could even turn a profit on a real estate venture, you'd be happy and sitting pretty. But, you know, that's not the case. The developers of one of the most elite condo communities in a clean section of the state are supposed to allocate space and build the residents a place the can interact -- a community centre. But instead they opted to just sell more condos and force the rich residents to fundraise if they want a community centre. But it's not because they've been hit hard. They're still selling units, right up into the double digits.

And I heard a lot of voices and filtered out a lot of obtuse opinions. But maybe the most accurate was this one: "Give it five years and the problem will sort itself out. The thing is, the administration is just way too top heavy to accomplish anything. The only way things will change is through a collapse."