A sworn statement for the benefit of federal, state or local law enforcement officials who may be monitoring this site: This blog is an exercise in political satire featuring a fictional character, Belacqua Jones, whose interface with reality is a half-bubble off plumb. The author in no way endorses or approves of any of the opinions expressed by Mr. Jones. The author is not now, nor has he ever been a member of the Communist Party or of any party or organization that advocates the violent overthrow of the government of the United States or that seeks to undermine our traditional democratic values. (Well…never if you are willing to overlook a one-month flirtation with the Young Republicans while a freshman in college.)
Dear George,
The time has come to metastasize your power. By this I mean we must strengthen its foundation from one resting on a pseudo-democratic base to one that rests on an absolutist base. We’re talking divine rule in a business suit.
We will do this by the introduction of the New American State (NAS), which will replace the old and out-dated United States of America. In today’s world it’s change or die, and our ability to stay in the vanguard is dependent upon our willingness to shred and discard the past.
We will ground the NAS on three founding principles.
The first leg of our tripod is the fragmentation of community. We’ve made giant strides in this direction. We discovered generations ago that there is nothing like the glow of a screen to shatter community. Its hypnotic aura causes community and family to fade and drop away leaving only the shell of an isolated individual mesmerized and brain dead. One of the benefits of this fragmentation has been the sundering of the bond between a given corporation and a given place, making the free movement of corporate assets possible. I don’t know where the people of Flint, MI got the silly idea that General Motors was bound to them for all eternity. Plant location is not a wedding vow with its “for better or worse”. With the fragmentation of community comes a neutralization of a sense of place thus facilitating the free flow of corporate capital.
Coupled with this is the elevation of the ego to the center of the universe. The deconstruction of community and place has thankfully left the ego in tact leaving us with a crypto-nihilism that will make the growth of the NAS possible. Let them be preoccupied with “reinventing them selves”, which we know is an ontological fallacy since a subject can no more be its own object than an eye can see itself. And if they aren’t reinventing, they’re busy trying to fill their voids with noise and toys. In this way, the polity dies and is replaced by fragmented, passive consumers.
To nurture this trend we must promote the idea that there is neither future nor past, neither ground nor foundation, but only a constantly moving aperture letting in a pinprick of light that we call the “now”. No context, no absolutes, that’s the trick, George.
The second leg of the tripod is the ritualization of religious fervor. It’s at a fever pitch now, a force you have exploited with delicacy and finesse. But it is a potential problem. The last thing we want is another Ghandi or another Martin Luther King. The ancients realized that there is a thin line between religious passion and political passion. The traditional methodology for diffusing this passion has been ritual and formalism. Encourage the repetition of rote formulas by the evangelicals and in no time they will reflect the ritualized spiritual numbness of the more traditional mainstream religions.
The final leg of our tripod is grounding on the founding principle of the NAS—the care and feeding of multinationals. Corporate America has a problem with our country; it’s become a saturated market. Not only are the masses filling their houses with useless junk, but they’re filling self-storage units as fast as they can be built. Consumer spending has peaked and is beginning to wane. The solution is the gradual implementation of a policy of induced poverty. Again, you’ve made a good start on this with your tax cuts, your deepening deficit and your shrinking of health benefits. Gradually, as the deficit grows, there will be a future erosion of social programs which will deepen our misery and poverty. By doing this, you will break corporate America’s dependency on consumer spending in this country and will force capital to nurture consumer spending in other markets, namely the third world and the former Communist bloc. These are markets waiting to happen. The tobacco companies learned this lesson when they discovered that as their American market shrunk, their Asian market exploded.
George, the NAS sits on the cusp of a golden age that will make the golden age of Athens look like a piece of cheap costume jewelry. This is what God has called you for, George. You are our Moses leading us out of the desert of democracy and into to land of corporate milk and honey.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
1:05:48 PM 
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