The New Devil's Dictionary

The New Devil's Dictionary of Modern American Usage
(with apologies to Ambrose Bierce)

Government, Politics & Civil Order

Armed forces: A government make-work program in which unemployable, unskilled young men and women from the lower strata of society emerge from their term of service with a high degree of skill in shooting people and blowing things up.

War on drugs: A conflict in which the government attempts to shoot and blow up the highly-skilled, underclass people who are shooting and blowing each other up in their efforts to sell the drugs which the government has previously sold them.

Drugs: Mind-altering substances which people, either rich or poor, take so they don't have to think about the depressing shit I'm talking about here.

Illegal Drugs: Untaxed drugs.

Drug treatment: Treatment for rich people can be very expensive, involving rehabilitation clinics and highly trained medical professionals. Treatment for poor people is even more expensive and involves prison, vicious beatings and buggery.

Human rights abuse: An outrage perpetrated by a country or political faction I disagree with.

Free enterprise: Socialism for the rich.

Socialism: Capitalism for the nomenklatura.

Pork: Government money that someone else got.

Religious tax exemption: A means by which the government subsidizes religious institutions with successful building programs.

Insurance: A subsidy for the stupid, risk-taking behavior of rich people paid for by poor and working class people.

Foreign policy: This consists of sending poor and working class people to various foreign countries to shoot angry brown people as a way of subsidizing the wealthier percentage of the population with jobs in the defense industry.

United States energy policy: Shooting Arabs until the Middle East runs out of oil.

Public education: Jails for children which allow their parents to go to work. Also, educational institutions. (archaic)

Private education: Institutions by which the natural arrogance and cruelty of the upper classes is refined. They also teach Latin and Rugby.

Weapons development: An ongoing process in which the defense industry makes military technology increasingly complicated, unreliable, expensive and harder to use. (See upgrade.)

War: An ongoing miniseries in which the American military kicks the shit out of various dirtbag countries in order to get free photo-ops for their latest weapons systems on CNN.

PAC: An acronym for "Political Action Committee." An organization which prevents political action.

Republican: Somebody with money who thinks the government should write his corporation big checks. Believes in the principle of borrow and spend.

Democrat: Somebody without money who thinks the government should write him big checks. Believes in the principle of tax and spend.

Libertarian: Republican who smokes pot and doesn't want any government checks.


Religion and Philosophy

Religion: A multilevel marketing scheme combining a belief in the supernatural with a successful building program.

Cult: A multilevel marketing scheme combining a belief in the supernatural with an unsuccessful building program.

Scientology: Former cult now boasting a successful building program, airhead Hollywood spokespeople and numerous unmarked graves.

UFO Cult: A belief system which holds advanced extraterrestrial civilizations developed faster-than-light travel as a means of crossing the universe and sticking things up people's butts.

Moral highground: A convenient place for crucifixtions.

New Age Thought: Neither thought nor new.


Free Speech, Art & Popular Culture

Popular Culture: Fads stolen from the real culture of black people and sold to white people.

Free Speech: When I call you a dickhead.

Hate Speech: When you call me a dickhead.

Libel/Slander: When I sue you for calling me a dickhead.

News: Advertiser press releases rewritten in the third person.

Freedom of Speech: The inalienable right to print whatever the advertiser tells you.

Investigative reporting: Negative articles about businesses and individuals who don't advertise.

Political reporting: Occasional filler between articles about advertisers.

Intellectual property: Ideas, music and images stolen from black people without good lawyers.

Post-modernism: A literary & philosophical movement whose adherents have cast off the mind-forged manacles that prevented them from being longwinded, unclear and dull.

Appropriate: A post-modernist term for plagarism.

Eclectic Art: Bad art. A term used by art critics who don't want to say "bad art." (See Eclectic Artist)

Avant-garde: That percentage of the population dressing like it was Greenwich Village in 1955 or Paris in 1870.

Alternative: Teenagers and people in their early twenties who dress like each other.

Hippie: A popular subculture of the late 60s-mid 70s denoted by bad frayed clothing in combinations of earth tones and cotton and the use of mellowing, mood-altering drugs.

Punk: A popular subculture of the late 70s-mid 80s denoted by bad ripped clothing in combinations of black and leather and the use of stimulating, mind-altering drugs.

Goth: A popular subculture of the 90s, similar to punk but 10 years younger and more catatonic.

Left-wing intellectual: Somebody who swallows his or her opinions whole from "Mother Jones."

Right-wing intellectual: Somebody who swallows his or her opinions whole from "National Review" and the "Weekly Standard."

Rational discourse: Left-wing and right wing intellectuals screaming at each other in scripted dustups with all the spontaneity of championship wrestling.



Professions & Gainful Employment

Eclectic Artist: Bad artist.

Naive Artist: Not-so-naive artist who pretends to be bad because crappy art sells.

Art Director: A bad artist who, in sympathy to other bad artists, fills their publication with bad art.

Performance Artist: A stand-up comedian who isn't funny.

Ad Agent: The only human being capable of bending over and kissing his or her own privates.

Politician: The only human being capable of being over and kissing his or her own anus.

Spin Doctor: A cross between a politician and an ad agent. Can spin around and kiss anything.

Journalist: A j-school graduate trained to do search and replace in advertiser press releases. (see Newspaper.)

Fiction writer: A writer who believes in the fiction of a successful career as a fiction writer.

Sex Worker: Honest whore.

Golddigger: Dishonest whore.

White House Intern: Honest political whore.

Lobbyist: Dishonest political whore

Fashion industry: A form of employment for gay men with design skills and young women with eating disorders.

Advertising Agency: A place giving employment to either failed or aspiring writers and visual artists willing to suck their own privates or anybody elses.

Restaurant: A place giving employment to failed or aspiring actors and directors.

Newspaper: An advertising agency employing writers and visual artists too ashamed to admit they're in the advertising business. (See News.)

Editorial Department: As distinct from the advertising department. That portion of the newspaper staff devoted to up-to-the-minute interviews, articles and reporting concerning the advertisers.

University: A place providing employment to actors and directors too clumsy to work in restaurants and writers who can't get work at ad agencies and newspapers because they can't write. As of this writing, continued funding for university positions for bad photographers and visual artists who can't paint or draw remains in doubt.

English Department: That subsection of the humanities department in which English teachers, when they aren't drinking or smoking pot, teach their students to be English teachers in order to teach the next generation of English Teachers, and so on.

Government: An entity providing employment for right wing firebrands attempting to eliminate government.

Walt Disney Corporation: A hellish realm where writers, voice character actors and visual artists cursed with too much talent are forced to begger and bugger themselves to Satan on a daily basis. A constant source of wholesome entertainment for kids of all ages.


Science & Industry

Leading Edge Technology: Stuff that doesn't work yet.

Product Development: Originally, corporations designing and testing products until they work. Now, convincing people to buy shit that doesn't work so they can keep paying the engineers until somebody figures out who fucked up. Eventually, this results in products which work -- after which the product line or industry standard is discontinued.

Product Support: A means by which corporations charge you money to fix their mistakes.

Product Help Line: A person from India you can't talk to who doesn't help.

Upgrade: When software developers improve their products by making them worse.


Miscellaneous

Asshole: Metaphorically, a term for any other driver who drives the way you do.

© March 1999-February 2000

'The Prisoner' explained

OK, kids. Here's the secret of The Prisoner. To put it in context, I'll give you the premise first. (No insult to your intelligence intended.)

Yes, most of you trivia-obsessed nerds know this show inside-out. If you’ve been wasting your time making money instead of watching old TV shows, you might not. So here’s the basic premise:

Sometime in the late 1960s, a high-level secret agent (not to be confused with Secret Agent) resigns from M-I6 in Great Britain. He doesn't say why. When he gets home, unidentified bad guys fill his flat with knockout gas, capture him and bring him to an unidentified “Village.” The place is a creepy holiday camp where Muzak fills the air and the brainwashed residents have numbers instead of names. If you try to escape, a wicked, self-motivating, white spheroid (aka “Rover”) either eats you, amoeba-style, or herds you back.

A headmaster-like authority figure calls the Prisoner into his office. Officially, this official is Number Two. (Numero Uno is never seen.) They talk. The show’s two big questions emerge.

Why did the Prisoner resign?

Who's running the Village?

The Prisoner refuses to say why he resigned. Number Two refuses to say which side is running the Village — and it's assumed there are only two candidates. (The show is set in the binary Cold War era. The "side" responsible is either the Commies or the West.) So, the Prisoner tries to escape; the Village tries to make him talk. A game of cat and mouse goes on for 17 episodes. The show continues to tease you with those two big questions:

Why did the Prisoner resign?

Who's running the Village?

You never find out until the last episode — Fall Out. Actually, you don't find out then, either. What you get, instead, is a goofy, surreal, allegorical, bad acid trip. McGoohan (the show’s lead actor, producer, frequent screenwriter and all-time Jr. God) fills your brain with trippy imagery, and then pisses on your head. He leaves the two big questions hanging. Big joke. Because the big answer hides in plain sight. It's bloody obvious, but (thanks to McGoohan's magical misdirection) you just don't see it. Allow me to explain ...

Take The Prisoner on its own terms.

Supposedly, the Village is a prettified internment camp for spies and people who know too much. It’s designed to protect (or extract) information and test new brainwashing techniques. The World Power behind it wishes to remain anonymous. OK, fine, I'll buy it. So ...

Realistically, what would a place like that look like?

First, they wouldn't telegraph which side was running it. They'd invent a new lingo, and avoid the buzz words of East and West. They’d also rotate the nationality of the man in the big chair. There’d be a Russian Number Two. They’d be followed by an American Number Two. Then Brazilian, Chinese, Indian, and so on. If the Power behind the Village wants to remain anonymous, that’s how it’s done.

Second, a village of spies wouldn’t be a village of sheep. Spies are the least sheeplike people imaginable. They’re cunning, inner-directed, analytical chess-players who get in other people's heads and keep their own thoughts private (and present an elaborate fake persona so the other side wouldn't suspect(. They wouldn't be bossed around (or broken) so easily. The Prisoner wouldn’t be the only rebel.

But that’s not what this village looks like.

The Prisoner isn’t a realistic scenario. As anyone remotely familiar with the show knows, it’s an allegory. OK. An allegory of what? Individualism vs. conformity. Sure, but that’s far too general. The allegory has a far more specific target.

Consider the picture it paints …

The Village pretends to be a democratically elected government. The people in charge are really thugs. Behind its techno cleverness, the Village's default solution to people problems is a punch to the gut, a kick to the head or a lobotomy. The rulers rule by force and tell the people they’re free.

The Villagers believe them. Because they want to.

The Villagers are a herd of mindless conformists. They shout slogans, twirl umbrellas, march in parades, discourage “un-mutualness,” trust their leaders and think they're living in a democracy.

Some prisoners are actually jailers in disguise. The Village is a village of finks. And many CCTV cameras. An Orwellian nightmare with pseudo-Italianate architecture.

The leaders have a superior attitude. They feel entitled to grab you out of your home, plop you into their system and tell you want to do and how to think.

And all of the leaders are British. Every last one of them.

Yes, there’s some half-hearted misdirection involving foreign languages. But every bloody Number Two is obviously from Great Britain. British, British, British. On it goes, for all 17 episodes.

The Number Twos are not simply British. They exude the smug, preppy, upper-class, Oxbridge, old boy arrogance of Britain's ruling class. (With the working class exception of Leo McKern's Number Two, who'd been forced into the job — and ultimately helps bring the system down.)

Conclusion?

The Village = an allegory of Great Britain.

QED.

Obviously.

Yep. Patrick McGoohan, with his fiery Irish background, has given us a satire of Great Britain. The Village = the UK. From an Irishman's perspective, it's an ugly caricature of the vast hypocrisy of British democracy that, coincidentally, aired about the time of the "Troubles."

Case closed.

The Day the Clown Cried

 ObserverSubj: Once upon a time...

Date: 1/28/99 11:13:05 PM Eastern Standard Time

From: JGetz

To: JoeRioux, TLPatten

Apologies in advance. I’m only a clown, goddamnit. I realize that the most pretentious thing in the world is to be humble. I’m not. I’m not even claiming that I have the necessary courage required to wrestle the devil of my nightmares.

Just that they are honest nightmares. Just that I’m really not lying when, as overblown, pretentious and tub-thumpingly Edgar Allan Poeish as I may sound, I’m telling the truth when I say...

There is something eating into my brain. Something big that I can’t quite see. Something I can’t quite describe without sounding like a jibbering mushmouth...

The very, very, very short version:

“Once upon a time” is the glue that holds everything together. Stories are sacred; stories are real. Stories, since the dawn of humanity, have been created in an organic, almost mystical process -- a kind of waking dreaming. “Once upon a time,” says the storyteller.

The people stare...wide-eyed...hypnotized...

Because, like acid, a REAL story is a trip that rattles your bones. You get in and you go where it takes you in an act of surrender...

Which the dreamer has to do first. You can have all the technique you want -- and God bless the tiger cage of technique -- but the story’s either REALLY HAPPENING in your head or it ain’t. The story either takes you on its trip -- finding you worthy or not worthy -- or it doesn’t. You can’t lie.

Even though it is a lie.

The paradox: an organic (meaning the opposite of bullshit) story is fiction -- but also real. An organic story weaves its pattern into the larger pattern of the universe with the exactitude of a Persian rug. It is what it is and what it has to be. It is, at the same time, absolutely uncontrolled and fucking magical...

But, in a radical break with what it means to be human, we’ve learned to do away with the magic. Now we manufacture stories, distilling them precisely for demographic exactitude and precise quantity of bullshit per liter...

We have learned to create fake dreams because only fake dreams can have commercials.*

In a radical break with almost all that has gone before, we have tied almost all of our shared narratives to the selling of products. At a very basic level, almost all of our most popular stories are fake because their basic message is “Let’s go shopping.”

“Let’s go shopping” is not where the sacred terror lies.

Intellectuals have been convinced that bullshit dreams are OK because stories are just stories and mean nothing. The masses have been convinced of the same thing because the shit you watch is your sacred consumer choice which, along with your religious beliefs, cannot be discussed or questioned.

Nobody can say “this is bullshit.” The referees have been stripped of their whistles. All critics have been taken outside the city gates and stoned to death. 

And the little child has discovered that, while the Emperor has no clothes, the torture apparatus of his secret police is second to none.

It’s a wonderful life...it’s a beautiful day! All the bad people have been turned inside out and buried in the cornfield at the edge of town...except for dat funny mans is bad on purpose make me laugh like Howard Stern, hahaha....

But no bad dreams.

Everything is great. Everything is wonderful. 

Mel Gibson can act. Bad things happen to bad people.

It’s a beautiful day...

Let’s go shopping!

There it is, kids. It’s almost all one big fucking fake. (Why...it’s nothing but a bowl of shit! Yes...but it’s very good shit, Miss Matesky!) Honest nightmares and holy visions becoming more and more rare...

At the same time that the simulacra of fiction is increasingly indistinguishable from reality...

Cultural movements are now created whole in the media replicator like Swanson's frozen TV dinners. Why invent new music for the 90s when we can simply REHEAT SWING?

MTV has various shows like “MTV’s the Real World” and “MTV’s Road Rules” in which a spoiled elect of twentysomethings -- transfigured into the golden streets on the other side of the Tube -- self-dramatize, soliloquise and bitch -- playing and mugging for the cameras in real/unreal dialog about their real/unreal existence.

Kids play videogames in which they get inside the “story” and kill things. Every year the games get better, if that’s the right word...PUSHING THE ENVELOPE OF SPLATTER TECHNOLOGY!

“Cops” is a show about real life in which real cops grind real negros, with identity hiding, digitally-generated rectangular black bars on their faces, to the ground. The cop, of course, knows the camera is there. The bellowing black-barred black dude on the ground does too...THAT'S ACTING!

Why get involved with the lives of fictional characters when you can listen to the REAL pseudo-encounter-group confrontations of “Transexuals who want to fuck themselves” on “the Jerry Springer Show”...?

And let’s not forget “the White House in Crisis!”

So it goes.

Our dreams are fake and, at the same time, astonishingly realistic.

Our “real life” is turning into a dead push-button grind we endure between hallucinations...(because, fuck it, Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox ain’t got nothin’ to do with me...) Deadly real -- and, at the same time, astonishingly fake.

Black is white, up is down, truth is lies, dumb is smart, old is new.

We have fallen down the rabbit hole of the fucking tube and something has to give.

That’s what cyberpunk was getting at before it was mainstreamed.

That, whatever it is, is the next big thing.

That's what scares the shit out of me and what I wish I had it in me to write about...

Though I hafta admit I don't feel quite up to the task...

Sorta like Bozo the Clown stumbling onto the corpse of a dead God.

BOZO: Oh my...oh no, there's a dead God here, somebody h-help...anybody else notice this...oh nooo, I'm just a clown I don't know what to...HELP....could somebody...oh no, I just wanna go to the circus and make the children laugh...i-i-isn't somebody else responsible for cleaning up this kinda … ? HELP ME doesn't anybody else notice this HELLLLLLLP! (looking at watch) Uh-oh. Better run....

(He runs)

Calliope music...

Fade to black.

Deja vu all over again.

From about the age of 13 to age 17, I was temporarily psychic. I dunno what caused it. Adolescent hormones, who knows. But I was constantly experiencing déjà vu. Sometimes dramatic,

I saw my dog die, twice. Pal. He was chasing a cat, doing a figure eight around our Volkswagen and a Norfolk Island Pine. I was running around trying to stop him. At the end of the final circle, the cat ran out into our street; my dog followed; a car hit him.

While I’m running around trying to catch my dog, I remember the dream. I can see the future. I know exactly what’s going to happen, and there’s no way to stop it.

I even remember remembering the dream – within the dream. And the feeling of absolute helplessness.

Screech. Thump.

So it was written.

Most of the time, it was random crap. I’d dream shit and it would happen and there was absolutely no point to it. Some friends took my bicycle apart and put it up in a tree as a joke. Walking through the mall with my cousin. The cover of a book. No significance.

I’d get into a certain mental state, a feeling of clarity, connectedness and disconnectedness at the same time. In that state, I could do ridiculous runs of coin flips. Heads, head, tails, heads, tails, tails, tails, heads, tails, heads. I'd call it; I'd be right, again and again. Ask my sister.

I won a math contest by seeing the number on a flash card – 33 – and working out the score before the math genius had a chance. Up goes the card. “1089,” I say. OK, card counting maybe. But this kind of thing happened all the time.

Then, about age 17, it started to fade.

Now, aside from this bizarre experience, I’m the most materialistic, least hoo-doo person in the world. The idea of atoms deeply reassured me. It meant the coat in the closet couldn’t turn into a monster. Great. But I actually experienced this shit. I know the conventional explanation of a temporary lag in two normally coactive sensory nerves is bullshit. I had dreams that came true. I told some of them to various people, wrote some of them down in advance. I can’t prove it. But I know.
And, if you think about it logically and scientifically, the implication of any psychic prediction of the future is deeply disturbing. Before we start, let’s eliminate reincarnation. I wasn’t walking around a fucking mall with my cousin in a past life. But you knew I was going to say that, right?

OK, here goes …

Explanations for precognition:

Time is like a four-dimensional movie. The self (spirit, soul, whatever you want to call it) can project itself ahead on the timeline and scope out the coming attractions.

Time is a four dimensional structure. Our senses give us data about what’s happening “now.” Other, subtler senses are receiving data from the future. In dreams or certain meditative states, we become aware of it.

The human mind is an amazingly powerful computer. On a subconscious level, it’s capable of figuring out exactly what’s going to happen in the future. It’s not really precognition; it’s a deduction.

The human mind has the power to alter reality. I.e.: the precognitive dream didn’t predict the car wreck. It caused the car wreck.

The human mind creates reality. Nothing exists “out there.” Life is just a dream. Sometimes we dream the same thing twice.

Life is a virtual reality game or entertainment scenario. We have, literally, seen certain segments before. Some mechanism causes us to forget. Occasionally, the mechanism doesn’t work.

Some entity (good, evil, spiritual or material) with access to information about the future is feeding that information into our heads.

Well, that’s all I can think of for now.

Does any of that seem fun?

Just say no to dregs

OK, kids. Here are the dregs of my hard drive. Random trains of thought that never quite left the station. Ready or not, I'm sending 'em out anyway before the year ends.

Remember. Just say no to dregs...

* * *

Brazil Nuts dept. (leftover from Sept...I think)

The Right is crying out for Clinton to pay the costs of the damn investigation against him. Sorta reminds you of the "information charges" in Brazil ...don't it?

* * *

Dick Clark's rictus grin sure reminds me of the year end skeleton moldering away...

* * *

This year 2000 shit is just a little too close to Isaac Asimov's Nightfall for comfort....

It's gonna get freakier and freakier, kids. Yes, indeedy...

The Y2K bug I'm worried about is the one between the ears of human beings. Goddamnit anyway, here's David McCallum on a show called "Ancient Prophecies" on The Learning Channel spouting drivel about the fucking end of the world...VISIONS OF DOOM AND PAIN! EARTH CHANGES! OH MY GOD! THE VIRGIN MARY APPEARED TO...

Pure hoodoo. Hoodoo on the "Learning" channel, yet. McCallum spouting this crap with a straight face. Unbelievable...

It's all so fucking stupid...

Stoopid or not, there's this superstitious bone in us crazy human beings that gets freaked out at the thought of 1999 (woah! 666 backwards) rolling over to 2000....

The end.

THE END.

Prepare to meet thy God.

THE END OF THE WORLD.

Agghhhhhhh...........

And I know it's all bullshit. I know it's just a load of mystical crap....just like those rationalistic scientists in Nightfall.

Which doesn't help much when the fires start burning...

As I've got a superstitious bone of my own.

And am two steps away from holy terror at all times as it is..

So have a Happy New Year folks....

While you still can.

Lagniappe

OK, additional thoughts on the metaphysical game of Twister Clinton's tangled himself into. (And the Democratic party, in general.)

It's my -- doubtlessly oversimplified -- reading of Aristotle that politics is the practical expression of philosophy. I.e., you have a certain view of the world, the universe, ethics, and human nature. You translate that view into a political philosophy, and from there, into a course of practical action in the political sphere. After that, you find a lot of other people who sort of agree with you and try to make it happen. Political philosophy is the operating system of democracy. Citizens debate the philosophical issues first, before anything else happens.

For whatever reason, there's not much real political debate in late 20th century America.

In mainstream politics, the 45% of Americans who believe in a relativistic morality find themselves in a twisted position indeed. The Democrat party represents their philosophical worldview. But the Democratic party can't openly state that worldview -- they have to wrap it up in politically acceptable code. The result is a constant disjunct between stated belief and real belief.

To put it plainly: We don't believe in God—or not believe in God. We don't believe in an absolute code of right or wrong, either. We can't come out and say it. But the Democrat party stands for our non-beliefs. Although, sadly, they can't actually say it either.

Obviously, I'm talking about the twisted position of mainstream liberals in mainstream American politics. None of this applies to, say Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, the late Bill Hicks, etc. We still have a thriving -- and totally ineffective -- hard left who say exactly what they mean and get nowhere.

If Clinton made an honest speech

Well, They got what they wanted. The Impeachment has begun. I guess it's time to set the record straight.

Some of you hate me. Some of you love me. Some of you want all this turmoil to go away. But America is in crisis -- a crisis that I will freely admit I have largely created.

I've been accused of lying -- and I have done so. Hell -- I'm goddamn good at it! "What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive" -- but I've had a lot of practice, people! Oh yeah! I'm a GOOD goddamn liar...and that's the truth! I'm such a good goddamn liar, I believer whatever I'm saying is the truth at the time I say it.

Lying is my superpower. But it has always been the power my enemies hold over me. My weakness is my strength. My strength is my weakness.

And now, I have fallen into the trap They set for me. I let Them back me into a corner. They got me just where They wanted me. Funny thing...that may just be Their undoing!

Because I've been backed into a corner where, goddamnit anyway, I've got nothing to lose anymore. No reason, finally, not to tell the goddamn truth...no reason not to say goddamn on television! Goddamn...it feels good to say goddamn!
From now on, I might as well start telling the truth.

So here it is, America:

Back in the 60's I found myself in a fork in the road...change the system from within or destroy it from without. Two paths you can go by -- just like it says in Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven." Letting the system remain was no option at all: America had become a machine producing death -- just plain obvious to anyone with the eyes to see it.

So I worked from within -- ignoring the "sell out!" jeers of my radical friends -- climbing the political ladder and giving away little pieces of myself the higher I got. I surrendered my principles one by one. I cut my hair. I shined my shoes. Even so, I had hoped, to the end, to hold onto my balls. Still do...

That's the price you pay for changing the system from within.

Fact is, I couldn't be honest. Like millions of other baby boomers, I had to grin and pretend to a false morality I didn't believe in. I couldn't stand up and tell the world that I didn't give a good goddamn who screwed who or what they put into their bodies just so long as they didn't hurt anybody. I couldn't tell the world that Hillary and I had an open marriage and that was just fine with the two of us and nobody else's damn business. Couldn't admit, in public, that, as with so many others of my generation, my life was not about self-sacrifice -- but the pursuit of self-gratification and self-actualization.

In this, I remained a true citizen of the Woodstock Nation -- a member of the counterculture that stood up against the death machine that was America in the 60s -- for awhile anyway.

As Toynbee pointed out, every generation has a mission. History judges each generation according to whether it succeeds or fails in that mission. This mission is assigned by a process Toynbee referred to as "challenge and response." History hands you a challenge. How do you respond?

Looking backwards, the challenge of my 1960s generation was to take the war America had won against the Nazis in Europe and bring it back home -- and defeat the Hitler within. Our mission was to create social justice and equal opportunity in a colorblind, egalitarian society. To end the powertrips and racism. To end the waste. To stop living like pigs...

The old Leftists used to call that "solidarity." The New Leftists used that word too, until we forgot what it meant. That was part of our Revolution --

The other part being sex, drugs and rock and roll.

I'm here to tell you, after awhile it gets kinda hard fighting for social justice and the perfect orgasm at the same time...

Which is why, like many of my generation, I discovered that it was easier saying it than doing it. Talk is cheap. As cheap as a feel-good donation to "We are the World" or some similar festival of hype, bullshit and self-promotion on the part of a bunch of self-indulgent pop stars past their peak disguised as charity...

This all happened gradually. No signing your soul on a deed to the devil in blood. No door to open or line to cross. Just a process of gradual corruption. Piece by piece, principle by principle.

And then -- one day -- you wake up and look at yourself in the mirror. You look -- and the Dad that ran away from you is smiling right back.

What you realize -- what I realized -- is that, like every generation, we had become our parents. Our parents, meanwhile, were trying to pull a Joshua number and hold back the sun. They wanted to keep time's wheels from turning. They didn't want to pass the torch onto us -- ungrateful bastards that we were -- though they were content to sell us shit.

But sooner or later it had to happen. No matter how much they fought it, no matter how hard they worked out or how much Grecian Formula they applied -- the day had to come when George Bush, Bob Dole and Private Ryan were just too damn old for the White House. That day came. And on that day, I was just about ready...

I had reached the last rung on the ladder, the end of my sell-out climb. I had climbed this far by lying, of course. There was no other choice...

The Republican party had come to represent the worldview of folks who believed in some absolute moral standard -- God, the ten commandments, heaven, hell, thou shalt not -- the whole nine yards. Now, of course this was a cover story for the agenda of various corporate interests -- but plenty of folks sincerely believed in that cover story. And sincerely believed the Republican party represented them. Millions of people...

Millions of other people believed in a relativistic world view. Essentially, these were the children of the counter-culture. The democratic party was the only party left to represent this viewpoint -- as the last ditch redoubt of the ragtag remnants of American liberalism and the American left, strange bedfellows though they were...

Trouble is, you couldn't own up to the core beliefs of that constituency without committing political suicide. The other shop could holler "God told me that abortion is wrong!" We weren't free to holler back "Good and evil exists in your head, fucker!" They could say "Gay marriage is an abomination!" You couldn't say, "Who cares who screws whom?" They could say "War on drugs!" You couldn't say, "What's wrong with getting high every now and then?" They could say "Prayer in schools!" You couldn't say, "Let's leave talking to ghosts to the nuthouse."

So the democratic party was left in the nasty position of being the practical political expression of an unspeakable worldview. We can't say "God is dead -- the universe is meaningless -- there is no value except the value we create -- vote for me!" We can't say anything except pure flying horseshit. Just flapping through the skies like Pegasus dropping his load on the world below...

Salute the flag! Support our troops! Praise the Lord! America's great!

In other words -- we have to lie.

The reason our friends on the Right hate me so much is because they know this. Somebody who represents a relativistic way of seeing the world ain't supposed to get to the White House -- the reason I'm there is I cheated. I lied....

They know. And so they hate me.

They know that, despite my suit, tie and haircut, I'm a goddamn draft-dodging, pot-smoking hippy in the White House.

And that's what this is all about.

I stand before you as a walking Hegelian contradiction. I had hoped to bring about a Revolution of social justice and equality. I had also hoped to party hard.

Holding onto my balls, in other words.

And every time I grabbed another stolen piece of pleasure out of the nooky jar, that's when I'd tell myself "This is the real me. All that horseshit for the camera's just an act. This is the real William Jefferson Clinton. I just don't care...this sure FEELS like Revolution...WOOO-HOOOO!"

That's what they figured I was doing. And they found me out...

It's come down to this. My generation failed in its historical mission. We lost the Revolution -- because you couldn't live a life devoted to pleasure and solidarity at one and the same time -- at least not just yet. Instead of liberating the future we fucked it -- just like me and Monica, though technically speaking that wasn't intercourse. How goddamn symbolic it all is, huh?

Now the death generation wants to bring me down -- because they want to impose their view of reality on America like some thermoplastic mold. What they want is a schizoid, perpetual-motion machine -- the Puritanical America of public discourse full of flag-saluting, Church-going, parade-marching, war-supporting sacrificial patriots -- and the Love for Sale America of the capitalist marketplace in which everything and everyone has a price and honor, love, loyalty and compassion do not exist. An America of atomized selves trying to buy their sense of identity and belonging back based on the latest glittering horseshit they see sandwiched inbetween a bunch of actors pretending to be real people on television. Trying to buy their souls back -- but just going deeper and deeper in debt in the endless mall of Satan's Company Store America...

Once again, America wants to eat its young -- in this case the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the WWII generation. Listen up kids...

Seeing as how they've got me on the ropes, I can be honest now. The tube's been lying to you. You can't have it all. You can't do anything you want. You can't grow up to be President, even if you get to wear the suit. The tube promises a party but that party's about to end. This is what this is all about...and I wish I hadn't lied about it.

All you young folks out there who either don't believe in God or don't believe God particularly cares about whatever gets you through the night are going to be screwed. You will learn to wear a public face and salute what They tell you. You will wear a suit and tie and shine your shoes...forever. You can be your real self in the dark, of course -- They'll be making money off that too. But out in the open, get ready for a whole lot of smiling and saluting if you don't all get together and stop Them now. The time has come to fight!

Relativistic amoralists of America -- I call to you now! The time of decision has come. My generation failed in the '60s, but perhaps it's not too late. The challenge has come before us once again -- and perhaps for one last time -- we can still bring the War back home!

That is the challenge of history. That is my challenge to you today -- my challenge to all you bad boys and girls out there who got me elected in the first place...

Animal House America -- I call to you! Unbelievers, hedonists, pagans and pleasure-seekers everywhere -- I call to you! My call goes out to all you hard-working, hard-partying folks out there who are sworn to fun and loyal to none -- and you know who you are!

Revolution now! Revolution TODAY!

Hear my call. Accept the challenge of history. Stand up. The time is now...

The time has come to stand up and fight for what you don't believe in.

Good night, America.