Tyranny
By Scott Parkinson

Have you ever heard a noise that makes your skin crawl? The creak of Dracula's coffin opening up as you watched the late show all alone as a little kid. The sound of something scratching the roof of a strange house you happened to be staying in. A loud thud coming from inside your house when it was supposed to be empty. A scream on a deserted road at sunset. Yes, noises whose immediate sound does not mean imminent danger, like a gunshot, but coupled with a touch of imagination and a smattering of survival instincts and you feel the presence of evil. Well, I recently heard a noise that so frightened me I was instantly reduced to a slobbering pile of shit and tears.

I'm sturdy folk, a nub of a human, a ball of gristle and attitude, a Chicago Polack/mutt breed who has taken his lot as a Gen X'er without a bunch of whining and moaning. I lived in Santa Barbara during the Reagan years when the locals referred to him as Dutch. I knew the second Bush drew his proverbial "Line in the Sand" that the US was going to kill a whole bunch of people for a nickel or dime at the gas pumps. I know I won't get a cent of Social Security, and at best they might somehow save it so that I can pay for the Baby Boomers‹but that really is a best case scenario. What I'm trying to say here is that I am not an idiot and am actually rather cynical with my interpretations of the world. But even given my jaded attitude, what I heard the other day made me feel like someone was pulling my innards out with a corkscrew.

I was sitting down watching God, tuned to CNN, and spitting my usual venom at the comments that were coming out (which is coincidentally the reason my girlfriend won't let me watch the news when she is home). I was actually in rare form because it was during the Republican National Convention. I had kept up a litany of curses and denunciations for about an hour when, in mid-shot, I was blown from the saddle, took a ten count and was called out for the duration. My usually snazzy rebuttals (the type I seem only to come up with when I'm alone) seized up as I doubled-over gasping for air. I was hit with a hay-maker that came from so far out in left field that I never saw it coming and that sucker landed where I lived.

The Chairman of the Republican Party, Whats-his-fuck Barbour (I think that's right, but that just might be his common name and not his given one), was responding to a question about the vast and massive presence of corporations at the convention when he uttered the sound. To justify himself and all the other politicians feeding at the corporate trough, the vermin tried to make it a Rights issue. The spewing sack of shit, with a straight face, said that the Republican Party does not discriminate against the participation of any individual who would like to meet, greet, and express political views that they hold pertinent (I would argue that more‹ask any homosexual how warmly they have been embraced as they tried to express views at any of the local levels‹but most people who have stayed with me this far know what a crock that comment was) and that anti-discrimination should be extended to the personal rights of the corporations.

Aaaarrgggghhhh!!!! My fingers burn and my asshole drips just typing those lines out. The concept is so fundamentally wrong, so initially flawed, so Hell-spawned that it just locked up the gears in my head and kicked the little political optimist in my head in his teeth. To hear the head of a political party that is supposed to be working within a democracy utter that concept made my soul go cold. The Personal Rights of a Corporation?

I know, and have known for a while, that the Republicans are the Big Business Party, but I had never guessed that our society had progressed down the Corporate Feudalism path so far that a comment like this could be made and the uproar didn't result in torches, pitchforks, and a good old fashioned lynching. Not only didn't the interviewer pull his fountain pen out of his pocket and drive it through the heart of this Satan, as any truly patriotic American would have, he didn't even pursue the notion of Personal Rights being extended to corporations. Worse, when the interview was broadcast and the information disseminated through out the public, there was not massive surge of Democratic rage and then a quick convulsion as 250 million people rose up and swallowed whole the Republican Convention. Ancient Athenians were probably spinning in their graves like tops, but the American people let that justification drive another nail into the coffin of a free society without so much as a hiccup.

It has been well over a week since that madness was spit into our faces and I am still waiting for the rebuttal. I'm waiting for the Americans that vilified Roseanne for grabbing her crotch at the end the National Anthem to rise up and smite Tyranny when it romps freely through our political processes and then taunts us gleefully as it puts on the robes of democracy. The America I know, and John Wayne died for about a thousand times, would never sit for a disgrace like this. I hope she is just catching her wind, like I was, from the low blow put into her gut by one she held so close, and that when she has recovered, there will be hell to pay for trying to sellout her morals for a brief moment to hold her reigns.

Despite rumors to the contrary, Scott Parkinson's body is still in Seattle. However, his belongings and heart reside in San Francisco.

return to the Shut up, I'm talking page
return to the LIES home page
return to the A&A home page