Let me disclose something shocking.

In some very real sense, I don’t care about the abortion debate. I don’t care about the Ukraine or the fictional sovereignty symbolized by any made-up line forced into reality by the existence of border checkpoint huts. I don’t care about Will Smith, or Chris Rock, or addled Joe or evil Donald, or whether Twitter is owned by Elon or some other oligarch/fuckpile of oligarchs. I don’t even care about the poverty of children of Arkansas. Not really and truly and deeply. If I did, I’d be doing something about it, beyond hanging my self-worth and mission energy on the faithful rendering of rants like this one.

The truth is that it’s the very meaninglessness of all these things to what’s left of my life and days that makes it easy for me to obsess about them in episodic manic bursts.

Further, if you tell me that any of them somehow do matter to you my beloved, really, I’m going to be quietly skeptical of that pending further exposition, about how they matter to you, and what you’re doing about it.

What I do care about is diamond saturnine rain and pinto beans.

I care and I will never know why, about the Shaggy Man and the origin stories of Princesses and Goddesses alike.

I go back, to not caring, when it comes to the question of what kind of person that makes me.

***

I go back, to caring, when I learn little bits like this one:

“America is 6% of the world’s population that consumes 40% of the world’s material and economic resources”.

I have no damn idea if that’s still precisely true, or worse, or better. I learned it long ago. It was true then, and it has been roughly true for my entire life, as … an American.

It means: the other 94% of humanity has had to divvy up the remaining half amongst themselves, decade after decade.

So that we could have Freedom! To drive big cars with sexy tailfins down the great mother road. Or to take our sane savvy Teslas a hundred miles up the Interstate for Taco Tuesday–it’s the same thing.

So that we could have sock hops and flash mobs and a supercomputer in every pocket. So that we could have ‘democracy’ and pledge allegiance, so that we could pray freely and thank the Founders’ Jesus that he didn’t chose to fling our mortal bodies down in some resource-starved shithole on the other side of the planet.

I care about the Policy Objectives of my Empire, and I love you enough to tell you what they are.

***

The foreign policy of the Empire since at least 1945 is to keep that foundational statistic above locked into place, through regime change or covert operations or assassination of Presidents (Castro, Lumumba, Kennedy, Hussein) or sanctions or invasion or occupation or any variation of evil that leaves US with the lion’s share of oil or gas or rubber or lithium or cobalt or wheat or whatever else it craves. When the Empire talks about Our Interests Overseas, this is exactly what they mean. Resources need to keep flowing disproportionately into the System, and anything at all is justified in the name of keeping it that way.

The domestic policy of the Empire is more subtle.

The domestic policy is to keep you and me convinced that “we” deserve that lion’s share. We’re the smartest. We work the hardest. We’re the most free. We’re the democracy and democracy is God’s will–everybody knows that. Even the Shiites will of course greet us as Liberators, because what we bring is Liberty. And Justice too. For all. If we should stumble across an oilfield or two in the process, WeThePeople go right ahead and consider that the hand of Providence, clear proof that we are chosen by a will Divine. Just as he chose us to save the European homeland from the Hitlerman, and right the wrong of Jewish suffering by giving them their own sovereign country in some completely blank spot on the map, devoid of any resources or anything else save a few wandering heathens and savages. Just like America itself.

The domestic policy of the Empire is to put every tool at hand, from kindergartens to advertising agencies, to the godly work of making sure you know how lucky you are to have been born in the Land of the 40% of everything.

Like Albert said:

“Private capitalists inevitably control the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions … “

The domestic policy of the Empire is to thwart any source of information you might have, to reach any conclusion that doesn’t comport with the happy six percent owning half of Everything as god intended.

The Empire only cares about having anything and everything it wants, and making sure you feel the same, making sure you, and me, and Will Smith and Angelina Jolie and Sean Penn and Neil Young are all fully on board with that, because we are the blessed, and deserve it, and as for those other people … we shall choose their most photogenic babies, and bring them home with us to The Home Of The Brave, and make them part of the six percent who Jesus loves best.

That’s freedom, baby.

You will always be free to think and feel and say anything you like.

So long as it doesn’t traitorously challenge the Unequal Word, as the apostate Assange did, but don’t think about him.

Believe in me, and be saved.

***

I don’t care about Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin is Satan.

I do care, and I will never know why, about the poetic sounds that snakes make while slithering in apple trees.

I’m not a professor. I’m not a success. I’m not as bright as I think I am. I’m not a journalist or a novelist.

I’m an old eccentric herpetologist and music teacher and that is my freely held delusion.

I am the Shaggy Man, and that is both my name and my job title.

I am irascibly and pettishly ungrateful about having been born into the six percent, and though I often wish my eyes sparkled with kindliness, they do not.

But I am grateful to the mother who bore me.

I am grateful to the selfishness of the schizophrenic father who donated the seed I grew from twisted.

I’m grateful for you.