Everyone must have a night world and a day world.
And often, this day world is as afraid of unleashed work,
as the night one is of unleashed love.


notebook: 9/8/86
published in: *The Boundary of Blur*
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Of Dogs and Tricks


"A dog starved at his master's gate
Predicts the ruin of the state."
Blake
*Auguries of Innocence*



Innumerable times during the first Kerry/Bush debate,
Bush uttered the words: "We're working hard."
At the very end of the NY Times artlicle on this event,
the observation was made that maybe he was referring
to the debate itself.

It is well known how lazy George W. Bush is. He reeks
of laziness. In the Michael Moore sockumentary *Fahrenheit 911*
much is made of this quality for good reason. It is obvious
to nearly everybody.

Why not to everybody? Possibly this laziness is part of
Bush's appeal. I know I will sound like a grouchy old man,
an aging curmudgeon, when
I mention that endless complaints about fatigue, boredom, restlessness,
along with the explosive growth in the desire for
and production of universally available, easy,
superficial amusement are now entrenched in
everyday "US and only US" life.

I came to the conclusion that the meaning of the Blake
aphorism cited above is that when dog owners, for
example, don't care about their dogs enough to take care of them you have
an environment where so many people are so lazy and selfish
the whole society might very well be heading rapidly down the drain.

I've always believed that the attacks of 9/11/01 happened
because as a nation, our institutions are so dysfunctional
that we are extremely vulnerable. Bush represents the tip
of an iceberg of laxity meling right in front of us the way
an icecream cone melts in a spoiled child's hand while he is
too busy watching tv to notice it.

There may be a lot of explanations for all this- technology,
anomie, alienation, lack of involvement, hopelessness,
you name it.

How can it change? Can it change? Does anybody
truly care, beyond the easy practices of complaint,
gab and promises?

I don't know. But Kerry and Edwards seem like fairly hard
working guys. Bush/Cheney are totally spoiled, exploitative, violent,
angry upperclass twits as far as I can tell.

Laziness is closely associated with manipulativeness, and finally
psychopathy and criminality. Bush and Cheney get extremely high scores
in all these areas and stink of these practices, only we can't get near
enough to them to truly appreciate the intensity of that stink.
Lots of expensive advertising and publicity
function like perfume or aerosol deodorant to cover
the horrid smell of their hateful and harmful
policies. The fact they have so many supporters should
tell us a great deal about about our sagging culture. It would
take a ton of people like George Soros, Michael Moore, Jon Stewart,
Kerry/Edwards, Theresa Heinz, to name a few, to dig us out of the
pile of dogshit we're now buried under in Us and Only Usland.