Remember that ditty circulating in the internet round about the time the U.S.A. attacked Iraq: If you cannot find Osama, / Bomb Iraq. / If the market's hurt your Momma, / Bomb Iraq. / If the terrorists are Saudi, / And they’ve repossessed your Audi, / And you're feeling kinda rowdy, / Bomb Iraq!
Wide spread loss of trust in public authority is chic in our era. In South Africa we go further by making the government a repository of all our dissatisfactions. Lucky for us we’ve the tyranny of opinion polls—the modern day answer to ancient practise of reading the animals entrails for guidance—leaping about in response to every latest headline or cock-up to back our illusions. And so it goes:
The news is yo-yoing your opinions as the corollary to the loss of anchorage you feel deep within making you feel kind of fanciful and abstract. You are not in the mood of confronting your illusions? Why not undermine the government in cross-stitched logic and vague quatrains of Nastradamus. Call it the crime thing.
You feel a little exhaustion from your imperialist hangover and nostalgia, and are walking around tired of being a nonentity why not manufacture your popularity from the flattering delusions your barmates give you when you are ‘out to lunch’. Better still; you’ve been having bad dreams lately of apocalypse and deeper misgiving of Cassandra fantasies that we’re tilting to wards Zimbabwe like situation. Rant! Rant, my epicurean fad; there are government’s inefficiencies all over, only the business class is perfect (and of course they promote you). Rant! The barbarians are at the gates.
You support political leaders not on principles but on shallow fancy of whether Hugo Boss shirts are in, or Armani? Base your support not on any deeply held belief or commitment, but on the fact that you wanna get on the Gravy Train. Bring on the rip-roaring umshini wam Zulu boy to fan factionalism and scar liberals out of their wits.
You are irritated by party politics and desperate for life style politics that judge your leaders by personality rather than political factors? The leader does not have a Cheshire cat smile, and is an unapologetic dweeb who walks like he’s wearing sock garters. All this flames you but can’t really nail his fault except he looks down and expose your sophisticated ignorance? Scandalise and ostracise him. Everyone is distancing themselves from their past to be pc while dwelling on its weeds in their hearts of hearts; why can’t he just go with the flow and let sleeping dogs lie?
If your moral campus is spinning out of control and you are not sure why; blame it on the government. If your partner is living you, and your first born is doing drugs. The government is surely to blame.
If you kind of feel like some publicity-generating eccentric with a tinpot flare. Pluck a crisis from thin air, and like a Pharaoh getting his authority from Ra, suck your thumb and implicate the government on your delusions. If they deny it proof enough they’ve done it. Besides, who cares, you got publicity spin-offs. You need to demonstrate to occidental masters that Africa has an independent free non subordinate press.
If you are feeling a little relative morally; feel like crapping on some pities because you are annoyed that the fundamentalist do not respect or give a f#*% about your Switzerland position—but are shit scared to offend them lest they are hiding Osima or an Inquisitor on their backyard—transfer it to the government. Those ignorant former terrorists are safer target for your blunt fictions.
You kind of feel dissatisfied with economic growth, and feel, as Clive Hamilton writes in his book, The Growth Fetish, “restless dissatisfaction, chronic stress and private despair, feelings that give rise to a rash of psychological disorders” of anxiety, depression, substance abuse that makes you “engage in a range of behaviours aimed at compensating for or covering up these feelings.” It’s definitely the government’s fault. Shout out! Get some attention. ‘Me! Me! Me!’
Who’s your Tata now? Madiba! Help, we’re sinking!
Feeling déclassé; can’t afford brands that define the fetishism of your imagined trendy self style. You discover pen marks on the surface of your expensive handbag, or too much accumulated lint at its bottom? The government is polluting your world. The made is late? This government of fishes and loaves is giving her ideas that are making her too big for her boots. You diss and dish without creative drive; it’s not that you’ve confined your ambition to the consumerist’s mentality; no it’s the government that’s clipping your wings.
In the end what is all this noise but “a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing” feeling intoxicated by freedom and the yo-yoing of moods, grateful to the times, and the government, for allowing freedom to run amok. “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!” Wisdom here is not the purchase of the day.
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