The Fallen Dreams of Escape

The classic Ambrose Bierce short story, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge has a man being hung and miraculously the rope breaks and he escapes and has an adventure only to find in the end the rope didn’t break and his escape was a dying dream of desperation. In the end the man hangs from a stiff rope, dead of a broken neck.

Barack Obama is our dying dream of the desperate.

When he was elected after eight years of twisted fascism, Orwellian diktat, military evil and economic madness, the United States of America was at the end of its rope, hung by its own petard. American Empire, much like any empire, conquered in the name of exceptional pride, fought cruel wars of genocide in the name of peace and ground up its citizenry and treasure in the name of self-preservation. We became what we despised and traded our promise of enlightenment for dark age ignorance. We jettisoned reasoned principle and pursuit of wisdom for irrational fear and embrace of ugly hate.

Our political system was morphed, over decades, from the idealism of  Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to the cynicism of Let’s Make a Smoke-filled, Back-Room Deal Where Mr. Politician Gets Rich and We The People Get Screwed. We went from Disney to Political Pornography.

The People were left to dog-eat-dog it in a Darwinian nightmare while Corporations were crowned King, Neo-Liberalism made religion and citizens of the ‘greatest democracy in the history of the world’ made wage-slaves, debt-serfs, peons, cogs and widgets. Humanity was made a number and wisdom reduced to the least common denominator.

America no longer held the promise of the shining city on the hill but was found a garbage dump.

America was desperate for a savior after the Nero/Caligula regime and we settled for a happy, shiny knight riding the trusty steed of hope, change and the best ideals of human aspiration. He was swept to power on a rising tide of optimism twinged with desperation.

Facing endless and escalating wars, savage economic depression created by inhumane fat-cats and the systematic shredding and dismantling of Constitutional protections, trashing of human rights and a vicious program of divide and conquer, the election of Barack Obama was the snap and let loose of our noose and an escape to freedom; the chance for survival in the face impending and inevitable doom.

But the euphoria of release and relief was tainted soon after as the knight removed his shiny armor and helmeted visor to reveal his counselors and advisers as the very architects and enablers of the doom we fought so hard to escape. Bankers were brought in to steal the people’s loot and give it to the bankers, the very greed-mongers who orchestrated economic collapse on the backs of ordinary people. Military Officers who hadn’t won a war in 60 years were promoted and put in charge of commissions of war crimes, genocide, the devastation of peoples and the desolation of souls, creating, like despotic gods, legions of broken hearts bent upon eternal revenge against the evil American empire.

The knight left the care and feeding of hurting, diseased and desperate citizens in the hands of amoral corporations whose only mandate is profit at the expense of people. He called himself a leader but he was nothing but an appeaser. He called himself a man of principle but he was nothing but a back-room dealer. He called himself a man of peace but he was nothing short of a Machiavellian prince of death and destruction. He called himself a man of faith but he was nothing but a cynical charlatan flim-flam man who talks out of both sides of his mouth without moving his lips. The plausible deniability of political ventriloquism.

And so now we see the truth. The charade is over. The dream is over. The escape is over. Life is over.

As we, too late, hear the snap of our neck.