Signs and Wonders

Posted on 09.24.08 9:43AM under The Everglades Room

In these post-modern times, soothsaying just ain’t what it used to be. Throughout the civilized world, people have abandoned their ancestors’ primitive ways. They no longer trek for weeks to beseech cave-dwelling shamans for guidance. They no longer look to the skies for signs and wonders. They no longer ask the Magic Eight-Ball for answers during televised political debates. Okay, maybe some still do that.

But it’s undeniable that belief in the predictive power of omens and portents is on the wane in the civilized world. Except in the U.S. of A, that is (are we still civilized?). Hereabouts, the “reality-based” community has been whipped, bullied and cowed into submission by nihilists who believe in nothing, save their own godlike power to manufacture any reality useful to them, one that keeps the people too poor, stupid and afraid to question the New World Order’s secret first principle, reprinted here for the first time:

The Rules Are For (You) Suckers

In my country, millions of people remain unmoved by facts in plain sight. This is not surprising, since they’ve been told for decades that facts are merely opinions. Here, every day, my people’s spirits are borne aloft by the wonder-working power of myths, fables and bubbe meissehs. They clap hands at fairy tales told by telegenic opinion-makers in moments stolen from shifts two and three, wondering how they’ll pay for grandpa’s medicine if they get sick themselves, but standing ready to sacrifice sons and daughters in the oil pimps’ holy wars to save the last pools of black gold from the godless fur’ners who happen to live on top of them.

So, late in the evening, when smarter folks are asleep, after shouting myself hoarse and turning blue with rage, I wonder just what will it take to open my fellow Americans’ eyes, so they finally see that their children’s futures have been highjacked and the Republic has been all but destroyed, hollowed out, rendered impotent by crooks posing as self-reliant, rugged individualists, most of whom couldn’t succeed at anything that wasn’t paid for with your tax money.

Reading instructive pieces on the great stick-up of 2008 and the sociopathic free-marketeers behind it, I wonder if the people will wake up in time to take back the Republic and get it off life support, or if it’s already dead. Why don’t Americans realize they’ve been electing their executioners for decades? What needs to happen? What will it take? I wonder.

With that question in mind, let me interrupt our pending return to cave-dwelling with a hopeful fantasy. Imagine, if you will, a hurricane, churning through the Gulf of Mexico after pasting Florida (where we have empathy for anyone else who gets hit, including the recent victims of Fay, Gustav, Hannah and Ike).

Our fantasy storm is a big one, and it’s aiming for Texas, bearing down on coastal cities that all have been evacuated. A well-founded fear grips the region as the storm approaches the coast, a fear fanned into near-panic by breathless, round-the-clock ads for plywood, water and batteries, disguised as news coverage.

Then something incredible happens. Approaching Galveston, the hurricane jumps up into the thermosphere, leapfrogging Houston, failing to make the predicted northeast turn toward Shreveport, tracking northwest toward Abilene, then passing miles-high over Bryan and Waco, where it suddenly descends over a little town called Crawford.

Miraculously, the storm shrinks to the size of a miniature tornado and plunges straight down, landing on a ranch where nobody’s home. It’s owned by President Caligula, who’s been hidden away by the Wizard Cheney until after Election Day.

The ranch is instantly vaporized, swept up into the heavens by winds so powerful they dig a hundred-foot crater in the earth where the ranch used to be. Thousands of people watch and report as the storm spins itself out, rotating in place for two days. No living being is injured.

Would that be enough? Would that get it done?

***

Alan H. Rolnick has practiced law in Miami for twenty years and has appeared in numerous high-profile civil and not so civil cases. His first novel, Landmark Status, received such ecstatic reviews he wondered if his publicist had scandalous pictures in her safe. Alan consults on legal matters for the entertainment industry, provides trenchant social commentary without warning, and is Executive Producer of the independent film Canvas. To learn more, visit his web site or email alan@alanrolnick.com

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