Austin City Limits and US Complexes
By Mathew Maavak
After reaching my cousin Joe’s apartment, our first outing was to a local Wal-Mart store to get a toothbrush, which, couldn’t have been confiscated by those hawkeyed Dallas airport staff. It will never pass off as a suspected terrorist weapon though there might be enough residual matter to supply DNA data. Upon checking the merchandise inside, I was missing that mall wedged between Kuala Lumpur’s more impressive, more stunning twin towers.
The clientele here were clearly the budget-challenged minority, mainly Hispanics and Blacks. Row after row were items, which, anyone familiar with brands and pricing would snort in derision. A normal toothbrush cost so much that it was more viable to get an electric one, which, was a little over double the price. In addition, Asians are brand conscious - unbearably so - and there is nothing like unsheathing some bitchin’ bristles from your scabbard of toiletries - it whirls signifying your sophistication, that you are revolutions ahead of your fellow citizens. That’s a nice way to start off the day before your teeth gets assaulted by a daily dose of tobacco.
I needed a pair of sports shoes and a knapsack as well but I was willing to wait, as nothing seemed worthwhile; instead I was trying to figure out how this American chain still remained an icon.
Later, I came across mundane things here not quite available at other super marts, like tiny acne removers and tea-ball sifters, and the rows of long-barreled toys, which turned me catatonic for a moment.
There, right before my transfixed eyes were rows of rifles. Rifles in a supermarket? I have been to all kinds of outlets before but this was definitely a shot in the arm for one lacking a little bit of excitement.
That’s right you Third World jackass! We’ve got both them guns un’ roses in here, you git dat? Think your Londons, Kuala Lumpurs, Singapores and where-is-that-place can offer these 95-dollar beauties? Take your Waitroses, Debenhams and Isetans and shove them…
There are a few things about America that no foreigner can understand. One is the proliferation of guns, and why gun companies can get away with murder, while tobacco firms get sued whenever someone thinks he might just survive that lung cancer, and enjoy a good life thereafter. Didn’t your mommy and school teach you about the dangers of tobacco? It gets even better when someone named Stella Liebeck spills hot coffee on her lap and gets US$2.7million (jury-awarded punitive damages) as a reward. (The real amount is now a conjecture, after a settlement between the aggrieved party and McDonalds who wanted to initially settle the case for US$800 instead of covering her medical expenses worth up to US$20,000).
I wonder where her insurance company was in this drama, if they were any. But insurance companies can intervene for very guilty parties in say, the Columbine High School shooting. US$1.9 million was offered to families of the 36 victims, in an attempt to reach settlement. Insurance setups can work as fast as fatal bullets in such cases. This not quite the comical farce that would amuse Ronald McDonald. The guns were illegally procured, and involved sale to minors.
Yet, President George W. Bush, who holds an honorary law degree from Yale, is trying to prevent gun companies from getting sued under almost any circumstances. It seems there are too many “frivolous law suits” around. In the end, families of dead cops cannot sue those merchants of death after maniacs go on a killing spree. Now, there is an idea for those who get teary-eyed whenever the Star-Spangled Banner is played against the Sept 11 backdrop, and when the backs of protestors are broken at WTO meetings by the very same cops.
The total annual bill for gun related violence is staggering. It’s US$100 billion per annum by one estimate. (Even those who don’t get sprayed with bullets may need PTSD treatment). And who pays for that? Finally, there seems to be a long-term method to the legal system’s madness. They will eventually exonerate any willful negligence caused by mega corporations.
But violence is a global pastime, not just American. You will find more screwed systems abroad. Yet, no one is able to understand the US healthcare system, unless he is a banana republican. I was reminded of this when Joe asked me if I had taken a short-term insurance plan, specially designed for US visits. Only foreigners who actually fall sick realize that the trip to Disneyland wasn’t worth it. This was one constant fear I had, despite all that talk about County Hospitals. Foreigners, especially those with all sorts of pallor except the now healthy yellow, need not worry. Sensitive airport staff will selflessly pump up enough adrenalin and antibodies to make sure you don’t fall seriously ill until you reach home.
Any casual observer would find the US healthcare system to be a giant, eugenics complex, systematically weeding out the weaker, or poorer sections of the community. In the long run, this costs less. To keep up the moral façade, there are laws against euthanasia and preventive measures against suicide. It is not just the US insurance companies that reap huge profits; those who own the government can spend a lot more time playing war games instead of being burdened with the infirmities of non-entities.
Here, you need haggle for months or years after being slapped with thousands for a simple medical procedure. They come in multiple bills, from the anesthetists, specialists, administrative personnel and the other plagues lurking within US hospitals. A two-hour usage of a hospital bed can cost more than a two-night stay at a five-star hotel in an idyllic Pangkor Island.
Canadian and foreign doctors, in the meantime, are multiplying like cancers at US hospitals, as lots money can be made here. Nobody wants to be a doctor in this status-obsessed land or have they been weeded out as well? That’s another idea for those poor White supremacists, who, by virtue of their economic status, are the front liners in any war of medical attrition.
Gumption is a rare human trait. Soldiers are still willing to fight when veteran benefits are whittled down. They cheer on when their commander-in-chief regards them as anything but cannon fodder. Can he explain the Gulf War syndrome or why his GIs are battling the foot soldiers of former US sweethearts like Osama bin Laden? Just two out of a familiar thousand questions one could ask.
The eugenics complex is also tied to the work ethic complex. Many here actually get employed for medical benefits, until that pink slip and a 15-minute ultimatum leaves them dangling, wondering which politician was responsible for rewarding Chinese workers for American votes. Moving offshore is an inevitable global capitalist logic and there is a partial solution for job losses. In Malaysia, while lower end manufacturing shifts in droves to places like China, local workers are given government-aided training to produce higher end products. Why can’t US firms do the same?
Add to this the non-nuclear family complex. Many American couples avoid tying the knot simply coz a partner’s Medicaid ceases once the ring is on the finger. “In God We Trust”, but your insurance company has an indirect say over how the Sixth Commandment should be interpreted.
Despite this financially bloated mess, it can take months to get an MRI in the US whereas in the Germany that the United States once – and proudly - liberated from Nazism, it can be arranged within four hours at a public hospital. Sick Britons were being sent there, and France, from 2002 onwards as UK’s underfunded NHS couldn’t cope. The British army seems better equipped in Iraq. Tag-along Tony might as well send his patients across to the Atlantic, to their “cousins”, instead of getting them nursed by traditional enemies in the Old Europe.
You think all this is good for US businesses, when qualified foreigners are routinely pissed off and your underprivileged are nothing better than statistics, some of whom don’t even make up those numbers? But enough of boring healthcare stuff! I came well-stocked, with made in USA meds that were far cheaper in Kuala Lumpur as Third World citizens should get subsidies from richer nations. You see they are not as capable of profiting insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Or more importantly, they are not willing either!
I badly wanted to watch the Austin City Limits Festival but my features, which can be occasionally seen besides some pretty faces, could now grace catwalks for the bomb squad. I had to miss out taking snaps of some Sept 11 anniversary ceremony earlier in Dallas as I was told it “wasn’t safe…for us”.
So, I had to stick to downtown Austin. There were some interesting places to visit like the O’ Henry Museum but hardly anyone knew its exact location. I strayed on foot for miles and got lost in an area where the stares were less friendly. Taking a cab to someplace familiar was out of the question as I was reminded of a Russian acquaintance’s “strange” experience – his airline ticket to Moscow cost less than intra-London cab ride to Heathrow.
I approached this real estate agent who was getting a house spruced up. Downtown was “that way” as the bald eagle flies but it was too far a journey for a footman. (In Britain, women walk that distance). He offered a lift, and the friendly expression didn’t change after learning that I was from Malaysia. (He knew where it was and thought I was a Muslim). He was surprised to note that we shared a remote consanguinity, which I earlier guessed from his Eastern European surname, his Texan looks and his un-Texan amiability towards lonely sojourners in distant shores.
Thousands of years of peregrination amidst danger can impart certain qualities. My newfound friend had Cracow-born grandparents who fled present day Poland before stomping goosesteps could blight their paths. We shared other similarities as well. He didn’t like religious fanaticism, racial stereotyping, ignorance and the other cultural high points prized by the American South. He liked Austin though, as it was cosmopolitan but advised me against venturing too far into those “Bubba” outskirts. And I shouldn’t take airport goons too seriously as even blonde-haired, blue-eyed grandmothers were subjected to similar scrutiny. This puzzle was solved later.
I had to maze around downtown Austin for two or three days until I got myself inside the O’ Henry museum. I had earlier found it on the wrong day, when the doors were shut but such was Austin’s reverence for this author that even a cop guarding a Federal building wasn’t sure where it was. It was in fact a block away. A Prophet is indeed without honor in his own country while foreigners gush over this man’s genius for humor and twists. The friendly lady in charge proved my hunch right, that the museum received a lot of visitors from the literature appreciative Russia and India.
There were trips to the scenic Mount Bonnell and dinner at a Texan BBQ joint not far away. Its catchphrase “eat here, diet at home” wasn’t a boast. The pretty young waitresses were good enough for the Miss Southern Pride pageant. They can stay slim by just delivering orders to a table. Lifting a tray for two was tantamount to pumping weights, and the dexterity involved was an art of its own.
It wasn’t the humungous portions that were a cause for alarm; American cows get a regular hormone regimen; no Asahi beer or sake treat like in Kobe. The result is an obesity problem seen nowhere else in the developed world. So, how do some stay slim?
Visit Austin’s Town Lake Park and you will get a glimpse of a thriving counter industry. This is what you call the bovine-sports gear industrial complex, in case anyone needs a thesis idea desperately. I have never seen a large number of joggers on a weekday at noon. They come fully accoutered. Young mothers can jog, drag along hi-tech strollers (the babies slept soundly) and frantically check up their cholesterol/fitness ratio through monitors attached to their arms. Tiny MP3 players remind you that the 21st century had long arrived.
As a former athlete still in the age bracket for serious sports, I can tell you that these women could outrun me, even with their babies, and they don’t have a choice if those waistlines are to be maintained. Very few win this battle of the bulge. A famous one who did was former Texas Governor George W. Bush, right in this place, after he had successfully avoided other lesser battles. And you are comparing this man to Hitler, a decorated war hero who won the Iron Cross First Class?
Enough of heroes, I had a peek into the netherworld at this park. Someone called The Flash, much to my surprise, sidled up for a chat. The preamble was a question over Stevie Ray Vaughan’s statue. Who was he? I told him what Joe told me in the morning. In three minutes, he was offering a stick of marijuana for three bucks and the salesmanship, to be fair, wasn’t pushy. In 10 minutes he was singing one of Vaughan’s classics, I think.
The Flash was a registered college student with a good degree of intelligence. He preferred making US$1,000 a week from selling weed to completing his college education.
We got talking, and he wasn’t perturbed that I was a journo. Asked why he was doing this, the answer came in the form of a post-modern disquisition on the calculus of indifference in a callous society. The system sucks coz no one cares and no one ever will. His political sense, his understanding of the masses was well-formed for a 20-year-old.
To him, Sept 11 was a farce – there were “scanners” onboard that revealed exactly what was going to transpire before those fateful bangs.
(I would later read that it could be possible for the control systems to be overridden, plunging those planes into safer shores. This doesn’t explain why pilots, anywhere, aren’t coming forth to denounce the non-use of this option).
Sensing my neutral response, he singled out the second Twin Tower strike, 20 minutes after the first, in full view of the global TV audience but not apparently on the military’s radar.
In my psy-war class, we were told that Bin Laden was astute enough to understand the propaganda value of live, spectacular, televisual strikes, knowing very well that camera-mounted helicopters would be launched by the world’s media in minutes – it was after all New York – to inadvertently capture shots of the second strike. The logic was brilliant; bin Laden understood media and military psychology superbly. He seemed to have known that there would be hovering CNN or Fox news helicopters nearby after the first hit while supersonic jet fighters couldn’t be revved up to prevent the second. An attack helicopter could have launched a beyond visual range missile as well while media choppers took a closer look.
Here lies the ultimate paradox, at least to me, of Sept 11. Can anyone explain this before proceeding to other anomalies? For the benefit of future generations, we need a spin like how the hijackers were locked up in intense negotiation before the promise of a safe haven and, tragically, ham and eggs for breakfast blew everything up.
Sept 11 wasn’t the only tragedy. Why are smart young American youths like the Flash pushing weed? College students elsewhere smoke them for want of thrills and amnesia - the world sucks after all – but they rarely make it a fulltime business enterprise.
There were other things different here. Weight and distance were measured in the Imperial system, while the rest of the world has switched over to Metric. Even travel agents can’t tell you how much your 50-pound luggage limit is equivalent in kilos. This is an irritant for American businessmen and scientists as well.
In 1999 a Made-in-America wonder called the Mars Climate Orbiter plunged into the red planet instead of orbiting it after a NASA mix up over both systems. US$125 million was wasted away in our cosmos because long back, some Frenchman thought the universe revolved around his culture. The more down-to-earth Hellfire missiles make no such mistakes.
The roads were a nightmare. Unlike the British Commonwealth, cars here traveled on the opposite lane, and traffic lights flashed very briefly for pedestrian crossings. Before you reached the other end, the lights change and cars charge forward, after the pedestrian’s walking speed is approximated. Too bad if one needs to keep dodging cars for a while. You really need to be on your feet in this country. Looking back, I didn’t see any old folks crossing such roads. The public transport system was the worst in the developed world – many “worsts” here in America.
The solution is cheap cars and cheap oil, one needing industrial ingenuity, the other a standing army of financers and warmongers. The soldiers can die in Iraq while pipelines are sabotaged, as expected.
Texan TV was a bore even if it offered 100 channels over cable. The comedies were great but the news sucked. Local stations were too busy reporting on the traffic situation, the Austin City Limits Festival and that gerrymandering exercise that was causing more storm than Eye-raq. CNN was its usual self – the newsy equivalent of a freak show. I watch them only for two reasons – the efficacy of Botox (applicable only to female newscasters) and the study of crude “propatainment” (propaganda + entertainment). You won’t find, wrinkled, gray-haired tele-bimbos here. (They say when it comes to age and calibre, Barbara Walters is one of few exceptions).
Males are excused. Grey on the likes of Wolf Blitzer give off an illusion of sagacity, which he uses to manage the course of any discussion. This time he was seen amateurishly browbeating an evangelist or church rep whose points didn’t seem unreasonable to me. Here, you have the civil liberties-separation of church and state propaganda complex, managed by those who demand exceptions over Zionism. Things are allowed to work differently in Israel.
(Check if their healthcare system benefits from US largesse. And take a closer look at their medical units and veterans benefits.)
You still like CNN? We go back to my psy-war class, where the uncensored clips of the 1991 Al-Amiriyah carnage were shown. Charred little bodies and those presumably of women and non-combatants were seen being carried out of the bunker. There were no remnant of military devices, not even a shred of an epaulette (Scores of Western journalists were seen taking pictures and for once, the Iraqis imposed no limitation on their movements, questionings or reports). CNN was there.
And how did they spin this in the run up to the current Iraq war? Its website made clever allusions to the “Iraqi claim” or “Iraqi allegation”. There were so many that I was confident enough to access them one day again (CNN’s search facilities were good). Now, type out the name of the place and try out spelling variations and this is the best you might find. “On January 13, 1991, the 28th consecutive night of bombing against Baghdad, two precision-guided laser bombs hit a shelter in the district of Amariya, killing as many as 400 men, women and children, according to Iraqi claims.” (CNN, Feb 13, 1998) Somehow, its search engine, powered not surprisingly by Google, can’t retrieve those articles whipped out around early 2003. But why restrict condemnation to media whores?
Feminists, like those botox-propped faces at CNN, aren’t perturbed. Burning bras, hedonism and misandry are the feminist (not to be mistaken for women’s rights) pre-occupation. And they are in the killing business too. They want free-for-all abortion and yet condone mothers who claim, right in front of TV and their kid, that they wouldn’t have had him or her if there were earlier access to that French RU486 abortion drug. I really wonder what kind of adulthood the kid will face when mommy’s confession can be watched during a classroom debate years later, or easier still on the net. Militant feminists make choices easier for crisis-ridden, single American mothers who despair of their unborn child’s future. It’s cheaper and easier to import children from China – now a thriving industry - than to adopt a local American kid. The Chinese are getting pragmatic. Why abort when you can export?
Here is a question my girlfriend e-mailed from Seattle. It was circulated on the net. "If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already, three who were deaf, two who were blind, one mentally retarded, and she had syphilis, would you recommend that she have an abortion?"
If your answer were yes, congrats! You would have just killed Beethoven. What about Van Gogh? And Stephen Hawking, the Einstein of our day? (There is an irony here for those who have read Hawking!) In the end, the eugenic complex gets even bigger, churning out dumbasses who vote in dumbasses.
The feminist-civil liberties -separation of church and state complex have done well to contort the issue of abortion, spotlighting on the genuine horror stories i.e. rape victims. These same activists can be seen marching out in force against vivisection, and medical experiments that really do save human lives, and correct defects in unborn children. Are the lives of animals worthier than blobs of cells called fetuses, something we were all at one time? “Church-inspired” Bush would agree to this - for rightwing votes - but not to the Al Amiriyah barbarity, in concert with CNN/Fox newscasters, its Zionist backers, with the tacit consent of “leftists”, who get propped up by mega financers in that great human complex called the Animal Farm!
There is no reason needed in this desensitized, Stucke-stampeded world. If you don’t like some people kill them, if your “fetus” is going to turn out ugly, kill it. When you grow old and frail one day, you can be spared of expensive Medicaid, and anguish, and expect the same clinical mercy. “Today the unwanted child, tomorrow the unwanted adult.” Now, who said that?
Reason? Who needs it? I should have just rolled out those three bucks.
Part 5: The Two Towers
Jan 14, 2004 Copyright © 2004 Mathew Maavak
Addenda:
1) The story about Beethoven turned out to be an apocrypha. Just shows you how miscommunication can be transmitted, and facts concretized from benign (in this case literally loveable sources). Ask yourself what about the meticulously engineered ones? Planned with malice and executed with calculated coldness? Read A Global Village or Ghettoized Planet for more details.
2) Saviour Bush announced a job training program (he was careful not use the term job training scheme, like commonly used elsewhere) for US workers in his recent State of the Union address. This bankrupt nation can't sufficiently take care of its maimed army veterans anymore and even if they did, where is the money going to come from? Where is all this money coming from? Well, its just another one of those schemes, a political one. Check the daily bill for the Iraq war and compare this to the Federal educational allocation for your kids. The two bills are tied. Quite a number join the army to get the finances for college studies later!!
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