Image is Truth (and Ignorance is Strength)

I am constantly inspired by my government's clear example, which it sets before us every day while most of us scarcely notice.

But that's advertising for you: it's not supposed to hit you upside the face, but rather penetrate your subconscious. Fortunately, I spend time every evening looking, examining, studying what our government is really doing, and so I am able to benefit from its subtle role modeling.

My case in point today involves a financial problem I'm trying to deal with right now. I won't get into the sordid details (they'd be all too familiar to many of you); but I'm faced with bonafide insolvency on a number of fronts, and I don't know what to do. Last night, I was given my inspiration: let Image be my Truth, and I will be Saved.

I watched the President, you see—how his image was quite literally surrounded by signs bearing the words "Victory" and "Plan". What he said, of course, was the same noxious drivel that we've all heard for years now. But that image was something. Of course he has a plan for victory: there were about 673 signs—wallpaper, mind you—all over and around him that clearly said so: a camera couldn't get a picture of him without one of those images appearing above, below, in the background—until I thought I saw the phrase planted on his forehead!

So here's my plan: I'm going to make some signs that all say things like, "I am Wealthy," and "All My Bills Paid!" I'll hold a press conference for all my creditors, surrounded by those signs; and I'll have a a team of photographers and video crews shooting me from every angle, and every subsequent image will have a "Plan for Solvency" or "Financial Freedom" logo in burnished, patriotic gold over blue. In no time, the letters, phone calls, levy notices, and reminder emails will all stop, and my credit rating will be in the Outstanding range before the mid-term elections dawn.

Now, back to the President: maybe someone with more time and patience than I can look back over old photographs of Presidential speeches and press conferences, and see whether past executives have seen the need for such imagistic shillery to support their oratory. Meanwhile, I have to post this comment, which I received from our occasional contributor, Red Hook Red—I think he speaks for us all.

I wonder if all the people who voted for Bush and the GOP because they stood for "values" have had enough of those values yet: arrogantly blundering into a war that has become an unwinnable hornet's nest without any understanding of Iraq's culture or thought about what needed to be done once the shooting stopped (if it ever stopped), plunging the nation into debt, promoting incompetent cronies and hacks to positions of vital importance, botching and then forgetting about the Gulf Coast, promoting a foreign policy that is based on the same totalitarian behavior that we profess to deplore, spitting in the eye of science and reason by promoting "intelligent design" as preferred curriculum, sneering at conservation while letting oil companies write our national energy policy - which only guarantees that middle eastern oll sheiks will continue to have us by the shorthairs while the globe continues to melt and hurl catastrophic storms at us, doing nothing to solve the health care crisis, encouraging corporations to plunder employee penision funds and walk away from any obligations, making you feel like a traitor for questioning any of this....I could go on, but I'm getting nauseous.

—Red Hook Red