Shooting the Dream

This is the week my American Dream died. Maybe yours is still fogging the mirror but mine is cold and stiff, prostrate, and staring up at me with fish eyes.

Like most other Americans, I dream of living better than the majority of you. I tolerate all of your social and environmental problems that rule over you by corporations creates, with the understanding that one day I may use the same laws that have let them become rich off all of you, by exploiting your labor, to also make myself richer than I deserve to be. You could call this philosophy Marxism for Number One.

Lately I have been browsing downtown condos looking for the home I would want to live in after I strike it rich, because I'm not much for suburban living. Under the guise of creating a photo album of Seattle's most interesting alleys (which I've been posting on the personal blog, the one nobody reads) I'm actually scoping out which condos look nicest from their backsides. Then I go online and check out the prices.

That led to the first blunt-force trauma to my American Dream. I'm really, really, going to have to exploit the hell out of you all to get a decent condo.

I was stunned to discover that a lot of the guys who brag about their high-rise condos are living in studios with fewer than 500 square feet, because that's all the poor suckers can afford. So it's like, they have trainer condos for the not-so-rich. I've seen bigger rooms in hospital wards. You don't even need a million dollars for one of these trainer condos. You can get one for a quarter million if you shop around. It's sad to see how far the reality is from the glamorous myth. I bet in some of these "luxury" condos you have to sit on the toilet to shower. You have to dress in bed because there's no standing room.

I'm going to need at least half a million to get me a one-bedroom with a view of a loading dock and dumpsters. I'm not sure I want to exploit people that much, it hardly seems worth it.

The hit that killed my Dream once and for all came in the news last week, with reports that a Milwaukee man was arrested and faces up to 6 years and 3 months in prison plus a fine up to $11,000, for shooting his own lawn mower, in his own yard, for not starting.

OK, witnesses say Keith Walendowski was intoxicated when he fired a "shotgun or rifle" into his Lawn Boy, last Wednesday morning. But that is no excuse for arresting him and charging him with a crime. It was his house, his yard, his shotgun and/or rifle, his intoxicant, and his Lawn Boy. And we know that the lazy mower, a glorified tin can, had it coming.

[Right: Our man's mug shot. He looks homeless, but he was housed when he was arrested. When he's released in 6 years, who knows?]

How can I enjoy dreaming about being able to own my own home if, when I finally get one, I can be arrested and put in prison for more than half a decade every time I shoot an insubordinate appliance or motorized lawn tool, even one that's asking for it?

What are they going to do next? Spy on us in the privacy of our own kitchens and arrest us when we shoot our worthless, non self-defrosting refrigerators? Is it now going to be against the law to throw your shoe through your stupid TV screen when your stupid team loses? Did you know that the last pope did that once? Would you lock the pope up for 6 years? Why should anyone even have a stupid TV? Why own a house?

As I despaired of ever being truly free in a home of my own, I realized that's why there's so much homelessness in America today. It just doesn't pay to have a home of your own. You can't do anything in it that you can't do on the streets.

Hope Springs Eternal

I haven't said much about the Iraq War lately. I hate repeating myself and you can't not when you're talking about the repetitive.

But, holy cow, look what happened this morning. First, I beat my head on this keyboard, to bang a column out. Nothing came out of my head as usual (the head-banging trick almost never works) so I did what I always do next. I checked CNN.com, to see if anything had happened overnight. And there was the story, just 39 minutes old, "Blackwater security firm banned from Iraq."

Just the day before, Blackwater contractors had been blamed for killing 8 civilians and wounding 14 in what was seen by many Iraqis as a scatter-shot response to small arms fire on a State Department motorcade.

You could say, "Insurgents shot at our State Department officials, and the Blackwater people were contracted to protect them, so what's the problem? When the insurgents stop shooting at us, Blackwater can stop shooting back." You could say that if you missed the fundamental issue involved, namely that whereas American military personnel are accountable for their actions in Iraq, to the military and ultimately to the American people, individual contractors are not. All we can do is cancel an entire contract, and that won't happen because the security companies have too many friends in the Bush Administration. Worse, our government has not permitted their puppet government in Iraq to hold military contractors to Iraqi justice. So without any investigation of the shooting having begun, everybody in Iraq had to know that the contractors involved would never pay a price, even if they had knowingly mowed down unarmed citizens in a deliberate massacre. It wouldn't matter.

Since I knew the puppet government in Iraq couldn't try these guys, it never occurred to me that they might get away with booting them out of the country altogether. It will be interesting to see if the order sticks.

I don't know about the rest of you, but this news gives me hope. I want to relish that hope. I want to savor every drop of it. Therefore I will indulge in fantasies, dreaming of the great news to come that may have just been heralded.

It might be that this is the first of many such bannings. Blackwater could be banned from Afghanistan. Then, countries where Blackwater isn't working now could ban Blackwater from working there in the future. Then, countries where Blackwater might never work anyway might ban Blackwater from passage through them. The result could be that Blackwater could be stuck operating entirely in the United States.

That done, the American people might wake up and come seriously face to face with the reality that the only remaining reason for Blackwater's continued existence is to wait in the wings until the scheduled roundup of undesirable Americans and facilitate their shuttling off to the concentration camps. And having witnessed the banning of Blackwater in the entire rest of the world, they might get the cajones to do it themselves, right here in the freedom-loving U.S. of A.

What's that? It can't happen? Americans won't get their rocks until the day comes they can tell Iraq from Afghanistan on a map? Hey, don't rain on my dream.

I'm not done. If the Iraqis, who don't even have a real government, can tell Blackwater to shove off, anything is possible. Americans could see straight to try the board and management for treason. They could elect a really good president.

The emerging testes could even affect us here in Seattle. Seattleites might realize they've been irresponsible to allow the MID Yellowjackets, unaccountable hired vigilantes, to force poor people to conform to the selfish greedy whims of the megacorporations that control the Downtown Seattle Association.

One more dream: Instead of peeing themselves every time they're asked for a quarter, and trying to put a stop to the practice, Seattleites could get the balls to just say no to panhandlers and keep walking.