A Disposable Society: America

       American community organizer and writer Saul Alinsky had his own bucket list for the creation of a social state.  While I disagree with the fundamental negative connotation of "social state," what he surmised is interesting.  Here are the eight levels:

1.  Control healthcare and you control the people.
2.  Increase the poverty level as high as possible, because the poor are more easily controlled. 
3.  Increase debt to an unsustainable level.  This way you can 
raise taxes and thus produce more poverty.
4.  Remove the ability to defend one's self.  (The right to bear arms) That way a police state can be created.  
5.  Relying upon welfare, take control of each and every aspect
of people's lives.  (food, housing, and income)  
6.  Take control of what children learn in school.
7.  Remove the belief in God from the government and schools.
8.  Create class warfare between the rich and poor.  

      While this list is not quite as accurate as Mr. Alinky's original, it creates a certain amount of doubt in the American mind.  At least it should.  Instinctively I have observed these things happening in the United States.  While at times I have lamented about being born into the wrong generation, now it seems as if my generation is the only one capable of seeing such changes take place.  The Baby Boomers lived in their own bubble.  That almost is extinct.  They got theirs for them.  Gen. X was not left with much except baggy blue jeans and flannel shirts.  They did create a viable form of commercial music that today vehemently is ignored.  Who wants to hear about the angst of their youth?  Certainly no one that is interested in their well being.  We have proven that.  On the second try with less resistance from Grunge music, which had a substantial financial message, America was able to allocate the true functionality of her youth.  "We exploit them."  When the fight of Gen. X waned, it was easier to convince each child in America that they needed a "portable communication device."  When I was a kid we had Walkie Talkies.  They were available at the local Sears and Robuck store.  While they had telescoping antennas they did function worth a damn.  Two cans and a piece of string did better.  (I wish the television commercial that is using this set up as a prop, would reinforce that the string has to be pulled taught for it to vibrate properly and carry sound in the can amplifiers.)  Cell phones in their short history have gone through very discreet phases of development.  I never could hear on one, so without the aid of an earpiece I chose not to use it.  I still don't.  My income can't substantiate a wireless communication device with a base price tag of $600.00 and a rental fee of $50.00 a month.  That is a lot of clams.  I can think of better things to do to occupy my time, such as compose music.  The cell phone can wait.  The bottom line is the cell phone is an entertainment device.  There is novelty in its use.  Given the quality of an AT&T ground line and its modest price, I saw no reason to change for the sake of popularity.  The campaign was effective, and the virus spread.  Cellular phones could be the only truly mainstream item in existence in America.  Music is not uniting anyone, nor are mass shootings.  What I am wondering is when and why America became a "do or die" situation.  When did we become disposable?  When did we become so "attention deficit" that we can't remember what came before today?  I believe this rule should be added to Mr. Alinksy's bucket list.  

9.  Take away the human being's mind's ability to concentrate and   
      thus think.  (Create Attention Deficit Disorder)  

At the same time we could throw in a few other maladies that would alter the effectiveness of a properly functioning mind.
  
What I truly am questioning is how we became an "intangible" nation.  What I truly am questioning is how we became a "disposable" nation.   My only answer can be that this ideal has come from television broadcasting.  Television in America drastically has changed.  Why does it concern me?  It concerns me because I always have enjoyed watching late night television, that is as an adult.  When I was a child I enjoyed watching at the normal times, cartoons on Saturday morning, and prime time in the evenings.  These days I only can stomach late night television and that too has taken a dive.  Without criticizing bad writing, I want to focus on the approach of today's TV.  First and foremost the amount of time allotted to commercials it seems as just the same as programming material.  When I channel surf in the wee hours of the night and find a good movie, I have to sit through five minutes of commercials each five minutes before being able to see the end of the movie.  It is nerve wracking.  Usually I give up.  I do this at other times as well.  It seems to me that if you dissuade your viewer from staying on the same network, you are missing the boat.  Isn't the goal to keep viewers?  This could of course could work toward the advantage of other networks, since you will flip through them.  Unfortunately it is likely that at any given time, if your surf through say seventy one basic cable channels there only will be commercials showing.  This happens to me often.  I find at a given moment no programming at all, only a barrage of unrelated, unartistic, pop-oriented advertisements that annoy me.  There has been but one exception, the commercial for J.G. Wentworth that uses real opera singers in a bus actually singing the ad's message.  Because it is so rare I get choked up watching it.  It harkens back to the time in my life when I was pursuing music full time.  I was working on the D.M.A. in Composition.  Then and only then was immersing one's self in the artistry of Western music copacetic.  Here in America what's the point?  We don't understand the music anyway.  The Baby Boomers and their sensibilities are almost extinct.  What is left?  It is a scary thought.  Dare I say Miley Cyrus?  Justin Bieber?  Is this what the youth of America understand today as music?   What I long for in my life is a sense of line.  A sense of line recognizes recent history, relies upon education, and maintains a sense of leverage in life.  It is not disposable.  Why should it be?  When did the state of the human being become tossing them away like dirty paper cups?  Television invented this concept.  Possibly in competition with the internet's interactive nature, television needed a new direction.  Why not use "Newspeak?"  George Orwell all ready invented it in "1984."  Why not say, "To hell with the truth.  Let's just lob out random lies and cover the reactions of the American public."  To an extent we still are in this modus operandi.  What I long for is a sense of line in life.  I long for a time when life is not sensational.  It is average and ordinary.  I long for a time when through the philosophy of Zen, we are able to quiet ourselves and our minds from the superfluous overstimulation of modern society allowing our own ideals to come to fruition.  This is what I attempt each and every day, and I fail.  The phrenetic pace of television is not helpful, nor is its scare tactics.  While fully I believe the grass roots survival programming is relevant, trying to scare the viewing populace with grotesque imagery is childish.  We have the cellular phone to blame for this.  Without it many of the disturbing photos and videos would not be in circulation.  It is in extremely bad taste that television media is broadcasting some of this programming.  Tangibility.  Tangibility to me is knowing and understanding what is around you each and every day.  I feel I may be the exception to the rule, because having returned to my "home" town after years working in the cruise industry, I have no security.  Things have been cemented into place for decades, and they are not changing.  I am operating on the fringes, and in no way do I have any desire to penetrate the perimeter.  It is oppressive.  It is staid.  It is boring.  It is uncreative.  I should say, "It is conservative."  It seems like we are operating on a virginal landscape.  Is it not well-known that most things all ready have been accomplished in our world.  I know this because I can remember.  I can remember the hundreds of television shows made and broadcast in the 70's and 80's that are better than what we see today.  It is because they contained social commentary about the Conditions of America.  They were reinforced each week over years.  Nothing was going to change tomorrow.  There were no terrorists.  There was a Cold War, a war that was fought intellectually.  Today we have been dragged back into the trenches fighting day to day for our sole survival, and it is tiring.  It is a ploy.  It is a plan.  It is an approach being implemented to weaken America, and we are complying.  In my view television is responsible for the largest part of this campaign, and Rupert Murdoch certainly has something to do with it.  Back in the day you could look forward to watching "Fat Albert" toe the line of modern racism with a soundtrack by Quincy Jones.  Today we watch crime scenes.  I don't much like it.