Approved Dreams Only !

[Daveparts]

Approved Dreams Only !
By David Glenn Cox


What the hell? It’s new years day! A time of reflection a time of introspection to correct our paths and plot new directions. But like millions of you in America, I’m frustrated, frustrated by a government that treats us as offal. Unneeded unwanted and of little economic value. For you see, that’s all we are to them, economic units to be pushed down the capitalist chutes until our time comes to have the electrodes placed to our temples. Then we can make that last transaction with the funeral home and the cemetery; our capitalist books closed our value extinguished.

2007 has been a landmark year for me; my business of two years has failed. I have been unable to find permanent employment for the same reason my business failed. Because working people, the one time middle class are melting away like the glaciers in Greenland. But it has not all been bad, I received a Chicago style citation for an article I wrote about Fox news entitled, “Wind Turbines, Bad?” A small credit, but my first, so I’m proud of it.

The Fox news story was about a west Texas rancher disgruntled about his neighbors despoiling his view of his west Texas scrub with ugly wind turbines. I pondered if perhaps he would have preferred a nice coal fired plant with its coal trains running at all hours and its chimneys belching smoke. Or maybe a nice nuclear plant with their picturesque cooling towers against the backdrop of cactus and tumbleweeds. Explaining that one pound of exposed plutonium would be enough to kill every living thing in Texas.

But it was an easy target, we all know where Fox news is coming from and my fear however is where they are taking us. I have another accomplishment this year, that I am proud of and also the main source of my frustration. I have written a novel, a political novel, a story about every day working class people trying to stand up against an oppressive government. The reviews have described it a political fable and submitting it to publishing houses and agents I have received the following answers. “This is one hell of a story, a story that needs to see the light of day in print.” But also, “A hard sell, not the type of project that we would be interested in pursuing, good luck.”

There in lies the frustration, praise that the story is true and correct but when we cross that line from thought into business it becomes a hard sell. Perhaps, if I were to change the character of the homeless man contemplating his own suicide into an out of work star fighter pilot then perhaps we could make the sale. Or if I changed the character of a drug addicted messianic megalomaniac President into an evil outer space overlord on a titanic space vehicle hundreds of light years away then perhaps we could make the sale.

But what of Margaret Farmer? A middle aged divorced woman working her heart out for a company that doesn’t give a damn about her all for the promise of promotion and maybe a fifty cent an hour raise and her own dignity. Maybe if instead of changing this homeless man into a national figure through hard work, toil and plain working class intelligence perhaps if she could change herself into a 69 camaro and then a super hero of some sort then perhaps we could make the sale. Never mind that Margaret is a super hero, a real super hero, the market seeks only imaginary super heroes.

Now if the Catholic Priest in the homeless shelter could become a wizard and his protégé a young black man from the street could become instead a nerd in funny looking glasses then perhaps we could make the sale. Years ago, I saw a book of cartoons by a German artist, I believe his name was Raush. His pen and ink cartoons would be of huge crowds just simple cartoons until you began to look closer. Then you begin to realize that he had drawn a soccer stadium with thirty thousand faces in it, each telling a story, thousands of stories.

A drunk throwing up, a couple fighting, a woman exposing her breasts. Everything you could ever see in a stadium but with only a casual glance it was just a silly cartoon, that to me is what our mainstream media have reduced us to. The real threat from Fox news and the mainstream media. To never look closely at our society, to never look into its face but only to look casually at the world and to accept it at first glance.

The news media and the entertainment media have served their masters well, as it’s all about product placements and special effects never about the people. Our people, our neighbors with real emotions and real dreams and real problems. But let’s keep it in the realm of fantasy because if we use reality as a background for our fiction people may become uncomfortable. People may get ideas, wrong ideas about what is good and what is evil. Modern media isn’t about presenting the message but steering the message and controlling the message.

So perhaps I shall modify my book, “The Servants of Pilate” from the story of working people struggling in a society that abuses them to “The Star fighter who loved me and the Wizards of Arrogance.” The story of working class struggle in a galaxy far far away.