Issue #22/77, November 5 - 18, 1999  

by Mark Ames

I don't know why I did it. As we walked down Main Street in Concord, New Hampshire, on our way to the Al Gore radio interview at New Hampshire Public Radio, I suddenly decided that the foil bindle would best be stored in a disk pocket in my computer bag. So I pulled the foil bindle--which still had a good half a g of scope left in it--out of the inside pocket of my thrashed leather jacket, stuffed it into a disk pocket, and closed the Velcro tab. It was safer there. Or so I thought.

We'd parked too far away and our shirts were covered in darkened blotches of sweat by the time we arrived. A New Hampshire cop in full Cool Hand Luke uniform and some Secret Service agent in khakis and Kevlar stopped us and asked us what we were doing there. Taibbi was pale and panting, while I looked like an Arab terrorist disguised as a grad student tweak in my cholo button-down with DEA T-shirt underneath and Red Wing electrician's boots. Chris brought up the rear in his inconspicuous way--except that he wasn't inconspicuous at all in his black trenchcoat, a fashion statement most Americans now believe is one of the four warning signs for spotting a Columbine/Travis Bickle-be. I'm surprised that the Secret Service agents didn't tag him on-sight. Gore's security detail had literally barricaded the Vice President inside of this provincial radio station, which was located in a building that looked more like a rural General Store from the outside. A convoy of Humvee-sized Ford Explorers blocked the front door entrance like tanks guarding a junta after a palace coup. Well, not exactly that. Not a palace coup. No, not like that at all.

The only thing interesting for me was whether I'd be busted by the Vice President of the United States of America for possession of cocaine. It was close. Once the Secret Service people agreed to let us through their gauntlet of Robocops, Explorers, and crocodilian Gore 2000 press people, they then put us through a search. Chris was pulled aside, since he had a camera. A mustached goon with one of those squiggly Secret Service earplugs and some weird high-tech holster shit barely wrinkling his ridiculous prep school blazer (an outfit we later learned was designed to "go with" Al's) told me to open my computer bag--the very bag that I'd just ditched the coke into. The first compartment I opened was the one I'd stored the shit into; I wanted to get it over with first things first, and in my state of mind, I was almost hoping to get busted. I'm not sure why--maybe it had to do with all the classic rock we'd been listening to--I just needed some way out.

From the beginning I had had my doubts. As the trip to New York drew closer, those doubts turned to nausea and weird bouts of paranoia and insomnia. The whole idea of covering the US presidential elections--it's either scary or uninteresting, depending on the time of day. But Taibbi pushed me. On paper, he was right: after all, the president is the most powerful being on earth, perhaps in the entire galaxy. He commands an empire like those rare few imperial powers in mankind's history: Alexander's Macedonia, Caesar's Rome, Genghis Khan's Tartar Empire, Elizabeth's England.... He is Paul Mu'uad Dib, only a blubbering, boring version of him. In many ways, America's imperial rule is far more effective and thorough than the others', in large part because Americans don't even know or admit that they rule, exploit, and bleed the world. Americans are mostly unaware of their imperial position because they're unaware that a world exists, or where it is located on a map. Even maps are alien. Which suits the oligarchs that run this place just fine. It's hard to kill something that doesn't officially exist.

As for the fabled American middle classes, what can you say? They're not a very sympathetic bunch. They lack the pathos and tragedy of the peasants of yore or the working classes of recent yore. In fact, America's middle class is the most easily bought-off "masses" in mankind's history. In medieval times, you were able to keep the masses from revolting against the oligarchs by promising them an eternal super-oligarch's life in the next world if they kept in line, and an unbelievably painful, savage, eight-week-dragged-out-death in this world if they didn't. So if you wonder why the peasants didn't constantly have French Revolutions every year from 561 to 1789, then that's why. America's masses are far easier to snow: all they ask for is a new piece of fairly priced electronics every year, fantasy football, and maybe a few ethnic restaurants in their suburbs. That keeps 'em calm. The oligarchs can swallow up every company on the planet and destroy the landscapes of the masses' existences, boxing them further and further into indentured slavery, but they'll put up with all of it. They're the meekest masses ever, trust me: just give your Middle American a Franco-Burmese restaurant within fifteen minutes' driving distance, a new carb-free diet to worry over, and an affordable home theater system, and they're as docile as kelp for another decade. They might whine once in a while about their taxes and inability to gain access to the kind of health care that makes America's oligarchs immortal, but really, they'd sell it all for the chance to eat Sino-Caribbean tapas at the local strip mall.

I say, along with the Army of Darkness, "Kill the mortals!" I mean kill 'em all. That's my E-Z one-step answer. But then you'd have to keep killing, because I for one wouldn't want to live under Dutch rule with its home care leave and six weeks' guaranteed vacations. No, if there's one reason not to dust the contiguous forty-eight with sarin gas and anthrax spores, it's because the Dutch will likely take over after us, and make this world one big disgusting mass of beer-drinking Social Democrats. Which leaves us with America as the least of the evil choices.

Besides, they--the American masses--are beginning to do some of the killing all by their self-motivated, creative, expressive little selves. Just this week, there were two office massacres, joining the dozens of massacres we've seen over the past couple of years, massacres that are growing with frequency. What no one here realizes is that these massacres--the Columbine High School killings, the office shooting galleries--aren't crazy or illogical or criminal at all. They're uprisings, plain and simple. They are political acts. No different from the peasant uprisings you had during the ten centuries of feudalism. And just as effective, too. Look, this is a horrible country; the conditions that the oligarchs have put the masses into is a horrible condition. It's unnatural, it's sick: working eighty-hour work weeks in a cubicle with little Dilbert and Cathy strips all around you. It's wrong; it deserves to die. Once in a rare while, someone realizes it here; and once in a very, very rare while, one of the enlightened someones decides to do something about it... something incredibly stupid. He decides to shoot his fellow serfs in one great bloodbath. They never do kill the bosses, do they? No, they always kill the ones at their own level or below before pulling the trigger in their own mouths. But hey, as they say, you gotta start somewhere. And at least these folks are showing some initiative.

This past week, a new trend in office uprisings has been shaping up: disgruntled employee/serf plays the usual game of Doom II in his cubicle-office building, then... instead of blowing his brains out, he actually flees the scene and tries to outlive it. The serfs here are just beginning to realize that you don't have to end your little uprising the second you've blown your steam off; maybe, just maybe, you oughtta enjoy the fruits of your labor, right? Imagine how good Bryan Uyesugi felt, how much lighter and calmer his entire being must have weighed, after traversing the full level of his Honolulu Xerox office this past Tuesday, leaving the laser tag game with a score of seven kills (the all-time high score in Hawaiian massacre history, I should note). I bet when he drove away in that green company Xerox van, he was singing some Three Dog Night song and slapping the steering wheel in relieved bliss; I bet he stopped at a drive-thru McDonald's and ordered two Happy Meals, and goddamnit he enjoyed them. Then he fled into the Oahu hills. And here's where Uyesugi's game plan was a little, shall we say, flawed. First of all, you don't flee the scene of an office massacre in the company van; second, you can't really flee all that effectively if you're on a tiny, overdeveloped island 3,000 miles from the nearest continental landmass. Now, if your getaway vehicle is the company van AND you're on a tiny island, well, you probably wind up like Bryan Uyesugi: nailed within a couple of hours. This was a clear case where the peasant rebel actually should've Cobained himself with the last round from the 9mm clip, but then again, he probably felt too damn light, relieved, and happy to entertain thoughts of suicide at that moment. But hey, it's not like the medieval peasant rebellions were led by Francis Bacon. They were stupid and they died, but still they were heroes in an abstract way. And so is Uyesugi.

As of this writing, the follow-up peasant rebellion in Seattle, in which a camouflaged gunman wasted two and injured two others before fleeing, is having a little more success in avoiding capture. We can't fault him for taking it out on a shipyard instead of one of the zillions of coffee houses there--criticism is easy, as the man says, while massacring is difficult. If this anonymous hero has the sense to shed the camouflage, switch cars a couple of times, and head south, he might even make it home free.

When you learned about feudalism in school, you weren't supposed to deal with it; why should people deal now?

As for me, I'm obsessing with these rebels, these allegedly random massacres, these peasant uprisings, because I'm trying my hardest to get psyched. Psyched about America through these peasant rebellions. Psyched about anything, but most of all, psyched about chasing around these boring oligarch stooges and trying to convert it into interesting text without reverting to a cheap "it's interesting because it's not interesting" conclusion. And for me, the only way to get psyched, to get my blood going, is by sneaking in felony-level substances under the noses of the Secret Service.... Sure, compared to Uyesugi's heroic peasant uprising, my little act of rebellion is like carving "The Baron Sucks Dicks" into the Lord's favorite oak tree on his manor while Uyesugi ran around burning half the crops and lynching the pious peasant-folk. But it's a start. I'm just trying to deal in my own little way. I guess I should have actually railed out on the shit. That would have made this little story more interesting. There was a real missed opportunity to do the Hunter S. thing. Even the Jew Broad was disappointed: "You should have done it and then reported on what it was like being with Gore," she told me. "I just think it would have been cool if you were actually ON it, and not just carrying it around. Don't you?"

I know, it would have been cool. But the sad thing is, I'm so fucking far from being cool in any measurable way that to have done the stuff and played the HST role and then written about it would have been embarrassing and fake in a not-good way. And too much fun. Among other things, I am determined not to enjoy anything at all while I'm here in America--it's the only way to re-enter the mindset of the American subject.

Also, imagine if I'd have railed out before going in there to stare at Al Gore through a bullet-proof window as he droned on about healthcare benefits and greenhouse gasses to a sycophantic radio journalist with an ass like an anvil. When you're pissed off, you can see that for what it is; but on coke, you'll start agreeing with anyone. I'd have found myself grinding my jaw, grabbing the lumpy Gore Press Relations woman who had hissed at us, and barked, "You know, Al Gore makes a lot of fucking sense! I mean I really agree with his Kyoto Declaration, man. If you think about it, the guy's done a fucking lot for this country!"

No, the point was to risk, half-heartedly, getting arrested, with no potential upside to the risk at all. Pointless, cheerless rebellion. It's the American way.