Okay, it's like this.  Big Business, the Corporate Government, the Money With The Guns, whatever you want call it, has figured out how to persuade the vast majority of us into accepting its point of view and methods.  It's not necessarily a conspiracy.  It's simply a machine with a design that works.  Like a car.  Unfortunately, unlike most cars, when it stops it falls apart.  It may not be the most efficient way to get from A to B, but it's the best way to get there while keeping the most people hungry.  Hungry for whatever one is in the business of marketing.

Fear of Abandonment (FOA) is at the top of the Flow Chart of All Fears, and is the watermark on each page of a good corporate prospectus, annual report, or a simple mission statement.  FOA is the first conscious fear and is born directly from the basic animal fear, that of being consumed/in physical pain, and once you realize that, well, the game is wide open.  Fear of being ugly, fear of being fat, unloved, unhealthy, unattached, uncommitted, unconnected, unmarried, unhappy, unfunny, unhip, unCola; there's a new and improved solution for everyone and everything out there.

Come along with us!  The playing field is very tilted, but it's a really fun kind of tilt, trust us.

For all you nascent oligarchs and plutocrats out there, here are some things to keep in mind while trying to stay in power:

• Into every home mix television, sugar, and pharmaceuticals in large handfuls.  Completely cover 900 sq. ft. of reality and dirt with 5000 sq. ft. of split-level dream.  Fold in shame, add a pinch of vanity.  Layer onto a sleep-inducing schedule and simmer in a 98.6 degree workplace until edges become frayed and common sense no longer sticks to a toothpick.

• Manufacture armaments possible only through trillion-dollar budgeting.  Sell them to lots and lots of people, then play Let's You and Him Fight.

• Make certain there is always a slave class, then marginalize and criminalize them.  If local or regional jurisdictions catch on, move the factory overseas.  Win/win for stockholders.

• Pay spies well.

• Always keep lots of your nation's flags handy.

• This Bud's for you.

• Use lots of hairspray.

• Testosterone is good for business because football is good for business because in the football mind can be found the most useful naïveté.

• Advertise advertise advertise.  Then advertise some more.

• Never use a position paper to persuade a government official when a nice crisp thousand dollar bill will work just as well.  Try several.  In each fist.  Campaign reform.  Look yes, say yes, act no.

• Always emphasize that a human lifetime is measured best by its financial earning potential.

• Always de-emphasize that schools exist primarily to feed a corporate economy with labor and research.  Program your mind for success, and you will always succeed in a pogrom program -- unless you fail, but there's a program for that too.  Sometimes the best institutions are correctional.

• Keep God on your side.

There are many more tips to learn, but with these easy-to-follow instructions there will never again be any kind of popular uprising to worry about.  Revolutions went out with brass buttons and blunderbusses.

Why am I saying all this stuff?  Um, let's see... oil?  Saudi Arabia?  Texas?  Bush?  Cheney?  Ashcroft?  The Middle East?  Cakes and ale?  Beer and skittles?  Raw raw raw, go team!  

Perhaps you can tell I'm still a bit dizzy after yesterday's elections?  

I can't wait till 2006 when Schwarzenegger is "elected" Governor of California.  That's gonna be a Party.

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