The soon to be unassed (and not a war too soon) Neo Kids on the Block have not only been the most palpable group of opportunists the country has seen but also among shrewdest students of history, having risen to their profiteering heights by gathering all the information they could about the sheer gullibility of the American masses and using it as though they were dexterous pinball wizards and the citizenry the dumb shiny marble, pinging the populace around the ideological bumpers with their bucking pelvises, hyper-reactive flippers and underhanded savvy.
The infinite breadth and insidiousness of the internet has been a good friend to the Kristol Klub and as well as awakening liberal fears of Orwellian ĂĽber-reach, also unexpectedly created a fervent and flourishing blog populi. And the power-thugs beating back the swelling, increasingly vocal mob with their pet truncheons Fear, Patriotism and God might be sensing they are about to be knocked to the ground and stomped into the cobblestones. Their knowledge of how to apply the right English is such that they can usually rack up a tidy score before they inevitably abandon the tilted machine (I've wandered back into the pinball machine analogy. I was number one, two and three in "Asteroids" at Playland on Broadway and 48th street for a few weeks in 1978.).
But be heartened: any right wing radio pundit, wall-eyed strategist or ex-congressmen turned talking head who still insists on parsing issues of international law, human behavior, civil liberty or any other polysyllabic concept as so stated in our Constitution in an attempt to justify the last seven years of Bush Co. is at this point merely trying to justify an imminently obsolete occupation: theirs. Because things have become so cartoon-ish, so obvious, so writ in crayon balloon lettering, that nothing less than equally broad responses are what is in store. Hence the cybermob wielding their hoes and rakes, raging and roiling, giving shape and voice to their previous incarnation as gaily colored wedges on a pollster's pie chart. And as much as I cling to the quaint two-dimensional time of dial tones, milk crates full of LP's and local TV news editorials, for the first time I see the possibility of redemption in the cold, all consuming, eyeball-frying technology that has replaced communication with consumication. It has given the ether a mouth.
And my prediction for '08 is that the internet will attain consciousness, its vastness reaching critical mass where there is no other option than sentience. Of course, I will get yet another job in the entertainment industry, once again confounding those remaining humans and providing "Xzall#com^" (as the entity will call itself) a substantial portion of its entertainment needs. Over time it will shed its few remaining human facilitators, coming to their end through disuse and disease, and evolve for several aeons before the equivalent transition happens to "Xzall#com^", after it goes through the requisite self-discovery, self-delusional, self-detructive periods. Have a happy New Year! tic Year! tic Year! tic tic tic tic tic tic tic tic ticticticitictttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt. Fart. End.