Stuck inside of Manchester With the N.H. Primary Blues Again

The U.S. Army told me to put down that I was born in Manchester, New Hampshire, as my birth certificate was from Manchester, that is, issued by the town clerk at the Manchester City Hall. At the time, births in neighboring Goffstown were registered in Manchester.

I went to Manchester a year or so ago to get a new birth certificate, my old one having worn significantly. It’s habit of getting itself misplaced was an annoyance in these days of the “War on Terror” when it is best to be carrying a passport when making a 2 A.M. run to the 7-11 for a bag of Cheetos.

So, I paid a visit to the town clerk -- the same office where my and Lisa’s request for a marriage certificate was denied as we had forgotten her divorce decree back in California before she jetted off to Moscow and out of my life (she's back in it again, as my best friend) -- and the clerk behind the desk informed me that the records were shipped back "home" to Goffstown. So, now I'm officially born in Goffstown again.

"And so it goes...."

Like Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim, I have become unstuck in time, as history has begun repeating itself.

My father, who was born in 1926 and had memories of Herbert Hoover, died railing about how the Republicans had destroyed America again, just as they had almost eighty years in the past. Hillary Clinton, the Goldwater Girl, must be considered the front-runner for the Presidency, despite a few stumbles in the past two weeks. If she were to win, and win reelection, that would give the United States 28 years of governance by two families.

It's certainly true that the Republic of the United States of America died sometime shortly after 9/11/2001, and just like the fall of the Roman Republic, was succeeded by an Empire. Imperial America, run for the benefit of one oligarchy (one family tree) with two branches. Bill Clinton was the son George Hebert Walker Bush never had.

Could George Orwell have dreamed up this version of America/Oceania we live in now? It seems to me that Orwell's mistake was that he couldn't envision fascism in the midst of plenty. The surfeit of materialist "well-being" that is post-Reagan America is more soul-deadening, more an opiate than any other religion dreamed up by the mind of man, including Saudi Wahhabism/the Deobandi creed of The Taliban & al Qaeda.

When people are hungry, they think, even if it is thoughts of thieving or of scrounging up a bellyful of victuals or finding a place to sleep on a cold night. When they are fat, they dream.

America is in a prolonged fugue that began during the second Reagan administration and which, after rumblings and nocturnal leg-kicking during a brief nightmare after the Persian Gulf War, has returned stronger than ever. This is not the dreaming wisdom of Fergus & The Druid: This is Orwell country. Keep The Kudzu Flying! should be the motto of George W. Bush and his gang of Sunbelt Suzerains. Let's fight a jihad for the Money God! Can we set the battle hymn to the rousing strains of the Theme from "Hee-Haw"?

Doublespeak and doublethink, the language and consciousness of our subconscious-driven, socially defined reality, are the norm.

This is the wasteland, this is cactus land....

It is said that Bertolt Brecht corrected his friend Walter Benjamin one day, when Benjamin was complaining about the 20th Century being the age of fascism.

"What makes you think that the world wasn't always fascistic?" B.B. asked. "What makes you think that fascism is unique to our time?"

Welcome to the Wasteland that is early 21st Century America. Welcome to my nightmare. If your headpiece is full of straw, lean on me.

I'm back in Manchester, New Hampshire. Stuck inside of Manchester with the N.H. Primary Blues Again. Those Beat-o, Beat-o, Flat-on-My-Seato, Yet-Another-Job-Has-Been-Shipped-Off-to-Mumbai-Again, Hirohito* Blues.

It was at the Manchester town clerk’s office sometime in 1978 that I took the oath -- at least I remember it as an oath, but time has a habit of creating chiaroscuro memories, the mixture of light and dark yields three-dimensional images, but I‘m not sure if they are lifelike rather than my life itself -- the oath of citizenship when registering as a voter. I registered as a Democrat. It was the proudest day of my life, and I was so happy to declare my party affiliation in that Republican state. Why would I take an oath of citizenship when, under the 14th Amendment, I already was a citizen?

Memories are fun when not taken too seriously, and one doesn’t suffer from non-medical Munchausen syndrome (i.e., a propensity for crafting good remembrances with yourself the leading man).

Where is my party? Lost with my youth, I suppose, though -- like Walter Benjamin -- who am I to ever think that the Democratic Party was ever liberal, let alone a party of the left? Eugene McCarthy win the primary in ‘68, which was mostly a rejection of L.B.J. and his infernal war, but George McGovern came in second in ‘72 and Jimmy Carter, the conservative, beat a field of liberals in ‘76.

These are the primaries I know best, as I left Manchester in ‘78. But I’ve
been back several times, just never in primary season.

* If you know Hoagy Carmichael, and the fact that my father was in the Third Fleet during WWII, you might get the reference.