Fear and Loathing
God, branch night.
Whatever that meant.
The trembling, the Iwantattentionrightnow mumbling. The Class of 1960 Representative, a man who twice served in Vietnam, was the first man to jump into Panama and led the 82nd Airborne to victory in the First Persian Gulf War.*
The alcohol, the depravity. AMERICA’S BEST AND BRIGHTEST. On wonderful display. Getting the kicks out. Getting adjusted. Paying twenty dollars to right a wrong.
Strange memories on this nervous night at West Point. Has it been three years? Four? It seems like a lifetime, the kind of peak that never comes again. New York in the late oughts was a very special time and place to be a part of. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time in the world.
Whatever it meant.
…One sometimes thinks about how far our society as “progressed.” Now, we TiVO all that we can’t see due to our busy schedules. We demand the government give more and more of our money back to us, so we can buy shit we don’t need. But they don’t give it back to us, they just keep thinking they are always the smartest people in any room they walk in to. And as they waste their money, they waste the birthright. Consumerism is everywhere-look at the 12 year girls. They are the standard. If they dress like sluts at Halloween, or on any other day, that is an indicator. Their minds are so full of pop culture shit, it’s a reflection of what America is or will become or both. Jesus. The malaise gripping this country, the sense that nothing is resolvable, that all of us are collectively fucked. The idea that we are some weird inheritors of a long-lost civilization of people that left us a grand constitution and roman buildings in our Capital, but for some reason we and our elected leaders are powerless to stop the wheels of history and time, despite our great power.
I looked around tonight, looking to my classmates and seeing them. Just like I did my high school graduation, and R-Day, and Cow Commitment and Ring Weekend. Taking it all in. Knowing that very, very soon, people around me will be very, very dead. A couple of kids off’d themselves after high school graduation. This time, it’ll be the Taliban. They live in fucking caves and we can’t win. Not yet. But I’m sure we will. This time, America is at the mall. They don’t see Afghanistan on CNN enough to care. And that’s how things are going to be. .5% of the population making the sacrifice so everyone else can go to work and get money and pay in to their 401k and buy slutty outfits for their 12 year old daughters so those girls don’t hate their parents for preventing them from looking like jailbait. I’m not sure how long this can last, but I’m sure its for a while. Awareness of national boredom takes a while, I’m sure I can hold out. I just hope my kids can, too.
Actually, fuck that. I hope somebody runs in 2012 to turn this around, for real. Somebody that can wake people up and remind them what’s really important. Somebody that MTV hates, somebody that doesn’t resort to the same whole shit to get people elected. Somebody who knows what the hell they are doing and has a backbone. He or she is out there, somewhere. Let’s hope we find them and make them our President.
Yeah, branch night. Fucking A. Crazy times. And together, we all make one more step closer to graduation and The End Of Life As We Know It.
I’m kind of depressed by the whole prospect, but I sort of knew it was coming all along. Good times never last long enough.
