Bureaucratic Insanity: The American Bureaucrat’s Descent into Madness

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2015: The Year of the American Identity Crisis

Race and sexual identity now make up a good portion of all media distractions. According to political activists, “symbols of oppression” now include Halloween costumes, the Confederate flag, and the color of Starbucks coffee cups. So shallow is our collective identity, that this now defines our most passionate debate. While the global economy deteriorates and our government pursues endless conflict across the planet, this is what Americans are most concerned about.

Identity issues make the perfect media story. For the 24-hour TV and internet rage business, these symbolic, but mostly linguistic fights generate strong emotional responses while being non-threatening to advertisers or to the government.

These relatively innocuous symbols have become lightning rods for attention, while real issues go ignored. We wrote in a previous article back in June: “[R]eal problems like mass incarceration, torture, endless war, the end of privacy, and widespread poverty are ignored. This is more than just a corrupt media distracting us with meaningless trivia. Americans literally cannot tell the difference between symbols and reality.”

I have long maintained that these sham fights are a symptom of a society that collectively no longer has any sense of identity. What makes life worth living? Family? That hardly seems true for many Americans. Family cohesion has been disintegrating for some time. A few of us try to define ourselves by hard work and material gain. Maybe that works for some, but how far does that go in an economy with 46 million people on food stamps and a shrinking middle class?

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A Trip to the Barber Shop

My hair isn’t what I imagine it is, flowing locks of youthful rebellion, blinding the establishment with it’s vibrancy. Instead, it’s more of a matted mess. Finally, when I can no longer deny I look and feel like I live under a bridge, I head to the barbers to return me to civilization.

I go when no one else is there, midday. Less waiting. I have nothing better to do at that time other than write lengthy diatribes to you about modern living, but I prefer to do my sulking at night anyway, while most Americans sleep and the mythological truths of life are at their most apparent.

The American barbershop is an inherently political establishment. It is one of the few areas where the working class still gather and the presence of a television is minimized or outright absent. People really talk at a barbershop, and although the discourse is underdeveloped, its still more substantive than anything you’ll hear from the elites on the Sunday morning talk shows.

“He tells it like it is,” the chorus sang as I walked in.  “He ain’t beholden to no one,” one customer pipped up. “And he can win.” I immediately recognized the topic of discussion, but said nothing.

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