Disillusioned

Music: Soundgarden, "Black Hole Sun"

I'm in a down mood today, my friends.

Something that occurs to me from time to time is when somebody says they were "disillusioned" -- or experienced "disillusionment." At least in the States, that's seen as a bad thing. You know, like "I thought they were great at first, but I was completely disillusioned after seeing them."

But isn't disillusionment actually a good thing? Isn't it better to see more clearly, rather than less? I remember dating a woman who said "I'd rather have a gentle lie than a harsh truth." (I can't remember how she put it, exactly, anymore -- but that was the gist) And I remember being sort of off-put by that. All truths are harsh, ultimately. That's why people run from them.

America's a land of illusions -- the Fourth of July makes me think of that more than most holidays, like we're the Land of Liberty, Land of the Free, and people celebrate a long-ago battle with illegal fireworks, hot dogs, and alcohol, even as our country is in worse political shape than it's been perhaps in its entire history. It's a crisis that's been ~60 years in the making -- probably the moment the Department of War was changed to the Department of Defense, when our military no longer stood down, but remained permanently mobilized, when we moved from having an army of necessity to a standing army, and the Pentagon's budget bloomed into a toxic flower and then spread into a garland that hangs around our necks, heavy, like a chain, keeping us from spending on needful things, and instead engagin us in wars of opportunity abroad, again and again. Bleeding money and life and the future -- for all the talk of the Social Security lockbox (and, indeed, the moment the "lockbox" rhetoric appeared in 2000, I knew Social Security was in danger), the real lockbox is Pentagon-shaped.

Remember when they talked of the "Peace Dividend" (very, very briefly -- maybe three weeks in 1993, before it was sucked down the memory hole)? Anyway, those days are gone forever -- the terrorist bogeyman is too perfect. Never mind that a $420+ billion military budget won't...can't protect us from that bogeyman. It's incidental. The inertia of such huge spending dominates our society in frightening ways. Why do countries have coups? Because the military ends up being the only dominant institution -- all the others fade away, and you're left with the military. We're on that road, friends, and it frightens me. We need more disillusionment.

Anyway, here's to disillusionment, I guess. I'll raise a glass of existential brandy to it in a ghostly snifter and pretend to drink from it...

Somebody explain to me how these guys get pears in those brandy bottles.

Disillusion me, please!!