Warhol’s mass reproduction of the iconic trademarks and personalities of American popular culture are but his disdainful pronouncement of the pathetic obsequiousness, the painful naïveté, the misguided loyalty of the American masses, both blue and white collar. Loyalty is the least of virtues.
Warhol creations are parodies of the American condition. Trump, in his torturous, reckless imbecility, is himself a caricature so perverse, he is the very personification, decades after Warhol, of all that is most uncultivated, uncivilised, unenlightened, unrefined, unsophisticated in the bowels of the American public, made ever more toxic by the virulent absurdity however espoused by and through the waste-of-protoplasm at the helm of the fundamentalist, fascist, right-wing party and its constituency.
The coronavirus is merely the current manifestation of the greater sickness of the world. Though the culprits are many, the States Once-United of America, under its current leadership, especially, undeniably predominates. Proof of this lies simply in what may be easily observed – Live a toxic life, die a toxic death. The SOUA has poisoned itself. Where other nations must battle with a biological pathogen, certainly in the end to find a defence; the SOUA battles the inhumanity, the socio-economic belligerence, the religious fundamentalism within itself, native to itself. There is no intrusive, invasive element here; there is the self-destructive, self-annihilating civil war between right and wrong. To its very core, it it is putrid with hatred; its Heartland, now its Hateland.
The threat itself of warring factions, pro-dictator, loud and vocal, with their despot at the helm; and anti-dictator, timorous and silent, living on hope rather than courage. Fear dominates both. The former, in apprehension of losing their champion of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant supremacy, Trump, his puppeteers amongst the rich and powerful Republican elite, and his followers amongst the duped, misguided fundamentalist right; and the latter, knowing full well that reason is not a weapon against the ignorant, believing that the senseless will eventually come to their senses.
The counting of days, weeks, even months, is futile. The least toxic of nations, those nations once victims of capitalistic expansionism, imperialism, and exploitation – nations, quarry, seemingly, of the caprice of history, of geography, of anthropological nuance – may through karmic retribution be spared virulent perpetuality. No count of days, however, will be long enough for those nations whose karmic debt demands greater suffering, greater loss of life, than the sum total of their atrocities committed. It is not necessarily that the fate of a nation is the fate of its people, but acquiescence is compliance. Everyone will get exactly what she or he deserves, both good and bad. Again, live a toxic life, die a toxic death.
Were you weary of Limbo? Get off the fence, for now we descend into the other eight circles of hell. The Coronavirus will take its ineluctable toll, as fitting. The the healthy, the righteous, the tolerant, the compassionate, the humanitarian, the wholesome, will survive. Meanwhile, back in the States Once-United of America – either sleeping or siding with the enemy, or fighting him and his – Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Anger, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery will continue ’til hatred is quelled, ’til the voices of autocracy, of aristocracy, of oligarchy, of socio-economic privilege, of blinded sycophantic white Anglo-Saxon Protestant supremacy, and the the breath and blood which brought them forth, are extinguished.
Rebǝl!
À la recherche de licornes. 