Sunday, December 31, 2006

vox populi

WASHINGTON What does the new year hold in store for the United States?

Americans have gazed into their 2007 crystal balls for an Associated Press-A-O-L News poll. Some see a grim picture: another terrorist attack, a warmer planet, or another major natural disaster.

But most people don't see the U-S going to war with Iran or North Korea.

An overwhelming majority think Congress will raise the minimum wage.

About a third predict reinstatement of the draft.

One in four anticipates the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Ipsos conducted the survey of one-thousand adults from December 12th through the 14th.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

2 Comments:

Blogger Juke said...

1/4 of 3000K is a goodly bit more than the original transportation allotment as I recall. Possibly that was a metaphorical use of large numbers?
On a more serious note Dawkins evidently busted his nephew's six yr. old vision of Father Christmas as the Brits are wont to describe our merry archetype ho fella, Dawkins pulling the plug on that little string of fairy lights with a hey nonny - no.
Which puts that pretty much in perspective.
On an even more serious note there evidently is reproducible evidence, quite a lot it seems, to refute the existence of anything like there ever even having been an Easter Bunny. Ever.
What no one's taking into account is this cavalier deflation of significant and vital dream-bearers and transference-objects is creating and antagonizing a most real and threatening animus/anima in the aether-spirit-realm whose real world influences are only beginning to be felt. The thwarted fantasies of otherwise innocent young minds and hearts gone raging animate and smashing through the virtual threshold, bitter, rancid and dark with collective disappointment looking for catharsis and revenge.
The problem with guys like Santa Claus, and Dawkins, is that even though they don't exist, once you've pretended hard enough they do, you have a responsibility - if not to their fictive shadow-images, to the credulous who've bought that Santa Claus/Dawkins narrative from you.
Which is not to say Jesus isn't coming this year.
But that the Jesus in the heads of that quarter-America probably is.
In a stretch HumVee, kind of a deep lustrous pearl-white with none of those matte-black fittings, light-gray tinted windows you can just make out the halos through, no engine noise at all and the tires sing, chrome's got some kind of gold radiance, and a personalized license plate on the back that reads differently to everyone who sees it, in their own language.
That Jesus. Coming soon.

1/02/2007 9:56 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Juke, thanks for the heads up on that one - I'll keep an oiel out.

But to your larger point, two time-compressed things:

- Dawkins can kill all the golden carriages he wants. He still has Dawkins.

- Etc for the Enlighterati wherever.

- yr raging animage and bitter rancid and dark with collective disappointment is way too accurate a portrait of people who tend to look a lot like my own kids. Tom Brokaw can croon about greatness, none of the collectively disappointed are in attendance.

1/04/2007 1:42 PM  

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