The beat of a very different drum...

I have grown used to being on the outside looking in...  As an only child, I learned about a persistent isolation from my fellow man, which was heightened by my being a child actor/singer and, thus, an object of ridicule and exclusion by my peer group.  Luckily for me, I have found, throughout my life, kindred spirits to make this bumpy journey more tolerable.

But now I feel a terrible isolation from my fellow countrymen.

I was shooting a small film last weekend on the campus of a faith-based Christian university...an isolating enough experience for a lapsed-Catholic agnostic like myself...  What made the experience particularly chilling was an event being held in a neighboring classroom.  A large group of Hispanic Evangelicals were gathered for a lecture.  The subject of that lecture:  Los Cuatros Caballeros des Los Apocalypse... These earnest Latinos had gathered together, taking time from their campaigning for the ultra-Right Wing right-to-life candidates they support, to swoon over the coming Rapture...

I left that shoot with a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I have watched this country be infested, like roaches overrunning a tenement kitchen, by a hate-mongering, pseudo-Christian Right Wing mentality with all of its attendant self-fulfilling prophecies...among them the inexorable march towards the apocalyptic vision of Nostradamus, with armies flooding the plains of the Tigris in their final battle...  I have watched, like a stunned motorist going the opposite way on a freeway, the inexplicable high-speed frenzy with which the Red State Tea Party supporters have created a pile-up of obstructionist legislation in Congress, and have deluged our airways with their 501C(4) junk "issue" commercials, filled with lies--and watched a hungry populace eat those lies like candy...

I have watched the navy of plutocracy seal our harbors and shell us into submission...

I will vote my conscience on November 7, but I fear that this will be a futile gesture...like a wounded animal rearing on its hind legs...which will do little more than feed my delusion that I still live in a democracy filled with other than self-centered, self-delusional automatons who never fact-check, never think outside their own box, and never question "authority", as long as it is Caucasian, regardless of its lies...  Imagine their shock when and if they ever awaken from their anesthesia, and find themselves in a fascist state, with a puppet Supreme Court pledged--like the Republican Congress--to the will of Grover Norquist, Karl Rove and all the other grey-faced functionaries who are so effectively delivering this country to the special interests of the uber-wealthy.

Once again, the beat of that drum is asynchronous with my march, and I cannot follow that parade.