Random Notes On Non-Events and Non-People
Bad Bunny was the performer at the Super Bowl half-time show. I never heard of Bad Bunny before this month. I understand he sings in Spanish. (I cannot verify whether “sings” is strictly the correct verb here, though I suspect not, based on the photos of Mr. Bunny that I have seen; and I surely will not attempt to verify it by listening to any of his performance, than which I would rather hear an actual bunny’s musical efforts.) I think that a major country (and its global satellites via entertainment hegemony) treating a football game as the most important event of the year is almost as absurd as said country (and said satellites) treating the half-time show at that game as an event of equal or greater significance to the game itself. Of course I know this is all about politics and money, or perhaps money and politics — the order doesn’t matter, since everything in today’s popular American culture is inevitably about both of them in varying proportions. And yes I know that the National Football League is an entertainment behemoth that tends to play its politics, and invest its money, to the left of the spectrum. That is their right, and if anyone finds it objectionable, then he is equally within his rights not to buy the NFL’s product. Don’t want to support Bad Bunny? Don’t watch the stupid football game. If their ratings were cut by a number of viewers equal to all the non-progressives who actually watched this year’s game, I suspect the NFL would replace Bad Bunny with Peter Rabbit for next year’s half-time show faster than you can say “God Bless America.” They would hop right to it.
As an alternative to the atrocity of Bad Bunny performing (“not even in English!”) at the Super Bowl half-time show, TPUSA, a creepy-looking quasi-Christian pep rally club owned and operated by Erica Kirk, whose husband Charlie was assassinated at a public appearance so recently that the cuckoo MAGA media is still reaping the benefits of the conspiracy-tinged gossip mill surrounding his widow’s quick takeover of her husband’s organization — this creepy-looking quasi-Christian organization staged an alternative half-time show of its own, designed to steal attention away from the NFL’s awful progressive propaganda stunt by offering up a second equally awful (and if we’re honest, probably equally progressive) propaganda show, featuring an equally embarrassing and politically-rationalized “performer,” one suspiciously mature-looking “Kid Rock” (not his real names, I will venture to assume), thus summing up everything that has gone so terribly wrong with American public life over the past generation. “They shove their vulgar and offensive thoughts and wishes down our throats, so why don’t we shove ours down theirs?” A national gagging contest ensues, with everyone vomiting on themselves and everyone else in lieu of civilized public discussion, of which America is no longer capable on any level.
The Epstein files are revealing more and more names of prominent men, many of them affiliated, either officially or semi-officially, with the Trump administration. I am particularly amused by the appearance of Peter Thiel, the pseudo-conservative pseudo-intellectual’s billionaire of choice for this era, one of those individuals who think that invoking the name of Leo Strauss somehow qualifies one to anoint oneself a philosopher-king, replete with noble lies and holier-than-the-many stratagems, minus Socrates’ philosophic nature and principles — or irony — of which Thiel self-evidently has none.
What immediately jumps out at anyone looking at the Epstein matter without the titillation motive, and indeed with squinted eyes always ready to be turned away suddenly lest they see anything too ugly, is simply how pathetically desperate for contacts and thrills of the pettiest sort our age’s movers and shakers tend to be. If nothing else — though I suspect he was actually quite a bit “else” — Epstein, along with his accomplice in grossness Ghislaine Maxwell, inadvertently constructed a real-life “ring of Gyges” experiment. Send out feelers to every prominent financier, politician, and New York celebrity one can reach, offering them a chance to indulge in all the hobnobbing, wheeling-and-dealing, and dubious extracurricular activity they could ever dream of, all somewhat over the heads, or at least beyond the vision, of the unwashed masses, and then observe their eagerness to be a part of it all, apparently in most cases for no other reason than because they could. That is, because they felt they could get away with it, because no one would know, because they were so big or so wealthy that no suspicion or judgment could ever touch them. And — here is the implied motive and the real conclusion of the experiment — because as long as it is all hush-hush and under the public radar, there is no reason not to do it. No reason other than the soul’s own habituated guideposts and taste, factors which obviously do not apply to those who have none — no good habits, no good taste, and in all probability nothing but a dark, echoing hollow where the soul ought to be. The fruits of “power.”
