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BOLGIA 11, CIRCLE FOUR: THE HOARDERS, THE WASTERS, THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE DAMNED
By Giles Weaver
 In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED, Anthony Patch is determined to validate his worldview – that life has no meaning and therefore any task humanity deems worthwhile and productive is equally as meaningless. He hopes to prove his existential theory by not working a day in his life. His wife Gloria is so enamored with her own beauty, and the seduction of a life of leisure, that she accompanies Anthony on his strange journey to nowhere while they live on just enough inheritance to remain a gentleman and lady, but not enough to secure their future. Gloria shuns having children as the burden to her body, beauty, and time would effectively end the façade of eternal youth she strives to keep intact. What is a woman’s worth if she’s not inspiring the reckless spending of vast sums of other people’s money? You can (GULP!) read the book and find out, or I can tell you. Which is going to be Anthony-Gloria? Read or do nothing? Okay, I’ll tell you (I’m an enabler). Nothing. She’s worth nothing.
As the Patch’s money dwindles, they wait for Anthony’s pious and absurdly wealthy grandfather to die so they can inherit the millions he made through his hard work. Disgusted with their attitude and “immoral ways,” the grandfather leaves nothing to Anthony and Gloria in his will, and they use their remaining money to sue his estate. After multiple appeals and several grueling years propping up Oz, Anthony and Gloria finally get a judgment in their favor and the millions of dollars to which they somehow felt entitled. By this time, however, Anthony’s mental health and his marriage to Gloria have deteriorated to the point that they’ve become parodies of themselves. They use their newfound wealth to set sail for Italy -- second-generation American aristocrats determined to hide among the European savages. However, Anthony is somehow proud of himself. He never had to get a job – he held out all those years – he showed everybody he was right – life is meaningless except for the dollar.
Fitzgerald’s title comes from a line he wrote in a letter to a friend, Marya Mannes– “America is the story of the moon that never rose… America is so decadent that its brilliant children are damned almost before they are born.” That was 1922, but it might as well be yesterday. In this surreal age of hyper-patriotism and endless war, it is a comic irony that the nation-state to which all this rabid loyalty is given, in fact, does not really exist, much in the same way Anthony and Gloria’s upper class posture hid the fact that they were really hollow, rotten, souls with providential lineage.
Yes, there’s nothing that symbolizes “The United States of America” more than a big wad of cash and a ship setting sail to Italy. Yet the undeniable fact is that the U.S. doesn’t have a dime to its name. Our government operates on borrowed money and then has the audacity to pass legislation that makes it harder for you and I to borrow money. That’s how it works here. For everything that is being taken away right in front of us, two things are being taken away behind our backs. At some point, even the most dedicated patriot is going to notice he’s naked, and he will look up and wonder why American flags are made in China. Literally. He will wonder why the infrastructure and schools and health care are so bad. He will wonder why global financial institutions are making decisions that affect his life instead of the evil bastard he voted to “represent” him in Washington D.C. He will wonder how the national debt, the deficit, and the trade deficit got so damn big. He will wonder why he gets murdered with payroll taxes, but billion dollar companies get refunds delivered to their P.O. boxes in the Bahamas. He will wonder why the pension he built up over fifty years is gone, but the failed executives in charge of it just bought their fourth house with their “golden parachute.” He will wonder how America suddenly went from being a respected world power and the greatest creditor nation on Earth, to a third world banana republic that owes everybody money Tuesday for the cheeseburgers we ate today. He will look around and wonder where all the American women have gone.
Go into any department store and you can see for whom are consumer culture is set up to satisfy. American  women have some kind of insatiable religious fervor about the accumulation of junk they don’t need so they can pretend to be people they’re not. Do you think they’re going to just stick around here when all the REAL money is in China? That’s going to be one huge ark setting sail, but it will, trust me, and the headline will read: “ONE HUNDRED FIFTY MILLION SHOE WORSHIPPING AMERICAN WOMEN DESCENDED ON CHINA TODAY AND ATE IT.” I know these things. I’m a genius.
Here’s a play that makes conservatives squirm – INHERIT THE WIND. At the end there’s that great story about Golden Dancer – a beautiful wooden rocking horse that was rotted on the inside. In the play that’s supposed to religion – specifically Christianity -- that is why all the Jesus fanatics hate rocking horses. The good Lord in heaven knows they have to hate something or they just wouldn’t be Christians, would they? I digress. Back to Golden Dancer. What another perfect symbol for the Enronization of our society. It sure is pretty, but once you figure out the accounting is a sham you realize there’s not actually anything there. When “America” looks into what is not actually there we find China staring right back at us, among others. That’s why China laughed at the U.S. when we wanted our spy plane back. Why would they listen to a demand from their bitch? They’ll just call in their markers and watch as American PhD’s try to figure out how to flip mad cow burgers. It is fascinating that Americans look at other cultures that have been around for thousands of years and think their stupid because they don’t have pick-up trucks.
And all of this is just the silly financial collapse pathway to becoming the country that isn’t. The other, of course, is the inevitable balkanization of the country once Roe vs. Wade is overturned. Oh it’s coming. Yes it is. When that happens at least fifteen states will become reproductive right free zones. Who knows how many will follow? What are you going to do when it happens? Write your Congresswoman? HAHAHAHAAHAHAHA! I slay me. Subsequently, population patterns will change as educated women, and the men who love them, flee America’s new Mini-Me theocracies for other U.S. states that live in the 21st century. Then there will be a second wave of men moving out of those states to flee unwanted pregnancies. Not to mention whatever other draconian measures the fundamentalists have up their holy sleeves to ensure a woman’s certain death by coat hanger. I’m not saying it will DEFINITELY happen, and I don’t WANT it to happen, I’m just saying it’s PROBABLY going to happen and it will be on pay-per-view.
In THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, and throughout most incarnations of Arthurian myth, it is understood that the land and the king are one. If the king is strong and just, the country will be strong and just. If the king suffers and fails, that land will suffer and fail. In America, we have only one king – the Dollar. When the Dollar does well, so does the country. When the Dollar fails (i.e. Enron again), then the land fails. (NOTE: That’s a metaphor. I’m not talking about actual fluctuations in world currency). Take this notion one step further and we’ll all be up to speed on “the checkbook” circa 2006. The King is dead and there’s no body – just a shredded paper trail. We have created an abomination whose hemorrhaging red ink will turn all but the most powerful to paupers. The transformation to no middle class will be accelerated by tax cuts for the wealthy, corporate socialism, immigration “reform,” outsourcing, consolidated foreign owned media, a health care system melt down, and 400 military bases around the world, to name a few. The U.S. Treasury is Anthony and Gloria Patch. It is Golden Dancer. It is a suffering and failing king. And a nation hollow to its center will produce citizens hollow to their center.
 The players on the Duke University lacrosse team are the prime current example. Though the details of the alleged sexual assault have yet to be officially confirmed, there is one thing that is not in dispute: in the time honored tradition of American “pioneers,” the players have circled the wagons. They have not cooperated with investigators, and, to use a phrase repeated over and over in the AP reports, they are “keeping silent.” Keeping silent? These are TEENAGERS involved in a serious felony and they’re “keeping silent?” Is their sense of entitlement so exaggerated in their collegiate sports fantasy world that they think gang rape is just another game?
The fact that the players are “keeping silent” proves two things: 1) there is not one person on the team who has any kind of moral compass, and 2) they believe if they keep quiet their parent’s money and lawyers will protect them from the real world of crime and punishment. I call it the Patch Rule. You can call it the O.J. Rule, or the Robert Blake Rule, or the Michael Jackson Rule if you wish. Basically this rule teaches us that justice is bought and sold just like toothpaste. If you’ve got the money and/or fame (in this case the “perks” for being pampered arrogant student athletes), you are beyond the law. This rule is so rock solid I’m shocked that I have not found one law school, including Duke’s, which offers a class on the subject. I guess that’s why we have Court TV – just like old time burlesque at the county fair!
How is it possible that Duke University, suddenly under the media spotlight, has not expelled every member of its lacrosse team? How is that possible? One would think that an “elite” university would consider the refusal of its students to cooperate with authorities in a rape investigation grounds for an immediate thinning of the herd. You would think that wouldn’t you? But if you do believe that then you haven’t been paying enough attention to the Patch Rule. Rich white kids with rich white parents at a rich white school practically INVENTED the Patch Rule.
The three assailants accused of the rape, whose identities will be discovered through DNA sampling, are the embodiment of physical, moral, philosophical, and spiritual cowardice. It is my sincere hope that the Patch Rule will not apply, and that once their names are known, they will become synonymous with the names of the three men eternally devoured by Lucifer in Dante’s last circle of Hell – the traitors Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius. It will be a comeuppance more magnificent than the Magnificent Ambersons.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not as cynical as you may think. It’s not that I don’t believe that we can change the present destructive course of our nation. Even the precarious financial precipice on which our nation teeters each day can be rectified. I know we can do it, I just don’t think we will. We are a nation of Anthony and Gloria Patches. We don’t want to actually do any of the hard work; we just want to reap the rewards that we feel entitled to have for absolutely no reason at all. We want to do nothing and be nothing -- and we desperately want it all to be meaningless. We need it to be meaningless. That’s why we don’t really care if our country is being bought up by anyone with a functioning national treasury. Carve it up for all we care. Just don’t take the “AMERICA: LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT” sticker from my SUV. I’ll need that when I’m learning to count Euros.
And so we’ve come full circle. We will hand down a bankrupt nation to bankrupt children. These are the dying days of history’s first radioactive Empire; we have begun our inevitable descent from its false summit. For what bleak future have we been foot soldiers for so long? Will we define ourselves by endless conflict in the name of a country that barely exists on paper? For a nation slipping out of the bonds of its own radical mythology? What will happen when we reach the base of the mountain only to discover that the glistening cities of our souls vanished long ago? Why won’t this brilliant, beautiful, and damned moon rise?
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