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OF SPAM. FRAUD AND AUGHT-EIGHT
A coworker of mine has developed a ritual for
enduring cubicle life: she shares the spectacu
larly inane spam excreted at her by the web's
churning intestinal tract. It's the game that
never gets old, the way your grandparents ^an
regale their peers with World War II stories ad
infinitum. I laugh at every one. Are there actu
ally people who fall prey to these things?
Free herbal Viagra. One-month college degrees
(no GED necessary). Fantabulous stock option
buy buy now! The messages never change—nev
er—and yet, if you watch the news, you'll still
find correspondents and pols wringing their
hands over the explosion in Internet fraud.
But the names: the names, now, they're fun
ny. It's never From: Sam Taylor, say, or Jennifer
Watts. No, it's From: Octavius Rembrandt. Santeri
Monte. Lazarus Colby. And, finally, this morning,
"Thanksgivings I. Hideousness."
My first thought, after my coworker forwards
me this email, is: Do the spammers use some
proprietary cool-name generator? Because if such
a program exists, I want it. My next thought is
come on. Come on. The sender's name is the first
thing you see. Is there anyone, anyone at all,
who would possibly click on a link proffered by
Thanksgivings I. Hideousness? Or supply a credit
card number? Undoubtedly. Mr. Hideousness
knows his market. I'm sure.
Given this pummeling, daily ri-goddamn-
diculousness. I'm tempted to develop a unifying
theory explaining how
some people trust these
spammers. I'm thinking
it's a subconscious act
of defiance aimed at a
society that veers ever
more fervently toward a
hip cynicism, that inflicts
its own assault on self-es
teem, giving a person two options: either devote
gobs of time and money to staying au couiant, or
put equal effort into proving how little you care
about same. You can't even be conscientiously
unhip without becoming hip.
Maybe these spam-trusting souls, the ones
we think of as hopelessly gullible, are instead
offering a kind of up-yours to a world in which
nothing can be taken at face value and no one is
to be trusted. Searching for something to trust,
these people are lunging at the most patently
unreliable source they can find. They're doubling
down on blatant bullshit and daring American
culture to up the ante of infuriating chic yet
again.
That's the theory, at least. And it's also, I
think, a fair description of the 2004 election. No
point in rehashing the grisly details. Let's just
reaffirm that, in spite of a mushrooming foreign
debacle and a lacuna where a coherent domestic
policy should be. That Man not only wor, but did
so comfortably. This wasn't a matter o' abortion
clinic bombers and Book-of-Revelat'ons zealots
surging en masse into the polling stations. The
media has smothered us in red state/ blue state
rhetoric, the intractable national divide—but you
know (and like) people who voted for George W.
Again. Most likely with a curl of distaste upon
their lips, but they did it. Yet we, in our bluish
oasis, roll our eyes and wonder how people could
fall for his particular line of bullshit. Again.
It's time to stop wondering. The Rovian
Republicans have convinced Americans—not
the extremists, not the gun nuts, not the xe-
nophobes. but a majority of hard-working,
concerned citizens—that anyone espousing blue
views is effete, vacillating, adrift on the prevail
ing currents of what's newest and hippest at the
expense of old-standby American values. This
despite the fact that the Democrats have recently
trotted out two of the most unhip candidates in
memory: Al Gore and John Kerry. This isn't new
news. Every Democratic candidate since LBJ has
been cast as indecisive, weak, and in the thrall
of the latest and most fringe of special interests
(as opposed to the reliable corporate stalwarts
buttressing the GOP). What is new is that a com
fortable majority of Americans have, in the face
of the greatest steamrolling clusterfuck in our
nation's history, surrendered to credulity.
I don't think we as a nation have plunged
our heads into the sand. People are passionate,
concerned for their futures and their children's.
Hell, environmentalism is finally gaining popular
traction, even if it did take three-dollar gas to
get us there. People do care—but they're tired.
Weary of a cultural outlook that demands we
obsess over, then dismiss, every coming thing;
that exalts cynicism and world-weariness as the
ideal responses to any stimulus. An outlook that,
in Kerry's case, told us everything we shouldn't
believe in but^othing we should.
Now the political press swears the Democrats
can't help but retake one or both chambers of
Congress this fall. We're told that voters are an
gry. This fall, they'll flood the voting booths to
punish the GOP. And I'd like to believe it—that
this time, the politically spam-trusting major
ity actually will slip into a fugue of healthy, hip
cynicism and dump the Republicans.
Why would they do so now, though, if they
passed up the opportunity to spank Bush in
2004? And what, if they do, would they be vot
ing for? Which is the question Rove and company
have gleefully used to tie Dems in a six-year
knot. The spam-trusting majority clearly isn't
content to rehash the
lesser-of-two-evils act
that swept the late 20th
century presidential races.
Come '04, they sent out
a grand fuck-you to a
culture that mocks belief.
Not the capital-B-belief
in a capital-G-god, but
simply the willingness to believe that not every
one is crooked, conniving, scheming to rob you
of your last precious dollar. In doing so,* they
gave themselves (and the nation) fully over to
the most crooked, conniving and scheming ad
ministration since Dick Nixon's. The Republicans
have elevated lock-step belief and "staying the
course" above rationality—and. though burdened
with a staggering track record of lies, payoffs and
playground-bully intimidation, have convinced
America that here lies the better path.
That brings us, finally, to the specter of 2008
and the presumptive Democratic candidate.
Hillary Clinton certainly hasn't failed to absorb
the lessons of the past six years: she's hawkish
on Iraq, speaks feelingly of her religious upbring
ing and scrambles to find Republicans to cospon
sor her bills. She's determined to drag her party
kicking and screaming back to the center with
her, but one has to wonder if her public remodel
ing will make a difference. The legions of Hillary
haters aren't likely to be impressed. The far left
will swallow its bile and vote for her regardless.
As for the rest, the credulous majority? Seems
she's counting on the same thing that's buoyed
the Republicans since 2000: that the mere claim
ing of traditional beliefs, the clinging to square
American values, is an acceptable substitute for
a rational strategy. She may wind up captaining
the Titanic, but she'll still be running the ship.
How will they react, the people who do be
lieve, who doggedly refuse to learn better, to be
come hip to the wide, wicked world? Who think
nothing of surrendering their Social Security
numbers to Thanksgivings I. Hideousness, their
Social Security itself to the GOP?
If it's indeed Hillary, 2008 will at least
represent the ultimate, gift-wrapped irony for
Republicans, no matter how much they claim to
disdain fly-by-night allegiance to cultural cur
rents. There is one universal political truth: hat
ing Hillary will always be hip. Perhaps we'll have
President-elect T. I. Hideousness.
Edward Cowan
Searching for something to trust,
these people are lunging at the
most patently unreliable source
they can find.
PAhens 0 ri gin
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