Channeling George
Monday, August 29th, 2011George Carlin was an American comic who died in 2008 at the age of 71. Carlin had a long career as a stand-up comic. Toward the end of that career he became increasingly concerned about America’s direction, and his later appearances focused on the excesses of American politics and culture.
On three consecutive nights I had dreams in which I sat down and interviewed Carlin. They were detailed, vivid and strangely morose and humorous at the same time. Carlin on the first night was wearing a bunny outfit. He was dressed as a big white furry bunny, with a fuzzy tail and big lop ears. Even stranger was it somehow made sense, and I never asked him about it. What follows are the notes I took of the conversation when I awoke.
Q: how are you? What is the afterlife like? And why are you and I sitting here conducting this interview?
Carlin: You might want to hone your interview skills a bit. Those three questions cover a lot of ground. How about we focus on one at a time? (Carlin’s eyebrows stretch high as he says this, highlighting the glaringly obvious interview gaffe I have just made)
Q: I always liked that when you would bug your eyes out and raise your eyebrows after making an obvious point during your stand-up routine. It dramatized the point you were making and underscored the irony in that unique Carlin-esque way.
Carlin: Thanks for pointing out the obvious to me about me, the ‘me’ that is dead and has now had ample opportunity to review my life. (eyebrows are up again)
Q: Are you ever out of character? I mean, even now as we sit here, with no audience, you seem to be doing your schtick anyway.
Carlin: Is dead out of character? I think it is. But hey, you said it. Irony does well on either side of the curtain.
Q: So, speaking of “the other side.” How are you now?
Carlin: I am actually quite similar to the way I was before. I’m still funny as hell, or so other souls tell me. I am still quite cynical. And I still marvel at the plight of America, only now it is more of a fascination with the details about how people anesthetize themselves to the obvious plight of the country.
Q: what you called, “swirling the drain?”
Carlin: Circling the drain….Yeah, the slow yet now accelerating decline that is characterized by pulverizing stupidity, an almost suicidal penchant for overconsumption of carbohydrates that make people fat, and endless diversions that contribute pretty much nothing to the betterment of the species. Other than that everything seems to be perfect.
Q: ok, I want to come back to that, because I am curious as to what you now know that could help us out, especially since you have now “crossed over.” But first, share some of your afterlife experiences.
Carlin: What I know now? Excuse me, but what I know now is exactly when I knew then, which nobody seemed to know was true…know what I mean? (George is now grinning ear-to-ear, because he has delivered this in his trademark staccato machine-gun style of rapid fire facts.)
Q: uh…
Carlin: Ok, first your “afterlife” question about what that is like…Well, I always wanted to be 12 feet tall and invisible, and now I am. Or at least in my mind I am, which isn’t really true either. You don’t really have your own mind here; after death you leave your body behind, which is actually quite nice. I don’t have to floss and clip toenails anymore, and my bunions were kind of bothersome. Though I do miss the gallons of ganja I inhaled.
Q: No mind of your own?
Carlin: Yeah, it’s kind of like America, only smarter.
Q: So with no mind, and no body, what is left?
Carlin: Your essence. And I know that is an abstraction, which people in the west seem to hate, but it is what it is. It is beyond the world you are familiar with, the world of form and content.
Q: so, how are you and I communicating?
Carlin: hey, I died, I didn’t become God. I don’t have all the answers. And this is your dream. You explain it. You have the burden of proof.
Q: I’m not sure I can do that. But dreams happen. I mean, everyone has them. Scientists have proved that we have dream states. My question is about how this communication is happening. I can’t explain it. But it is happening. I am experiencing this.
Carlin: of course you are. And so am I. The fact that scientists have verified dreams doesn’t matter. The majority of the world’s credible scientists have evidence of global warming, but the kooky right-wing conservatives deny it’s veracity. Just this past week the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, a group that doubts climate science, surprised the science-deniers by corroborating previous research. I don’t think that will matter much. That’s something true about America; while the facts are interesting, in the end they don’t matter much.
Q: how can you say that? America leads the world. We are a beacon of freedom to millions. Our way of life is the envy of most of the world.
Carlin: No, No and No. Geez, now I sound like the politicians. You think you lead the world. You don’t. While you may be a beacon to some, I don’t think it is virtuous to brag about third-world citizens fleeing grinding poverty and political repression. And by the way, you have your own political repression, only it is much more subtle, sinister and pernicious. So much so that your own citizens either don’t recognize it or are in denial about it. And no, you aren’t the envy of most of the world. Have you traveled to Europe lately? They don’t wish to have the American way of life. Just ask them.
America is the sole remaining industrialized nation that has not made a political commitment to acknowledge global warming and do something about it. Think about that wall of denial. I think it’s Denmark that has a 200 year plan for flooding that they have in place as a response to the rising sea levels that they have projected as a consequence to global warming. They have spent billions. They are preparing. In America? You argue and have food fights about whether it’s happening.
The American infrastructure generally is crumbling. But instead of investing in that, the empire building goes on across the globe, with literally trillions spent on weapons systems and war efforts. It’s sad.
Q: hold it. That’s just plain wrong. I can cite many examples of how America leads and how our way of life is superior.
Carlin: America leads in terms of Imperialism. With over 250 military installations around the world, you have no equal. America leads in supplying weapons and arms to the rest of the world. America leads in defense spending, because that makes profits for the war machine that none of you even question, because you live in a culture dripping with fear. Too bad, because that is exactly the kind of spending that bankrupts and brings down nations.
Even on scales of world rank on numerous items, America has fallen behind. In measures of upward mobility, which is the likelihood that a person can rise to higher socioeconomic levels, America has dropped to 12th among industrialized nations. That’s like Sweden ranking 12th in Swedish meatballs.
Q: Hey, that’s a Bill Maher joke!
Carlin: Yeah it is, I ripped off Maher on that one. You can get away with that here.
And speaking of getting ripped off, America leads in ripping people off. Your own Academy Awards gave the best documentary award to “Inside Job” by Charles Ferguson. That movie exposed the reasons for the financial collapse, primary of which was deregulation and a lack of oversight of the financial industry. Get this; tens of TRILLIONS of dollars were lost in that debacle, and not a single person went to jail. Why? Because the political system is corrupt, from top to bottom, and that corruption is sustained and condoned by politicians that have included George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The stench of corruption goes to both sides of the aisle, and in this case the aisle is more like a sewer.
Try ripping off the local convenience store and see if anyone reacts to that. The local newspaper is all over that. But guys in suits on Wall Street? Nobody touches that. Obama’s poster boy Tim Geithner was hip-deep in the mess, and he is a big deal in your government. I guess having the fox guard the henhouse works for America. Or some in america. Do you mind if I don’t capitalize it? It seems out of character. It might even raise an eyebrow if someone saw that I continued to capitalize it.
Q: Funny. But this is a dream. No one is gonna see whether or not you capitalize America.
Carlin: Exactly. And no one in America is gonna care what I say about it either. They didn’t before and they won’t now. They are too busy being distracted and scared about some contrived boogeyman somewhere. (The current flavor of the month is Quaddifi.) Or watching “Jersey Shores.” Or eating at the mall after running up the credit card. …they are getting on with the american dream.
Like the song says, “logic and proportion have fallen softly dead” in america.
Q: George, you sound bitter.
Carlin: Yeah, but it’s all a dream, right? Everything is forgotten in the morning.
Or is it?