[_Journalized_11.10.2011_]

On Joe Paterno's firing (via NYT): "Kathryn Simpson, 20, a junior studying graphic design, was weeping as she walked away from the university’s administration building, Old Main, with a friend. 'This is devastating for us,” she said. “I never in a million years thought I’d see this.'"

Ah yes, another devastated learner, thinking of college sports on the scale of geologic time! Breathless hyberbole! Coupled with a breathtaking enthusiasm for the most mediocre parts of being alive! Later, her academic colleagues would rage in the streets of State College, destroying private property to make their point: sports are very, very important to them. Or something.

I suppose that Simpson and her friends represent the light beer of cranial contents, but, still, as she speaks — and as people like her continue to utter nonsense to what must be somewhat bewildered news crews — increasingly, our co-inhabitants on this continent reveal to us that the United States deserves whatever fate comes due. In the end, really, who'll throw a flotation device to this nation of pickup-trucks/Sunday-sports dunderheads?

Sad thing is, one has to wonder if there aren't altogether many Americans who view last night's Penn State riot with a greater degree of sympathy than they'd ever express for all the Occupy protesters. And what would the grizzled Tea Party freak-jobs, obsessively cleaning their unnecessary guns while counting the tax-subsidized sickbeds they'd like to empty, think about such a riot if it was conducted by (say) immigrants, or Muslims, or all those others about whom they seem so constantly infuriated (pssst: afraid). The airwaves would be ablaze with their call to arms.

Nope, the sound of silence that you hear, my friends, is a product of a nation's majority offering its tacit consent. No large-scale outrage at the sports-related hooliganism, because we must admit that this country understands — no, it loves — when the masses fight for the system-endorsed opiates that keep them distracted from wondering about how hard they might be working for absolutely nothing. The youth of State College represent the best-case scenario for the system. They'll skip the economic and social battles of their time, but they will go apeshit over ... wait for it, football. (Well, in this case, a football coach who failed to prioritize human beings over the same old need for numbers, numbers, numbers that screws up everything else, all the time, every time ... congratulations, the drones have won.)

Because, in this country, in 2011 — it seems to me, more and more — it's not about the kind of life you should live (rich with personal opportunity, balanced by members of society working together to keep each other housed, fed, and healthy so that we can concentrate on science, arts, and growth as a species). No, it's about how much stuff the bitter and the personally unfulfilled who measure their lives by the square footage of their yards, and the numbers on their tax returns, get to keep for themselves: all for beer, buckshot, bibles, big trucks, and ballgames.

Welcome to the occupation. No, for real. You're living in it. Brought to you by the generation that walked home barefoot from Woodstock (and, now, their children).