I found myself awake in the wee hours of the morning last night. As I usually do when I'm up late, I found myself flipping through the channels, looking for something moderately entertaining to keep me occupied. I know, I could and should be reading when I can't sleep, but I like to do things the hard way. It's in my DNA or something.

Having had all the Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" and the Food Network's "The Iron Chef" I can stand, I change the channel over to VH1's "Insomnia Theater" for some late night music videos. Between every one well made video by an arists I admire, VH1 plays three or four shitty videos by "artists" who shouldn't even be allowed to use that moniker. One of the videos of the latter category was one of reigning pop superstar and Michael Jackson wannabe, Usher. It was pretty standart Usher fair, with iced out (that's 15 year-old speak for lots and lots of diamonds) jewelry, Cristal spilling out over expensive Champagne glasses, and hordes of size 2 and under women grinding on people that wouldn't get the time of day if they weren't famous. While I watched Usher's video, I started thinking that not only is our country the very definition of a capitalist country, but that the 99.999% of us who don't have material wealth and "power" spend countless hours idolizing those who do.

A few years back, I read an insightful piece about how Disney's "The Lion King" was perhaps the greatest representation of capitalism ever put to film. Here you have a film where the thousands upon thousands of secondary class citizens came out to bow to the birth of their king, a king which views all of these citizens as dinner I might add. The minority citizens, represented (shamefully) as hyenas, are seen as goosestepping commies seeking to overthrow the system. The women lions are clearly second class citizens, and despite doing most of the work to bring Simba back home, they gladly accept their secondary status once Simba is reinstated as the ruling monarch. One could also make the argument that not only do the hyenas represent the minority classes, but that this den of African lions is voiced by few voices of African descent. I don't know about you, but I don't know too many Africans who sound like Jonathan Taylor Thomas or Matthew Broderick.

I only bring the above up because we do the same exact idol worship in this country as they do in "The Lion King."
The same exact rules apply. We idolize the very people who subject us, we buy full tilt into the very system that oppresses us, and I'm sure that we would gladly send our sons and daughters to their deaths to defend this very system.

In his book "1984," Orwell writes that the power of social change lays in "the proles" (proletariat = working class), but that social change is not possible because the proles are always either too pre-occupied living their daily lives or are too massive, diverse, and apathetic to ever be able to effectively stage a revolutionary act against the system. Such is the life of the comfortable middle class. As long as they can have their occasional steak dinner, watch the local news on the "idiot box," and earn money at a job that they probably don't really like, things will keep on as they are.

One effective tool that us "proles" use, and is probably innate in all of us, is the ability to make sense of our situation. Given just enough time to think, and the rest of the time spent not thinking in front of a computer screen or television monitor, we pull our justifications from any possible place that we can. George W. Bush says that he's "just one of us," and has the belt buckle to prove it. And 60,000,000 million Americans bought into that justification. Even though he's the son of a millionaire oil man who was head of the CIA, ambassador to China, Vice President for eight years, and President for four more, I'm willing to justify his being "just one of they guys" as long as I get my nice 300 dollar tax relief check.

Or look at how we continually change our justifications and try to make sense of the war in Iraq. We go from he has weapons, to he had weapons at one time, to he has the capability to make weapons, to he has terrorist ties, to he's a bad man, to we're making the world a safer place bringing democracy to Iraq. Some would say that each of those reasons listed above have been there from the get go, and I'm sure we could argue that point until we're blue in the face. But here we are, 1,500 dead soldiers later, no weapons, no weapons facilities of any merit, to no link found between Saddam and 9-11, to his worst crimes coming when he was an ally of the United States, to Iraq not only being a place of possible Civil War, but a place where the insurgents now outnumber the "Allied" troops there. And we somehow make sense of this as we crank up the sound on our iPods.

And a major part of these justifications comes from idol worship. We worship these entertainers, and buy into their lifestyles even though these wealthy lifestyles are something we will never have, or what I would want to have. And this isn't about money. I don't see money as this ultimate evil, and that everyone must make the same wage as everyone else. But how about levelling the playing field a little bit?

But capitalism being what it is, people in our society are always going to crave what they don't have. We justify ourselves by saying, if this person can make 20 million dollars, then maybe I can too. Well, no you can't. You work at McDonalds. You work for the University of Texas as an administrative assistant. You're a hairdresser. You'll never get there no matter how hard you try. And don't take this as a plea for people to quit trying to do what they want to do. People should *always* strive to be the person they want to be. But I've always wondered how much of people's dreams is fuelled by the acquiring of wealth. Do you want to be an actor, or do you want the wealth and fame that comes with the job?

Orwell's "1984" was ultimately correct. The power does lie with "the proles." Sure they're famous, but they're only famous because we make them that way. If we actually took a moment or two to think about the images that are being fed to us by the major media corporations of this country, then it doesn't take a sociology degree to see that society views wealth and success as being co-equals. But Orwell was also just as right to say that if we're waiting for "the proles" to change things, we're going to be waiting for a long time. The proles only react when affected. And by that point, they usually react in a negative way that puts one tyrannical system in place of the outed tyrannical system.

I've rambled on far enough. As much as I still have to say, I'll leave it at that. Feel free to comment, especially if you disagree.

matt out