Two and a Half Texas Towns

El Paso, the U.S. side of an international, continuous city, is elevated, so that Ciudad Juarez spreads out  below, to the south. At night the Mexican half of the bitty is an even matrix of white and yellow lights. In the morning it is even more regular, an uninterrupted texture of single-story block structures, gray and undistinguished by any architectural feature.

These Mexican border towns are well-documented sites of drug gang violence unchecked by the Mexican authorities. From most reports, the violence is – like the view of Ciudad Juarez – an even pattern of criminal brutality that doesn't distinguish between commercial cartel mayhem and official police mayhem. The profits made by these two antagonists as motive and product of the violence is evenly divided, as well. Perhaps it was my prejudice but the low, gray, crowded grid of Ciudad Juarez had a sinister look.

Leaving El Paso (with Marty Robbins' song clearly in mind) the Subaru and Dovekie and I traversed more striking desert. Toward the end of the afternoon we moved into hill country and dense, dark-green scrub trees.

I wondered how anyone could navigate among those trees and hills, and what a pain in the saddle it must have been to winkle longhorns out of that brush. The hill country seemed impenetrably complex.

Until I reached San Antonio. I-10 ported me into a web of interlocking, wandering highways headed in every direction and confused even more by massive signs hoisted a hundred feet up, above the second and third tiers of crossing superhighways. I have never been so assaulted by commercial come-ons – every possible service and product and blandishment, every business logo and catch-phrase. A defensive panic developed in my throat as a coppery taste and a headache accompanied it. I had been sweeping across landscape for too long, I suppose, to confront sudden advertising overload.

Overload. Like TV ads, one after the other but not from a screen. Every direction, every scrap of sky lit by hype and hyperbole. I had the skin-crawling feeling that a thousand hungry commercial claws were reaching for my bank account, blatantly, loudly, squalling at a volume like a dog pound when a fire engine passes.

The hardware store was once my friend. They wanted me to get along well, suggested tools and fittings, how-to suggestions. Maybe it still is, though it's all in Chinese, now.

The elevated signs above San Antonio's warren of oversized highways are not concerned for my well-being or health or consumer approval. Ask yourself: do we still believe businesses care about consumer approval? More likely, they go for the percentages and forget the dissatisfied. The masses will eat/buy/use/consume anything. Tell 'em what they want.

But it was late. I'd once again gone to the wrong Red Roof Inn and was using my iPhone GPS direction lady to guide me to the room I'd already booked from the iPhone while I was at the edge of the desert. I was disheartened, disoriented, unbelieving.  Too much greed, too much advertising, too much of everything.

The GPS iPhone lady – an infuriatingly smug bitch I'll never meet, thank God – directed me through the briar patch levels and concrete thruways of San Antonio. She employed a doubtless logical but abstruse embroidery of turns and route numbers, once vectoring my car-and-trailer rig through a tiny neighborhood street where multiple pickup trucks sat before each bungalow. I was grateful she showed me the way, and I hated her all the same.

Tomorrow I will scoot out of San Antonio ASAP. Perhaps there are six or seven blocks of distinguished downtown beauty in this burg. I'm not encouraged to find them. The GPS iPhone lady will get me out of the briar patch and on the road. I'm too tired to eat, too discouraged to rejoice at geographic progress. El Paso and San Antonio are ugly blots on wonderful land.

How did we get this way?

Braxinoso Speaks

Himself is plentifully naive. And thin-skinned. He's seen the commercial grip tightening around life for, lo, these many years and he's contributed to it. We can't return to Walden Pond or the Little House On the Prairie, dammit. This is the time and society we've got. Cowboy up and do what you can with it. He needs to stop feeling "special" and admit that he's as much a part of this mess as the rest of us.

The Arrogance of Patronizing Blue Collars

The following is a diatribe directed at John Fahey, the chairman of the board of the National Geographic Society. It's from Society Matters, a blog for which I'm an advisor and occasional contributor; it's a band of ex-NGS employees who are concerned about the editorial direction the magazine has taken, and even more about the dreck presented as factual and educational on the Society's cable channel.

It should be said that Geographic, following the gimlet-eyed greed of its former president, Gilbert Grosvenor (the grandson of the first editor-in-chief, Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor, son of the great e-in-c Melville Bell Grosvenor, but "the blood ran thin") sold 70% of the channel to the King of Sleaze, and the Enemy of Journalism, Rupert Murdoch. Even so, the channel carries the Society's "brand" and is cheapening the venerable image built painstakingly by extraordinary explorers, writers and photographers. My nine years at Geographic were proud times for me. The Society's standards today are much-degraded.

But this isn't merely about Geographic. There is a corporately imposed disconnect between learning, journalism, honesty and the working people of our country. Giving citizens bread and circuses is cynical but understandable. Giving citizens lies and assuming your own citizens are cattle is short-sighted, wrongheaded, and enormously damaging to the fabric of society with a small "s."

I'm a fussy elitist in my own way. But I have enormous respect for the American working citizen. I reject the notion that working people are lazy, prefer welfare, are stupid and dull. No. It simply isn't true. We had, not too long ago, a lively and discerning middle class. With a few notably dented exceptions, everyone I've ever met would prefer doing good work to being given government doles. We're in a crisis when the Geographic Society and the politicians in DC consider the citizenry as a herd of biddable, predictable, mindless sheep.

"The fix is in. Everyone's crooked. You'll do anything for enough money. If you don't do it, someone else will – you might as well get paid for doing it. Miracles don't happen and governments are corrupt; it's always been that way, always will be. Why complain about politics? It's all a show. People are so dumb and lazy that it's worthless to offer them anything of quality. Joe Six-Pack likes it dumb."

This is what Alexander Pope was worried about in his "Essay On Man":

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

Our Devolved Geographic Society is operating on the cynical principle that its audience is so imbecilic that it will only favor bright lights, candy and scandal. This debased Society also embraces the fiction that "reality shows" are something the public desired.

First, Joe Six-Pack is a hell of a lot smarter than the TV vice-presidents and the boardroom think. He lives in a complex world of compromised possibilities and is more aware of broader issues than his grandfather or great-grandfather. Joe has been exposed to more cultures and religions and places. He's been relieved of much sentimental surety about faith and politics and permanence. He's seen the world change drastically. He is trying – and this is an ongoing, difficult effort – to retain balance.

Joe didn't want "reality shows." They were a function of the Writer's Strike in the 80's, when it was discovered that a small production company that paid only a few of its subjects could – by being in-your-face provocative – provide passable air-time for less money. The formula was so successful that "reality TV" proliferated.

Given a chance, Joe Six-Pack could make intelligent decisions. Cleverly, his corporate government has narrowed his access to information and overview by actively restricting information, unashamed propaganda, disinformation, and even by flooding the internet with spurious data (we're beginning to learn that much of the right-wing no-climate-change web myth has been generated by oil-paid bloggers).

Not only does Joe's government try to confuse his balance, but a venerable ally of education and exploration – The National Geographic Society – has surrendered its virtue to the myth of Joe's idiocy. A Society that once addressed cutting edge technology and revealed archaeological wonders is serving up junk-food – scripted soap operas insulting their subjects and disregarding facts. These "shows" play to gullibility, lubricity and scorn. They stray as boldly across the lines of good taste as Hiram Bingham strode boldly through Inca jungles.

The central and most damaging principle on which the Devolved Society functions is that it MUST provide such dreck programming. If it doesn't, John and his boardroom cronies suggest, the Society could fail, lose its audience, disappear, go the way of the dodo.

Very well, then. The National Geographic Society has had a good run, has done great work, and perhaps it should close its doors before it disgraces itself so grievously that its stellar reputation is tarnished beyond retrieval.

Sell, off, John: the buildings and equipment – location, location, location – are worth a mint! Give up! Conclude finally that Joe Six-Pack doesn't deserve good journalism or honest facts, tidy up your desk, and everyone goes home with a nice bonus.

The alternative is more difficult. It will require a trip back into the Age of Reason to fetch the notion that Man Is Perfectable, that given tools of truth and skill Joe Six-Pack could see the world more clearly. It would require effort on an Herculean scale, John, and a few – ahem – shifts in policy. It might even require the dreadful admission that "after some thought and soul-searching, we've decided to re-direct our editorial navigation and get closer to the spirit of the Society's founders and the giants who made it great."

You could be one of those giants, John. Honestly. It wouldn't be easy! My God, the flak you'd take, and you might lose some advertisement, too. You could lose a lot. But you might regain the soul of the Society.

Relying on a perceived stupidity should be more dangerous than it is. The only explanation for getting away with it is that elections and Congressional decisions are so predictably in favor of corporations over citizens, that to recognize the corruption would mean the whole damn system is broken. If it is, we'd all be obliged to go through a vast social upheaval to build a new system. This loss of surety, comfort, predictability and the specter of real discomfort is – even to the intelligent working people I trust – unthinkable. We're stuck for a time in a denial mode: "No, it's the pendulum swinging. We're a democracy. We just gotta get to the polls and vote in the right folks."

That time is past. The big corporations control both parties. The parties determine who will run. We're given a choice between senatorial and presidential candidates who are all approved by big business. Choose one party or the other and we're still powerless.

What's the answer? Unthinkable.

Braxinoso Speaks:

Himself is about to make an enormous shift from California to Florida. Out of the frying pan, so to speak. He plagues himself with these ponderous problems of state, injustice, human rights, heritage, revolution. Honestly, I wonder if he is merely avoiding practical focus on the problems HE has. He makes sense but he has no real forum, no following, and before he leads a charge he must feed his horse. It's my task to persuade himself to be prudent of his time.