As for the victims, the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more. The Founders cannot have intended this perverse result.

Justice Sandra Day O’’Connor

If the news has been sounding bad lately, that’s because it is. Where to begin? How about Kelo versus City of New London, wherein the highest court in the land decided that your house might be America’s next Wal-Mart. It’s hard to be cheerful when the terrain is starting to resemble a penny arcade hall of mirrors.1

The fun thing about being in a hall of mirrors is that you know it’s an illusion, and there’s an exit sign. Unfortunately, that doesn’t hold true for what is brazenly passed off as the 21st Century’s version of American culture. Alas, the prosaic nature of our present situation seems not to register in the neurons of most folks. Which is understandable in a culture that values reality TV over reality, celebrity over credibility, and consumption over everything else. Like the fish that doesn’t grok water, most of us are lost in a miasmic fog of mediated pastiche. Our illusion is now being maintained by a complicated matrix of outsourcing, cheap Asian trinkets, and ever-escalating real estate prices. Where’s Alan Greenspan when you need him?

But, like all illusions, our current conglomeration of lifestyles doesn’t quite add up to a whole enchilada. Things might look spiffy on the surface, but there’s a noticeable hemorrhaging of sanity spreading across the fruited plains. Of course, who needs sanity when you’re surrounded by hundreds of millions of people just as crazy as you are? That’s where mass media comes in: I’m ok, you’re ok; we’re all lost in this together, so stay tuned for a lie from our sponsors.

There’s a theory that says the longer an ostrich keeps its head under the sand, the safer he thinks things are above ground. Not a very scientific theory, but it speaks volumes about our current state of affairs. In post-modern parlance, it translates as: Denial is the natural reflex to personal alienation and bullshit overload.

Yes, Ethel, we’re a culture inexorably trapped in a deep illusion of progress, all the while spinning off new forms of alienation, ennui, and neurotic juju, ready-made for the brokers of plastic entertainment and serotonin reuptake inhibitors. But don’’t trust me on this; find out for yourselves. Try this little experiment and see to what extent you’ve been co-opted by the ephemera of popular culture and political falderal. TURN OFF THE TELEVISION FOR ONE MONTH.

This innocuous maneuver comes off as quite threatening to most Americans. Somehow, we’ve come to identify our " self" with the flickering images popping out of the Boob Tube and the idea of unplugging shakes our ego to its core. Which is interesting, in that, to a large extent, our concept of self was handed to us by the people who invented such must-haves as Coca Cola, SUVs, tanning salons, teeth whitening, lite beer, $100 haircuts (unless you’re John Kerry, who knows the value of a house payment sized trim), and internet dating clubs.

On the other hand, after a couple of weeks of TV detox, an amazing thing transpires: One begins to see how patently idiotic the culture of television has become. And how we’’ve been sucked in by the endless come-ons, put-downs, and sleight of hand served up by the highest paid snake oil salesmen in our short but glorious post-Paleolithic romp.

However, a very interesting phenomenon occurs as the televised flickers fade: Politicians lose their grip on your attention - dangerous business in a democracy because we might start thinking for ourselves, which is anathema to the corporate controlled bureaucratic oligarchy currently in possession of our government.

Now that I’ve got your attention, let’s go back to the little tid-bit above about your house becoming a Wal-Mart. By now we’ve all read a review of the recent landmark Connecticut case (which got substantially less ink than the story about an Alabama student missing in lovely Aruba). According to the pundits (me), our erudite Supreme Court, by a 5 to 4 margin, punched a gaping hole in one of our nation’s most cherished concepts –– that property owners are safe and secure in the possession of their homes. And you thought your mortgage was a pain in the proverbial ass!

At first blush, the cute case from Connecticut appears to be a blast of ironic weirdness, the right-wingers siding with the little guys against a huge development project. On closer inspection, the mist clears, revealing an even deeper irony. The so-called liberal jurists, in their zest to promote social do-goodism, ruled that the city (and its private partners) was free to condemn several well-kept homes, in the interest of building a "small urban village." (Make that a big-ass small urban village) The fact that a few good folks, one of whom was born 87 years earlier in the family house she still maintained, were forced to lose their precious chunk of the American Dream was just dictum in an otherwise nonsensical exercise in legal mumbo jumbo and social engineering. 2

Why should we, the Tele-Tubers, be concerned with such malarkey, you ask? Isn’t Mudd just harping on his neo-green-libertarianism (again)? Of course I am.

Here’s what Justice O’Conner had to say about the fiasco: "Under the banner of economic development, all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded, i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature [city government] deems more beneficial to the public in the process."3

Do you know who sits on your City Council? If they are anything like the odd critters that call the shots in my neck of the woods, we’re all in serious trouble. I’m researching conservation easements as a last ditch move to make sure no slimy bastard ever gets his chain saw on my land. No raccoon is safe from the whim of local governments anymore (not that they ever were).

Maybe old Kerouac was right; perhaps a rucksack and a can of pork and beans is the answer, a life of aimless wandering, drinking jug wine, scaling alpine peaks, Zen lunatic orgies, and meditations on the empty void of the Dharma.

Not that it worked for Kerouac.

But it sure beats [no pun intended] hell out of having your house bulldozed by a gang of civic minded thieves with a passion for the kind of pork and beans that only an accountant could talk about with a straight face.

The red flag is raised, folks, and all’s fair play where a buck is at stake. If it comes down to that garden you put 10 years of sweat equity into or a new Quickie Lube Emporium, you might as well start saying adios to the gladiolas! "A man’s house is his castle" has suddenly taken on a whole new meaning.

ZAP! back to the TV experiment…….. Tim Leary’s quip to " turn on, tune in, drop out" could easily apply to our present mediated daily experience. Dropping out of the blinking babble culture is nothing to fear; and, in fact, your mind will thank you in short order. Look at it like this: You’re not really dropping out of anything; rather, you’re dropping in to endless hours of rediscovered personal time. Which is what freedom is all about. The fact that you won’t be watching America eviscerate what sanity it still possesses will only sweeten the deal.

It is the 4th of July as I scribble these jagged thought fragments. A time to reflect upon the meaning of our country’s grand experiment, hinged on independence, built upon the noble concepts of individual freedom and innovate self expression. As the skies sparkle with the red glare of exploding fireworks, I can’t help but wonder if my joyous fellow citizens realize that independence is a continuing state of mind. No people remain free as long as they are under the spell of talking heads, advertising wonks, corporate bottom lines, rock stars, fashion divas, religious edicts, or political charlatans.

It’s never too late to decompress. The first step is that little button on the remote control. Just be sure your property isn’t part of your town’’s economic improvement scheme.

Ahoy! 1. The term penny arcade is obviously euphemistic. As this essay was being put to bed, virtually nothing in the United States of America can be bought for a penny. 2. Unless you live in remote Alaska, you’ve heard civic planners in your area try to pass off a new development as a "village." It might be a hunking mall, a strip full of cheesy retail, or a drag racing track –– but it’s a village. Developers obviously go to seminars. 3. Kelo et al v. City of New London et al. Certiorari to the Supreme Court of Connecticut No. 04.108. Argued February 22, 2005.Decided June 23, 2005