Preservation Act III

By: K(en(neth Louis) G(rant)

When we were young and green, we shared our dreams, together, and you were my friend,

We had our good times, PAL, we thought they’d last… …forever, but nothing lasts forever,

Nothing lasts forever,

Time goes by, and people change, it’s best we go our separate ways,

And it was wrong to think that we would always be, you see? Nothing lasts forever,

Nothing lasts forever,

Time goes by, it takes us all, and nations crumble and empires fall,

And who were we to think our love would never end, my friend, nothing lasts forever,

Nothing lasts forever…

— Ray Davies, Kinks, Preservation Act II (dedicated to Pal on the 29th anniversary of his birth)

Pity so few of you are hip to Pres I/Pres II. They’re great records. Plus, it would save me some splainin’.

Anyway, check them out.

And please join me in hoping that the long-rumored Kinks reunion actually goes down. But let’s keep it real here: it ain’t easy holding a band together when there are brothers involved. Sometimes it lasts, forever (Van Halen); sometimes not (Oasis, Credence).

So, “Preservation” is a 3-disk rock opera about a corporate-controlled society (run by that fabulous, outlandish degenerate: Mr. Flash) replaced by a totalitarian one, headed up by the dour, humorless Mr. Black. The narrative kind of ambles around, albeit with magnificent hooks throughout. But the storyline, like those of most rock operas (Tommy, Quadrophenia, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway) is confusing and (arguably) just as well left untold.

Until, that is, the present day, because, in addition to that (pie crust) promise of a Kinks reunion, if ever there was a time that we were in preservation mode, it is indeed upon us.

So welcome to Preservation Act III. How y’all preserving about now? Never mind, I don’t want to know.

As for me, well, the following sort of sums it up. I did indeed catch the Macy’s Parade, but it kind of creeped me out. Too Zoomy for my tastes. What, with crudely recorded images of the Grinch balloon piped in over what clearly wasn’t contemporaneous time. Kind of reminded me of those unnerving, infomercial-like Democratic and Republican National Conventions, held remotely this past summer.

But anybody who knows me will understand my belief any parade is better than no parade at all, and we can leave it at that.

In the meanwhile, I want to take this opportunity to give a long-overdue shout out to Mr. Flash, the villain of Preservation Acts I and II. He rose, from the humble origins as a “second-hand car spiv”, to head up an entire nation, corruptly hoovering up all the cash along the way. Yes, they called him the scum of the earth, they said he was a rogue and a villain. But deep inside of him, he was only human, just an ordinary man, with ordinary plans…

That Flash was the quintessential corporate operator, a filthy capitalist out of central casting is beyond dispute. And I say God bless him and his good works. He built (scrapheap) cities, sent all the people into factories, complete with their cloth caps and trilbies. No, they got no style, but at least they had jobs. He’s not somebody I would particularly want to hang out with, but I think the feeling is mutual.

His latter day, virtue-signaling, political correctness-kowtowing equivalents give off a different vibe; of this there is no doubt. They only flaunt their wealth in private, while paying perpetual public obeisance to widely distributed cultural protocols.

I don’t wanna hang out with them, either.

I’m just glad they came around is all. Particularly the Big Pharma guys and girls. They are on the receiving end of a never-ending stream of shade throwing, but they and their minions have been working around the clock on vaccines and therapeutics for this here pandemic virus, and it appears that a number of them are on the verge of cracking the code. God bless them, too. Even if they meet with failure, or tarry/test our (long-taxed) patience, it won’t be for lack of effort. More importantly, they’re our best hope for actually, finally, emerging from this mess, even as they are caricatured as wild-eyed money grubbers, bent on exploiting the masses at every turn.

Let’s pray for them, shall we? Because, I don’t know about you, but I’d rather back them horses than rely on solutions emanating from the bureaucratic realms of the CDC, WHO, or any occupant of executive houses located in jurisdictions such as Albany, Sacramento, Harrisburg or (of course) Washington.

And hats off also to that dubious crowd that oversees the production of smart phones, manages the pipes of the internet, administers limitless pushbutton commerce, or provides us with communication platforms — to spout out whatever nonsense pops into our brains at any given moment. Can you imagine what 2020 would have looked and felt like had they not done what they did? Created what they created?

Well, it would’ve sucked is what. Not that it didn’t suck bad enough as it was, but it certainly would’ve sucked worse without the profit-driven efforts of companies like Pfizer, Moderna, Astrazeneca, GlazoSmithKline, Apple, Amazon, Gooooooogle, etc. Not everyone agrees with this, but many who don’t will nonetheless impatiently wait for the vaccine, while doing all of their business, consuming all their entertainment, sourcing all their information, and pontificating to their hearts content — on platforms provided by these presumably villainous corporate enterprises.

As we wind down ’20 and stumble into ’21, it will be fascinating to witness the desperate waltz between corporate colossus and rising woke consensus. Ultimately, these hosts are on a collision course, as our tech titans in particular rise to a level of commercial power not seen since the days of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. They have danced a détente dance with the progressives for a couple of decades, but it can’t last forever (nothing does). Both groups must ultimately awaken to the reality that they are on opposite sides of a pitched political struggle. I know who I will be rooting for, and, by any fair rules of engagement, who is likely to win.

Mad props are also owed to the custodians of professional sports. Virtually all are billionaires, featuring decidedly unfashionable demographics (gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, etc.). But I’ll be switched if they didn’t pull off their seasons. The bubble-bound NBA was a somewhat depressing blurb. The World Series looked like a Salvador Dali painting, or perhaps more appropriately (especially when one set one’s eyes on the cardboard cutouts they put in the stands) Munch’s masterpiece “The Scream”:

But they strapped in and played anyway. And as for the NFL, it has been about the only thing that has saved me this fall from inserting my head into an oven, gas on; burners off. The smart money said that they wouldn’t snap the ball. But they did. For the love of the game? Probably. But also because there was too much capital at risk not to.

And what about my man Satoshi (if he ever indeed existed) and his crew? Figured out a way for economic agents to transfer units of value between one another without a financial intermediary intermediating. It followed on that these value units didn’t even need to be paper issued at the whims of governments and their banking agents. Newfangled dollops of worth became all the rage about three years ago, but then everybody sort of forgot about them, and nobody can say for sure why. My theory? It was the cannabis. Yes, it must’ve been the cannabis. Now, where were we?

Oh yeah, now I remember. They’re back. Setting aside a rather ignominious selloff that traversed the most recent holiday, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple and those other whacky cryptos are on a rocket ride to new all-time highs. Technically, there’s no upper bound to where they might climb, and I suspect they are destined to soar to higher elevations — ere they – yet again – do that whole Icarus inversion thing.

And what’s to sink them? Well, at some point, I think the latter-day Mr. Blacks and their buzz-killing thugs are gonna step in and clip their wings. The hard fact is that currency issuance and control is (perhaps apart from military) the most powerful element of societal governance, and governments are not likely to allow their paper to roll over and get stiffed by a bunch flashy upstarts. There’s simply too much freedom embedded in the concept of crypto to abide in a world, where, increasingly, the appropriate ways to think and act are not a fit subject for polite difference of opinion. Everybody’s business is now everybody’s business. And crypto flies in the face of that reality.

Their day of reckoning, too, is coming ever closer. Take a look at the USD of late, as it plunges to threeyear lows against its peers, and soon, its overseers are likely to take action. But then again, the Dead Prez also don’t buy you as much these days in terms of stocks, bonds, soybeans or (again) crypto.

Oh well; the dollar had a good run for a couple of hundred years and may yet rise again.

But nothing lasts forever.

We had our good times, though, didn’t we, PAL?

But as for now, as for me, I’m gonna go into preservation mode. The curtain has risen on Act III, and if I have to specify what I most wish to preserve, then I have failed, we have failed.

And we haven’t. And won’t. Fail, that is.

Time goes by, it takes us all. And nations crumble. And empires fall. And who were we to think that we would always be?

Well, we were us. And it was enough. Still is.

Why?

Because it HAS to be. Because some things. Last. Forever.

TIMSHEL

Posted in Weeklies.