Free The Damned Highway by Nick Mamatas Page A

the lucre rolling in and the ships rolling out. That’s what an insane mutant I met at a highway rest stop told me anyway, and while I have plenty of reasons not to believe a word of it, I can’t think of a single thing that should stop me from reporting it as iron fact.
    There is the ring of truth to it after all. The Great Society was born in the blood pools of Indochina as much as it was in the White House. Few whites could truly bear the thought of opening their wallets to help the Negro, but it was the evening bloodletting in every living room that let the white man believe that his mojo was still rising. Sure, the blacks could date their daughters and even run for office, provided the campaigns were sufficiently quixotic and starved for funds, but at least we were killing tons of gooks. A man could stand up. But now, with the war gone the wrong way and a social worker on every corner, what might the white man, with his diseased physiognomy and blank stare, believe in? Nixon has long transcended the need to even pretend to care about Jesus Christ—a hippie if anyone’s ever seen one, and a suspected Jew besides, just like Noam Chomsky—and he has found another Lord to serve. He’s laughing as the Democrats jockey for position; by week’s end he might call a press conference at the National Cathedral. “Take a look at this, you homely bastards,” he’ll growl, then drop trou and take a dump into the Holy Host. “Line up and take what’s coming to you!” By Tuesday, he’ll be twenty points ahead in the Gallup Poll. Moloch is the faith of a cringing slave, of a man who worships the whip and the pike. But what Nixon has goes beyond commerce, beyond capitalism, beyond Christianity, beyond anything at all. The stars are aligning in his favor, and there is little the Democrats can do about it.
    The motel room grows sullen and oppressive and too quiet. I wonder if and when the mushroom will kick in. There’s a small transistor radio on the scratched bureau, and I turn it on for company. I spin the dial, searching for Jefferson Airplane or the Grateful Dead or Bob Dylan or anything else that will soothe my soul and feed my muse, but all I find is that angry, new shit, Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper and the like. Dark music to be played after dark in dark times. I keep scanning and come across the news. Someone is interviewing Mamie Van Doren about her active role as a member of the president’s reelection campaign. Incidentally, that’s the same group I ran into before, the ones who had Senator Eagleton spread-eagled across a slab in the back room of a two-nit bar, wrists and ankles cuffed tight to the corners, electrodes attached to his balls. This is how those people like to play. Trust me. I’m a journalist. Apparently, Mamie Van Doren was granted a personal tour of the White House, conducted by Henry Kissinger himself. The reporter asks her if anything occurred at the end of the tour. The actress giggles and then says, “No comment. He took me back to my hotel. We were accompanied by several of his security men. One can’t be too careful, you know. He was a complete gentleman. He said he’ll call me when he gets back from Moscow. He has a lot of girlfriends, but that’s okay, because I have a lot of boyfriends.”
    I smash my fist down on the radio so hard that the plastic casing cracks. That makes me even angrier, so I sweep it to the floor and stomp it beneath my feet until I feel better. Then I scavenge through the debris, searching in an act of postmodern divination. And there it is, a tiny piece of broken plastic that reads made in taiwan . Because more and more, that is our country’s slogan. We used to make things here, but that seems to be sliding away. I envision a time, decades from now, when America’s only notable export will be our entertainment. Everyone in America will be involved in the movies somehow, because