Burke's Interesting Cow Theory


In the beginning there were cows....

Please talk to me. Wont you please come talk to me. Just like it used to be. Don't you you ever change your mind. Now your future's show defined...

Com'on come talk to me.

In the general progressively depressive era of the gnereal fiction department of the biggest used book store this side of Detroit, lived a cow. a purple cow. He was even from mars. Ya know, that's not that far away. Not far at all. Unfortunately for this cow it seemed a lot further than it was. You see, he didn't speak French very well. Comment allez vous was about as much as he understood. And everyone knows that you just can't get by in Madagascar without an explicitly detailed knowledge of French. Luckily, he didn't live in Madagascar, but that's beside the point. The true marvel is that with a phone dialing center covering up half of his general thoughts, the cow just couldn't seem to moo right. How do cows move in French?

"Che, ¿sabés? Peter Gabriel was nominated for a grammy award for "Steam""

"Dude, you shouldn't put double quotes in quotes. That is what you call a big giant gramatical taboo."

"Oh, I'm dreadfully sorry. I wont do it again. In fact, I'll even kiss your shoulder if that will make you feel better."

"I don't think my shoulder is in need of kissing."

"That doesn't matter. I'm all more than willing to kiss it. I'm a public service creature."

"Public service, hah!"

"You hurt my feelings."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't do that. Why don't you get a life?"

"Because I'm anti-social, and don't have the desire."

"Haven't you heard that Simon and Garfunkel song?"

"I am a Rock. I am an Island..."

"No the other one, about the man nobody knew that then went on to commit sucide.."

"Poor guy."

"For all we know he could've been a geo-nuclear engineer-"

"What the shwoo is that?"

"I dunno - just a big important sounding word. - anyway, he could've been someone just super important with a grand capability for changing the world; yet due to his anti-social behavior, he just kinda bit the dust."

"Ooh. That's, like, bad. But, I'm a sophisticated guy. I'd never shut myself in a gas chamber."

"I believe you."

"That's cool. There aren't very many people who believe me these days-"

"That's because you're just a little anti-social dude trapped in his own private world. You have to give people a chance to hear you before they can go out believing you."

"Yeah, but I'm just such a dork."

"Well, you have to start somewhere. I'm sure some of Bill Clinton's friends thought he was a dork."

"He is a dork."

"But that's besides the point."

"Is that gramatically correct?"

"Alright. This is going to be an interesting discussion."

"Yeah, I know. I don't think Burke would've liked Clinton very much."

"Burke who?"

"The pritish political dude. Have you ever read much by him?"

"Didn't he write that ultra-conservative tetsie on the French Revolution?"

"I don't know French...."

"You know-"

"Sorry. That was just a horribly weak joke attempt. Ya know. I think we've just masacred a few spellings, even with homonymographical errors."

"I'm amazed at your vocabulary."

"Thank you. Anyway, have you ever stopped to consider that for grand part of this ultimate half century, the democrats have actually been the conservative party?"

"How do you get that?"

"Well who controls congress?"

"The Republicans."

"I meant, 'Who controlled congress for the majority of the time?'"

"Ahh. The Democrats."

"Therefore, the democrats have been in control, pushing their own programs, which are basically the same programs that they've been pushing for the ultimate half century. So - Get this. The republicans get in, and what do they want to do? They wanna cut back these programs. They want to affect changes in the general system that the democrats have been controlling. Meanwhile, the democrats, want to follow the same path, continueing the emphasis on social programs, and adding to the spending. Thus, the republicans become the liberals, and the democrats the conservatives-"

"BUT, the democratic programs have been a short-lived invention. The republicans are in fact conservative, desiring to return to the less-hefty government of the pre-depression days."

"'Red Rain' sounds so cool when you roll your R's"

"And you wont get carpal-tunnel syndrome when you are able to use the voice-activated computer system."

"I'm sorry. I got off on another huge tangent. But, I really do dig tangents. They're, like, the official basis of all small talk. Lock in to a tangent until you finally get in to the desired topic of interest."

"That is pretty true."

"Yeah. Ya know. Sometimes you get all psyched up, worried about what you'll do when you finally get on the phone to talk to someone who told you to call them, but couldn't think of anything to say. Then, finally, after an extended period of time, you get psyched up to do it, you make the call, and - get the answering machine. So, in the end, it really didn't matter. You just tranasfer the burden to the other party. Now, you are both, like, generally excused for not making the call. But, by waiting so long, you lost lots of the original reason for making the call. Kinda a bummer, no?"

"Confidence, and it becomes easy! Anyway, I was getting interested in the conservative, liberal train of thought. Maybe we can reframe the republicans under the guise of 'constitutional conservatism.'"

"That was some bad word choice. Alright. I guess you could try to pull that one off. But, that does bring us back to Burke. He was really conservative. Yet, his conservative philosofies, go directly against most political thought today. In fact, he would probably be called extremist."

"Well, far-right-wing conservatism starts to be muddled with the far-left-liberalism in the good-ol political circular speectrum."

"Yeah. Burke was an outstanding defender of the statas-quo. He supported the king. He supported nobilistic heirachy."

"He did receive his representational seats from the rich."

"Wow! You do know something about him."

"No, lucky guess."

"Yeah right. Anyway. Solsbury Hill. It would be so cool to go to France. The French accent. The French chicks-"

"French chicks?"

"It'd be cool to have all sorts of rumours spread about me. Rumours are awesome. They give people a totally false impression of people they hardly know. It can be easily worked to create an impression of what you really want to be. However, it usually end up the other way around, creating a great mess that you just can't seem to find your way out of. What a pain."

"Anyway, Burke was a very talented rhetoricition. Thus, there might be a lot of things that he says that he really doesn't mean. They say Bill Bradly (wasn't he the basketball player?) was one of the few honest polititions. He actually spoke his find without regard to a ton of public opinion-special interest surveys."

"Who says?"

"Some magazine.... Anyway, Burke was liable to have sputtered off a bunch of stuff just because he thought it was cool, even thought he didn't really mean it."

"Yeah. That does sound like a common practice today. But, I have a feeling that he did believe a lot of the stuff he said. Just look at it. It's actually good stuff. It just goes totally against the grain of our modern political thought, but that doesn't take away from it's importance."

"Well, France has taken a long time to get over the French Revolution. I've heard that until a few years agon they were still taking sides over there."

"Yeah. It brings the point. Most nobility don't just suddenly find themselves king. There's a growing process - a process that extends through generations. In today's society, people commonly limit their thinking to the one-generation life. Your opportunity is strictly dependent on your personal forces and desires, without regard to where you came from. Hogwash. Though personal determination can be very important, the initial molding period cannot be disgarded. Have you noticed that the majority of the chicks seem to resemble their mothers-"

"I'm not that terrible interested in-"

"Alright. You can use guys. Anyway, por más que sean 'What a Babe's cuando sean jovenes, the good-looking falsities tend to return to their mom's looks. If they're really truely deep-babes, they'll usually have a babe of a mom. Though temporarily, the children can feign to escape the hereditarial binds of their family influence, this is usally much more deeply engrained in their subconsious thought than they care to admit, and very few are those who are able to permanantly change this influention pattern. Thus, as Burke pointed out, the nobility are there because they need to be there. They have paid the price, and they have their children trained in the pattern of what they need. Sure, there can be some changing. And there should. After time, the reign might fall out, and the people might lose their ground, thus leaving the spot for someone that has been preparing from before to gradually work their way up to the top spot. But like in swimming, it's usually the number 2 that comes to occupy the number one spot, not some po-dunk that has never even jumped in water before."

"Yeah, that kind of makes sense. But, it does seemn to go a little bit against conventional wisdom."

"Exactly. Like Burke's encounters with Paine. Burke say a general social system, with just the right to be governened will. Meanwhile, others thought an alturistic system with many rights, the which the people were not ready to have."

"But what about the dictatorship regims like those in Brazil when they won the '70 World Cup. They sought the best interest of the entire community by force. Yet, the most benefitted were the rich. The poor, however, stayed poorer."

"Well, what did the poor do to get richer?"

"I suppose they would've worked. Well, they would've desired to have at least a sure of the giant economic pie."

"But why?"

"Well, if everyone else is snarfing down the pie, wouldn't you want to, too?"

"Sure, but if I hadn't paid the price to buy it, I wouldn't expect them to give it to me. Money for nothing. Chicks for free. Wow, the Peter Gabriel album cover looks a lot like the Dire Straits one. Anyway, a common assumption by the poor may have been that just because everyone else was pigging out, they'd be able to, too. However, they didn't notice the cashier charging the admission. They were willing to get closer to the food source, but they weren't willing to pay the entrance fee."

"Hey, now wait a minute. I'm sure they were willing to work. They probbly put in just as much extra work as the rich, but the rich got all the skyscrapers, all the nicely paved streets, everything Meanwhile, the poor with all their forces ended up with nothing."

"Ahh, but the trikle down theory. The poor can also use the rich's roads. If they have cheap labor, others will want to come in to take advantage of it, and thus there will be more new jobs created. The rich have put in the extra work, and they get the extra benefits, even if they do arise from the extra forces of their fathers."

"But, what about personal progress? Equal pay for equal work?"

"That's never happened. Some burger-flippers work a lot harder than some high-class executives. (Though usually the executives have done a lot of serious work.) The problem, however, that I was getting to was the oppression. How did the military forces get in to control? Were they really the most deserving. After all, they did arise to power due to influence."

"Is that bad? or good?"

"Well, in military case, bad. The military is highly based on the senority/subservant system. Thus, the best, or natural leader, may not be in the highest position. And, even if someone in the high-chair is the natural leader, he may not really have adequate intellectual support. Instead, his support is based on force. The people have no other option. They get killed if not."

"So, what is the difference between the king and the military-rule?"

"The king is more of a family thing."

"Yeah, just muddle-in family values with all this mess."

"Well, that's one of the 4 most important factors: Values/Religion, Inteligence, Athleticness, and pop-liberal mentality. The absolute will lie in good there, and usually the brown-eyed look will follow directly. A lot of french, with some german, a touch of indian, and a few others."

"Huh?"

"The absolute babe."

"Oh."

"But, the values do begin to become a little more pronounced when the family-based kingship is placed in power instead of a primarily male-based military regime."

"Yeah! Right on. Women need to have their role in the important decision making proceses. WIhtout it, the men will run over and do all types of insanities. For this, the women's position should be carefully maintained, with the given rights necesary to be able to continue its influentual role in society. We have lived for too much time in a male-dominated society, replete with general restrictions-"

"Why don't you just give me a kiss?"

"Wow! I'd never expect you to ask something like that! You're opening up! So cool."

"And the kiss?"

"Maybe next time we go to yell-practice."

"But that's kind of dull. The ton of people is awesome. I love to sit there and just watch them move around. People are such interesting creatures. Hey, I got my degree plan worked out. He was a cool guy. I need to go back in three days. I think I'll have a cool time. I can even go around a little undecided for some more time. Total coolness. But it's so nice to be in the university environment. I saw a great Annababe the other day, and the sleeping-studier, and wow, it's just filled, even if they are a little old-"

"You're hurting my ego."

"But you're the only one here. Sos más o menos lo que siempre he querido para mi AMOR."

"Entiendo español."

"Uh oh. I think I have a serious problem now...."

"Well, I have to go swimming."

"Oh if only I could swim."

The typical american non-contact goodbye. The cow gradually made it's way back home, only to find a horse resting in it's bed. What a pitty. It could've been a great pig. But, it was envious of Richard Cory's position, driving itself sick to get it, even though Richard eventually stuck a gun to his head. Oh well, at least blue turtles pop up some time in sting songs. Down by the railway side. A secret world, we will colide. All the places we were hiding of. What was it we were thinking of?