Man oh man, nothing is more beautiful than Mark Morford when he gets in tune with his writing vibe. I normally can't help but normally roll my eyes at hippy-talk, but Morford's column today furiously yanked me kicking and screaming into the land of cognitive dissonance. Blinders off . . . cynicism low -- for only a moment or two, or as long as it takes to get through an extended quote:

The incessant drive to war, the blank-eyed young soldiers, the drab oil fields, the terse U.N. debates, Rumsfeld's ink-black eyes, the violence and 9/11 and Osama in hiding, Saddam's sneering and Shrub's smirking and Dick Cheney's defibrillator cranking on 11 -- these events are considered "real," they are tangible and raw and ugly and happening right now and we've got the pictures to prove it, all over the media, grainy and grim and mean, CNN and Fox News and frowning pundits and 100-point newspaper headlines, so you know it must be true.

Then there's you, walking through your daily life right now, eating and laughing and screwing and paying rent and thinking for yourself, filtering the onslaught and trying to remain connected to something divine and universal and authentic, all while straining to put this national trend toward violence and warmongering into some sort of acceptable frame.

You are not "real" in this same way. This is the feeling. Your experience is somehow irrelevant; what you do and how you maneuver this daily treachery is an insignificant side note to the big ugly daily political machinations because hey, it's war. It's the Big Boys. Angry White Men with very serious penis issues. All that matters is the machine, and the money, and the oil, and the WMD and the drumbeat rhetoric.

[. . .]

Here is the great fallacy of the American ethos, the one that powers SUV purchases and spawns a billion McDonald's franchises and gun purchases and Adam Sandler movies: it is the notion that Americans exist in a freewheelin' vacuum, that our daily choices don't, in fact, affect the world, and our neighbors, and our children, and the environment and our own bodies.

It is the idea that those very choices -- foods you eat, cars you drive, shows you watch, personal relations you have, waste you create, choices you make -- can't, in a very real and immediate way, erode your divine links, spit on your spiritual spark, taint your mystical meat. Every single one, every single time.

In other words, in buying that gun, smacking that child, abusing that spouse, screaming at that neighbor, buying that thuggish SUV, supporting that war, wishing death upon all them damn furriners, you may think you're exercising your God-given all-'Murkin right to do/say/drive whatever the hell you want because you're an American goddammit and no one will tell you how to live so back off.

Not quite. Rather, you are also injecting a deliberate dose of bitter bile straight into the cultural bloodstream, actually -- and quite literally -- lowering the general vibration of the human collective cause, casting your vote for small-mindedness and solipsism and violence. Yep, you are. And yes indeed, your vote counts.

[. . .]

That postcoital buzz? That post-party feel-good vibe? That genuine laughter? That gratuitously kind thing you did for that stranger? That celebration of your body and your sex and love and spirit in spite of mainstream religious puling and finger wagging? That deep meditative solitude? Bingo. That's the vibe you want. That's the vibe we all need. That's the vibration that makes all the difference.

Yeah, this hippy get-touch-with-a-positive-vibe thing might be complete bollocks, but do you honestly think it's any more so than how most of us are conditioned to think and to live our lives?