You Are Born Modern, You

The New Shopping Malls Make Possible The Synthesis Of All Consumer Activities, Not Least Of Which Are Shopping, Flirting With Objects, Idle Wandering, And All The Permutations Of These.

You Are Born Modern, You Do Not Become So.

Cities Are Distinguished By The Catastrophic Forms They Presuppose And Which Are A Vital Part Of Their Essential Charm. New York Is King Kong, Or The Blackout, Or Vertical Bombardment: Towering Inferno. Los Angeles Is The Horizontal Fault, California Breaking Off And Sliding Into The Pacific: Earthquake.

A Sociosphere Of Contact, Control, Persuasion And Dissuasion, Of Exhibitions Of Inhibitions In Massive Or Homeopathic Doses...: This Is Obscenity. All Structures Turned Inside Out And Exhibited, All Operations Rendered Visible. In America This Goes All The Way From The Bewildering Network Of Aerial Telephone And Electric Wiresto The Concrete Multiplication Of All The Bodily Functions In The Home, The Litany Of Ingredients On The Tiniest Can Of Food, The Exhibition Of Income Or Iq.

Politicians - Power Itself - Are Abject Because They Merely Embody The Profound Contempt People Have For Their Own Lives. One Should Be Grateful To The Politicians For Accepting The Abstractness Of Power, And Ridding Others Of Its Burden. This Inevitably Kills Them But They Get Their Revenge By Passing Onto Others The Corpse Of Power.