“It’s Not Nine One One”
Where “Homeland Security” dealt with the physical/legal boundries of the United States, “It’s Not Nine One One” deals with more psychological, introspective, and political ideas. It is a study of the idealogical state of our self proclaimed democracy. In our time we have seen this democracy transformed by the internet, reality TV, confrontational politics, radical extremist groups, and talk radio. Every group is screaming their agenda front and center. Things like working together for the greater good, compassion, compromise, empathy, and civil debate are out of the question. So I used the image of the country as viewed with the poles reversed, south up, north down.
Viewing “It’s Not Nine One One” is like seeing the United States from outer space. It is like viewing it in a dream when you have left your body and are floating above the Earth. Viewed from space there is no up or down, no left or right (political pun intended). Viewed from this position the compassionate heart of America becomes a testicle sack where things are ruled by testastrone, hubris, and macho energy.
Let me make this perfectly clear. This concept, this shape we call the United States was made by aliens, immigrants, and the descendants of these immigrants. It was made by designating certain natural features of the landscape, like the shorelines and certain rivers as borders. But at other points, it is merely a line imagined and laid across the landscape. It is a cartesian construct, an abstraction, laid between the southwestern states and Mexico, and the northwestern states and Canada. “It’s Not Nine One One”
Ken Little 2010
