Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Pamela Anderson spoke last night on Larry King. I didn't watch. America's latest Schwarzenegger immorality play explodes across our living room high definition televisions each evening, regurgitating familiar Iraqi sand and suffering. American meatloaf nights shudder sporadically with the sudden impacts of insurgent car bombs that maim and dismember and kill the brave and the bold and lonely maternal interrogatives that whine and cry and question the idle and the corporate. Sadly, one recalls the "Mission Accomplished!" photo-op phantasmagoria of May 1, 2003 with mute horror, as we watch The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer for John Madden-esque play-by-play of a Hollywood war movie sequel doubly sinister given the obvious, blatant lies we told ourselves to enter the theater and the horrible, malicious truth that won't let us leave during the previews.
No Iraqi Constitution can stop an insurgent's bullet, improvised explosive device, or dirty bomb. Our current international debate, argued in men and material, over whether to allow evil dictators to control their nations with iron impunity while isolating their realm's international impact, or to remove enemy combatant heads of state from power through costly martial means will ultimately have one ground zero result for the American people -- weak national security. The very concept of domestic safety within American borders is ludicrous: the country that produced Eric Rudolph and Eric Harris, the nation responsible for Dennis Rader and Timothy McVeigh, can never be safe.
We don't know what safe is.
Think about it: the geopolitical concerns of free trade and unfree labor, of open borders and international law, are not understood or even reflected on by the average American. To survive, we consume energy and produce waste; more than simple biology, our base needs dictate our national political psychology, which is why no one really cares about Cindy Sheehan. Without quoting Hobbes, I submit that the real reason America routinely involves itself in destructive, lethal, utterly wasteful wars without justice is that we tend to forget our own impotence.
The United States of America represents the pinnacle of human civilization on Planet Earth. We are the ideal. People the world over endure journeys of unbelievable sacrifice and hardship just for the chance to pick our oranges, wash our dishes, mow our lawns, drive our cabs, and study our sciences. Everyone wants to come here, even in our worst moments -- the enduring American freedom is the belief that here, more than anywhere else, the individual is truly master of his or her own fate. Not class, nor race, nor religion or gender, not station of birth, or family ties, or anything you can think of can hold you back, so the myth goes. Recently, I've desired nothing more than to see this nation through the warm, worn, determined brown eyes of an immigrant, a person whose stake in American success emerges as a voluntary choice rather than a lifelong fact. For the American native, born into privileged citizenship, America is very much a self-defined propaganda, always lacking the substance of voluntary commitment unless one makes the extra effort to discern what America really means to them. Nothing is more annoying in the modern American political commentary than the right-wing character assassins who decry illegal immigration as if it presents the single greatest clear and present danger to American welfare and security since Russia got the bomb. In Tucson, Arizona where I left Angel, hatred of Mexican immigrants was more common than hundred degree afternoons, drunken co-eds, and low-cut tank-tops on middle-aged bottle-blond mothers. For the Michelle Malkin's and Lou Dobbs' among us, illegal immigration allows lawlessness and aids terrorism, while castrating the law-abiding American middle class who wish nothing more than to work hard at jobs that pay wages decent enough to support Christian families and send good-natured, God-fearing children to college.
But that's not really possible in George W. Bush's America. The middle class is being squeezed, Twenty-First Century terrorism contributes to investor anxiety, gas prices are higher than Bill Maher snorting coke off Ann Coulter's shaven pubic mound at midnight on Libe Slope at our alma mater, Cornell University, metropolitan police departments routinely violate personal civil liberties at subway stations, and poverty still cripples millions of American children -- way more than Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas ever will. The point? The alpha nation in human history has yet to feed all its hungry, protect all its citizens from sudden, unprovoked attack, secure energy sources that don't annihilate the natural environment, ensure all its workers a living wage, or refrain from attacking individual rights to manipulate public fear. We are not only the best, we are the best that ever was. And we are failing.
America is impotent.
Yet, like all suffers of erectile dysfunction, or ED (thanks Sen. Dole!), America doesn't like to remember its condition. Sure, the temporary Cialis of tax cuts and reality television allows the American body politic quiet orgasms, fleeting moments of Jessica Simpson mind-numbing stupidity, but our blissful ignorance never persists as long as we'd like. We may be the ideal, but we are far from enlightened, and our false Nirvana shatters with every breaking news casualty report and front line tragedy. What is the war in Iraq but an arctic reality shower? Fox News can massage and manipulate and propagandize news from the front until Donald Rumsfeld resembles Angelina Jolie and Operation Iraqi Freedom will still be what it always has been -- the kind of mistake that gets men killed.
We are the brightest, and we have yet to learn to live without war. We are the greatest, and we spend more time, energy, and money on ending life than preserving life. We are the Omega -- and we still make mistakes we cannot fix where people die. When our CEO President reminds us reminds us how much we enjoy vile, depraved human conflict by scaring us all into frothy rabid fervor our myopic national lenses focus on the supposed good we can perform abroad, and no one seriously considers poverty, education, health care, and the economy. We convince ourselves to believe the Mattel President's prepared speech about mushroom clouds on American soil because of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and send our young people to die by fire under a Fallujan sun. We call this patriotic, but this quest for pure lies and soiled truths sacrifices more than our sons and daughters in Iraq.
We are losing the American soul.
The founding myth of individual virtue atrophies under an Administration more concerned with bike riding with Lance Armstrong than adequate protective gear for American troops. Our leader forsakes the crippling economic concerns of millions of Americans who depend on the internal combustion engine to support themselves and their families, yet finds the time to question evolution's validity and oppose both embryonic stem-cell research and homosexual marriage while American students lab behind much of the civilized world in science and math. In the meantime, rising scientific and industrial powerhouses like China and India threaten to surpass American superpower hegemony before Paris Hilton's dermatologist finds her first wrinkle. President George W. Bush annihilates American self-determination fanaticism in favor of totalitarian control from an anti-intellectual, quasi-corporate, reactionary Christian theocracy formerly known as the Grand Old Party.
Individuality can not exist in a world where everyone either thinks alike, or is too afraid of man and God to speak difference. All we teach the young in today's America are binary numerals. "You're either with us, or with the terrorists." "We fight the terrorists abroad, so we don't have to fight them at home." "Marriage is a union between a man and a woman." "Dead or alive." 011100110001. The price of nonconformity with the New Republican Order is social ostracism and political irrelevance. No Democrat on the national stage of any stature opposes the fundamental Bush doctrine of military intervention on a President's gut instinct alone, regardless of oppositional intelligence, absent post-war planning, unabashed war profiteering and graft, and the unfinished war or terror. The Bush Administration dismembers the reputations of all those who stand against the President, even former counterterrorism operatives, career diplomatic and civil service personnel, and grieving mothers of war dead; the result is a public that rejects difference and reason and embraces authority and control. Mind you, we are not yet Borg, but resistance should not become futile on our watch. It's not as if passive silence keeps America safe anyway.
No Iraqi Constitution can stop an insurgent's bullet, improvised explosive device, or dirty bomb. Our current international debate, argued in men and material, over whether to allow evil dictators to control their nations with iron impunity while isolating their realm's international impact, or to remove enemy combatant heads of state from power through costly martial means will ultimately have one ground zero result for the American people -- weak national security. The very concept of domestic safety within American borders is ludicrous: the country that produced Eric Rudolph and Eric Harris, the nation responsible for Dennis Rader and Timothy McVeigh, can never be safe.
We don't know what safe is.
Think about it: the geopolitical concerns of free trade and unfree labor, of open borders and international law, are not understood or even reflected on by the average American. To survive, we consume energy and produce waste; more than simple biology, our base needs dictate our national political psychology, which is why no one really cares about Cindy Sheehan. Without quoting Hobbes, I submit that the real reason America routinely involves itself in destructive, lethal, utterly wasteful wars without justice is that we tend to forget our own impotence.
The United States of America represents the pinnacle of human civilization on Planet Earth. We are the ideal. People the world over endure journeys of unbelievable sacrifice and hardship just for the chance to pick our oranges, wash our dishes, mow our lawns, drive our cabs, and study our sciences. Everyone wants to come here, even in our worst moments -- the enduring American freedom is the belief that here, more than anywhere else, the individual is truly master of his or her own fate. Not class, nor race, nor religion or gender, not station of birth, or family ties, or anything you can think of can hold you back, so the myth goes. Recently, I've desired nothing more than to see this nation through the warm, worn, determined brown eyes of an immigrant, a person whose stake in American success emerges as a voluntary choice rather than a lifelong fact. For the American native, born into privileged citizenship, America is very much a self-defined propaganda, always lacking the substance of voluntary commitment unless one makes the extra effort to discern what America really means to them. Nothing is more annoying in the modern American political commentary than the right-wing character assassins who decry illegal immigration as if it presents the single greatest clear and present danger to American welfare and security since Russia got the bomb. In Tucson, Arizona where I left Angel, hatred of Mexican immigrants was more common than hundred degree afternoons, drunken co-eds, and low-cut tank-tops on middle-aged bottle-blond mothers. For the Michelle Malkin's and Lou Dobbs' among us, illegal immigration allows lawlessness and aids terrorism, while castrating the law-abiding American middle class who wish nothing more than to work hard at jobs that pay wages decent enough to support Christian families and send good-natured, God-fearing children to college.
But that's not really possible in George W. Bush's America. The middle class is being squeezed, Twenty-First Century terrorism contributes to investor anxiety, gas prices are higher than Bill Maher snorting coke off Ann Coulter's shaven pubic mound at midnight on Libe Slope at our alma mater, Cornell University, metropolitan police departments routinely violate personal civil liberties at subway stations, and poverty still cripples millions of American children -- way more than Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas ever will. The point? The alpha nation in human history has yet to feed all its hungry, protect all its citizens from sudden, unprovoked attack, secure energy sources that don't annihilate the natural environment, ensure all its workers a living wage, or refrain from attacking individual rights to manipulate public fear. We are not only the best, we are the best that ever was. And we are failing.
America is impotent.
Yet, like all suffers of erectile dysfunction, or ED (thanks Sen. Dole!), America doesn't like to remember its condition. Sure, the temporary Cialis of tax cuts and reality television allows the American body politic quiet orgasms, fleeting moments of Jessica Simpson mind-numbing stupidity, but our blissful ignorance never persists as long as we'd like. We may be the ideal, but we are far from enlightened, and our false Nirvana shatters with every breaking news casualty report and front line tragedy. What is the war in Iraq but an arctic reality shower? Fox News can massage and manipulate and propagandize news from the front until Donald Rumsfeld resembles Angelina Jolie and Operation Iraqi Freedom will still be what it always has been -- the kind of mistake that gets men killed.
We are the brightest, and we have yet to learn to live without war. We are the greatest, and we spend more time, energy, and money on ending life than preserving life. We are the Omega -- and we still make mistakes we cannot fix where people die. When our CEO President reminds us reminds us how much we enjoy vile, depraved human conflict by scaring us all into frothy rabid fervor our myopic national lenses focus on the supposed good we can perform abroad, and no one seriously considers poverty, education, health care, and the economy. We convince ourselves to believe the Mattel President's prepared speech about mushroom clouds on American soil because of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and send our young people to die by fire under a Fallujan sun. We call this patriotic, but this quest for pure lies and soiled truths sacrifices more than our sons and daughters in Iraq.
We are losing the American soul.
The founding myth of individual virtue atrophies under an Administration more concerned with bike riding with Lance Armstrong than adequate protective gear for American troops. Our leader forsakes the crippling economic concerns of millions of Americans who depend on the internal combustion engine to support themselves and their families, yet finds the time to question evolution's validity and oppose both embryonic stem-cell research and homosexual marriage while American students lab behind much of the civilized world in science and math. In the meantime, rising scientific and industrial powerhouses like China and India threaten to surpass American superpower hegemony before Paris Hilton's dermatologist finds her first wrinkle. President George W. Bush annihilates American self-determination fanaticism in favor of totalitarian control from an anti-intellectual, quasi-corporate, reactionary Christian theocracy formerly known as the Grand Old Party.
Individuality can not exist in a world where everyone either thinks alike, or is too afraid of man and God to speak difference. All we teach the young in today's America are binary numerals. "You're either with us, or with the terrorists." "We fight the terrorists abroad, so we don't have to fight them at home." "Marriage is a union between a man and a woman." "Dead or alive." 011100110001. The price of nonconformity with the New Republican Order is social ostracism and political irrelevance. No Democrat on the national stage of any stature opposes the fundamental Bush doctrine of military intervention on a President's gut instinct alone, regardless of oppositional intelligence, absent post-war planning, unabashed war profiteering and graft, and the unfinished war or terror. The Bush Administration dismembers the reputations of all those who stand against the President, even former counterterrorism operatives, career diplomatic and civil service personnel, and grieving mothers of war dead; the result is a public that rejects difference and reason and embraces authority and control. Mind you, we are not yet Borg, but resistance should not become futile on our watch. It's not as if passive silence keeps America safe anyway.
8 Comments:
At 8/23/2005 08:30:00 AM, Jenn said:;
great post, james, although it concludes slightly more optimistically than i would've thought you'd feel.
i have a question though -- certainly the spirit of america is being degraded in this day and age, especially by president bush? but if history is written by the victors, will bush's war and his two terms as president subtly and successfully alter americanism such that bush may actually be considered a great president because the iraq war will be anachronistically spun into one with more support and less moral ambiguity than it actually is?
At 8/23/2005 08:49:00 AM, James said:;
I don't think that it's optimistic at the end; it's more a reflection of President Bush's approval ratings. The current Iraq War is now more unpopular than it has ever been, translating into job approval ratings in the low 40% for President Bush.
People are generally dissatisfied with Bush's handling of the war, and my take on our dystopia should reflect that. I don't believe that the dissatisfaction alone really changes anything, but it's there, which means that battle fatigue is affecting the American national psyche.
I don't believe that President Bush will ever be considered a great President because his domestic record during both terms has been so anemic. None of his sweeping ideas for remaking American life - privatized Social Security being he most famous flop - has been cemented into law.
Further, our digitized age offers everyone more opportunity to write history than ever before. No one is going to track down every copy of Farenheit 9/11 and burn them just to paint President Bush as a shrewd war planner. So no, Bush's legacy will always be stained with his screw-ups.
At 8/23/2005 09:28:00 AM, Karlos said:;
Gaad-DAMN, dog! Thanks for the Maher/Coulter image... I used to be able to sleep at night.
At 8/24/2005 11:16:00 AM, jaimie said:;
Great blog that you have. Also, thank you for recognizing our blog on your list of cool blogs.
At 8/24/2005 02:16:00 PM, James said:;
Karlos, you're welcome. I thought the fellow Cornell alums would enjoy that.
And hello Jaimie! Thanks for visiting my site. No prob on the shoutout; game recognize game. (Do people still say that?) Happy anniversary, btw!
At 11/25/2006 01:02:00 PM, Anonymous said:;
Nice site!
[url=http://qpcpdjnf.com/dmzl/ieqk.html]My homepage[/url] | [url=http://drrrlwss.com/xxyy/tyuz.html]Cool site[/url]
At 11/25/2006 01:02:00 PM, Anonymous said:;
Good design!
My homepage | Please visit
At 11/25/2006 01:02:00 PM, Anonymous said:;
Well done!
http://qpcpdjnf.com/dmzl/ieqk.html | http://hmmngchy.com/anud/cxsa.html
Post a Comment