What kind of people are we? I’ve been wondering a lot lately about the soul of America. It’s mostly due to the insanity that has poisoned the August town hall meetings around the country. But, the reality of it for me is greater than that. It’s the cherry on a giant crap sundae that’s been building in my mind for a few decades.
Do I have what it takes to coexist with these other Americans? That’s what a sticker on my car says I‘m doing, and am telling others to do. Do I think that’s possible? Has it ever been? I suppose historically we may be coexisting rather well here, given the polar extremes of the left and right in modern America. There are many factions throughout the centuries that have annihilated each other over policy divisions great and benign.
But it really disturbs me how much anger I feel lately. Last fall was finally our time, after the worst eight years of my life. A horrid time in American history. A period of shame that should be felt from top to bottom across this land. And six months in, I’m told that this new President is evil, he’s Hitler, he’s tossed out the Constitution,… Socialism!… Communism!… and worse,.. Taxes are coming! Where were you people for the last decade?
Instead of a country that came to it’s senses after a nasty dance with Fascism and breathed a collective sigh of relief, what do we find? We find that the 25% of the population that never had a problem with anything the Bush Administration could muster is controlling the message during the Obama Administration as well, with the same fear and disinformation that exploited the populace from 2001-2008.
And who are these people that the media likes to refer to as the “independents”? The people whose minds can be changed in an instant and whose votes are battled over in every election cycle. The middle 40% of America that apparently can go either way if marketed to properly. I’m growing more and more disturbed by these people as well. I understand cynicism when it comes to politicians from all parties, but when it comes to issues, please have a stance. Many of the people I know that choose to play the middle-ground do so because it’s easier and requires less reading. I also believe this group is more prone to cult of personality, which leads to voting without knowing what you’re voting for. Obviously there are many in this group who voted for Bush as well as Obama. Philosophically, this is unacceptable. But in our sad reality, Gore, Kerry and McCain have one giant trait in common… they’re boring. Achilles heal of politics.
So, back to my original point. Can I stand to live within the same borders with these people? How different can your values be from your neighbor’s and yet a peaceful coexistence maintained? If a person on my street owns a Hummer, I revile them. I don’t know them, and I find myself not wanting to. Am I becoming as intolerant as I feel that the Right is? Is it okay for me to despise people for their choices as I know they despise me for mine? When I see the disgustingly vivid anti-abortion signs being held by the bridge on the way home, do those people feel the same anger toward me that I feel toward them? And whose fault is it if we do? Who started all this?
Different sides of many issues have battled it out forever with varying degrees of civility or bloodshed. Some things change via the pen, some via the armaments. I’ve only been around for three-and-a-half decades of history (as far as I know), so my only path to knowledge of the centuries I’ve missed is reading up on it. And as much as I read I still find it difficult to put our time in perspective. How much do we dislike each other? How does it compare to levels of angst and disdain during or prior to similar periods of American or World history? At what level of whatever will whatever be triggered with the resulting whatnot? I don’t know.
Instead, as the opinions of the radical Right are voiced from my TV or littered within my local newspaper, I just lose track of who I‘m angry with. Is it with the person who just misrepresented a reading of the Constitution, or is it with the media who fail to point it out? The person who thinks Obama is a communist, or the radio personality who told them he is?
This I suppose brings me back around to the dance with Fascism that I referred to concerning the Bush years. In reality, little has changed on that front. It was there before him and is very much here now, though his tenure was a spike on the graph. Sure, we may make some progress on social, wedge issue matters. But when it comes to changing the economic structure of America and the war economy, the true power brokers work their magic.
This current fight over healthcare is a prime example. If Americans were presented with reality, they would surely choose a similar system to that of the rest of the civilized world. But when much of the population falls for the fear mongering of the Fascist puppet-masters that control a substantial amount of our government‘s action or lack thereof, we get the recent insanity at the August town halls. We find middle-class Americans screaming with all their might to protect the rights of corporate America. We find elderly Medicare recipients furious at the thought of government-run healthcare. Once again, an unacceptable line of thought.
So, what comes of the corporate control of our government and our media? Well, some wicked legislation this way comes. Drug companies, insurance companies, banks, investment firms, oil companies all reap vast rewards for their insidious work inside government offices. And now that most of the media is owned by these same companies, journalism has become entertainment. General Electric has no interest in investigating General Electric.
And hence, given that so much of the population votes based on reasons outside of the issues that actually affect their lives and the media refuses to investigate, much of this corporate tinkering goes unnoticed by the public. Even when things fall apart due to obvious corporate misbehavior and scandal and crime, it’s very easy to blame the liberals lack of values or the scourge of illegal immigrants ruining America, or the ever popular devil, taxes. Multi-national corporations fill your food, air and water with chemicals that make you ill, and you get to deal with their cohorts in the health insurance industry and prescription drug industry, and your finances are a disaster. On the news, Senator So-n-so slept with What’s-their-name. And that scoundrel has to go. Those in bed with Monsanto and Tyson and Merck?, no story there.
As I watched a local town hall the other day, a woman emphatically stated that the Constitution does not guarantee the right to healthcare. And I wonder again, why is it that I have to share a planet with such heartless souls. Are you willing to step over a dying human being to snatch a few more of your precious tax dollars back from the feeble grasp of another social program? Will you use those dollars to add another foot to the wall around your house to protect you from that lazy drivel that wants to take what’s yours? Even worse, are you willing stomp the poor again in outrage that corporations pay their fair share? So, now the middle-class will fight battles for multi-billion dollar multi-national companies as well?
I don’t know who I’m angry at anymore. I may be back to despising the species as I did back in college. The problem with college is that you occasionally learn things. The more I learned about the evil and pain that can be tossed about so callously in the race for profit, the less I enjoyed humanity and it’s capabilities. I was willing to toss the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, people can do wonderfully selfless and beautiful things. But the despicable scroll of history cramps my gut with bitter disdain for the dark possibilities of humanity. Profit always wins and working people always face misery and nature always loses. We win some battles, but the war never goes well.
And for now, though I cannot lay exact blame for my anger, I know that I need to find another way to deal with it. I don’t want to be them. I don’t want to be red in the face. I don’t want to be cold in the heart. I want to find a way to be aware and to be involved without burning a hole in my gut and wasting my soul on feelings uncontrolled by me. I think that few people are capable of this, but I’d like to be one of them. Ignoring for the sake of inner peace hasn’t been my modus operandi, but I’m currently coasting at an annoying simmer. Like it or not, I must coexist. That was never really in dispute. So my only option is to find the other way. To keep my eyes open without the sights dooming my spirit. I’ve only been around here three-and-a-half decades. Best of luck to me I guess. Best of luck to you.
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1 comments:
I don't think there are abstract Americans. People exist at the same time in many categories: gender, race, class, nationality, religion and so on. The clash of these identities in the US and the ability of one side or another in a social confrontation to organize and the lived experiences of people determine our consciousness. Since this is a constantly occurring and dynamic process, minds constantly change and social forces and majorities/minorities constantly shift. People on the right today can be in the center or on the left tomorrow; as a conscious left we have a lot to do with how people line up.
We're not dealing with established fascism yet. I don't want to minimize the dangers of fascism, but fascism arises from particular sections of capital in response to (in reaction to) revolutionary movements, or the threat of revolutionary movements. This is the dialectic. Granted that the election of Obama is seen as revolutionary by sectors of the right, we have not yet seen fascism in power in the US.
We also have think about this in these ways:
"The city streets all led to quicksand in my time,/My speech betrayed me to the butchers./I could do only little/But without me/ those that ruled/could not sleep so easily:/That's what I hoped./That's how I passed my time that/ was given to me on this Earth.
Our forces were slight and small,/
Our goal lay in the far distance/
Clearly in our sights,/If for me myself beyond my reaching./That's how I passed my time that/was given to me on this Earth."
It's some lines by a poem from Brecht. Remember: "But without me/ those that ruled/could not sleep so easily..."
Finally, we really are on the edge of the unknown. The US just elected the first Black President, and in the past 2 weeks we have seen the beginnings of a revolt by some progressives. An economic "recovery" is underway that doesn't seem to be bringing along workers, work or employment. The right may have dragged itself into a fight it can or cannot win, but it will surely spend and deplete itself before the 2010 elections if they keep going the way they are. US withdrawal from Iraq is underway and a majority of the British--and a near majority in the US--want withdrawal from Afghanistan as well. It's a good time to be on the left, I think.
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