United States Slips into Coma
World Turns a Blind Eye
"It was cocaine of the soul," snorts prominent blogger"It really looks like a situation where they make the rules up as they go along."
Elisa Massimino Lawyers Committee for Human Rights
The rain falls down on last year's man, that's a Jew's harp on the table, that's a crayon in his hand. And the corners of the blueprint are ruined since they rolled far past the stems of thumbtacks that still throw shadows on the wood. And the skylight is like skin for a drum I'll never mend and all the rain falls down amen on the works of last year's man. To some degree, we all view the world, an extension of ourselves, as a living, breathing entity made in our image. Conversely, just as we project parts of our psyche onto the world, we feel it shaping our dreams and aspirations.
We enjoy a closer relationship with our world than we generally choose to accept. We project ourselves onto it and see ourselves in it. Countries, cultures and histories are integral parts of our greater, communal self and intellectual, physical, emotional, and spiritual being. I might view the tattered remnants of 'old' Europe as the seat of my culture in much the same way an American might view Africa, an integral part of our breathing planet, as the dark and atavistic side of our universal soul.
Over the past two years, the U.S. president and his fellow Americans have done much to disillusion me. Recently, I have felt betrayed, resentful, and somewhat lost. Mentally and emotionally, I felt your America was possibly no longer mine. I was losing sight of the America of which
Tom Shugart,
Frank Paynter, and
AKMA write, the America in which it is possible to clearly discern values in action.
These guys don't bluff themselves. They're keeping more than a dream alive. They're safeguarding the myth of our salvation, the most important story we have with which to realise ourselves and those we hope to shelter from harm. Others are kidding themselves. Theirs is a dark and fearful America, a mental fortress I refuse to enter, a spiritual prison devoid of love, hope, and faith.
Our view of the world changes dramatically when we lose touch with that part of our psyche seeing the greater whole. We express ourselves accordingly. As people contributing to a community of writers, we share our thoughts in words. Watching my growing alienation from my idea of the U.S., I saw my flow of blog entries slow and virtually dry up, a statement in itself.
Yep, I was hanging in here by a thread, not knowing or admitting the cause of my frustration and disillusionment. But U.S. bloggers, people who live in that great space, be it Canada or the United States, helped keep alive that part of my psyche taken up by my imagined America.
My
recent blog entry on deciding to leave a company I once belonged to had little to do with my experience in 1995 and everything to do with a powerful desire to walk away from blogging, a need to cut myself off. My blogging of
Stanton's words had less to do with contemplation than that which I was contemplating, the process in which I was taking part.
I have a vision of the land in which most of my blog friends live, North America and, more particularly, the United States. Yes, that is all your country is to me, a vivid dream of a felt memory and a sense of the good things the future might have brought to all of us through its existence. It is a myth born of literature, poetry, cheap novels, Hollywood, song, and narrative. It is a myth echoed by writers, thinkers and artists, the usual suspects.
To now, and having touched land there only briefly more than twenty years ago, my dream of what it might mean to me has remained unsullied. I have tried to write it, but have come up short and wanting. The myth of the United States is a part of who I am. But I was confused and wanted to sever myself from it. All I knew was that the U.S. I had known was yesterday's man.
I met a lady, she was playing with her soldiers in the dark. Oh one by one she had to tell them that her name was Joan of Arc. I was in that army, yes I stayed a little while; I want to thank you, Joan of Arc, for treating me so well. And though I wear a uniform I was not born to fight; all these wounded boys you lie beside, goodnight, my friends, goodnight. "...do what truth obliges you to do. Not in the name of 'rights,' those malleable implements of political convenience and inconvenience, but in the name of life." Somebody for whom I have the utmost respect and affection said the above.
Over the past few days, realising I was thinking of closing this blog without regret or second thought, I continued watching the river. I wanted to find the underlying cause of my dissatisfaction with things American and my recent belligerence towards perceived intolerance or indifference to the United States' role in moderating global interaction. So I read the blogs. My blogs; those I link to and some to which I don't for reasons that have more to do with time than anything else.
In a sense, I've been re-learning simple truths. I've been to all the same old places. Funny thing about the same old places. While they live in us, we put life on temporary hold as we revisit them. But they're there to 'remind us', but not to be lived in. We generally forget the good things we leave behind there, in those old places. I do, anyway. Now I'm back; older, uglier, and not much wiser. Life goes on. I accept these things. I am, after all, a blogger and a professional. I take these things in my stride.
When I write naturally, I write personal shit. This inevitably involves other people. I do not like to hurt other people because I do not like to be hurt myself. Since September last year, after I pulled the plug on 'personal' blogging, George W. Bush has allowed me to focus on matters that affect all of us.
Yet, I knew that I'd eventually have to weigh the sometimes selfish sensitivities of others against my own. If I do not write of that which affects me, I go stark raving mad. Call it selfishness, call it what you like. I call it 'Keeping no secrets from myself.'
In my growing antipathy to all things American, I sensed an underlying dishonesty. It nagged at me. Getting to the bottom of this uncomfortable animosity has been a priority. I discovered, while trawling through others' blogs and my old posts, that I've published most of my personal 'secrets' and have little to hide but that which others would have me keep confidential.
Since starting blogging, I've been frank about that which I see George W. Bush and his thugs visiting on the world. I believed that if the United States invaded Iraq, it would spark a global war it can only lose. Ultimately, as individuals we all witness the end of the world. We idle to our personal apocalypses and time sweeps us away. In the myriad spaces dedicated to George W. Bush's determination to secure his
Pax Americana, I see the American Apocalypse. Despite that which good people are doing, it is still very much on the cards.
In my blog entries, I kept harping on certain subjects, such as Joe Conrad's
Heart of Darkness and the blunt papers of the U.S.' military planners, people who see perpetual war as the 'export of stability'. These books and papers to which I refer, are seductive. Much like the communications tools we use, they are physical and mental constructs. There is far more to us and the world in which we live. I think we all occasionally lose sight of this.
In March, the country a ravaged waste, the United States invaded Iraq. As American soldiers watched the libraries and museums of antiquity burn and encouraged looting, the world changed. Why? Because America changed itself in the mind of the world through its actions. It drew into itself, shut off all access to the infinite possibilities it represents in the minds of billions, and closed the gate.
I did not sever ties with the U.S. of my psyche. The United States severed its ties to me, validating the views of those who see only isolation in the Bush doctrine. More, by its illegal and cynical action, it set itself beyond international law and anything acceptable to our myth of a greater whole.
History has a habit of repeating itself. Those who want to buck that trend are on to a hiding to nothing. We as people or I, as a blogger, cannot change the world or the inevitable. What we can do, through action, is influence the outcome. Surprisingly, however, although the future had been so clearly mapped and spelt out, the United States' retreat into itself shocked me. I had to come to terms with a new world, a world devoid, for now, of my mental myth. I fell silent.
Luckily, through the Internet and other peoples' blogs, I was able to see the same bewilderment at work in those I call my American friends, the people with whom I blog and to whom I am, in a real sense, bound.
I was intensely angry with the United States, its government and, by extension, its people. My antipathy arose out of a loathing of intellectual dishonesty and proclaimed ignorance. While I've done my fair share of berating the right, the politicians and effete intellectual leaders of the left have done more to shut down the United States than any other group.
Their equivocation or silence has lent respectability to George W. Bush and his neo-conservative handlers. Worse, they have given him carte blanche to foist his philosophy of Perpetual War on the world. With few exceptions, those leading the American left [its politicians, intellectuals and philosophers] are running scared. They are in denial and are paralysed. They are in hiding and do not know what to do.
Thirty years ago, the same people had no doubts. Today, those who regale us with the noble action of their youth appear stuck or glued to the spot.
What is the result of their inaction? People continue to suffer and die.
On the blogs, The Great Post-Modern Debate has been a revelation for me. Not being an intellectual or an academic, I am unable to converse with those speaking a language I do not know and have therefore been a bystander. I readily admit I cannot tell a postmodern from a postman. The postman, however, always rings twice. I believe the postmodern to be just as persistent. My inability to speak in tongues does not preclude me hearing what is said.
Most of that which is balanced by thoughtful reason and a just, feeling morality boils down to hogwash. When intellectual debate becomes polarised, the scholars stand out from pseuds lost in endless reruns of a bad Walt Disney movie. You want post-modernism. Listen to Dylan and shift shape in every line.
There is no need for our intellectual and academic leaders to dissect or find new approaches to the Bush administration's war on the world. Any such 'need' is little more than a political ploy. It has the warmongers and gunrunners in stitches and leaves them free to do as they please. In addition, it leaves our intellectual leaders free to enjoy their paralysis in the comfort of tenures served in ivory towers or the air-condtioned hotel rooms marking speaking trails undertaken between books.
With the avarice of starving pigs, those supporting Bush have acted. They have descended on the ancient world and torn up our history and the lives of millions. They are [with the help of media pinch-hitters like Thomas Friedman] quite prepared to march into the Holy Land, annexing our past, present and future.
As the mind of the leaderless left wallows in self-pity and denial, and draws out circles of confabulation into supposedly meaningful discourse [trying to make a silk purse of a sow's ear], those being attacked and those taking advantage of such attacks step up their reasonable resistance. More die.
As the educated elite whiles away the lives of thousands in cloistered talk shows broadcast for online voyeurs, it loses shape, form and substance. It is left to merchants of death and those who've lost hope to do the American left's work for it. Sooner, rather than later, the drip-drip of body bags returning from the East will become a flow and, perhaps in five or ten years' time, a once familiar flood.
It will then be left to those who weigh up the cost of gas against that of dead 'rag heads', blacks and 'Chinks' to call a halt to escalating costs. These people adopt the warlord's latest line with unthinking indifference, moving easily from lie to unconscionable lie, caring not a damn when 'found out'.
When the unthinking masses decide enough is enough, the politically correct intellectuals of the left, having cut themselves off from the discourse of chaos, their sense of intellectual opportunism intact, will surface once more to ride an unruly wave of dissatisfaction to office and a fundamentally immoral and crudely labeled 'justice', from which it will reap pecuniary reward.
Those prepared to ride such a wave are no better than those they proclaim to declaim.
Inaction leads to a sham and a shameful lie. While there is a need for discourse, action in the face of injustice beats talk to a solution every time. Leaderless, the more-than-capable mind of the left is paralysed.
So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far as we do evil or good, we are human: and it is better, in a paradoxical way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we exist. T.S. Eliot 
I came upon a wedding that old families had contrived; Bethlehem the bridegroom, Babylon the bride. Great Babylon was naked, oh she stood there trembling for me, and Bethlehem inflamed us both like the shy one at some orgy. And when we fell together all our flesh was like a veil that I had to draw aside to see the serpent eat its tail. Another person I respect calls bloggers 'self-involved.' It wasn't intended as a compliment and brought me up short. Perhaps blogging is a First World wank. But, fuck it, no. I like being self-involved. I like self-involved people. I particularly like writers and bloggers who are self-involved. It generally denotes a degree of self-admitted 'fucked-upness' and a desire to see things in a different light or, at least, more clearly.
To me, self-involvement signals a willingness to take what's there and realise or change it. Blogging is about being self-involved so that I may better appreciate the world and those about me. That's why I still love the 'personal' bloggers, the war bloggers, the academics, and the techies. Like me, they're irredeemable recidivists, wild animals, hopeless cases, fools. They're covering the same old ground, trying to find another way or accept the one they've chosen. And they're willing to share the ride.
I believe most who write, in some way, realise that we're alone in this thing called life and our one hope, as people, is to share what we have. It's how we become who we are. It's a case of "We're in this together, Bubba, come hell or
High Water." Eh...
High Water's no longer here. Ah well, being a good Catholic boy, I've grown accustomed to the idea of hell. Bring on the brimstone.
I doubt
Tish would beat me about the head were I to label her the antithesis of the American intellectual leftist. I reckon she'd take it for the compliment it is. She keeps an intensely personal, always sensitive and often passionate blog in which she writes of everyday life. I've come to know
Tish over the past eighteen months through her words. Although she slings insults at the gun ghouls whenever given cause or opportunity, she does not go out of her way to pick fights with the political evils of our time.
Yet, with the few honest intellectual leftists I have listed on my blogroll, she and other personal bloggers [also listed on my blogroll] are leading whatever counter there is to the madness that has turned America into an international scourge and pariah. With
Tish, it's hard to miss. Any doubts as to her feelings about being 'closed down' by moral mercenaries must be self-induced. She wears her blog heart on her sleeve in the form of countless graphic links to small groups fighting for justice wherever it has gone AWOL.
In the clarity of her beliefs and the honesty of her writing, argument is shown up for a fearful waste of good blogging time.
What binds Tish to honest scholars and street fighters? Much as those wedded to unthinking indifference will map the future with body parts, introspective writers, artists, philosophers, academics and others are moved almost intuitively to express revulsion at the warmonger's way. With
Tish and many others, instead of letters to the editor or papers, it's a flood of colour and strongly felt words expressed in logos.
Looking at the labels adorning so many sites, I sometimes wonder whether outrage has become packaged, labeled and commoditized, or whether we who cut ourselves off from the subject of our anger have not become cut off from the causes motivating our use of these small marks of passion.
Whatever our reason or manner of expression, decent, thinking people worldwide are expressing their dissent in small but meaningful ways. Whether, like
Elaine, we rage against the machine or, like son
b!X, get involved with our local communities, people are saying "No."
Nowhere is this more evident than on the Web. As a counter to the trailer-trash mentality of the unfeeling right, the silent tide of a decent person's morality is as effective as sand against stone. It erodes, eventually reducing rock to sand.
Where are our left-wing sophists? They're still searching for leadership and struggling to catch up with ordinary people.
Some women wait for Jesus, and some women wait for Cain so I hang upon my altar and I hoist my axe again. And I take the one who finds me back to where it all began when Jesus was the honeymoon and Cain was just the man. And we read from pleasant Bibles that are bound in blood and skin that the wilderness is gathering all its children back again. I've been reading the
Happy Tutor over the past few days. Having come to it late and sideways [how else does one do it when one enjoys the company of
Paynter?], I tracked the start of The Great Post-Modern Debate to his bordello through comments made by
Stanton and
ray.
As
Tish serves as a model of the personal blogger, the
Tutor exemplifies the intellectuals I enjoy reading. You will find
Matrullo popping in to correct him when he errs.
Salo is ever ready to put him straight.
Salo and
Matrullo. Perhaps that should be S&M, given the context.
Never mind. Others dive in and argue, but few disagree. The
Tutor is a hands-on kinda guy. He, together with those I know who pop into his place, has been propping me up. He writes beautifully, linking to many blogs and people who write with similar skill. Were that more of us had such insight and knowledge of who we are. As my friend Dimitri said in an e-mail a couple of weeks ago, "...we have to own it all -- it is not them, it is us, that do these things."
How so? Do yourself a favour. Go over to
WealthBondage and read the
Tutor's posts from a week or so back. Perhaps more importantly, read the comments appended to the posts. Talk about
Sex and the Pithy. Understanding and humour overcome fear. Fear is the scholar's greatest anaesthetic and the Tutor is conducting a hands-on workshop for the comfortably numb and those with some understanding of how best to regain one's feeling. Fear is being used to good effect by those in charge; by those who will be in charge for some time to come.
A couple of interesting counters to the Bush administration have been floated. One is a cop out.
Put a Democrat to the White House? Give me a break. As the Archbishop points out in the article below, all our politicians serve the same master. What is the new and unlikely messiah to do? Call the troops back home or lend the crime an air of respectability? Government knows that once you commit your country to a long-term campaign, civic and social structures are designed to ensure that it's seen through to its inevitable close.
Foreigners, like myself, who've seen the Democrats fall in line behind Bush, scoff at such attempts to 'rectify' the situation or bring about a political and market-related 'justice'. To us, the simple fact is that Bush has precipitated a conflict of a scale and magnitude not seen since Vietnam. It affects billions of people and will continue for years to come.
For the most part, events have overtaken any reasonable response.
I live in a place and space very different to most on my blogroll. South Africa is a violent country. You are ten times more likely to be shot in South Africa than you are in the United States. Does that mean life comes to an end, that we live in fear or close ourselves off from those about us, be they our family, neighbours, friends, colleagues or the world? Nope. I believe it gives us a far greater appreciation of life and the choices we sometimes must make in order to keep living it and become ourselves.
Living with violence or the threat of violence can give people a greater appreciation and sound understanding of their politicians, business leaders, and sinners. We tend to call a spade a spade this side of the ocean. I might take a long time getting there but, in the end, I come to appreciate things for what they are. This appears not to be the case for most Americans. Like the intellectuals who fail to face up to the huge injustice being perpetrated in their name, they clothe themselves with ignorance and suffer others with scorn.
I see enormous anxiety crippling American intellectuals and their leaders. It's a good sign. Through the
Tutor's and others' posts, I've come to realise that I am not cutting myself off from a part of myself, that part of my psyche made up by my friends, dreams, narratives and fictions I call the United States. They too experience this alienation. It is the government of The United States that has tried to sever its ties to the world.
It has attempted to set itself adrift on a sea of endless fear and it has not succeeded. Yet.
As a master of the carnal arts and a philanthropist to boot, the
Tutor is not content to sit on his backside. Eager to thrash those of others, he is ruffling feathers, wandering into others' comfort zones, up-ending dearly held personal myths. I must say I've enjoyed myself tremendously over the past week. With
AKMA, the
Tutor has upped the ante considerably. In short, and to be vulgar beyond that which is acceptable in polite company, these two have posed a quiet question, "What would Jesus [substitute any applicable deity] do?"
For a layman, The Great Post-Modern Debate has a chicken-and-egg quality to it. That I feel the egg to be that eaten by the Curate is unimportant. The introduction of the spiritual into the wider debate is as much about chicken and eggs. If that part of me taken up by a myth called the United States manifests physically, mentally and emotionally, it does so spiritually as well.
Perhaps the nature of our medium and the ritual abuse of anything vaguely spiritual has made me avoid any mention of what is a fundamental part of our greater personal being. For sure, the 'spiritual' has little place in a world dominated by things. But is it the world that is dominated by materialism or only those who choose to see it that way? I think the latter.
The spiritual is communicated through our words and, on the Web, probably not through discussion of any interpretation of it. I am not speaking of religion or evangelism. We speak of 'voice'. I no longer glance at
Google News or
Yahoo! News to keep up to date with current events. These aggregators have no 'voice'. They have no spirit or sense of what people choose to call spirit. They do not speak to me.
The disseminators of what passes for news and commentary these days have become anachronisms in my world, a world the United States denies. They are a mix of distorted stories backed by lurid language punt fear through reports of SARS, Hollywood, Palestine, sport, monkeypox, MTV, Korea and other subjects. They are minor myths harnessed to push weird and lurid views. They constitute a theme park for the mind or serve as cocaine for the soul.
Ignoring a large part of what and who we are, they reflect a world that does not exist. They have no relevance to our realisation of our greater selves.
To abuse Dylan, in much the same way as George W. Bush's 'Christianity' has more to do with ersatz religion and 'everything from toy guns that spark to flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark', it really is easy to see without looking too far that not much is really sacred.
But the average American, glued to the networks and the media that have served government so well for so long, would not know that.
We who oppose the agenda now being pursued by the United States' current administration have time to get our house in order. To do so, we need to take into account our remarkable willingness to sink to the level of those now 'exporting security' to the world. And rise above it. Or we too will become last year's man.
The rain falls down on last year's man, an hour has gone by and he has not moved his hand. But everything will happen if he only gives the word; the lovers will rise up and the mountains touch the ground. But the skylight is like skin for a drum I'll never mend and all the rain falls down amen on the works of last year's man. Leonard Cohen |
Last Year's ManY'know, in a town near here, Jefferson, Wisconsin, the Tyson chicken workers are striking for a living wage. I was trying to explain to two privileged young men why we might want to be supportive of this union even though we stride forth in our splendid individualism ready - mano a mano
- to compete for a living in this marvelous capitalist culture. They didn't get it. The pendulum has not even reached the perigee of its swing into darkness. The plagues appear on the horizon of our consciousness. The power elite shove the muzzles of their guns down the throats of starving children. Our infrastructure, hard built and lovingly nurtured for over a century is crumbling before our very eyes. And our young men think it's just fine that we should all be reduced to subsistence rather than being sparked by a vision that we should all prosper. Frank Paynter
![Government fighters drive through the Liberian city of Ganta, about 240km from the capital Monrovia, Monday, June 23, 2003. Ganta city is in ruins following claims by both sides of heavy fighting as clashes tore at a week-old truce in Liberia's escalating civil war. [Associated Press]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uj-77HYbYpzADW3xscAyN83HPS_ZHS2Hh5y9Imxra6ruxhP6_qiY7-FojmmN6vTtsTu-_pqsfsuNePmMO7gVURPK2i6g3-7RLFIXVT=s0-d)
