Every
liberal man and woman of good will I know predicted that our latest
Iraq crusade was just that -- folly. But it has exceeded our worst
nightmare, devolving from the cowboy fantasies of a dry drunk from
Texas, into a hideous torture flick. Complete with hoods, leather
straps, cross dressing, sexual humiliation, and trophy corpse display.
All it took was a couple of digital cameras in the paws of the
ruddy-nutted sons and dominatrix daughters of this nation’s patriotic
trailer courts -- a few grisly candids to send home to the family over
the internet. Click-click-click-click-click! And the entire sorry lie
of the cowboy liberation of Iraq melted in a puddle of international
revulsion.
About the best the war’s apologists and paid pundits can come up
with is that "Abu Ghraib is by no means My Lai" and that "Iraq is not
Vietnam." Well, no, not yet. But it is already looking a lot spookier
and more perverted than Nam ever was. As a journalist 30 years ago I
documented returning Vietnam veterans’ stories of U.S. atrocities in
that war. I still have a few photos of young smiling young Americans
poking cigarettes into the mouths of severed Viet Cong heads, and I can
tell you the grins of the young Americans in Abu Ghraib are not one bit
different. They still look like high school kids at some ghastly kegger.
Those Iraq War apologists make some strange, logic defying leaps to
dismiss parallels with Vietnam, only to fall flat on their asses, as
each week brings more undeniable similarities. The American public
seems not to notice their ass falling or the similarities. We continue
to kill droves of innocent civilians, innocents who in turn kill us,
until finally, the innocents we are supposed to be liberating become
our targets. Thousands of American kids are snuffed out, or mutilated
for life. Many more thousands of Iraqis suffer the same. Billions are
poured into firepower to blast dust and human beings into the dry mush
that nourishes that specter called war. Iraq may be a dryer venue than
Southeast Asia, but if this is not another Vietnam, it is a rip
snorting good imitation.
Assuming Iraq does not become a protracted Vietnam style
battleground -- though all those brand spanking new permanent bases
there make one a bit suspicious -- we nevertheless, as that old
Iran-Contra scammer Colin Powell pointed, have pay for and own what we
have broken. Personally speaking, I never wanted Iraq as the 52nd state
(Israel being the 51st to the tune of countless billions) and I doubt
you did either. But if we are, as the neo-conservatives claim, destined
by historical circumstance to make such annexations, we certainly could
have picked two less troublesome pieces of real estate than Israel and
Iraq. Now that we’ve got them, we are in deep shit, darlin'.
Oh, Bitter Redemption!
Before all of us who saw it coming get too smug here, permit me to
drop a turd into the punchbowl. Bush and his neocon thug cronies did
not accomplish this all by their lonesomes. Every American owns some
piece of the blame for the sorry decline of our "republic." (Aren’t we
all getting tired of this term "republic" being thrown around by every
writer in the country these days?) And part of that blame belongs to
liberals -- even we far-lefties so fond of pointing out that any nation
built on the twin pillars of Negro slavery and the ethnic cleansing of
the Red Indian sprang from corrupt seed to begin with. But now that we
have become another nasty example proving that absolute power corrupts
absolutely, well, that’s as bad as it gets. And from that condition, no
nation has ever returned but by a terrible road.
If anything can stop this imperial court of jackals, the jackals we
allowed to steal an election (without breaking out in open street
rebellion as we probably should have done), the ones currently looting
the national treasury, the ones spoiling for Armageddon and wiping
their asses on the constitution, it is you, me and about 100 million
other Americans who may or may not decide to vote in November. Even if
we cannot drive the jackals away from the carcass of our constitution,
we can redeem ourselves as individuals. Let me share with you these
lines by Vachel Lindsay. I know Lindsay is uncool among the literary
gaggle these days, but let me do it anyway.
I am unjust, but I can strive for justice.
My life's unkind, but I can vote for kindness.
I, the unloving, say life should be lovely.
I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness.
Come, let us vote against our human nature,
Crying to God in all the polling places
To heal our everlasting sinfulness
And make us sages with transfigured faces.
-- From “Why I voted the Socialist Ticket,” by Vachel Lindsay
Yes,
we can still vote, still affect the outcome of an election, despite the
ominous Diebold-Bush mob syndicate now shaving the dice in the back
room. And let's admit it: Most of us are not that thrilled about the
horse-faced, clearly insincere John Kerry, even if he did speak out
against atrocity as a much younger man. Incidentally, some would see
that as a basic moral obligation -- others would see it as opportunism
during a distinctly anti-war era. Whatever the case, we have been
handed Kerry as the stage prop alternative to George Bush in a
long-running quadrennial drama, produced and directed by capitalist
ideologues.
If you will remember, we did have other options. In our hearts we
all know that Nader, Kucinich and Sharpton were the only candidates
speaking the whole truth. Whether they would have acted on their own
words, may be another matter. We will never know because liberals,
being too worried about picking the right actor in the televised
popularity contest that we call elections, never seriously considered
them anyway. Speaking the truth does not count for much these days.
Instead, we let a corrupt system and our own lack of moral gumption
sucker us into allowing yet another multi-multi-millionaire vie for the
part of (try not to laugh, please) "leader of the free world." I spent
years interviewing some of the fabulously rich and almost every one of
them lived in delusion. So we'll vote for Kerry's delusion. Later we
will learn that he is the answer to nothing. Yet he gets a shot at
sitting behind the most powerful mahogany desk on the planet because of
fabulous wealth and ambition. Just as George Bush did.
In fairness to the Democratic Party however, it must be said that
not all of them are part of the current liberal séance trying to get in
touch with their principles. Thank god for people like House Democratic
Leader Nancy Pelosi. If that woman ever wants to run away with a
has-been redneck leftist writer, I'll be scratching gravel toward the
West Coast.
No More the Locust
In his 1957 classic, The Undiscovered Self, Carl Jung
examined in detail Nazi Germany’s mass psychosis and the dangers of
learning "to submit absolutely to a collective belief." Here is what he
observed: "The truth is that we don't know for certain whether
something similar might happen elsewhere. It would not be surprising if
it did and if another nation succumbed to the infection of a uniform
and one-sided idea. America seems to be immune because of the outspoken
counter-position she has adopted, but in point of fact she is perhaps
even more vulnerable than Europe, since her educational system is the
most influenced by the scientific Weltanschauung with its statistical
truths; Her mixed population finds it difficult to strike roots in a
soil that is practically without history. The absence of a historical
and humanistic education so sorely needed in such a circumstance leads,
on the contrary, to a Cinderella existence."
Today, we watch the "infection of a uniform and one-sided idea"
spread out across the globe again, behind a flying wedge of our own
storm troopers. And this time those uniforms are enough to give Joseph
Goebbels (or Dylan Klebold) wet dreams, with their spooky high-tech
variations on the hideous get-ups so preferred by despots. We seem to
prefer big dark-lensed, insectoid chem/bio facemasks and desert greys,
instead of Nazi black gabardine and silver skull jewelry, or the
dripping gold braid of the Latin dictator.
And as to you Carl Jung, well, I regret to tell you that we are
staring submissively straight into the face of the jackal again. That
"outspoken counter-position" you pointed to is faint stuff now, lo
these 47 years later. The kind of thoughtful liberals who contemplated
you and your meditations under your pear tree are a timid bunch these
days. Tell me this, Carl. From your vantage point out there in the
void, does it appear to be too late? What do we need to break this
awful spell upon us?
No reply? Well, that’s OK my old friend. Sleep the sleep of the
ages. Go back to your cosmic dreaming, because I think I already know
what we need.
I think we need some cast-iron, double-bottomed sons-of-a-bitches in
liberal leadership and in rank and file. Real fire breathers who know
why Emma Goldman and Joe Hill and Eugene Debs (and yes, you too Carl)
were important. People who will sit their children and grandchildren
down and teach what the school system will never teach in its
never-ending process of churning out overweight little consumers. Teach
them that Adam Smith’s unseen hand is unseen because it never existed.
Teach them that it was our unquestioning collective belief in this
fable that had, when hitched to our "chosen people" Protestant
religious complex, long ago set us spinning toward the psychotic end
game now in play.
So how did we come to be such a nation? How did we come to elect the
jackals in the first place? I am reminded of a story an acquaintance
once told me. During World War II he made friends with a German
prisoner, and once asked the prisoner how Nazi Germany could possibly
have come into being, how ordinary Germans could be so compliant.
"Imagine what would happen," replied the prisoner, "if John Dillinger
were elected president of your country."
Lest I sound too self-righteous, I admit that during the '90s I
behaved just like the rest of the flaccid American middle class, and
was far more a part of the problem than the solution. I was throwing
money around like a Texas wildcatter in a Lubbock brothel. Some years I
barely knew where the local election polls were, but knew exactly what
floor at Harrods's in London you could find the last silver cigarette
cases. That was pure mindless consumption, untethered to the
geo-political reality that created my affluence. In doing so, I helped
this American empire -- which writer Jeffrey St. Clair aptly dubbed the
“Empire of the Locusts” -- run through the greatest natural bounty ever
bestowed on any civilization in a scant 225 years, then move on to turn
the rest of the world into a sweatshop. I regret my hubris. As for
those 225 years, they are small potatoes as empires go. More ancient
nations know that the ground beneath them has seen many, many previous
empires pass over with the tread of their armies and the same hubris in
their citizenry. So it will be with ours. We will collapse at some
point, in all likelihood taking the ecology of the planet with us.
But until then, there are still some of us old bastards around who
have seen enough in our lifetimes to call things what they really are.
And we are not about to end up as more liberal roadkill alongside this
historical crossroad. We are ready to lend our bad backs and grumpy
attitudes to the fight for the soul of this nation with which we are
stuck. Like the country songs says, "My head hurts, my feet stink and I
don’t love Jesus." So get out of my way and Katy bar the door! I for
one am taking to the streets, joining every damned faggot commie tree
hugging protest march that comes rattling the pike. I don't care if
these are the last days of the empire of the locusts. I don't care if
the entire jackal nation is at our very throats. Let whatever history
remains record that some of us went down with a fight, and that perhaps
a few of us indeed became "sages with transfigured faces."
***
About Joe
Born 1946 in Winchester VA, USA. U.S. Navy Vietnam-era veteran.
After stint in Navy became anti-war hippie, ran off to the West
Coast... lived in communes, hippie school buses... started writing
about holy men, countercultural figures, rock stars and the American
scene in 1971... lived in Boulder Colorado until mid 1980s... 14
years in all... became a Marxist and a half-assed Buddhist...
Traveled to Central America to write about third World issues...
Moved to the Coeur d'Alene Indian reservation in Idaho, built a
cabin, lived without electricity, farmed with horses for seven years... tended reservation bar (The Bald Eagle Bar), wrote for regional
newspapers... generally festered on life in America... Moved to
Moscow, Idaho, worked on third rate newspaper there... Then moved to
Eugene Oregon, worked for an international magazine corporation pushing
insecticides and pesticides to farmers worldwide.
Then back to hometown of Winchester, Va., to settle some scores with
the bigoted, murderous redneck town I grew up in. I love'em but they
need a good ass kicking.
Died in 2000 when George Bush got elected... died along with 275
million other Americans... Plan to rise again from the dead when he is
tossed out... maybe reincarnate as a Commie terrorist on Wall Street... maybe as a sex worker in Amsterdam... can't decide... both have
their advantages.
LINK: JoeBageant.com