if there's hell below we're all gonna go
When I was still living in Baltimore a few years back, I was taking an American Govt 101 class taught by a tall and imposing Nigerian who, to what continues to be my utter shame, knows and will know far more about his adopted country's constitution and founding than I ever hope to realize.
Anywho, it so happened that 9-11 took place within the first few weeks of the course, and in the ensuing class discussions, he and I had it out more than once about the new/old vernacular, things like "homeland" and PATRIOT Act:
We are at war, my tall and imposing Nigerian instructor would say. It is a war like the one that Israel fights, he said.
This is not Israel, I would shoot back. And we've been here before, man. Remember the black bag searches? And take what happened to the Panthers and the peace movement, or shit, even MLK, in the 1960s - how are things supposed to be different now, I asked. What about checks and balances?
Don't worry, my tall and imposing Nigerian instructor would answer, grinning. The PATRIOT Act has a five year sunset clause...
Of course, six months in, there were the no-fly-lists - no-fly-lists that had the names of lesbian peace activists and Green Party members on them. Of course, there came the news of the watch lists of with deadly Quaker groups at the top. Of course, three years in, His Presidentness was begging to ladle on the security provos, despite proof that the Ashcroft Justice Department was encouraging prosecutors and cops across the country to use as much of the PATRIOT Act and "war footing" as they could to prosecute all sorts of non-terrorist related crimes. I reported on a piece a year or so ago about an attempt in the House to overturn what's probably the most offensive and least useful section of the PATRIOT Act, the one that allows the feds to go through your library records, and in the most ham-handed fashion, the White House scared the Congress into keeping it in (though none of this comes close to approaching the criminality of extraordinary rendition or the Muslim pustches that followed the fall of 2001).
It is obvious we are at a fork. Think for a moment, just really think for a moment - think about how far this country has tilted to the right. Set aside the faces and personalities and the outrageous statements for a moment and really think about what it is this country is now, where this country is going now. Nevermind our "standing in the world" - what's our standing at home? Are we a kinder country now? A more compassionate one? A more environmentally and economically sustainable one? Are we healthy? Are we more educated? It's hard to grasp the full scope of the shift (admittedly, a shift from the center right to the extreme end of the spectrum, as Uncle Noam likes to say), and even harder to talk at all about this in any sort of rational way with other people (We're just ciphers to one another now - I have my blog and you have yours, you post pictures of purple fingers and I link to stories about air power and Abu Ghraib; I watch Fahrenheit 9-11 and you loved the Passion of The Christ; fuck, I wish you a Happy Holiday, you yell Merry Christmas). But whether or not the public space is capable of holding this fact, we are still at some kind of juncture, and reality is rapidly bearing down on us. Asks Jonathan Schell:
But where is the American empire now, where the new Rome? Where are its subject peoples, its provinces, its Macedonias and Carthages and Egypts, its victorious armies and triumphal parades? Where, for that matter, are its arts and letters, its Colossus of Rhodes, its Pyramids? Where is its Virgil? Would that be Bill O'Reilly, fountain of abusive misinformation, or Dan Bartlett, the White House Misspokesman? Can someone give me a tour of this realm? We might begin in Iraq. But perhaps we had better not. The tour would have to be cut short in the Green Zone, the American compound in downtown Iraq and the only secure territory in the country. Some 200 Iraqis have been killed recently in bomb attacks (horrors scarcely mentioned in the debate in this country). As for the Iraqi government, these quislings are unable to follow imperial orders they are deficient even as puppets. Their main accom-plishment has been to open a torture center, perhaps in imitation of our own Abu Ghraib, or perhaps following the model of Saddam Hussein.
As the bullshit piles higher in Iraq, the futility of a century we paid for in blood and treasure is becoming more and more apparent, and it's beginning to look like that the American contribution to the last 100 years and maybe the next may only be Audrey Hepburn and the threat of nuclear holocaust. Sayeth Gabriel Kolko:
The world is escaping American control, and Soviet prudence no longer inhibits many movements and nations. World opposition is becoming decentralized to a much greater extent and the US is less than ever able to control it--although it may go financially bankrupt and break up its alliances in the process of seeking to be hegemonic.
This is cause for a certain optimism, based on a realistic assessment of the balance-of-power in the world. I think we must avoid the pessimism-optimism trap but be realistic. Although the Americans are very destructive, they are also losing wars and wrecking themselves economically and politically. But for a century the world has fought wars, and while the US has been the leading power by far-in making wars since 1946, it has no monopoly on folly.
But it is crucial to remember that the US is only a reflection of the militarism and irrationality that has blinded many leaders of mankind for over a century.
Indeed, the brutality of our actions and the callousness of our rhetoric reflects a desperation in the emptiness of our grand and angry gestures, a final realization deep down that way back when we traded in our tri-cornered republican hat and frock coat for empire's robes a hundred or so years ago, we could not pretend the former and keep the latter. Ultimately, this is what yesterday's big news - or last year's, fuck you very much Bill Keller - tells us: there is a choice we can make, one that runs deeper than Hillary or the House of Representatives.
Thich Nhat Hanh was once asked, many years ago, whether he was from North or South Vietnam. He responded that he was from the center. We need to find that center, that place where we leave Democrats and Republicans and cable news and everything else that has substituted for rational, human discourse in this country, and realize our collective future depends solely on our capacitiy to live with one another.
Or put with a little more touch of the popular - we are already living in Blade Runner, and we're mere minutes from Brazil. The empire is weak and dying, but if it's given the space, if we give it the space, it's courtiers will make that death a long and terrible one, both here and abroad.
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