Still Crazy
By Daniel Patrick Welch
8-5-3
- After all these years, it still amazes how Americans
can remain so disconnected from the world events in which we play so
central a role. I use the term "world events" loosely, since the US
today seems to have lost even its historically tenuous connections with
the reality of the rest of the world. We continue to call our baseball
championships the World Series, oblivious to how quaint and naive, at
best--or arrogant and self-absorbed, at worst--it has always seemed to
the rest of the world. This has been the hallmark of Americans' role in
the world--a curious blend of ubiquitous involvement paired with
near-total ignorance.
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- But the lovable galumpfing innocent act has worn thin
around the world--innocents don't usually oust your elected leaders and
install their own puppets--and its charm, if it ever had any, is no
longer. Yet the national stupidity persists, facilitated by its enablers
in the headline-addicted US press establishment, to the detriment of the
American reputation around the world. Consider these gems from recent
press accounts of the massacre in the Mansur district of Baghdad: "Oh So
Close," chirped half a dozen tabloids. So close to what, exactly?
Genocide? A War Crimes Tribunal?
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- No. The reference to a botched raid on a house where
Saddam "may have been hiding" was to how close our liberators came to
catching The Beast. The press has so completely given itself over to
Pentagon propaganda that they can't even see red flags where they
should, sort of like a Bizzarro Running of the Bulls. Before the
monotony set in, my ears perked up at the tedious repetition of the
obviously planted party line: how US forces had come within twenty-four
hours of catching Hussein's security detail, "...and possibly even the
deposed dictator himself."
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- Imagine my excitement! Almost! Very close! How dumb do
you have to be to infer correctly that, in the pathologically dishonest
code of the worst administration in history, as phrase as weak as
"possibly even" should translate as "definitely not." Almost, we have
learned, only counts in horshoes and WMDs.
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- Aside from Paul Simon lyrics, the other reference
unzipping itself from the archive of my subconscious was the memory of
Winston Smith, Orwell's everyman from 1984, sitting and playing chess
while listening to broadcasts of how Big Brother would cleverly defeat
the enemy. The parallel is chilling, and makes me wonder what kind of
personal hell we are each supposed to go through before we all finally
love Big Brother.
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- "How stupid do they think we are?," the question
fairly screams in our minds. Apparently exactly as stupid as we have
proven to be after all these years. Orwell's Goldstein expounded that he
who controls the present controls the past, and he who controls the past
controls the future. Of course, 1984 was at least partly fiction, a
figment of Orwell's fertile communist imagination. We never got to see
the other side of the story Winston weaves into a stunning triumph for
Big Brother.
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- In this reality, at least for now, we are indeed privy
to the rest of the story. We have access to front line reports of the
massacre that unfolded under the name of this botched raid. The
Independent's Robert Fisk takes a different line than the oft-repeated
Fish Story: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=428199Troops Turn Botched Raid into Massacre. "At least one
civilian car caught fire, cremating its occupants," reports Fisk. One
civilian was brought to Yarmouk hospital "with his brain outside of his
head." Well, Emily Latilla would have remarked before issuing her
trademark "Never mind," "That's very different!"
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- However, the Fish Story about "the one that got away"
is more compelling in our national, self-delusional narrative than the
truth, and far easier to digest. But nobody needs a doctor to tell them
that whether something tastes good is not the best proof that it is safe
to eat. Likewise, Americans should be careful to trace how this
poisonous story was deceptively sweetened into a near
triumph--especially when, under the icing, it reveals an unmitigated
disaster.
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- The veneer, our seemingly unending capacity to stay
Still Stupid After All These Years, allows our governments literally to
get away with murder. It allows us to ignore the roots of hatred and
distrust in the region, from the CIA ouster of the elected but
unacceptably socialist government of Mohamad Mossadegh in 1953. Equally
forgotten is the US installation of the Shah's brutal regime and
tireless efforts to prop up repressive governments throughout the Gulf,
including Hussein himself. He who controls the past....
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- But of course, Goldstein collides with Santayana at
some inevitable point. We appear to be indeed condemned to repeat the
closed loop of Occupation 101. The language of imperial conquest is
always the same: liberation, civilization, democratization...all
hopelessly self-aggrandizing concepts to the families of the victim
"with his brain outside of his head." The stupidity gene has been
equally inherited by both major parties over the years, despite the
current mutation into the truly monstrous. Nonetheless, one of the most
rational calls comes from Democratic presidential candidate Dennis
Kucinich, who suggests withdrawing US troops, turning over
reconstruction (and contracting) over to the UN, and making the
Administration pay for the reconstruction its bombing made necessary.
Cheney's personal fortune should cover a chunk of it. Sound advice that
won't be followed--Simon's lyrics give way to Pete Seeger's, in the
plaintive, almost mournful chorus to "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,"
a song he wrote in the wake of his indictment by the Unamerican
Activities Commission in 1955: "When will we ever learn/Oh when will we
ever learn?"
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- � 2003 Daniel Patrick Welch. Reprint permission
granted.
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The
Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in
anarchy"
Groupe de communication Mulindwas
"avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans
l'anarchie"
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