I'm afraid of America
Why have so many Americans forgotten so easily the principles upon which this republic was formed? And how has the story of the earliest settlers, who fled the theocracies of Europe to live in a land where they could be left alone to believe freely, or not believe at all, become corrupted and twisted into the false belief that America was begun as a Christian nation?
The only answer that comes to mind is that decades of insidious lies, dressed in the garments of faith but seeking only the absolute power that comes from a population of frightened "true-believers", has eroded the ability of formerly upright Americans to identify bald-faced liars and corrupt bounders when they see them.
The faces of these cynical and power-mad ideologues aren't hard to discern. I remember my Grandmother explaining to me that a person's soul can be seen in their eyes, on their faces, their sins seeping forth like Cain's sign. How can the usually sharp and decent eyes of middle-class American workers not see the truth in the faces of our leaders. You don't have to be a psychic seer to recognize the emptiness and moral cowardice in the face of George W. Bush, a lousy actor propped up by vicious puppet-masters, or the thirsty corruption in the face and dead eyes of his handlers, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and others. These are men who have traded away their souls for the chance to bend the course of history to their own petty needs.
I was talking to a neighbor, a Viet Nam vet who'd been cut loose by his users in the 70's and spent the next two decades regaining his stolen life, which had been wasted by a previous group of ugly men. This was during the 2004 election, and we were talking about the two candidates. "Any man who actually put on the uniform and served his country simply has to be better than a play-acting coward who used his father's connections to get out of the war while waving the flag and cheerleading the rest of us from the sidelines. Surely, Americans can see that." Well, they couldn't, or didn't care, because that callow coward became our president.
I used to think that the ordinary, working Americans I knew from the West side Little Italy of Chicago or the Lower East Mulberry Street neighborhood of New York, or the small ranches of Missouri were a hard bunch to fool. But fooled they were, into believing the exact opposite of the truth, into voting against their own interests and values. Last August, I stood outside an Evangelical church in central Missouri, with a decent man for whom I was doing a job. I asked him why he and his friends wanted Bush to become president. "Because he's like us," he told me. "He believes in country, in family values, in telling the truth. He'll be a decent, honest leader." Here was a man whose financial life had flourished during the Clinton administration. His salary had gone up, jobs were plentiful, and the meager investments in his retirement account were growing healthily. He didn't have to worry about losing one of his three sons to a useless war, because our country was at peace. As long as the country didn't get seriously derailed, his life would be good. But he had been convinced, by other people "like him" loudmouthed opportunists like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and the other poisonous proxies of American fascism, that George W. Bush would "turn the country around." He did that, certainly. Within a few months of his taking office, the first foreign attack on the American mainland had taken place, the US economy was about to lose a greater percentage of it's value than any other time in history, we'd be embroiled in a phony "war" on terrorism, and my friend, my friend had been laid off from his good job with a huge telecommunications firm because the new "corporate-friendly" administration had removed regulations that kept Americans working but stood in the way of the profits of a few very rich men. Today, this man, father of five in Central Missouri, is managing a fast-food outlet, making a small fraction of his past salary, using none of the technical skills he had learned to work in telecom. His second-oldest son is in Iraq, and there won't be money to send his children to a decent college. He believes George W. Bush is one of the best presidents ever.
This is why I'm afraid of Americans.
The only answer that comes to mind is that decades of insidious lies, dressed in the garments of faith but seeking only the absolute power that comes from a population of frightened "true-believers", has eroded the ability of formerly upright Americans to identify bald-faced liars and corrupt bounders when they see them.
The faces of these cynical and power-mad ideologues aren't hard to discern. I remember my Grandmother explaining to me that a person's soul can be seen in their eyes, on their faces, their sins seeping forth like Cain's sign. How can the usually sharp and decent eyes of middle-class American workers not see the truth in the faces of our leaders. You don't have to be a psychic seer to recognize the emptiness and moral cowardice in the face of George W. Bush, a lousy actor propped up by vicious puppet-masters, or the thirsty corruption in the face and dead eyes of his handlers, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and others. These are men who have traded away their souls for the chance to bend the course of history to their own petty needs.
I was talking to a neighbor, a Viet Nam vet who'd been cut loose by his users in the 70's and spent the next two decades regaining his stolen life, which had been wasted by a previous group of ugly men. This was during the 2004 election, and we were talking about the two candidates. "Any man who actually put on the uniform and served his country simply has to be better than a play-acting coward who used his father's connections to get out of the war while waving the flag and cheerleading the rest of us from the sidelines. Surely, Americans can see that." Well, they couldn't, or didn't care, because that callow coward became our president.
I used to think that the ordinary, working Americans I knew from the West side Little Italy of Chicago or the Lower East Mulberry Street neighborhood of New York, or the small ranches of Missouri were a hard bunch to fool. But fooled they were, into believing the exact opposite of the truth, into voting against their own interests and values. Last August, I stood outside an Evangelical church in central Missouri, with a decent man for whom I was doing a job. I asked him why he and his friends wanted Bush to become president. "Because he's like us," he told me. "He believes in country, in family values, in telling the truth. He'll be a decent, honest leader." Here was a man whose financial life had flourished during the Clinton administration. His salary had gone up, jobs were plentiful, and the meager investments in his retirement account were growing healthily. He didn't have to worry about losing one of his three sons to a useless war, because our country was at peace. As long as the country didn't get seriously derailed, his life would be good. But he had been convinced, by other people "like him" loudmouthed opportunists like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and the other poisonous proxies of American fascism, that George W. Bush would "turn the country around." He did that, certainly. Within a few months of his taking office, the first foreign attack on the American mainland had taken place, the US economy was about to lose a greater percentage of it's value than any other time in history, we'd be embroiled in a phony "war" on terrorism, and my friend, my friend had been laid off from his good job with a huge telecommunications firm because the new "corporate-friendly" administration had removed regulations that kept Americans working but stood in the way of the profits of a few very rich men. Today, this man, father of five in Central Missouri, is managing a fast-food outlet, making a small fraction of his past salary, using none of the technical skills he had learned to work in telecom. His second-oldest son is in Iraq, and there won't be money to send his children to a decent college. He believes George W. Bush is one of the best presidents ever.
This is why I'm afraid of Americans.
posted by Nittacci at 11:51 AM
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