An American View:
Looking For A MiracleBy Keith Gottschalk
04 September, 2006
Countercurrents.orgAs an American who has deeply loved my country and hardly recognizes it any more, I have always striven in these columns to try to give my Canadian audience a good idea of the motivations behind why Americans do the things they do, think the way they think and talk the way they talk.
I feel that at times I have pulled my punches. Even so, I have been accused of spreading hate. It even happened during my meeting with some Canadian acquaintances in a fish and chips shack in Victoria this summer.
I was explaining why so many Americans buy into the myths of American history and culture (the "Cult of America" that I talk about from time to time) and how seemingly innocent beliefs can have widespread and very bloody repercussions down the line.
So lost in my discourse, I didn't notice that some American tourists nearby were giving me what used to pass for a "hate stare" in the South. My Canadian lunch partners who witnessed the glares informed me of these reactions.
As an American seriously exploring immigrating to Canada, I suppose that makes me a traitor. I suppose that merely for writing these opinions, in a long stretch, I could find myself in a similar situation as Marc Emery.
And yet it seems that many in Canada find what is going on here hard to believe. It does seem, contrary to every check and balance that was built into our system, that my beloved country has gone insane.
Despite those who wax rhapsodic about what happened to Joseph Lieberman and George W. Bush's polling numbers, I have to remain frankly pessimistic.
Bush will remain President and keep his unsteady hand on the ship of state (with a veritable mafia of warmongers and greedheads standing behind him) right up until January 20, 2008, no matter what.
The Democrats will undoubtedly nominate another Brooks Brothers suited non-entity who will again ignore the progressive constituency of the party, not to mention the poor, the minority populations and others who have not shared in the American Dream because the Democratic Party seeks power for its own sake.
And since they are now inextricably tied to corporate money they will not now, nor ever, question the fundamental assumptions of American capitalism and what it is doing to our environment, our people, the world's less fortunate and our very souls.
All American political speech that does not question the fundamental issue of income distribution and market forces uber alles is blather intended for somatic consumption.
Because of the particularly rapacious brand of capitalism practiced in the United States, the media, not just talk radio, but the newspapers and television news organizations will continue to lie, obfuscate and pacify because they know who signs their cheques the system that makes their fortunes possible.
You can't eat freedom. You can't eat free speech either. They have made their deals with the devils of mammon and now stand as veritable eunuchs still pleading as steadfast defenders of the First Amendment, which they abandoned decades ago.
"Know Your Enemy," cries CNN. They should look in a mirror.
The U.S. will continue to blindly support Israel and excuse every atrocity that nation commits with the armaments that U.S. taxpayers spend billions of dollars on to send to that country's armed forces.
They will do so because U.S. arms manufacturers know who signs the cheques that pay for the ski villas in Aspen and the private corporate jets. And U.S. politicians fear AIPAC and accusations of being "anti-Israel" or even "anti-Semitic" far more than the American voter. And a great many deluded Christian fundamentalists believe that Israel's continued existence will mean their ticket to Heaven will be punched.
And besides, since it's no longer kosher to show outright or overt hatred and prejudice against black people anymore (Heaven knows, America needs them to fight our wars), America needed a new class of people to hate. And for their sins they were given two Muslims and Mexicans who, CNN blares, are "taking American jobs" by the millions through their "invasion."
While we're told that this "invasion" is the cause of our Middle Class ills, the corporations will continue to run our lives as we run the treadmill longer, harder and more desperately for less pay, fewer benefits and less security.
Our laws were written, and our courts constructed and our police deployed, first and foremost, to protect those denizens of capitalism. And so they remain standing guard, doing their duty, and their minions continue to scramble for the crumbs from the master's table, taking solace in the belief that if they don't do this duty, someone else will.
After all, the kid needs braces.
And the Constitution and our civil liberties that we're told our young lower class cannon fodder are dying for in the Middle East will continue to be whittled away by degrees by a government that fears its people more than any "terrorist."
And the American people will not take to the streets. They will, instead, "take it," because they, like their government, have made their own deal with the devil. They have forgotten and shamed the memory of our founding fathers and sacrificed essential liberty for the security of a comfortable middle class life which they will eventually lose anyway.
After all, someone could get hurt or tear-gassed or jailed actually protesting. And certainly no one will blame any overzealous police for "just doing their jobs." And we wouldn't want our boss to see us thrown into a paddy wagon on the Six O' Clock News might be bad for the career.
They will go and vote for one of the two sets of protectors of this economic and military system. Some will actually believe that those calling themselves Democrats will somehow end the war and bring our troops home.
You can bet your bottom dollar that if any Democrat is allowed to be elected to the White House, the war will continue more savagely than ever, lest anyone think that the so-called party of "cut and run" wouldn't walk tall and talk tough.
And if all else fails, Diebold's fantastic voting machines will take care of any "irregularities." And the courts, of course, will act as if nothing is out of order.
And we'll roll over and go back to sleep. Because of course, you can't eat freedom. You can't wax it up and show it off around the neighbourhood as some sort of status symbol. Freedom isn't a first class ticket to a great vacation, a new set of clothes. It doesn't confer status or creditworthiness.
I wonder if we will miss freedom? I wonder when we're restricted to our homes during the next "national emergency" (Reichstag fire?) if our video games, DVD movies, beer and antidepressants will salve that nagging feeling that something we once had was gone.
Perhaps we never understood what it was anyway or what it meant.
Looming in the distance just beyond the radar of most reality TV fans are the two greatest pieces of reality ever unleashed against human existence as we know it peak oil and global climate change.
Peak oil, the point at which we've extracted exactly half of all the petroleum Mother Earth holds, may already be here. If you think gasoline prices are bad now, you haven't seen anything yet. But as our society rages, as Dylan Thomas wrote, against the dying of the light, more innocent blood will carpet the Middle East because, after all, that's what we're there for to delay the day of reckoning.
But the day will come with terrifying consequences. Our economy, overstretched by suburban expansion debt, consumer debt and national debt is already showing signs of wobbling and will not need much of a shove to start a cascade of dominoes that will make 1929 seem like child's play.
Peak oil is not only why we are fighting, killing and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan but also why Vice President in Charge of Our Non-Negotiable Way of Life Dick Cheney met with the oil, geology and military honchos at the start of Bush's first term.
All Dick wanted to know was (1) how much is left (2) and what do we have to do to get it. And of course, not let the American people know what they decided to do in our name.
Understand something as you continue to pay more for gas at the pump in the U.S. and Canada. Understand that Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and all of their corporate and big oil pals do not feel your pain. They can secure whatever oil and gas they want. After all, as you're paying more, the oil companies are raking in obscene, record profits.
Of course nothing will be done about it. The oil lobby and their corporate partners bought this government fair and square and they will do with it what they wish. Who are you to argue?
And coupled with the global warming effects of our hydrocarbon emissions on the climate, these two titanic crises coming together at roughly the equivalent time in history may and probably will, ring down the reign of homo sapiens on the planet Earth.
Understand this they won't try to save the planet. Not so much that it will cost them their fortunes but because these people truly believe in their heart of hearts that a world not run by the accoutrements of fossil fuels is not a world worth living in.
But there's one more thing. And it's my greatest fear having studied this country's history and served in the U.S. Armed Forces.
People seem to continue to believe that once the Soviet Union ceased to be, all those thousands of nuclear warheads we pointed at each other suddenly became inert.
If it all starts unraveling in a big way for the United States to the point where, constrained by a shattering economy, determined opposition by other nations over natural resources and the diminishment of Earth's carrying capacity because of environmental destruction, the man in the White House may decide to take the planet down with him.
Because I believe based on the record of American history that the people who now rule this nation, true sociopaths, believe a world in which America does not dictate terms is a world not worth living in. And if we can't have it, no one will.
If you think this is extreme, ponder it. In your heart of hearts, in your deepest fears, do you believe they are not capable of this?
I do, sadly.
I hope I'm wrong. But I wouldn't necessarily bet against it.
I won't deign to give Canadians any advice other than to do your best to speak to Americans, not like Rick Mercer, but in a way that gets them to think of the role their support of their country's policies play in the future viability of the planet.
All I can do is all I would ask of anyone else: do not fear speaking the truth. Talk with conviction of the heart to anyone who will listen and start planting mental seeds. Talk about what kind of future we want for our children. Do we want a world of constant war, continuing destroyal of the Earth's support systems, greater savage inequalities between the rich and the poor, politics based on paranoia, hate and xenophobia?
Ask people you meet if they believe that the sum total of our existence can be measured in dollars? Were we put on Earth as individual souls with the command of our creator to engage in some kind of maniacal race to produce and consume more than anyone else, i.e. "die with the most toys?"
Or perhaps as touchy-feely as it may sound to the NASCAR crowd, perhaps our lives and our planet were meant for something better, simpler, more peaceful. If not for us, perhaps for our children. Perhaps at some point before we go too far, our consciousness may be awakened. It may be a forlorn hope but miracles occasionally happen.
And we need one soon.
Keith Gottschalk has written for daily publications in the Midwest U.S. and was formerly a radio talk show host in Illinois. He frequents babble as the Américain Égalitaire.
