[Written in response to the Republican takeover of Congress in the 2010 election.]
As a result of Democracy being eviscerated, the country known since 1776 as the United States of America is now steeped in the throes of a political, social and moral nervous breakdown. As a country, we've barely broken the barriers of adolescence. China (a country to whom we appear to be abdicating ourselves through outsourcing and the US Chamber of Congress), Nigeria and Chile can trace their national lineage back multiple dynasties, kingdoms and centuries. As we grapple with the infancy of our nationhood, some days I think maybe we're having a serious case of the terrible twos: Congressional tantrums, the mayhem of mid-term elections, pandemic foreclosures and mind boggling phobias based on people's racial, ethnic, gender and class identities continue to demonstrate just how underdeveloped we are.
Tea Party candidate Christine O'Donnell campaigns on tectonic plates of lies, representing herself as a Constitutional scholar, while remaining delusional and incapable of discussing even one amendment to the Constitution. With thousands of intelligent and well-informed women who are Democrats, Green Party members, Republicans and Independents, shrewd Sarah Palin (with some real McCainsian muscle behind her), continues positioning herself to wear the "imperial presidential crown" in 2012. Women like O'Donell and Palin so fit the stereotypical paradigm of pretty but not necessarily intellectually substantive or historically informed. I've yet to see even one interview with Grace Anne Baltich of Hanover, Minnesota, Lynna Lan Tien Nguyen Do of Fremont, California or Tara Andrews of Baltimore, Maryland. These women have studied diligently, devoted serious time to civic engagement and are preparing themselves to become the next generation of presidential candidates. All meet the age qualification to run in 2012. Their work and aspirations are documented in She's out There! Essays by 35 Young women Who Aspire to Lead the Nation, a book and film by Amy Sewell and Heather L. Ogilvie.
In concert with the billionaire Koch brothers who continue the legacy of their father Fred Koch, founder of the John Birch Society, Political Analyst Karl Rove and US Chamber of Commerce CEO Thomas J. Donahue have sunk their talons into our electoral system and clawed the life out of it. Groups many naively thought extinct, including the John Birch Society, Ku Klux Klan and the Traditional Values Coalition are being fueled by infusions of money and personnel to reignite protracted conflicts based on people's racial, ethnic, religious, class and gender identities. We're being marketed into supporting the surgical industrial complex, altering our bodies molecule by molecule and fighting aging with a vengeance, placing way more attention to our VQ's (Vanity Quotients) than or IQ's.
An MTV reality crew tapes a full throttle domestic violence incident involving reality show star Amber Portwood. She pummels her boyfriend Gary Shirley, as their two-year-old daughter sits only a few feet away. Not one member of the crew stepped up to stop the violence. The moral anchor has been wobbly for a spell, but now it almost seems to have corroded, totally. People also have no problem killing someone over tennis shoes or, positioning themselves for high hair pulling drama by displaying multiple levels of egomaniacal dysfunction in the media. Humiliation has become a national sport leading to untold numbers of young people choosing suicide, snuffing out their futures on an almost daily basis. The stress of American Exceptionalism, a two centuries long, unsustainable practice, has taken the country to the brink and kept us from focusing on the hearts and souls of our own citizens. As Toronto Star Columnist Richard Gywn notes, "It's (America) exhausted its quota, a very large one indeed, of bright, confident mornings."
We've bombed millions of others, as well as ourselves, into a psychotic state and evidence of the walking wounded surround us daily: maimed and homeless vets, many of whom are women trying to raise babies while still dancing on the remains of their adolescence; banks hiring hairdressers, teenagers and Walmart greeters to sign-off on loan modifications for mortgages; unemployed college graduates saddled with six-figure debt. With rare exceptions, the voices of progressives are barely audible in the blast of the media. And the ongoing stupefying demonization of President Barack Obama ricochets like the "Theatre of the Absurd" plays of Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet and Tom Stoppard.
In Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America, by Rolling Stone contributor Matt Taibbi, a brutal portrayal of the financial industry services is rolled out on a canvas that paints a neo realistic image of the fiscal dysfunction of the country. While I have my own long-held concerns about the size and function of government, their deep reach into my privacy and layers of incompetence (with the exception of the efficient employees at Social Security), social orders need governments to implement laws and policies that make them possible to get food on the table safely, provide necessary maintenance of infrastructure and provide essential services that get us water to drink and paid for our work. But the jockeying for running the country like a corporation has taken hold withwe the people being fired at will by empire builders committed to clearing the landscape of the growth of Democracy.
So, where do you take a country for rehab? Certainly not the Jersey Shore; Nor is this work that falls under the purview of media therapist Dr. Phil or celebrity rehab Guru Dr. Drew Pinsky. While Jon Stewart's Rally for Sanity is an invitation to engage in civility, everyday across the centuries Americans have organized, fiercely fought for social justice and worked right at the dinner table to rehabilitate our country. These efforts are now minimized and overshadowed by the drama and madness of the racial, ethnic, gender, class warfare and religious vilification. They are also being derailed by strategically forged policies to use debt and foreclosure as tools to suffocate millions of Americans who were called abominable if they didn't "buy" into the American Dream. Along with humiliation, demonizing the poor by religious leaders and politicians has created a real societal disconnect reducing us to random acts of compassion. But acts of oppression have been far from random.
Children around the rest of the world may soon read a "Once Upon a Time" tale about a country that died before its time because "Dr. Biggy Greedlove" and a select cadre of corporate troops dismantled the Democracy millions of workers on assembly lines, poets and artists, surgeons and teachers across the United States once worked diligently to try and build.
Go well in the country of your heart, mind and soul.
Daphne Muse
Writer, Social Commentator & Poet
Copyright Oakland, CA 2010
Copyright ©
Copyright to this web page, as a web page, belongs to this web site.
Copyright to the article above belongs to the author.
Webspinner:
webmaster@crmvet.org
(Labor donated)
