by Don Hynes
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| Vantage Point | Culture and Politics by Don Hynes |
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"No man is prejudiced in favor of a thing, knowing it to be wrong.
He is attached to it on the belief of its being right; and when he sees it is not so,
the prejudice will be gone." - Tom Paine
August 06, 2003 Freedom and Power The growing polarity in the United States is not governmental, between democrats and republicans nor between conservatives and liberals. The divisiveness surfacing in our systems of governance is in reality a struggle at a deeper cultural, even psychic level, between a competing set of ideas and ideals. It is a struggle within our nation for our sense of identity, a contrast, even conflict, between the power to get and the freedom to become. The flag waving and loyalty calls by the Administration are seductive to the confusion between nation and government. The government is not the nation; it is the servant of the nation just as the military is not the government; it is the servant of the government. The nation is above government and above the pettiness of corporate or individual self-interest. The nation is the embodiment of the idea that draws us together and gives us collective reason and purpose, and although that idea could be encapsulated by the word freedom, there is a growing polarity within our communitas between two conflicting interpretations of that long held virtue. The power to get, Target Corporation’s current consumer tag, centers the side of the argument that finds its expression in consumerism and the emerging global corporate state with stakeholders such as Dutch Shell, Bechtel, Chevron and Citicorp. When frustrated this power has the ways and means, currently on display in Iraq and elsewhere, to impose its will through government and military force. This power is supported through the media and entertainment industry as freedom, but is anything but that. Consumerism is an addictive practice and although we don’t easily equate red dot sales at big box stores with dope, examine the consequences of this supposed power: ravaged indigenous peoples, second and third world sweat shops and child labor, ruined natural environments, colonial and now corporate wars and occupations, and a history of violence that accompanies the need to acquire just as surely as addiction declines into parasitic theft and self destruction. Where has the supposed freedom of the automobile led except to the re-colonialization of the mid-East with a military presence in personnel and infrastructure that is bankrupting our capital base as a nation? The freedom to become does not need military force except in self-defense, and does not need governmental rule except in its role to protect and enhance the nation, not to rule over the nation nor other nations. The freedom to become is the idea behind the United States that since its inception invited and inspired the world. It may not have been embodied by the founders any more fluently than it is now, and most immigrants surely hoped for a pot of gold in America, but there has always abided a sense of reward beyond the material, promised in the lamp of liberty on the statue in New York harbor. It has been more ideal than reality for many: the native peoples destroyed by immigration, the slaves horribly abused in the building of the country, the immigrants whose backs were bent with little beside the propaganda of imminent reward, the working class who fought and even died for a fair shake in the industrial system. Yet however slighted the ideal something of intrinsic value has beckoned from this country, that brought the world’s compassion and support to America after the attacks of September 11, because “the deeper hope of America” as Jacob Needleman beautifully writes “was its vision of what humanity is and can become.” We hold the freedom to become as a promise, an ideal that integrates us with our fellows, while the power to get, although the desire of many beyond the U.S., will ultimately isolate us. The difference between these identities and ideals is markedly clear in the compassion we espouse versus the swag of military might and corporate favoritism, but changing governments will not solve the problem. As a people we must wrestle with the question at the level where the division exists, in our collective identity as a nation. The direction we take will determine not only the course of America, but with our present economic and military force, the peace and evolutionary potential of the world. Dangerously Irresponsible These were the words by a Federal Court judge in sentencing three pacifist nuns to prison terms for protesting the militarism and nuclear weaponry of the United States. I wonder how he would have described this scene in Baghdad where Task Force 20, an elite US military unit, killed a number of Iraqi civilians in a botched Sadaam hunt. Imagine yourself in the midst as high-powered and indiscriminately fired weapons gun down your neighbors and friends. Can this lead anywhere but the furtherance of added hatred and reprisal? Read Secrets by Daniel Ellsberg and you’ll find the same phantom goals and distorted information that characterized the brutal tragedy of the US war against Vietnam being replayed in the occupation of Iraq. Anti-US resistance is growing, as fourteen-year-old Mustafa Hussein becomes a folk legend for standing off a company of US soldiers until killed beside his father and uncle. Robert Fisk writes of the new Iraq where the power to get is symbolized in Occupation Chief Paul Bremer’s daily outfit of business suit and combat boots, attempting to run a country he doesn’t understand from within a razor wire compound. Holland offered a contingent of troops on behalf of Dutch Shell who scrawled “the Netherlands” on anything paintable to distinguish them from Americans, while southern Iraq, relatively free of violence, may be changing for the worse, and although the US military remains committed to its mission, which it must, this soldier speaks for many when he writes "we don’t feel like heroes anymore". Why aren’t there any public displays for the returning dead or severely wounded? Might the uncomforting presence of those who have suffered most, sober our public policy and machismo? Asia Times describes the Saudi outrage over the Bush Administration classification of the 9/11 report, while investigative reporter Greg Palast unwinds President Bush’s personal and corporate Saudi connections. Eric Margolis considers why the US wants Sadaam dead while Tom DeLay, who calls himself an “Israeli at heart,” tells an Israeli assembly that Palestinians must bear the burden of peace. The Palestinians are already bearing the burden of the Israeli military occupation, why not the weight of peace as well? DeLay exemplifies the “new priesthood” described by George Monobiot in America is a Religion: “The dangers of national divinity scarcely require explanation. Japan went to war in the 1930s convinced, like George Bush, that it possessed a heaven-sent mission to "liberate" Asia and extend the realm of its divine imperium. It would, the fascist theoretician Kita Ikki predicted: "light the darkness of the entire world". Those who seek to drag heaven down to earth are destined only to engineer a hell.” The Land is Ours Jyoti Fernandez writes these evocative words about “the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, (where) local farmers are under pressure to embrace a future of large-scale monoculture producing crops for the global market. But the farmers themselves, especially women, are convinced that traditional practices and knowledge are the best guarantee of their livelihood and food security.” Michael Pollan offers a complimentary study in Getting Over Organic : “The lesson to be learned is that consumers of all kinds, but especially eaters, are producers in the most important sense. With every food purchasing decision, we are helping to create the world we want to live in, one bite at a time.” And Old favorite Merle Haggard kicks up the dust in Hag’s Editorial: “As a country we need to look inward for the answers to the energy of the future. We need to bring down our demands for oil, rebuild some bridges and highways and allow the farmers to grow something that replenishes the soil. Those who don't know what that is, should do some research. The problem is not in Iraq and the answers are not in Iran.” Ways to Help Look up the Dixie Chicks who have joined Rock the Vote in a spin free partnership that isn't leaning republican! Help MoveOn stop the big oil energy bill. Sign on with NRDC BioGem’s to save the Tongass. Frederick Douglass by Robert Hayden When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as air, usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all, when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole, reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians: this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world where none is lonely, none hunted, alien, this man, superb in love and logic, this man shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues' rhetoric, not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone, but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing. Peace. *** |
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