Letters To America

Name:
Location: United Kingdom

There is nothing you need to know about me. Either my words are fun to read or they are not, your enjoyment or fury would be neither elevated nor negated by learning that I was much the same as you or wildly different from you.

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Letters To America - Onward, Christian Soldiers!

"I'm all out of faith, this is how I feel" ~ Natalie Imbruglia

Dear America,

Is that a cross on your sleeve or are you just terrified to see me? I guess, after systematically alienating those who don't share your faith, the appearance of "the other" in your quiet little world must be kind of scary. I remember sitting through the "war on Christmas" thinking "what the fuck are these guys smoking?" because it was obvious to me, even from a continent away, living in a country far more secular than yours, that Christmas was never under threat. How could it be? According to the best stats I could find, about four-fifths of your country claim Christianity in some variety and about a quarter of the whole country are Bible literalistic so how could Christmas ever be under threat?

Fear it seems, is the only truly American value. A fear that passes beyond anything rational into a kind of dream-world where the threat far exceeds reality, where saying "Happy Holidays" is a threat to Christmas. How is it a threat exactly? Does anyone honestly think that not hearing the word "Christmas" every time one goes into a store is going to shake anyone's faith? Or is this, as I suspect, another piece of the American Christian entitlement complex? Do you know what an entitlement complex is, America? It's where you believe yourself to be worthy of special treatment just for existing, where you're so convinced of your own specialness that you should be held to different standards than the rest of society. See, without that, you'd recognize that Happy Holidays was just a way of greeting people that didn't throw your choice of faith at them. But then, what fun would that be?

It seems that American Christianity is defined as much by the sense of being embattled as by any shared values. Everywhere you look, they're teaching evolution, allowing abortion, tolerating gays, abandoning their traditional morality. "Traditional morality", odd phrase isn't it? Perhaps it's the youth of your nation America but you don't seem to have realised yet that "tradition" is just the name we give to something daft we've been doing for a long time. The Scopes monkey trial is where blind following of tradition takes you. I wonder sometimes, if the entitlement complex of America the nation exists because of the entitlement complex of the Christians who make up the majority of the country. I was actually raised in a Christian household America. I was raised by a woman who tried as best she could to improve the lot of those around her. Whether that was inspired by her faith or whether her faith was inspired by her compassion I don't know but that's what I always associated with Christians. I might not have any time for their god but I could see that the effect that their faith had on many Christians was one of compassion and that was good enough for me. Even if I didn't share that faith, at least it was helpful to society.

But then I saw you America and what the hell were you playing at? You had a vast majority of your country believing in Christianity and a significant minority who believed that the Bible was literally true but that didn't seem to lead to compassion. It seemed to lead to attacking those who didn't believe as you did. A war of words raged over teaching evolution and no matter what the aggressors claimed, it wasn't because of the minor stones they managed to throw at evolution, it was because evolution didn't fit into the literal reading of the Bible. What the fuck kind of piety is this? Evolution has evidence, literal creationism has none of any kind whatsoever but because "proof denies faith", that absence of evidence is held to be evidence in itself. This was logic not so much twisted as bent.

What you have America isn't the Christianity I grew up with, it's something quite different. I grew up with a Christianity that wasn't really scared of much, that allowed God to be in charge and got on with living it's own life but the Christianity you seem to have created America is a Christianity that's terrified to it's core of anything that offers an alternative. Gay marriage can't be allowed because that would be a threat to Christianity (do not say a word about bullshit "traditional values"), like millions of Christians might take a look at gay people getting a fair break and suddenly think "I'm cured! I want the boys!". It's a belief system of fear where the existence of things we disapprove of is a threat to our existance. It's a club of exclusivity, if those Christians don't approach their faith the same way we do, they're not really Christians at all. It's kind of amusing if you're a history geek. The attitude of the Catholic church during the Inquisitions was that no rational man could possibly have philosophical differences with mother church so anyone who didn't choose it's loving embrace must be in league with demons. I see the exact same attitude from your assorted ranks of Southern Christians, if you're not with them, you're against them.

Perhaps that's where it comes from, America. You've always defined the rest of the world by allies or enemies, with you or against you, the idea of "live and let live" never seemed to occur to you so perhaps that's why so many of your Christians seemed to take the same attitude: With us or against us, either you're a believer or you're one of those evil secular liberals trying to erode our stranglehold on public morality. Whoops, accidentally slipped into honesty there. I'm not sure when being a fanatical Christian because a requirement for being an American . I imagine it started with the Puritans (people with about the same sense of fun as Hirohito). Certainly, by the time that Bush the Elected declared that atheists couldn't be patriotic, it was ingrained. The synthesis of piety and nationalism, agree with me or be labelled unpatriotic, unChristian, sieg heil and pass the jackboots. Much like nationalism, zealotry needs an enemy, someone to rail against and the fanatical Christians found it in the society that was no longer thinking of everything in terms of God and Satan. In reality, the cash register did more damage to Christmas than secularism ever did but ruthless capitalism has been the American way for the last fifty years so you couldn't campaign against that, better to go after the secularists. Better to create an enemy.

I'm not sure when it happened but somehow, the image of the American became the image of the American Christian. In your constitution, you have seperation of church and state built in but half of your country seems to be so ignorant of history that they ignore that. They insist that their view of things is the right one, the only acceptable one. A generic season's greetings isn't enough, it has to be exclusively a Christian greeting. It isn't enough that gay people aren't accepted by the church, the law of the land has to discriminate against them as well. It isn't enough for a schoolkid to be able to pray, he has to be able to pray in a moment of silence created especially for the purpose. The entitlement complex rolls on America. Your fervent Christians hold marches and rallies. Perhaps it's racial memory but the sound of marching people bellowing slogans about exclusivity puts images of swastikas in my mind's eye. But somewhere in my mind's eye, I see wild-eyed fanatics dumping Harry Potter books on bonfires and I remember that old saying "Where they begin by burning books, they will end by burning people".

"Is your God such a worldly god that He must play at politics?" ~ Sir Francis Walsingham

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Letters To America - The Divided Nation

"And so, it begins" ~ Kosh Naranek

Dear America,

Can you explain to me what the fuck "conservative" actually means these days? Because it seems that these days, anything someone on the right does is "conservative" and therefore good while anything anyone on the left does is "liberal" and therefore bad. The actual principles I always thought of as "conservative", things like small government, states rights, transparency and accountability in government, responsible taxation; barely anyone still on the right is actually espousing those values. Under Bush, who is apparently a "conservative", you have the biggest, most secretive and corrupt government in recent history, taxation so irresponsible that your great-grandchildren are going to be paying down the debt and he thinks so much of states rights that he went straight to the SCOTUS to steal the election and keeps trying to enact an ammendment banning same-sex marriage instead of letting the states sort it out on their own. Meanwhile, Clinton, who actually did abide by those principles to an extent is held to be a man of the far-left. I just don't get it.

Watching Mrs. Alito's wholly-manufactured waterworks during her hubbies rubber-stamping, I am however reminded that the right has learnt the lessons of media manipulation far better than the left. While Scalito was answering some fairly normal questions, his wife bursts into tears, allowing Republicans and their media noise-machine to rant about "vicious Democrats". I smell set-up here but the accusations did allow a friend of mine (someone I like and respect even while his political opinions are rapidly shifting to the right of Attila the Hun) to rant about how liberals and the left have long since given up any pretense to civil discourse (this coming from the party of Ann Coulter, Dick "fuck you" Cheney, Jack Abrahamoff, the Dan Rather witchunt and the Swift Boat Smear) and he's not alone in thinking that. This kind of mindset, a way of looking at the world where black is white, the media is liberal and asking fairly normal questions is "vicious interrogation" if a Republican says so is alarmingly common. So, I'm forced back to my original opinion: It's not about policies or principles anymore, it's about tribalism, an "us vs them" mentality. The right consider themselves to be at war with us, with liberalism and, like any war, any tactics are excusable. It's acceptable to lie, cheat, take bribes, manipulate the media, steal elections, anything at all so long as it's the right doing it. Bush's real mistake is that he doesn't come right out and say "yes, I stole the election. I had to protect us from terrorism" because seemingly the entire Republican party would give him a free pass these days.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that America was dead, in principle if not yet in fact and one of those reading suggested (quite reasonably) that the McCarthy era was worse. He pointed out that McCarthy essentially controlled the entire political apparatus and it took a full-blown expose of how illegal his actions were to stop him. I respect the readers opinion but I also have to respectfully disagree. With McCarthy, there was a political will to stop him, there was a media which were actually interested in looking for the truth, there was a public vaguely interested in whether their politicians were crooks. Today, there are none of those things. Today, you have all three branches of government controlled by the extreme-right fringe and, thanks to the efforts of Diebold, that's not likely to change anytime soon. You have a media dominated by extreme right pundits (anyone about to say anything about Michael Moore can kindly go and boil their head), a media so browbeaten by the accusations of "liberal bias" that they now have a distinctly conservative bias (of course, the cries of "liberal bias" have to be kept up to prevent the media resetting to anything like a neutral position). If Watergate happened today, the only result would be the arrest of a few people for leaking information. Far from impeached, Bush would be applauded for going outside the law so long as he claimed it was to keep the country safe. As for the electorate, it seems that the majority of the electorate either just doesn't care or is so throughly brainwashed that they will laud anything anyone on the right does, regardless of right or wrong, legal or illegal or even whether it works. Are there those who don't fit that? Yes, of course but if they exist in any great numbers and given the nakedly incompetant, corrupt and criminal actions of the administration, where are the protests? Where are the riots, the acts of civil disobediance? Where are the cries of "have you no decency?"?

No, this is worse than McCarthy. McCarthy wasn't having hundreds or thousands of people locked up on no charge (McCarthy always charged them, even if that charge was bullshit). There were checks on McCarthy's power, even if those checks weren't used for a long time. I didn't live through the McCarthy era. I'm about twenty years removed from that. I am however, a lover of history, of political intrigue and of mysteries (I am seriously considering having "Collector Of Mysteries" added to my business card) so I think I can draw a comparison and this is far worse than McCarthyism, it's worse than Watergate. With McCarthyism, there were checks of Smokin' Joe's power even if they weren't used. Bush has spent the last five years systematically removing any check on his power. From stuffing the courts with his far-right appointees (many of whom really do deserve the title "activist judge") to setting up "Free Speech Zones" to writing a section into the new Patriot Act making it legal to arrest those protesting his power (Washington Post) to the attempt to remove the filibuster, Bush (or, more likely, his handlers) has deliberatly dismantled every check on his power. An imperial presidency is what he's after and he's damn near achieved it. Power without limit, for ever and ever, amen.

McCarthyism was also different in one regard: McCarthy was a man of principles and, whether I think his principles were completely insane or not, he stuck to them. That's why he went after the Hollywood players who had very little actual power. Bush and co have no such principles. They recognise that actors have virutally no actual power so beyond making sure that everyone knows "Hollyweird" is a hotbed of liberals (and therefore, immoral and evil), haven't bothered going after them. Who needs to have flashy show trials when you can just create an atmosphere where no-one takes the opponant seriously anyway? They're liberals, they were never going to give Bush a chance anyway so why listen when they say bad things about him? And there, Bush's handlers prove both that they're smarter than McCarthy and that they have less principles.

Watergate was different. During Watergate, you had an interested electorate not so easily distracted by questions of patriotism and not so terrified by the threat of terrorism (a threat the Bush administration has ruthlessly exploited, witness the ridiculous naming of a security act [the USA PATRIOT Act] so that it's opponants could be accused of lacking patriotism). You had a political climate not so used to teh politics of smear and abuse and not so accustomed to corruption. During Watergate, you didn't have roughly a quarter to a third of the country who had embraced fundementalist Christianity as another would embrace the cults of David Koresh or Jim Jones and were willing to read any criticism of a fundementalist Christian as an attack of Christianity itself (NOTE: This is not meant to imply all fundementalists engage in cult-like behaviour, nor that all fundementalists are far-right fanatics. However, I've met scores of fundementalists and only three were what I would call decent people). Nixon claimed that anything he did was legal because it was the president doing it and the courts corrected him. Today, it seems that the courts will affirm Bush is right when he says the same thing.

So, I think your situation now is worse. You have a supine electorate, a throughly cowed news media, checks and balances that no longer exist, a judiciary in bed with the very powers they're supposed to be controlling and a chief executive totally beholden to mega-corporations and religious fanatics who views himself as somewhere between Henry Ford and the Messiah. Perhaps, if this was the Christianity I grew up with, a religion that preached faith, love and charity even if their deity seemed to be a psycho, it wouldn't be a problem. If Bush had fallen in with the faction of fundementalism which actually seems to be based on the fundementals of the faith, it wouldn't be a problem. But he didn't. He fell in with the faction of fundementalism (almost the entirety of fundementalism these days) which grew out of and exists in symbiosis with, extreme-right politics and that's not a faith of peace, love and charity. It's a faith of an eye for an eye and rage that the world is no longer as you would like it to be and revenge fantasy (the emphasis on hell). It's a faith not of charity but of "people choose to be poor", it's a faith not of humility before one's supreme being but of lording it over others because we're saved and they're not (oh, they'll deny that but then, they would). There are a few decent people I know who are fundementalists, I don't doubt that there's a few more I don't know but experiance leads me to believe that they are the exception, not the rule. This is not their fundementalism, this is the fundementalism of Pat Robertson and Fred Phelps, this is the fundementalism of supply-side economics (aka: voodoo economics, aka: trickle-down economics) and the imposition of values on the surrounding world. This is the fundementalism where Bibles cost whatever the market will bear. Sometimes, it's also the fundementalism of racism but that's rarer today. You still have a race problem America but it's not as pronounced as it once was. Then again, I still hear people coming out with lines like "I could never be anti-semitic, that would be totally against scripture". Maybe it's my ingrained cynicism but anyone who's primary reason to not be racist is because their holy book says so worries me, there's always the chance that they might reconsider.

But by and large, racism is not teh problem, tribalism is. The noise generated over the last twenty years or so has been very effective at dividing you into two tribes. Through public bombasts like Rush "behold, my inability to sustain a relationship" Limbaugh (no disrespect to those who have divorced but a man with three divorces and a prescription drug problem should not be lecturing me on "traditional" values), myths like the Latte Libel (the myth that liberals are all city folk who drive Volvos, drink Lattes and read the New York Times) and some fairly unsubtle bits of playing to rural resentment of city-dwellers (such as Bush, teh Conneticut Cowboy), the right has largely succeeded in creating a new kind of tribalism. A tribalism of city vs. country, intellectuals vs... who? Anti-intellectuals, I guess. It's neatly divided teh nation into the down-home, good ole boys who vote Republican and can mend an engine and plow a field and have good, honest callouses on their hands versus the snotty, effete liberals in the city who think they know what's good for everyone and would ban the Bible and invite the terrahists in.

Contrary to popular belief, this is not a new phonomenon, it's remarkably easy to start a class war when you can convince one class that they're being oppressed. When I was a kid, they used to tell me that America was a classless society. Like hell are you. You're more riven by teh class divide than England is, it's just that the definitions are a little different. In England, class was about ancestry mostly. In the US, it's about where you live and who you vote for but it's still about class and class is ultimately about tribalism. In England, the class system finally collapsed as a result of Thatcherism (one of the few things Thatcher can be thanked for) but for you America, teh class system kept going and teh New Right played into that ("New Right" = neo-cons, the "fellow travellers" of Gingrich and those who followed him). They studied history and noticed how easily the working class resentment of those in the classes above could be turned into blaming them for everything held to be wrong with the universe. So Gingrich, Bush and their accomplices affected a down-home populism, affecting a working-class rural accent, carpetbagging to rural areas like Texas is often assumed to be, feeding into that resentment with things like the Latte Libel, playing off it by claiming fundementalist religion and anti-intellectualism (which were then mostly rural things), by playing up their supposedly humble beginings. Forget for a second that the man most rewarded for this populaism (Bush) is the silver-spoon son of a career civil servant and politician who's never held a manual job in his life. Forget that teh man most demonised by this movement (Clinton) actually did come from humble, rural origins. Details like that are beside the point to the man in Dogfart, Texas. Convince a little man that he's serving some great purpose and he'll do anything for you. Convince him he's helping to throw off the hated oppressors and he'll vote for you, torture your enemies for you and he'll do it with a smile. Convince him that he's part of a crusade to throw Washington insiders, pointy-headed experts and godless liberals out of government and he'll vote for you and he won't look too closely at what you actually do once they're gone. These aren't new tricks. Machiavelli laid out some of them in The Prince, Hitler used some of them on the German people and told them as much. Lenin, Stalin, the power-hungry have often used similar tactics and any serious student of politics or history soon learns to recognise them but then, any serious student of history or politics is an expert or at one of those hotbeds of liberal treason, a college and therefore, not to be trusted. Clever little system isn't it? Totally self-preserving.

America, schizophrenia is not healthy. Dividing your society into two groups and then seeing how vitriolic the differences will become (and teh right have been far more willing to go down that road, no matter how much self-hypnosis their apologists are willing to engage in) is going to explode, sooner or later. Perhaps it'll come to a new civil war. That's possible but unlikely. Oh, I think the divide has got easily nasty enough for that. I think it'd actually be fairly easy to convince the same stupids (no, conservatives are not necessarily stupid but stupid people do tend to be conservative) who proclaimed theat Roy Moore was being persecuted for his faith to take up arms against the traitorous liberals in their midst but I doubt that will happen. Mostly, there's no need for another civil war. The liberals have no power, the laws and courts are being systematically turned against them and the electorate can be distracted. The traditional bread and circuses, a carefully orchestrated scandal or two that seems to have an effect but just removes a couple of fall guys (the mob had a similar way of occasionally sacrificing someone to the feds), maybe disappear a few of the more public protesters and the problem goes away, everything back to normal. Intimidation, distraction, division, sacrifice a few pawns. Hardly groundbreaking tactics but tried and effective ones.

Have you ever read Orwell, America? George Orwell has been quoted so often these days that quoting him tends to get denounced as standard leftie paranoia (ah, tribalism again, I do love synchronicity) but in many ways, 1984 remains the standard guide to this administration. Spying on one's own citizens, the corporate friendly corruption of the Party, all that's apropos but the bit I was really thinking of right now was the section about teh Party's need for perpetual war, how all the Party really desired of the people was a primative patriotism which could be appealed to when they were needed to work longer hours or accept shorter rations. And then, I turn on my PC and find that Bush has told voters to punish any Democrat whose comments on the Iraq War gives "comfort to our adversaries" (Associated Press), perhaps by pointing out that the bloody war is unwinnable, and I think that Orwell was a prophet and anyone who seriously thinks the similarity to the defintion of treason ("giving aid and comfort to the enemy") was accidental needs to take off the dittohead coloured glasses. Bush may be stuck on The Very Hungry Caterpiller but it seems Rove has read his Orwell.

"So this is how liberty dies - with thunderous applause" ~ Senator Padme Amidala

Letters To America - The One With All The Sex

Dear America,

What the hell is it with you and sex? You've got this really weird dichotomy going here where you're madonna and whore all at once. In the US, sex is an obsession. In the rest of the world, it's a fact.

I can still remember the furore caused by Janet Jackson flashing a boob on national TV. It was weird, totally out of proportion to the actual incident. Here in England, we've had topless women in the pages of newspapers for thirty-odd years, newpapers anyone can buy. These days, it's somewhat fallen out of fashion and only one tabloid still has the Page-3 girl (and these days, they have a Page-7 guy too) but over there, a pop star flashes a boob and the world's coming to an end. It's surreal. You have this culture where hardcore porn is legal (we only legalised it a few years ago) but sex itself is somehow still verboten.

Somehow, you've gone from the country that had Deep Throat on general release to the country where sex is frowned upon. You've got schools pushing abstinence only sex-ed. I can even kind-of follow this one. The proponants argue that abstinence preserves sexual health, prevents pregnancy, encourages self-respect and so on and it's true. Abstinence does all of those things. Abstinence-only sex-ed, on the other hand, does none of them. Here's the FYI guys: Teenagers are going to fuck and, short of chaining them to the dinner table, there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop them. Doesn't matter whether you tell them abstinence is cool, God will love them for it or their balls will drop off after their first shag, they're going to have sex and nothing you say or do is going to stop that. True fact: the kids who actually listen to the abstinence ed are the ones who weren't going to have sex anyway. Some people just don't want to fuck until they get older and hey, that's fine. No-one ever said you had to have sex and part of being sexually aware is being able to judge, honestly and without pressure, if you're actually ready for it. But America, what this bullshit about sex ed somehow "encouraging" teens to shag? Dunno if you know this America but it's only in the last few hundred years that teens haven't been fucking. Go back a couple hundred years and it was pretty common for first-time mothers to be still teenagers. Hell, there's still at least one state in the US where you can get married at twelve. Teenagers don't need any encouragement to shag, they've got all the encouragement they could need flooding through them already. Encouraging them would be a little like offering to buy a Catholic priest a drink: What the hell would be the point?

See, to a Brit, the American attitude to sex is baffling. Here, sex is just not a big deal. You can buy a pack of rubbers from the vending machine in most public lavatories and get them free on the NHS. You get birth control pills free on the NHS. Most people lose their virginity at around sixteen (which is the legal limit), are glad to be rid of it and, beyond the odd check that rubbers are being used, no-one really bothers about it but over there, you've got True Love Waits and The Silver Ring Thing and Lord knows how many other equally dumb clubs with equally ridiculous names, all to prevent people doing one of the very few things that really does come entirely naturally. I mean, I know why, it's because you're crazily religious but to someone from a culture where sex isn't viewed as a necessary evil, it's truly surreal. I can walk into a doctor's office, pick up a card by the door, hand it to the receptionist and get handed a bag of about a dozen assorted rubbers, no questions asked. Over there....?

Y'know America, it's saying something when the fanatics want people to die for having sex. A while back, some bunch of scientists (who would be awarded medals in a just world) discovered a vacination for cervical cancer. Cervical cancer is triggered by a virus called HPV and HPV is a sexually transmitted virus. The Family Research Council opposes the development of the vaccine because "they may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex". The scary thing is that these nutters actually have people who agree with them. It's a lunatic way of looking at things of course because firstly, the human mind simply doesn't work that way. A teenage girl wondering whether to shag her boyfriend does not casually think "I wonder if he's carrying the HPV virus", it just doesn't happen. Secondly, seeing as males can carry and transmit the virus with no effect to themselves at all, what happens if the FRC gets it's way and teh vaccine isn't developed? I'll tell you: Lots of teenagers marry, don't use rubbers and get the HPV virus because facts are facts, you are not going to stop teenagers having it off. Really, you do have to wonder if this bullshit isn't just an excuse to punish sex. I mean, these are the people who impeached Clinton just because he got a blowjob.

I'm not even going to get into the abortion arguement...

And then there's gay people. Over here, being gay is, for the most part, not an issue. OK, you're liable to get beaten up if you're obviously queer and in the wrong neighbourhood at the wrong time and that's bad but bloody hell America, have you looked at yourself lately? A bunch of your states recently enacted legislation purely to prevent gay people from getting married. What the fuck? So let me get this straight: Gay sex is a bad thing but allowing gay people to marry, leading to less promiscuity (and if gay marriage works the same way as hetero marriage, less sex) is also a bad thing? Pre-marital sex is bad but gays shouldn't be allowed to marry and are therefore forced to have pre-marital sex their whole lives? Talk about Southern logic. You've got a good portion of the country that would like homosexuality placed back on the DSM-IV list of mental illnesses, you've got Fred (*spit*) Phelps wandering across the country with his carnival of incitement, you've got ex-gay ministries for fuck's sake. And people actually believe this bullshit, lots of people. Sometimes America, I think that's your big problem: You've got so many people in the country that lunatics who'd just be a background noise here actually have the numbers to make themselves a political force. And then, when Bush was asked about gay people during the presidential debates, the first words out of his mouth were "well, we're all sinners". Evidently, the first thing that comes to Bush's mind when he thinks of gay people is the word "sin". Sometimes I think I should lay off Bush just because it's too easy a target, it's kind of like swatting flies with a Buick but when he comes out with shit like this, you have to wonder if he's drinking that booze or taking it on IV ("No Mr. President, the bag of bourbon isn't empty yet") because this says to me that here is a man who has no interest whatsoever in treating gay people as a normal part of life.

Some time ago, I can remember getting into an arguement with an American because he thought that if gay marriage was legalised, gay people would be allowed to come into schools, kids would get the message that being gay was acceptable. I can remember sitting there scratching my head and thinking "and the problem is...?". Even in the parts of the country where gay people are somewhat better treated, it's still called "tolerance" and that's bullshit. Gay people shouldn't be tolerated. "Tolerance" is what you call it when you think something is bad but choose to put up with it anyway, "tolerance" can kiss my tungas. Anything less than full and total acceptance is still treating gay people as something less than straights, it's still dividing the country into us and them, normal and not normal and how far is it from "not normal" to "not really human" and how far is it from "not really human" to Matthew Shephard crucified on a fence post? In a way, the lack of acceptance is the fault of gay people themselves. No, not for pushing too hard for "tolerance", for not pushing hard enough. I mean, gay people are trying to win their rights through lawsuits and court battles and public opinion and that's very civilised, that's very enlightened but fact is, we're used to thinking of a civil rights struggle as involving huge marches and charismatic speakers. On some level, we still think of a right as something that has to be torn from the bloodied fist of an oppressor, not argued for by people in suits. We're expecting Malcolm X, not A Few Good Men. Forget the lawsuit, let's have some fucking riots! Forget the suit, let's march up Pensylvania Avenue and spraypaint a pink triangle on the wall of the Whitehouse! You want to get antsy about having a gay character on a kid's TV show? Fine, let's put an openly gay character on every show (and they have to be sexually active too, none of this bullshit gay celibacy stuff), let's have RuPaul presenting the news, let's have Ellen DeGeneres doing play-by-play on every football game, let's bring Quintin Crisp back from the fucking dead to teach your kids English Lit. Let's make them sorry they ever mentioned the subject. I mean, what's next? Are we gonna start seeing episodes of Sally Jesse based around "My husband likes to slide his cock up my asshole during sex"? Because that's how it's getting. Voyeurism and condemnation all at the same time, all the little thrill of listening without having to admit you're getting a kick out of it.

In [whoever]'s name America, sex does not have to be this complicated. If you like getting butt-fucked by gangs of burly bikers, just remember to take lube, rubbers and cab fare. It's sex, not a space shuttle launch. For the sake of my sanity America, go out, find a nice girl or guy and just get laid already.

Letters To America - Kicking The Corpse

Of course Bush has lied, he's a professional politician and politics these days is largely about who's able to lie more convincingly. Most politicians lie, the only real difference is what those lies are about.

Now, it's coming out that Bush has indulged in blatantly illegal wiretapping of, well, virtually everyone by the look of it and, like always, we're getting sidetracked by the noise machine into arguements about whether the Patriot Act makes it legal or whether the courts have approved warrantless wiretapping before. None of that actually matters at all because neither the Patriot Act nor previous court decisions overturn the 4th Ammendment. The wiretapping flies in the face of that. In a just world, that'd make him liable for a charge of treason but we don't live in a just world so it won't matter.

In the words of Elvis Costello, "I used to be disgusted but now I'm just amused". After the list of errors, screw-ups and crimes this administration has been guilty of and watched the Right-wing zombies backing him regardless, you eventually just have to shake your head and smile because otherwise, you have to wonder if a full half of the most powerful nation on earth has gone completely fucking tonto. The cult of personality surrounding Bush has now become such that if Jehovah could be bothered to descend from teh sky and say "y'know, this Bush dude is kind of incompetant", a good portion of the Republican party would become maltheist overnight (and Fox "news" would run specials on how evil God is). The adulation of the man has passed beyond anything rational. We're not talking about "his policies are better" anymore, it's outright hero worship, it's the total inability to admit even the possibility that Bush could have made a mistake. I don't use the word "worship" much because I think people misuse it a lot but the adulation heaped on Bush is getting to be fucking terrifying, it really is verging on idolatry. Michael Moore says a few unflattering things about Bush and suddenly he's public enemy number one. Hell, someone wrote a book about all the things wrong with America just to have an excuse to put a photo of Michael Moore at number one. And everywhere, 9/11. That's the excuse for everything. Want to spy on your own citizens? 9/11! The war on terror! And the left is so fucking terrified of being called unpatriotic that they fall into line and the problem goes away. Karl Rove couldn't have hoped for a better excuse. Hell, maybe he wanted this one to happen. I don't know if Rove had anythign to do with a dozen nutcases flying a jet into a couple of office towers but I do know that if someone said to him "3,000 dead and you'll be able to get away with absolutely anything", his only reaction would have been "will 4,000 remove the term limit as well?".

I've been thinking about this a lot recently. Not Bush specifically, more US politics generally. And I tell you what, it's fucking depressing. I mean, you have an administration that is nakedly corrupt (in fact, if not in law), you have a president who went AWOL during his tour of duty in the Home fucking Guard and the story gets spun and sidetracked into a discussion on the authenticity of the documents proving that. Nowhere, not once, was it actually shown that Bush completed his tour but spin, spin, spin and the story suddenly becomes about forged documents. It's not about the facts anymore, it's about a side-issue but who cares, it doesn't change anything. Tom DeLay is indicted and the arguement becomes whether a cheque constitutes bribery. Find the side-issue. Whenever a story breaks about this administration's latest abuse or the latest fuck-up or crime, the story just gets spun into a side-issue, the media cooperate and let it go (anyone who any longer complains about a liberal bias to the news media can kindly fuck off and die, the gene pool could do without that degree of wilfull stupidity) and nothing changes. Stack up what this administration has been suspected of: rigging elections, complicity in several corporate scandals, torturing prisoners, corruption, incompetance, nepotism, stacking the courts with judges who really are activists, starting a war for bullshit reasons. Clinton got his cock sucked by someone who wasn't his wife and we had all-Monica, all the time for over a year, Bush destroys everything worthwhile about the ideals of America and... nothing.

Because he's Bush, you see. He claims he's a conservative (he's not, he's actually a far-right radical) so that makes it alright. I've been thinking on this for a long time, ever since I noticed how violent the left/right divide was and wondering, why are the righties so angry all teh time? Then I thought about it, and I read a little while and I talked to a few people and I had it: They hate us. Liberals that is, progressives. It's not even really about policies anymore, the far-right spin machine was so successful at blurring the left/right divide into the city/country divide that really, it now has about as much to do with actual differences as the Bloods and the Crips (Why do you hate them? "Because they wear blue"). If this was two hill clans, they'd be a-feudin' and a-fightin'. It's politics but that's what it comes down to, they hate us for being liberal. Some of us hate them too and by now, I can kind of understand why. When you've got the majority of the media and about half the country telling you that being liberal is the intelectual version of being a child rapist, it's kind of hard not to hate the people demonising you. Push people into a corner long enough and sooner or later, some of them will come out swinging. Tragic really but that's how humans are.

In a way, it kind of feels like I'm giving a eulogy for the USA here. Oh, the place still exists but only in name, all those ideals that made the USA somethign special, that freedom to say what you like, love who you like, worship how you like, that's gone or going. You can't say what you like anymore because you're being watched, you love another guy or another girl and you're still a second-class citizen and sooner or later, an ammendment will make that near enough permanent. Right now, you can worship how you like but take a look at the public storm over the "Happy Holidays / Merry Christmas" bullshit and tell me it wouldn't be a piece of cake to manipulate them into backing an ammendment to declare the USA an officially Christian nation. Hell, Georgie McCokespoon has practically said as much. But it doesn't matter, it never does. It doesn't matter how many Arabs get tortured on Bush's order or how many elections he stole or how badly he fucked up teh Katrina response or how many of his administration get indicted. It doesn't even matter how much booze Bush is putting away these days because no-one cares. So long as they've got Desperate Housewives and the illusion of elections every few years, they couldn't really give a fuck. Mention any of this and you're a goddamned liberal, you're anti-American, a traitor and maybe the guy in the pub will lay you out and maybe he won't and the whole matter goes away.

I used to love America. Difficult to believe, huh? But really, I did. A lot of kids do in Britain, it's difficult not to. Most of our movies come from teh US, most of our music too. The majority of our TV comes from you guys these days. Even our language reflects that shift. I said "movies" just then when I would once have said "films", your culture gradually subsumes ours. Oh, I can't really blame you for that, that's just how societies work and truth be told, it's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just how things work. But yeah, like most British kids, I learned a lot about the US when I was growing up or rather, about teh US's perception of itself because say what you like about TV and movies but it's probably the most reliable indicator there is of how a society sees itself. I learned that America stands for things like freedom of thought, religion and speech. I learned things like the romanticism of the cowboy hero, the lone stranger dispensing justice at point-blank range (believe me when I say my taste in film has improved over the years). I watched your teen comedies and envied your teens in a nation where you didn't have to wear school uniforms, where you could drive to school at fifteen (yeah, I know but I was a kid and didn't understand the fine distinction). I learned that your country had been through some rough times, that you'd had slavery for a while and there was a war over that but the good guys won and the slaves were freed and everyone was equal now. I believed in the dream of America. Difficult to believe I was that naive, isn't it?

Then I grew up and I realised that none of that was true. You weren't free in thought, speech or religion, not really, only on paper because the USA had the most conformist public culture in the free world. The cowboy? Yeah, sometimes he was the hero and sometimes he wasn't but thos4e people he was so set on defending, I talked to a few of them and they turned out to be petty and small-minded and cruel and actually, not so worth fighting for after all. The teen comedies? I stopped envying kids in the US about the same time I figured out that they really were oppressed. By a school system that's almost designed to take bright kids, sensetive kids and ostracise, alienate and bully them until they kill themselves or each other (see Columbine); by a system that teaches you blind obediance to the clock, to teh bells. Where you have to get a permission slip to take a piss and these days, where being a geek doesn't just make you an outcast and target for violence, it makes you a potential murderer too (see Columbine again). And the big war over slavery? Yeah, turned out that slavery wasn't really teh big issue there. Even the good guys kept slaves and freed? Freed was a joke, free to live in a ghetto, free to get into a gang because you want to stay alive. Oh yeah, you were free to pull yourself out of that ghetto if you could but you had to get over the difference in education, attitude, even language. Realistically, the chances of that were pretty miniscule. I couldn't pin down exactly when it happened but the dream of America, that kind of died for me when I realised that it was built on dead bodies and mythology and a totally self-serving system of government. No-one actually cared about helping their fellow man, not really. They paid lip service to it, they wrote phrases like "all men are created equal" but they didn't really believe it. It was just a pretty phrase, fine as an ideal but you couldn't actually run a society like that, right?

So the dream kind of went sour on me. I think it did on a lot of people. All those fine ideals you grew up with, they don't really count for anything, they never did. The ideals of America, seems like America never really tried to live up to them and by now, they're pretty much dead and gone. Forget freedom, forget privacy; all the government has to do is say the magic word "terrorism" and they can snoop, torture, spy, oppress. Just pretend to be upholding "traditional values", "fighting terrorism" and you can do whatever you like.

I try not to hate you America, I really do but damn, it's difficult these days. On some level, I know that your people aren't really bad, just easily distracted. I know you don't really try to oppress every nation around you, you're just like King Kong, so big and so powerful that everyone gets squashed without you ever really meaning them harm. On some level, I know you don't really mean to persecute your kids so much but ever since the fifties, you've been taught to live in fear of "juvenile deliquency". And I know you're not really cruel, you're just scared. Fear, it seems, is the only real American value. Fear of terrorism, fear of gays, of the "other". You're taught it, cradle to grave. Be afraid, the teacher whispers. Fear of everything and yoy put up with a permanent wartime economy, you devote a full quarter of your income to guns and weapons and bombs and bullets and honestly America, is it any wonder we get worried where you're going to point that thing? I try not to hate you America, I really do but it's not easy. No-one likes being disappointed you see, especially not when the one disappointing you claims they're everythign they said they were. You always thought you were special America. That's why you didn't have to bother playing with others, that's why you could do what you liked, deserved to be able to do what you liked. You were special, the rules didn't apply to you and you trained your people to believe it. "Love it or leave it", "my country, right or wrong", you trained them to think that America had to be loved, it had to be protected. Anyone who criticised you couldn't really have a point, they must just hate you. Hate those freedoms that you shouted so loudly while they withered and died, hate your specialness. Why they wanted you to stop being so fucking superior, how dare they! No America, I can't hate you really. It's said that in death, friend blends with foe and only the void they leave behind is really remembered and maybe that's true. I can't hate you now America. I guess all those high ideals were impossible to live up to really and when you found that out, well, you just stopped trying to live up to them. What else could a reasonable nation do, right?

So that's it, America. That's your eulogy. Probably not the eulogy some expected and I imagine I've pissed off quite a few people listening to me. I've said things they don't want to hear and I guess I've said them a little loud. Sorry about that folks, couldn't help it. It was a hell of a ride, America. I guess you can't chase dreams forever so you gave up those dreams and just tried to look after yourself and if a few people got shoved aside, well, they'd do the same to you, right? No blame there but why did you have to pretend that you lived up to those ideals? Why did you have to pretend that you were so special? Like Citizen Kane's "rosebud", we'll probably never know. So here we are, America. You're dead and gone and I can't help but miss you but missing you or not, it's doesn't really matter. Nothing ever changes, not really.

Letters To America - The Liberal Media Lie

Today, we're talking about the "liberal media" myth. You know, the one where the media is dominated by liberals who give news stories a liberal slant, the one that's complete bollocks. This whole thing got started because years ago, someone did a study that concluded that the majority of reporters have fairly liberal views on social issues. Well, colour me shocked. Of course, that led to the all-pervasive myth that reporters being liberals are unable to report objectively, they have to slant things their own way. These days, it's got to "self-evident" status. If you dispute the myth, you just get told to go watch TV for a while or just plain insulted. Of course, in amongst this, no-one bothers to consider that the people who actually decide what gets on the air or into print, the editors, are overwhelmingly conservative. No, the myth just gets repeated over and over until the media are so scared of being accused of having a liberal bias that the American media actually has a decidely conservative bias (call me a liar? Then why did twice as many daily papers endorse Bush as Gore?). It's called "convincing the self", if you have the lie drummed into you over and over again, you start to believe it and not only that, you actually start to promulgate it too. Yeah, the mainstream media has such a liberal bias that the story about Bush going AWOL from his unit during Vietnam became a debate on whether the documents were forged or not. Now, I'm not going to get into whether or not Bush went AWOL because to be honest, I don't know but you notice how the attention was shifted from the main issue to a side-issue that actually made no difference anyway? I mean, surely the logical response would have been to provide detailed proof that the allegations were without merit before you attack the documents themselves? Or am I just being dense here? I mean, one could play the "It's obvious they were without merit" card except that firstly, it isn't obvious and secondly, this is the same country that impeached a president over getting a blow job. Yeah, the media was real liberal then. For about a year, all we had was All Monica, All The Time and even after he left office, the right is still demonising the poor guy but that's another topic for another time.

What gets me is that teh people spouting this "liberal media" crap so often are people like Bill O'Lielly (host of The No Truth Zone), Ann "Nutcase" Coulter, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. If the media is so bloody liberal, why are they all over it? Bill O'Lielly tells lies, lies, more lies and then lies about his previous lies and there's barely a sound but half the country is ready to hang, draw and quarter Michael Moore for saying unkind things about the president. Seriously, have the dittoheads taken over? I might not like Moore's films but when did disliking the president become a capital offense? Of course, I know why this is happening, the cult of personality surrounding GW Bush but again, that's a topic for another time...