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.