Letters To America - On Awakening

"What's the time? / Seems it's already morning" ~ Roxette, Spending My Time

There seems to be something in the air, perhaps you can feel it. For the last six years, we have all suffered through the long night of Bush (and I truly believe that the eventual story of Bush's administration should be called "The Long Night") but lately, it seems there is a reason to hope once again. It seems that finally, after so long a nightmare, we are all starting to awake.

Optimism doesn't come easily to me. I am, by nature, a pessimist and a cynic and so, it takes a while for me to accept that something worthwhile is resurfacing. It seems that Bush has already become a lame duck. Even now, eighteen months ahead of time, the focus is entirely on who the Democratic candidate will be in 2008 and, while Diebold should never be counted out, it seems to be taken as read that the Democratic nominee will be the one measuring for drapes on Pensylvania Avenue after all is said and done. It's unusual for any political party to have such a bountiful crop of potential nominees but the Dem frontrunners already seem to resemble an All-Star team. Hillary Clinton is bright, eloquent and committed. I have a few problems with her policies but nothing which would make me run screaming and she would always have her husband's advice to call upon. Barrack Obama will almost certainly be president one day. I'm not sure this is his time but his time will come. Young, bright, passionate with an ethnic background that can only help him connect to the people. Sharp dresser and, of course, it helps that he's a handsome man (let's be honest, it never hurts). Dennis Kucinich would probably make the best president of all of them but will also probably never get the chance. To his credit, he has discovered a real talent for the meaningful quip.

And then there's Al Gore. The promotion of Al Gore is probably the cloest thing we've seen to a genuine grassroots movement for a long time in politics. According to a poll I read this morning, Gore ranks third amongst the Democratic candidates which doesn't sound too special until you realise he hasn't even announced yet. It would be easy to complain that Gore should have been president for the last six years. It's true too but as difficult as it has been for us, it seems the time away has been good for Gore. He seems tougher, more driven and he's actually discovered that he's allowed a personality (and frankly, not before time). The old Gore seemed timid, like a preppy schoolboy terrified of saying the wrong thing. This new Gore is likeable, even (dare I say it?) charismatic and he has discovered his cause (or, more accurately, he's more openly committed to his cause). Every great president should have a cause. FDR had the Nazis, Lincoln had slavery. It's difficult to say what Clinton's was since he spent most of his second term being treated like a chew-toy but Gore now has his cause: Saving the planet. That's one hell of a cause.

Amongst this, the Chimp In Chief seems somewhat lost. Like a petulant child, he pops up to announce some grandiose new lunacy, fiddling while Washington burns but shortly thereafter, he is forgotten again. His great ally, Tony Blair, can't afford to back him anymore since the feeling in England is that if Blair keeps quiet for the next seven months, he can have a dignified exit and retirement but if he tries anything radical, he'll be out on his ear. The increasingly megalomanical VP appears every so often amidst a cloud of brimstone but even he no longer intimidates as he once did. Even the general public are starting to look at Cheney and realise that the man is simply out of control. In a way, I almost feel sorry for the conservatives. Because we need the genuinely conservative. I'm about as liberal as they come but we need the opposite number to hold us down, reign in our excesses and force us to refine our ideas but Bush has taken the conservative ideas to such extremes and made such a mess of them, that the entire conservative philosophy is likely to be discredited with him.

You're not out of the woods yet, America, there's still some dark days ahead of you. Between Cheney's madness and Bush's pathological need to prove he still matters, you may yet be dragged into a doomed war on Iran. It's a war that the US would inevitibly lose but then, winning was never the point. The point was simply to tie up the oil reserves, pushing the price of crude to stratospheric levels. In Iraq, that strategy has worked beyond every hope. Iraq would struggle to pump a million barrels of crude a year these days and we've all seen what that's done to the price of oil. How much further would that price climb if Iran were subjected to a similar fiasco? Oh yes, lot's of people would die in the process but not Bush or Cheney or any of their loved ones so it makes no odds to them. When you consider that Bush's entire administration has been a mission to aid a very narrow, very wealthy elite that he once described as his "base", his administration has been wildly successful, judged purely on those grounds. Oil prices at record highs, billions disappearing into the pockets of Halliburton, Bechtel, Custer Battles and similar contractors, much of it unaccountable and unaccounted. At home, civil rights have been stripped back to, and in some cases, beyond the bare minimum and the great neoconservative dream of destroying the welfare state entirely? Well, there were some hiccups in that such as the embaressing collapse of teh Social Security sabotage but otherwise, things are ticking along nicely. So you still have a ways to go, America, you're not safe yet.

Why then, do I feel so chipper? Because the country is finally seeing Bush for what he is. A none-too-bright frat boy who coasted through life on his family name. A family name that was essentially a trust fund that should never have run dry but now, it seems the cheques are beginning to bounce. His adventurism is coming back to bite him, the base he once relied upon are becoming uncomfortable with him and even his father, phonomenal manners and all, couldn't save him (the late and sorely missed Ann Richards once described Bush Sr. as "born with a silver foot in his mouth". He promptly had a silver brooch made up in the shape of a foot and sent it to her as a gift. There's a man who takes a little mockery with good grace). Finally, a mainstream media figure (the wonderful Keith Olberman) is saying what we've all been thinking and saying it with more passion and eloquence than most of us could muster. Liberals are starting to come out of the woodwork. The long night is not yet over and things may well be darkest still to come but perhaps, finally, dawn is starting to break.

"How long? Not long, cause what you reap is what you sow" ~ Rage Against The Machine, Wake Up!

Letters To America - Where Do We Go From Here?

Originally written 22/01/07

I've never trusted beginnings, tricksy little things. Give me an ending, you know where you are with a good ending ~ The Kindly Ones, The Sandman

It's always tricky, writing commentry at this time of year. As the new year is born, the old year is dying. The Romans knew this, that's why Janus had two faces. It's tempting to say "happy new year" and wish everyone well except that I doubt this new year will be any happier than the last. People have called me a pessimist often. I always respond that I am a realist and if the two seem so similar, it is because reality so often conforms to my worst expectations. Perhaps echoing the season, the year ended with a trifecta of deaths...

In any normal year, it would be folly to describe James Brown as the least important death. The man's gifts to music are well known, his charisma and energy are legendary and yet, this year, his death is the least noteworthy. An old man shuffles off this mortal coil and departs for the wild blue yonder and what is so surprising about that? I have heard that James Brown was not so pleasent a person in his personal life, I have heard he was a wifebeater. Perhaps he was. Perhaps he was like the rest of us, no better or worse except for his remarkable talent, a flawed person with many failings. Most legends are when you look closely enough.

So, the corpse of the brutal tyrant has had him moment swinging in the wind. Now what? Yes, Hussein was a monster, perhaps he was even deserving of the death penalty (I am a supporter of the death penalty in certain circumstances) but really, what difference is it going to make? Are those opposing the occupation likely to now give up and go home? Probably not. They may even fight all the harder. It's difficult to say what should have been done with Hussein. He was too dangerous to allow him to live but in death, he may have become a martyr. Realistically though, his living or dying will probably make little difference. We're still stuck in an intractable occupation which shows no signs of ever ending; Iraq is either in or close to a civil war (depending on how you define the term) and is a collosal disaster regardless. The irony is that, in removing Hussein, we may well have destroyed the country. The Sunnis, Shias and Kurds might have been able to agree that they hated Saddam more than they hated each other. Now that he's gone... It's difficult to see how Iraq can survive as a nation now and let us not forget that Hussein took information we needed to the gallows with him. What was disturbing about Hussein's death was the degree of celebration that accompanied it. Even I, as a supporter of the death penalty, was taken horrified by it, by the degree of glee in evidence. Even when we are forced to execute someone, we must never forget that this was, in the end, a fellow human being. A man who had parents and children who, presumably, loved him. Do you think they were watching as the floor dropped out from under him and the rope snapped taut? I hope not. It is a terrible thing to put another human being to death, a monsterous thing which makes monsters of us all and yet, on occasion and very rarely, we must become monsters for a time because some are simply too dangerous to be allowed to live. Still, if we must be monsters for a time, we must be careful that we don't forget how to be something else. If we are forced to kill a man, it must be with sadness, solemnity and respect for the momentous wrong we commit, it must never be a joy to behold for that way lies madness.

And then, finally, we come to Gerald Ford and what can be said of him? Perhaps the kindest thing that can be said of Ford was that he did nothing and in politics, that's sometimes the hardest trick to master. He was a C-grade President, neither especially good nor especially bad. A nation cannot always be led by great men and between the great men and the fools, there will always be the great ruck-and-run. The middling people, the one's who were "not bad". Compared to Georgie, he looks like a MENSA member. Yes, we could always say that "Ford was brighter than GW" but the statement would always by flawed by the unspoken addition: "yeah, but so's yeast".

And what of Georgie boy? How has he finished up the year? Not in the best of shape. His ratings hold steady at somewhere between "low" and "dear lord"; indictments and possible impeachment tick ever closer and shortly, he will probably (assuming he doesn't find some way to stop it) have to contend with a Democratic Congress. Still, I have a horrible suspician that it won't make any difference. I have a horrible suspician that Bush will treat the Democratic Congress the same way he treats the UN, as something to rubber-stamp his ideas or be ignored if they won't play along. During the dying days of the Nixon administration, someone quietly pointed out to Nixon that he still had the military, he could always resist his removal. Perhaps the best thing that can be said of Nixon is that at the tipping point, he stepped back from that. As bad as he was, he wasn't willing to be quite that bad. It is a disquieting realisation that, in the same circumstances, Bush might very well go with the military option. Truthfully, that's probably what it would take to force the masses to awaken from their opium (of the people) dreams. Some will tell you that the Midterm results are an indication of a great landslide, that the people have finally awakened and will hold Bush's feet to the fire. I wish I had it in me to be so optimistic. More likely, having done their duty and registered their dislike, the people will go back to sleep, lulling themselves to bed with American Idol and ABC News because the great masses of the people aren't necessarily evil but they do have a very short attention span. And if the right-wing pulls every dirty trck there is, blocking inquiry, ignoring Congress, obstructing every step of the way, would the great mass of people notice or care? Probably not because their TV won't tell them anything about it. There's the problem with allowing a dumbed-down mass media, you end up with a lot of dummies. The Democrats won't fight as hard, they won't throw as much mud because, unlike the Republicans, they still haven't learned to go for the jugular. They still haven't learned that modern politics is not about policy or positions or even results; it's a popularity contest about perception. That was John Kerry's great failing: He couldn't speak in soundbites and a serious, thoughtful man, a man whose thoughts took more than five seconds to explain, he was a sitting duck in the modern climate.

Because perception is everything you see. George W. Bush is rapidly solving the question of whether he's evil or just insane by replying "both" but he can still count on about a third of the electorate because that third still percieve him as a good old boy, one of them. Politics no longer selects for the great and good, it no longer selects for the genius or the unconventional thinker or even the iconoclast, it selects the people who look like the electorate. The people vote for the politicians who look like them and if you have a similar opinion of humanity as I do, that means that what you end up with is someone not too bright, self-serving, petty and vindictive but just bright enough to surround himself with clever men. Like a corporation, the true power lies not with the CEO but with the Board. And that's why the right is so insistent on rehabilitating the memory of Reagan and Vietnam.

So, where do we go from here? I have bad news for you. It will get worse before it gets better. It's possible that the Bush junta will find a way to prevent the new Congress taking office but it's more likely that they will simply find a way to make Congress irrelevant. People will continue to disappear for all legal purposes, people will still be tortured, Bush will still do exactly what he likes when he likes. Yes, you have a chance now, a very small chance, to pull your country back from the brink but I'll be honest, the odds are against you. The long night of the last six years has had plenty of time to bed in deeply and get comfortable and it's going to take a lot of sweat, tears and blood to shift it. Feel like getting drunk now? Think I'll join you.

And if I cannot sleep for the secrets I keep / it's a price I'm willing to steal / the end of the night never comes too quickly for me ~ Catatonia, Strange Glue

Letters To America - The End Of The Line

Originally written: 31/12/06

This is it, folks. This is where it all comes tumbling down. Usually, when I rant and rave about the death of America, I do that for a lot of reasons. One is because I'm paranoid as fuck but another is because, like the man said, the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

Well, three stories hit me pretty hard today. The legalising of torture, you all know about by now. Then I hear that the SCOTUS is going to "revisit" (i.e. reverse) Doe V. Bolton ( link ), then I hear the House has approved the "Iran Freedom Support Act" ( link NOW UNAVAILABLE ). Yeah, sounds harmless but you might as well call it the "Pretext For Invading Iran" Act 'cos that's what it is. It's the neocons victory party, man. Legalise torture, invade half the Middle-East, outlaw abortion. Hey George, what shall we do next? I know, let's build internment camps for liberals! Ooops, I mean "terrorists".

Nothing left now. Wasn't so bad all that long ago. Seven years ago, your biggest problem was where the president kept his cigars. Today, torture. Damn, let's just move 1984 out of the fiction section 'cos Orwell was a frigging prophet. All the party wants is power, power for it's own sake and they never have enough power. And there are still people supporting this administration! For whoever's sake, guys, LOOK AT YOURSELVES!. Your Constitution has been shredded like so much rodent bedding and your monster of a president is legalising torture and no, I'm not going to fuck around arguing about whether it's torture or abuse or whether 9/11 makes it ok or whether Bush has the power to order it because I really couldn't give a fuck. He's legalising torture, ergo, he's a monster. I couldn't give a shit what kind of pretty language you call it or how many different euphemisms you can come up with, it's still torture.

You no longer have the right to freedom from fucking anything, your country no longer has the right to the moral high ground on anything ever because this is worse than 9/11. That was a bunch of murderous savages committing an atrocity, this is the fucking government of the most powerful nation on earth, coldly and rationally, legalising torture. They're savages, you weren't supposed to be.

Tommorrow, I might have enough passion to rant and rave about this monstrocity of an administration again. Right now, it's just too fucking depressing.