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