- (There has been a fair amount written recently about
whether America should just get over the inhibitions of its anti-imperial
origins and boldly embrace the fact of its having swelled and fattened
into a full-fledged empire - a kind of imperial coming out of the closet,
if you will. Favoring, as I do, honesty in politics and human affairs,
I tend to support this approach.
But before all the drawling, born-again, yahoo-patriots with custom shotgun
racks in the rear windows of their Cadillacs and faded little flags fluttering
from the antennas break into the chorus of "Onward Christian Soldiers"
(actually, an excellent choice for a new Imperial Anthem), a few qualifying
reflections are in order.
Rome built magnificent roads, aqueducts, forums, and theaters where its
imperial footstep trod. America leaves behind Coca-Cola bottlers, Lay's
potato-chip distributors, piles of trash, cluster-bomb canisters, and landmines.
Rome built beautiful temples and embraced all religions. America sends
loopy fundamentalist missionaries and people who believe God is an alien
life form speaking from tin cans to disparage the ancient beliefs of others.
Rome at least had some great emperors before it fell into decline and experienced
such notable events as a group of legionnaires declaring a horse to be
emperor. America starts off with the likes of Reagan, Clinton, and Bush
- one intelligent, immersed in hormones, sandwiched between two bell hops
elevated to the imperial purple. I know, I forgot the whining, snobbish
mama's boy who doesn't eat broccoli and who kept looking at his watch
when others spoke in a debate, but then, so have most Americans.
It has been observed that so often true evil has a banal appearance, and
in the case of many of history's most evil people, this appears often
to have been the case. Think of Hitler eating his beloved pastries, the
vegetarian, non-smoker and teetotaler, watching Marlene Dietrich movies.
Or Himmler, the weak-chinned, former chicken farmer who ran the dread
powers of the SS and other state security for the Third Reich. Think of
Stalin, generally sitting quietly at meetings or dinners, always praised
by outside observers for his modest manner, quietly smoking his pipe and
rarely drinking much even while those around him were reduced to comradely
stupor.
These are the kind of people who once in power set in motion the machinery
that employs the psychopaths and thugs that constitute some natural share
of any society's population in order to turn bad dreams into reality.
Generally, their own boots are not splattered with the blood of their
victims.
And so we have Emperor Bush, certainly not ranking as one of the great
menaces of history, but a man whose banality comes married to a decided
taste for the stupid and brutal use of power.
As to his banality, it would be hard to match not just among the world's
leaders, but also among the men briskly walking by on any busy downtown
street. His droning, nasally voice suggests a cardigan-sweatered Ozzie
Nelson giving Dave and little Ricky a homily after being caught chugging
root beers in the kitchen. One senses in Mr. Bush intense earnestness
about insignificant matters and uninformed self-righteousness about big
ones. One imagines him fitting right in as the manager-trainee going nowhere
in the ladies' garments department at a Wal-Mart or the petty assistant
vice-principle at an elementary school whose life swells with purpose
when disciplining ten-year olds.
Actually, if it weren't for his slurred pronunciation, his Archie-Bunker
vocabulary, and the odd, deliberate nincompoop-phrase like "Axis of
Evil" or "homicide-bombers" cropping up, there would be
no reason ever to listen to his speeches. You can learn nothing from them.
They are imperial gestures. His words and views are utterly predictable
and commonplace in their expression. The empire would be no worse off
were his staff to prepare a multi-purpose, all-occasion, error-free DVD
and distribute it to the press corps and members of Congress.
But in so many of Mr. Bush's words and actions one also senses that same
conscience-numbed, sniggering tone he used during his campaign in speaking
of the scores of prisoners executed in Texas. Whether it's thousands of
innocents killed in Afghanistan, murdered and mistreated Afghan prisoners,
or Mr. Sharon's running a Murder Incorporated, the tone is the same. Just
as with the prisoners in Texas, his emphasis is always on, not the plight
of those suffering before him, but on the crimes they are presumed to
be answering for.
The banal Mr. Bush in a comparatively short period has managed to give
the world a nasty whiff of in-your-face Americanism and, while doing so,
to create the beginnings of a dark, unholy alliance. While I fully recognize
the inconsistency of speaking about foreign policy and morality in the
same breath, still America is the world's first great empire that pretends
to adhere to principles of democracy and concern for human rights. There
is some reason at least to hope that the mold of history in these matters
might one day be broken.
Well, the simple fact is, that with virtually every breath Mr. Bush has
worked against these important principles. His idiotic, undefined War against
Terror has created needless destruction and privations, threatening itself
to become a kind of global terror. That and his cavalier attitude towards
international treaties have set a frightening precedent and basis for
relationships with the rest of the world.
Israel's Sharon is free to crush Palestinians' hopes, crushing a good many
of their people along the way. Russia's Putin, in return for toning down
his criticisms of American policy, has been given carte blanche to continue
state-terror in Chechnya, the bulldozing of Jenin on a vaster scale. And
Turkey, in return for its support of a future attack against Iraq, appears
to have received the same carte blanche for its campaign against the Kurds,
a people who have suffered under Iraq, Iran, and Turkey and who were treated
atrociously by that tireless worker for peace, Henry Kissinger.
Oh, and then there's the new alliance, complete with an exchange of bounty
for information and cooperation, with a military man in Pakistan. And the
"we'll bomb, you fight" pact with cutthroat warlords of the
Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. Of course, they are looking for someone
to fill the same role in Iraq, but it's going to be tough with the record
of flip-flops and betrayals the U.S. has earned amongst various groups
there over the years.
I am reminded of the old joke, "What do you get when you cross a canary
with a gorilla?" "I don't know, but when it sings, you had better
listen." Perhaps better than any image I can come up with, this joke
describes Mr. Bush as Emperor. A weak, narrow, uninformed man married
to a colossal, imperial military machine. And you had better listen. ___
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- John Chuckman encourages your comments: jchuckman@YellowTimes.org
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