Stark, Raving America
Stark, Raving America
No country in the world is as deeply riven by light and darkness as the US
KERSY KATRAK
"America, America, God shed His grace on Thee. And crown thy good with
brotherhood from sea to shining sea."
It was Norman Mailer who said that although America was an impossible
country to live in, he couldn't see himself living anywhere else. When
questioned why, he replied that only in America could he find the very best
in the world and the very worst at his own doorstep. I cannot recollect the
exact words so I paraphrase: "God and the Devil both live here. There's a
war going on in America!" Mailer made this pronouncement in the
mid-seventies. In the intervening three decades this dichotomy has grown
sharply, beyond a perceptive novelist's metaphor into the grim reality of a
schizophrenic nation.
A country unsure of its permanent values, confused by opposing sound bites,
locked into a bitter unforgiving war with itself.
Nothing illustrates this more vividly than last week's events. The State
Department refused to give Narendra Modi any kind
of visa whatsoever. Within the next 48 hours, President Bush had signed a
bizarre congressional bill by which a woman who had been brain-dead for 17
years was to be kept 'alive' by force-feeding through a tube. One was a
decisive reaffirmation of the fundamental human rights enshrined in the
words of Jefferson and Paine. The other a retrograde act in this 21st
century by which "the right to life" was defined by artificially keeping
life signs going in flesh from which all human consciousness and thought had
disappeared.
What's one to make of this country, its mind-numbing President; and this
queer bunch of evangelical 'pro-life' Christians that make up his voters?
Well, I have had the dubious privilege of living many decades ago in the
American Midwest. I know first-hand those isolated towns and the suspicious,
hard-eyed, church-going bunch who live there: mistrustful of anyone not
completely local, with a gun in every cupboard to back that mistrust.
Pro-life you say? It was about them that the East Coast jibe was written:
'If it moves, shoot it!'
These Christians live by the Good Book, have read its great injunction,
"Hurt not the Earth", yet daily allow the dumping of thousands of tons of
toxic waste into the planet's rivers and oceans by their MNCs. And permit
the deforestation of thousands of acres of tropical forests by their timber
and paper lobbies. And look on uncaring at the wasting of the planet's
biodiversity and its genetic pool by licensed American piracy of the
wildness. And without losing a moment's sleep, go to church next Sunday.
And what can we make of this President who confers so often with his "Higher
Father" and who must surely be aware of the words of His Only Begotten Son,
"If thou canst not love thy brother whom thou hast seen, how wilt thou love
God whom thou hast not seen". Yet, this man looks on unflinching at the
'collateral damage' as tens of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi women and
children are bombed out of existence; and their men maimed and tortured.
But, it is not so easy to close the book on America, for as Mailer insists,
America is two countries. There are two narrow regions on both East and West
coasts that are areas of light, and of a liberal humanism: fertile ground
for the arts and the sciences, and for cutting-edge frontier research.
Perhaps the greatest in the world. And between these two: that vast archaic
continent of howling, self-enclosed darkness called Middle America.
Ranged even today against Bush and his neo-cons are Mailer's "armies of the
night": members of the current counterculture, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein,
John Pilger; as fiercely committed as their founding predecessors. It is
largely on account of their courage and persistence that the world has some
coherent record of America's shameless political betrayals, ecological
violation and hard-knuckled economic bullying under the umbrella of the
World Trade Organisation. Starting with the murder of Salvador Allende and
the carving up of Indonesia's natural resources by American multinationals;
through the shameful bullying of the Doha trade conference and a list of
endless doublespeak and broken treaties, ending in the final reneging on the
Kyoto protocol by President Bush, because as the man said smugly, "It's bad
for business."
Uniting this whole schizophrenic mess is the natural beauty of the land.
From the windswept Atlantic shores of Maine across the prairies of middle
America and the icy pines of Colorado, to the final spectacular Redwoods of
Northern California; dropping from steep cliffs to the undisturbed calm of
the Pacific Ocean.
Such stark contradictions held in the grip of a single whole of
heart-rending beauty might be enough to drive any man mad, and the proof was
presented during that fateful week when Modi was denied his visa. A
16-year-old in Minnesota shot both his grandparents and then a dozen
classmates, grinning and waving his gun madly as he fired. And this I
believe is the real problem. If America's madness could be confined to
itself, one might well leave it alone. But America is such a global power
that its schizophrenia threatens, whether by persuasion or by force, to
engulf the world.
And for myself, this last week has been a journey into my own past. I was 21
when I journeyed to America. The beauty and casual cruelty of the land
wounded me: a wound akin to an unhappy falling-in-love. And though I no
longer live in America, I watch its happenings with interest and concern.
But that wound has not entirely healed. And so sometimes as I watch America,
I mourn.
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20050411&fname=Column+Kersy+%28
F%29&sid=1
No country in the world is as deeply riven by light and darkness as the US
KERSY KATRAK
"America, America, God shed His grace on Thee. And crown thy good with
brotherhood from sea to shining sea."
It was Norman Mailer who said that although America was an impossible
country to live in, he couldn't see himself living anywhere else. When
questioned why, he replied that only in America could he find the very best
in the world and the very worst at his own doorstep. I cannot recollect the
exact words so I paraphrase: "God and the Devil both live here. There's a
war going on in America!" Mailer made this pronouncement in the
mid-seventies. In the intervening three decades this dichotomy has grown
sharply, beyond a perceptive novelist's metaphor into the grim reality of a
schizophrenic nation.
A country unsure of its permanent values, confused by opposing sound bites,
locked into a bitter unforgiving war with itself.
Nothing illustrates this more vividly than last week's events. The State
Department refused to give Narendra Modi any kind
of visa whatsoever. Within the next 48 hours, President Bush had signed a
bizarre congressional bill by which a woman who had been brain-dead for 17
years was to be kept 'alive' by force-feeding through a tube. One was a
decisive reaffirmation of the fundamental human rights enshrined in the
words of Jefferson and Paine. The other a retrograde act in this 21st
century by which "the right to life" was defined by artificially keeping
life signs going in flesh from which all human consciousness and thought had
disappeared.
What's one to make of this country, its mind-numbing President; and this
queer bunch of evangelical 'pro-life' Christians that make up his voters?
Well, I have had the dubious privilege of living many decades ago in the
American Midwest. I know first-hand those isolated towns and the suspicious,
hard-eyed, church-going bunch who live there: mistrustful of anyone not
completely local, with a gun in every cupboard to back that mistrust.
Pro-life you say? It was about them that the East Coast jibe was written:
'If it moves, shoot it!'
These Christians live by the Good Book, have read its great injunction,
"Hurt not the Earth", yet daily allow the dumping of thousands of tons of
toxic waste into the planet's rivers and oceans by their MNCs. And permit
the deforestation of thousands of acres of tropical forests by their timber
and paper lobbies. And look on uncaring at the wasting of the planet's
biodiversity and its genetic pool by licensed American piracy of the
wildness. And without losing a moment's sleep, go to church next Sunday.
And what can we make of this President who confers so often with his "Higher
Father" and who must surely be aware of the words of His Only Begotten Son,
"If thou canst not love thy brother whom thou hast seen, how wilt thou love
God whom thou hast not seen". Yet, this man looks on unflinching at the
'collateral damage' as tens of thousands of Afghan and Iraqi women and
children are bombed out of existence; and their men maimed and tortured.
But, it is not so easy to close the book on America, for as Mailer insists,
America is two countries. There are two narrow regions on both East and West
coasts that are areas of light, and of a liberal humanism: fertile ground
for the arts and the sciences, and for cutting-edge frontier research.
Perhaps the greatest in the world. And between these two: that vast archaic
continent of howling, self-enclosed darkness called Middle America.
Ranged even today against Bush and his neo-cons are Mailer's "armies of the
night": members of the current counterculture, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein,
John Pilger; as fiercely committed as their founding predecessors. It is
largely on account of their courage and persistence that the world has some
coherent record of America's shameless political betrayals, ecological
violation and hard-knuckled economic bullying under the umbrella of the
World Trade Organisation. Starting with the murder of Salvador Allende and
the carving up of Indonesia's natural resources by American multinationals;
through the shameful bullying of the Doha trade conference and a list of
endless doublespeak and broken treaties, ending in the final reneging on the
Kyoto protocol by President Bush, because as the man said smugly, "It's bad
for business."
Uniting this whole schizophrenic mess is the natural beauty of the land.
From the windswept Atlantic shores of Maine across the prairies of middle
America and the icy pines of Colorado, to the final spectacular Redwoods of
Northern California; dropping from steep cliffs to the undisturbed calm of
the Pacific Ocean.
Such stark contradictions held in the grip of a single whole of
heart-rending beauty might be enough to drive any man mad, and the proof was
presented during that fateful week when Modi was denied his visa. A
16-year-old in Minnesota shot both his grandparents and then a dozen
classmates, grinning and waving his gun madly as he fired. And this I
believe is the real problem. If America's madness could be confined to
itself, one might well leave it alone. But America is such a global power
that its schizophrenia threatens, whether by persuasion or by force, to
engulf the world.
And for myself, this last week has been a journey into my own past. I was 21
when I journeyed to America. The beauty and casual cruelty of the land
wounded me: a wound akin to an unhappy falling-in-love. And though I no
longer live in America, I watch its happenings with interest and concern.
But that wound has not entirely healed. And so sometimes as I watch America,
I mourn.
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20050411&fname=Column+Kersy+%28
F%29&sid=1
posted by bitandpieces at 7:23 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home