So I am having the happy lunch time read in Chris Hedge's book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002) when I bump my head into that small piece of social unpleasantry:
Why did we majikally think that the end of the cold war would majikally mean a triumph for democracy?I can appreciate that many of us were not at all impressed with Milton Filmore's Romance with Generalissimo Pinochet that had so helpfully underlines the dark truth:
Democracy needs capitalism.So WHY did we majikally think that Yugoslavia would be able to make the nice clean and straight up transition from Mixed Market Economy leaning towards communism to the more mainstream Mixed Market Economy, leaning towards a Democratic Republic.
But capitalism does not need Democracy
Or worse yet, why didn't we actually pause to think, or investigate, or deal with what was really going on as Serbia shifted from marxist dogma to serbian nationalist dogma, and things just got crazy??? Did we really hope that what we were doing breeding those nice dot.bomb corporations were going to open up the Freedoms of the Fantastical FSF that would lead to the wider distribution of Knowledge, and with that the inevitable and logical teleological phenomenology that Representational Democratic Republics based upon sound well regulated open and transparent markets were going to take us all to the Promised Land.
WHAT WERE WE THINKING????
Worse yet, why is it that when El Prez wanted to restore the wetlands in iraq, and wanted to finally, after so many other excuses started to weaken and become 'underoperable' on a truthier scale, didn't MORE of us notice and POUND on the table that Representational Federal Democratic Republics do not just fall off the back of the bus. That there was going to need to be some actual commitment to 'bringing democracy to iraqi' and the rest of the places that were suppose to majikally opt to embrace those wholesome rockwellesque bits and pieces of a Capraesque Americana.
So now, as we look at the prospects that some americans may not want to keep the current administration in office, do they REALLY still want to pimp me the majik of never-never land and that some how a change in the presidency will some how mean that Freedom, Liberty, Justice, and the rest of those sunday school political dogma are going to go busting out all over like freshly planted spring wonders!!!
Should americans start worrying bigger Big Time that we have been posting the worst graduation numbers in a long time... and worse yet, that the next generation may not be as sold on the alleged american ideals... Since, uh, well, it's not as clear that americans are currently holding any of those ideals. I mean it remains comical that for all the whining about 'bailing out the snivellers who took bad loans', no one is out there rampaging about the Wankers who embarked upon the level of banking fraud that was required to get those loans on anyone's books in the first place - let alone transmogrified into the majikal beans that made Bear Stern's Happy Hedge Funds go following jack all the way down the bean stock, but without, well, any bean stock to be falling down near....
So what will it really take for americans to decide that they like the idea of 'democracy', as a form of representational government of those who are majorly committed to self government? Even IF that means that as a part of the self governing the group opts to do things as a Group, and not merely as a cool collection of libertarians who are expecting that the US Military will bomb the bad economic data back into the stone age, so that... uh, those whiney liberals are forced to be punished.... And never mind the mortguage brokers, as it is not like they were under any legal obligation to any banking regulators... and ....
Or should we be more optomistic and hope that as things swirl down the flow folks will understand the VALUE of both a case of ammunition, and the 10 Kilo Sack Of Rice... You know, putting the 'locally grown' back into the lexicon of day to day life. Right next to 'counter sniper fire' as a part of getting the daily potable water.
Oh, sorry, I keep forgetting, in america we should never have to think bad thots about what happens when the thin veneer of civilization peels off like a bad suntan. That only happens over there, somewhere, where the natives just do not understand the importances of accessorizing.... Or worse yet, their notion of 'militaire chic' is based not upon the fashion but the survival value.
What if we start working out why it is that the idea:
Person is an entity that it would be wrong to Murder.were a useful notion in, of and by itself, as a part of the larger set of questions about why we do not like to walk around in combat gear, every day, 'doing our duty', and that there are other modalities that might be gooder. You know, like 'after the war'.
Who knows, we might get to a place where we got the clear and compelling distinctions between morality, ethics, law, and that we really should not need to have torture to maintain any of that, for the self evident reasons that are obvious to rational sapient life forms.
Or should we give up on that naivety and just pray for reign, and the glory of those who are left after it all, and the more majikal hope that the survivers will start working out why there had been a 'before time'.
So please, remind me again why it is that folks are optomistic about the American Exceptionalism, that some how their america will keep them all warm and safe and comfy.... You know, as we replace the old failed pre-911 dogma about 'truth, justice and the american way', with the more meaningful Nationalistic Dogma...