Politics: War Malaise
I'm sad to report that my muteness on Friday was the product of both workload and a surprisingly early onset of war-fatigue. I'm hitting a malaise. I can't sit on top of all this. I can't ponder whether that's the real Saddam Hussein, or one of his body doubles. I'm making jokes about Saddam and his henchdoubles. I'm not a sports fan and I'm paying an un-necessary amount of attention to the NCAA tournament (Butler! Auburn!). I'm stressed out by conversations when they turn to the war. I'm searching for parallels to free me from the angst and strain.
I can't say I've found one yet. I've forecast civil conflict in the United States before, so it doesn't matter what I say. But I think there is something mis-calibrated in our nation right now. We've still got so many people who don't care about anything, they don't show up at the polls, they don't demand information, they don't care about the crimes our government commits in our name, they don't care much about anything. The vast majority of Americans didn't take to the streets when democracy was abrogated in the 2000 election. In fact, more people watched the Super Bowl than performed their most basic duty as a citizen in the 2000 election.
The miscalibration arises from the fact that this same huge hunk of blase bastards have an opinion on everything. In poll after poll, Americans appear to be cleanly divided -- no Don't Knows, no No Opinions. These people who can't be bothered to vote, who blissfully toss litter into landfills and buy Ford Expeditions, who don't read the newspaper and who flip it over to Wheel of Fortune instead of watching the already anemic national news, these people suddenly are foreign policy experts? These people suddenly have some staggering insight into America's energy needs?
How is this possible? How can we be a nation of such lazy, windy, morons who happen to know enough about every subject that polling them isn't a meaningless activity in media-masturbation?
Unless. Waitasecond. Is it possible that our endless polling, our stupid people, all of it, can be clearly resolved by blaming the media? They sure have gotten on my nerves this week. They cover this whole wide war like a hostage standoff. They periodically break breathlessly into wildly inane regular broadcasting to provide "developments" in the war. They gin us up with these outlandish items from their pinprick emplacements on the war frontier. They saddled up with the President on the way to war, and now they've saddled up with the infantry divisions to get the war done. The shots we're seeing are phenomonal. But they are more of the same, and they feed America's disjointedness even more.
These amazing pictures, this incredible blow-by-blow coverage of this war is so disturbing. Americans are being trained to love the war and shown how cool it is, but also how much it is like actual entertainment. We get the highs (Oil-fields captured! Iraqis surrendering!), we get the lows (Resistance stiffens! Republican Guard fights back!).
We're also getting a heaping helping of what we've demonstrated to love the most: agonizing sentiment, in the form of something somebody in a suit tells us is 'chilling' (as in "Chilling photos tonight from Iraq as American POWs are shown ..."), or something somebody in a suit tells us is 'heartwarming' (as in "A heartwarming story tonight as a family sends one of its loved ones off to war, just as a new member of the family is born...")
And I guess that's how I got where I am right now. We're getting this war handed to us, and we're swallowing it up. It is the implementation phase of the war buildup, where we were told interesting lies in an effort to make this part of the war possible by slowly bullying public support over the 50% line. Now we're being shown interesting pictures and given the right dose of death and victory to slowly move public support in the sought-after direction. Meanwhile, Rove and co. will push the budget package with tax cut (Rove's War: 1 Senate, 1 massive tax cut; democracy: 0), the public will learn to hate Americans who exercise their free speech rights by listening to Fox News, and Nigeria's about to plunge into a civil war.
So I've got war malaise. I don't watch it, and I don't want to read about it any more than I have to. I'm not so smart to think I know how it's going to end up, but I have a pretty good idea. In the meantime, I'm going to try and keep my eye on the other balls in the air right now. I'm hoping that, by staring just to the left of the war, some clear picture of America will appear, like those magic eye diagrams.
(What the hell is a development in this war? As we're learning now, war hasn't changed in a long time. War means killing people and getting killed. That's your development. Some of your killers get killed. Some people who don't want to kill anyone get killed. Some people don't mean to kill anyone, but they do anyhow. War is not noble, hasn't been for hundreds of years. War is a nasty, terrible thing people do to each other when some of their number combine a staggering animosity with military hardware. It isn't developing for shit. Try this sentence and these different nouns. First the sentence: "Soldiers on ___________ confronted the enemy and after a fierce _________ battle, took over their position." Here are your nouns: (series one) Bradley Armored Vehicles, M1-H1 Tanks, Abrams Tanks, horseback, foot, hovercraft; (series two) gun, arrow, slingshot, taser, laser, esp, karate. Doesn't matter. It's all war.)
I'm sad to report that my muteness on Friday was the product of both workload and a surprisingly early onset of war-fatigue. I'm hitting a malaise. I can't sit on top of all this. I can't ponder whether that's the real Saddam Hussein, or one of his body doubles. I'm making jokes about Saddam and his henchdoubles. I'm not a sports fan and I'm paying an un-necessary amount of attention to the NCAA tournament (Butler! Auburn!). I'm stressed out by conversations when they turn to the war. I'm searching for parallels to free me from the angst and strain.
I can't say I've found one yet. I've forecast civil conflict in the United States before, so it doesn't matter what I say. But I think there is something mis-calibrated in our nation right now. We've still got so many people who don't care about anything, they don't show up at the polls, they don't demand information, they don't care about the crimes our government commits in our name, they don't care much about anything. The vast majority of Americans didn't take to the streets when democracy was abrogated in the 2000 election. In fact, more people watched the Super Bowl than performed their most basic duty as a citizen in the 2000 election.
The miscalibration arises from the fact that this same huge hunk of blase bastards have an opinion on everything. In poll after poll, Americans appear to be cleanly divided -- no Don't Knows, no No Opinions. These people who can't be bothered to vote, who blissfully toss litter into landfills and buy Ford Expeditions, who don't read the newspaper and who flip it over to Wheel of Fortune instead of watching the already anemic national news, these people suddenly are foreign policy experts? These people suddenly have some staggering insight into America's energy needs?
How is this possible? How can we be a nation of such lazy, windy, morons who happen to know enough about every subject that polling them isn't a meaningless activity in media-masturbation?
Unless. Waitasecond. Is it possible that our endless polling, our stupid people, all of it, can be clearly resolved by blaming the media? They sure have gotten on my nerves this week. They cover this whole wide war like a hostage standoff. They periodically break breathlessly into wildly inane regular broadcasting to provide "developments" in the war. They gin us up with these outlandish items from their pinprick emplacements on the war frontier. They saddled up with the President on the way to war, and now they've saddled up with the infantry divisions to get the war done. The shots we're seeing are phenomonal. But they are more of the same, and they feed America's disjointedness even more.
These amazing pictures, this incredible blow-by-blow coverage of this war is so disturbing. Americans are being trained to love the war and shown how cool it is, but also how much it is like actual entertainment. We get the highs (Oil-fields captured! Iraqis surrendering!), we get the lows (Resistance stiffens! Republican Guard fights back!).
We're also getting a heaping helping of what we've demonstrated to love the most: agonizing sentiment, in the form of something somebody in a suit tells us is 'chilling' (as in "Chilling photos tonight from Iraq as American POWs are shown ..."), or something somebody in a suit tells us is 'heartwarming' (as in "A heartwarming story tonight as a family sends one of its loved ones off to war, just as a new member of the family is born...")
And I guess that's how I got where I am right now. We're getting this war handed to us, and we're swallowing it up. It is the implementation phase of the war buildup, where we were told interesting lies in an effort to make this part of the war possible by slowly bullying public support over the 50% line. Now we're being shown interesting pictures and given the right dose of death and victory to slowly move public support in the sought-after direction. Meanwhile, Rove and co. will push the budget package with tax cut (Rove's War: 1 Senate, 1 massive tax cut; democracy: 0), the public will learn to hate Americans who exercise their free speech rights by listening to Fox News, and Nigeria's about to plunge into a civil war.
So I've got war malaise. I don't watch it, and I don't want to read about it any more than I have to. I'm not so smart to think I know how it's going to end up, but I have a pretty good idea. In the meantime, I'm going to try and keep my eye on the other balls in the air right now. I'm hoping that, by staring just to the left of the war, some clear picture of America will appear, like those magic eye diagrams.
(What the hell is a development in this war? As we're learning now, war hasn't changed in a long time. War means killing people and getting killed. That's your development. Some of your killers get killed. Some people who don't want to kill anyone get killed. Some people don't mean to kill anyone, but they do anyhow. War is not noble, hasn't been for hundreds of years. War is a nasty, terrible thing people do to each other when some of their number combine a staggering animosity with military hardware. It isn't developing for shit. Try this sentence and these different nouns. First the sentence: "Soldiers on ___________ confronted the enemy and after a fierce _________ battle, took over their position." Here are your nouns: (series one) Bradley Armored Vehicles, M1-H1 Tanks, Abrams Tanks, horseback, foot, hovercraft; (series two) gun, arrow, slingshot, taser, laser, esp, karate. Doesn't matter. It's all war.)
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home