JULY 14th
Let us go forth, this day of July 4
A day most patriotic
Let us try to explain Liberty
to a nation that is psychotic
In this land most proud, the American
Land of the Short Attention Span
A land of people, yearning to be Free
If only you could drag them, away from the TV
***
I cringe every July 4 when the Boston Globe prints
the full text of the Declaration of Independence.
It might not have been so bad, if not for that clunker
of a statement about "the merciless Indian savages".
I have tried to explain my preoccupation with Indians,
a tough job even for a poet. Today, I will even try to explain
something about France, which is even tougher, in these dark
days of Freedom Fries.
"The merciless Indian savages", huh? Maybe they would
not have seemed quite so merciless if someone had not
been trying to grab their land. Same as any hapless patriots
of Iraq who might be doing now exactly what any red-blooded
American would do for their own country- in their eyes, trying
to defend their country against an occupying force that is
really there for ulterior motives of economic self-interest.
For doing so, they are lumped in with"terrorists", and tortured.
A convenient play of words. I imagine that they are
also assumed to be quite "merciless", which justifies their being
hooded, electro-shocked, exposed to snarling dogs,
raped, murdered. How merciless they are, or how
clueless we are, or how merciless we are, or maybe
all of the above.
A husband of a niece of mine got back from Iraq, having
been injured in an explosion. He had volunteered to go over there.
A cousin has a son there, and tells me how tough and brave
he is, and how "there are some good things happening, there."
You don't know what to say. You don't want to offend them.
You politely smile and nod, later feeling guilty that you
should have tried to engage them a bit more, as useless
as it would have been.
You can see that they are fine people, just naive as all hell.
Good things happening in Iraq? Let's see, what did he mean
by that? Probably things like "free elections", not thousands
of dead civilians.
Maybe you could start a family feud by saying to them-
"Free elections? Look, pal, we don't have free elections here
in Ohio, much less over there, in Iraq. Do you *seriously* think
that the U.S. would allow an anti-American candidate to be elected,
do you? I've got news for you- if there is only one possible outcome-
pro-American candidate 'A' or pro-American candidate 'B', then
it is not really a "free" election. It is a sham, even worse than our
supposed free elections, here."
I know where this conversation would lead- sour looks, cold shoulders,
not a trace of acknowledgement, which is why I give my own sour
looks when I hear the rhetoric/propaganda that the American people
are really nice, well-meaning people who just don't understand what
their governments really do.
They do not *want* to know. They hiss and spit when you try to
tell them. Doesn't matter if you try to do it tactfully, or
sarcastically - you could never be diplomatic enough, that
it would make any difference. It does have something to do with
their own character- the indifference, the self-love, the irrationality.
The best that could be said is that it is not a uniquely American
damnation. It is a human-race damnation.
How many times has the U.S. overthrown democratically-elected
governments, only to replace them with murderous, torturing
dictators? You try to tell Americans that thousands of people
were killed and tortured under their boy, Pinochet of Chile, or their boy,
the Shah of Iran- you will get most jaded and blase reactions.
What could that possibly have to do with the price of Rice-a-Roni
in any of their American Wall-Marts?
The victims could climb into the tens or hundreds of thousands-
same reaction- just a number. But when a tiny fraction of that
scale, some 3000 Americans get killed - Oh, the world will *never*
be the same. Everything is changed, forever. Now, we have
justification to do anything and everything we want -
a justification not similarly accorded to anyone else who
has experienced things just as bad, or worse.
The comparative preciousness of American lives is a kind of
decadence. Tell the American people about 30,000 civilian
deaths for their invasion (correction- "liberation"), and it
whistles through their ears like a fried egg gliding over a
butter-flavored, PAM-sprayed Teflon frying pan.
Hate-filled right-wingers will justify the global murderousness
over the decades by claiming that it was all necessary to defeat the
boogey-man Communism, which was *so* much worse.
A quarter or a third of a million Americans are never to blame
for the CIA-engineered coups and war-mongering right-wing
Presidents that the people seem consistently to love the most.
But everyone left-of-center on the planet is to blame for
everything that Joe Stalin did.
The truth is, those overthrown governments did not always
represent Joe Stalin. They were guilty of things like improving
the education, or health-care, or the economic lot of the
poorest citizens. What the American ruling elite really found
most threatening was an economic philosophy that redistributed
the pie in a way that was not so lop-sided in favor of wealthy
interests.
Patriotism is like religion- a descent into complete madness.
Rationality has nothing to do with beliefs that are taken for granted.
The word "decadence" to 99% of Americans would be mentally
associated a word like "homosexual", as sure as Pavlov's dog would
salivate at the sound of a bell.
Decadence- what is it? Could a homosexual explain to America
what *real* decadence is?
Airline stocks being short-sold from within the World Trade
Center Towers, while an FBI critic is being conveniently
reassigned to the building, to his imminent death.
Planes hitting and people jumping to fiery death while a businessman
in the WTC is listening to the Howard Stern show's "Angry Midget"
and the President is reading "My Pet Goat", which is just too interesting
to put down.
A pretty Barbie Doll Barbarian, right-wing pundit who announces
that we should poison a liberal Supreme Court Justice (ha ha ha)
and invade other countries, kill their leaders, and convert them
to Christianity (ha-ha-ha).
Or if she had a gay son or daughter, she would tell them
"Oh, did you know that you were adopted?" (ha-ha-ha).
If other countries listen to the ultra-wealthy Barbie Doll,
the talk of killing leaders and converting them to Christianity
would sound just exactly like what they see the U.S. as actually
doing. It would fuel the worst fears and intent for violent revenge.
But what the heck- Barbie gets rich by being provocative. Ha ha ha.
It is a schtick. Everybody's doing it and trying to get a piece
of action. Yuk, yuk.
Barbie goes to War. The Spirit of America.
Operation Desert Storm.
A whining tone- "It's too hot: turn up the air-conditioning".
Or "Omigod, I chipped a nail!". Or, "This army helmet is
messing up my hair". Ha ha ha.
You just want to throw up at the ugliness of the picture.
I get very patriotic every July 14. No, not the 4th, the 14th.
Most Americans, even my friends would be bewildered by that
statement. What is the meaning of July 14? You ask them,
they don't know.
Sigh... It was the day that the Bastille fell. You could think of it
as the Gitmo Bay of 1789.
Cliff Townsend is a black gay man, once part of a group called
the Flirtations. They did a bit of uplifting music, but much of
it light fluff. Cliff did the deep voice.
Later, on his own, he did a far more political and provocative
song about the French Revolution and gays. Of course, if was not
a commercial success.
The peasants are too busy partying to know that they are peasants.
Will they ever wake up to the true dimensions of their own degradation
and learn to be more forceful, when necessary?
I am genuinely inspired by the words, "Speaking in language that
no one understands, of the rights that we grabbed with our own
bleeding hands/ when we climbed over the barriers and tore down
the walls, of the prison that they told us, would outlast us all."
Speaking in language that no one understands. French, I guess.
Either that, or poetry.
Yes, I am a patriot, ready to die for my country. For Liberty.
For France. More than a country- a concept.
Tom Keske
|
|