2.13.03 – begin rant

it feels like the whole world is coming apart at the seams. and yet, my life goes on as normal: i go to work, i sort mail and answer phones, at home andy and i watch the simpsons and play with fetch with the cat, cook veggie burgers and speculate on the forecast for snow; i go to the theatre and we put on another good performance of edgy, in-your-face don delillo dialogue. i haven’t bothered to buy plastic and duct tape and bottled water.

i claim i haven’t been able to put together a really good rant on the current state of world politics because i’m just too angry about it; is that the case or is it just apathy? is it too hard, too much work to really get angry about it? i still feel safe; boise idaho is probably not a big terrorist target. i think it was too hard to get angry for a long time; now this growing sense of impotence is making me angry whether i like it or not. no matter what i, or any other average joe american citizen, says, it’s not going to change the current course of american politics. i get daily forwards from other peace-lovin’ friends: email petitions to sign and mail to the president, a grassroots campaign encouraging people to send envelopes of rice to the white house – these are followed by more emails exposing the petitions as frauds and the rice idea as a good way to start a new anthrax scare. what’s a peace-nik to do these days? my co-worker amy invited me to go to a peace rally at the state house. “what’s the point, tho?” said my cynical half, “100 idahoans marching around in the rain is not going to change george bush’s mind about going to war.” i mean, a hundred thousand, even if every resident in the entire state went on a hunger strike, president bush wouldn’t give a fuck. “i guess it’s just good to feel the solidarity with other people,” said amy. “i don’t want solidarity,” i told amy, “i want change.”

it seems strange to me that the entire world is about to erupt in war based on the decisions of a very small number of men. we talk about “the french, the germans, the americans” as if all of the citizens of that country were representatives of the political sentiments of the country’s leaders. i’m having trouble referring to the US as “we” these days. or rather, i catch myself doing it, because it’s a common speech pattern, and have to correct myself because i did not vote for that man and his decisions do not represent my will. but will the whole world come to this realization? will the iraqi people know that i didn’t mean for this to happen?

andy and i share a penchant for Mystery Science Theatre 3000 movies; last night we rented one that started with a short called Truck Farming. it was this piece of 1950’s style propaganda ala Better Living Through Chemistry. when i look at this kind of propaganda, it seems so blatant, so totally unhip that i can’t believe it could persuade anyone; of course, i’m looking at it through narrowed, cynical eyes that the 50’s didn’t have. i feel like, if that’s propaganda, then i’ll definitely be able to spot it from a mile away. but of course, propaganda has evolved along side the rest of the country, getting hipper and more cynical, more subtle. the government keeps its citizens busy laying in stores of plastic and duct tape (which, by the way, might come in handy for a leaky sink but will do very little to protect anyone in the event of nuclear, biological or chemical weapon strikes) and assuring us that by democratizing iraq, the threat of osama bid laden will have been eliminated. isn’t it funny how the US government went after saddam hussein just about the same time that bin laden slipped through their fingers? nothing like a war to distract folks. i mean, the audio recording from bin laden that aired earlier this week was promoted by colin powell even before it aired on radio stations in the middle east, because it served to further the US government’s case for war. and then there’s crap like this coming from CNN.

how can we trust news coming from an organization that makes war – the potential loss of thousands of lives – sound like a shootout at the OK Corral?

and here’s something that really rankles: a clip i heard on the BBC world service this evening described a university district in a town on the border between afghanistan and pakistan in which books promoting jihad on the soviet infidels can still be found, left over from the soviet invasion of afghanistan. these books were published by the university of nebraska press. why? because during the cold war, the US was all for getting afghans to cut out the eyes of soviets, who happened to be our enemies at the time too. but now Americans are the infidels, and this propaganda has turned back on us. and we don’t have the guts to admit that maybe all our propaganda, foreign policy, our dependence on middle eastern oil, the fact that we supported the taliban not that long ago might have something to do with our current woes? i’m not excusing anything about september 11th, but it also infuriates me that the US can feed most americans the simplistic view that “they hate us for our religious differences.”

do i believe that saddam hussein is actually a nice man whose penchant for cowboy hats and american television indicates his fondness for america? no. but do think that we’re going to make anything better for the people of iraq, and the rest of the world, but invading like we are now? no. we’ve broken NATO in half, for god’s sake. north korea has nuclear missiles capable of striking the west coast, and the US keeps saying, “china and japan, can’t you guys work this out yourselves? we’re kinda busy over here bringing democracy to the people of iraq.” but do i have a better solution? well, no. and that’s part of what makes me angry, too.

end rant. i invite responses. i’m not claiming any of the above rant to have been expertly researched, so correction or discussion is welcome.