America for itself

The Straight Goods Cyber Forum
with Larry Solway

Commentary:

  I watched with fascination as President Bush tap-danced around media questions at his press conference last Tuesday. It was the day before he "laid down the law" to Wall Street. He should perhaps have hearkened to the classic statement made by a former Canadian Justice Minister, and with slight alteration insist "The Government had no place in the boardrooms of the nation." (Do I have to give a prize to the first person to correctly identify that Minister of Justice?)
  He hearkened all right. But that's just a play on words. The reporters continued to grill him about Harken, an oil company that he was a director of, sat on the audit committee of, and sold for a profit without reporting the sale until 8 months after the fact! I would be proud to name Bush a client of my expertise in handling the media. He kept returning to his core statement, which was: "The SEC examined the issue and decided there was no cause for action." No matter what he was asked - did he know, why did he wait? Is that what Americans are entitled to? He kept hammering the same answer. The SEC found no grounds to proceed.
  Well, God Bless them all. I love them. Carl Sandburg once wrote, in To A Contemporary Bunkshooter, that he liked a good talker. He also proclaimed "You go around tearing your hair yelling about Jesus." The analogy, a leap of course, is that George W. Is the evangelist of Big Business and he really honestly genuinely (what a dope) believes that there is an ethical foundation to the urge to make a great deal of money.
  Remember this: Americans originated the salutation "Have a good day." I never heard it anywhere else. I went with "Y'all come back soon hear?" I remember once scolding the cashier at a chicken restaurant for having to pay for the worst chicken I had ever eaten. He nodded sympathetically, took my money and ordered me to: "Have a good day." I give up.
  I really do love Americans. They can be thoughtful, friendly, caring, helpful, and sometimes even educated. I confess though, I can't abide their "idees fixes" about what makes the world go round. Their devotion, now wavering mightily, to the cowboy ranting of their semi-literate president is unfathomable, is galling.
  When I look at his proposal for peace in the Middle East I am stunned (I shouldn't be) by how naïve and truly American those proposals are. He calls for transparency (whatever that is) and he demands a democratic government. "Democratic" by American definition means everything we agree it should mean, like elections and politicians responsible to the electorate. In America though, it also means Capitalism. They can't separate the two. They honestly, devoutly, truly, genuinely believe that the two are inextricably woven together; you simply can't have democracy outside the unfettered market-first capitalist system.
  Recently I was unfortunate enough to have to head to a hospital emergency in Dayton Ohio. Two different people, without any real prompting, referred to our system as "socialized medicine." That's the buzzword for most of them. There is democracy (capitalism) on one hand and there is socialism (dictatorship) on the other. It's almost too much to bear. It's not even worth arguing about.
  The issue is really that America is more and more standing alone. I am sorry about that. I am sorry that they seem to lack the leadership that understands differences. I am sorry for every American who has to "join up" when the President says you are either for us or against us. I am truly sorry that they insist all other countries, including the democracies of the European Community, have to line up with them. It looks like the only one who will heel is Tony Blair. The others are upset by Bush's total failure to understand anything but the sound of his own macho mutterings.
  He is the "Toxic Texan" who refuses to go along with Kyoto. He is the guy who thinks Americans should be given exemption from vulnerability to war crimes actions. He believes that the American farmer is "the greatest in the world" and that subsidies only make certain that agrarian greatness can succeed in world markets.
  Trying to demonize the enemy, (and I can't disagree totally) they are more and more in media and from political pulpits describing the world of Islam as one where the sufferers blame everyone but themselves; where illiteracy and want are epidemic; where education is almost totally absent; where ignorance and illiteracy fuel the fires of fanaticism. It may very well be that America will have to admit it is impossible to "turn" the attitudes of the people who hate you most. Just to add a little spice, the destroy Iraq rhetoric blazes on.
  America is now certifiably the only super power. They have a chance to broker real harmony and détente. Instead they revert to a grotesque form of old-fashioned isolationism, a kind of newfound "America-First" attitude.
  And because I do love them, I am sad.

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