The gods of Mammon

Be patient, gentle Reader, be patient; I'm almost done.

Sometimes you just have to get it off your chest. Sometimes you just have to let it out. Sometimes, you just have to vent as well. But, sometimes, you have good reason to.

I think I've isolated the real heart of the issue, the reason why, at bottom, America is the way it is and why most Americans are the way they are. I hate to be the one to break it to you all, but the True Religion of America is materialism. Down-and-dirty, straight-up, unabashed, self-effacing worship of the gods of Mammon.

It's a long and complicated, deep-seated infestation from the Puritans, I am sure, but everything in America in America is measured in terms of things. Things, not just clothes, make the man. The house (even if it's a McMansion), the car (which says more about one than just about anything else), the phone, the tablet, the watch, the jewelry, the places one goes to eat ... that's what counts.

I recently had the wonderful opportunity to see friends from America from "way back when". What did we talk about? Property, investments, retirement options, cars (or pick-ups), vacation opportunities ... that is, pretty much things ... things that one can "have". Value(s) translate into dollar values. You are what you have.

There are those who would hasten to point out that my position on "things" is the result of the fact that I really don't have a lot of things. I don't own property. I do own my car (but it's four years old and over-mileaged). I don't have "investments" to speak of. And I'm about to start drawing modest retirements from both the US and Germany (in other words, two almost-halves almost make a whole ... though it may be more like a "hole"). But, I really don't mind. That's just the way things are. I don't feel like a lesser person because I can't measure up to all the things that others have acquired. It's nothing I ever really wanted to do, and in that, I can safely say, I believe I have been quite the success.

No, in my life, other "things" have been more important than things: what one thinks, what one believes and why, what one knows, how one treats others, regardless of one's relationships, whether one practices what one preaches, how open one is, how tolerant, how forgiving, how honest, how true, how loyal and devoted, how caring, show sharing, how loving, how humble.

In this regard, I have found that I have been pretty much of a rebel, no matter where I have lived or worked. That's OK. I don't mind being different. I wish that more Americans wouldn't mind either. I suspect that there are lots of potentials there, but besides the gods of Mammon, Americans have to also endure the Caretaker of Conformity.

But, it's time to stop. It's time to review and re-evaluate. It's time to reconsider. There are going to be hard times ahead (and this is not just my curmudgeonly cynicism talking), and we are going to need each other more than ever before in our lifetimes. Maybe it's time to convert.

Don't shoot till you see the fear in their eyes

Some of you are probably thinking that I'm being pretty unpatriotic at the moment. There, I suppose, you are right. Personally, I see it as being non-patriotic, not unpatriotic. America could be such a nice place, but it's like I said back in July: it's just hard to deal with all the hypocrisy. I happen to agree with Einstein: patriotism is pretty much an infantile disease, like measles. But, if you like itching, well, hey, who am I to stop you? Isn't that what freedom's all about?

Truth be told, I'm just a bit frustrated at the moment. Since most of you Americans have never been anywhere else, you don't know what it's like to the "token Ami". Yes, I'm the one that family, friends, and acquaintances turn to for the explanations as to why America is bombing this place, or what Americans have against universal healthcare, or how it is that some many apparent "idiots" (their term, not mine) get elected to public office, or why there's a race problem, or how can so many so-called Christians advocate the death penalty. (And, yes, dear reader, I've been asked about every single one of those issues, and many, many more. As the great comics have all noted: you can't make this stuff up.)

In other words, since I was born there and since I still carry a blue passport, I am somehow, magically supposed to know why America ticks the way it does. And all I can tell them is, I didn't really understand it all when I lived there, and now that I'm here and I see what's going on, I understand it even less.

One of the issues that parents, teachers, educators, etc. have to come to terms with when dealing with children and adolescents is how to make them see that their actions have effects on others. That relationship between "me and thee" is a tough one to grasp when you're young. We all know, however, that some of them just never get it. They grow up still not understanding this simple fact of life. And it is this behavior that so many "outsiders" (Americans call the "foreigners") just don't get.

America spends more on defense and less on actual humanitarian aid than any developed country. They have the audacity to demand that others follow suit. While Americans like to think of their country as a benevolent patron, what the benefactors of that "benevolence" experience is more like a mafioso patron. America has unmasked itself: drone assassinations of "alleged" terrorists, the deceits, lies and threats from the perpetual surveillance state, the economic extortion and terror imposed by American manipulated "organizations", such as the WTO, the IMF and World Bank, the perpetual war machine ... this is all America seems to know anymore, and that is, to put it simply, a sad, sad story.

There was a time, and maybe even rightfully so, when America was looked up as the beacon of freedom in the world. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but that beacon of freedom in more and more looking like a death-ray of terror. It may be time to regroup.

A deeper view from the outside

Let me say that I am fully aware that some readers were simply offended by the last post. How could I ... how dare I besmirch the image of "the greatest country in the world"? But who thinks it is? That's the party line inside the borders, and I know that for a fact from my childhood. But who else thinks so? Those immigrants who are so desperate to get anywhere other than where they are who sneak in illegally, risking life, limb, and liberty only to be thrown out again if they are caught? Maybe? All those brown people near oil fields who have been shot at, bombed, starved, diseased, assaulted, mishandled, demeaned, denigrated, and demoralized? I doubt it, but who knows?

How insulting is that very phrase, which is quick to fall from American lips for all those who did have the "luck" to be born there? Do Americans really think that there's no better place on earth? And upon what do they base that judgement: only 10% of the American population even possesses a passport, some never use theirs at all, and the majority who do use them to cross over into Mexico or Canada since the requirement for travel documents changed? So, who's seen what to know one way or the other? So again, we hear all the words, we know what each of them means, but together, well, they just don't give us much sense at all. Don't get me wrong, there are many positive characteristics about America and Americans ... and there are just as many for anywhere else and any other people, if you're willing to look. No, most of them never get out, and what's going on inside, well, that gives a lot of us on the outside pause for thought

What do we see? The greatest disparity between rich and poor in the developed world; lack of basic social safety nets (and a hard-line approach to getting rid of the rest of what is left); lack of universal healthcare; the most expensive healthcare system in the world; highest rate of child poverty in the developed world; highest infant mortality rate of the developed countries; a dysfunctional system of government; bizarros as holders of political office (and if you think Bachman, Cruz, O'Connell, Boehner, Gohmert, Paul, ... the list goes on and on and on); the gun fanaticism; the incarceration rate; the violence; the brutal police tactics; the science deniers; the religious fundamentalists who are forcing their beliefs into the school system; the most rapacious form of capitalism ever devised; the cult-like worship of money; the perpetual war machine ... you get the point. That's what it looks like from elsewhere. You need to maybe get out, take a step back, take a deep breath, and then look again.

It all wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so embarrassing for those of us who are asked why things are the way they are? Believe me, there is a lot of scratching-of-heads that goes on outside your borders. It also wouldn't be so bad if you would just stay where you are and only focused on yourselves. You could rape, murder, pillage and plunder each other all you wanted, and the rest of the world would have more than enough reason to respect your national sovereignty. Unfortunately, your government only wages its wars in other peoples' houses. The consequence is that when America implodes -- and it's doing its best to do so soon -- it's going to cause a lot of collateral damage, and the most likely victims are starting to get very uneasy about it all.

A view from the outside

It's that time again ... Americans are getting ready for their favorite unproductive activity: mid-term elections. Not being caught up on the inside, the view from the outside can be quite informative, if you allow it to be so.

Americans like to think they are special. They even like to think they invented modern democracy. What did the Greeks know? We' showed them, they say, and we showed everyone else how it's done. If it weren't for America, we'd all be oppressed in monarchical or tyrannical dictatorships or something of that ilk, or so the story goes. But, that view from outside is revealing in different ways.

Over in Hong Kong, students and others have been protesting and shutting down the commercial sector because the Chinese masters wanted to vet all candidates for their elections. The students asked what kind of democracy that was? And the answer is obvious: it's American-style democracy. Others, in secret or with a token show of transparency, determine who's going to run against whom. Where's the difference? And if that's not bad enough, the candidates selected aren't really all that different even if others -- mostly behind the scenes -- tries to color one of them red and the other blue. After all, how can you choose among more than two? So you're given the choice between red loser or blue loser. But, hey, this is America where losers can become winners! How long did it take me to figure that one out?

And then, right there in the land of the free, with all those billed rights: the highest judicial instance in the country decided that money talks, literally. It used to be one man (later, one person; most recently, one registered and validated ID-carrying person) one vote. Now the votes are counted in dollars before you even get started. Like I have long said, Americans truly have the best government money can buy.

The view from the outside shows us that in fact America has lost the plot. Yes, they love to think they are special, and the word they like best to describe that specialness (for there are negative kinds of "special" -- just think short busses) in positive and glamorous terms, so they call it "exceptionalism". But, let's face it: that's just another kind of "-ism", like consumerism, cronyism, or totalitarianism. And, let's not forget that aberrations are, by their very nature, exceptional as well.

Personally, I wish them a lot of luck in their predetermined game. They're going to need it. The world is watching, but rapidly tiring of all the senseless antics. It's time to get new clowns into the ring.

But, hey, maybe it isn't that way at all. Yet, it really looks that way from the outside.

Willing to learn

Maybe I've been a bit hard on my fellow country-people as of late. Oh, they're allegedly a rough-and-tumble sort, so they should be able to stand it, but perhaps I've been inaccurate in some of my assessments. After all, I was thinking about possible explanations for what I am witnessing ... and inductive approach, to be sure: look at the facts and phenomena being displayed and try to generate an explanation (theory) to account for them. However, having at least a modicum of respect for science, I agree that in light of new evidence, if necessary, the explanation needs to be modified accordingly.

Recently, I was re-reading a true American classic, Richard Hofstadter's Anti-intellectualism in American Life. It was a Pulitzer winner, and I know, for many of you, simply "high-brow", but that's what the book is really all about: just how long that attitude has been part and parcel of what America is and what it stands for. At any rate, I ran across the following statement in a footnote:

Electoral appeals on both sides [of the presidential contest between Jackson and Adams] were lacking in truth and in delicacy [...].

Now, apart from the fact that a sentence like that makes the heart of a former student of language and literature beat just a little faster, it is even more remarkable for its relevance today. Doesn't that very well describe an attack ad? Lacking in truth and in delicacy? Perhaps we shouldn't be so kind to the below-the-belt exchanges that pass for campaigning for the office of what many bill as the "most powerful person on earth". Why am I the only one who is apparently shocked by the discrepancy between what it's supposed to be about and how everyone seems to be going about doing it?

My point is really that you can romanticize all you want about the good old days (that really weren't), but the uneducated, uncouth, simply ignorant adoration of brute force, deceit, and backhandedness exhibited then and being exhibited now strikes me as more than just inappropriate when we are talking about a decision that is going to affect the lives of (at least potentially) every single human being on this planet.

When the backwoodsmen of the frontier were squabbling amongst themselves, it was bad enough, but it really didn't matter all that much. In the world today, as globalized and as networked as we are, such squabbling is no longer isolated and provincial, it's a demonstration of real values that some folks hold dear.

The world is watching, but I'm not convinced they think it's a good show.

Expert terror

You know what scares me more than anything else? Experts. Lord knows we got enough of them. Some of them have respectable credentials. Most of them are only self-proclaimed. Yeah, that's one of the risks you take when living in an age when any opinion is as good as any other. That's where we are, aren't we? Yeah, unfortunately. Well, that's how we wanted it.

Our real problem is that we can pick and choose what we want to believe. It's not a matter of accepting any more. It's not a matter of the better argument, the more valid research, the more reliable information ... no, it's all about belief. We've long outdone the early Middle Ages, the Pre-Renaissance ... we're way past that. We're so much smarter than any of those poor misguided souls could have hoped to be. Yep, universal education, and not a bright person in the house. Should one actually show up, s/he'll get shouted down by the masses faster than you can say "liberal educated elite".

Me? I think we get what we deserve. We don't want it any different than we have it. If things don't work, it's really because we don't want things to work. C'mon ... gridlock is much more interesting than actually solving a problem. Holding to your hokey principles is much more important than actually making the world a better place. No, me? I have no sympathy for anybody anymore. Oh sure, I'm depressed by the fact that there are more have-nots than there ever will be haves. I'm bothered by the fact that too few take too much for themselves and are willing to leave the rest behind. I'm disturbed by how widespread true ignorance is. But, I can't say that I'm all upset about it. I figure is the systems doesn't work any more, feed it. It'll implode. It has to.

As a matter of fact, I actually think we're moving to a new level of crime ... not ignorance: that' been around long enough, and it has tradition, in fact. (If you don't believe me, try reading Hofstader's Anti-intellectualism in American Life (if you can get past your own anti-intellectual prejudices that is) for a cogent portrayal of a phenomenon that has been going on much longer than any of us can afford.) No, we are, I believe, moving from crimes of now to crimes against the future. They're not new, of course, but they are becoming ever more evident.