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The ugly face of America is once more in evidence as politicians head off for their summer break and the traditional ‘Town Hall’ meetings prevalent at this time of year.

Already reports are coming in of organized intimidation by far right activists who, at the behest of corporate lobbying companies and the health industry, are only too happy to swamp the public meetings of pro-health reform politicians, barrack and heckle the speakers so they can’t be heard, and threaten any who dare stand up to them.^[1]

Is this democracy in action? Certainly not. The Great Power, so keen to spread its doctrines around the globe, acts surprised when those on whom it attempts to force its ideals rebel with fury and outrage. Is it any wonder? American democracy is a failure for all but a relative few of its citizens. The only winners are the rich and powerful corporates, able to dictate terms and manipulate masses to achieve their lucrative ends.

Foreign governments may bow the knee to US imperialism, aware of the wealth benefits to be accrued, but to ordinary folk the only reward is the obliteration of culture and enslavement to a foreign power.

Hardly surprising, then, that rebellion against the US produces factions such as al Qaeda, al Shabaab, and Hezbollah.

9/11/2001 was only ever a matter of time.

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright almost cost President Obama the election when he spoke of ‘America’s chickens coming home to roost’. The public outcry, nationwide across the whole spectrum of media, was deafening. US citizens were, as always, quick to defend their glorious nation – even against a naked, obvious, truth.

Democracy is a great and just concept, condemned to fail by homo sapien fallibility. Like every other system of government ever invented on this planet it falls victim to man’s inherent greed and lust for power over his fellow beings.

In the 21st century America controls that power. How much it is abused varies depending on the powerbase of the moment. In the first decade of this new century a single terrorist attack caused an outbreak of rampant imperialism under Bush that Obama will never fully counter, even if he manages to equal Bush’s two terms.

The damage is done. Iraq won’t go away and if there is ever a ‘victory’ in Afghanistan it will be, at best, equally inglorious.

Meanwhile, the ugly face of America continues to turn outward as left and right draw further apart over irreconcilable issues, previously only ever settled by the gun.

How long before someone in a Town Hall meeting somewhere resorts to that inevitable course?

^{[1] “Health Industry Sabotages Town Halls” MSNBC, August 4th 2009}

Filed under: Democracy in action

Justin Webb, the BBC’s “North America editor”, has long been an irritant to me. His reports, as featured on BBC News America, were fawning, establishment-toadying, and left one with an unpleasant after-taste reminiscent of the morning after a heavy bout of absinthe assimilation.

Listen to Webb, without the necessary knowledge only obtainable from permanent residence in this nation, and you’d be left thinking there was no greater place on earth; that America was coast-to-coast Disney, an enchanted land ruled by benevolent Congressmen dedicated to providing their citizens with every comfort and convenience.

Justin Webb, at best, was a dedicated Americophile; at worst, just another media piglet suckling at the doctrinal teat of its fat corporate master.

Webb’s tenure in the United States is coming to a close. He’s done his stint and is returning home to Britain. As a finale to his eight years in the States, he’s written a final piece for the BBC radio series, “From Our Own Correspondent”.^[1]

I approached it with some cynicism, expecting the usual overdose of sugary American sentimentality I’d come to expect from this reporter. By the time I was halfway through, my opinion was totally revised. No longer answerable to his US media masters, Webb was finally writing from the heart, and his words could as easily come from my own keyword.

It [Charleston, SC] gives a wonderful insight into hardscrabble American life, the sleazy glamour of the road that repels and appeals to visitors – and indeed Americans themselves – in roughly equal measure: gas stations, tattoo parlours, Bojangles Pizza, $59 (£35)-a-night motels, pawn shops, gun shops, car showrooms, nail bars, and Piggly Wiggly, the local supermarket chain which, in my limited experience, smells almost as odd as it sounds.

It is a panorama of the mundane: Doric columns a-plenty but all of them made of cheap concrete and attached to restaurants or two-bit accountants’ offices. On and on it goes, encroaching into the palm forests with no hint of apology………

……On the last day we spent in our home in north-east Washington, they were holding a food-eating competition in a burger bar at the end of our street. The sight was nauseating: acne-ridden youths, several already obese, stuffing meat and buns into their mouths while local television reporters, the women in dinky pastel suits, rushed around getting the best shots.

America can be seen as little more than an eating competition, a giant, gaudy, manic effort to stuff grease and gunge into already sated innards……

………There is an intellectual ugliness as well: a dark age lurking, even when the president has been to Harvard………”

Webb’s essay isn’t all negative. For all the “intellectual ugliness” and “dark age lurking”, he admits he’ll find it hard to leave America:

More than 300 million people live here now, settlers from all over the world. From Ho Chi Minh City, from Timbuktu, from Vilnius, from Tehran, from every last corner of the earth, they have made America their home and they are still streaming in.

I feel crazy going back to the old world. My five-year-old daughter Clara, who is the proud owner of an American passport, agrees.

She says she intends to leave home, at around 12-years-old, and return to her native land. I do not blame her.”

Time will tell if Clara still feels that way by the time she reaches her twelfth birthday.

Webb’s essay is worth a read, if only because it’s the first time he’s been able to tell the unfettered truth. I know exactly how he feels. America is ugly. It does still linger in the dark ages. Much of it is repulsive, unappealing, dreadfully boring.

Yet, like Webb, I would find it hard to leave the US after seven years of residence. There is something about this country that endears, despite its numerous faults. Perhaps I just haven’t lived here long enough to define exactly what it is.

Justin Webb says America “shines a light on the entire human condition”.

God help us all, if he’s right.

^{[1] “Checking out of ‘Hotel America'” Justin Webb, BBC, August 1st 2009}

Filed under: Telling it how it is

Just one month ago, Kentucky Pastor Ken Pagano opened his church to gun-toting parishioners in a ‘celebration of the Second Amendment’.^[1]

In defense of this grossly irreligious act (in most other Christian countries of the world he’d be unfrocked for such behavior) he said:

If it were not for a deep-seated belief in the right to bear arms, this country would not be here today.”

On what evidence he based this hypothesis one can only conjecture, but for anyone with even a smattering of New Testament knowledge it’s obviously in stark contrast to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

Perhaps Pastor Pagano would argue the point, but in a truly Christian church, the words, “Love thy Neighbor,” and, “Turn the other cheek,” and, “Love thine enemies,” would negate further debate.

More powerful than words, two recent incidents – one in Las Vegas, the other in South Carolina – turn Pastor Pagano’s views on their head.

From the BBC today:

Two young children have been shot by their siblings in the space of 24 hours in the United States.

In Las Vegas, a two-year-old girl was in a critical condition after being shot by her four-year-old brother at their home, police said.

In South Carolina, a four-year-old boy was shot in the stomach by his three-year-old brother after the little boy found a gun…..”^[2]

While both incidents were accidental, they are further symptoms of the sickness gripping the United States today.

America long ago forsook its God, in favor of its guns.

^{[1] “US pastor opens church to guns” BBC, 28th June 2009}

^{[2] “Two toddlers shoot siblings in US” BBC, 25th July 2009}

Filed under: Holy gun law