In the theatre of the absurd that’s now American politics, there’s much that’s center stage. A 2012 Presidential race already underway. The Tea Party. The Koch Bros. Two wars in Muslim nations. Unemployment. A right-wing attack on government of all kinds. High corporatre profits, low job growth. Class warfare or math? Global warming or drill, baby, drill? Taxes, taxes, taxes. Fortunately there is still Italy to keep American politics from being the most bizarre on Earth.
Not center stage, but hidden well out of the lights and behind the curtain, are some things that should be talked about, exposed, understood. But our current political dystopia will not bring them forth:
The Republicans are accusing President Obama of class warfare in trying to raise taxes on the richest U.S. taxpayers. Obama is saying it’s just “math.” True class warfare would be bloody and entail much demolition of palaces in gated communities, bombings at exclusive enclaves, kidnappings, etc. We’ve all seen class warfare through history and across many nations from Czarist Russia to almost any Latin American dictatorship you want to name. A higher tax rate isn’t class warfare. Americans can’t evenget off the sofa long enough to protest much of anything except the government itself. Meanwhile the money flows into our corporations with almost no social conract that the corps do anything for the nation that houses and protects them. The U.S. encourages the profit-making with almost no requirement that the wealthy do anything for the society on which they feed.
The ten poorest states in the U.S. have not gotten that way accidentally, and perhaps not even through God’s will. In fact, all ten are rife with conservative Protestants whose god seems to be involved elsewhere for the time being. Or maybe their god is so into the stock market he approves of overseaing jobs, no unions, low taxes and low wages. Does the conservative god really hate public transit and education and favor big, decade-long invasions? Seems so.
We’ve all have read about the studies showing that right-wing brains can reject any facts that conflict with their faith-based beliefs. Texas Governor Rick Perry cannot even comprehend that any execution in Texas could ever be questioned, or perhaps a mistake. There could never be an incorrect conviction. He knows that. And he believes that global warming caused by humans is just a theory, thus he can ignore it. Even though gravity and atomic structure are also just theories but both are quite necessary for the oil industry which lies at the soul of Texas ”culture.” Apparently Gov. Perry knows that he can ick and choose among theories, ignoring those he doesn’t like. Gov.
Half of Americans who bother to vote apparently feel oppressed. They’re over-burdened, over-regulated, over-taxed and over-run by our overlord government. They want less government apparently. They hanker after old fashioned freedoms. I recommend they check out Uganda. There freedom from government is rampant. Forget de-regulation, try no regulation.
In Uganda there are few waste-water regulations, no social security tax, no food inspections, no crosswalks, no sidewalks mandated for safety or handicapped, almost no road signs and even less traffic enforcement. The few white-uniformed traffic police stand by the side of the road and wave down drivers. They have no vehicles. The rare squadron of national police tool about in small herds in the back of old Toyota pick-ups.
Well, I am recently returned to the U.S. from a trip overseas. Travel doesn’t always broaden, as some would have it. I lost several pounds on this trip. Endless stress and questionable food will do that for you. I was in a country where I saw no: McDonald’s or Starbuck’s, Wal-Mart or Costco, sidewalks or shopping malls, parking meters or water fountains. For over ten days.
“What wonderland is that?” some might ask. Well, it is was Uganda, ranking 209th in the world’s wealthiest nation contest.
PARIS IN THE TWENTIES: ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Recommended reading for OLLI class:
SUN ALSO RISES
Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited”
Any book by or about Sylvia Beach
EXILES RETURN or PARIS WAS OUR MISTRESS
MOVIE TO WATCH: “The Moderns” 1988. Director: Alan Rudolph.
Keith Carradine as Nick Hart ?
Linda Fiorentino as Rachel Stone ?
Wallace Shawn as Oiseau ?
Geneviève Bujold as Libby Valentin ?
Geraldine Chaplin as Nathalie de Ville ?
Kevin J. O’Connor as Hemingway
Paris Bibliography
These tears I cry are tears of joy. Tears, also, of relief after months of not wanting to become too hopeful for fear of the disappointment and bitterness that could ensue, if…. The past eight years, following previous decades of American political reality have taught me not to hope for too much in U.S. politics.
I was just beginning college when JFK had broken an earlier political barrier by becoming America’s first Catholic President. America’s Protestant-Catholic antipathies had not led to European-style civil wars and mass executions, but had created an invisible barrier for anyone with an Italian or Irish or Polish name. Then JFK was assassinated. Welcome to American politics, kid. We play for keeps. Soon our first Texas President, LBJ, gave us the full-scale Vietnam War and its corrosive effects, its low-water mark of burning cities in both Vietnam and America. Soldiers on college campuses. Then the murders of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
Our little town had its usual all-out effort for the Fourth of July. Nearly two full hours of parading dancers, bands, floats, acrobats and politicians. There were lots of old cars and trucks:
