Hi Joe
I was pleased to see my last email quote in your latest essay, North Toward Home, which I have just finished. A reading for the second time (I can't take in all your dense prose in one go!!), even if you only quoted my quotation of someone else - long forgotten, alas. Yes, The government got in again... Go Bama!!
But I have correspondents in the US who genuinely hope for change in this new administration and are willing to look hard-eyed at the demands that must be made of the American way of life (or is that Way Of Life?). As one wrote to me yesterday, O'Bama (sic) is an educated man, and we surely mist all acknowledge that this is some kind of a breakthrough after the last half dozen Presidents. In fact I cannot think of one since Roosevelt, who could be relied upon to act upon your own deathly sentence, the one that tells us we should be "Looking upon the world with eyes as cold as ashes but with a heart like a furnace."
Of course we Europeans bristle when the US President blandly refers to himself as the Leader Of The Free World or some such arrogant phrase, but truth to tell, for as long as the money lasts and the bombs fall, he is. We only wish we could have a vote. But this time, and for once, the Americans voted just the way we would have, so there are no complaints to be heard. Besides, our own dear Taoiseach Brian Cowen or the bumbling British PM Gordon Brown would hardly make better replacements. G Brown is alright, he has lived and he has had an education, but he lacks the sheer humanity of Barack Obama. Cowen is a buffoon with no saving graces, in fact no grace at all...
The truth is there has been an appalling collapse of good sense in the world of finance, both trading and banking, and governments are realising that they have been overrun by corporate power, were its willing victims, for crissakes. And now, God bless us, we The People are going to pay for their mistakes - and give them bonuses too, it seems.
In the light of all this, how bad can Obama be? He has dodged the issues in Gaza, but he was on the phone pretty pronto once he had the Presidency in the bag. Personally I look upon that as a good sign that he is thoughtful, careful, heedful and prepared. Israel must know they pushed it to the limit, and as it happens they largely failed to settle Hamas' hash, which must have been20their main motive, that and the joyful slaughter of innocents, which actually I do not think most Israelis want or support (though the military may think more brutally - they usually do). So now Israel must listen to the new Voice Of America (did you ever hear that station, back in the good old Cold War days? Marvellous, kept us laughing long into the night many a time). I hope he has balls enough to make some kind of a stand against their lop-sided policy of attrition, but the same must go for Hamas. Israel's big mistake has been to alienate even their allies, even those Palestinians who do not like or trust Hamas, and if now they lose US support, even only a little bit, it might be that they will at long last agree to a separate state with the right to elect its own government without being told what to do by the rest of the world. Just like America in fact...
Incidentally, I doubt you will have seen the cover of Private Eye, my preferred political reportage in the UK: It features a photo of Obama and Hilary together: He says "Can we still blame Bush for everything?" And she replies "YES WE CAN!!"
I hope you're enjoying a beautiful day in Belize. I am in Kerry!!
Rory Fellowes
CG Animation Specialist
Rory,
That’s about as good a common sense assessment as we’re likely to hear anywhere these days. Especially about Israel. Like everyone else, I have my opinions about international political affairs, but rather avoid writing about them, other than the most obvious outrages, such as what the Israeli government has become. Not the Jews --- hell, I don’t know any Jews here who support what happened in Ga za --- but the Israeli state and its leadership. But, in agreement with you, I don’t think the U.S. can any longer entertain the delusion its support of Israel is rational or contributes positively to peace in any way.
In any case, while I am no member of the Obama cult, I do believe he has the chance to be the most important president since FDR (actually, the problems he faces are greater than those faced by FDR, when you look at the big picture --- starting with nuclear weapons and ecocide) So in effect, he already as important as FDR in the sense that whatever he does or doesn’t do will affect American history more profoundly than almost any previous one. Simply because of the seriousness of the times. I tend to call the impending end of the American civilization profoundly serious, although half the world would see it as an improvement and Americans see it as a “lifestyle choice.”
Never has so much been at stake both for America and the planet. Americans may not get it, but poor folks down here in the Third World sure as hell do. Most of the children on my end of this village are now eat only two meals a day, and meager ones at that, because of the food crisis caused by ethanol crops being raised elsewhere in the Americas, replacing traditional crops. Cost of rice, beans and flour are to the point that we are seldom getting all three or even any two of them in the same meal. I don’t believe Obama can fix that, but poor people here do. I don’t even believe he can fix any of our most important domestic systems such as education, or income disparity, simply because they are the standard manifestations of an empire nearing its end --- which in America’s case simply means joining the human race and living within the planet’s shrinking ability to sustain us all.
Of course we can all rejoice in that Obama is reversing Bush’s chilling, deadly policies. Which is the least one should expect of him. But that’s not a step forward in any way. It is merely regaining a few of the already diminished freedoms we had, and letting up a bit with on our consistent world thugism by choosing to discuss our problems with our adversaries instead of shoot our way out of them. I suppose in the world of American politics that amounts to sublime statesmanship. And after the series of presidents we’ve had, each one so much more deviously fucked than the previous, it’s no wonder Obama looks like the second coming of Christ to so many. And hey! We’ve got his guarantee that we will only kill Iraqi babies for 18 more months! That’s what passes for improvement in this morally and civically impoverished country.
I have no doubt he will be the most well reasoned, intelligent president we’ve had since, well, I don’t know who. Clinton seemed like a thinking man too, but he was thinking up ways to fuck us (and about anything else that was warm blooded) and yet maintain the cheering of the crowds too. Which he did.
Anyway, if Obama strives his utmost to be universally humane in action and decision, he will have furthered just about every front, from poverty to the ecology and world peace. Regarding world peace, I simply don’t believe the horseshit that the human race is an innately violent and murderous species doomed to eternal war making between its many tribes; I’ve never seen a war declared by ordinary working mooks, whether they be in Tel Aviv, Moscow, Kabul or Keokuk Iowa. Then again, I wasn’t around when America’s “peaceable settlers” wiped out the red Indians, nor have do I have any Hutu relatives.
Anyway, if Obama changes American policy in any manner away from the America militarism and the complex that benefits from death and war --- though I doubt he can beat that mob alone, but maybe unify Americans approximately toward that end --- he will have been our greatest president. And I think he is so ambitious he wants to be exactly that and has a reasonably sane “no drama Obama” approach that could work.
But for now he’s just another new boss, farting in the same mahogany Oval Office chair as the old boss, but making some very good iconic gestures to indicate things are not going to be the same as the old boss. And the whole world is relieved and more optimistic. As I’ve said many times, I do not believe in raw hope, which is childish, can mean anything to anybody, which makes it too easily manipulated by those in authority. But I do believe in justified optimism. And I’m beginning to detect a scent of that in the air. Let’s just hope the full course meal will follow.
Still, no matter what Obama does, even in making the finest of choices, somebody’s ox is going to be gored. Especially in a country whose economy and sense of identity is driven by a ridiculous infantile and pointless lifestyle of gadgets,20fads and flatulence. In other words, somebody is not going to get their goddamned pony for Christmas and be pissed as hell. Which makes them prime fodder for demagogues and profiteering corporate sharks.
In the end Obama will have done what he could in his time. I only hope that the cagey idealism we all suspect is there, is really there. Or if it is there, that it will not be snuffed by the massive global financial and corporate cartel that really runs this country, mostly by default because most of our citizenry no longer takes responsibility for their country, or anything else except their choice of pizza toppings. We shall see.
In the mean time, we know for sure Obama isn’t a dry drunk narcissist like George Bush, who doesn’t seem affected at all by being considered the worst president in American history by historians and most of the world (except Native Americans, whose nominee is Andrew Jackson). If we’d have elected wild Ozark boar instead of Obama, the hog’s presidency would still come out less destructive than Bush’s in history’s rating game, although the Oval Office carpet may have suffered.
Obama is among the most personally ambitious presidents in history, make no mistake about that. He wants to be remember ed as among the greatest ones. It’s too early to tell if he has it in him or whether providence will allow him that. But one thing for sure, with the whole free world in love with him, and the world’s worst political elements holding off until they know what to make of him, he has a damned fine shot at greatness, doesn’t he? So, yeah man, I’m with you. Go Bama. Hell … go anybody!
Like many others, I’m goddamned sick of apologizing for being an American. Honestly speaking though, I no longer believe in nations or patriotism, or powerful leaders as saviors, and now consider myself a citizen of the world with allegiance only to pure, undifferentiated humanity. Like I told a Dutch jourmalist tourist here in the village last night, who asked for my “opinion as an American.”
“Hell, I dunno,” I said, “was only born there.”
In art and labor,
Joe
, a book with a selection of 25 of Joe's online essays, is now available from Amazon-US.
