Rage, Despair, and America's Direction

by soccerdad

For the longest time I have been unable to finish anything I have started to write. My hard drive is cluttered with more than 30 folders each with links and many with partially written posts. I stare at the computer screen at articles of Bush’s lies, American atrocities, corruption, etc sick to my stomach unable to muster enough rage to overcome the deep sense of despair that pervades my everyday. Despair that originates not only from the shear repetition of immoral, illegal and pre-fascist acts of this administration but also from the lack of response of most people in this country to these acts, the lack of response from the Democrats, and the lack of response from Religious leaders. It would be unfair to say there has been no response by people, but I find it meager in light of the magnitude of the ongoing events. And, in large part, the despair comes from my own inability to do anything of any real value to change anything or anybody’s mind. Finally, the belief is growing that much of this will continue and, in fact, cannot be changed because the evolution of certain events is unstoppable and our response to these events have taken us down a road from which there is little chance of turning back. As an example, it is the decreasing supply of hydrocarbons that has driven and will continue to drive American foreign policy for years and is in fact why we see such a muted response from Democrats on the Iraqi war. The American response to this issue has been since the 1950’s . Democrat or Republican administration, to use force as well as covert actions, including the overthrow of legitimate governments, to maintain the flow of oil. What is the likelihood that this approach will change? American has always believed in promoting capitalism and democracy at the point of a gun.

So why the tirade and why has the rage broken through today? It is this story about the AIDS crisis in Uganda. This story does not contain the complexities of arguments associated with the Iraq war. To me at least, it is relatively straight forward and exposes in clear manner the fundamental belief systems of our current political leaders and their fundamentalist (C)christian supporters. I’ll only briefly summarize and encourage you to read these more literate comments and analyses here and here. Essentially the number of AIDS cases in Uganda have doubled in the last 2 years primarily because of the forced discontinuation of condom distribution and the implementation of an abstinence based approach. The articles describe how the fight of AIDS in Africa has been out-sourced to the religious right. The articles also show the role of Focus on the Family's James Dobson and the continued misrepresentation of the scientific literature on the effectiveness of condoms.

So what’s the point? What we clearly see here is the common belief of the government and its religious backers that people who do not share their beliefs are lesser humans and not deserving of any real consideration. Their lives are cheap, clearly expendable and not worthy of being saved. It is the belief system, not humanity, that is primary. This attitude has pervaded American history and has been called American Exceptionalism, i.e. that Americans, especially the Judeo-Christian White components, are better than other nations or peoples, whether it’s the American Indian or the modern day Muslim. Many religions have for centuries had such exclusionary beliefs, which have moderated with time for some, but the modern fundamentalist and dominionist cults have taken this belief to new levels.

So where does this leave us? We have a President who goes on TV and preaches intolerance for gays. We have right wing talking heads as well as religious leaders dehumanizing Muslims so as to make their slaughter more palatable to the masses. We have mainstream media adopting the message and materials of hate groups in order to stop the “immigration crisis”. We are seeing the partial revival of such groups as the KKK and the proliferation of small hate groups. For discussion of these latter issues please read David Niewert. So as we spread democracy, neo-liberal capitalism, and “enlightenment” to those “savages” in the Middle East, our own country slides slowly in a fundamentalist direction that we supposedly abhor in “them”.