BORROWED MONEY, BLEEDING FINGERS

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you're the one
That can do what's never been done
That can win what's never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.
-Bob Dylan

When the clouds won’t rain and the sun won’t shine, Bob Dylan is as good a source of truth and light as a man can find.

Indeed. It’s a dim, cold day in America when the only way to get an accurate sense of your own country is by reading the foreign press. The Brits, French, Aussies and Japanese are a helluva lot more insightful and accurate about the shithole that America is wallowing in than any of our homegrown “journalists.” Sweet Jesus, three minutes of Diane Sawyer on any given morning is enough to make me wish I was the registered owner of a .357.

When was the last time the country was in a funk this deep? In the late 1970’s maybe, particularly after angry Iranians took fifty-odd Americans hostage in the US Embassy in Teheran, and refused to release them despite saber-rattling from Jimmy Carter and threats from the international community. The Japanese were whipping our asses in the economic arena; we couldn’t deter the Soviet Union from invading Afghanistan.

The world pushed back against American power and dominance, and America buckled, like a boxer caught with a straight right to the solar plexus.

That was then. Plenty of raw sewage has flowed over the dam since. Ronald Reagan rode in on his white stallion and declared that it was still morning in America, and that we had nothing to fear but faint-hearted liberals, feminists, queers, pot-smokers, atheists and Communists. For Ronald Reagan, America’s official uncle, the sun was always shining and glory lay just over the horizon.

It’s all different now. At the start of the Reagan era it was the world pushing back, this time we bleed from self-inflicted wounds, seven years of Bush-Cheney and the collective attention span of a three-year-old. Some examples:

Coinciding curiously with the Presidential election season, the failed Occupation of Iraq appears to have fallen off the media radar, as if life in Iraq has returned to normal along with millions of refugees, as if Sunnis and Shiites are holding hands and singing the Iraqi equivalent of Kumbaya, as if American soldiers are patrolling the streets and avenues without weapons and body armor.

As our economy heads south, the major Presidential candidates have begun to take notice, though when they talk about what can be done to steer the economy away from the cliff edge, they don’t talk about Iraq and the effect the massive cost of the Occupation has on the US economy. Dear Guys and Gals, in case you didn’t know, we’re paying for our wars with money borrowed from foreigners. That debt must be serviced year after year after year, meaning there will be fewer dollars available to do important things here at home.

Dennis Kucinich gets the linkage between guns and butter and the difficulty Empires have always had providing both. Kucinich is the only candidate who unequivocally calls for an immediate end to the Occupation, for scrapping the Patriot Act and impeaching Bush & Cheney for crimes against the Constitution. These ideas are too radical for NBC, which unilaterally decided recently that Kucinich didn’t meet its “criteria” to be invited to a Democratic debate. Excuse me, but is this a democracy or not, and who the fuck is NBC to decide which candidates should or should not be allowed to debate? Whether NBC approves or not, Kucinich is in the race; he may be a “fringe” candidate without a prayer of winning the Democratic nomination, but he has a point of view that voters should be allowed to hear. Frankly, I’d rather listen to Kucinich than status quo candidates like Clinton or Obama who think change will happen if they just keep repeating the word.

Americans are finally coming to grasp what the rest of the world has known for years: human behavior is altering the global climate in ways that carry frightening implications for the future of life on this planet. Of course, in our typical infantile way, we think we can “consume” our way out of trouble by buying “green” products and recycling more beer cans. We’re all for saving the environment – as long as we don’t have to give up our SUV’s or McMansions – and heaven forbid that American corporations forfeit a dime in profit.

More media attention is given to Brittney Spears’s mental confusion and child custody battles than to serious, thoughtful, logical and informed discussion of the Iraq Occupation, the plight of American workers, energy policy, and the role the Federal government must play in slowing down the real dangers of climate change.

Dylan was right, as usual: “It’s alright, Ma (I’m only bleeding)”