A Strange and Savage Land

“He was born in a vat of snake oil.” Hunter S. Thompson on Bill Clinton

Well, that seems to aptly describe ninety-nine percent of the politicians in Washington and most state capitols. Honor is rare in politics these days, and most politicians wouldn’t recognize honor if they tripped over it. This is partly because the pols are constantly in fund raising mode, prostrating themselves before trade associations and industry groups, grubbing for cash and leaving their ideals and ethics at the door. The system is bought and paid for and the deals go down under a shroud of secrecy.

There was a time in America when we depended on print and TV journalists to expose political corruption and, for the most part, they did a decent job keeping the politicians somewhat honest. The corporate takeover of the mainstream media destroyed the muckraking tradition. Reporting now is sanitized and trivialized and delivered by friendly lightweights or -- in the case of Fox News -- shouted by rabid partisans. No average American can make sense of it all, a fact politicians from both parties use to their advantage. Confusing the hell out of the American electorate is relatively easy.

The US is now involved in several armed conflicts in the Muslim world, but most Americans are as clueless about that as we are informed about Amanda Knox -- former resident of Italy’s prison system. We know Amanda’s parents, her sisters, her lawyers (US and Italian), her minister and her childhood friends; we know her state of mind and what she ate on the plane coming home from Italy.

The Knox story is like a Lifetime network movie, replete with all the things we love: sex, drugs, murder and mystery. In comparison, our wars against Muslims are merely grim and depressing, endless and hopeless.

Dark times, Hagrid said to a young Harry Potter, dark times.

Indeed.

The forces of repression and stupidity are loose in the land, running amok, and growing stronger against feeble resistance. Mexicans in Alabama are running scared, packing up, pulling their children out of public schools, fearful of being persecuted by Alabama’s tough new immigration law. Mexicans, Arabs, Pakistanis, Ethiopians -- no arms wait here to welcome you and yours. America is pulling back, electrifying its fences, and screening undesirables like never before.

Dark times, scary times. Who will hold the line against these forces? Barack Obama? No, he was born in the same vat of snake oil that Clinton sprang from. Any of the crop of GOP presidential hopefuls? Sweet Jesus, no, those people are unhinged, as dangerous as starving jackals, and they pray to a wrathful God who doesn’t believe in redemption or forgiveness. If you’re poor, it’s your fault. If you get sick, too bad. If you get deep into debt and can’t crawl out, you will find no relief.

All our heroes sleep in the grave. We’re on our own, stumbling around in a strange and savage land where the customs of the locals are unfathomable and intruders are burned at the stake. The rich wall themselves inside environments they can control and hire private security guards to fend off undesirables; the poor are driven into shantytowns where raw sewage flows in the unpaved streets. At night the tolling of the mission bell is drowned out by the howl of coyotes.