Illusions, Myths and Fables

I’ve just finished reading a collection of essays by Gore Vidal covering a span of nearly six decades. I don’t think we will see a writer of Vidal’s erudition again; it seemed he had read everything from Aeschylus to Tennessee Williams, and that he was personally acquainted with every important thinker, writer and political figure of his time.

Vidal was at his best when lacerating our government for hypocrisy, or puncturing the windbags who dominate the public airwaves on Sunday morning.

My progress through the essays was slowed by frequent pauses for note taking and reflection. Vidal reminded me that issues that appear peculiar to our time are in reality not new at all. For instance, forty years ago Vidal wondered why “we allow our governors to take so much of our money and spend it in ways that not only fail to benefit us but do great damage to others?”

Great question. Why indeed.

In a number of essays Vidal pointed out that American politicians have, since the beginning of the republic, created illusions and called them facts. Illusions galore, like claiming from every rooftop that our national debt is the direct result of overly generous entitlement programs rather than a national security state run amok; and that the only path to enduring solvency is not to raise taxes on the wealthy or drastically scale back our national security apparatus, but to take a sledgehammer to “wasteful” social programs.

Another grand illusion, and a core tenet of the idiot wing of the Republican Party, is that tax cuts for the wealthy produce jobs for the middle class. The wealthy have enjoyed more than a decade of tax “relief” and the middle class is still waiting for jobs.

Or like our president at the Commander’s Ball thanking our brave warriors in Afghanistan for protecting our freedom. Really? Our freedom is imperiled from the frightful military capability of a relatively small, rag-tag, loosely knit group calling itself Al-Qaida or the Taliban? The president failed to mention that America is entering its twelfth year of waste and futility in Afghanistan; the greatest, most expensive military force in human history has failed in spectacular fashion, but, naturally, our political leaders claim that the occupation has been a brilliant success and has prevented evil terrorists from attacking our homeland.

And now, of course, the Al-Qaida threat has sprouted in Africa and the prevailing wisdom is that we fight the terrorists there or fight them in Florida, California or on the shores of Lake Michigan.

America has itched to get a foothold in Africa and now, courtesy of the endless War on Terror, we have a pretext.

Yes, we are awash in illusions and to those I would add fables and myths; the fable that we live in the land of the free and the home of the brave; the myth that we are inherently better than people of other nations and that our lives are more valuable; the fable that we are a force for good in the world.

Primarily what we have that others do not is louder and more persistent PR.

Vidal was also bemused by America’s relationship with the state of Israel and the way this small nation manipulates our foreign policy. Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, was grilled the other day on Capitol Hill about the sacred topic of Israel, and of course he promised undying fealty to Tel Aviv, no matter how many innocent Palestinians the Israeli army kills or how many settlements are built on confiscated and disputed territory.

In the 1980’s Vidal wrote, “I would stop all military aid to the Middle East. This would oblige the hardliners in Israel to make peace with the Palestinians. We have supported Israel for forty years. No other minority in the history of the United States has ever extorted so much treasury money for its holy land as the Israeli lobby.”

The extortion has now been going on for 65 years and we are as far from peace in the region as ever. Israel is more militant and recalcitrant, always making threats to bomb Iran or launch another assault on Gaza.

My favorite Vidal quote has to be this one: “Persuading the people to vote against their own best interests has been the awesome genius of the American political elite from the beginning.”

The electorate becomes apoplectic, rabid and sometimes violent over the rights of a fetus or the teaching of creationism and the Ten Commandments in public school, but when the financial syndicate mortgages our future and turns millions into paupers, the electorate falls silent.

Unfortunately that’s not an illusion.