Grand illusion
Driving home from work I was struck by what an amazing, grand illusion America is. It's a dream built on a wish built on an illusion built on a great big pile of unthinking violence. This bubble is due to burst. The dream is built on credit -- and the loan is just itching to come due. I found myself thinking that I just want to come home. To be somewhere quiet, clean and well organized. And this is coming from a guy staying in a five star hotel! And what, New York City is quiet, clean and well organized? By comparision: yes. Here the noise and smoke and chaos of the street is complete. It's an all-inclusive anti-resort. And this is how most of the world lives. It makes suburban, bourgeoise America -- my homeland, my roots -- seem perverse and surreal.
And so what to do about it? What to do about the great inequity? Well, I will learn from my friend Dan Goldsmith and do what all I can to not judge. The way of life here is different from mine, but not subordinate. And then what? Reserve judgement, be open, be respectful...but then?
A month or so ago I went to see a play set in AIDs-stricken Africa. A white British woman -- the wife of a semi-do-gooder businessman -- is thunderstruck by the suffering. Her husbands asks what she plans to do and in an impassioned speech she declares, "I can bear witness." From the moment I heard those words I have been deeply affected by them. I can bear witness.
It's hard to be here in this context -- working for IBM, being a white-shirted Westerner...here. It's contrary to my traveller's heart. I want to blend. Mix in and stay somewhere on the edge of town. Maybe those days are over for me -- an old fogie at 31.
And so I had a fleeting impulse to change my flight and high-tail it home to the comfort of my East Village flat. Rolling Rocks at my fave bar, pizza by delivery, potable water on tap. My friends have said I'm too sensitive. Ok ok. Maybe it's true. I am affected by the world around me -- and have chosen to immerse myself in it. So, no. I'll stick around and follow through.
But I'm not making any promises beyond my trip to Delhi next week. I could see myself putting my head into the sand. Get a country home and drink in the clean, forest-green air for the rest of my life. Send a check to UNICEF or Greenpeace but meanwhile life like the rest of America -- on a loan that ultimately future generations will pay for me. For us.
And so what to do about it? What to do about the great inequity? Well, I will learn from my friend Dan Goldsmith and do what all I can to not judge. The way of life here is different from mine, but not subordinate. And then what? Reserve judgement, be open, be respectful...but then?
A month or so ago I went to see a play set in AIDs-stricken Africa. A white British woman -- the wife of a semi-do-gooder businessman -- is thunderstruck by the suffering. Her husbands asks what she plans to do and in an impassioned speech she declares, "I can bear witness." From the moment I heard those words I have been deeply affected by them. I can bear witness.
It's hard to be here in this context -- working for IBM, being a white-shirted Westerner...here. It's contrary to my traveller's heart. I want to blend. Mix in and stay somewhere on the edge of town. Maybe those days are over for me -- an old fogie at 31.
And so I had a fleeting impulse to change my flight and high-tail it home to the comfort of my East Village flat. Rolling Rocks at my fave bar, pizza by delivery, potable water on tap. My friends have said I'm too sensitive. Ok ok. Maybe it's true. I am affected by the world around me -- and have chosen to immerse myself in it. So, no. I'll stick around and follow through.
But I'm not making any promises beyond my trip to Delhi next week. I could see myself putting my head into the sand. Get a country home and drink in the clean, forest-green air for the rest of my life. Send a check to UNICEF or Greenpeace but meanwhile life like the rest of America -- on a loan that ultimately future generations will pay for me. For us.
posted by Ethan at 9:59 AM
10 Comments:
I know what you mean about wanting to blend in as a traveler. It's difficult when you have a wanderlust to feel as if you are a walking emblem of all that is grand and illusory about the US. I remember seeing really young kids working in the red light district in Bangkok and wondering how the hell we could let this happen. I'm not sure I have an answer.
You can try to affect the world positively as much as your conscience demands, but at the end of the day you can't still be beating yourself up for everything you haven't yet changed. You should then be able to go to sleep believing in your own authenticity and not feeling as if you are somehow complicit just because you couldn't single-handedly reveal the man behind the curtain.
It's no secret to the rest of the world that the USA is heading for fiscal collapse sometime within the next two decades. There isn't a single economist out there who can make the numbers add up. Still, the majority of Americans are ignorant to the fact that our affluence is mostly made of borrowed money. Our government intentionally keeps us in the dark about how bad things really are. George W. Bush isn't about to come on TV and tell you that he borrowed over a trillion dollars in the last few years to fund this mess in Iraq and to keep the economy limping along. Our national debt is now over 8 Trillion dollars and rising by about 2 Billion dollars per day! Currently, our national debt is 66% of our GDP. That's astounding! Think about it: 2/3 of the country's combined income (personal, corporate, everything!) in one year is the amount of money we owe. It's like having a $100,000 salary, but owing $66,000 on your credit cards. And that's $66,000 spent on goods that depreciate rapidly. I'm not talking about a good investment like a house mortgage, but on bad debt: using your credit card to buy cars, TVs, and groceries. Such deficit spending (when systematically left unchecked) leads only one place: bankruptcy. Just like there is no guarantee that you will continue to receive that $100,000 salary, there is no guarantee that the U.S. economy will continue to grow fast enough to keep up with interest on the debt. Because our national debt continues to grow (i.e. we go into debt to pay our debt -- like so many people do with their credit cards), it's fair to say that our economy is NOT growing fast enough to sustain our standard of living. The day of reckoning quickly approaches. . . .
And if some jackass comes on here to "remind" me that our Debt to GDP Ratio was twice as high during the decade of 1945-1955, just after we'd saved the world from German and Japanese imperialism, but that we climbed out of debt by the grace of Jesus, and that our debt today is no big deal, I will have responded in advance: compare the things we went into debt for then and now. Rebuilding Europe and Japan and creating our modern infrastructure (highways, power plants, thousands of schools for all those Baby Boomer kids) during the Eisenhower years certainly paid off in the end. Yes, America went into tremendous debt, but the investments were largely social. It was GOOD debt, because the dividends were spectacular. Today, we're going into debt by feeding the Pentagon monster and destroying (not rebuilding) other nations in the process. Meanwhile, our national infrastructure (built mostly in the '50s and '60s) is crumbling. The corporations that control the politicians in Washington don't want all that deficit spending to go into social welfare, but rather corporate welfare. The Pentagon System is a gigantic corporate welfare scheme, whereby the nation's biggest corporations (G.E., Lockheed, Dow, Microsoft, and yes, Big Blue, etc.) fleece taxpayers to the tune of billions of dollars each passing day. The "wealth gap" in this country now resembles the Grand Canyon, with the top 1% owning more than the bottom 90%. And this gap widens each year. Such greed has never been seen in the history of the world. Today we are complacent, because the rich and powerful throw us tasty scraps like Sony PlayStations and Ford Mustangs. Anyone with a credit card (most adults) can go into debt to obtain these trinkets and feel like a really cool dude. But the easy credit days are nearly over. America is going to get ugly really soon when millions find themselves the indentured servants of Bank of America, Chase, and Wachovia. Enjoy low-crime New York while it lasts!
I can't wait to talk to you about India. Get drinks soon and fast!
and I'm leaving a short comment because when I got back from India, all I wanted to do was learn about their changing economy and improve it and understand it. And I don't feel like typing it, I would rather do the "we have skin that knows each other " thing.
And I don't mean that in a naked way. I mean it in a non internet way :-P
Klayton, I couldn't agree more. It's truly disheartening. It's not a secret plot to divest the American people and the world of its wealth for the benefit of the few. That's giving undeserved credit...the rip off is utterly blatant! Look at the latest Net Neutrality act...as Chomsky says, if you want to predict the future, just ask if a piece of pending legislation advantages the rich or the masses. You will be able to unerringly predict the outcome because the laws that pass are those that benefit the powerful, wealthy few at the expense of the masses, the environment and the generations of tomorrow.
What's more, I've long felt that the root of the problem lies in the elementary, middle and high school system. How is it even possible that I graduated from an upper middle class suburban American high school without ever having a single course that included any information whatsoever about personal finance? Not one. No classes on budgets, household bills, managing debt...nothing! It's criminal! To say nothing of long-term financial planning -- I'd wager most kids graduate high school incapable of discerning the difference between a 401k and turnip. This willful blindness represents a truly dangerous ignorance we're perpetuating. How can we expect to have an informed voting population making decisions about something as complex as the fiscal management of the entire United States when we don't even know how to balance our checkbooks?
I think every single American with a functioning brain cell understands (vaguely perhaps) that the corporations, especially those tied to the Pentagon System, have bought out every politician in D.C. The Republicans are just plain evil, and the Democrats are total wimps. Who can really say what that last presidential election was all about? Gay marriage? "One nation under God" in the pledge? Who is John Kerry, and what does he stand for? No one knows. An ape could have beaten George W. Bush had that ape simply held up a sign during the debates that read: "You led this nation to war under false pretenses." Had John Kerry merely stated on the night before the election that Bush is a liar with an IQ of 72, that a former cocaine addict is now sending our boys to be slaughtered in Iraq, Kerry would have won in a landslide. But Kerry doesn't have balls. He was bought out long ago by the tech companies that sustain the Massachusetts economy, the same companies that are making billions off this war, the same companies that fund our sham universities who supply our sham high schools with sham teachers.
A funny bumper sticker I saw today: "One nation, under-educated."
Chomsky was on CHARLIE ROSE the other night (probably the only TV spot he'll get in the U.S. -- after midnight on PBS) to plug his new book. He explained that Bolivia has a better functioning democracy than we do, and that the U.S. is a "failed state" by its own definition of the term. He's entirely correct. A large percentage of Bolivians turned out for their recent presidential election. And the debated topics were radically meaningful. The winner of the election was a commoner, a true man of the people. When was the last time that happened in the U.S.? Ah . . . never. Most Americans don't even vote, and the ones that do vote (as polls reveal) vote on superficial characteristics and qualities of the candidate, and not on the "issues." And who could blame us poor, dumb Americans when the only choice we get is Bush and Bush Lite? Kerry and Bush may differ on minor, meaningless issues, but they're fundamentally the same on the real issues that we never get to discuss. Issues like: who should run this country -- the people, or the corporations?
It's a total fucking scam from top to bottom. Everyone knows it. Few will admit it. The minute you think "I have too much to lose by opening my mouth" is the minute you lose everything anyway. America will get what it deserves, and soon.
Hey Ethan,
Sorry, but I couldn't resist adding my two cents to this whole discussion, and I promise this will be brief. Re. the US's debt -- yes, your infrastructure is going to crumble and the lifestyle is not sustainable, but as for the US's international debt, well, who is going to collect? I must admit I'm not optimistic that this will happen anytime soon, in the absence of an enforcing Leviathan, as it were. The 66% and rising will be paid for by someone else, not the US, nor those of us who get to be upper-middle-class in the developing world. It's a guilt trip and a conundrum.
Meanwhile, hope you're slathering on the sunscreen, and see you soon.
G.
I was saddened to read all these comments. The desperate anger and the hopeless furious predictions. They fill me with sadness.
Being a COF (Certified Old Fart), I'm allowed to say, "When I was your age...." or some other bullshit like that. But my generation, with its errors and foolishness also took action against segregation in the US. We opened Freedom Schools. We sat in, picketed, wrote letters to elected officials and to newspapers. We were reviled and investigated and put down and shot at.
But, by damn, we actually accomplished something. We'd still be fighting in Viet Nam and there'd still be "Whites Only" signs had we not taken action.
True the changes we wrought were sadly insufficient to the problems and have been replaced by new wars and new versions of racism, but I do think we did improve the lot of many in some measurable ways. We did change perceptions and consequent decision-making.
Bush/Cheney et al are in power because we ALL (including your generation with a big capital letter) allowed it. Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle merite, said Josef de Maistre and it's still true. We deserve what we got because we've allowed it.
Anything that happens to me --- either I created it, OR I supported it, OR I allowed it. Or some percentage of each of those.
My sadness lifts when I see the beginnings of taking principled action. I can bear witness is such a beginning. Bravo for that. Now, for the next step.....
Auntie,
The last thing my generation needs is a sermon from a Baby Boomer, unless of course you and your peers are willing to forgo the Social Security and Medicare entitlements that are set to bankrupt this nation by 2030. That's no "hopeless furious prediction" but a fact that is mathematically indisputable. If you can make the numbers add up, then please, show us how.
I respect much of what the Boomers accomplished, even if most of the Boomers were inspired to protest Uncle Sam's crimes against humanity because they were afraid of getting drafted. After Vietnam Uncle Sam got wise and ended the draft. Now we have a professional military that fights our wars, and Americans can go about their business and not give a shit. Ending the draft effectively ended protest in this country. It worked like a charm. Please don't tell me that the '60s counter-culture movement would have happened if there had been no draft. No draft, no Woodstock. Plain and simple. Sure, the civil rights movement would have happened one way or another, because millions of blacks were sick of the nonsense. White middle-class Baby Boomers may have helped the movement along, but please don't pat yourselves on the back too much. You could always go back to your cozy suburban homes (or your Ivy League dorms) at the end of the day.
Tyranny takes many forms. Whites oppress blacks. Men oppress women. America oppresses the Third World. Today my generation (and future generations) are being tyrannized by the Baby Boomers' lust for deficit spending. Two people my age will have to slave our asses off to provide one Baby Boomer with a comfortable retirement. That ain't cool. My grandchildren will be paying a sizable chunk of their paychecks to pay the interest on money borrowed yesterday. They won't even have the satisfaction of knowing that their taxes are being spent on current needs. They will be funding in 2050 your heart transplant in 2015 -- assuming that America exists in 2050.
Yeah, Baby Boomers had all the fun and all the glory, but now the party's over, and they expect future generations to clean up the mess. I tip my hat to the Boomers and to all they accomplished, but I also curse them under my breath as I look forward to slaving under their yoke for the next 25 years.
Just like the Boomers said to their Depression-era parents: "We don't mean to be ungrateful, but you folks are a bunch of dingbats!" -- so we say to you. And if that makes you sad, well, too bad. Think about how your own mother felt when you grew your hair long, smoked pot, made love to a black girl, and burned your draft card on the green lawn of Harvard University. You wanted freedom. Hell, yeah! Freedom is beautiful. . . .
So don't try to scam us into slaving for you now that your bones are brittle and your heart is weak. Baby Boomers are always bitching that "today's youth just won't take a stand against THE MAN!" Well, look in the mirror, daddy-o. You and your generation are THE MAN.
And since when was speaking truth to power "desperate anger"? I assure you, no one on this comment thread is desperate or angry. You are the only sentimentalist here, Auntie, and by your own admission. The rest of us are merely discussing issues of grave importance. Such condescension reeks of Certified Old Fart fascism. You'd serve everyone better by sticking to the facts and not getting all psycho-feely-preachy-frumpy on us videogame-addicted good-for-nothing children of Reagan. You can thank us for your free bottle of Lipitor/Prozac/Viagra later. . . .
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