July 5, 2005
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His entry reminds me of an interview I heard with Chris Issak, the singer and songwriter. He was talking about his high school days, about how he and his friends had experimented with things they maybe hadn't ought to have. Promiscuity and narcotic use and so forth. But he went on to say that things were very different back then.
"That was all back before the hellmouth opened under Sunnydale High School," he said. That's a reference to the TV show, 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' where a single teenager is given superhuman powers and tasked with the destruction of all the demons and monsters that are drawn towards the hellmouth, a portal to a demon world that just happens to be under her high school.
High school shows used to be about who's dating who and whether a young athlete should cheat. Nowadays, the kids have to fight and kill the evil mayor who's actually a giant snake demon who wants to gorge himself on all the people assembled for high school graduation.
We're in a time when our nation is... Well, I don't want to say it. I'm sick of saying it. I'm sick of saying that we're jerks. I don't want it to be true, just as I'm dragged down by the veracity of it. Americans just don't care. Huge political scandals are brewing, but nothing will come of them because it might make Americans feel bad about themselves. We're narcissistic enough to have a media that works that way. We don't want to feel bad about our choices, even when they were bad choices. The people who said they were bad choices were just Blaming America First at the time, and now that they're right, it's still not *our* fault. Certainly it can't be.
And it's not just politics. All of American culture works this way. We want to feel righteous rather than moving forward. We want to protect our feelings of inflated self-worth rather than cultivating worth through integrity.
These are spiritual concerns. Not religious, but spiritual ones. They're universal; they apply to all of humanity. But for some reason America is the place where these markers of self-delusion take fantastic shape and enormous size.
And that's how I feel on this July 4th. There's a hole in my heart for this country. The Bodhisattva vow seems so far away, so gone, so way beyond gone. Gate, paragate, parasamgate...
Comments (5)
You've put your finger on the key issue, though I think it goes hand-in-hand with America's unique "No Consequences" Protestant Christianity. If your religion preaches that material success proves that God loves you, and that you can get away with anything as long as you "keep Jesus in your heart" then why would a rich, powerful nation ever feel bad?
We link that, currently, to a President who has not once ever suffered consequences for wrong actions in his entire life (one awful job of parenting), and so, self-delusion is indeed the law of the land.
So we have a war without personal costs (no draft, no tax increases) and poverty we care nothing about ("it's not me") and scandals that we just aren't interested in ("everybody's corrupt") and a bleak future we refuse to look at ("things are fine right now").
The question is, can we get out in time? Because the collapse into chaos will be an ugly one.
If by 'get out in time' you mean move to Canada, then yes, we can.
Thanks for the link to Billmon, that was very good.
I have a hole in my heart for this country, too. I never really knew how to say it until I read it in your words. The part that really hurts is when I raised my right hand like I did last Friday, to reaffirm my oath of commissioning, which in essence is to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America"... which I'm more than happy to do. Because it was and still is a good thing, this building block of a democratic nation, but that's no longer what I and all the rest of us in service are doing anymore. We're defending something entirely different, something entirely onerous, and it dismays me to the depth of my soul. A hole in my heart, indeed.
Narrator: your final question chills me to the bone. I want to say, "get IT out" but like bindweed in a corn field, I doubt that all that is this Administration and its supporters can ever be eradicated... or who would have the power to do it.
Homer: That's one option, but moving next door is just moving next door. The falling down house with the brambly, overgrown yard still affects everyone on the street. And I happen to like my home. Quite the corner we're in.
I feel less invested every day. It does seem strange, but you already are seeing the beginnings of a "brain drain" toward certain EU cities and a lessening in the inflow from Asia of the kind of people who really build a nation along with a dramatic drop in foreign students at US universities who seek to stay in the US after they graduate. I always know where the exits are...
My friend and I had a total Chris Issak love fest not too long ago because we found out that he wrote I love [name] on his guitar for his HS sweetheart who died of cancer. Also how "wicked game" was so hot yet he's a really awkward seeming guy. <3
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