Because You Never Asked

OKLAHOMA AND THE REST OF US

     (This essay is the companion to the one called “Oklahoma”, written shortly after the explosion at the federal building in Oklahoma City.)

     And what about the rest of us? Is it good enough to sit around and feel superior to these psychopaths who’ve committed such an unspeakable act? Do we come into court with totally clean hands, or do we all have some shred of responsibility for the things our culture gives forth with?

     We live in a society that has made unbridled, competitive confrontation the foundation of its value system. We not only confront exterior forces on a regular basis, we are constantly confronting ourselves. Almost from the beginning of our cognitive awareness, we purposely seek to create enemies. By the time the big Thanksgiving Day game between East Diddly and West Diddly High rolls around, we’ve already been through these state sponsored mini-wars many times over. Perhaps even more relevant is the way we routinely confront each other on a daily basis --- with the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, or the watches on our wrists. This is further compounded by the diminishing grace with which we compete: the Deion-dancing, in your face arrogance meant to further humiliate a beaten foe. People go out in the world offering messages as to who they are and what they believe --- bumper stickers and tee shirts telling us to “kick butt!’ or that “second place is for losers”, or to “just do it!”, or any endless variety of themes extolling the virtues of winning and the disgrace of defeat. Some people have to let us know how wonderful it is to be “single and loving it”, or to be the parent of a child who is “ --- an honor student at Yuppie-Suburb Jr. High”, or even worse (I’m not making this up), that “my kid just beat up your honor student” (ah yes, the usual last resort of the working class). Commercials have become more personal, more bean ball aggressive, with advertisers specifically calling each other out by name. We might finally arrive to a day when an MCI commercial will be little more than “hey, AT&T, you suck!”. Our cultural dialogue is degenerating into nothing more than an “I can beat you, oh yeah, well I can beat you” shout down. We are consuming ourselves in competition. It is making us neurotic, insecure. It is becoming unhealthy.

     There’s been a lot of talk about loss of innocent life in Oklahoma. The fact that a day care center, with its precious enrollment of pre-school children, was not immune from the perpetrator’s hate, has rightly elevated the public horror for the wicked deed. But let’s examine some of the acts of violence propagated by the United States government in recent history. Although some of us may have disagreed with such acts, they were accepted by the vast bulk of the citizenry and represent the official will and policy of this nation and its people.

     If my memory does not deceive me, our military action in Panama was called “Operation Just Cause“. Try telling that to the family and friends of the men, women, and yes, children, who happened to be under the bombs and shells that destroyed a good part of Panama City’s poorest neighborhoods. The number of deaths incurred in this action has always been shrouded in the pea soup of governmental ambiguity, but I’d be willing to bet there was quite a bit more loss of civilian life in Panama than in the Oklahoma bombing. If we examine the official reasons for this military fiesta, it is hard to find any more justification than the following: a typically greasy, Caribbean dictator, who had certainly become “El Presidente” with our support, had been calling us names --- and oh, yeah, he had something to do with drugs. The unofficial reasons were probably something more substantial than that --- lest we forget, there’s that canal down there, which is supposed to be essential in keeping us the swellest nation on Earth --- but it was decided we’d all be better off if we continued watching Oprah and Geraldo and left the bombing to them. In any event, a lot of innocent chocolate-skinned people were done in by all this.

     I’ve already written extensively about the Gulf War in this mass of dubious philosophical patter. (Who could have foreseen, as I put this essay up on my site in 2007, what chicken feed Papa Bush’s oil war would be compared to the horror his son has wrought?) We all know that six figures worth of human life was destroyed in this action, a substantial part being civilians, including, you guessed it, children. In an effort to equate this gleefully dispensed human massacre with the events in Oklahoma, and to be brief, I shall simply quote from a previous essay. “In an effort to continue selling a noxious fuel that is fouling our planet so we can go on producing and selling superfluous products in a manner that accommodates our economic system, we have fouled our hands with the blood of greed. This is something I can’t, in all good conscience, be a part of.”

     Fifty years ago, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These were the two most singular acts of destruction the world has ever known and its moral implications have been debated ever since. Although there supposedly exists a warring code exempting civilian populations from the brunt of an armed conflict, in practice, this is very difficult to avoid and perhaps not that morally pertinent. When two willing, technologically advanced industrial giants like the United States and Japan formally legalize a state of all out warfare, everyone, both soldiers and civilians, are in it together and must be responsible for it. After three and a half years of hateful, full blown conflict, it is easy to see that pity for the other’s victims would not be a high priority. As a result, the United States, allegedly to shorten the war and save American lives, decided on its atomic course of action. This is the official version, and, if true, civilized man can argue as to the reasonable qualities of such an action.

     The gear works of the intellectual discipline known as “history” creak and grind along at a rust covered pace. As we creep towards the 21^st century, this ponderous history machine is beginning to grind out some interesting new perspectives on the events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Much of what I’m about to say was gleaned from a documentary shown on Public Broadcasting, a source not given to sensationalism nor frivolous research. The program in question was scholarly and extremely well documented. If I may risk the sin of over-simplification, it suggests the Japanese were willing to surrender, and had given such diplomatic signals with terms we could accept (in fact, with the terms we eventually did accept), months before the bombs were dropped. However, the United States decided to conveniently ignore these signals and dropped the bombs as a warning to the Soviet Union, who had already been perceived as the next great threat. If there is any degree of truth to these assertions, I contend our country is the most sordid terrorist nation on Earth, and, like the Germans due to their guilt from WWII, forfeit any credibility as a moral watchdog for some time to come.

     I remind the reader that this essay is not about the competitiveness of our society, nor the invasion of Panama, or the “Oil War”, or the atomic bombs dropped in Japan. It is about the explosion that just took place in Oklahoma City. Sure, we can attribute this heinous act to a handful of extremist lunatics who’s response to their “grievances” was way out of line. But there seems to be a little of this in all of us. We’ve become a nation of whiners, complainers and spoiled brats. We are inventing a new kind of discontent; in the past, most public upheaval came bubbling up from the angry masses, from poor people demanding more opportunity and a more equitable distribution of wealth. Today we see people who already have a lot, angrily demanding more. Here we are, living in a land of plenty --- in fact, in a land of never before so much --- and it is not enough! This exaggerated commercial competitiveness; this perverted devotion to material acquisition, is corrupting our personalities. It is muddling our concepts of right or wrong, moral and immoral, and distorting the meaning of truth and lie. I’m tired of whimpering people pointing fingers at striking ballplayers and selfish owners, conniving politicians, or, in what has now become the most fashionable bitch of all, the big, bad government. It is time we all looked in the mirror and started to take responsibility for our culture’s aggressive, confrontational ethic, and our own ignorance in not harnessing it --- or even worse, in encouraging it. I am not talking numbers. I couldn’t care less about the NASDAQ, the GNP, who’s employed or whether “durable goods” are outselling whoopee cushions. What’s more relevant is how insensitive this socio-economic system, and the way of life it has spawned, is making us. If we all want some credit for the good our culture produces --- the technology, the music and athletes, etc., --- then we must also take responsibility for the wicked and perverted. We are all responsible.

     Kick butt!     

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Email: JerryG@postcman.info