Something is wrong with the United States. I think most of us have noticed
it. There is a mortal rot in the country, made manifest by many little rots
that are hard to integrate mentally yet are, I think, somehow related. The
change is grave, accelerating, probably irreversible, and fascinating. Things
are not as they were.
The United States is the most hated country on the planet, followed by, to
the extent that there is a distinction, Israel. So far as I know, there are
no other contenders. You can say “Who cares?” as many will say,
or “Screw’em if they can’t take a joke,” or “I’d
ratherh be feared than loved.” All very droll. Still, it is an interesting
datum. No country ever lives up to its own PR, but there was a time when America
was widely admired. Now, almost universally, it is seen as a rogue state.
And is.
This carries a price. The US consulate in Guadalajara is part fortress, part
prison, with barriers and cameras and bars and rentacops, and they take away
a woman’s lipstick if she is going to enter. Maybe a country that fears
lipstick needs to think. The French consulate around the corner is wide open,
like all others that I know of. The French, Chinese, Japanese and so on aren’t
hated.
The US government now lives in its own, strange, insulated world.
(2) The United States is the most militarily aggressive country on the planet,
followed closely by Israel. I am aware of no other contenders.
Some of this combativeness is obvious—attacking Iraq for no good reason,
occupying Afghanistan, threatening Syria and Iran, attacking Lebanon by proxy,
bombing Somalia, putting troops in the Philippines to hunt Moslems. The US
is also looking for trouble with Venezuela, threatening North Korea, moving
to “contain” China (Doesn’t a container need to be bigger
than its scontents?), embargoing Cuba, pushing into Central Asia, increasing
the military budget, and pushing NATO ever closer to Russia. (How stupid can
you get? Very. Stay tuned.), And the Pentagon now has Africom, African Command.
Africa is now America’s business.
(3) Powerful domestic hostilities grip the United States. Maybe you have
to be outside of it really to see it. I live in Mexico. You can go for…well,
five years and counting, without hearing angry talk about this or that group.
In America, women hate men and men are getting sick of American women. Blacks
hate whites hate Hispanics. “Affirmative action” engenders intense
hastily that doesn’t go away. It isn’t the normal friction found
in any country. It is serious antagonism quashed by federal force.
And the black-white-brown thing has very real potential for getting nasty.
This we don’t talk about.
(4) A curious state fear prevails in America, but it is a governmental creation,
a calculated manipulative Disneyland. Perhaps soon we will have Terror Mouse.
Recently I was in Washington. Everywhere there were the artificialities of
fear. The steel pop-up barriers in the roads, the stop’em-bombs steel
poles on sidewalks, the endless warnings to report suspicious behavior on
loudspeakers in the subway. The searches of everything, the metal-detecting
doorways even on buildings of country governments, of schools. (Schools, for
Chrissakes. What is wrong here?) And of course the confiscation of shampoo
at the airport. This is nuts.
(5) The bullying of people entering the US. Any country has the right to
determine who enters. Fine. If you don’t want them to enter, don’t
give them visas. If you issue a visa, try to be courteous.
Violeta had a visa, issued by the consulate, both times when we went to the
US. Still she got bullied by the border Nazis. It was ugly. I am obviously
not a Mexican, but I get the same hostile questioning as to where I am going,
why I was in Mexico, and so on. It is none of their business where I go in
my country. Or shouldn’t be, but there are no limitations on governmental
powers now. A friend, married to a Mexicana, again with a visa, got separated
from her, and both got abusive questioning. She came out crying.
America was not like this. Now it is.
Compare this with the real world. I land in Beijing—evil commie Beijing,
right? Maybe twenty seconds to see whether my visa was valid, clonk of stamp,
thank you, no baggage search, into a taxi. Vi and I land in Paris, en route
to Italy. Glance at passport, yep, it’s a passport, no stamp, no nothing,
on we go. Italy didn’t even look at our passports. Grown-ups.
I am not ashamed of the United States. It is a hell of a country. Been there,
done that, loved it. In two weeks in DC with Violeta, although she is clearly
not American, she was everywhere, always, treated with perfect courtesy and
friendliness, whether on Cap Hill or Farmville, Virginia. Americans really
are good folk. The government isn’t. It’s the gravest problem
we face, both internationally and domestically.
(6) The Constitution really is going away, or has gone. It never did work
as well as it should have, but few things human ever do. Habeas corpus is
dead, right to an attorney, congressional right to declare war—it’s
not even worth listing the list. Joe iPod in the burbs doesn’t care
because it doesn’t affect him, yet. Git them Hay-rabs, ain’t no
draft, plenty sushi. Urg.
(7) The increasing, detailed, intrusive regulation of life, the national
desire for control, control, control. Everything is the business of some form
of government. Want to paint your shutters? The condo association won’t
let you. Let dogs in your bar? Never. Decide who to sell your house to? Racial
matter. Own a dog? Shot card, pooper-scooper, leash, gotta be spayed, etc.
Have a bar for men only, women only, whites or blacks only? Here come the
federal marshals. What isn’t controlled by government is controlled
by the crypto-vindictive mob rule of political correctness. This wasn’t
always in the American character.
Add the continuing presence of police in the schools, the arrest in handcuffs
of children of seven, the expulsions for drawing a picture of a soldier with
a gun. Something very twisted is going on.
How much of the public knows what is happening, or even knows that something
is happening? I don’t know. But I don’t think that it’s
going to go away. In ten years it will be an entirely different place with
the same name. Almost is now.
