From the Progressive
Review 's Undernews July 2002
THE REAL WAR
today is not one against terrorism - which not even federal agencies
can uniformly define - but between myth and reality. While myth
has been doing extremely well over the past two decades, reality
has one ace in the hole: it doesn't really care what people say
about it.
Thus the stock
market has shown itself deeply contemptuous of its boosters,
the "war on terrorism" has increased the likelihood
of further attacks, and the Department of Homeland Security has
created vast new insecurities for those American citizens who
still want to live in a democracy. In the capital city, the city
council is considering a bill permitting big brother spy cameras
all over town - in part because they will reduce the "fear"
of crime. As Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information
Center asked the council: "Let us imagine that crime has
gone up after [the cameras are] installed but the public, perhaps
aided by an effective public relations campaign, believes that
the cameras have helped deter crime. How do we evaluate the system?"
In other words,
does myth still trump reality?
It's worth noting
that on this date in 1980, Peter Sellers died at age 54. Sellers,
in the person of Chance the gardener in "Being There,"
left us with as a profound observation as we would hear in all
the years that followed: "Life is a state of mind."
Certainly, no
other paradigm has so consistently and increasingly guided the
American spirit. Say it loudly, often, and on the right channel,
and it will be.
Like Chance,
many now only to know the world through television. But, unlike
Chance, many do not have the wisdom of their garden.
Nor do many these
days - especially among the elites - have much contact with the
sort of reality that demands competence you can't talk your way
out of - say the type found among farmers and those who earn
their living on the sea. As Conrad noted, "Of all the living
creatures upon land and sea, it is ships alone that cannot be
taken in by barren pretenses, that will not put up with bad art
from their masters."
I have been blessed
by acquaintance with both the land and the sea and these experiences
have affected my outlook as much as any college course, book,
or ideology. And even though a writer, I am deeply conscious
of the limits of words compared, for example, with the ability
to protect oneself, or to choose a wise course, nautically or
politically.
I also have at
least some second hand knowledge of living close to fear, for
a part of my childhood was spent in the company of an English
girl evacuated during the bombing of London. It hadn't been easy
for Ann to get to Washington in July of 1940. She wrote me 60
years later:
"I set sail
in the Duchess of Atholl in convoy. There was a slight skirmish
with a submarine. I remember feeling the ship shudder as depth
charges were dropped but we were unscathed and pressed on, though
I remember seeing icebergs and wondering. That was the time that
my mother told me we might well be sunk. If I was dragged underwater,
not to struggle. I would come to the surface naturally, then
not to strike out to England or America but float on my back,
as I had learned at school, until I was picked up.
"On August
30, 1940, the Volendam set off with a load of British children
for America. It was sunk in the Irish sea. All were saved.
"On September
17, the City of Benares sailed with many of the Volendam survivors.
It sank in mid-Atlantic and most of the children perished."
No more British
children were sent to America after that.
Ann, as always,
was dry in wit, understated, resolute in determination, and unflappable
in crisis. What struck me as I read her letter, was how much
I had learned from her over the years about staying calm and
realistic in bad times. More than once, after September 11, I
wondered what Ann would do right now.
Today, I find
myself in a town utterly possessed by crisis yet stunningly unable
to shine reality upon it. Almost from the moment of the attacks
of September 11, the news channels draped their screens with
pseudo-patriotic propaganda and now the president can hardly
be seen without some cynical semiotic pattern on the wall paper
behind him, misinforming the public and deluding himself. To
this day, we are not allowed - in any major public forum at least
- to consider the present crisis as the religious struggle that
it is or to raise the possibility that it is a rapacious foreign
policy and not rampant civil liberties that has so put us at
risk.
Similarly, the
public words about the market that fall down upon us even faster
than the market itself, are dripping in self-denial, empirically
absurd clichés, and hope masquerading as fact. As has
been pointed out, you would have done better investing in soft-drinks
and getting just your deposit back than taking the same sum and
buying some of the most touted stocks.
The participants
in this magic show are not just the politicians. Our media increasingly
covers perception rather than reality and our academics have
helped convince us that common truth doesn't exist anyway.
Further, a whole
tribe of professors make their living arguing that their theories
about the economy or geopolitics are objective, despite these
paradigms being strikingly unsupported by fact and in the end
having more in common with a creationist's use of the Bible than
with a scientist's use of evidence.
In any case,
it is certainly not a liberal-conservative divide. It is the
myth of each that, absent the other, everything would be fine.
In fact, both camps are engaged in manipulations of emotions,
ideas, and facts.
And what happens
when - as on September 11 or during the July crash - reality
intrudes again? Even the Christian fundamentalists had enough
sense to come up with an Apocalypse. The best the boomers can
do is to nod their heads as the man on MSNBC says again, "buy
and hold."
Chance the gardener,
forced outside his haven, ran into some young thugs. His reaction
was to pull out a remote and change the channel.
We've tried that
twice in the past year and it hasn't worked any better than it
did for Chance.
It may be time
to get real. - SAM SMITH