The Disunited States of America (+ a frank comment by the Editor)

by Jim Sorrells, Ph.D.
May, 2006

Controversy over the attacks on 9/11 continues. Despite UNITED 93,
a film I found very compelling, there are those who think that crash
and whatever hit the Pentagon were both fabrications. Even though
there is no question that something hit the twin towers, a lot more
people suspect the government had a hand in the collapse of the towers
and neighboring WTC 7.

But those numbers pale in comparison to those who distrust the
reasons given for attacking Iraq. Was Colin Powell misled or
misleading is his presentation to the United Nations? Did the
administration honestly think there were WMDs posing a nuclear threat
to the region, or were we lied to in an attempt to get us to accept an
action we never would have accepted otherwise?

After all, this administration has always operated in secrecy and
doubt. Did polling officials in Florida and Ohio rig the results that
favored Bush over Gore and then Kerry? Was the Diebold Corporation,
which manufactured many of the voting machines, complicit? After all,
the president of Diebold "promised" the state of Ohio to Bush.

After election, the administration established a pattern of
secrecy. Documents that had been de-classified were re-classified.
Wiretaps were ordered and first legitimized with claims of warrants.
Then, even the pretense of warrants was dropped. Cheney, with close
ties to big oil, formed an energy task force, refusing to release the
identities of the participants. We do know that environmentalists,
conservationists, and alternative fuel folks did not need to apply. Is
it any wonder that the public feels bamboozled by the explanations for
soaring fuel costs?

Halliburton, still doling out deferred payment to Cheney, wins
no-bid contracts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and even when those
contracts are executed with shabby accountability, they are renewed.

Bush told us he is a "compassionate conservative." His compassion
apparently extends only to big business and the rich, the primary
beneficiaries of his tax cuts. The poor need not apply. He tried to
privatize Social Security in the name of rescuing it, like rescuing a
drowning man with a large, heavy rock. The Medicare Prescription Drug
program? Tailored to the needs of the pharmaceutical industry, and if
you can't figure it out, you must have Alzheimer's, for which you need
an expensive medication.

It seems like we've added a fourth branch of government, i.e., the
Great American Lobby, headquartered on K Street, de facto president
Jack Abramoff. The speaker of the House resigns in a flurry of charges
of corruption. A congressman is caught on tape accepting bribes, the
money is found in his freezer, and he has the audacity to complain
about the F.B.I.'s intrusion. The Democrats and Republicans alike
issue statements denouncing the F.B.I's intrusion. Is that chutzpah or
what?

Actually, that's small potatoes. We got our knickers in a knot over
the awarding of port security to Dubai Ports World, yet nobody even
noticed that Treasury Secretary John Snow, under whose aegis the deal
was awarded, is a former executive of CSX, a container shipping firm
with links to Dubai Ports World and the Carlysle Corporation, which
you learned about if you saw FAHRENHEIT 9/11. The revolving door of
cronyism between government and industry spins again.

One after another corporation is exposed as running a shell game.
The executives at Krispy Kreme were misleading their investors and
employees right out of the Enron playbook both of which went belly-up
after their executive officers reaped millions. Turns out the high and
noble institution, the University of California, has been handing out
bonus packages right and left, in blatant violation of its rules and
procedures, hoodwinking the Regents, and the President of the
University hardly seems ashamed. The lid is about to blow on Fannie
Mae, the largest facilitator of mortgage lending in the country. Turns
out the Army Corps of Engineers may have bungled the job in rebuilding
the levees and floodwalls of New Orleans, not just now but in the
past, but of course the Corps denies it. At least the President of the
University of California had the decency to admit his wrongdoing.
"Taking responsibility" has become rare and as ineffectual as taking
umbrage.

Or perhaps taking confession. Instead of taking responsibility for
its pedophilic priests and putting them out of the harm's way of
children, the RC Church simply rotated them from one parish to
another, all the while denying any wrong-doing, until victims began
collecting millions. Then something had to be done.

Before the threat of avian flu appeared to subside, our government
had purchased millions of doses of Tamiflu, manufactured by Roche from
a formula owned by Gilead. Who was the former chairman of Gilead
before he became Secretary of Defense? You got it. Is it any wonder
that bird flu is now being spoken of as a hoax?

Same with global warming. I happen to believe it is a reality, but
I'm waiting for the next conspiracy theory to allege that the
administration is doing it on purpose to facilitate drilling in
Alaska.

Last but not least, our sports and entertainment industries. Barry
Bonds is booed as he breaks Babe Ruth's record. Was it skill or
steroids? The last two contestants make it to the finals of "American
Idol." Was it votes or manipulation?

I was inspired to compose this essay by rumors circulating about
"American Idol." Did Reuben win over Clay Aiken because the producers
suspected Clay might be gay? Are the judges' comments a
not-very-subtle attempt to influence voters? Are the phone lines
rigged (like voting machines) to give votes cast for one contestant to
another contestant (a notion I would seriously consider if I found out
Diebold makes the equipment)?

If you add up all the above aspects of life in which trust is at a
minimum, corruption seemingly can't get any more rampant, and the
notion of "truth" is beginning to seem like a cruel joke, the mental
state of America is somewhere between utter cynicism and blatant
paranoia. The motto seems to be, or seems that it ought to be, "Trust
no one."

When I was growing up, i.e., until day before yesterday, it was
during and after WWII. We were "good guys," fighting for the "right"
causes, not just for self-interest (at least until Pearl Harbor). Just
about everybody did his or her part to support the war effort. The
notion that FDR had links to industries that might be profiting from
the war would have been unthinkable, and I don't recall that notion
ever being entertained.

Then it was perhaps Eisenhower's warnings about the
military-industrial complex that brought the sobering awareness that
something could begin to stink in the state of Denmark. The film, WHY
WE FIGHT, spells out that thesis. In America, we hold history in low
regard and scarcely remember our own. If it were otherwise, we would
"remember" many periods in our history when government and various
industries conspired against "the people."

The next glass of cold water, as I recall, came when Spiro Agnew
was exposed as a sleazy, two-bit crook, and I wondered how in the
world Nixon came to pick him. Watergate answered that question for me.

Kennedy was my hero, but I'll have to admit that my unmitigated
admiration took a blow when I learned what a womanizer he was and the
first "conspiracy" theory I can remember, that Marilyn Monroe had been
offed because she knew too much.

The second conspiracy theory I remember lives on, namely that Lee
Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby were not isolated nut cases, acting alone,
that perhaps our president had been assassinated by our government.

And then there were the lies about Viet Nam. As Robert McNamara
relates in FOG OF WAR, Gen. Westmoreland once speculated that if we
hadn't "won" the war, he and McNamara would have been tried as war
criminals for crimes against humanity. And they all lied, Kennedy,
Johnson, and Nixon, asking us not to believe our eyes as we watched
the 6:00 news, asking us not to puke when the National Guard shot the
students at Kent State.

That's it, I think, the extent of lying, so prevalent that is has
become the expectation. Maybe not even lying, more the Art of the
Dodgeful Answer, "I did not have sex with that woman"…unless you count
fellatio as sex. Forget "the whole truth and nothing but the truth."
It's more like "the parts of the truth that make me look good."

"Integrity" is a quaint term that used to mean something in
American society, a term that Webster defines as "steadfast adherence
to a strict moral and ethical code." It's as though collectively, we
have decided to abandon the code of honesty, in our commerce, our
government and other higher institutions, even in our sports and
entertainment. Not just caveat emptor, buyer beware, but citizen
beware. That, my friends, to borrow terms from construction and real
estate, is dry rot of the infrastructure of our character. Our piers
and joists have been eaten away by the termites and beetles of greed
and self-interest, unabated by compassionate enlightenment. Any house
like that is bound to fall down, and there is no homeowners insurance
for such losses.

[I'm beginning to think that it is not some external calamity that we
have to fear but the all too obvious deterioration of our system from
within. Not good news, folks -- we're killing our selves from within,
or rather, we're being killed by the excessive greed and stupidity of
our own 'leaders' (of both government and industry) gone wild with
their own inflated egos and sense of infallibility. Not the worst of
news either -- we CAN throw the bums out, There is no way in hell they
can "fix" the elections if a solid majority of Americans decide the
party is over. Mr. Nixon found that out, and he was a good sight
smarter than the current bunch of bozos. Are we tired of this shit
yet? I believe we're getting there pretty damn quickly... ED.]