Apathy is the New Fascism
The United States is the most powerful country on Earth. Our military is huge and our politicians send it anywhere they please. Our corporations are some of the largest private companies to exist in all human history. Some of the greatest artists, scientists, writers, musicians and inventors of all time are Americans. We were the first colony to rip off the chains of imperialism.
We now place the same chains on others.
The United States of today perpetrates the same crimes on the rest of the world as the Europe of centuries ago. We’re ruled by a partnership of corporations and politicians willing to destroy liberties and lives in order to maintain their power. How long we’ve been this way is unclear, but when I look at the things we’ve done lately --- like choosing to topple a sovereign government in Iraq, eagerly purchasing mass goods made by sweatshop labor in the Third World, blocking action on global warming --- I see a nation that’s completely betrayed its founding ideals. We do to the rest of the world what the British did to us: exploit without shame.
A majority of the American people are complicit. I’m not just talking about the people who voted for Bush. It’s bigger than that. There’s a little bit of it in all of us. It’s the escapism, the unwillingness to seriously demand a REAL moral government and economy. It’s the inability of many to even recognize the pain we’ve caused. It’s the unwillingness of many to even consider the possibility that we’re not a “shining city on a hill,” and that maybe we never were. When a person like George W. Bush looks into a crowd of mostly old rich white males to give the State of the Union address and says, “The state of our Union is strong,” it means strong like a rapist.
Brute strength, moral cowardice.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. If the American people chose, we could devise a solution. There are some extraordinarily bright people in this country. We could use our government as an instrument to change the role we play in the world and heal the wounds we’ve caused. We kicked out the British. We created electricity. We broke the addiction of slavery. We stopped Hitler. We rebuilt Europe. We made rock and roll. We put a man on the moon.
Yet America currently plays the role of global vampire. We suck the life out of poor, unlucky masses all across the world, quietly supporting regimes that kill their own people as if it’s perfectly normal and acceptable behavior. We invade countries because we want their natural resources. We purchase goods from businesses that treat their workers like slaves, denying them basic rights like speech and assembly, let alone luxuries like unionization and a living wage.
But we don’t change. We shop. We’re Pac Man. We move on, running away from our demons, consuming all in our path. WHY?
Americans don’t care. Not enough Americans, at least. We’re too busy working, or raising kids, or watching TV, or shopping, or going to school, there are 20 million reasons, some perfectly legitimate, others pitiful, most scattered in between, but in the end it just means inaction. It’s going about a routine when the routine itself is what’s responsible. This is what makes apathy the new fascism. It’s the one thing that if cured could unleash the kind of incredible energy that allowed the accomplishments of yesteryear to be applied toward the dilemmas of today. Therefore, I put to you that it’s every bit as much the scourge of the world now as Hitler was then.
Don’t get me wrong here. I don’t know what to DO. I haven’t a damn clue how to solve the problem. I’d make a terrible doctor --- great at diagnosis, horrible at cures. But I know for a FACT that most Americans faced by the realization that they’re responsible for horrific pain would be extremely angry and want to change.
According to Alcoholics Anonymous, the first step toward recovery is to admit that you’re powerless, that your life has become unmanageable.
Sounds like as good a place to start as any, don’t you think?
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