Ed Vulliamy (London Observer): Farewell America

[Jack Rabbit]

From the London Observer (Sunday supplement of the Guardian)
Dated Sunday August 24

Farewell America
After six years, The Observer's award-winning US correspondent Ed Vulliamy takes his leave from a wounded and belligerent nation with which, reluctantly, he has now fallen out of love

Once smitten, it should be impossible to fall out of love with America. Who could fall out of love with that New York adrenaline rush, or the clutter of the 7 Train as it grinds on stilts of iron from Manhattan out to Queens through the scents and sounds of 160 first languages? Who could fall out of love with the mighty desert when a lilac dawn fades out the constellations in its vast sky? Who could fall out of love with the muscular industry of America's real capital, Chicago, 'city of big shoulders', as the poet Carl Sandburg described it? It was insurgent Chicago that first captured my heart for America as a visiting teenager in 1970.
Now it's time to leave the United States as a supposed adult, having been a resident and correspondent for exactly as long as Tony Blair has been Prime Minister - I was appointed that May morning in 1997 that brought Britain's Conservative night to an end. Blair's love for America seems to have deepened since; but love is both the strongest and most brittle of sentiments, and mine has depreciated. I still love that adrenaline rush, the desert light, those big shoulders; but something else has happened to America during my six years to invoke that bitter love song by a great American, BB King, 'The Thrill is Gone': 'And now that it's all over / All I can do is wish you well...'
I arrived in an America regarded by the world as 'cool'. One can never be sure whether a President defines the country or vice versa, but this was Bill Clinton's America.
I'm not quite sure what 'cool' means in any context beyond a vague positive, but the Clinton administration turned even Washington into a vaguely 'cool' place; one could spend a relaxed evening listening to the Allman Brothers Band with someone who had all day been advising the President of the United States over takeout pizza (George Stephanopoulos, who, admittedly, left the administration, disillusioned).

Read more.

[greatauntoftriplets]

1. I am reading this right now Jack,

It is a wonderful piece. So sad, so true.

[Nay]

2. Wow. This breaks my heart.

[ixion]

3. he's chronicling a sad, very tragic trend, I'm afraid

that's affecting Americans and non-Americans alike. The thrill is gone form many these days, thanks due exclusively to the Mad Chimp and PNAC.

You know, there are two primary types of futuristic scenarios in science fiction. There's the post-apocalyptic, iron-fisted empire version similar to that of 'Star Wars', and the 'Star-Trek' styled version. In the first case, the Star Wars case, there's a massive despot that controls 99% of the resources, and people are reduced to rebels and scavangers trying to stay alive in a hostile, despotic environment. In the second, the world has developed into a paradise, where the main goal is not wealth, but betterment, enlightenment, diplomacy and so on.

This, of course, is a metaphor for the differences between Democracy and Despot. Neocon facists have been eroding our democracy for years under the guise of moral superiority, and while I hope in my heart that we manage to create the 'Star Trek' future, in my mind's eye I see the post-apocalyptic nightmare brought about by America's gradual descent from democracy to despot, and I see parallels to the 'Star Wars' style.

Despots are never run by 'The People'. Invariably, they are run by those with the wealth and power. While this is a form follows function type of relationship, it never works out to be beneficial for 'The People'. The closest a despot can come to being a 'good thing' is what is referred to as a 'Benevolent Despot' (Seemingly and oxymoron, I know), more of a myth than a viable politcal model. Yet it is just this type of government that PNAC seeks to define.

Call it 'Compassionate Conservativism'.

This erosion of democracy, while taking place over the course of the past 150 years, has reached a nexus with the deceitful and devisive cabal, a cabal that continues to seek a stranglehold on the power of The People. Sadly, this is not about politics. This is about ideology. And that's what makes it such a perilous venture. To play politics is one thing. To seek a coup d'etat goes well beyond the line of simple politics, a statement of the obvious, by definition.

And this is what we've been reduced in a matter of two-and-a-half years:
Restate the initial premise: A democratic government is one of The People, by The People, for The People.
Restate the obvious: This statement is now in default. What was once seen as a creedo has become grounds for being labeled (however ironically or hypocritically) as unpatriotic. Herin lies the flaw in the logic. There are others areas, obviously, but this is where the 'Black-is-White' logic begins.

Not a government of the People, but a government of the Elite.

Not a government for the People, but a government for the Corporate.

Not a government by the People, but a government by rule of Force.

I try and maintain the concept that the planet could evolve into a place where people pursue enlightenment with the same zeal that they now pursue money. America has not been such a place for many years. Yet the concept remained: someday we would create that great society. Because we were bound together in such great number and with such massive resources, we could create a society based on erudition, on the highest principles of humanity.

High hopes. Indeed. The idyllic vision of Utopia. Perhaps never reachable, for logistical reasons, but cerainly something to work towards.

Though I think, further, I know we have taken a wrong turn and are heading down a destructive path perdition, to be sure. Yet it is NOT in God's hands, as some may have you believe. It is in OUR hands. In the Power of We, the People.

We create the reality around us, from a collective standpoint, at least.

And given that, we can create any reality we desire.

Really. I'm not just saying that. If you don't believe me, think about it. If, one day, everyone in the world decided not to fight, there would be no war. Just like that. And while I'll admit that given the current predisposition of the world populace this is unlikely, the concept itself is fundamentally sound.

Action is the Word become Light. Action on thought creates reality, to a large degree. Not entirely, mind you, tragedies are part of life. But so many these days are entirely avoidable, so easily deescalated with a modicum of diplomacy.

Detente is a beautiful thing, as the saying goes.

What we have happening these days, however, is not detente, but racketeering and extortion, at best; and a power grab at the jugular of American democracy, at worst.

And you have to wonder... what reality will the People choose? Will it be Star Trek or Star Wars?

[LeftCoast]

4. Excellent!

:kick:

[sweetheart]

5. This quote touched me...

'Sometimes I wonder,' pondered old Ruby Walker, sitting on her porch surrounded by cats, soon after her daughter had been killed in a shoot-out, 'if they ever did really do away with slavery here.'

It rambles a bit, but i hear him. Methinks it is typical dissolutionment... if he had been through those poverty ghetto's decades ago, perhaps he would have become dissolutioned earlier.

My experience of america to eurpoeans who have never been there is that they have no frikkin idea about the place... and i think he puts this well with "cool"... marketing spin. The truth is we've never left slavery.

[T_i_B]

6. LONG.....but good.

Nice to see the World Cup documented (it was actually a bit of a similar experience here I found) The article documents a lot of what makes America great and also does a good job of nailing Bush

It is incumbent upon journalists, I think, to distrust conspiracy theories. But the problem with the conspiracy theory of the machine that lifted George 'Dubya' Bush to high office is that it never lets you down; you wait for the trip wire, but walk on. This is hardly the place to recount my inspections of that mechanism but I did spend many weeks listening in Texas and days at the Securities and Exchange Commission sifting through box files, to become acquainted with its workings.

I wanted, just for instance, to find out which company bought Dresser Industries, once the world's biggest oil services company, of which Prescott Bush (Dubya's grandfather) was director and for which George Bush senior opened up the West Texas oil basin. It was Halliburton, recent beneficiary of a contract in Iraq, where Vice President Dick Cheney made his fortune after being Bush senior's Defence Secretary. And on it goes. President Bush broke all records in the history of campaign finance to get 'elected'. One of his biggest donors was 'Kenny Boy' Lay, CEO of the Enron Corporation, operator of one of the biggest company frauds ever. And among Enron's lav ishly paid consultants was, inevitably, Ralph Reed, former head of the right-wing Christian Coalition, recommended to the board by Karl Rove, the Svengali figure who managed all Bush's campaigns in Texas, and is now the most powerful man in the White House.

The entwinement of politics around the corporate boardroom had been rehearsed during Bush's governorship of Texas - once a nation, and most Texans would love it to be so again. But the Union prohibits that. So: if Texas cannot be a nation, make the nation into Texas.

For nearly a decade a group of people exiled from power during the Clinton years had been making plans. Their names are now more or less well known: Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, James Woolsey, Douglas Feith. In a series of papers they devised a blueprint for unchallenged and unchallengeable American power, military and political, across the globe, with the Middle East and Iraq as fulcrum. All that was needed to realise that dream - said a document produced by one of their many think-tanks, the Project for the New American Century - was 'a new Pearl Harbour'.