I wrote the following just short of a year ago. I never posted it because I thought it too shrill, and myself too angry. Well, now, coming off two weeks of objectively shameful media circus and titillation over JonBenet * Karr, followed the credulous parade of politicians that Jack Cafferty notes are shamelessly slogging through a third-world New Orleans... well, now it's time to pop the top. Because we serve no vinegar before it's time...
- jump -
09/07/05
Tom Guarriello of TrueTalk kindly notes this blog in his post:
We're Mad As Hell...
It's time for The Howard Beale Show.
In Network, Paddy Chayefsky and Sidney Lumet's biting satire of all things 70s, Howard Beale was a network anchor-gone-mad. One night on the evening news, Beale let loose an empassioned diatribe about everything that was wrong with America, and entreated those who agreed with him to get out of their easy chairs, open their windows and shout at the top of their lungs: "we're mad as hell, and we're not going to take this anymore."
Mr. Bush, it's time for The Howard Beale Show.
Because many of us are out there this morning getting out of our easy chairs and walking to the window...
Exactly. Tom's invocation of "Network" caused me to recall not just Howard Beale, but
Faye Dunaway and William Holden:
Max: It's too late, Diana. There's nothing left in you that I can live with. You're one of Howard's humanoids. If I stay with you, I'll be destroyed. Like Howard Beale was destroyed. Like Loreena Hobbs was destroyed. Like everything that you and the institution of television touch is destroyed. You're television incarnate, Diana -- indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy...
War, murder, death -- all the same to you as bottles of beer, and the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensation of time and space into split seconds, instant replays. You're madness, Diana. Virile madness, and everything you touch dies with you. But not me. Not as long as I can feel pleasure and pain... and love.
You know, there's a revealing element to the narrative news organizations have followed so far--the hand of news producers, I'm sure. The little boy separated (now united) from his dog "snowball." The stories and video of "lawlessness" and looting, contrasted by the wire service photos (Never on broadcast TV!) of folk face down in water and holding their breath far too long for it to be a dare.
Even the so-called liberal media is stingy with idea of who counts as "we," or "us," still giving the benefit of the doubt as if it were rationed, dwindling, and saving the most of it for those who need it least. Hoarding it. Hoarding it, like it hoards access to public officials who lie to them, knowing access is a rare commodity. Truth? Not so special. Hoarding it like some management carves away employment, destroying corporate cultures in search of fleeting efficiencies, whipsawing masses of people based on whim or fad, all for a slightly taller pile of cash-on-hand, soon to be made moot by some more ruthless competitor.
Max has a great point above. And one of the beautiful ironies of Chayefsky's Network script was that he reversed roles: Dunaway's Diana, named after a fabled warrior, was the warrior. It was Max, the Man, who was lamenting the loss of character and self-control; the death of compassion. Lamenting her soullessness. Angry and sad, at the same time.
I get it. I too am angry and sad.
Why? America has lost it's soul. No, I don't mean because of Katrina. It's a loss that's older than that. And no, I don't mean individual Americans or one specific party or the other, one sector or the other.
I mean "America," the Idea of the thing. The collected, goofy optimist hope of it.
As individuals, and as relatively small communities of purpose, we can muster a warm, compelling Public Character. In isolated moments, usually huge conflagrations bringing barriers down with the buildings or airplanes, we can share. Temporarily. Most of us.
But, outside of survival-mode, throw us all in a pot and you get mush.
Or maybe, crabs in a barrel. I recall reading an interview with Spike Lee, oh, must be at least 10 years ago. He used that analogy, and I'd never heard it before. He related how he'd been at a fish market and seen the fresh, live crabs kept for sale in an ordinary rain-barrel. As he watched the teeming mass of legs and claws, he noticed that a mound of crabs would form and then topple, almost reaching the top. Over and over again this would happen. Finally, one crab would crawl the undulating ramp of of his crab cousins and make it almost to the lip of the barrel and clamp a claw on it. Just as it seemed he was home free, several other crabs saw this new top step and clamped onto the hind legs of their about-to-be-lucky cousin. Down they all tumbled, down, to the bottom of barrel, fated to start all over again.
That analogy fits so well the kind of frustrating entropy the last 30 years of so have wrought. Shining cities on a hill. A Thousand Points of Light. A Bridge to the 21st Century. Compassionate Conservatism. Many frustrated runs up to, then back down again, the potential leaps of quality of existence that Stephen Jay Gould popularized as punctuated equilibrium. We're excellent at slogans and PR. We just can't get a claw on the edge of that new plane.
Why is that?
Hmmm. IBM had a marvelous spot a few years ago: "Where are the flying cars? You promised me flying cars!" Indeed, the "future" was supposed to be more miraculous than this, wasn't it? We were supposed to become more enlightened, more thoughtful, more charitable and inviting. If you go back and reread the speeches, the pro formas, from politician or businessperson, we were always cresting the wave of a bold tomorrow, forgiving and forgetting all our yesterdays.
Ah, but as this grand young country has of late become one of perpetual mid-life crises, the urge to hoard has only grown along with our waistline. I can't believe I'm thinking this next sentence but here it is:
We are afraid of our future.
Not of what it might bring, we're not that incoherent or naive. No, we are at a crossroads of purpose. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it's been said before. But never before have so many veils been lifted from our eyes is so short a time. And remember, this is 2005--those eyes thought they had pretty much seen it all, had pretty much got it knocked.
Okay, but why are we afraid?
Maybe it's because the American Mythology has run its course for this phase of our development. Maybe, like the aging graduate who keeps coming back to the fraternity house to party and relive that lithe and easy time, we can't let go. We can't bring ourselves to move on, and up, to better things. More worthy things. More mature things. The next stage.
Maybe? I think so. Just look at the metaphors we benchmark by. The cowboys and indians. The stoics. The John Waynes and Clints and Bruce Willises, taking this beach, or that hill, squinting and shooting, no questions asked; tackling the terrorists or bank robbers or aliens single-handed, stubbly and gruff, but still getting the girl.
Those are the benchmarks of a 13 year old boy. Still not sure what manhood is, still scared, a little, of the opposite sex, still not sure how he sounds to others. So he shouts, or glowers.
Yeah, as countries go, we're in adolescence, not mid-life. I wrote the same here some time back....
Now, what is the archetype of America in the eyes of the world? It's an admix of seeming geographic impossibility: It's California's Hollywood, right next door to Monument Valley and across the street from the Brooklyn Bridge. America is fast and flashy, future and past, mostly fair-minded, act first, ask questions later.
America is a Hero in a hurry, in the archetypal, R-Complex lexicon. As citizens, we are most comfortable living out that idealized self-image. Others, i.e. The rest of the World, are most comfortable seeing us as this Archetype. Anyone who tries to alter that view--ourselves included--gets a very bad reception from the R-Complex. It is a non-operational identity, It is inauthentic. To some, the dissonance can be scary or angering. America is also an adolescent as countries go. Like many teens we are in the midst of deciding our next phase. Messy for kids, messy for us, but a vital tug of war to cement identity for further growth.
Here is where American politics is playing out an object lesson as you read this. Left and right have two very different perceptions of "Hero", brought violently into conflict by the events of 9-11. One Archetype is powerful, yet sage and calm, expansive almost to a fault. It is a Hero-caregiver-protector. The other is powerful too, sage as well, if not so relaxed, and decisive almost to a fault. It is a hero-warrior-protector.
There's only one drawback. A country can have a certain naive energy, in fact I'd bet it's the key to our soon to be 400 years-worth of continued leaps up Gould's spiky stair-steps of Punk Eek. A country can have that naive adolescent energy, but it's citizens--it's grown-ups--don't have that stopped-clock luxury. Grown-ups still need to act grown-up within that collective thing called a country. Otherwise, we get Golding's version of
children playing at adult:
Chapter 3: Huts on the Beach
Jack is busy tracking a pig at the start of this chapter, when he arrives at the beach where Simon and Ralph are constructing huts. Ralph complains no other boys are helping them with their shelters, but Jack tries to argue that hunting is more important; this expands into yet another argument between Ralph and Jack. When Jack again brings up hunting, Ralph presses that keeping the signal fire is much more important than hunting. Jack disagrees, and they boys continue on their path of mutual dislike.
Ignorant to the fussing of the other boys, Simon picks fruit for the littl'uns and makes his way into the jungle finding a clearing. He climbs onto a mat of creepers, and remains there; he enjoys the tranquility of this spot, where he can be in touch with nature.
Significance: Jack is solely concerned with hunting, and cannot see the necessity of other things that can keep them alive. Ralph and Jack are really beginning to fight in this chapter, and it foreshadows much more future conflicts down the line. Simon's actions present him as a very good, peaceful and helpful character, in contrast with many others.
Yep, the emphasis is mine. And this town ain't big enough for the both of 'em. Not under the current terms, anyways, not mired as we are under the tortured burden of our
other electoral
choices of regret, right, Professor Bainbridge?
I have no doubts how New Orleans is gonna fare, and it won't be fair, no matter what bullshit promises Nagin or Bush offer. The mythical They say "no decision is a decision." Yeah. And lack of action, attention and care are what they call "Tells" in the game of poker. They telegraph your position, your cards and your intent. They tell much that some wish hidden. Too late. We know who holds the cards; we know they means-test their "Compassion." And they helpfully inform us who are the looters, and who are the "finders".
What did Max say?
War, murder, death -- all the same to you as bottles of beer, and the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy... You're madness, Diana. Virile madness, and everything you touch dies with you.
There is no truth, no practical virtue in this current version of a "Republican" America. There is only tribe, enemy. And it's a suicidal soup. A deathmatch where one side still does not realize how pathologically its existence offends the other.
Blue and Red. Max and Diana. Ralph and Jack. Looter and Finder. And, come on, let's face it, The Dead and the Quick. Except this is a selfish, secular judgement made real and plain by government high-jacked by a psychotic agressive victimhood draped in old-testament tribalism. Yes, a so-called Christian nation shows pagan, primitive, falsely prideful as a world looks on in shock.
Indeed. It's only fitting. A City known for Soul gives up its own, as its nation pretends it still has one.
###
See? Harsh. But, today, 8-30-06, we have insurance whistleblowing sisters. And this, a harsh contrast between progress made in (R)MS and (D)LA, from of all places, the Washington Times:
In New Orleans, people are shocked to see whole neighborhoods lying still in ruins, like a post-apocalyptic movie set. The New Orleans metropolitan area has lost nearly one-third of its pre-Katrina workforce and more than one-fifth of its population. Its electric-power consumption is 60 percent of mid-2005 levels; its gas usage 41 percent. Just under half of the city's bus and street car routes are operable; about 17 percent of the pre-Katrina public-transportation vehicles are in use. Fewer than one-third of the city's schools will be in operation by the start of this school year, according to the Brookings Institution's Katrina Index.
This national tragedy, with its very real local consequences, cries out for attention one year after Katrina's landfall, just as it did in the weeks and months immediately after.
A year is gone, and with it, judging from the sorry state of the States of LA, AL and MS, gone too is any pretense of remorse or redemption. Welcome to purgatory, Dear "Christians." Welcome to the Cold Civil War.
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(a version of this crossposted @
fouroboros)