I wrote this for the local weekly paper just before the first of the year. I don't think they ran it.

12/27/2006

Dreams of Deliverance

Dear City Newspaper,

Rome must have felt something like this. The New Year brings the contradictions of the American Empire ever more inescapably into view as many Americans turn ever more defiantly inward, deeper into our myths of omnipotence and righteousness.

Even the liberals among our rulers, who seem to believe that good intentions can overcome the tragic consequences of the heedless pursuit of their own self-interests, cannot imagine that a distant people - ancient, tribal, poor, oppressed - can manage to solve their own problems without our intervention. These colonial precepts are deeply imbedded in our system of values.

The managers of official thought wring their hands in perplexity. After all we've sacrificed we can't just walk away! They do not share our values; therefore they need our authority. Benighted by superstitions they can't be trusted to make decisions about their land or resources.

Back in days when we used words to describe real things, we called this racism.

But now everyone seems to feel that Pax Americana, however righteous, is just not working. The natives are too primitive to accept our gift of enlightenment. Iraq is becoming our Adrianople. It's extraordinary: the neocons, the military, the person-on-the-street, all want out. All except one unstoppable man, who presumes to reinterpret the role of Commander-in-Chief into a God-like confrontation with a destiny primarily his own.

We used to call this dictatorship.

Despotism, totalitarianism, authoritarianism, absolutism. We were taught that all those things are the opposite of Americanism. Yet the military, sworn as defender of the Constitution, will follow orders despite their better judgment and the will of the population. Meanwhile, our erstwhile Representatives, also sworn to uphold the Constitution, refuse to consider the ultimate remedy that tattered document provides.

Impeachment.

It's as American as capitol depreciation. It's the way we can retire an executive turned sovereign without endangering the whole system. The Constitution grew out of an anti-imperial revolution, so you can imagine how significant and necessary the provision is. But the system is afraid of it. As with moral teachings, we choose those rules we like and ignore or reinterpret the inconvenient parts.

In its most progressive clauses, the US Constitution is incompatible with the immorality and racism that underlie any imperial system, yet the supreme US law has served primarily to protect the prerogatives of those with property. We've always fought over this contradiction, first and still regarding matters here at home, because there is a domestic empire of privilege to be defended. And, since becoming an international imperial power in the 1890s, we've maintained an official two-tiered system of morality, which is now blowing back on us in a frightening but inevitable way.

Like Rome in its decline, we're compelled to make a choice. We can plough ahead as if nothing has changed until we're overrun by the Visigoths of modernity - resource depletion, bioterrorism, economic isolation. Or we can back off the ego trip.

That'll be hard on McCain and Clinton and all the centurions of the Washington Consensus. Very hard for a first-world economic system that's based on its own form of rape and pillage. It'll be hard on we common citizens who've also profited from the empire. It's gonna hurt.

But what's worse? Accepting our proper role as co-equal planetary citizens and using our power and creativity to make the world better? Or carrying on flogging our servants while George W. Nero scratches his fiddle deep down in Deliverance? Our choice.

Happy New Year.

Carl Pultz

Rochester, NY

timbuktom, that was great.

This month's issue of Mix magazine's interesting Classic Tracks feature is on the making of "Don't Stop Believin." Very interesting, whether you're a fan or not.

God. I hope so.

Heather, you're too smart to be writing about TV. But please don't stop. Carl