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More than fifty years ago, James Baldwin remarked that, Most people
are able to delude themselves, and
get through their lives quite
happily There is a parallel now in the splendid illusions proposed
by those
who claim victory in the failed Iraq campaign. As we spiral
into a sad decline of death, destruction, deficits,
and
dishonor many of us find neither solace nor safe harbor in such
delusion.
Today, in America, we are forced to examine what we are, where we are
going, and who we may become
The current regime in America seeks to reinforce traditions of
anti-intellectualism and dogmatic fundamentalism.
Fifty years ago Mr. Baldwin intoned that it was essential for
Americans to free ourselves of the myths of America and
try to find out what is really happening here. After more than a
half century of searching, perhaps in the nick of time,
we may finally discover what must happen if we hope to survive. We
may feel powerless when leaders try to
redefine torture and legitimize aggression, but if we hope to find truth,
courage, and fidelity among these transgressions,
we must take James Baldwins observation to heart. He told us, The
intangible dreams of people can have a tangible
effect on the world. We can embrace his admonition that The
challenge is in the moment, the time is always now.
In spite of this hope, a simplistic reductionism typifies the
rhetoric of the right-wing extreme in America today.
These pundits would have us accept situational ethics, devalue civil
rights,
and deem common decency
old-hat.
A left-wing extreme would have us believe that corruption reigns
supreme, the body politic is diseased, and revolution
is the cure. Those of
us
who exist
in-between these poles, know the truth is less simplistic and more
essential. Our
dreams are not in vain. Our traditions are worth saving. We need not
surrender to amoral CEOs or anarchists without
a cause. We can find common ground and universal cure in liberal
values and conservative principles. We must
return to the rule of law, preserve our resources, and protect our
security by embracing our neighbors in reconciliation
and respect. In this vast middling place, where most of us find
ourselves, we can be liberated from a patent surrender
to fascism when we move to conserve the values which define America.
Those who have
hijacked our nation, disenfranchised our people, and upset the
balances of power in America, seek to
drive us backwards towards a primitive colonialism. Baldwin observed
that, Wherever colonialism is a fact, the
indigenous culture begins to rot. This was evident with the sad
decline of American tribal cultures, in the brutality
and squalor in the Palestinian occupied
territories, and this disease now unfolds and festers in Iraq.
Among the
ruins of these cultures emerges a subculture which is condemned to
exist on the margin. And now, in America,
as our leaders move to occupy other nations, we find ourselves
suspended in an amoral cultural chaos.
What will it take to forge a cultural
synthesis to liberate us from the yokes of oppression and guilt? How
can we
move our social order to a point of reconciliation and creative
regeneration? What will it take to reaffirm the
legitimacy of our dreams, the efficacy of moral compunction, and the
necessity of social conscience?
How much further must we lower expectations before
we wake up to face ourselves?
The answer is clear and irrefutable. The great injustice which is
the irreducible fact of colonialism, must not be
allowed
to stand.
These destroyers of dreams choose to conjure old demons of
colonialism in corporate
disguise.
The polemics of a war on terror
and an orchestration of a new anti-Semitism, are only fear-mongering used to
hide
the ugly face
of aggression and exploitation of
peoples, cultures, and nations.
Today, it is not only nations of the
dispossessed and disinherited who have been disenfranchised now the
victims include the too-silent majority of
Americans who would rather not know the truth, and who find comfort
and harbor in delusion and obfuscation.
We, who work and worship in America, can no longer afford to ignore
political realities. Our nation and our globe
have been transformed and revitalized by a flowering of information
technology. Instead of retreating to the depravity
of violent colonialism, we must embrace the powers which are
redefining our future and our culture. The moneyed
elites who have betrayed our values in pursuit of the almighty dollar
must be forced to recognize who they work for.
Orwellian apologists like Karl Rove are going to have to
come clean, face the music, and pay their
dues. However
much so many would like to avoid the truth they can run, but they
cannot hide.
We can no longer afford to deny what Baldwin warned us against.
Rather than inheriting a greater capacity for
self-loathing and
self-delusion, the facts on the ground and the evidence we see will
force us to accept that neither
the TV screen nor the local bar can
free us from what ails us. America has become Harlem transformed. We
have
seen the enemy, and he is us. As our nation devolves into a
third-word ghetto of dreams deferred, our salvation lies
not in denial
and delusion. The only way we can save ourselves is to have the
courage to remember who we are,
and live up to what we can be.
When some propose that ticking time bombs demand redefinitions of
torture,
This perpetual justification empties the heart of
all human feeling. The emptier our hearts
become, the greater will be our crimes. The
country will not change until it reexamines
itself and discovers what it means by freedom. In
the meantime, bitterness is increased
by incompetence, pride, and folly and the world
shrinks around us. It is a terrible, an
inexorable law, that one cannot deny the humanity
of another, without diminishing ones own. (Baldwin)
These words speak directly to this generation and
our current grief.
James Baldwin tried to reach beyond the liberation of his people to
liberate his nation. We need follow his example.
We must discard our illusions and face the discord and chaos in our
nation. In Baldwins America this chaos was
blamed
on outside
agitators or communists.
Today the scapegoats are redefined as terrorists, whose behavior
often mirrors our own. But, If we are not able, and quickly, to face
and begin to eliminate the sources of
discontent in our own country,
we will never be able to do it on the greater stage of the world.
One hopes these
sentiments are not lost in the
translation of
fifty plus years, from a legacy of racism to a sad slide into
macroeconomic
betrayal and disaster.
Presumably the society in which we live is an expression ---in some
wayof the majority will. But it is not so easy
to locate this majority. More often than not, vitriolic southern mobs
of the past, or
todays extremists... fill, so to speak, a moral vacuum,
and
the people who form these mobs, would be very happy to be released
from their pain, and their ignorance,
if someone arrived to show them
the way. We need not surrender our values and traditions to primal
fear. Instead
we must look beyond the myths to discover what divides
us. We are encouraged to build walls to protect us from
incommensurable terror, but perhaps we need tear down those walls and
face our fears, terrors, insecurities, and
demons together.
We could listen to our writers, who are here to describe things which
other people are too busy to describe. James
Baldwin told us the truth we could not bear to hear, that a country
is only as strong as the people who make it up and
the country turns into what they want it to become I dont believe
any longer that we can afford to say that it is entirely
out of our hands.
Delusions notwithstanding, We made the world we
live in, and we have to make it over.
Nobody Knows My Name is as vital and cogent today, as it was
more than half a century ago.
Tim
Flanagan
associate editor at
www.WritingResource.org/ |
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