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Re-Lighting the Torches of America's Soul Monday 30 June 2003 What happens when individuals or whole societies damage -- or even temporarily lose -- their soul, their spiritual anchor, their sense of themselves as moral entities? Oh, I know that talking about "soul" and "spirituality" is anathema to a good share of the Left. Those terms often are regarded as too new-wavy or are found mostly in the camp of conservative churchgoers. But we need to focus on the moral and spiritual aspect in our politics for a variety of reasons, including helping to re-balance our own souls amidst all the horrors being perpetrated by our so-called leaders. Further, if we in the progressive movement avoid the spiritual field, we certainly will be crushed in 2004, and the know-nothing forces of Bush&Co. will have free rein -- read: reign -- to carry out further imperial misadventures abroad and police-state-like constitutional shredding at home. The result will be catastrophe -- to our already shaky economy, to our national treasury (and treasures: our young men and women sent to patrol the empire), to the collective soul of America. The United States is, and likes to think of itself as, a highly moral country, dedicated to fair play and to the belief that God takes an interest in our democratic experiment. Americans, at heart, want to do the right thing. When our society goes outside the boundaries of decent moral behavior -- as we did with slavery, for example -- those lapses are regarded as aberrations, correctable as we learn more. We are in another such moment in our history right now, but we can hope that as more and more citizens learn what's really going on behind the scenes, and face our political shadow, the pendulum will begin swinging back the other way -- if permitted to do so. Using fear and a permanent-war scenario, the Bush Administration has been able to manipulate the American populace into turning its spiritual button to the off position. By demonizing and lying, it has put America's moral sense of itself into a kind of numbed "pause" mode. Americans are led to wallow in the fright and negativity pushed daily by Bush&Co. and its conglomerate-owned mass media. After months and years of having this negative template laid on top of our society, it's not difficult to have one's energy sapped, to sink into a kind of fatalistic torpor, or even, because the feelings are so intense, to deny that one is having doubts at all. The Dark Clouds Gather The shadow forces in American politics have been in the ascendancy for more than two years, and many ordinary citizens, not used to having mean-spirited and mendacious leaders in control of the country, have been confused as to how to respond. And so many folks closed down their moral sensibilities. But there are signs that this is beginning to change. Normally, you see, America doesn't initiate wars when we haven't been attacked or are in little danger of being attacked, or when our vital national interests are not at stake. But, in this Iraqi case, the American public has been led to feel: "After 9/11, we need to get those guys, and Saddam is capable within 45 minutes of sending his drone planes to drop anthrax on us, or a nuclear bomb" -- and more such whoppers. And off go a quarter-million American troops to the Persian Gulf, with little or no serious debate -- and with more of them dying every day. (Don't get me wrong. There are bad-guy terrorists out there who need to be confronted and captured, but we don't need to become a unilateral bully abroad -- thus enriching the soil in which terrorism grows -- and move into a police-state at home to handle the problem. And our officials certainly don't need to lie on a massive scale to dupe us into approving their imperial policies.) Even though it has become clear that the U.S. is in no danger of an imminent attack from Iraq, and that indeed there were no weapons of mass destruction worth worrying about, the Rove propaganda machine has done its work well. More than half of those polled think we did the right thing, even if no WMDs are ever discovered. So. How to combat that moral lethargy, that overwhelming sense of denial that America maybe, just maybe, might be doing something wrong, something that violates our normal sense of ourselves as a righteous, ethical people? Rather than simply bash away at the bourgeois, religious middle class for their willingness to go along with whatever Bush&Co. says and proposes, it might make more sense to try to reach folks on an idealistic level, where they live and/or repair to emotionally. It's key to remind ourselves that we are taking this approach not only, or even mainly, as a political tactic, but because it's the right thing to do: to see folks as individuals, with very real fears and sensitive spots. Think of it as a kind of holistic political-spiritual practice. Love, in the long run, always is more powerful than hate and suspicion. Healing always is more gratifying than destruction. Learning From Earlier Struggles During the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and '60s, the act of reminding white, Bible-reading citizens of their moral consciences had a great deal to do with eventually bringing about the required changes in the South and elsewhere. During the anti-Vietnam War days, many in the clergy -- priests, rabbis, ministers, imams -- also were reminding citizens of the immoral policies that were being carried out in our names; the spiritual underpinnings of the peace movement served as soul-bedrock for our actions -- even when we protesters sometimes went astray. Millions of us found ourselves denouncing not only our government but also its ordinary-citizen supporters; we got up into their faces (often our own parents' faces) and equated them with baby-killers and worse. In our self-righteousness, it took us a good while to figure out that such tactics often were counter-productive, violative of our inner beliefs in peacemaking, and, in terms of bad P.R., making us the issue rather than the war. How to exit that path? In the Pacific Northwest, where I was then teaching, many of us anti-warriors decided to meet regular folks where they lived -- in churches, at public meetings designed to break down generational barriers, at political potlucks, at community picnics, at sporting and social events, in off-campus classes -- and tried to learn more about them, as human beings. In the process, they learned more about us as human beings, that we were more than just raggedy longhairs smoking grass and shouting at the police. Suddenly, communication lines were open. We weren't so scary any more, they weren't so stereotyped anymore. We activists heard their fears and agonies: They didn't really like the war and all the death and destruction carried out in their names, but wanted to trust the government, fearing anarchy if the scruffy anti-war protesters were correct in their denunciations. And these middle-class folks finally could hear what we were saying, that the government was lying about a war-policy destined to fail. As more and more body bags arrived back in the States, the middle-class folks with whom we were talking sensed we were telling the truth, and many began contacting their elected officials, or writing letters to the editor, or working for peace in their churches and schools and so on. A good number even wound up on the streets with us protesters. Middle-class pro-war solidarity began crumbling, and the Nixon administration knew it had to somehow end the conflict. The Vietnam analogy is not exact, of course. But more and more, it looks like the U.S. -- having alienated its traditional allies and much of the rest of the world by virtue of its unilateral, arrogant, bullying approach prior to the war's start -- is now in a 'Nam-like quagmire in Iraq. We have only the foggiest notion of the sub-rosa cultural forces in play in that land, and a good share of the population is opposed to our presence. Forces of opposition are regrouping and, especially at night, carrying out a guerrilla war against U.S./U.K. troops, with more bodies being shipped back home each week. The Lies That Bind It's now clear to all that the Bush Administration lied about -- or (if you don't want to admit that your government would falsify on such a massive scale) at the very least grossly exaggerated -- its rationale for speeding to war. Iraq was a broken nation before "shock&awe" began, with no weaponry to speak of; the U.S. and U.K. were in no imminent danger of attack, and neither was anybody else in the vicinity. Iraq was attacked to provide a demonstration model for the region, in order for the U.S. to assert its hegemonic control in that energy-rich area of the world, and as a warning to nations (and international organizations) around the globe not to oppose the U.S. lest they bring the wrath of U.S. power down on their heads. Ideologues within the U.S. government, seeing that there was nobody to stand in the way of the lone superpower on the globe, had concocted a military/foreign policy aimed at preserving and expanding America's Pax Americana ambitions. (See my "How We Got Into This Imperial Pickle: A PNAC Primer"). The upshot of all these recent revelations of Bush Administration greed and skullduggery, stealth power-mongering, and gross lying is that the American people have been given the tools with which to measure their sense of morality and spirituality against the shadow forces that, for the moment, dominate U.S. policy.
Hope on the Horizon In short, the building blocks are almost in place for serious impeachment moves and a possible electoral victory in 2004. The keys to these hopeful developments lie in:
Are they aware that Bush's incompetent "post-war" policies are endangering our troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere? Isn't it shameful that the Bush Administration, which claims to care deeply about our soldiers in uniform, is cutting back funding to veterans? Are they aware of the extremist, ideologically-driven judges that Bush is appointing? Are they aware of the humungous deficits being racked up by the Bush Administration, and the deliberate consequences that flow from that: little money left over for strapped State budgets, Medicare, Social Security, meaningful prescription-drug coverage, Head Start, curbing environmental pollution, bettering education? And so on. These are just a few ideas to kick-start the discussion. No doubt, you've got more great suggestions for how to turn this country around and back to civil politics, compromise, a genuine concern for the general welfare of all our citizens and society, not just the elite. Get those ideas out there. Friends, our beloved nation is at one of those
historical crossroads that will decide our fate. We either defeat the
shadow forces of greed and power-hunger -- of negativity and
fear-mongering -- and take our country once more into the aura of light
and hope, or we risk losing our individual and societal soul for a long,
long time, with untold damage to the nation, the world, our moral center. ------- Bernard Weiner, Ph.D., is a poet and playwright, who has taught at Western Washington University, San Diego State University, San Francisco State University. Formerly a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle, he now co-edits The Crisis Papers.
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