← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · deteodoru
Thread ID: 16379 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2005-01-21
2005-01-21 19:50 | User Profile
It's a frustration no winner's day to day existence as I go through the daily press in five languages, looking for a sign of hope in the Middle East. With friends as casualties on both Semitic sides, one can only feel as a perpetual loser. I never thought, after Vietnam, that I would yet live again through such an ignoble loss of national direction.
There's this Iraqi surgeon who taught me how to staple resected bowels-- he's dead! Then there are Israelis I came to love-- many of them are dead too; and Palestinians I first met at Columbia U, and later partied with in Brooklyn-- some of them are also nothing more than buried body parts.
All in all, as one from a small nation pulled and pushed, to and fro in the battles of the super-giants, I can feel how helpless so many feel. I am like many who refugeed here in America. Some came directly; others, like me, came after a long trek of life adapting and becoming part of many nations, one at a time, before moving on to the next. But the hardest for me to adapt to is America. I think there are two reasons:
(1) My late father, a unique luminary as both scientist and physician in my country and Europe, suddenly in America came to feel a devastating inferiority complex. And so, rather than battling for his scientific ideas, he moved to the clinical realm where fees for services alone spoke of your skills as a physician. He did quite well; then, as an obsessive Americanphile, he kept his money moving through his hands as he became a consumer. This idea that seemed to permeate him: that "things" make the man-- Lincoln Continental, big house, tailored suits and lots and lots of electronic gadgets (the latest on the market)-- tuned me off. Before he died, he said of Reagan and Reaganomics: This man made me poor, but I love him for the way he freed mankind.
My treasure was always books; even if I never get to read them all, all the knowledge and all the experiences within are mine, at my fingertips whenever I suddenly need them and whenever I get around to totally absorb myself in them (only now, reeeetirrrred, can I fulfill my dream, many decades after starting my collection). I kept thinking of how free one is to think as one wishes in America. But, as a Russian refugee writer once said: in the USSR, you always knew you had at least one person who would read your stuff-- the censor-- here in America nobody reads, everybody is asleep in the mind! It seemed that the people you invite to a cappuccino in order to get feedback on your thoughts always seem to say: wow, man; that's deep, much to deep for me, let's go see a football game!
Somehow, "interest" and "enthusiasm" were always-- especially in the academic setting of ideas-- seen as competitive or, I was inevitably asked: how much do you expect to make on that idea? I watch, therefore, the "Americanized" East European immigrants always showing off their "things" as marks of their success in America and discussing their process of acquisition before, finally, getting down to discussing ideas. Finally, only then, do you see that their brains have not sclerosed; rather, it is the "after-the-things" show of lower priority. Only American leftists, with raging "anti-Amerika" imperialism in every breath, talk of the evils of consumerism as mind numbing. But then, little do they say about the mind-numbing of ideologic catechisms that cannot tolerate "meaningful dialog," the mantra that aroused 25,000 of UC Berkley's 27,000 students in 1964. One was therefore left to choose between "things" and "perpetual revolution."
With the end of the Cold War, many Americans were left to ponder America's role in a world without the Communist bogyman. For American Conservatives, Loyd Gardner was definitely right (my apologies for refusing to see it), there was this triumphalist air about them. Not just that America was the better, leaving room for improvement, but that America is the best. This leads to a total lack of introspection. Few ask if consumerism is the best culture for the world-- disguised as "globalism." Few ask if everyone on earth were to demand and have a right to get as many "things" as Americans feel they have a right to desire and acquire, could the world ever produce so much? That 6% or so of the world's population uses up some 60% of the world's resources only makes one ask, where are we to get 18 times or so more goods than we have now, so that everyone can get all the "things" we have? Already China is causing a painful rise in the price of oil; so, what are the American people entitled to do about it, given their economy's utter dependence on cheap oil?
Materialism begets injustice because production will never be enough to distribute evenly. Marx and Stalin were not the only ones to write about this, many a capitalist economist is pondering this very question.
And then there is the issue of population. The white man is a disappearing item. Reproduction has been brought to zero in many nations through contraception and abortion as yet another contraceptive device. But in the poorer parts of the world, technology is not how the demise of homosapiens was and is combated. Depletion is fought off with fecundity. Imagine now curing AIDS, Malaria and some of the other big killers as Jeffrey Sacks would have us do. What do you do about the consequent population growth and the growth in demand for "things"? Will technology solve the problem-- probably not fast enough-- or do you resort to the Chinese solution of only one child per family?
Americans have, since WWII, been the most generous people on the planet. But then, how far does the generosity go when, not only is there nothing in it for them, but it starts to demand sacrifice on their part. Imagine if all Americans were required to eat vegetables on Thanksgiving Day, to thank God for their plenty, and had to send all their turkeys to protein starved children in the Third World; would they do only that? Before answering, recall that we destroy surplus food, rather than send it to the starving, because to do so would depress farming prices on the world market.
The point is that American generosity always begins after its people's own engorgement, never as a sacrificial generosity. And, when one looks at the arguments made since Truman's Marshall Plan for that generosity, it always was argued in terms that, "it's good for us." What happens if it should ever be moral but NOT good for us?
(2) The materialism of Americans leads to a rather sensitive pain threshold. So, we take our inordinate share and only THEN feel generous. In fact, Americans argue themselves into generosity, more often than not, by first feeling GUILTY, both for how much they have and how they got it. The US gave $35 million for Indian Ocean tsunami relief, but is reluctant to give even more because, in order to make sure nobody but us and our friends have WMDs, we spent ourselves into a deficit attacking Iraq and thinking about attacking Iran. Of course, the righteousness of the attack is beyond discussion, because GW Bush, our elected leader, avowed that God told him to do it. And so, who are we to quarrel. Consequently we are depleting both our patriotic human and military material resources in war while claiming to recognize our humanitarian obligation. The latter, we argue, is, of course, good for us because it will make Muslims like us. Can anyone in the Middle East ever be imagined to change their rage against our support of Sharon's massacre of Palestinians or the 100,000+ innocent civilians we killed-- collateral damage in Iraq-- because we give $35 million in relief to the Islamic Indonesians?
I learned at home that "generosity" is when you feel the joy of giving, period!
Do we feel that joy as we plan our AIDS relief, our tsunami relief and our Iraq reconstruction? Are we a pro-selfishness factor promoting the selfishness of national leaders we support because they support us, all at the expense of their subjects?
These are not partisan questions, but questions raised by a leading Republican Senator, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
All in all, one conclusion comes to mind that I think all Americans should ponder. BinLaden should be our reminder that "generosity" does not trump "responsibility." We cannot suck-up the world's resources and then expect gratitude because we send in boxes of surplus American cheese along with CNN News video crews to photograph our generosity. Perhaps the SE Asian concept about the man you, as a good Samaritan, save should be pondered: you altered my karma, now you owe him his life. Can we accept the responsibility that goes with generosity?
We should think that, one way or another, everything we do has residual consequences, the responsibility which our generosity does not abrogate.
But here is the main reason I feel uncomfortable-- STILL, after decades-- in America. This nation has an unbelievable capacity for anesthetizing its people to what goes on outside each one's skin. As example, I site the Abu Graib prisoners abuse. It opened a Pandora's box of American war crimes possibly ordered as desperate intel acquiring methods by civilian DoD leaders that are desperate to undo the imbecilic war they waged in the Middle East. The pointing finger had, last summer, gone so high in government that many, including President Bush, panicked over the American image this projected. So, they all promised to turn over every rock and punish the guilty no matter how high.
Actually, the tons of documents I have in front of me as pdf printouts seem irrelevant. Sgt. Charles Grainer argued that he was "ordered from above" to abuse the prisoners, much as seems to be indicated by all these documents. But, though so easily available on the Internet, these documents are now lost in a limbo of amnesia brought on my national anesthesia. The prosecutor's summation reminded the jury that it is watched by America and the world and its decision will reflect on the US Army, its soldiers, its leaders and America itself. One cannot imagine a less legal and more political argument for finding the man guilty of sole responsibility for the prisoners abuses, and yet, that was the best argument for swaying a military jury into finding Grainer SOLE "guilty" party for his actions....Now watch how the national anesthesis will take over our minds as the torture increases, not out of its efficacy, but out of our desperation to salvage a failed policy.
In conclusion, let me say that I love this nation, especially the freedom I have to criticize it when I see reason to. But, now that I'm an old man instead of a young Americanophile refugee from Communism arguing with the New Left on the UC Berkley campus, I realize that majority rule, when the majority is so able to anesthetize itself, is really totalitarianism.
This does not mean that one should hate "Amerika" or leave it. It means that "meaningful dialog" is our only weaponed against the anesthesia. Therefore, to sit down in silence, thus to self-serve on grounds that the "mass" is anesthetized, is to abrogate the duties of citizenship. I love America because, despite the disgusting national-anesthesis, there are many good people who do not ask: what's in it for me, but instead fight that anesthesis simply because it is there and it is wrong. To me, that is the pledge of allegiance to which I pledge myself: I shall fight the anesthesia-- both in me and others-- so that the many will never get away with sending the few to die needlessly in wars that produce guilt which our generosity later tries to abrogate.
Daniel E. Teodoru
2005-01-21 20:07 | User Profile
From one retiree to another.....Welcome!
2005-01-21 20:41 | User Profile
Welcome to the board. May your stay be long and enjoyable.
[QUOTE=deteodoru]Only American leftists, with
raging "anti-Amerika" imperialism in every breath,
talk of the evils of consumerism as mind numbing. But
then, little do they say about the mind-numbing of
ideologic catechisms that cannot tolerate "meaningful
dialog," the mantra that aroused 25,000 of UC
Berkley's 27,000 students in 1964. One was therefore
left to choose between "things" and "perpetual
revolution." The leftists certainly have the most clout, but they are not the only ones who see the evils of consumerism. Both Distributism and Christian Agrarianism reach this conclusion from a religious, rightist perspective. Our own illustrious Mr Walter Yannis would be quite happy, I'm sure, to discuss Distributism with you at length.
You state that you are worried that Americans will not be generous if it means they have to sacrifice, and this could very well be the case. However, I think we should differentiate between sacrifice and harm. I take the traditional view that a person's moral responsibilities radiate outward in expanding circles. This was sometimes phrased as ethos, oikos, ethnos, polis. In other words, one is responsible first to God privately, then to his family, then to his kith and kin, and then to his state. Therefore, if by our actions to help strangers, we are causing positive harm to our family, kin, or state, we are not committing a moral act. I am all in favor of helping everyone I can, and I am willing to sacrifice to do so. I am not willing to help someone, however, if so doing harms anyone to whom my moral responsibility is greater.
[QUOTE=deteodoru]I realize that majority rule, when the majority is so able to anesthetize itself, is really totalitarianism.[/QUOTE] Democracy is tyranny, in my opinion.