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I've never trusted beginnings, tricksy little things. Give me an ending, you know where you are with a good ending ~ The Kindly Ones, The Sandman
It's always tricky, writing commentry at this time of year. As the new year is born, the old year is dying. The Romans knew this, that's why Janus had two faces. It's tempting to say "happy new year" and wish everyone well except that I doubt this new year will be any happier than the last. People have called me a pessimist often. I always respond that I am a realist and if the two seem so similar, it is because reality so often conforms to my worst expectations. Perhaps echoing the season, the year ended with a trifecta of deaths...
In any normal year, it would be folly to describe James Brown as the least important death. The man's gifts to music are well known, his charisma and energy are legendary and yet, this year, his death is the least noteworthy. An old man shuffles off this mortal coil and departs for the wild blue yonder and what is so surprising about that? I have heard that James Brown was not so pleasent a person in his personal life, I have heard he was a wifebeater. Perhaps he was. Perhaps he was like the rest of us, no better or worse except for his remarkable talent, a flawed person with many failings. Most legends are when you look closely enough.
So, the corpse of the brutal tyrant has had him moment swinging in the wind. Now what? Yes, Hussein was a monster, perhaps he was even deserving of the death penalty (I am a supporter of the death penalty in certain circumstances) but really, what difference is it going to make? Are those opposing the occupation likely to now give up and go home? Probably not. They may even fight all the harder. It's difficult to say what should have been done with Hussein. He was too dangerous to allow him to live but in death, he may have become a martyr. Realistically though, his living or dying will probably make little difference. We're still stuck in an intractable occupation which shows no signs of ever ending; Iraq is either in or close to a civil war (depending on how you define the term) and is a collosal disaster regardless. The irony is that, in removing Hussein, we may well have destroyed the country. The Sunnis, Shias and Kurds might have been able to agree that they hated Saddam more than they hated each other. Now that he's gone... It's difficult to see how Iraq can survive as a nation now and let us not forget that Hussein took information we needed to the gallows with him. What was disturbing about Hussein's death was the degree of celebration that accompanied it. Even I, as a supporter of the death penalty, was taken horrified by it, by the degree of glee in evidence. Even when we are forced to execute someone, we must never forget that this was, in the end, a fellow human being. A man who had parents and children who, presumably, loved him. Do you think they were watching as the floor dropped out from under him and the rope snapped taut? I hope not. It is a terrible thing to put another human being to death, a monsterous thing which makes monsters of us all and yet, on occasion and very rarely, we must become monsters for a time because some are simply too dangerous to be allowed to live. Still, if we must be monsters for a time, we must be careful that we don't forget how to be something else. If we are forced to kill a man, it must be with sadness, solemnity and respect for the momentous wrong we commit, it must never be a joy to behold for that way lies madness.
And then, finally, we come to Gerald Ford and what can be said of him? Perhaps the kindest thing that can be said of Ford was that he did nothing and in politics, that's sometimes the hardest trick to master. He was a C-grade President, neither especially good nor especially bad. A nation cannot always be led by great men and between the great men and the fools, there will always be the great ruck-and-run. The middling people, the one's who were "not bad". Compared to Georgie, he looks like a MENSA member. Yes, we could always say that "Ford was brighter than GW" but the statement would always by flawed by the unspoken addition: "yeah, but so's yeast".
And what of Georgie boy? How has he finished up the year? Not in the best of shape. His ratings hold steady at somewhere between "low" and "dear lord"; indictments and possible impeachment tick ever closer and shortly, he will probably (assuming he doesn't find some way to stop it) have to contend with a Democratic Congress. Still, I have a horrible suspician that it won't make any difference. I have a horrible suspician that Bush will treat the Democratic Congress the same way he treats the UN, as something to rubber-stamp his ideas or be ignored if they won't play along. During the dying days of the Nixon administration, someone quietly pointed out to Nixon that he still had the military, he could always resist his removal. Perhaps the best thing that can be said of Nixon is that at the tipping point, he stepped back from that. As bad as he was, he wasn't willing to be quite that bad. It is a disquieting realisation that, in the same circumstances, Bush might very well go with the military option. Truthfully, that's probably what it would take to force the masses to awaken from their opium (of the people) dreams. Some will tell you that the Midterm results are an indication of a great landslide, that the people have finally awakened and will hold Bush's feet to the fire. I wish I had it in me to be so optimistic. More likely, having done their duty and registered their dislike, the people will go back to sleep, lulling themselves to bed with American Idol and ABC News because the great masses of the people aren't necessarily evil but they do have a very short attention span. And if the right-wing pulls every dirty trck there is, blocking inquiry, ignoring Congress, obstructing every step of the way, would the great mass of people notice or care? Probably not because their TV won't tell them anything about it. There's the problem with allowing a dumbed-down mass media, you end up with a lot of dummies. The Democrats won't fight as hard, they won't throw as much mud because, unlike the Republicans, they still haven't learned to go for the jugular. They still haven't learned that modern politics is not about policy or positions or even results; it's a popularity contest about perception. That was John Kerry's great failing: He couldn't speak in soundbites and a serious, thoughtful man, a man whose thoughts took more than five seconds to explain, he was a sitting duck in the modern climate.
Because perception is everything you see. George W. Bush is rapidly solving teh question of whether he's evil or just insane by replying "both" but he can still count on about a third of the electorate because that third still percieve him as a good old boy, one of them. Politics no longer selects for the great and good, it no longer selects for the genius or the unconventional thinker or even the iconoclast, it selects the people who look like the electorate. The people vote for the politicians who look like them and if you have a similar opinion of humanity as I do, that means that what you end up with is someone not too bright, self-serving, petty and vindictive but just bright enough to surround himself with clever men. Like a corporation, the true power lies not with the CEO but with the Board. And that's why the right is so insistent on rehabilitating the memory of Reagan and Vietnam.
So, where do we go from here? I have bad news for you. It will get worse before it gets better. It's possible that the Bush junta will find a way to prevent the new Congress taking office but it's more likely that they will simply find a way to make Congress irrelevant. People will continue to disappear for all legal purposes, people will still be tortured, Bush will still do exactly what he likes when he likes. Yes, you have a chance now, a very small chance, to pull your country back from the brink but I'll be honest, the odds are against you. The long night of the last six years has had plenty of time to bed in deeply and get comfortable and it's going to take a lot of sweat, tears and blood to shift it. Feel like getting drunk now? Think I'll join you.
And if I cannot sleep for the secrets I keep / it's a price I'm willing to steal / the end of the night never comes too quickly for me ~ Catatonia, Strange Glue
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