Eating America's Shadow

People called Richard Nixon a tragic figure--those where innocent and carefree times compared to the now-unfolding third act of the George Bush tragedy.

President Bush is the poster child for America's deep rooted denial and self alienation. Bush is so perfectly the president for America at this moment in history that I almost want to blame God for having a hand in the matter. But since I am more Human Potentialist than Christian Taliban, I will instead say that George Bush is in the White House courtesy of the American Republic's "uneaten shadow"--to bend a phrase from genius poet Robert Bly. To an increasing number of Americans George Bush represents all of the criminal greed, selfish xenophobia, and short sighted exploitation that has been swept under the rug of America's collective psyche--and so much has been swept under there by now--from the genocidal exterminations and forced relocations visited upon the Indians to the enslavement of Africans and African Americans, and then the decades-long dirty war conducted to keep the forcibly freed "slaves" from assuming their rightful place in American Society. This collective shadow runs wide and deep, from an Anti-Chinese pogrom in and around Seattle in the 1880s to the current sly perpetuation of immigration "laws" that keep a steady supply of cheap labor on hand, and in degraded and easily revocable conditions. It is all quite "necessary" to business as usual, but is all stuffed way down, unseen and in many cases, unseeable. And America could not exist without these and hundreds of other atrocities carried out every moment throughout the world

That is not to say that America "is" these hidden crimes. But they are an integral, even intimate, part of America. A part that remains hidden--in many cases purposely glossed over, in other cases uncomfortably glimpsed but publicly unallowable scenery.

As poet Robert Bly describes the situation in his long Vietnam War era poem, the Teeth Mother Naked at Last

But if one of those children came near that we have set on fire, came toward you like a gray barn, walking you would howl like a wind tunnel in a hurricane, you would tear at your shirt with blue hands, you would drive over your own child's wagon trying to back up, the pupils of your eyes would go wild--

If one of those children came toward me with both hands In the air, fire rising along both elbows

The Vietnam War ended. Or rather, the Vietnam portion of the war ended. The war ground its way elsewhere and by a series of detours has arrived, for the main part in Iraq. Bly graphically summarizes the mechanics of this hidden process in his poem, as this summary of the summary suggests...

This is Hamilton's triumph. This is the advantage of a centralized bank. B-52s come from Guam. All the teachers die in flames. The hopes of Tolstoy fall asleep in the ant heap. do not ask for mercy.

All these terrible shadow secrets locked away inside the American earth are the energies that swirl around the White House and Congress, that unfold in interminable routine on the police beats and in the prisons of America. These are the seeds of America's continuing misadventures. And like any shadow, the longer it feeds in darkness, the more powerful and dangerous it becomes.

Watching Bush's latest speech was to see the living result of America's collective fears projected onto one relatively ordinary man. He was a willing vehicle, of course, but the war in Iraq is a collective effort--not all of it conscious effort. And if we are ever really going to stop the war, rather than just move it around from place to place, we, the American people are going to have to reclaim the shadows of our past, and of our present situation, from Bush and his ilk. And along with it, the rest of our power.

Bush's speech, in which he might have been looking in a mirror when he spoke of the ruthless killers converging on Iraq, appeared as a frantic game of hide the pea--a shell game without shells, or pea, or table--a weird sort of pantomime of obfuscation. As if, in the calculations of the White House political brain-trust, America is so well trained that simply pretending there is smoke and mirrors has become enough.

Chances are the White House is disconnected from reality. Chances are much of the American public is disconnected from reality as well.

It is, for example, gratifying to see American public opinion turning against the Iraq war. It is also terribly predictable. It was predictable on the day that US Troops and Ahmed Chalabi's henchmen pulled down Saddam's statue in Baghdad. The war had already been lost, and obviously so. Vietnam had never gone away. It was clear from the beginning that the Bush administration was lying through their teeth to sell the war. Most of America, and all of its power centers were happy to look the other way, counting on "success" to obliterate the need to address reality. Washington still thinks that Vietnam can be won.

In April of 2003, support for the invasion was 76 percent. Forget a Red/Blue divide. That's the real read on the nation. Bush is a symptom.

Dealing with those symptom means getting to the cause. Electing Kerry certainly wouldn't have been a cure. The Green Party's 2004 showing hinted that they may have succumbed to the disease--hopefully in that case it will not be fatal. The sickness feeds on denial. Denial about what is wrong with America and what it will take to fix it. We are all part of the problem, right and left. Our usual response to business as usual is the necessary other half of the equation that keeps Bush in business.

There is a cure for America's disease. But it isn't any political fad or utopia--on some special occasions powerful healing medicine does just pour out of the earth and spread through the streets and the collective mind, toppling business as usual forever--but for the most part, the cure for America's disease is found through individual effort. We find it by following the connections between how we live our lives, how we relate to our neighbors, our political representatives, our jobs and our purchasing habits and through that, starting to see what our lifestyle is asking America's soldiers, border guards, and toxic waste handlers to do, and what it inspires men like Bush imagine they are divinely mandated to invoke. This has nothing to do with becoming vegan, or engaging in self-criticism or self denial. It is a question of imagination. Following our possibilities to their imagined conclusions, not following our unreflective habits in the same old circles.