Berserkistan-on-the-Potomac

Man wearing only a speedo
arrested for attempted car thefts
while holding stolen tool box.

Gary Trudeau has been writing about Berzerkistan, some mythical country in the Middle East, for quite some time now. I have enjoyed his tales of that bizarre country immensely. However, it occurrs to me that Berzerkistan is a far better description of the U.S. than it is of one or more of the several “…stans” that exist in the more remote regions of Asia. At least those countries know what they are fighting for, namely to protect themselves from us. We here in the real Berzerkistan have no idea what we are fighting for, how long we are going to go about it, what the end will be, what the best means for attaining some unknown end may be, or even why we are there, wherever we are, in the first place. This does not, of course, keep us from sending more troops there, where they are not wanted, and for the most part don’t even know why they are being sent there. Berserk, according to my thesaurus: mad, violent, wild, crazy, deranged, crazed, frenzied, maniacal, manic, insane, hysterical, frantic, raving, out of control, out of one’s mind, and more. I should think these adjectives pretty much sum up our foreign policy in general, but especially in Afghanistan, unless, perhaps, there is a goal that is being kept very hush-hush, like building a pipeline across that rugged country for Cheney’s oil buddies? I don’t know if this is a goal still held by the Obama administration, I wish I did, as the enterprise might then make at least some sense, however dubious.

Berserk about Afghanistan is only the tip of the berserk iceberg we are currently floating on. We can’t even seem to agree that health care is “good,” or good for only some and not others, or good enough to pay for, or only good for getting rid of senior citizens and the handicapped. Nor can we decide whether or not guns should be allowed at public meetings, whether everyone should be allowed to speak or not, what kind of t-shirts are allowed, whether free speech should be allowed to the dismally ignorant and uninformed, whether free speech is truly a good thing, or whether socialism is creeping up on us in the dark like a giant anaconda about to smother us all. We can’t seem to agree even if our President is really our President. If this doesn’t represent berserk I wouldn’t know what does.

Getting away from health care for the moment, we also can’t agree on who is allowed to marry whom, who should control a woman’s body, what drugs should be legal, whether the Geneva Convention is quaint or not, does torture work, should adultery keep a person from holding public office, is the earth older than 6000 years, is the bible literally true, should prayer be allowed in our public schools, whether males should or should not be circumcised, does our President resemble Hitler, whether the First Lady should wear shorts, and in some cases whether a person is male or female. Now you might think these are all questions that can be legitimately asked, carefully considered, and democratically decided. But alas, they aren’t. There are always some who feel the only way to solve problems is through violence, so we shoot doctors, lynch people, blow up buildings (even churches), picket clinics, shoot and stab each other, beat our wives, abuse our children, and in general behave far worse than animals.

On the international level things are even worse. Here we find war crimes commonplace, including the killing of innocent civilians (known by the euphemisim, “collateral damage”), torture, massive destruction of property, war profiteering, murder, arson and rape on a grand scale, the use of supposedly banned weapons of war, renditions, looting, you name it. Even genocide is tolerated, depending upon who the victims are.

The center of this berserk behavior is our nation’s capitol, which should rightfully be called Berserkistan-on-the-Potomac. Here reside (at least for part of the year) our elected leaders. These esteemed leaders are elected by the various states. They seem to commonly pick the most stupid among them to be their leaders (that is to say, they tend to elect people most like themselves). These leaders meet in Berserkistan-on-the-Potomac to decide the course of national and international events. They take an oath, which can justly be described as The Hypocritic Oath, which vows they will support the Constitution of the U.S. and perform their various duties faithfully. Supposedly they are to look after the public well-being in general and their constituents in particular. They swear this oath on our Holy Book of Violence, which, although badly dated, is held in esteem. Of course no one expects these leaders to do anything like what they are supposed to do. It has become common knowledge they are there for one purpose only, to raise money for themselves and make money for their wealthy benefactors at all costs. If anyone has the temerity to suggest something that might benefit the public good, they are shouted down with derisive cries of “socialism,” “communism,” “Marxism,” “anti-Americanism”(terms they do not seem to even understand) and what has become the generic term for all these bad things, “Liberalism.” Because the citizens of Berserkistan-on-the-Potomac live in such intimate and close proximity to our seriously berserk leaders, it is believed their brains are so addled they are not allowed to have a vote in serious matters of state. Such as it is in Berserkistan today, it was not always so. There were in the past serious voices that spoke for the public well-being and conscientiously attempted to promote it. This was before Berserkistan became a one-institution society, where business became the only institution that mattered, profit was the singular goal, and huge corporations ruled the earth.

LKBIQ:
Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone
John Maynard Keynes

TILT:
White cats with blue eyes are not always deaf.