Eyes Yet Wide Shut?

photo "We're All Really Monkeys" courtesy Jeffrey Shay

THE FALL GUY
The United States, apparently, has found a fall guy for all that's wrong with our country. President Bush, the Emperor with no Clothes. That's good news for Americans who prefer to look "out there" rather than "in here" for the source of our nation's ills. While the national conscience has stirred, prodded by those unhappy judges of the collective superego, a cogent case can be made that we ourselves have been at least equally diligent spinners of the Emperor's elusive threads. We are waking perhaps, but are those sand-specked eyes we rub yet wide shut?

Think about how we got here.

On one hand, you had right leaning blind loyalists attacking the patriotism of anyone who dared to point out the denuded state for our case for war with Iraq, while on the other hand those who had the actual common sense to advocate diplomacy over force were were arrested for such "heretical" acts as wearing "Give Peace a Chance" shirts.

And the left? With a practically unified voice we have dehumanized Bush and Cheney (if it looks like a quail...) as the face of evil, failed to present clear economic or military alternatives to the "Stay the Course" mentality of the current Administration, and given John Kerry a free ride during the last Presidential Election for emphasizing the way he went to war instead of the way he came home from war.

TWO-SIDED LINCOLN
It's as if one side of the country was looking at one side of a five dollar bill and the other was looking at the other; one side seeing Lincoln and the other side his memorial. And we were prepared to go to our graves, along with, to date, over 2500 Coalition troops and 28,000-32,000 Iraqi civilians, before we would ever have admitted the other side might not be delusional.

I ONCE WAS BLIND BUT NOW I JUST DON'T SEE
So, we were blind then but now we see? Or is it that we've simply replaced the Red and Blue 5 dollar bill with a two-faced currency sided by the face of a victimized populace on one side and a power hungry corrupt leadership on the other? (Related: "Roshomonistic Way to Win A Beer")

How otherwise to explain the bi-partisan shooting down, without even open-minded debate, of gestures toward the Middle East that could reasonably be construed as conciliatory such as the Dubai port issue? How otherwise to so unthinkingly leave unquestioned new conventional wisdom tropes as the one voiced by Middle East expert Juan Cole in a recent Slate magazine essay: "Tactically, strategically and politically Bush now finds himself in the worst of all possible worlds... they have no good options . . ."

No good options? Are we so hardened in our positions that it doesn't even cross our minds that maybe, just maybe, Bush could be persuaded to actually APOLOGIZE to Americans and Iraqis alike? To say, oops. I screwed up! Help me find a way out!"

Am I alone in believing we have an incredible opportunity for United States citizens blue and red alike to look inside and ask ourselves not just "where did Bush go wrong?" but "How did we manage as a nation to blind ourselves so completely to his missteps, distortions, and. as seems to be increasingly apparent, outright lies?" For Reds to reconsider what Jesus would REALLY do and Blues to think about whether or not a less timid left would have flayed Howard Dean for expressing outrage over a military action that was already in question from the moment the sword dropped.

IF NOT IN DOUBT, EAT 'EM
The fight is not with each other. Well... a little. And the fight is not with President Bush or the "evildoers" within his administration. Well... a lot. Still, the fight is also within our own riven hearts; those riven hearts we can't bear to look inside for shame and sorrow that we could have failed as miserably as the other guy. (Related: "Riven Hearts: Why I Write & Why I Fight"

We'll eat Bush alive and swallow our children's future before we'll admit that. Unless we don't.

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Comments

[Meg]

"those riven hearts we can't bear to look inside for shame and sorrow"
Beautiful line, Raphie. :)
Wouldn't it be nice to find a way to "Pied Piper" everyone into lives where they, too, can look inside without shame and sorrow ... it really, really, really should be simple ... but humans make it not so for themselves.