This is My America.

A rant inspired by Lewis Lapham’s satirical Notebook piece in the Oct. 2005 edition of Harper’s in which he asks “in a major rather than minor key” “Can we make America the best damned fascist state the world has ever seen?”

The U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader, already reprimanded three times by his peers on the House Ethics Committee, has been indicted not once but twice. The U.S. Senate Majority Leader is under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for insider trading. The administration's top federal procurement official has been arrested by the FBI for making false statements about golf trips paid for by a lobbyist who seems to be everybody’s friend. The Deputy Secretary of State (the top political advisor to the president), the Vice President’s Chief of Staff, and quite possibly the Vice President, himself, have been implicated in the treasonous and careless act of publicly identifying a CIA agent in an attempt to discredit a former ambassador’s opposing view to one of the administration’s “weapons of mass destruction” claims. The "weapons of mass destruction" claims given as reasons for Our invasion of Iraq remain unfounded. The inexperienced crony appointed to head the "post 9-11" Federal Emergency Management Agency resigned without accepting any blame for a Federal response to a hurricane and levy breach that took five days to commence (for more appropriate disaster preparation and response see the work of former FEMA director James Lee Witt or, more recently, the days leading up to Hurricane Rita). Instead the president sheepishly said “I am responsible” as if words are enough. The nepotism continues with the president’s latest nominee to the Supreme Court, the apex of the United States Judicial system. The nominee’s experience, for the most part, comes from her job as personal counsel and cover to her appointer since his days as governor. This is My America. The America left to me and my generation.

This is an America where the number of millionaires and billionaires continues to rise at a rate almost equal to the rise in the number of poor. In this America, allegiance is pledged not to Country, but to brand name. This is an America where the bottom line is the only line, where defense spending is never questioned, and where the executive branch rules the legislative branch. Gone are the days of “The buck stops here” unless you are on the bottom of the governmental or military ladder. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” has morphed into the only thing we have is fear. Fear is how elections are won, liberties are lost and dissent is squashed. Our culture of spin and deception has made dissent anti-American, torture justifiable, and tens of thousands of Americans left, on their homeland, without food, water, sewerage, and electricity for five days “their own fault”.

In the terms recently given to us by the U.S. Congress General Accounting Office, the “covert propaganda” being perpetrated by our government and its hired journalists warrants punishment, but there is barely a reaction. Simply more fodder for the disgusting and disheartening joke that’s referred to as public discourse in this America. Fake reporters propped up by the administration to ask “talking points” questions that turn out to be of the few that receive the closest to answers. This is the America I have inherited. For the rich, screw the poor! Mass produced, overly processed, poisoned food sold cheap to continue to feed the machine.

And of course there is the war of aggression, the war of choice, the War in Iraq. Iraq, where the liberated are starting to ask the question: When will we be better off then we were? Iraq, built on the success of Afghanistan, where elections have been fixed and opium production is at an all time high. Iraq, where we have turned the corner three times so far and are do to do so again on October 15. But who will fight and die for this new constitution? In America, there are those who fight that our Constitution stand as the framers framed it as they fight to add to it intolerant discriminatory amendments in order to define religious terms and give government the power of sanctification currently bestowed upon churches and temples. People fight for more unwanted pregnancies (unborn children) while they fight the welfare system that provides for many of the born. A tax cut and spend America that thinks putting corporate profit before clean air and water makes sense and the idea that bombing will not stopping bombings is the talk of “wackos”.

What would the founding fathers think of This America? A nation with eyes glazed over by celebrity, ambition revolving around money with little or no concern for the greatness, or even goodness, ones deeds. What would they think of a “misunderestimated” president misspeaking at podiums from which a nation was once inspired? What would the creators of America think of towns with character sanitized by the Everytown Starbucks society and jobs long since left for the cheaper unregulated labor of foreign countries?

The vacuum of real leaders can go unfilled only as long as the frustration can hold. President Bush, I would love to just “Get on with my life”. I would love to, as the Dalai Lama says, “Internally disarm”. I just don’t feel right about letting this all go with out yelling from the top of my virtual mole hill.