Truth Nor Consequences

There was a time, believe it or not, when consequences followed lies. Today I’m afraid we live in a country where liars imagine that the only consequence they’ll ever experience as a result of their untruth is ever greater success. Now, should there happen to be some fallout—they call that “trickledown”—from the inconsequential fables they spin around themselves . . . . Well! I guess it’s up to the little guy to sort that all out—or to take the blame, when that’s expedient.

And who exactly are the “little guys”? In the past, I used to think of you and me as the little guys—those of us who earn less than six figures and can barely scrape together two nickels to “save” each week. Now, I’m not so sure the little guys who’ll reap the gravest consequences of our continuously growing “productivity” and resulting eons of mega-consumption won’t be those of us who, literally, are little—namely, the children and grandchildren of the “boom” generation.

When did this national culture of lies without consequences get going? In one way, I suppose it’s as old as language itself. No word exists that isn’t “spin.” There’s a vortex of significance that swirls around any word and somewhere in the dark hole at the middle is the ding an sich. The thing that gives rise to the concept is, of course, not the concept itself. Thus, insubstantiality serves as the basis of all human thought, because that which causes the thought dissolves in the act of being thought about. Thereafter, it resides only in the hidden spot of thing-ness that has been totally obscured by the whorls of conceptualization which loop around it but are always being sucked back into it at the same time as the centripetal force tries to fling them away.

The fact that no word can actually stand in for the thing it represents is a reality we all cope with every minute of every day. But that doesn’t mean we have to like it. And, it absolutely doesn’t mean we should take advantage of one another by never meaning anything we say. On the contrary, precisely because truth is so difficult to attain, we ought to spend most of our time silent in contemplation of the “Om” or the “Atman” or the “I am” that is the first of all words and the center of all that is. Do so, and some truth may occasionally creep into the few words you say.

By contrast, look at me now. Pouring words onto the page in the metastasis that speaking truth to untruth must unfortunately become. So, let’s loop back to my question of when America lost its way in the progress toward truth and justice, the concepts upon which this nation was founded. U.S. involvement in Vietnam was the springboard, Richard Nixon was the diver. With Watergate, Nixon plunged not just himself, but all of us, into the bottomless waters of lies without end. Yes, I imagine presidents before Nixon had not always told us the gods-honest truth, but none before Nixon disregarded it so utterly. And what was the consequence?

He lost his job and slinked back to San Clemente tail between his legs! One could hope the man never had another good night’s rest. But, he certainly didn’t suffer much in the way of public consequences. Ford pardoned him a month after he resigned. Not because Nixon wasn’t guilty but, Ford says, because “the tranquility to which this nation has been restored . . . could be irreparably lost by the prospects of . . . prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing [the former President] to further punishment and degradation.” I guess it’s a good thing the founding fathers didn’t have these same qualms about prolonged and divisive debate with King George, huh?

Had the nation taken the Nixon occasion to debate and determine exactly what “separation of powers” and presidential “executive privilege” the Constitution intends, perhaps we would not be where we are today. Instead, Nixon’s bald-faced lies without consequences gave way to the charmingly masked lies of the former actor Ronald Reagan in his trickle-down economics, tax cuts for the wealthy and, most notoriously, the Iran-Contra Affair. Rather than tasking him with negative consequences for any of these travesties, the country honored Reagan with a state funeral upon his death in 2004. And, now, for the last eight years we’ve been treated to the shameless, self-indulgent pseudo-buffoonery of the younger Bush and his administration. Virtually every word from their mouths is another fear-mongering lie, and never any consequences. They’re happy to bring to justice the little guys like those they accused of offenses at Abu Ghraib, but who's going to be held responsible for the grave abuses at Guatanamo.

And what will be their legacy? Never-ending "War on Terror." National debt of inconceivable proportion. Millions without health care. Hundreds of thousands without jobs. More and more mortgage foreclosures. Grievously wounded veterans who have no long-term health care. Nothing done to slow climate change. Nothing done to improve public education. Nothing done to achieve energy independence. Failure in the financial sector. . . . But “victory” in Iraq! (Don’t think about Afghanistan. Don’t! I said.) And CEO’s with salaries that diverge from their workers’ pay by multiple hundreds of times! That’s the sort of world I hoped my child would inherit. . . . Or, no, I guess it isn't. For just a moment there, I must have dreamed I was a CEO.
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These days, privilege is rank and so is brimstone!

But, it won’t be tomorrow that I invite my neighbor over. ’Cause, if you recall, my shadow and I are visiting the pub. And that’s just the way us bleeding-heart sinners are put together, as I’m sure Sarah Palin will tell you. We’re all really long on high-flown ideals and way too short on the kinds of action she's used to, the kind that doesn’t even cause her to blink.

So, I was talking to the guy that cleans our offices yesterday, and he made me realize that almost everything wrong with all the institutions in the U.S. can be summed up in two words . . . executive privilege. And I'm not talking only about the federal offices in Washington, D.C., either.

Are the corporations of America—those grand ole businesses that have flourished for generations on the sweat and labor of honest men and women—truly not responsible for the fixes they've gotten themselves into? I mean, who do they have to blame but themselves for never having paid any attention to one jot or tittle above the bottom line? It's exceedingly demeaning to those of us who have a few connected synapses left when they tell us that they "couldn't have foreseen" whatever today's disaster may be and they expect us to buy that BS!

Anyone who can add and subtract could have predicted the eventual failure of the so-called "housing bubble." The first time it became clear to me exactly what a "sub-prime mortgage" was, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. "Who would buy such an abortion?" I thought to myself. A lot of people, apparently. Part of the problem is that we let ourselves be easily swayed by language that comes to us with it's own quotation marks already tied to each end of the phrase. That's all the more true if the language is coming out of the mouth of someone supposed to be an authority in the field—like a mortgage banker, for instance, or an economist, or a hedge fund manager.

What do any of us peons actually know about the high-flown world of finance, after all? We've simply got no choice but to trust the experts. Problem is, most of them are plain and simple opportunists; i.e., someone in the right place at the right time. For the rest of us, it's caveat emptor right and left.

So now OUR government has bailed out Bare Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and, today, AIG! I can't even keep up with the sum total of our money they've so far committed to these giant corporations. But I'm going to have a real hard time forgetting that they fired the CEO's of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after the two of them jointly earned almost $30 million last year, and we didn't ask them for a penny of it back . . . although it seems we aren't going to give them their golden parachutes. Boo hoo!

Do you begin to get a glimpse of what I mean by executive privilege?
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My Heart Bleeds and I’m Proud of It!

Since when did it become a sin to have a bleeding heart? Should I be ashamed that I’m made of flesh and blood? Every holy woman or man is the more blessed the more the sinner can see that it is bright and viscous blood which surges in the saint’s heart. Yet here in this land of milk and honey, I’ve become afraid even to touch the earth, let alone admit I’m made of it. Do I imagine that the punishing father will come home to rip the honeyed bread from my mouth and splash the milk across the floor? I think I must. I know I deserve no more. Yet, there’s the bread, the milk, the honey . . . every morning, every night. God! I’m scared that someone will notice I’m the sinner, not the saint!

So I keep my head down. Don’t look in the eye of the stranger on the street. Cross over to the other side when I see trouble ahead. Turn the corner before the beggar catches me up. Scurry back into my hole when I hear footsteps behind me at night. It’s chaos out there, the tooth and the claw, rat’s race and grindstone and fear, fear, fear!

Should I happen one day to awaken without fear, all I need do is read the news, turn on TV, listen to the radio or access the Web. Before half an hour passes, I’ll remember a hundred reasons to be afraid. Where’s today’s hurricane? Earthquake? Genocide? Who’s just killed whom . . . and how many? Has the ice cap melted yet, are the polar bears all dead? Is the rainforest gone completely? The frogs and birds entirely disappeared? Have we left anyone out there who isn’t our enemy? Maybe I should get a gun. Never mind that I don’t really know how to use one. I’m sure it’d make me feel braver to brandish my weapon when threatened. But I feel threatened all the time! Yet I never see the face of the adversary.

Maybe that’s because he rides my back. And, there’s no turning fast enough to catch a glimpse. He’s always behind me because he belongs to me, my shadow. I make him; he makes me do things I wish I hadn’t, but we can’t be separated. For I fear to be without my fear. Instead, I dress him up and take him out for a nice dinner. Maybe truite a l’almondine will make us better friends. Tomorrow, we’ll keep it simple and go to the corner pub. There’re some guys I want to introduce him to. I know they’re all haunted by the same demon I am.

Perhaps, just perhaps, we will lift a glass and remember we’re all in this together! Democrat-Republican, Conservative-Liberal, Hutu-Tutsi, Israeli-Palestinian, Shi’a-Sunni, Catholic-Protestant, Hindu-Muslim, East-West, Mars-Venus, Us-Them. Why do epic adversaries always come in pairs? Can’t the human mind encompass more than one thing at a time? Not one of us gets out of this place alive! So, maybe we ought to make the best of it while we’re here. Here’s the bread . . . and there the honey. God doesn’t run away from us. We run from God and we never look back. After all, let’s not forget what happened to Lot’s wife! As if I need a reason not to glance behind me when I know it’s the wrath of God there. Is that why I can’t see my shadow?

When my sister bleeds—even if she’s the nameless Lot’s wife—I bleed too. And she bleeds every month. Isn’t that blood enough? Maybe if I let it slip from my mind that I’m my sister’s keeper, send her off to the red tent with the other women and get back to my man’s work, I can pretend that her blood isn’t mine, isn’t spilled for me and my children.

So, whose blood is this on my hands? Is it the blood of the elephant and rhinoceros, whose tough and pointy parts I must possess to keep my manhood hard? Is it the blood of tiger and ape, of frog and bird, bluefin and coral? How about Eritrea, Darfur, Tibet, Srebenica, Rwanda, Gallipoli, Wounded Knee, Auschwitz . . . ? Where will it end? In Iraq? North Korea? China? A flooded Antarctica? How many must I kill before my bloodlust is slaked? And to what end?

Whether dollar, yuan, rupee, ruble, peso or dinar—every single one is another tree whose life I took! Yet in the morning, in the evening . . . there’s the milk, bread and honey! Couldn’t I share it, just this once? I think my neighbor’s child may be starving. Let that thought flit through your mind, and the shadow shows up immediately to whisper in your ear, “It’s yours! Daddy gave it to you today, but you don’t know for sure that he will again tomorrow. So eat what you can and hide the rest. If your neighbor knows you have it, she’ll kill to have it from you. That’s what you’d do, wouldn’t you, if your baby were starving?” And you know you would, maybe for a lot less reason than that.

You stole the land you live on from the indigene. You pillaged the forest for the house you live in. You rape the earth for the meat in your mouth and the corn in the cupboard. You take and you take and you take, and what’s left in the end? A broken pillar of ash and salt on a bed of silk and gold. Oh, my! What riches you’ve amassed! Too bad you’re not here to enjoy them.

For me, I’m happy my heart still bleeds. I’m not entirely mineral yet. I have a shred of hope left, so I’ll vote for Obama because among politicians he alone urges my hope to live. I don’t know about you, but when I stop hoping, I die. And I’d like to believe that the day may come when I set aside my fear for a moment and invite my neighbor’s hungry family to sit down with me for a meal of bread, honey and milk.
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