- Next month, Americans will flock to theaters nationwide
to be amused by the performances of Nicole Kidman, Bette Midler and Matthew
Broderick in a remake of "The Stepford Wives." I hope to see
it myself. While I hasten to add that in these times, humor is essential
to our survival, and that I do not wish to suggest that we all need to
wear "American Gothic" faces, I find curious the timing of this
Hollywood redux.
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- This week, it is virtually impossible to read, watch
or listen to any mainstream media that is not extolling the godlike status
of Ronald Reagan, one of the most egregious war criminals and mass murderers
in American history. Journalists Robert Parry, Bev Conover, Will Pitt and
Greg Palast have all written incisive pieces documenting the criminal acts
of the Reagan administration, most notably, the Iran-Contra scandal and
the largest theft in the history of the human race, the Savings and Loan
outrage of the 1980s. Unquestionably, Ronald Reagan should have died in
prison, not in his cushy estate in California. That the aforementioned
historical facts are not being reported by corporate media and only by
independent journalists is blatantly symptomatic of the robotic trance
Stepford America prefers over the wrenching realities of the smiling, doddering,
"sweet old man," former B movie actor turned president. Meanwhile,
the entire world, with perhaps the exception of Maggie Thatcher fans in
the UK, is aghast with our need to lionize Reagan in the face of the heinous
atrocities he permitted and promoted internationally in the name of ridding
the world of the "evil empire."
-
- Progressive journalists commenting on the deplorable
Reagan policies, both foreign and domestic, remind us that our current
situation under George W. Bush is directly traceable to Reagan's rabid
anti-communism and his contempt for all beings less privileged than he.
Moreover, his administration marked the birth of a new generation of journalists
who essentially function as sycophantic stenographers for the ruling elite.
But was it only Reagan and the media which paved the way for the horrific
policies of the current administration? For all their power, these institutions
could not have succeeded in producing the devastation we see around us
were it not for the American people who refuse to accept anything but a
happy face.
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- Indeed, the happy face of Clinton smiled and told us
that NAFTA and free trade would save the American worker. Today, the American
middle class is facing extinction as a result of globalization and the
outsourcing of jobs offshore - a happy face, promoting lies.
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- With a happy face, George Bush, Jr. assured us at the
2000 Republican Convention that America needed to have a humble foreign
policy, all the while packing his administration with neoconservatives
hell-bent on world domination. With a happy face, he strutted across the
aircraft carrier Lincoln, dripping with testosterone, clad in flight suit
and those pubescent straps between his legs, to declare that the Iraq "mission"
had been accomplished. With a smile - or more accurately, a repulsive smirk
- the "bring-'em-on" and the cavalier threats of hurling nukes
at the "evildoers" have cost nearly a thousand American lives,
and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi lives. With a swagger and a scornful
sneer, we are "reassured" that the most tyrannical piece of legislation
since the early Colonial Intolerable Acts, that is, the USA PATRIOT Act,
makes all of us safe from the "terrrists."
-
- With a happy face, the hand-puppet of the oil/gas/timber
industries, Interior Secretary Gail Norton, promises that her environmentally-gutting
giveaways to her cronies will profoundly purify our air and water.
-
- With a bubbly, elfin grin, Norton's colleague, Labor
Secretary Elaine Chao, announces that America is now swimming in jobs,
jobs, jobs. And how many recent college graduates, not swimming but drowning
in student loan debt, did she interview - those who cannot and probably
will not find jobs unless they move to India or Indonesia?
-
- But here we are, in the ghoulish Iraq debacle, an economy
in shambles, a nearly decimated middle class, a planet on the verge of
catastrophic, environmentally-induced climate change, an administration
that seriously believes that America's incalculable arsenal of nuclear
weapons built 50 years ago must now be upgraded and that the testing of
those weapons in Nevada must soon resume.
-
- As if these realities weren't dire enough, petroleum
geologists inform us that oil production worldwide has peaked and that
without immediate, radical conservation measures, our planet will experience
a calamitous energy crisis within the next two decades that could eliminate
millions of people from the earth Is that what it will take for America
to stop smiling - to stop demanding that our media present pleasant and
pretty pictures of the Stepford world we cling to? In my college history
classes, I have actually seen students drop the class after the first day
because they sensed that I would not be teaching a Disneyland view of history
where we could all hold hands and dance around the illusion of "America
the beautiful."
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- Forty-one years ago, America made a choice - a choice
to take the path of the happy face. When the Warren Commission concluded
its hideously mendacious report on the assassination of John F. Kennedy,
Americans smiled and allowed themselves to be conned, lied to, jerked around,
violated.
-
- When the Pentagon Papers revealed that the president
and the military never really intended to win the Vietnam War but keep
it going as long as possible, we stood enraged over our 58,000 dead men
and women, but in 1980, we chose the happy face of the smiling old man.
When Ronald Reagan illegally arranged for the sale of arms to Iran and
allowed Oliver North to orchestrate massive cocaine trafficking onto the
streets of the United States - both operations created to finance the Nicaraguan
Contras - American Stepford robots clicked their heels and exchanged platitudes
about what a great communicator Reagan was and how nice Nancy looked in
red.
-
- As the "smiling old man" turned his head and
looked the other way while his organized crime pals looted the savings
and loan industry and we were once again violated, we began bantering once
more about what a wonderful country we live in.
-
- We knew that Reagan had armed the monster named Saddam
Hussein, and we saw the Gulf War coming. As thousands of our troops returned
with mysterious illnesses, we reminded ourselves of the short little video
game that the Gulf War had been and how it didn't last very long.
-
- Later, like good little automatons, we became voyeuristically
obsessed with the stains on Monica's blue dress and allowed our government
to spend $70 million dollars investigating the guy who put them there.
And now, yet another president has impeachably lied his way into a war
in collusion with a Stepford media while a Stepford Congress scarcely blinks
an eye.
-
- Are you still smiling? Have I depressed you yet? I speak
not only about the masses, but to and about my progressive peers. Why do
we continue to insist that we live in a democracy - that clean elections
in America are possible when every particle of evidence proves the contrary?
Why do we tell ourselves that we have a political system that "works"
when we are faced with two candidates who are an echo of each other? Why
do we persist in believing that we are not yet living in a fascist empire?
According to Mussolini, "The first stage of fascism should more appropriately
be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power."
-
- Of course, all those who prefer to remain optimistic
will ask, "So what should we do? What is your solution?" My answer
is that we should stop believing that the system works and that choosing
the "right" candidate in a rigged game where a "right"
candidate cannot even be nominated is not a viable option.
-
- Over $2.3 trillion dollars is missing from the Pentagon.
At least $59 billion dollars is missing from the Department of Housing
and Urban Development (HUD). Our government tells us that it has no way
to account for that money and no way to audit itself in the future. Without
question, the same kind of financial mayhem is going on at the local level,
and most assuredly, those dots of criminality connect with state and national
theft on a massive scale.
-
- First, we need to organize locally and make local politicians
accountable for our money. Secondly, we need to vote daily with our time
and money by giving no time or funds to corporate news media. We need to
patronize local banks and retailers and buy out of corporate consumerism
as much as humanly possible. Most importantly, we need to inform ourselves
daily through non-corporate, independent media, and spread that information
far and wide. In my opinion, at this point in our history, we have little
hope of influencing our government nationally, and certainly not by voting
in rigged national elections, but there is much that we can do locally.
-
- Yes, I know, you do not like to hear this option, and
I am certain to receive scathing responses about it. It means that we have
to stop hoping for the "good" president and vote responsibly
hour by hour. Even more sobering is the reality that unless we want to
remain Automaton Americans, we must face one of life's cruelest lessons,
namely, that in spite of everything we do to create a more just and humane
world, there are no guarantees.
-
- As never before, we must cling to whatever gives our
lives meaning, to whatever we deem sacred. We can learn much about that
from our departed sisters and brothers of the anti-Nazi resistance movements
of the 1930s and 40s. Whether or not our external struggles can transform
our world sufficiently or in time to avert catastrophe, no evil on earth,
as numerous holocaust survivors discovered, can obliterate the bone marrow
truth of our inherent human dignity. What we must always remember, therefore,
are the words of the former slave, Frederick Douglass, who reminds us,
"Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave." In other words,
intentionally informed, questioning, critically thinking citizens, who
reject and expose the criminal enterprise that our government has become,
cannot be Stepford Americans.
-
- - Carolyn Baker is a professor of U.S. history living
in New Mexico. She can be reached at drumbaker@zianet.com
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