The Invisible library

The World George Made*

Last night I had dinner with my friend, Kevin and, as usual when we dine together, our conversation turned philosophical.

“Do you think the world is worse off now than it was a hundred years ago?” Kevin asked me.

I thought about it for a minute.

The short answer was, “Yes, but not really.” The long answer is, well, much longer.

At first, I was reluctant to say that the world is really worse now than it was a hundred years ago. It’s easy to think that, as we live in 2004, not in 1904. We have to deal with today�s threats, which loom large in our daily consciousness, mostly due to the pervasive influence the media has on our perceptions about our world. So, taking this into consideration, I would say that the world isn’t really that much worse off than it was then. We just think it is because of our embedded experience with the here and now and the fact that we have far more information about what is going on around the world than our ancestors of a mere century ago.

Back in 1904, few people heard about the intricacies of geopolitics on the scale that we do now, in 2004. I can bring up Google news and at a glance, see what is going on in Russia, Australia, China and Europe, and the stories are only hours or even just minutes old (their accuracy and depth is questionable but at least there is something to hang your hat on). In 1904, news took at least a day to get into print, and then it was mostly local and regional news. You had to wait for the Sunday paper to find out what happened that week in other parts of the world, and even then, the story might be weeks or months old. It took considerable time and effort to get the Big Picture. Some historians still don�t even agree on just what happened back then. It still does take a little effort, due to media conglomeration to get an accurate Big Picture, but not nearly as long as it used to.

Also, 1904 wasn’t exactly a Utopia, either. By then, there were Marxists, Anarchists and Socialists all making noise, trying to get their voices heard by the masses. In a few short years, Archduke Ferdinand would be shot in Sarajevo and World War I would be decimating the population of Europe as royal cousins fought to make their dreams of Empire a reality.

While the details may be different, the level of turmoil then was similar to that of now. But if we take a step back and look at the intervening years, we can see that it hasn’t been just a steady stream of chaos and bloodshed, though it often seems that way. There were periods of relative peace, punctuated by periods of unrest and even genocide. Certainly the 20th was a bloody century, but then, so far, the 21st isn’t exactly virginal, either.

But just a few years ago, it seemed like things might be different. Back in the good old days of 1998-99, the world was a different place. Sure, their still was international terrorism and geopolitical squabbling but it was manageable. We were usually one step ahead of the terrorists, and in the previous decade and a half, we had seen the collapse of Eastern Block Communism and the flourishing of Democratic ideals. The best aspects of Multiculturalism were transforming popular and academic culture, as new ideas were being shared by a wider variety of people than we ever thought possible. Boarders, not just the ones on maps, but also the ones between cultures, were becoming porous and doors were opening all over. And the Neocons hated it.

The likes of Wolfowitz, Perl, Cheney and Rumsfeld were fuming over the death of the Cold War. With no huge enemy states to prop up as The Bad Guy, their wailing and gnashing for their favorite pet projects like the Missile Defense Shield (a holdover from Reagan’s Star Wars pipe dreams) to unilateral invasion of underdeveloped-but-oil-rich nations were seen as laughable self-parodies of Hawkishness. There was no more US versus THEM. The Internet (and to a smaller degree, their own Corporate greed) had made the whole notion of States and boarders seem so 20th century. These were going to be things of the past. In the 21st century, we were all going to be citizens of the world, freely communicating and trading with one another and this would end the need for warfare in the traditional, geopolitical sense. After all, who wants to drop bombs on the tail end of their own production line or round up an untapped demographic? That’s bad for Global Socio-Capitalism, man. And worse (in the eyes of the Neocons) there were no real wars going on. Sure, we had military personnel and objectives in Rwanda and Bosnia but they were there under the pussified UN peacekeepers. They weren’t there for the glory of Pax Americana. Simply put, no wars means no war profiteering. They couldn’t have that.

So the Neocons set about remaking the world in their own image. They started by taking down the Big Dog with an inflated sex scandal and then installing their own puppet government through gerrymandering (not just in Texas but in other key states as well) and capping it all off with the grand daddy of all dubious elections, Florida, 2000.

In three short years, BushCo. has undone much of the multicultural goodwill that had been gained over the previous four decades (in some sense, the dreaded Multiculturalist meme was hatched the moment Kennedy said, “Ich bin ein Berliner.”) We now have an increasingly stilted conflict brewing in the Middle East, all in an effort to create clearly defined enemies. All so there can be, once more, US and THEM, and dreams of an empire that spans the globe. Just like in the good old days of 1904.

So, in a way, the world is pretty much the same as it was a hundred years ago but it�s also worse than it was a hundred years ago, and not just because the Internet and TV news has made the inherent chaos of the world seem more apparent. But because our leaders believed their own Black and White fairy stories about Manifest Destiny and the benevolence of Pure Capitalism, and set out to remake the world so that it conformed to that idea, killing everything that had the purfume of progressive ideals clinging to it.

I don’t mean to sound overly pessimistic, but for a while now I’ve been wondering what the future will hold for us. Sometimes I lay in bed at night, not sleeping, thinking instead how family, job, friends, love life, international politics, environment, genetics, flesh-eating viruses and galaxies seem to be not colliding so much as slowly rusting. That the whole universe is conspiring to slowly fall apart and decay. There in the windowless dawn I get the feeling that human civilization, if not Everything Altogether is undergoing some slow motion catastrophe. Not a detonation or earthquake or plague but a slow soaking flood that started a long time ago at our toes and has been gradually inching its way up our collective legs so slowly that no one noticed. Or worse, everyone notices but simply refuses to accept that we are all doggy paddling in our own entropy. Of course I know I’m not the only one who feels this way, in the cold, four o’ clock, gray of morning or the bright sunny mid-afternoon. I’ve long since outgrown that adolescent delusion that what I feel is unique. Which only makes the feeling of helplessness all the more tragic.

I can�t help but worry that, like our ancestors back in 1904, we�re just making time before the Great War starts anew. And I feel helpless to do anything about it. All I can do is write and observe and try and make my life now, today, something worth living since I don�t know how long that it might be before something truly horrible happens.
_________
*Blaming the state of the world on Bush is giving him far too much credit, I realize, but he is a convenient figurehead, being President of the United States and all. He has iconic status as the fabled “Leader of the Free World,” and so when I speak of Bush, I’m acknowledging that his role is rather small but the role that BushCo. plays is quite large. He is a stand in for the puppet masters. And how ironic that a notion once though too far out and paranoid has become conventional wisdom? There really are puppet masters. Only thing is, we know their faces and can recite their names. Watch as they pull the strings and beat our heads against the wall when our protests do nothing to prevent their unmitigated cruelty from becoming our foreign policy.

The title is also a reference to a Philip K. Dick novel, The World Jones Made, which, as many of his novels do, involves a solipsistic protagonist who, rather than simply being a victim of the world at large, discovers that he has a hand in creating consensual reality.

What Are Those Scum Doing Here?

By now, everyone’s been around the bend on this issue with the four dead Mercenaries in Fallujah. And Yes, I said Mercenaries, not “Contractors”. Contractors are who you hire when you want to add a deck to your house. Mercenaries are who you hire when you want to invade a sovereign nation under dubious pretexts and steal all their oil. Playing Orweallian name games doesn’t magically make the cluster-fuck in Mesopotamia any better, no matter what the wingers might say. The Iraqis now officially hate us and they have every right to. We invaded their country for no good reason, and then hired goons who thought the regular Military wasn’t bad-ass enough for them and decided to answer that add in the back of Soldier of Fortune magazine:

Illegitimate Politico seeks amoral anarcho-capitalists for long term “Contract Work.”
Military background a plus. Must have own gun, rocket launcher. All the
gold and Arab girls you can carry. No Homos need apply. Call 202-456-1414. Ask for Dick.

Now, technically, they aren’t Mercenaries, either. As George Paine at War Blogging points out:

Article 47 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions states six tests that are required to determine if a person is or is not a mercenary. The Blackwater employees meet all but one of the criteria: they are nationals of a party to the conflict (the United States) and therefore cannot be considered mercenaries.

Mercenaries are rather nationals of third-party states who engage in hostilities purely for profit. They are not motivated by ideology or national loyalty. They simply fight for the highest bidder.

The trend in the liberal media, from the Guardian to the Voice, is to call the Blackwater employees mercenaries. The word “mercenary” holds some very strong implications and power and should not be bandied around lightly. The fact is that the Blackwater employees were not mercenaries and should not be referred to as such.

But the Blackwater employees do share one thing in common with their murderers, and with the men languishing in the cages of Guantanamo Bay: They were illegal combatants.

This is because the Blackwater “security guards” do not wear uniforms clearly identifying them as combatants. They instead wear civilian clothes while engaging in combat. The photograph leading this story, of a Blackwater USA security guard serving in L. Paul Bremer’s bodyguard force, makes this clear. The man is carrying an assault rifle while wearing civilian clothes.

He is, therefore, an illegal combatant � just like the un-uniformed Afghans and Arabs “detained” at Gitmo.

To be a mercenary, you must be a third party to the war, not a citizen of one of the countries involved in the conflict. But calling them contractors is disingenuous, as it implies some sort of legitimacy to their position. Calling them mercenaries may not be technically accurate but it’s far closer to the reality than calling them contractors. Either way, that these scum make up the second largest contingent of Coalition forces just underscores the moral duplicity that our leaders have engaged in to pursue their little adventure.

The only difference between the employees of Blackwater Security Services and John Walker Lindh is that one was fighting for personal spiritual reasons (however dubious they were) while the others are fighting for money. Tough call between which is worse, a religious fanatic or a mercenary. But neither should be employed by the US Government, for any reason.

And Another Thing

I completely forgot to address the anti-semitism claim in my review of Mel Gibson’s the Passion of the Christ (let alone the presence of that extra ‘the’ in the title. What’s up with that, Mel? You’re movie’s clumsy enough without extraneous modifiers).

Neither I nor the friends I went to see the movie with noticed any overt anti-simitism. One could argue that the depiction of the Jews in the film were done in an over the top manner, as stereotypes, and that implies an anti-simitic subtext. But that’s giving Mel Gibson too much credit. As I mentioned before, this movie is all surface. It has no subtext. So if there is anti-semitism in the film, it is placed there by the viewer, not the director (though, not for lack of trying. He did concede finally and remove the blood libel line).

Bloody Hell

So, some friends and I went to see the Passion last night. A number of people have picked apart the sunday school theology so I won’t really discuss that here. If you’re interested, go read what David Neiwert has to say at Orcinus.

As a movie, the Passion of the Christ sucks, plain and fancy. Every character who is not a stereotype is a caricature. There is zero subtlety. Zero. Every scene is done like a stilted silent movie. I haven’t seen this degree of mugging for the camera in a modern film. We’re talking Nosferatu creaping up the stairs, the villain twisting his mustache and wringing his hands as the damsel lays on the train tracks. Every action is slowed down for emphasis, given a close-up or highlighted just so you don’t miss every bloody, gruesome moment. And gruesome it is. The scourging lasts twenty minutes. First, the Romans, grinning sadistically, beat him with canes. Then, when he isn’t quite unconscious, they get the whips with broken glass in the end and scourge him. For twenty minutes of the film.

There are no real surprises in the story, other than where Saint Mel departs from scripture to beat you over the head with an extra ounce of suffering. Because that’s the point of the film. Jesus suffered. It truly is the Gospel According to Mad Max.

Talking about the film afterwards, a friend said that what he got out of it was a plea for mercy. However, it was a plea that went unheeded. And unfortunately, the most unmerciful person in the film was the director. I’ve yet to see a more ham-fisted film and while I’m not a huge Gibson fan to begin with, I know from previous films he’s directed that he is capable of doing a decent job of telling a story. But he breaks just about every basic rule of storytelling there is. And of course, I know this film is not supposed to be a story but the director is making use of narrative tropes, therefore there are certain rules that apply. This is not a documentary, no matter what Mel Gibson’s intentions may be.

The Politics of Poetry

I’ve lamented publicly, loudly and at length about the dire situation in the world of contemporary poetry. It’s become little more than greeting card sentiments or self indulgent fiddle faddle with the intelectual bite of a toothless old man sucking on the pit of a peach. Few would-be poets these days remember that poems are supposed to excite the reader, drive them mad and make them howl. Essex Hemphill knew this and wrote accordingly:

THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

You are not to touch yourself
in any way or
be familiar with ecstasy.
You are not to touch
anyone of your own sex
or outside of your race
then talk about it,
photograph it, write it down
in explicit details, or paint it
red, orange, blue, or dance
in honor of its power, dance
for its beauty, dance
because it's yours.

You are not to touch other flesh
without a police permit.
You have no privacy-
the State wants to seize your bed
and sleep with you.
The State wants to control
your sexuality, your birth rate,
your passion.
The message is clear:
your penis, your vagina,
your testicles, your womb,
your anus, your orgasm,
these belong to the State.

You are not to touch yourself
or be familiar with ecstasy.
The erogenous zones
are not demilitarized.

~Essex Hemphill, Ceremonies

Go forth, you teenaged e.e. cummings, you underage Nerudas, and do likewise. Break the peach pit open and suck out the juice. Spit in the eye of the poetry teacher who tells you to write about pretty things with no teeth and a pipsqueak voice.

When the government blows up the internet, shuts us all up in cages, ties our hands behind our backs and electrifies our genitals, (for our own safety) our screams of agony and joy will be the only poetry we have left. So hone the scream. The rage. The voice of the needle and the knife. Learn to fuck with your words.

Poetry is political. It�s decadent. Slutty. Anyone who tells you otherwise is jangling keys and throwing shiny, pretty things into jail cells not yet closed and locked.

Friday Catblogging

Lucy has spotted a pigeon on the roof. If she stares very carefully, she might be able to get it with her fazer eyes.

Meanwhile, Sybil, one of Pansypoo’s many cats, takes a nap. In the sock drawer.

It’s The End of Western Civilization as We Know It! So have a Drink

Believe it or not, my entire University lost wireless access yesterday, hence my extended absence. It was chaos, I tell you, Chaos! If the Internet ever crashes, Western Civilization is screwed. We’ve become so dependant upon our little web of electrons that, to go back now to print and hardcopy media searching would drive many of us to suicide. And I’m not talking just us Librarians. Something to ponder.

However, today is April First, the beginning of National Poetry Month. I recomend Laurence Ferlinghetti:

Number 20
~From A Coney Island of the Mind

       The pennycandystore beyond the El
       is where I first
                       fell in love
                                   with unreality
       Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom
       of that september afternoon
       A cat upon the counter moved among
                                 the licorice sticks
                      and tootsie rolls
              and Oh Boy Gum

       Outside the leaves were falling as they died

       A wind had blown away the sun

       A girl ran in
       Her hair was rainy
       Her breasts were breathless in the little room

       Outside the leaves were falling
                            and they cried
                                         Too soon!  too soon!