Driving Mr. Booth

A very rough cut/trailer of a movie I hope to one day complete: Driving Mr. Booth

A View From New Zealand

Most of the responses I get to my essays are from the U.S., but I usually also get a handful from Down Under, Britain, lots from Canada, the Middle East, and sometimes from even more remote locales. By and large the feedback is positive. (Maybe too much preaching to the choir.) Anyhow had an interesting dialogue recently with an expatriot now living in New Zealand. Comes across as a bit shrill, but then again maybe we here in America are all just a bit too anesthetized as we muck about the mess we've made/inherited/allowed/ignored... Thought I'd post the exchange here, she makes some valid points worth considering.

Pardon the odd formatting, as I've yet to figure out how to deal with the bugs that attend copying/pasting of other docs, emails, etc.

Her First Email

I read your column on Common Dreams. It, among others, sparked this column that will appear in our newspaper on Saturday, Nov 25. I thought you’d be interested.

The breast-beating from the left-wing commentators in the United States has been deafening. Don't hate us! they cried to the world. It's that jerk in the White House! Now that we've finally noticed, we'll fix things! Just watch the midterm elections!

It was all a bit too facile, not to mention a few decades late. The US has elected only two presidents with a conscience in 30 years - Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. And Americans didn't actually like either one much, certainly not as much as they like George W in the days following 9/11.

The rest of their leaders have been scum like Richard Nixon, who hired a couple of aides named Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to run his own little dirty war. You might remember it: Vietnam.

The same thugs came back to run the Iraq fiasco, and still Americans - or at least a few left-wing commentators - want us to think George W is some recent aberration. He isn't.

They also seem to think the latest Iraq war is a one-off. Don't they recall the dress rehearsal in 1991? And who do they think invented Saddam Hussein to begin with?

Saddam started out as just another in a long line of bloodthirsty dictators the US has been propping up for 50 years or more on every continent except that big island to our left.

Why on earth should anything change now?

Americans get the leaders they deserve. And one of the reasons they get such jerks is that so few of them give a damn. The midterm elections saw 40 percent of registered voters turn out. That's 40 percent of those registered, not those eligible to vote. That's considered standard for congressional elections. They get a little more excited about presidential elections, but not much.

So if most don't vote, and the few who do elect the same old thugs, why on earth should the world expect anything in America to change? Not only do Americans not care about running roughshod over the rest of the world, they don't even care about each other. One glance at the ever-widening gap between the immensely rich (a list that contains Bush I and II, along with many in Congress) and the poor proves humanity's in fairly short supply in the world's richest democracy.

Having said that, if so few vote, can you really call America a democracy any more?

Deborah Sloan, news editor of the Manawatu Standard, is a dual US-New Zealand citizen. She escaped from the US in 1988.

My Response (perhaps a touch defensive)

Hi Deborah,

Thanks for writing. Just want to clarify a couple things. I don't consider myself a left wing commentator. I'm more a 41 year old stay at home mother who has been finally starting to pay attention to what's going on in my country, and because of my country--and as I've said before, am ashamed. Periodically I write pieces that Common Dreams chooses to print. The purpose behind my pieces is to try and wake others. I'm sorry that I, and others more competent and supposedly "responsible" than I, don't do a better job of owning up to our history. And to the way we are/have been creating havoc all over the world (although most of my pieces have something to do with that, some in more detail than others). However, my purpose will continue to be trying to wake the slumbering masses. And in my opinion, it means first waking them to what's going on NOW. Not what's transpired in all these tens-if not hundreds-of years past that've brought us here. If my house caught on fire I wouldn't waste time standing in the hallway explaining to my children why it caught fire, or the meaning or consequences of the fire. That can come (necessarily so) after we've safely escaped (and hopefully put out the fire).

I'm curious what your deeper thoughts are regarding these midterm elections. I can say that I'm guardedly hopeful. Yes, there's A LOT of work that needs to be done. Yes, many of us consider this two party system we have to be a farce. Just "one party posing as two." But it certainly feels like people are starting to pay attention. And like they sent a message yesterday. Better late than never is a horrible cliché here, but it's true. And it's a better turn of events, or at least appears to be so, than what could have happened. Especially considering the vote tampering that must have occurred in some places. In your opinion, what is the predominant view from New Zealand? And how would you suggest we change things? And surely New Zealand isn't perfect? (Although there's been many times these past few years I've thought our family should escape there as well. But hanging around a little while longer and doing the odd little bits I can to try and help everything from going completely up in smoke is appealing as well.)

Thanks again for writing,
Debi

Her Response

Debi: I have been trying to think of an optimistic response for you. I cannot find one. The rot in America began long ago, and just because the Democrats are now in power in Congress doesn’t mean the killing will stop in Iraq in the power vacuum the US has created (and was told it would create – remember the French and Germans that Rice kept calling “Old Europe”, when everyone castigated the French, calling them cowards, and ordered freedom fries? Remember that?); it doesn’t mean the US-manufactured landmines and cluster bombs will stop killing children in Cambodia and Afghanistan and Lebanon; it doesn’t mean the US will all of a sudden start backing the United Nations and, god forbid, pay its annual dues so the only hope most of the world has for peace can operate; it doesn’t mean Americans will stop spending billions on botox and divert that money to house the half-million war veterans who are homeless in America, not to mention the suffering thousands of schizophrenics …

It’s pointless to continue. The list is endless. And I see no hope that America will ever come right. It’s why I left nearly 20 years ago, and lately I’ve been looking pretty far-sighted, as more and more Americans flood into New Zealand.

Is New Zealand perfect? Of course not. But neither is it a super power that can run roughshod over the rest of the world without a thought, quite frankly, setting up a real possibility for world instability avoided since WWII. And New Zealand does a damn sight more for its downtrodden than the US does. We don’t have homeless shelters because we have state housing and a decent social welfare system, even though we haven’t anything like America’s wealth. Hospital treatment is free to everyone, because the people think it’s important. And doctor visits and medicines are heavily subsidized by taxes. Rich and poor attend the same public schools and private schools are few and far between – and little cachet is attached. And while there is disparity between Maori and Europeans, it is nothing like the intractable divide between blacks and whites. Our parliament includes poor and rich alike, and our prime minister is a woman (of little money), as is our chief justice. And when fewer than 90 percent of New Zealanders vote in an election, it’s considered a scandal. A scandal.

I appreciate what you and others are trying to do, but I don’t think you will wake the slumbering masses. They certainly didn’t look up from their fast-food trough for this past election, the numbers show. So the wealthy and powerful of America will continue to bully the rest of the world with impunity.

Deborah Sloan

Dear World

(Published by Common Dreams on 11/2/06)

Dear World,

How are you doing? What have you been up to lately? Sorry it's been so long since I've written.

I was actually in the middle of writing an open letter to President Bush when I thought of you.

I was asking him, respectfully of course, about his insistence that Senator John Kerry apologize for his botched joke. Perhaps you've heard of all this nonsense? You must think we're pretty ridiculous. I mean look at all that's going on in the world, and all Bush and his friends (including a mostly compliant media) want to talk about the past couple of days is a poorly thought out and delivered joke. Big deal. I'm sure that Kerry, a veteran himself, meant nothing disparaging against his fellow soldiers, past or present. Anyhow, I was asking him why he would insist Kerry apologize for a stupid joke when he himself so stubbornly refuses to apologize for anything/everything he has done wrong the past five plus pretty botched years of his presidency. Things that have had consequences of such greater magnitude that, to say the least, it boggles the mind.

Like refusing to apologize for not taking those pre 9/11 warnings seriously. Refusing to apologize for sitting in a classroom reading a story about a pet goat for seven long minutes after learning that the country was under attack. Refusing to apologize for the lies he told and cooked intelligence he used to start a war of aggression against a sovereign nation. He continues to bullheadedly refuse to apologize for all the miscalculations that have been made since, at every turn along the way, in that illegal war. Refuses to apologize for all the thousands and thousands and thousands of stolen Iraqi lives. Refuses to recognize, and then apologize for, the fact that his lies and deceptions have also directly led to the deaths of over 2800 (to date) brave men and women from the United States.

(By the way, speaking of bad jokes, what about those not so funny wmd jokes Bush told that one time?)

I could go on and on with all the things that I would suggest Mr. Bush apologize for. And I'm sure you could think of a bunch more to add. Yet even just one of the things already mentioned are more egregious, by far certainly, than Kerry's blunder and would be enough to win a debate regarding who has more to apologize for, don't you agree? But this joke thing is just more political slime slinging anyway. I wish I could say that everyone here can see that. That it's obviously just a rerun of an overused play from a tattered and pathetic book that never should have been used in the first place. Unfortunately I can't say that, but I do suspect that with the redundancy of the plays being called, eventually (hopefully sooner rather than later) enough people on the other teams will figure it out and take advantage of it and counter with better and more effective plays. Or maybe the management of the Bush team will get canned. Or both. We can hope. One thing is certain, right now we desperately need change at all levels and in all divisions.

Anyhow, while in the middle of my letter/argument to Bush, I remembered reading something a while back that he'd told author Mickey Herskowitz. Herskowitz was hired in 1999 to ghost write George's autobiography (and was later replaced after he didn't show Bush in the most flattering light--surprise, surprise).

"He told me that as a leader, you can never admit to a mistake," Herskowitz said. "That was one of the keys to being a leader." (Of course, the whole "leader" moniker, as well as the "President" one, are debatable.)

Thus I realized, it would most likely be a waste of my time entreating Mr. Bush to apologize. (Yeah, I know--duh.) But, I do want to say it again for emphasis, albeit a bit differently: What a shame to our country, and a sham he is, to make so much about Kerry's stupid joke, considering all the mountains of damage done and lives wasted that he and his cronies have authored.

Apparently, according to Bush, I'll never make it as a leader, as my letter to you is mostly just one big apology. An apology from an ordinary, increasingly appalled and ashamed, American citizen.

There is so much to be sorry for. Especially so the past five years of Bush's presidency. Sorry that he and his administration didn't heed the warnings regarding an impending terrorist strike within the US. Sorry that he used the awful events of that day to justify a global and "long" (seemingly unending) war on terror that has, by all accounts, only increased terrorism. Sorry the good will that was directed at us immediately following 9/11 was so quickly squandered. Sorry that the will of hundreds of thousands of people around the world, saying no to war, went unheeded and unappreciated. I'm so sorry that we couldn't stop the war machine from its costly (yet so profitable to the warmakers) and oh so deadly crawl across Afghanistan and Iraq. Sorry that so many many innocent people were crushed in its path. Sorry that we invaded a country, under false pretenses, destroying its beauty, culture, infrastructure, lives.... Sorry that we then had the audacity to authorize no bid contracts for the rebuilding of it to the very people who destroyed it.

I'm sorry that we don't seem to appreciate the sickening absurdity of it all.

I'm sorry that our "leaders" don't seem to care about being good stewards of the earth. Sorry that they laugh in the very real face of global warming. (Especially since the US is such a big contributor.) I'm sorry for the very real problems around the world that they, and by extension-we, continue to ignore. Sorry that the focus continues to be mostly only in areas of the world that are abundant in valuable resources or that are deemed important for strategic reasons. Sorry that these reasons usually, if not always, have nothing whatsoever to do with humanitarian causes/crises.

Sorry that it might appear that we all, the people, permit these things, though I do hope you realize that appearances can be deceiving (maybe you've noticed that we have some issues with the integrity of our voting system).

I'm sorry for the exasperation and frustration and justified anger that you must feel when you observe our actions, and the actions of our government. I'm sorry for all the sleepless nights you might experience because of the big ass bully storming through your neighborhoods. (And, just to loudly clarify, I'm not referring to the mostly good men and women in uniform who are on the ground in these neighborhoods). I'm sorry that our current leadership is the bully. And that I and my fellow countrymen and women have so far failed to reign that bully in.

I'm sorry for all the things I don't know, and therefore can't act upon. And for all the things I do know and don't act upon.

I realize now that Bush and I are very much alike in one way. We both have many more things to be sorry for than we can list here.

Yes, I'm writing to tell you how sorry I am. But also to tell you that I'm not alone in my sorrow. I want you to know that there are many of us here, more than any of us probably realize (and coming from all walks and political persuasions)--who can't believe the scope of what has happened to our country--and because of our country--in such a short time. But an apology is fairly meaningless if there is no growth, no learning, no wisdom gained, no change in behavior, right? I know that. So, I'm here to tell you that we are intent on changing the direction of our country. There are far more of us who want to get along with each other and our neighbors than don't. I'm certain of that. So please hang in there with us as we go through these turbulent times. It's sort of like the teenage years in some ways. I know I feel a bit like a teenager here as I write to you. Yes, we know we have a lot to work on. And yes we know we have some growing up to do. And hopefully on November 7th you'll see an example of us doing just that. (Then again, if you don't, please remember that looks can be deceiving.)

Hope to write again soon. Take care.

Love and hugs,

Debi