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