Are we well-cursed enough yet?

By Lance Olsen, Unfiltered 3-03-06

Are we well-cursed enough yet?
By Lance Olsen

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In an attempt to stop the spread
of bird flu, President Bush has ordered
the bombing of the Canary Islands.

(author unknown)
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An Oriental curse declares, "May you live in interesting times." It's hard to resist the feeling that we're in those times right now.

An inhospitable new climate is coming at us faster than scientists had expected.

The era of cheap fossil fuels is racing toward the cliff, threatening to leave wars in its wake.

Americans are throwing so much money at one such war that there's nothing left to provide security at our seaports -- no matter who owns them -- and our airport security suffers from an absence of rigor in checking the contents of packages and luggage heading into the bellies of planes.

Just as bad, our leaders were caught with their pants down when the nation took a hit from a weapon of mass destruction named Katrina. Plausibly even more dangerous, more and more nations around the world see America as the world's most dangerous nation, whether for our extraordinarily permissive policies on climate, land mines, economics, or for our country's still-growing role in the spread of nuclear weapons.

A guest on PBS's Foreign Exchange said that moderate Arab news reporters no longer dare to try making the distinction between the American government and the American people -- the tide has turned too far for that. And, as the Carnegie Institute for International Peace has said publicly, our national exuberance for basing our future on borrowed money from Asian and Arab nations is even scarier than terror. America is as dependent on foreign money as it is on foreign energy.

Meanwhile, thanks to our consummately conspicuous consumption of fossil energy, climate change is already posing basic challenges for the mundane growing of wheat that makes our daily bread. And, at the same time, our politicians want climate scientists silenced along with intelligence experts who dare defy the currently popular political line. And don't forget the hostile pressure applied against the teachers attempting to bring evolutionary biology to the classroom.

So, how are Americans responding? Rather than rising to the challenge, many followed their president's encouragement to go on a shopping spree after 9/11, potentially inspiring movies like Good Night, and Good Luck are not drawing substantial crowds, and our president proposes with a straight face that we sell the nation's forests as a one-time scheme to fund schools that will still need funding if every forest in the land is turned over to developers who fill them with subdivisions.

We live in interesting times -- not just Americans, but all of us. If reports of election deception are anywhere near the truth, it seems that we Americans are losing our right to vote, or at least to have it correctly counted. Recent economic reports confirm that millions are struggling with falling incomes.

But our troubles here at home pale before the pressures now coming at us from around the globe. The Economist, when George Bush opened his first term by throwing out long-established treaties on the spread of nuclear weapons, said that American had endangered itself. Now, after a swelled-chest binge of "shock and awe" failed to inspire enough awe, we are so wrapped up in Iraq that just about any tinpot dictator on the planet can safely defy us with a lot less cause for concern.

Go shopping? Well, that is exactly what the majority of Americans seem to have done. Earlier this week, reports surfaced that the average American family spent about $500 more than it made. And American homeowners managed to do their bit for the national spending spree by going deeper into home mortgage debt for some cash to blow on airline flights to vacation havens, but only after making sure to vote for politicians who would gut the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and, equally revealing, the Freedom of Information Act.

So, should we just shrug, and say, as some have said, that in democracies people get the kind of government they deserve? No, and precisely because democracy has always been about more than just elections alone. Concerned as Americans must be about the high risk of low-life tricks to steal our elections, it is the theft of our right to know and participate that are really at stake in these interesting times.

As poor George Bush may only now be learning, elections in the name of democracy can crush democracy when the likes of the Taliban or their domestic fundamentalist counterparts here in the good ol' USA win at the polls. Yes, elections are biggies, but Bush et al have been unabashedly willing to let democracy's other virtues take gang rape here and abroad.

Meanwhile, the media flee from hard news to infotainment, and the intelligence agencies are purged of everyone but those who want to know what books you check out from your local library.

Are these times interesting enough? How much more horror and fascination do we really deserve?

Lance Olsen is project director of Missoula's Cold Mountain, Cold Rivers, an advocate for human/environmental rights since 1990. You can reach him at lance@wildrockies.orga

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