In an agony of stupidity, the government shuts down.
Only some of it shuts down, of course. The part that stays open is the
part that’s at war. “Those of you in uniform will remain on your
normal duty status,” the president said. “The threats to our
national security have not changed, and we need you to be ready for any
contingency. Ongoing military operations, like our efforts in
Afghanistan, will continue.”
As I once observed, there’s no such thing as a relaxed nation. It can
shut down what it does right, if clumsily, like feeding people,
educating them and helping them through difficulty, but it will only
shut down its predatory sense of identity in a state of total defeat by
a bigger predator. Not letting that happen is its endless obsession.
This is the sly, primitive, irrational part of government: its
reptile-brain function. That’s still in full operation. We’re
continuing to raid, bomb and terrorize Fourth World countries and
pointlessly harvest global metadata. We’re still “completing our
mission” in Afghanistan. We’re just phasing out the government
functions that have value. Perhaps what we should talk about is a
rationality shutdown.
Bizarrely, the irrational functions of government are usually called
“security,” though of course they have nothing to do with rational
security. Four decades ago, in _Miami and the Siege of Chicago_, Norman
Mailer described the irrational security surrounding the country’s
national political conventions: “. . . helicopters riding overhead
like roller coasters, state troopers with magnums on their hips,
motorcycles, yet no real security, just powers of retaliation.”
I was reminded of this quote the other day when I learned about Miriam
Carey, the young mother with mental health issues who ran her car into a
White House barrier, then died in a hail of police bullets during a
subsequent car chase near the Capitol.
As Brittney Cooper wrote recently at Salon [2]: “Among other things,
Carey’s death is a cautionary tale about what can happen in a nation
that systematically ignores the unwell. One is left to wonder whether
she had all the social support she needed in a country that not only
thinks access to healthcare is a privilege rather than a right, but that
also stigmatizes mental illness.”
Cooper adds that Carey’s death is “set against the backdrop of a
governmental assault on struggling and vulnerable moms” and an
“irrational obsession with terrorist threat, over-policing of
marginalized communities and a lack of empathy for the least of these,
all of which are tied to a fear of brown people.”
The government shutdown puts this in slightly starker relief than it
normally is. As we wait for the sluggish, highly compromised forces of
rationality to reassert themselves, there’s value in observing the
activities that continue to function during this manufactured political
crisis, because they’re mostly what we need to change.
We’re still stuck with a government that thinks its role is to define
us rather than listen to us. A democracy is supposed to be otherwise,
but we worship power and decisive action in this country a lot more than
we worship “gridlock,” which often enough is what the slow process
of nonviolent conflict resolution looks like.
If our mainstream media valued the democratic process, the political
predators would have a serious check on their activities, but all of the
old integrity is breaking down. The corporate media is endlessly
desperate for the big headline. Pulling in listeners or readers is a lot
more important than reporting news with any depth, compassion or
seriousness.
Thus an NPR report [3] on recent U.S. Special Forces operations in Libya
and Somalia was delivered with the enthusiasm of a no-longer-bored
10-year-old. Wow, “President Obama decided to do something — and it
happened,” raved White House correspondent Ari Shapiro.
In Libya, a major bad guy is captured. In Somalia, another major bad guy
may or may not have been killed by Navy SEALs. This is important
because, in the absence of this sort of thing, “American allies and
adversaries may start to wonder if the president and the United States
are weak — frozen in place,” Shapiro said. “With that backdrop,
the raids in Libya and Somalia start to look like an important boost for
Obama. . . .
“In another change from the norm, these weekend raids received praise
from people in both parties.”
USA! USA! We’re still the primo predator out there. Maybe thousands of
American children have been shut out of Head Start classes, as Zoe
Carpenter writes in The Nation [4]. Maybe 9 million women and children
now lack access to food and infant formula through the Women, Infants
and Children program, and domestic violence programs and emergency
shelters are having to close their doors, but what does any of that have
to do with national security?
These programs, of course, have everything to do with national security,
but not enough of us have figured this out yet. Power flows toward
rationality with daunting slowness.
------
Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press) is now available. Contact him at
Bob Koehler, visit his website at
Common Wonders or listen to him at Voices of Peace radio.
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