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Spreading
Democracy
By Gozawheena Bergacker
11/22/07 "ICH" -- -- Deep in the bowels of a Washington DC
Think Tank, a recent college graduate—selected for her
unquestioning and eager embrace of their cynical ideology—labors
under the watchful eye of a well-connected political strategist,
creating “talking points” for the evening news. The large
corporations that so generously fund the Think Tank will pleased
with this latest fiction, the strategist muses as he inserts her
virulent words into his email and clicks “send”. He is confident
that corporate contributions will flow as long as the propaganda
flows.
Squeezed in a featureless cubicle in the middle of a sprawling
over-lit newsroom, a young reporter is struggling to ensure his
article conforms with the worldview of his boss’s bosses,
leaders of a large corporation with billions in government
defense contracts. His computer chimes. He retrieves the Think
Tank's “talking points” from his inbox and begins to read. If
you want to get along, you gotta go along, he whispers to
himself. He presses Command-Shift-C on his keyboard and proceeds
to infect his own work with the diseased words.
Seated behind a desk on a cheap plastic office chair in a
crowded suburban high school, an American history teacher bites
her lip as she recites to her class from the authorized
textbook. She must restrain herself from commenting on the
narrow interpretations and overt omissions. No Child Left Behind
dictates that her students must learn these fictions or her
school will lose its federal funding. A bell rings and the
students escape to the next class, where they will be infected
with more fictions.
A 30-something copywriter in a major advertising agency rubs his
eyes as he stares at his flickering computer screen. It is late
and he wants to go home, but he must find some compelling reason
for consumers to buy another drug, another game, another heavily
processed food for which there is no true need. The packaging
warns it may be harmful to the buyer’s health. He wonders if
they mean a physical or psychological health, but dismisses the
concern; there is no room for moral misgivings in the world of
business. He touches his keyboard and continues to spread
fiction.
Collapsing onto the sofa after a long commute home and an even
longer day at the office, an exhausted middle-age couple turns
on the TV and the husband begins to surf through the endless
stream of violence, murder, and angry talking heads barking
half-truths and Think Tank talking points. Numbed, the man
reaches his favorite “reality” show and the couple settles in
for an evening of fiction. Real reality is far too messy and
complicated; they trust their Congressman to discern fact from
fiction and vote in their best interest. That’s why they elected
him.
Covering a phlegm-choked cough, a Congressman picks up his phone
and dials the CEO of a large corporation to reassure him that
their generous campaign contribution had paid off handsomely. A
bill, written by the corporation's lobbyists and submitted by
the Congressman, had passed without question or comment. Its
diseased language had been buried deep in an omnibus defense
appropriations bill submitted for a vote late the previous
night. The opposition was given a single hour to review the
legislation before a vote was called. Not having time to read
the bill and not wanting to appear weak on defense, the
opposition party rubber-stamped the legislation, much to the
pleasure of the Congressman. He was very good at transforming
these fictions into cash, very good. He coughed again.
It is 8 pm and a poll worker closes the door of the polling
place and turns the lock. Until a few minutes ago there had been
a long line of people wanting to vote, but they had been turned
away. Once again, peculiar problems with the voting machines had
caused delays. Someone thought it might be a computer virus.
These problems were compounded by an fraudulent mailing
announcing a change in the polling place. Voters who traveled to
the address discovered it belonged to an empty lot. And then
there had been a large number of felons trying to vote again
this year. Most denied any crime more serious than a parking
ticket and demanded the right to vote, but the list of
authorized voters supplied by the state clearly indicated they
were felons. Although the head of the state’s elections board is
a politician with ties to the private company that created the
list, the state is certainly not in the business of tampering
with elections, she assures herself.
A military band marches by at the Flag Day parade, snapping out
crisp salutes to the procession of American flags waving bravely
ahead of them in the early summer breeze. Young fathers instruct
their children to place their right hand over their breast in a
sign of solemn respect. Elderly veterans in VFW hats wipe
tearing eyes as the band begins to play another rousing march on
gleaming instruments. This is the best country in the world, we
are reminded. We are the most blessed by God and the most free.
We have such an abundance of freedom that we proudly export it
to other countries, along with arms and cash to help compliant
regimes put down insurrection and squash dissent among its
citizens. So they can be free like us.
A mother cries as the body of her son is lowered into the grave.
He was only nineteen and full of promise when he heard his
nation calling and enlisted in the National Guard. He was
quickly trained and armed with a rifle, a Vietnam-era flak
jacket, and desert boots. His first letter home bore his pride
and the conviction that he was bringing democracy and freedom to
an oppressed and backward nation. He claimed the battle for
hearts and minds would soon be won and he would return to a
grateful nation a hero. His next letter confessed the
indiscriminate killing, the fear, and the hatred of an entire
culture. The conquered, he said, must accept freedom and
democracy, even if it is at the point of a gun. There was no
third letter. Only a knock on the door and a painfully short
visit by two Marines who brought with them the few miserable
effects of their son. Nothing of him was found after the car
bombing. The father comforted his wife in her misery as he
thought back to Vietnam, when a fiction had spread and killed
52,000 other sons.
An old and inconceivably wealthy man produces a weak cough
without covering his mouth. He smiles in false apology then
generously waves a carefully manicured hand over the captains of
industry assembled in the rich, mahogany-lined boardroom. This
has been a very good year, he reminds them. Corporate profits
are up, labor costs continue their downward slide thanks to
foreign workers flooding into the country. New opportunities are
opening up in the cheap labor markets of China and India. In an
era of dwindling resources we are quietly conquering countries
that possess the cheap fuel and raw materials our voracious
economic engine demands. Globalization is inevitable,
irrefutable, irrepressible: it is like a virulent disease for
which there is no cure. We have removed the few remaining
obstacles to unimaginable wealth; gone are the regulations on
the products we sell, the restrictions on which lands and
workers we may exploit, and the inconvenient laws that stand in
the way of our progress. At last, he proclaims, the markets are
in command—and we are in command of the markets. We, who were
destined to rule, will use our power to create an even an richer
life. For ourselves. And those below us will be grateful as
surplus droplets of our success trickle from our fingers and
down into their bleating mouths.
The elderly waiter clearing the soiled gold-rimmed dinner plates
of the well-satisfied men seated around the boardroom table
dares not make eye contact with his betters, for he fears his
thoughts will betray him. This must be a fiction, he thinks, for
it is too terrible to be true. These men—these self-ordained
rulers—would condemn us to feudalism. They will succeed if we do
not act; history has proven this too many times. But when he
shares his fears with the other waiters, they laugh and dismiss
his concerns as the mutterings of a silly old man.
The old man, who has lived a very long time and seen much, is
far from silly. He is one of many people who see the evil that
is happening but judge themselves powerless to stop it. The old
man knows that until Americans reject the fiction and discover a
courage for the truth this nation shall be condemned to live as
sheep in a society run by a pack of diseased wolves.
As his bare hand scrapes the slop from the rich men's dirty
dishes, he remembers something his mother once told him: You are
what you eat: Swallow the fiction you are fed and your life will
be yours no longer.
He sighs deeply. Perhaps today someone will speak the truth
about this American "democracy".
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