An American In Y’urp

“Elegant people are found in Paris; in the provinces there may be men of character.”

Forward: With that phrase, European philosopher Stendhal opens Chapter 12 of his 1830 literary classic The Red And The Black. Through his characters Stendhal endeavors to illustrate the cultural chasm built between the broad-minded “elite” of urban Paris and the“illiberal” provincials of the French countryside. Those self-imposed differences form the stereotypes that come to impose social, economic, and political repercussions upon both, and advantage upon neither. At once a study in misguided ambition and a parable on societal exploitation, The Red And The Black is widely considered to be the first modern novel of our Western world, and as its author predicted, a tale that would grow truer with age.

Though French-born, Stendhal lived an expatriate writer’s life in Italy. It was in Rome, not Paris, where he found the words that formed The Red And The Black. As have countless other writers from every age, Stendhal found Western society with its class distinctions, ubiquitous distrust and petty intrigues to be somehow clearer when viewed from the unique perspective of the Eternal City. Perhaps we humans are a species best understood and set to words when the observer finds himself surrounded by the crumbled vestiges of our past.

I am fortunate to find myself in Rome on this perfect Spring day. I’ve found an old Italian copy of Stendhal. I’ll attempt to read it again, this time where it was written. But as I sit here amid the glorious rubble of the world’s first solitary superpower, my simpler mind finds simpler parables than would that of Standhal. I’m reminded not of the decline and fall of past civilizations or the self-serving class distinctions born of mutual distrust. Instead I consider my own country’s decline from greatness, and her own “class” distinctions, distinctions prohibited by her incomparable charter, yet encouraged by her present leaders. The divisive pattern should be evident to every American. Yet it is not. Perhaps that’s understandable. After all, America’s fall from greatness is less a decline than a collapse. Our decline has been an implosion measured in days rather than in centuries. So, too, might be our fall if my countrymen remain in childlike denial.

Beginning with the voter betrayal of 2000, America’s decline was written in the vividly colored electoral maps of the US. Those red and blue colored charts formed a powerful visual adjunct to the meekly disputed travesty of unimaginable corruption the mainstream American media managed to persuade itself and most of its credulous disciples was an American election. The regional disparity was there for all to see in state-by-state, color by color, region by region, bias by bias clarity. Its bichromatic image is burned into my mind’s eye. I’ll forever see the United States as a land of red places and blue places, along with the inescapable and simplistic stereotypes each indelible color now represents to most Americans. Suddenly Stendhal’s reflections on class and regional distinctions, and town and country disparity of thought and intellect itself, come vividly to life. In the essay that follows, crafted over the course of a Roman week filled with both joy and tension, this writer comes to see how today, Stendhal’s lessons apply far less to The Red And The Black of old Europe, than to the red and the blue of new America.

RED AND BLUE IN BLACK AND WHITE

Reflections On America From An Ocean Away

By Dom Stasi

06/09/04 "ICH" -- Rome, Monday, May 31, 2004: It is the week of Festa della Republica, the Italians’ celebration of their country’s Golden Jubilee as a free republic. It is also a week that will culminate in celebrations of the 60^th Anniversary of the liberation of Rome from Fascism, the Normandy Invasion and the ultimate liberation of Europe from the Nazis. Quite a week. The fireworks and revelry remind me that it is also Memorial Day back in the States. All in all, a week of nationalistic pride, observed in a year of nationalistic shame, shame for both Italy and its Italian namesake, America. Neither country’s Rightist leaders seem to have learned anything from their forbears foreign adventures.

As is proper on Memorial Day, my thoughts turn away from the handsomely adorned Italian soldiers marching in the style of their American allies along the via dell Impero. I turn instead to thoughts of the 660 blood and mud stained dead American soldiers whose memories will be officially honored for the first time on this day back at home. Leading those honors will be George W. Bush, the very man who sent them to their deaths and refuses to tell us why. On this very day last year I penned an angry essay about that man. It was entitled simply, Chickenhawk.¹ The ensuing year, its allegations of military malingering have been all but proven true by his records (and lack thereof). True though indeed they may be, the implications of our Commander In Chief’s military desertion are being ignored by those whose responsibility is to invesigate and if warranted prosecute his treason. Since that time, the chickenhawk has unleashed an unjustified slaughter of innocents (1,000 Iraqi civilians per month for 14 months) the spectacle of which even the vaunted Roman Coliseum could not match.

I think as well of the additional 140 American KIAs whose second Memorial Day beneath the cold ground will bring no less searing pain than did the first, and no fewer unanswered questions to the restless minds, broken hearts, and tortured souls of those who loved them and lost them far too soon. For what did they die these 800 young Americans? For whom did they die? How many are yet to die? We still await but a single truthful answer to those questions. It will never come willingly from those few who purport to know. They’re too busy blaming the non-participants. Neither will we find it in the stupid musings of our government-controlled corporate media. Like our Italian allies and their media-mogul president, we are a country left to search for answers in speculation and reflection. Any who doubt this need only consider the apathy of those who brought us to this international disgrace. As the number of Americans killed in Iraq approached the 800 mark recently, Paul Wolfowitz, chief neo-con architect of this “war” in Iraq was asked how many Americans had died there. His answer, “…Oh, about three-hundred, fifty.”² One must wonder where Paul Wolfowitz is spending this Memorial Day. I would expect the Assistant Secretary of Defense has many important speaking duties on Memorial Day, what with his legions deployed across the globe. In front of which crowd of cheering chumps is he appearing, this American Varus³ behind his mask of sadness? Is it the sadness of defeat, or does he lament the deaths of his soldiers? All 350 of them.

Monday, June 1st: It has always been easier to reflect upon my America when an ocean lies between us. Be the locale oriental, occidental, polar or equatorial, America is made clear to me only through the filter of distance. But America is never so understandable as she is from here in the Eternal City. From the land of my ancestors, I can see the land of my descendants, and see it with a disturbing clarity.

I came here to relax, and am endeavoring mightily to do so. I am in fact sitting in an ancient Italian piazza enjoying a cappuccino and watching the world go by. But last night I received some annoying news. I was told that the Chickenhawk himself – George W. Bush - is scheduled to visit Rome tomorrow. I must presume he’s here to take credit for winning World War-2 some sixty years ago this week. But in reality it will be his less-than-triumphant return to the “old Europe” his now-confused flacks criticized so crudely only one year ago this same week. And though I won’t admit it, even to myself, I picked this spot because it’s on the route from DaVinci Airport I expect the hero’s motorcade to follow enroute to his hideout. I don’t expect to actually see Bush, nor do I care to. I’m more interested in the tumult that precedes him wherever he ventures outside of Crawford. I’m not disappointed. The morning quiet is broken by the endless drone of helicopters and fomations of huge four engine submarine chaser airplanes growling overhead in practiced anticipation of Italy’s aptly named national holiday. Or to translate loosely: Republican Day. That’s tomorrow, June 2nd. I expect the warplanes are also on the prowl to ensure the temporary safety of America’s addled brained visiting spokesman of Republicanism itself: Bush. That’s the only thing they call him here: Bush. Never President, or George Bush. Bush. It, too, seems apt for so many reasons. Not least among them is that a bush, despite its often decorative appearance and colorful adornment, is really just a form of brainless plant life, distinguishable from its coniferous brethren by lowly stature. Bush’s are often poisonous. They never soar very high. Choosing instead to hug the ground, the safety of shade, relying upon the shelter provided by grander varieties of life for their protection from the world of heat and light. All they require is to be fed a little bull manure from time to time, and they thrive. The Italian word for bush is Cespuglio (Pronounced: Cesspool-yo). As I said: fitting. This Bush will see nothing of the demonstrators sure to be standing here when the sunlight breaks through. His perception of how the Italians view him and his policies will be the bull manure fed him by his handlers as he sneaks through town to his meetings.

As the morning wears on, the street in front of the café is filling with demonstrators just as I expected. Molto beini. This is what I’m here to see, to feel, to be part of as an American – a real American – not some opportunist who will make money from kissing this jerk’s ass or writing kind lies. I’m here to see and to feel and to be angered by how far we’ve fallen in the eyes and minds of our comrades and allies on this anniversary of our genuine liberation of the very continent upon which I stand. They are by no means without gratitude, these Italians. This country too, has sent thousands of its young to Iraq that they may fight King George’s “war” for him. Like Americans an ocean away, they too were deceived by their president’s lies. Like a growing number of their American counterparts, the Italian citizenry is not happy about that deception. But unlike their American brethren, neither are they complacent. The old people of this country clearly remember being badly mauled when led into a war its majority of citizens did not support, a war against relatives and friends and against countries which had welcomed their émigré and toward which it harbored no ill will. Italy remembers being led to that war by a strutting, addled-brained dictator it came to finally hang by his feet in their rage and their shame. That was last century. The dictator they first followed, then executed with extreme prejudice was an arrogant little runt named Benito Mussolini. He liked to align himself with the powerful, and take vicarious glory from them. His hero was Hitler. The current Italian leader is already being compared to the Fascist il Duce (Mussolini). Today, Silvio Berlesconi is Italy’s sitting prime minister. A media billionaire, he is also the Rupert Murdoch of Italy, and an equally vile propagandist. A right-wing martinet, Berlusconi has attached himself in Mussolini-like fashion to the global power player of the moment, George W. Bush.⁴ How pathetic. Yet it is the real reason why Italian soldiers (along with those of Bush’s other European poodle, Tony Blair) are dying along side our own in the bloodied sands of Iraq. It’s also the reason why Rome will be Bush’s first and least humiliating European stop. But as I said, the citizens are not happy.

Last year on this very spot, the Italians staged the largest anti-war rally in the world, and did so on the day that the world itself staged the largest anti-war rally in its history. On that same day, in London, the English staged the second-largest. You might not have read about that stuff. That’s understandable. In the States our in-bedded press was busy feeding us stories about the dubious heroics of Jessica Lynch. Unlike Americans, the Europeans are not deluding themselves about this “war” in Iraq, this hillbilly family feud led by the aw shucks cowpoke who’s about to walk these bloodies streets of ancient stone, these via so often littered with the decaying bodies of wars past. War is not an action movie or video game here. Here they know its stink. They have for millennia.

All over the city there is a mix of revelry and anger. Patriotic banners and rainbow flags of disdain. The tension is becoming palpable. The sentiment is clearly not anti-American. It is clearly anti-Bush. Clearly. As the day turns to night, I return to the café. It is by now apparent that Bush’s motorcade will not be coming this way. The innkeeper tells me that Bush’s trip to Rome has been briefly postponed. The demonstrators, in the tens of thousands now, will be disappointed. Oh well, domani.

Tuesday, June 2^nd: It is a different, but equally leafy alcove this piazza where I sit out the chilly Republican Day morning. I have a headache. I didn’t get much sleep last night what with the brass bands and fireworks that filled the Roman air from midnight on. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. As long as the bira Moretti and vino Proseco flowed, I was right there in the thick of it, cheering with the rest. Now, infected with their passion, I suddenly might not mind actually seeing Bush.

The local morning paper shows pictures of three Italians being held hostage in Iraq. It is intended to provoke. It also says that Bush’s route through Rome is being kept secret. But I think I’ve figured it out. The piazza where I sit with what seems my 25^th demitasse (little cup) of muddy espresso is a somehow lovely mix of 16^th century beauty scarred by 20^th century shrapnel. Everywhere frenetic security preparations being staged ahead of Bush’s albeit late, but clearly unwelcome visit mar the morning calm. Across the street a large poster is being erected over a billboard that previously advertised an automobile. It’s not a homemade thing this poster, but a commercially produced billboard. Huge. As it comes together, I can see that it is an enlarged photo of a filthy blanket. From beneath the blanket protrude the bloody and mangled little feet of three obviously dead (Iraqi?) children. The Europeans treasure children – theirs or anyone else’s - above all else, as do we. But they seem less cowed about quietly sacrificing children – theirs or anyone else’s - to the whims of avaricious screwballs than are we.

Beneath the nearly-completed poster now reads the bold caption “Il lavoro del Bush.” Loosely translated: “The work of Bush.” I think “work” is a rather grand interpretation of what this savage is doing to our children and those of others. But that’s what it says. Given that its target can barely read English, the caption will be wasted on the Roman air.

Nonetheless, the poster – so graphic, so public - shocks my coddled American sensibilities: it’s not selling anything! How un-American is that? Imagine such a billboard at Hollywood and Vine, Times Square, The Mall Of America...

The presence of the billboard confirms my reasons for choosing this spot. I’m apparently not alone in my suspicion that Bush’s secret caravan will travel along this street. Because the real reason I chose this location, is less the presence of demonstrators and boldly written political billboards intended for Bush’s dim witted consideration, but for the presence of an ancient Roman ruin that has stood on this place for eons. It is a temple to which I know – I know absolutely – Bush and his entourage will feel compelled to pay homage. I learned of it in a taverna last night. It’s the reason that they WILL pass here. Deductive reasoning demands it be so. Some 2000 years old, the columned marble rotunda stands majestically at the confluence of the Tiber and Piazza Bocca della Verità. Right across the street from my perch. If - unlike his Thanksgiving trip to Baghdad - Bush pauses to see anything of Rome other than its airport tarmac, and does anything more Roman than getting photographed while pretending to eat a plastic lasagna, he will surely stop here.⁵ There can be no question of it.

Bush will want to not just stop, but worship at this ancient Pagan pile long before going on to the Vatican for his showboat act of Christian reverence. For the towering ruined rotunda soaring before me is nothing other than the ageless, marble Tempiale dei commercianti dell'olio. Or in English: The Temple Of The Oil Merchants! e’H

He’s gotta come by this thing. If not, I’m a monkey’s uncle. “Un'altra tazza del caffe, per favore,” I say to the café owner as I settle in for cup 26 of the morning. Suddenly I want very much to see Bush. I want to make him feel at home, let him know Americans are here. I want to stand among the demonstrators and profane him in English, and do so on this spot. For that, I’ll wait a little longer.

1999-08-01 14:14:11

Tempiale dei commercianti dell'olio

Wednesday, June 3rd: It’s noon. No Bush. I have in front of me yet another cup of espresso and now a bottle of beer as well. I figure they’ll cancel each other out. All of Rome is a similar contradiction. The eternal city is a continuum of our history and our duality as a people. In her buildings and her streets and in her denizens’ faces one can see the best and the worst of what we are as a culture and a race and an animal species. Be they stone or flesh, everything western is written on the facades of Rome. Everything human can be found there as well. Look here and one sees ageless stone once cut and piled with mathematical precision, high into the Italian sky, but reduced now to so much blood stained rubble by time and by men. Look there and ones eyes fall upon similar stone but shaped to the perfection of Davinci’s David in miniature. Both the ruins and the relics are the work of human hands. But look closely. The little replical David’s own hands, so gently turned in their perfection hold a weapon of death. He is the perfect and beautiful giant killer. The symbolism is suddenly disturbing. Humanity’s hard-won cultural progress and its swift and inevitable destruction can be found at every turn here. I cannot help but see our future more than our past written in the rubble of this first and ancient and solitary superpower fallen to ruins. Her stone facades as so much rubble crushed beneath the weight of her avarice reveal more of what is yet to come than they do of what has already been – far more. I look away.

There, two tables distant, I see a woman of timeless and borderless beauty. Her face – even as my own weathered old countenance - is an amalgam of every race whose armies marched triumphantly or were dragged in chains across these rough hewn stones beneath our feet; victory and vanquish, hubris and humility, genius and lunacy are combined in her single, albeit beautiful Italian face. It occurs to me that perhaps as an American of Italian ancestry, I too am a being whose blood flows with the ancient genes of everyman. As such I might presume to understand my own adopted country’s behavior in a way unique and critical to a mongrel species such as that from which I surely derive, and a mongrel society such as America herself most certainly is and hopefully always will be. For is not America a country whose blood is that of everyman? Did not victor and vanquished, proud and prejudiced, genius and lunatic contribute, albeit on a cultural if not individual scale to the tapestry that is America? The answer is simple. Yes!

But in America the differences are individual not societal.

As I sit here, in this ancient piazza, this mosaic of new and old, my thoughts return to my book, The Red And The Black. Stendhal’s tale seems suddenly less an entertaining story than an indictment of post-enlightenment Western – not merely Western European – mores. The Red And The Black becomes glaringly recognizable as a tale of greed-inspired stupidity told at a time that would see Europe’s golden age ultimately give way to the American Century. It is testimony to the book’s scathing accuracy that The Red And The Black remains a definitive treatise on the populist conditioning and angst that continues to characterize the self-proclaimed under classes of Western culture and its encouragement by the controlling elite and equally greed-blinded bourgeoisie. Anyone who has ever read Stendhal’s masterpiece cannot help but see its similarities to modern day America. One need only contrast Stendhal’s nearly two-century-old observations on town-and-country, against the very modern red-state/blue-state electoral maps used by every TV network during our own contested 2001 presidential elections to understand the unfortunate similarities between the 19^th century European mind, and that of the 21^st Century American. As with Europe’s The Red And The Black, we need only recall America’s The Red And The Blue to predict our own descent into a self-imposed and callous mediocrity as the rest of the world moves on and moves away from us.

Never has a population, the overwhelming majority of which has but the simplest of common interests (peace and prosperity, safety and security for our children, and to uphold the principles for which our parents and grandparents fought and too often died) never has a society of such homogeneous purpose been so decisively and divisively turned against itself. Never has a president – or more accurately a dummy and his ventriloquists – been able to delude so large a portion of his constituency into distrusting and disdaining of one another, and done so based almost solely on the region of the country in which they live. Yet, in the time-honored fashion of every populist exploiter in our history this most privileged, draft-dodging Ivy league cheerleader who fashions himself a populist bumpkin and heroic warrior man-of-the-people from the provincial heartland has somehow managed to pull it off. Now, if one were to believe the polls, an inordinate portion of those red-staters who supported and fell for his divisiveness are still too biased to admit their mistake. To you I say the following: if anything proves a provincial mindset, it is ones adamant refusal to admit that he’s been fooled by a city slicker. It’s time to fess up. For not to fess up is to be further fooled by the liars.

Again, the words and lessons from Stendhal’s The Red And The Black come to mind.

“Elegant people are found in Paris; in the provinces there may be men of character.”

The parallels and inferences to Americans and America’s popular and political demographics are obvious and specific in those old words. What is less obvious, however, is that men of character unfortunately expect others to behave as they themselves behave: with character. When they are lied to by fakers pretending to be like them, they are more vulnerable than are the “elegant” men of Paris. The “elegant” expect to be lied to. The men of the provinces would rather have been fooled than to be distrustful of their fellows without demonstrated reason. Men of character think, and rightly so, that to condemn without evidence is un-American. The hard, self-reliant life of the provinces demands that good men trust one another and rely upon each other’s character. Pretenders cannot survive the rigors of provincial life – anywhere, any time.

Nothing but location has changed since Stendhal’s day. There remains no dishonor in taking someone at his word. Simplistically stated, the majority of voters in the red states took George W. Bush at his word. His word was spoken in language and patois unique to their regions and intended to exploit them by making his lies more palatable to their regional sensibilities. For what is more regional than patois? When manifest as an inspecific drawl, however phoney, it infers region and specifically, it screams ruralism. But, however down home twangy, his word was no good. He promised smaller government. But gave you the largest increase in the largest government in the history of the world. He promised tax cuts. The vast majority of the money then went out to the richest Americans, and it went there out of all proportion to what the wealthy beneficiaries. It was an illegal wealth transfer, from one class to another, and it cost us our future.⁴ The Ivy League city-slicker in bumpkin’s clothing promised vindication against those who attacked us on September 11, 2001. Of the 19 attackers, 15 were Saudis. He quietly flew 140 of their countrymen out of America on September 12, 2001. He did this while demanding the grounding of every other civil aircraft in the American skies. Among those grounded in mid-course was an airplane carrying a human heart for transplant. On that same day he sent government aircraft all over America to pick up 24 of the alleged terrorist leader’s family members and evacuate them back to Arabia – that’s right, your tax-supported aircraft carried 24 bin Ladens back to Saudi Arabia before they could be so much as questioned by the FBI or anyone else American. (We knew where they were because certain of the bin Ladens had been here meeting with, among others, the liar’s very father George H.W. Bush and his Carlisle Group as recently as the night before) He did this while living Americans were still screaming beneath the Trade Center’s smoke and iron. He did this all, and he did it while feigning shock and outrage and saddness at our immeasurable loss. He promised you prosperity and plunged your country into its steepest debt ever. So far $650 billion of your tax dollars have disappeared with nothing identifiable to show for their having been squandered. It will soon grow to one-trillion! He’s promised you all of this, and done nothing more than send your sons and daughters to fight and die in his most unnecessary of wars.

The list goes on forever. But the point is simply this. You’ve been lied to and you’ve been used. We all have. We’ve been lied to by a man who exploits stereotypes. He wears his fake mid-America, Bible-belt folksiness like a fluorescent badge. He calls himself a Christian, yet ignores Christ’s most fundamental teachings. He orders the killing of untold thousands of innocents with neither reason nor remorse. He defiles God’s green Earth as would an ignorant swine. He puts pride before honor, and he lies about it all with an aw-shucks grin and fake regional twang and not a trace of penitence.

But know this as you consider our country’s future. Being lied to is not a crime and it’s not a mistake. Taking someone at his word is not a shameful act. Trust is not a sin. But refusing to acknowledge that your trust has been violated – not merely misplace, but violated - most certainly is. It’s a sin committed against ones self. Therein lies the difference – in Stendhal’s cruel tale, and in cruel life itself, in urban city and rural hamlet alike. Therein and only therein – not in region, not in “class” not in Red And Black or red and blue, but in character. The place from which each of us comes is Red, White And Blue! When we show the strenth and character to admit we’ve been lied to we’ll exhibit the difference between true men and women of character and the herd of biased, victimized, closed-minded provincial rubes our president thinks we are.

Thursday, June 4^th: Bush has arrived. His route is no longer a secret. He has met with, and been chastised by the Pope. Rumor has it that he is scheduled to read someone’s words at the gateway to the Coliseum. It’s billed as a speech. The route is lined with grandstands to hold the parasites, and armed carabineri at the barricades to hold the protesters. As the day wears on, the protesters will spread across the city, greatly outnumbering the 12, 000 police. American troops climb from a truck, take positions.

Never having been a part of one of these things, I cannot estimate the growing crowd’s size. But it’s certainly larger than that in the grandstands. There are thousands and thousands of protesters, tens of thousands at least, of that I’m certain. I am once again among them. The crush is intimidating as is the anger palpable. But there will be no violence. I can sense that. None. Pressing against a sidewalk railing, I raise myself above the crowd. At the end of the decorated parade route I can clearly see the reviewing stand, but cannot raise my camera, so thick is the crowd. I look eastward toward the towering ancient pile that is the Roman Coliseum. I think of Bush’s voice, his phoney bumpkin drawl amid such grandeur. Where, I muse, are the lions when you need them?!

I suddenly lose interest. I know he will say nothing of truth, nothing of substance, nothing of his own crafting, nothing worth hearing. His phony, insulting, provincial drivel will win him no favor here. I turn away and begin my push through the angry crowd and away from here, away from a liar’s bleating drawl that will sound as fake to my American ear as does his populist message of nothing. I walk away. In the final estimate, at this celebration of its liberation and independence, 250,000 protesters will bring Rome to a halt.⁶ It will matter not at all to Bush. Rome is not a swing state.

“The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.” – Stendhal

About The Author

Dom Stas, an enginner, is Chief Technology Officer for a national satellite network based in Los Angeles. An active member of The Planetary Society, and the Center For Inquiry, he is a frequently published science and technology writer. Opinions expressed in this piece are solely his own. Email <ResponDS1@aol.com>

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