There are no innocent bystanders when our money and/or rhetoric support the world’s most powerful military and the corporate status quo.
The next time you’re feeling “free,” see how far you can walk without being legally compelled to stop…to let cars drive past. The light turns red and voila: you are no longer free to continue walking because in America, the car culture rules. This essentially invisible totalitarian salvo was recently complicated when a big white SUV crept up into the crosswalk, making it virtually hopeless for yours truly to cross the damn street even when the light changed to green. I fixed my gaze on the mechanized monster before me and immediately saw all that is wrong with America.
No, I’m not just talking about how the gas guzzling properties of that SUV directly result in military interventions, human rights violations, global poverty, rampant war crimes, and everything else on the lurid laundry list. This is not just another screed about the myriad highways that crisscross America, draining tax dollars, shattering communities, and devastating eco-systems. No, this is all about dissidents finally blaming everyone who deserves blame (including ourselves).
The neatly dressed man in the passenger seat (“Dad”) was talking loudly on a cell phone. Global demand for columbite-tantalite (a.k.a. “coltan”), a common cell phone component, is fueling war and environmental destruction in the Democratic Republic of Congo…but leftists aren’t supposed to acknowledge their complicity. We don’t reproach everyday Americans for their callous indifference because, well…it’s all Bush’s fault, right?
The woman driving this death machine (“Mom”) sported diamond earrings. Although we’re aware how the diamond trade exploits both humans and the landscape, Mom’s given a free pass based solely on her ignorance. It’s Bush’s fault.
Both Mom and Dad proudly call themselves “liberal” and voted for Kerry in 2004. Their participation in the two-party farce and their acceptance of lesser evilism, however, are not seen as the problem by those in the know. It’s all Bush’s fault.
In the backseat of that SUV sat a teenage boy wearing Nike sneakers, a Gap shirt, and eating a Big Mac. I’m not supposed to point the accusing finger of blame at his family’s willingness to financially support sweatshop labor and factory farming because it’s Bush’s fault.
Next to Big Mac boy was his older sister: drinking Coke (sorry India and Colombia) and putting on nail polish (too bad for the animals it was tested on). This girl’s compliance is not the problem. She’s merely a product of the times. Besides, it’s all Bush’s fault.
The light that temporarily halted this SUV went green and Mom put the pedal to the metal. As she drove away, I saw a bumper sticker that reads: “Our son is a U.S. Marine.” Ah, here we have the Holy Grail of free passes. Condemn the war but support the troops, we’re told, and the SUV owner’s progeny only joined for the educational opportunities. It’s not his fault. Leave him alone. He’s only following orders. He had no choice. He has no culpability. It’s Bush’s fault that poor sonny boy is stuck in Iraq.
Reality check: The excuse of ignorance is not valid when graphic images are available within minutes. It’s not lack of knowledge; it’s denial…or perhaps even acquiescence. There are no innocent bystanders when our money and/or rhetoric support the world’s most powerful military and the corporate status quo. But if we just keep telling ourselves it’s all Bush’s fault, we can sleep better…our innocence wrapped around us like a big white SUV.
Mickey Z. can be found on the Web at http://www.mickeyz.net.
Damn. You just pretty thoroughly psychanalyzed my chosen username. Chosen with some care, I might add.
None of us can claim innocence of things done in our name. Maybe there was a time when we could claim ignorance. But no more. Any ignorance we still cling to is a willful, obstinate refusal to see what is right before our eyes.
It’s like I’ve been asleep half my life. Well I’m awake now. – Huff
I’ve lost a few arguments over the merits or lack thereof of diamonds. No one in their right mind should eat a Big Mac. Corn syrup should be shunned by all (next to impossible at this point).
But I do get tired of liberals complaining about SUV’s and then hopping in a private jet. One cross-country flight could fuel thousands of SUV’s for a year.
I thought for years that this issue of collective responsibility is the most important, and most difficult, issue facing the United States.
You’re coming at it from a largely environmental perspective.
I’ve tended to come at it from the perspective of state-sponsored terrorism, sponsored by the United States.
The key event that radicalized my world view was the shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 on July 3, 1988 by the USS Vincennes, a new hot-shit Aegis cruiser. There were 290 dead, including 66 children. It’s a wonder the Iranians haven’t been bombing American shopping malls. At that time, I argued strenuously that all Americans have blood on their hands, however attenuated by remoteness of responsibility and countervailing good works. My wife at the time disagreed so strongly that we almost came to blows. I can remember us yelling at each other as she dropped me off at work in D.C.
A main cause of depression and bad health is taking responsibility for things over which one has no control. It is possible to worry too much. But there has to be a happy mean. Nothing disgusts me more than the utter indifference of most Americans to their impact around the world.
I’ve been saying for years that I wanted to start a web site devoted to this one topic, although I’ll probably never devote the time. It is miles deep.
Gosh, you should see the amazingly low quality of every comment on this diary on DKos. Even for that cesspool it is a spectacle.
I still read dKos and enjoy some of the posters there, but every now and again I read a diary (such as this one) there and the comments, and wonder why the mere provocation of thought is so often considered offensive?
When I saw this diary on DKos about 11 this morning, there were about 50 comments, all nasty attacks on the author, so silly back-scratching and feces-flinging among the comment monkeys.
I just searched again, and the diary has been deleted.
I wonder what’s up with that. I was curious to see whether any level heads appeared.
The diary hasn’t been deleted…it’s here.
As for level heads…well, I’ll let you decide.
Thanks for the link. I was able to drag up many older diaries by this writer using the DKos search feature, but not this one, and couldn’t find a way to display earlier diaries from this day.
I happened to rate a couple of the comments in it, so I just got to it through my ratings page.
FWIW, if you know the diarists handle, instead of doing a search you can just put their handle straight into the url and see their diaries. For this case, either:
http://coolobserver.dailykos.com
or
http://www.dailykos.com/user/coolobserver
will take you to that diarist’s diaries.
A lot of the comments over at the Orange place looked like the ravings of hyenas on crack.
… the ravings of hyenas on crack.
Now THAT’S an image.
There are no innocent bystanders when our money and/or rhetoric support the world’s most powerful military and the corporate status quo. But if we just keep telling ourselves it’s all Bush’s fault, we can sleep better…our innocence wrapped around us like a big white SUV.
I’ve sat here for 20 minutes trying to formulate a response, rejecting each in turn as a violation of Booman’s prime directive of site behavior, but I find it very hard to find the right turn of phrase with which to respond to such an audacious claim.
I guess we better hope Lot doesn’t leave this sodom of a nation lest the deserved wrath of the flying spaghetti monster fall on the rest of us scum-suckers.
I’ll keep this in mind the next time I see the homeless man on the street, the parent struggling to balance medical care for a loved one with feeding the rest of the family (without the rest of them having to live in their car), or the young woman who foregoes a high-paying career to take a job in public health, or solar energy research, as a firefighter or a public defender.
It must be wonderful to have such crystalline clarity in your beautiful mind. The rest of us schmucks are trying to do the best we can in a world of shades of gray. Even blowing your nose condemns a host innocent bacteria to death in the cold and dryness of a tissue. That’s the way the world is, the hand we have been dealt.
Short of killing ourselves, I don’t see that we have much choice than to deal with reality as it is, and do our incremental parts to move things forward.
And now I have real work to do in the real world on real problems, so I’ll stop wasting electrons here that can be better spent in fighting disease or pollution, or even just spreading hope to folks in the trenches doing the work of trying to make the world a little bit better, even if they aren’t as free of the taint of sin as God’s holy angels, the real-world grayness you would fault them for, that they didn’t have the good fortune to be born guiltless in Somalia or Darfur.
Or as the Bards of Liverpool put it:
…But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow…
Truth hurts.
Let me try again. You have lots of good arguments. It sounds exactly like the arguments of my ex-wife. I’d love to see lots of back-and-forth debate on this.
The idea of collective responsibility, I think, is kind of a mystical idea, the sort of thing that people long on intuition like artists and poets can’t help perceiving, but that the majority of people rather fiercely reject.
Obviously it’s hard to draw boundaries. Obviously a homeless man is not as responsible as a plutocrat. Obviously a middle class American is not responsible for everything in the world, such as human rights abuses in China. I have no idea how to approach these problems.
But for what it’s worth, I think there’s a germ of truth in the idea of immense importance.
Back when I was a Catholic, I believe this idea went by the name of social sin.
Perhaps I’m finding the framing of the original post in terms of collective guilt problematic. I like your phrase collective responsibility better. I’m much more interested in how we’re going to solve problems than finger pointing or guilt gamesmanship.
When people “blame Bush” I don’t think it’s necessarily always to excuse themselves. A lot of the time I think it’s a reflection in the zeitgeist of the principle “With great power comes great responsibility.” or Luke 12.48: “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.” (Oxford NRSV Bible)
I think therein lies a kernel of justice for fairly appropriating responsibility between Bush, a soccer mom, and a Rwandan refugee.
That helsp me think more clearly about this. That pretty much nails one aspect of the problem.
Another issue, which the diarist is focusing on, is how to inform the soccer mom that she bears some of this collective responsibility, however attenuated.
I think I would have thrown up on his shoes. Or punched him.
He should be condemned to be locked into a room where the walls are covered w/ posters of big-eyed children, the shelves are encrusted with Hummel figurines, and Oprah, Dr. Phil, Regis, The View and Montel Williams are all playing simultaneously at full volume on multiple tv screens.
that I’m especially fond of:
I also recall something him writing something to the effect of “when I act, I choose for all.” It’s somewhere in Being and Nothingness, if one cares to look.
Anyhoo, when I was reading MickeyZ’s diary, those were what came to my mind – the individual’s responsibility for the choices made in whatever circumstances that he/she is thrown into; the impact that those choices may have on others on another corner of the planet; the notion of living in bad faith (another Sartrean concept) to the extent that one attempts to escape accepting responsibility for one’s choices to act (or not to act).
So it goes.
Some food for thought.
Nice comment. My wife and I are going to a short adult catechism class this month, and at the last meeting I quipped about Sartre’s comment, from No Exit I think, that hell is other people (“l’enfer c’est les autres.”). A very pious fellow chirped up: “Oh no! HEAVEN is other people!” I bit my tongue and forced a cheerful grin.
crossposting this to My Left Wing?
Or, barring that inconvenience, would you mind MY crossposting it, crediting you, of course, with a link to your site (already on my blogroll)?
So, I’ve been thinking about this diary. In some ways it’s well written and makes a good point, but… The idea of collective guilt or collective responsibility is one that has far too often in the past been tied to the policy of reprisals known as collective punishment. Holding an entire community responsible for the actions of some of its members and acting against the community because of it is a tool associated with some of history and the present’s more repressive regimes. To accept collective responsibility is perhaps noble. To assign it is the first step down a slippery slope.