May All The Diamonds In Your Field Turn To Stone

May 13 2004
Counterbias.com
Cory M. Marshall

"It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors" - (Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde)

They've gone too far this time.  Imagine, a grown man allotting a share of the responsibility for 9/11, to the Irish!   A former American diplomat in Dublin, Seoras O Diomasaigh, in that hateful Gaeltacht (or, George Dempsey in American), had the nerve to suggest that Irish media and the Irish had a hand in fostering the environment that permitted such a grievous event as 9/11. One could argue that merely by the millennium's struggle against their White Anglo-Saxon cum Protestant oppressors, the Irish might well serve as an exemplar for resistance.  But is it fair to blame the Irish for 9/11?

A rational person would not, but then we come to the jingoist. Apparently, it must be the Irish media who share some blame for they seem to be stuck in a Marxist rut for the last forty years or so, according to the diplomat.  It seems that the Irish press is moved more by the underdog than by the consideration for America's delicate feelings, and in some circles, this is egregious.

For all of the amazing things that she has proffered to the world, the United States has also run rough shod over the globe, fomenting dissent wherever there is a significant deposit of some desired resource. Sometimes, the disparity between the actions of the land of the free and her words cause my own Irish blood to boil, and this is particularly true when some perfidious operation that was plotted in the shadows comes into the harsh light of reality, and there are plenty of those operations to read about - subverting democracy in Iran in the fifties, Latin America for the latter half of the 20th century, et al.  So I guess that the American
'establishment' just doesn't like when a light is shone on a dirty secret or two, and there is a tendency to shoot the messenger.  

It might even be summed up as an unwillingness to be accountable, to be responsible, that is part and parcel of being American, and it runs from the top down.  Consider, a person who may or not have committed a capital crime can be called upon to pay the ultimate price in being killed by the state.  Alright, occasionally some responsibility is taken. However, the populace is shrouded from the death throes of the convicted because it would be too upsetting.  Too bad.  It doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest that, if they insist on putting down the least of their countrymen, they should have to watch it, to take responsibility for having such a penalty. They should know about all of the nefarious schemes that had unfolded in the name of the American Way, to take responsibility for having them.

It seems they have a role model in their avoidance.  Mr. Bush has dispensed with Mr. Truman's desktop doctrine of buck stopping. (But to be fair, if all the bucks stopped there, it would be difficult for them to end up in the grubby hands of Halliburton and their cohort.) It's like all critical thought is cast to the winds because it's almost unpatriotic to think, and none of them wishes to be painted with that brush.  But in the meantime, they are told to trust in manifest destiny and the Good Lord will provide, to go shopping and buy duct tape and plastic.  Anyone paying attention should be troubled by the manner in which the powers that be consider the governed, and troubled still more by the treatment given to those outside the pale.

Almost daily, we can behold the deceit and distortions being foisted upon a cowed public to the extent that many might just be grateful for some more objective media, perhaps from what is the 'auld sod' for some forty million Americans.  And that is sad, if not thoroughly disgusting. America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, simply doesn't have the courage to take a good long look at herself, and most of the good reporting about her comes from somewhere else, omitted from America's papers of record. There just might be something in the American psyche that disdains her fallibility to the point where her foibles go unnoticed, and her critics assailed.

But blaming the Irish for her troubles is symptomatic of America.  She seems always poking about things and stirring flames, only to blame someone else for the blaze, someone real or imaginary. In fact, there's quite a circumstantial case for US government complicity in 9/11, so hearing Americans lashing out at anyone and everyone who dares speak truth to people makes dinner a little harder to keep down.

In any case, I don't hate America, I just miss her or my delusions about her.