Running Amok, in the Finest of Shoes
Fear and loathing in America
 

December 3 2004
Counterbias.com
by WJG Anthony
 

Is there no more perfect phrase for the psychological climate in America than "fear and loathing"?

This patented phrase is from the fevered genius of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson and all rightful credit is his. An ugly but necessary preamble in this land of litigation and hustle and profit at all cost, but things like that must be said or risk be taken down by the snarling dogs of legal recourse.

Regardless, and all apologies aside, let the point be made: America is lost and searching. Despite the trumpeting of the tired nonsense that America is great, and sound, and will return to its brief and sparkling glory. The brutal point and ugly truth is that America has lost its way. America is no longer America. When every dollar that is spent to annihilate our "enemies" is equally invested in trying to coexist peacefully; when other cultures are respected and embraced and regarded as important and not just strange and different and in need of "Americanizing"; when lying and deceit lose their currency; when depth of spirit is as valued as depth of bank accounts; maybe then, the original promise of this country will have a chance of being realized. The world is watching – and loathing.

Something's happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Jones? – Bob Dylan

In an old "Hey Rube" column, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson referred to this Dylan lyric and offered his astute psychosocial commentary.

While I couldn't agree more with Thompson's analysis, I see things a bit differently and would offer another perspective:

This is a subject that has been a personal preoccupation for decades, and just when an analysis begins to make sense it ratchets up to a whole new plateau. One aspect of American culture has become clearly paramount: a widespread acceptance of the philosophy of personal survival and welfare at all cost. Truth matters only when it is personally beneficial. Plausible deniability, a modus operandi of the ruling elite that grew out of the dark age of Nixon era Washington and found full bloom under Reagan, has now become solidly rooted in the fertile compost of America at large.

Nobody, it seems, will take responsibility for anything. Not only is there ubiquitous denial of anything compromising, there is an odd counter-phenomenon of a willingness to accept unwarranted credit. People  everywhere are pretending to be talented and famous, and, oddly, accepted as so. Up is down and down is up. What is happening here? We fell down the rabbit hole a good while back and it is, collectively, just now beginning to dawn on us. The tragic consequence is magnified by a sense that the cultural tools to cope with this sort of problem have eroded as well. We have come to embrace bullies and demagogues and are loath to listen to hard truth. We want a yellow-brick road to candyland and don't want to recognize we are lost in a pointless forest.

This ethic of survival at all cost is in striking contrast to the indigenous American philosophy that "today is a good day to die" – an elegant and Zen-like reverence for divine will. Without this kind of acceptance and desire, on a broad scale, for an authentic existence, the world will grow ever uglier and more vulgar. Fights regularly break out in the stands of high school football games, men are killing each other over little league baseball, soccer moms are arrested for assault and running amok. It goes on and on. Look at the recent presidential election – sheesh – it all has the same smell: "my dog's badder than your dog, even if I have to cheat to prove it."

Are we doomed? George Harrison thought so, and considered naming his last album 'Your Planet Is Doomed, Part One'. He declared, "The world is going
mental as far as I'm concerned... Basically, I think the planet is doomed". George went on to say that things are speeding up because of technology and "...everything that is happening". "Everything" paints it with a bit of a broad brush, but he was certainly onto something.

Fat-cats grow fatter these days, while poets and painters starve. White collar criminals retire to gated communities, sometimes after a short stay in a country club prison. Vile toxins bubble up not only in the culture, but also in the landscape and in the drinking water, with those growing wealthy from it dying and passing on their ill-gotten wealth or living out their years in quiet well-feathered obscurity.

It is all finally coming home to roost, and while some might agree, it does little good to don a sandwich-board and take to the streets proclaiming "THE END IS NEAR!". Yet, it is way past time to pay casual regard. The signals have become too evident, too blatantly obvious. Clearly the message is on the verge of filtering down to the mainstream. When that happens, it will be, as usual, too late and entirely out of our hands. Perhaps it is too late already. But what is there to do?

There is no easy remedy for the self-indulgence that plagues America. It is so reinforced by our impatient ways, and so woven into the fabric of our culture. Until this black tide is turned by soul searching and self-realization on a mass scale, nothing will change. If and when it does, it is probably too late anyway. Things are that bad. Why bother? Life as it is will go on, at least for a while, and the ethos that 'anything that enhances the bottom line is good' will continue, and the storm clouds will continue to gather.

Oh, and now there is this "war"...

---