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Wayne Besen
PO Box 25491
Brooklyn, NY 11202
Remember the anticipatory exuberance that gripped the world as Y2K approached? There was a feeling, among the non-apocalyptic crowd, that humanity was crossing an important threshold. It was the dawn of the computer age and modern man was going to evolve and advance civilization.
For a brief moment, there was great hope that people in our rapidly shrinking world would join together for the common good. Technology was all-powerful, the United States seemed like a lovable superpower and a rapidly democratizing world would bring a century of peace and prosperity.
The optimism of the time was predicated on the assumption that we had actually learned from the horrors of the previous millennium, particularly the bloody meat grinder known as the 20th Century. The past hundred years had brought us two World Wars, Imperial Japan, the holocaust, Stalin, segregation, McCarthyism, Vietnam, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Ayatollah Khomeini and Saddam Hussein. (This is the short list)
This great evil was countered by the remarkable courage of the past century's heroes. We had extraordinary spiritual teachers, such as Gandhi, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King Jr., to show us a better way. They imparted the wisdom of peace, the power of knowledge and strength through compassion.
Unfortunately, we are now six years into the new millennium and it looks eerily similar to the worst aspects of the 20th Century. In many parts of the world, horror has replaced hope, poverty has eclipsed plenty and pessimism has erased optimism. In large part, Iraq has become Vietnam and Bush has morphed into Nixon. Darfur is the new Rwanda and Congo is, well, the same miserable Congo it has always been.
In the Middle East, Israel and the Palestinians are still in a tug-of-war over an overheated sand trap. Women are treated worse than pets in the rest of the region - they can't drive or vote in Saudi Arabia and the Taliban is keeping women from attending school in Afghanistan.
After freedom was briefly put on the pupu platter, former KGB official, Vladimir Putin, returned with the main dish of gulag goulash. He has slowly rolled back democracy and strangled freedom out of the people and the fledgling press. It is heartbreaking that the fall of the iron curtain has been replaced by Putin's iron fist.
In such a tyrannical climate, it is no surprise that Gay Pride in Moscow was cancelled. However, it was still shocking to watch police turn a blind eye while a few brave gay activists were harassed by nationalistic skinheads. Excuse me, but wasn't it Nazis, not gay advocates that killed (with the help of Stalin) up to 20 million Russians during World War II?
Likewise, Poland is now run by a right-wing government that uses nationalism to oppress minorities. The New York Times reported that parliamentarian Wojciech Wierzejski said that Gay Pride participants should be "bashed with a baton." Hasn't Poland been on the other side of the authoritarian baton long enough to know better?
What is most disheartening is that the 20th Century taught us the recipe for demagogic intolerance. Yet, we, as a collective people, passively watch the concoction bake and then get fat off the corrosive cake.
The ingredients are always the same: Ruthlessly ambitious politicians, a cup of nationalism, a heap of wrap-yourself-in-the-flag religious certitude, a pinch of intolerant bigotry, a spoonful of militaristic chest-thumping and a sprinkle of historic revisionism.
Sadly, even Japanese politicians are taking their nation down this perilous path by purging teachers who will not whitewash history. Under the banner of "conservative values" (sound familiar) history books are being rewritten to put Japan in a more favorable light. These pages of propaganda disingenuously recast World War II by using the more positive term the "Greater East Asian War."
But all the revisionism cannot change the fact that Tokyo's aggressive nationalism led to the despicable rape of Nanjing and the launching of a war that ended in atomic destruction. It is simply incomprehensible why anyone in Japan would flirt with transforming this prosperous and peaceful nation into a warrior state. Perhaps we are a weak species that just can't seem to kick the deadly, but seductively intoxicating, pipe dream of absolute power. We can't resist fervently waving the flag, even, in the end, if it means this banner will be draped over our coffins.
Meanwhile, in the United States we are in war and debt, yet we have spent the last two weeks debating distractions. While families are having trouble affording gas, the Senate has wasted precious time grandstanding on the "flag desecration amendment" and trying to write gay families out of the Constitution.
Why did we even bother with extravagant millennium celebrations, when the new world we were supposed to be molding is turning out to be a bloody rerun of yesteryear?
3 Comments:
Funny, I was thinking the other day how excited and optimistic things seemed in the late 90’s (at least in terms of life inside the US). By the end of 2000 it was like someone turned out the light switch and locked the door.
The dawn of the Bush age compounded by 911 cast a menacing dark shadow over that earlier optimism. The past 6 years has been a never ending cycle of fear, hate, greed and corruption.
But I am hopeful that the “shock and awe” of this spell is finally dissipating- that the silent majority of real Americans are beginning to shake it off and are waking up to the past 6 years of treachery.
Still there seems to be the notion that these are methods to be copied. No, it is not time to imitate the fear mongers who gain power by parading as moral keepers while corruptly favoring those that can line their pockets.
It’s a power grown by the fear and hate thinly wrapped to mockingly resemble values once treasured. They spin that fear like a menacing storm, till it grows large enough to block out all light allowing them to act in secrecy. Theirs is a no holds bard, win at all cost and reap the spoils at public expense game that is inevitably a lose lose proposition. It is time to offer a clear and contrasting alternative.
America is longing for the bright sunny optimism that year 2000 once held.
We long for the optimism of endless possibilities. We long for positive values. We long for Real American Values.
We long for States United – all for one and one for all. We long for “you get what you see” honesty. What happened to the house that was in order? How about that honest days pay for an honest days work? When will “the buck stops here” be something more than just a bunch of words. And "Do unto others..."??
Bring back the strong steadfast America. Strong enough to thwart its enemies while not compromising its own freedoms and values. Confident enough to project itself openly and honestly in the world. Strong enough to work with multilateralism. Confident enough to defend the words “all men are created equal”.
Bring back that land of creative opportunity we felt in 2000. We long for the true spirit of freedom – freedom that allows the fearless pursuit of dreams.
I’m reminded of a play I saw in New York in the early nineties, Angels in America. The play encapsulates the events at the end of the twentieth century into a prelude about the choices of the coming century. The play heralds the arrival of a new order, a new awareness, and a new politic. The message is one of hope and anticipation for the approaching millennium despite the many issues plaguing the world at the time.
Sadly, little of Kushner’s vision has materialized some six years into this new century. Dreams of new alliances have been met by growing fractures. Hopes of a collective spirit have been dashed by partisan rhetoric. The promise of technology has brought us nearer to each other though certainly not closer. Though we are some ten plus years beyond Kushner’s dream, we are seemingly closer to Orwell’s imagined vision of some ten years prior.
Each day brings us new possibilities and new opportunities to effect change. Like the metaphorical tree, we must each reach beyond the ground upon which we stand. If these connections we call the internet are to become a new web of interconnected roots whereby we all share in the waters that are our collective destiny, then we mustn’t pollute the place from which it flows. Each of us must seek out change. The millennium approaches. I’m hopeful...we still have ninety-four years.
