The Dark Ages: Awaiting Enlightenment in the USA

When I read this article, I thought about the general level of global, sociological, and cultural knowledge possessed by most US citizens.

The real problem, I think, stems from several causes.

1. The rapid and steep slide in the average citizen's standard of living.  This traumatic event must be kept out of public discourse because it may bring up uncomfortable subjects such as deindustrialization and outsourcing

2. After half a century of financial and industrial balance, the US people experienced a series of bubbles bursting.  This history must not be discussed because uncomfortable topics such as deregulation and privatization may be critically examined.

3. The massive inequality between social classes and the awesome rise in executive pay is also not part of the public discourse.  If the history of this growing disparity was discussed, the average person may inquire about the fact executives are making huge amounts of money and the wealthy few are profiting enormously while the average person can observe the plunge in their job security, wages, and on-the-job empowerment.  This may cause people to examine the union-busting proclivities of the leading banks and corporations and the utter lack of any form of workplace democracy.

They may also examine the fact that these emormous rewards are not related to any form of successful job performance or the betterment of society...in fact, they seem to have contributed to making it worse for the average person.

4. The point is is that there is so much that our oligarchs and oligopolic corporations need us NOT to remember, discuss and actively respond toward, that the economic elite have to use their control over the corporate-owned media, education and cultural institutions to produce both a dumbed down culture and a generally accepted social darwinistic attitude.

5. Actual longterm thinking, curiousity about the institutions and cultures of other societies, and the healthy pursuit of the goals of the enlightenment are several of many avenues that elite must block in order to maintain their hold on their growing wealth and power.

A recent example in domestic politics is the whole healthcare reform "debate."  Though every other wealthy industrialized nation possesses some form of universal healthcare, no systematic analysis of their systems was introduced nor could we debate which elements from these systems may be applicable to our own predicament.

Of course, US foreign policy is changing so rapidly, that the elite must be assured of a totally ignorant populace in order to pull it off. 

If one observes Haiti, there is not one suggestion that the US occupied the nation several times and formulated the neoliberal economic and political policies that transfered the peasants into the impoverished cities, generated a massive cheap labor source for US corporations, deforested the land and invested very little into the island's infrastructure.

Ignorance is bliss, and knowledge is suspect.

            Since Wednesday President Obama has told the people of Haiti and of the world that help is on its way.  From the very beginning he said to the people of Haiti, “You will not be forsaken.”  But there are some questions that the United States should consider.

            Why was China able to get a rescue crew into Haiti faster than the U.S.?  (Is my mental map of the world screwed up?  I thought Beijing was about as far away from Haiti as you could get.)

            And why was Venezuela able to get aid and rescue workers there the morning after the tragedy—even a day earlier than China?  (Not much news coverage about that).

            And isn’t it interesting that Cuba had three hundred Cuban medical personnel already there to serve the Haitians, was thus able to respond immediately, and was sending more medical assistance?

In Cheyenne, Wyoming, I was once told that at least two police cars could be at the site of any emergency within one minute.  Why has it taken a couple of days to send rescue people a short distance from U.S. shores?  Is that the best the U.S. can do?  And, is that the same amount of time it would take the federal government to respond to an emergency within the U.S.?  Maybe so.

In light of this reality, it seems amazing that an Associate Press story could say, “The U.S. dispatched troops and ships along with aid to Haiti, and other nations were joining the effort to help….”  It should have said that the U.S. was joining other nations who were already responding to the need.

According to the Associated Press, the U.S. announced on Thursday that C-130s “airlifted 42 American officials and their families and another 72 private citizens to safety.”  Iceland Air took out another 50 private citizens.  (Iceland also got rescue workers in faster than the U.S. government).

            Of course it seems logical that concern for American citizens should be on the mind of the U.S. government.  President Obama went so far as to say, ”We will not rest until we account for our fellow Americans in harm’s way.”   I wonder if he realizes that all Haitians are Americans—in fact some of the earliest to be called such.  Christopher Columbus arrived there in 1492 on his first trip to the new world—“discovering” America.  I wonder how many Haitians (=Americans) will be airlifted out?

            There is another question that is going to have to be raised in the weeks and months ahead, as had to be confronted after Katrina’s destruction in New Orleans:  could much of this tragedy have been avoided?  An article by Peter Hallward in the Guardian could be a starting point for the discussion. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/13/our-role-in-haitis-p...

As we all can observe, the US news media is decrying the two major obsticles to distributing aid in Haiti: widespread corruption and the lack of useful infrastructure.

Of course, the US solution is to bring in the military.

However, there is an undiscussed option that may work much better and place Haiti on a progressive and more humane path of development: Aristide.

Aristide should be flown in, his political organization legalized and, with the help of the Cuban, Venezuelan and Brazilian contingents, they could rapidly and efficiently construct distibution networks for for food and water supplies, medical help, burial of the dead, etc.

The relative lack of corruption within the ranks of Aristide's grassroots political organizations would probably rapidly distribute needed supplies and services while clamping down on looting and other criminal activities.  (They could be backed up by the present Brazilian occupation forces.)

Unfortunately, we will have to wait to be evacuated from the bowels of Satan before the US, Canadian, French and Haitian elite even consider such an option.

But it is good to put it in on the table so that the general population can actually imagine a rational, humane and enlightenment based solution to the horrible tragedy visited upon the common Haitian people.

In fact, by bringing up this alternative scenario, one can observe how much is undiscussed by the US's corporate-owned media, politicians and other important institutional figures.

It is this failure of imagination and rationality that is the bases of our increasing dark age.