A lesson: We are the government, all of us
By Solomon Matsas
Since several weeks have passed, and we now sadly know we are
not having a nightmare, but rather, there is no other good choice
but to open our eyes as fully as we can. The scene  in this
case, the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building  is
both surreal and familiar: shattering violence and the sudden loss
of life, unimaginable suffering and endless questions.
We are now in the full grip of an American time that has been
decades in the brewing, that some future historian may sardonically
call the Bubba-Finally-Gone-Terribly-Wrong Era. Leading up to last
November, Bubba’s lack of progress, distrust of others different
from him and his overall estrangement all combined to help him feel
sufficiently threatened.
He then got good and pissed and went out and voted. Many, many
Democrats were relieved of their Congressional duties. Fine and
well. This is our system. Come April, Bubba’s distant and decidedly
sociopathic cousin, Timothy, decides that Congressional refacing is
not enough or still moving too slowly. He decides, in an internal
argument of anger, that the time is now for a new civil war. Like
some ’90s version of Johnny Reb from Hell, he is hungry for
validation.
Having glued himself to the airwaves for months, he has heard
over and over, like a psychotic’s mantra, his favorite highly rated
media jocks heralding the call to arms: the government’s the enemy,
yes, the government IS the enemy, the Feds, the Revenuers, the
Regulators, the Yankees from wherever, the Outsiders, the Liberals
and the Socialists right behind them. This president is not MY
Commander-in-Chief, they’ll take away our guns and local armies if
we don’t stop ’em. Protect yourselves, join a militia, the Feds are
coming. Admittedly, this is the extreme end, which incidentally can
be heard everywhere, every day, as local stations tally their
ratings and profits, disregarding all else.
The not-so-extreme end sounds like: they’re all worthless
bureaucrats, just shrink government, cut off welfare, eliminate
regulations, say no to pro-choice, trade pacts, the spotted owl,
say yes to tax refunds, more rights and block grants for the states
and no more unpaid Federal Mandates. This also can be heard
everywhere, every day, spoken by any of us, the well-meaning and
legitimately concerned populace.
It is certainly true that those who signed the Contract With
America did so with a sincere desire to make things better.
Clearly, much good has come from it. What has also come along in
the fine print is reversed gun control laws, weakened consumer
laws, weakened environmental safeguards, reversed or eliminated
civil rights laws and allowances for the wealthy to skate away from
taxes.
In other words, weaken the federal government’s ability to do
the just and right thing when the privileged, or simply the selfish
and prejudiced, refuse to take responsibility; like in Selma, Ala.,
as with the Clean Air or Clean Water Act or the president’s ban on
assault weapons.
Along with our misgivings about our own Washington government,
an old and partly useful sentiment that has recently taken on a
different, dangerous edge is the harrowing truth that we have
allowed abject violence to permeate every aspect of our American
life. We have come to tolerate, be entertained by and even crave an
enormous measure of daily carnage. We even go out and pay for more
of it when the nightly news gore isn’t enough.
Destructively suspicious discontent, increasingly vocal
invitations to violent rebellion against the president and the
central power structure and now an unspeakable act of terrorism, is
there a direct connection? No one can say, or wants to say, except
what our common sense tells us in that inescapable room of our
private thoughts.
Is there, at least, an indirect cause and effect between the
hate-preachers and the well-armed loonies? After this past month’s
horrors and the horrors undoubtedly to follow in the coming weeks,
who wants to make, with any certainty, the "no connection"
argument?
So then, is stifling dissent the answer? Of course not, since
that would be, along with violence, yet another intolerable
tyranny. But beware of false choices. Is it not a false choice
between saving our sacred First Amendment rights and unmasking
those cowardly and irresponsible self-promoters who would eagerly
scream fire in the crowded theater of our sensibilities?
We all can understand that no freedom is absolute. As our
Constitution clearly outlines, all freedom is irreversibly wed with
the greater good. The line can and is drawn before those who would
openly encourage others to violent acts. The First Amendment has
never protected a right to do harm.
It is so garishly cruel, then, that these demented souls, these
poisoned killers, driven perhaps by the debacle at Waco or who
knows what personal demons, would dare to purport to care about
protecting children. They have now "protected" a nursery full of
babies into senseless oblivion.
They have left behind not a cause but a vanquished pit of pain
and innocent blood. They have immortalized not some worthy
principle but the very banner of hatred. They have celebrated not a
victory of morality but a murderous explosion of the rights of
evil. They have worshiped neither God nor country but have made
death their true altar.
We must take it on faith that our government is no more the
"enemy" than we are enemies to each other. Listen carefully to
those who offer no solutions themselves, but only condemn the
leadership of others. All of that sort of fear-blaming is
superficial and divisive. Read a civics test to be reminded: We are
the government, all of us. We must be willing to first point to
ourselves for both the problems and opportunities for change.
The visionary New York writer Delmore Swartz wrote that "In
dreams begin responsibilities." In the American dream of freedom as
well, responsibility is and must remain the irreplaceable
foundation.
So knee-deep now in the tangled rubble of failed logic and
reckless rhetoric, we find ourselves crushed with disillusionment,
confused for lack of answers yet stumbling over the same obstacles.
How long will our enduring culture, our great land and people and
promise of same, be held hostage by those relative few who extol
violence, particularly the white male extremist, that uniquely
homegrown zealot who would knowingly or unknowingly waste your
child and mine for some twisted, paranoid vision of Armageddon?
Does anyone still doubt that he is Liberty’s greatest
threat?
Matsas is a UCLA staff member.