Following the "news" each day before an enormous event occurs, as now before (maybe) war, reminds me of an old sensation: There was a children's game in which we were supposed to pin a paper tail on a paper donkey, and before you made your attempt you were blindfolded, and invisible hands spun you around and around till you were dizzy and disoriented and didn't know where you were. That's how I feel. President Bush is about to take a step toward seizing control of the entire planet. People and countries are terrified about the consequences for the human race if Bush does what he plans to do. And yet it seems as if we, the consumers of "news," when we try each day to learn about this desperately important moment we're living through, are given a huge, overpowering pile of stories, almost all of which deal not with the question of humanity's future, but instead with the question of Iraq's weapons.

Bush himself is not actually frightened by the weapons held (or not held) by this destroyed country, Iraq, nor is he actually shocked by the probability that Iraq, like all other nations on earth (because of the nature of nations), wants to be as well armed as it possibly can be. But he's managed to convince the governments of the world that, just as he will never say why he wants to invade Iraq but will only talk about Iraq's weapons, they must never say why they oppose the invasion, except by talking about Iraq's weapons. Bush will say Iraq has a lot of weapons, the opponents of war will say Iraq has few. This discussion will go on until the troops are ready and the weather's right for war, and at that moment Bush will declare he's "lost patience" with the laborious pace of the discussion of weapons, and he'll go to war.

The editors of the New York Times must know as well as anyone else that the discussion of weapons is the public relations branch of preparing for war, the propaganda arm of the process of preparation. The discussion of weapons, on Bush's part, pretends to be sincere, as all advertising does, but it is not sincere, and so it makes sense only as part of the story of preparation. But each morning I find in my newspaper two separate narratives, apparently describing unrelated developments: One (a thin little column) says that the preparations for war are going smoothly and the weather soon will be right for an attack, and the other (pages and pages) says that the discussions about Iraq's weapons are going poorly, and there's a danger that Bush may "lose patience." The thin column describes something that's actually happening. The pages and pages spin me around until I don't know where I am.

February

We've marched in Washington and then in New York. What happened around the world is astonishing! The despair we felt earlier is melting fast. In fact, our mood has utterly changed. But we have to ask, has theirs?

*

In school we were taught various terms to characterize political systems--"oligarchy," "autocracy," "democracy." What is our system? No term for it exists. To call it a democracy puts a false picture in the mind. How can you call it a democracy when, for example, the people don't even know today why in 1991 the first President Bush seemed to seek out the opportunity to attack Iraq, circumventing opportunities to avoid war? Yes, we're allowed to vote for our leaders, but we don't know what they're really like, because we're not allowed to know what they do. The enormous enterprises of the government are conducted sometimes for the benefit of some of the citizens, maybe even occasionally for the benefit of all of the citizens, but the citizens don't even know what the government is doing, much less why, much less who the beneficiaries are. The citizens can hardly be expected to comment intelligently on the government's decisions, because the citizens don't know what's actually going on, and they can't find out. We are lied to, manipulated and brainwashed, and then we're brought in at the appropriate moment to cheer and applaud, and we're never even told what we were being asked to applaud. If that's "democracy," then we're using the word in a very restricted fashion.

Sometimes a man like Jimmy Carter may blunder into the White House and sit down behind the desk in the Oval Office, and the rules of the system have to be explained to him. Jimmy Carter declared when elected that he would "never lie" to the American people. This was like a new man being selected as CEO of General Foods and announcing that from now on he planned to bake every General Foods cookie himself in his own kitchen. It didn't take long to teach Carter the ropes.

• « Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next »

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 75 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.