Is Gothom Worth Saving?

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Tuesday, June 28 @ 10:03:42 EDT

Is Gothom Worth Saving?

 

 

 

'Is Gotham worth saving?'

By Daniel Patrick Welch

 

Summer is here. The choking ajajas of Baghdad coat everything in a

pale yellow dust. Meanwhile, back at imperial headquarters, the

sandman effect of the Summer movie list coaxes Americans back to

sleep, our attention spans and consciences soothed into complacency,

in contrast to the suffocating Sumerian sandstorms. Kick back and

enjoy your popcorn in the artificial bubble of petroleum-driven,

air-conditioned bliss, while the bubble outside shows signs of

bursting. Batman Begins debuts in this atmosphere, and although no

comic strip dystopia can quite capture the grim specter of America's

decline, Christopher Nolan's morbid depiction is more than mere fantasy.

 

No astute observer will have missed the implications of doom for the

ruling cartel of Gotham. Criminal power, even at its height, is

surprisingly vulnerable- -- at least in Movie Magic. With their hands

on all levers of power, Gotham's mob elite have thoroughly corrupted

every level of the social order and filled it with hacks and butchers

who respond only to money and power and the unstinting abuse of both,

so much so that ordinary citizens can do little more than cower in

fear. It is left to a superhero, a district attorney and the only cop

not on the take to save degenerate Gotham from itself, against all odds.

 

Parallels to Bush's America are unmistakable. With control over all

three branches of government, a compliant, sycophant press, and

Americans too scared, dumb or oblivious to think, the Bush cartel

would seem poised to build its house of cards as high as the heavens.

Worse, " opposition " party spinmeisters hit the circuit to reassure

Gotham's weary masses that they would have done things differently:

Bush should have listened to the generals who told him he needed more

troops. I get it: I was against the war, and it should have been a

much bigger one. Huh? Is Gary Oldman the only ordinary citizen not on

the take? Who can stomach this crap?

 

 

 

Yet all is not smooth for the thugs who haunt Gotham's halls of power,

about which more later. One new antagonist provides an even more

interesting twist. The League of Shadows has decided that Gotham is

beyond saving, and must be destroyed. The resulting chaos will destroy

the allure of Gotham once and for all, and allow something newer and

purer to rise in its place.

 

The remarkable insight of this astute analogy is that this argument

over whether Gotham is beyond saving takes place only between Batman

and his mentor-turned-nemesis in the form of Liam Neeson. As Gotham

goes about its daily grind, rotten to the core, no one in the bubble

is aware that the debate has moved beyond the tired minutiae of what

passes for life in the Belly of the Beast

 

Similarly, Americans still allow themselves to be suckered in by the

lurid pageant of TV " news, " exploring the intricate details of Michael

Jackson' private life while completely ignoring their lying jackass of

a president and the never ending crimes of the unelected regent who

somehow now wields state power at his side. Talking heads go on at

length about the propriety (or im-) of Dick Durbin's comment comparing

the concentration camp at Guantanamo to those of the Nazis. Never mind

the fact that historical analogies are always wrong by definition; the

only " accurate " analogies are mathematical ones, like 1 is to 2 as 2

is to 4, and so on. Durbin's real sin was illuminating the world

outside the bubble, where Americans are not always seen as the White Hats.

 

Americans go about their merry way, oblivious to hatred of them

mounting on the four winds and across the seven seas. Foreigners, that

remarkable yet still human species of non-American, do not share the

same illusions, and some day we will have to wake up to the reality

that the debate has long ago moved beyond our narrow world of runaway

brides and sanitized, bloodless wars. Without the approved filter, all

these horrors are seen in a different light -- the light of day, the

light of truth -- than that sanctioned by America's mythmakers.

Guantanamo, the destruction of Fallujah, the torture at Abu Ghraib and

Baghram (yes, torture -- not abuse, as it is euphemistically labeled

in American press accounts, as if the torturers were bad parents who

need to be slapped on the wrist by the Division of Child

Services)...all these images hazy to those in the bubble have been

clearly building a cohesive image for those around the world looking

in, the image of a bullying, out-of-control,

violent society with a pack of dangerous, power-crazed lunatics at the

helm of the Ship of State.

 

Since I often have the privilege of having my work translated, I have

contacts in dozens of countries around the world, who remind me of the

truth that the American penchant for self-deception is tottering on

the edge. This one, like all bubbles, is as flimsy as it is

transparent. My wife and I watched with dismay as our foreign friends

recoiled one by one, fleeing their adopted America in the wake of such

grim foreboding. The election seemed to be the last straw, as even

Yankeephiles desperate to forgive the people while condemning their

government finally gave up. " You're on your own, " they seemed to say

-- and who can blame them -- as the very real question loomed (beyond

the grasp of most Americans) of whether Gotham was beyond saving.

 

Yet, as with Gotham, all is not running smoothly for Bush, his

Rasputin Karl Rove, and their fraternity of liars, thieves, cheats and

misleaders. There is a sense that something is wrong, deeply wrong, in

Bush's tightly scripted bubble world, a profound sense that " it " is

over...whatever " it " is. For those holdouts who still doubted this, a

palpable panic swept the country recently in whispers from coast to

coast, and shook the spectrum from libertarians to communists as the

Supreme Court effectively abolished private property in the heart of

capitalism. Municipalities can now seize private homes to make way for

private development. The way is now paved (and yes, I do mean that

literally) for the blissful monoculture of chemlawn landscaped hell,

one highway strip of Home Depot after WalMart after another as pesky

citizens are bulldozed out of the way (and yes, I mean that literally

too).

 

No wonder a CNN/Gallup poll finds Americans " generally in a funk; "

Poor Jimmy Carter: if only he had used the Teutonic Funk instead of

the faggy French " malaise, " people might have listened to him way back

when. Despite Rove's bag of evil tricks, the people remain unconvinced

that Social Security should work to enrich Wall Street. America's

working class and minority youth are proving to be far smarter than

Pentagon planners and their hatchet men recruiters counted on. Bolton

is reviled as the caricature he is, while dropping poll numbers force

ever growing cracks in Bush's façade. Is enough enough? Will the

outrage ever erupt, and the citizens of Gotham rise to the occasion?

Or is Gotham beyond saving? Impeachment whispers are growing as the

Downing Street Memos ooze through the firewall of American oblivion.

Of course, impeachment is hardly sufficient for war criminals of this

magnitude, but it is a necessary starting point for the reckoning that

must come if rationality is to

prevail. Exposes like Bush's Brain are gaining currency, and Rove's

wicked and illegal hand on the levers of power is coming ever so

faintly to light. As a sort of throwaway guest character on the

cartoon American Dad, Rove cameos as a sort of evil priest whose very

presence freezes the fishbowl, who burns in church and transforms into

a flock of bats when his " work is done. " Cartoons may not influence

state power, but hey -- funny is funny.

 

Outside the bubble, bright spots are easier to find. Latin America is,

thankfully, in full-blown rebellion as at no other time in the last 25

years. Hugo Chavez' Venezuelan revolution is sitting on newly

discovered oil reserves, assuring either the dream of using the

country's vast oil wealth to benefit the poor, or a US invasion -- but

not both. Incidentally, the Citgo buycott to encourage support for

Chavez' agenda is an interesting and promising internet-driven

campaign. And European voters were unimpressed by the prospect of

NAFTA-like globalism, and rejected the neoliberal agenda in decisive

polls in France and The Netherlands.

 

Militating against all hope, of course, is that Bush's minions are not

susceptible to self-doubt. The Lebanese guy at the store on the corner

says even Bush isn't stupid enough to start another war with Iran. But

stupid, I remind him, has nothing to do with it. Bush's handlers had

the good sense to build his base among fundamentalist End-of-Days

zealots. Just as impervious to reason or criticism as their

Thoughtless Fearless Leader, these dangerous wackos are so convinced

that they are Doing God's Work that they think they can do it better

than Him. These crazies are actually searching for the biblical red

heifer to sacrifice on the Temple Mount. Poor Israelis who cast their

lot with these armageddonite Christo-fascists. The only need these

Rapture hasteners have for Zion to exist at all is so that it can be

consumed in a ball of flame as they, The Chosen, are called to their

Maker. With friends like these, who needs enemies? In this light, it

is all the more understandable that they

are ready to throw caution to the wind as the rest of us suffer

eternal fire.

 

But the real reason the Big Question is out there is the same reason

why Durbin's Nazi analogy falls flat. All hubris must be punished by a

fall. Rome was sacked; the Nazis were defeated, decisively and

militarily, and forced at gunpoint by occupying powers to sculpt a

" new " society -- one without an army or imperial ambitions. Wounded

pride is hardly the type of whooping America needs to mend its ways,

though the insanity of the ruling clique may yet be enough to wreak

sufficient havoc to learn from. Half-assed defeats are dangerous, and

yield no lessons that stick. Aborted Reconstruction was never able to

reform the slaveocracy, yielding instead a hundred years of lynching,

the Klan, and the greatest wave of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.

So what's it going to be? Can Gotham save itself? Only time will tell

whether Americans wake up and seize the salvation of Batman, or face

that of the League of Shadows and Liam Neeson.

 

© 2005 Daniel Patrick Welch.

 

Writer, singer, linguist and activist Daniel Patrick Welch lives and

writes in Salem, Massachusetts, with his wife, Julia

Nambalirwa-Lugudde. Together they run The Greenhouse School

http://greenhouseschool.org. His website is at danielpwelch.com, where

translations of this and other articles are available for linking or

cross-posting in up to 20 languages.