[lit-ideas] American from abroad
- From: Torgeir Fjeld <torgeir_fjeld@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 11:36:40 -0700 (PDT)
America seen from abroad.
Here's what correspondent Eivind Trædal reports. America, is this correct?
"Obama didn't wear an American flag on his jacket sleeve during the election
campaign. No American president can act that way." These are the words of
Margaret Curole, co-ordinator of the World Forum for Fish Workers, feminist and
environmentalist. We are speaking to a member of "the other America," liberal
and well educated. Our discussion is going well until she catches us by
surprise with her comment on Obama's sleeve. "Besides, we pay too much taxes.
That's why I'm a member of the Tea Party movement."
A week after the conversation with Margaret, on September 11, we have the honor
of commemorating the occasion with a few hundred Tea Party members at the
Washington monument. Judging from plackards, pins and banners, this is an
incongruous mixture of market libertarians, Christian fundamentalists and good,
old-fashioned racists congregated around a handful of national markers.
Wandering around us are Ben Franklin, the Statue of Liberty and the
constitution. On stage a lady sings "the times they are a-changing,"
incomprehensibly. A few minutes of vague speeches emanate from the pulpit. They
are about "taking back the country." From whom? To what? Answers seem as
plentifold as there are attendees.
...
Without a common analysis and other goals than opposition to the administration
and taxes the movement appears to offer nothing more than disempowered
fistshaking from a populace that too long has been lacking a frame in which to
understand the social changes that affect them.
...
The political climate has reached new depths in the world's most powerful
nation. Political choices have apparently been replaced by a blindly swinging
pendulum of discontent. The apathy is now so great that a few hundred oddballs
in costume are able to decide the ground for public debate.
Best,
-tor
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