Betrayed
by James L. Secor

It is nice to see a linguist join the battle against the desecration of America, to attack the deception on the ground of its being: words. The latest--that I have read--of George Lakoff is "Whose Betrayal" about General Petraeus' attempt to further betray us in a war of false bravado and lost causes.

The lies spinning the war into existence might possibly have been stopped in their tracks but for words: the media. I clearly remember a reporter--calling himself a journalist--exhorting us to not question what it was America had done to warrant such an attack (9-11) but to concentrate on the attack and what we, as a nation, are going to do about it.

Like every bully who has ever existed, George, Dick and Don took the bait and fell right into the well-laid trap, a trap so obviously set it had arrows and bells and whistles indicating its location. A frequent responder to commondreams.org essays is Sioux Rose. She raised the flag of words being the culprit, i.e. the media, for betraying America into the mess it's in, the mess we're in.

But Lakoff and most all of the anti-administration people are buying into the very verbiage that has set the country on the superhighway to Armageddon, for they are all anti-war people.

The media has focused their attention on an external crisis and, in so doing, has further betrayed the country and its mandate. It is wagging the dog, to raise up a cliché: if I can make you pay attention to what's going on over here at point ME, you won't pay attention to what's happening at H. Yet, it's what's happening at H that's important, important in a manner that closes in on survival. H is here, home, America. . .and almost nobody is paying attention. Not really. At most, an article here and there when some such insidious socially-oriented law or other is passed. And then silence and back to what's important, because the press--mainstream and alternative and socialist--says it is by spending well over 90% of their time talking about it: the war in the middle East (ME).

I am not saying the war isn't important. It is. But it is being used to deflect attention from a far more lethal activity: the state of the nation. If we can be made to fight only one action, defense of those policies is easy for the Bush administration because they don't need to divide their energy.

Other than yelling and screaming over First Amendment freedoms and legislation surrounding the traitorous USA Patriot Act, which are war-oriented, the closest we've gotten, the closest we've been able to focus the media attention on the home front, is Katrina. Even here, any more, it is downplayed; it is certainly not front page news.

That is, not worth our attention. Too, the coverage, much like the Smithsonian's August story, completely bypasses the issue. This particular story is about a photographer with a feel-good, success story dressing, as if to say, "everything's okay" (Indelible Images: "A Horrible Blessing" by Maryalice Yakutchik, pp. 16-18). It is a travesty. A story over which I wanted to puke. How could such a magazine pen such a defrauding of its trust?

Yes, Dr. Lakoff, betrayal is a moral issue. The media left, right and centre are immoral. The media is turncoat diplomacy. The extremely few voices who are allowed to be heard are token, like. . .in the 1950's and 1960's you had to have a token nigger in a movie, so you could say, "See? I ain't no racist. I got colored."

The much-aligned Ayn Rand noted ( Atlas Shrugged?) that out of the Midwest would rise the president to bring the nation down. How sad for Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Missouri that Texas is considered Midwest.

There are far too many of these underhanded laws to enumerate here, aside from the hundreds of laws Bush breaks with impunity, including Affirmative Action (Cf. Charlie Savage, "Bush Challenges Hundreds of Laws," Boston Globe, Sunday, April 30, 2006; and here ), but the latest is over the health of our children, which began with the beguilingly-entitled education of our children, No Child Left Behind. Apparently, only the rich have children.

Bush has taken away all social and legal protections from predator corporations. Bush has cashed in the medical coverage chips and severely limited access to what's left via price fixing. Anti-Affirmative Action (racist) judgments are hailed as breakthroughs for freedom. Pensions gone. Jobs gone. FEMA (Fuck Every Middling American?) and all other disaster-related programs and agencies have been abrogated. . .and now, you ain't got no house, while the bandits make off with fortunes, a catastrophe that has already struck abroad: the UK's leading mortgage lender, the country's fourth largest bank, a bank that was bailed out a week or so ago, went bust.

Past an initial outburst of disgust, there's nothing about the policies, policies that will have far-into-the-future repercussions. No follow-up. No outrage. Like a sprinter who's expended his energy and run his race, all's quiet on the home front after the initial criticism.

At , a "Scorecard of Evil" can be found. But it doesn't come close to the bitter truth that there is nothing for Americans. No safety net, nothing. It's all gone. And you been payin' attention t'th'war, Jack. . .as if it's life and death for you.

Bush and his cronies have waged a class war on a class that, according to the upper and middle classes, the ensconced academics, the media and our textbooks tell us doesn't exist: the lower class. The working class and the poor. Unfortunately, this war affects all who are not old money or new landed gentry with off-shore tax havens and houses to go live in when it all sours at home. As it will.

I would like to take up the defense, perhaps one of many still in Pandora's box of social evils, that selfishness cannot see the results of its actions, which will be: no one to do their work, no one to make them their money. But by then it will be too late for us. Why?

Americans are deaf to their own plight. They allow themselves to be betrayed into thinking external enemies (already agreed to be false) are more important than their own well-being. They are being led by the nose-ring. Bluntly, Americans are betraying, beguiling and besmarming themselves.

In the 16th century, a fictitious character asked an immortal question: to be, or not to be. He chose to be, even though it meant courting death. Americans prefer to not be. . .and therefore stab themselves in the back. Or worse, they become Descartes in the joke: Descartes goes into a bar and the barkeep asks if he wants a beer, Descartes answers, "I think not," and disappears.

Bush and Petraeus have betrayed us; and we betray ourselves by following along, slavering tongues lolling eagerly out of the left side of our mouths.

In Americans' wish to be god amongst countries, they are going to end up where the wife of the Grimm Brothers' The Fisherman and His Wife ended up: in the pigsty. And we have nobody to blame but ourselves.

The American people have deceived themselves, falsified their trust, because of their mindlessness, their selective blindness and their wish to be led along like oxen.

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