LETTER TO AN AMERICAN FRIEND, By Bryten Breytenbach--Part II
I do not want to equate your glorious nation with the deplorable image of a president who, at best, appears to be a bar-room braggart smirking and winking to his mates as he holds forth his hand-me-down platitudes and ‘insights’ and naïve solutions. Because I know you have many faces and I realize how rich you are in diversity. Would I be writing this way if I had in mind a Black or Hispanic or Asian American, members of those vastly silent components of your society? It would be a tragic mistake for us out here to imagine that Bush commands the hearts and the minds of the majority of your countrymen. Many of your Black citizens must be just as anguished as we are.
Still, Jack, certain things need to be said and repeated. I realize it is difficult for you to know what’s happening in the world, since your entertainment media who have by now totally blurred the distinctions between information and propaganda and banal psychological and commercial manipulation must be the least effective way of disseminating understanding. You need to know that your government has made the world a much more dangerous place for the rest of us. International treaties to limit the destruction of our shared natural environment, to stop the manufacture of maiming personnel mines, to outlaw torture, to bring war criminals to international justice, to do something about the murderous and growing gulf between rich and poor, to guarantee natural food for the humble of the earth, to allow for local economic solutions to specific conditions of injustice, for that matter to permit local products to have access to American markets, to mobilize the world against hunger - have all been gutted by the USA. Your government is blackmailing every single miserable and corrupt mother’s son in power in the world to do things “your way.” It has forced itself on the rest of us in its support and abetment of corrupt and tyrannical regimes. It has lost all ethical credibility in its one-sided and unequivocal support of the Israeli government campaign that must ultimately lead to the ethnocide of the Palestinians. And in this your administration promoted -- sponsored? -- the bringing about of a deleterious international climate, since state terrorism can now be carried out with arrogance, disdain and impunity. As far as the Arab nations are concerned: America, giving unquestioned legitimacy to despotic regimes, refusing any recognition of home-grown alternative democratic forces, favored the emergence of a bearded opposition who in time must become radicalized and fanaticized to the point where they can be exterminated as vermin. And the oilfields will be safe.
I’m too harsh. I’m cutting corners. I’m pontificating. But my friend, if you were to look around the world you would see that America is largely perceived as a rogue state.
Can there be a turn-back? Have things gone too far, to beyond a point of possible return? Can it be that some of the core and founding assumptions (it is said) of your culture are ultimately dangerous to the survival of the world? I’m referring to your propensity for patriotism (to me it’s an attitude, not a value), to the fervent belief in a capitalist ‘free market’ system with the concomitant conviction that progress is infinite, that one can eternally remake and invent the ‘self’, that it is more important to be self-made than to collectively husband the planet’s diminishing resources, that the instant gratification of material desires is the substance of ‘the right to happiness’, that the world and life and all its manifestations can be apprehended and described in terms of good and evil, finally that you can flare for a while in samsara, the world of illusions (and desperately make it last with artificial means and Californian hokum) before taking all your prostheses to heaven.
If this is so, what then? With whom? You see, the most detestable effect is that so many of us have to drink this poison, to look at you as a threat, to live with the knowledge of cultural and economic and military danger in our veins, and to be obliged to either submit or resist.
I don’t want to pass the buck. Don’t imagine it is necessarily any better elsewhere. We, in this elsewhere, have to look for our own solutions. Europe is pusillanimous, carefully though hypocritically hostile and closed to foreigners, particularly those from the South; the EU is by now little more than a convenience for its citizens and politically and culturally much less than the contents of any of her constituent parts.
And Africa? As a part-time South African (the other parts are French and Spanish and Senegalese and New Yorker) I’ve always wandered whether Thabo Mbeki would be America’s thin globalizing wedge (at the time of Clinton and Gore it certainly seemed so) or whether he was ultimately going to be the leader who can strategically lead Africa against America? But the question is hypothetical. Thabo Mbeki is no alternative to the world economic system squeezing the poor for the sustainable enrichment of the rich; as in countries like Indonesia and your own (see the role of the oil companies) he too has opted for crony capitalism. Africa’s leading establishments are rotten to the core. Mbeki is no different. His elocution is more suave and his prancing more Western, that’s all.
What do we do then? As we move into the chronicle of a war foretold (against Iraq), it is going to be difficult to stay cool. Certainly, we must continue fighting globalization as it exists now, reject the article of faith that postulates a limitless and lawless progress and expansion of greed, subvert the acceptance of ‘might is right’, spike the murderous folly of ‘One God’. And do so cautiously and patiently, counting our steps. It is going to be a long dance.
Let us find and respect one another.
Your friend
Breyten Breytenbach
-------------------------
From: "breyten" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "Aidoo, Akwasi" <[log in to unmask]>,
"Sylvain, Michelle" <[log in to unmask]>,
"Kanem, Natalia" <[log in to unmask]>,
"Aina, Tade" <[log in to unmask]>,
"Amu, Ngozi" <[log in to unmask]>,
"Cox, Larry" <[log in to unmask]>,
"Wing, Christine" <[log in to unmask]>,
"Pwono, Damien" <[log in to unmask]>,
<[log in to unmask]>, <[log in to unmask]>,
"'Ama Ata Aidoo'" <[log in to unmask]>,
"'Ayi Kwei Armah'" <[log in to unmask]>,
<[log in to unmask]>,
<[log in to unmask]>, <[log in to unmask]>,
"'Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem'" <[log in to unmask]>,
"'Julius Ihonvbere'" <[log in to unmask]>,
"Alice Urusaro Karekezi (E-mail)" <[log in to unmask]>,
"Betty Murungi (E-mail)" <[log in to unmask]>,
"Chris Landsberg (E-mail)" <[log in to unmask]>,
<[log in to unmask]>,
Ebrima Sall wrote:
Dear Gambia-lers,
Greetings!
Below is a very recent piece on the Bush Administration's current policies, written by the South African writer, Breyten Breytenbach. I thought you might find it interesting.
All the best,
Ebrima Sall
-----------------
From: "breyten"
To: "Aidoo, Akwasi" ,
Subject: Re: Bush-speak
Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2002 21:56:38 -0400
Dear Akwasi & friends
I hope you are all well... as we wait for this war (in all its guises) thatAmerica seems to want to wage against the rest of the world to be launched. Please find attached a piece I recently wrote on commission for 'TheNation', due to be published this coming week. In retrospect it's clumsy and crude, too angry and one-sided. But the form does not lend itself to much subtlety. In any event, I stand by the substance. Best regards Breyten Breytenbach
-----------------------------------------
LETTER TO AN AMERICAN FRIEND
---------------------------------
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance - Get real-time stock quotes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|
