America the Disjunctive:
Musings on Alienated Children

by Jason Twinhaft

In the trade this difference is known as a disjunct.

Of course we all live in various disjunctive states, since none of us know what is actually going on. Often our approximations are close enough to "reality" that we can keep on keeping on, and lead a more or less rewarding life.

When the disjunct becomes extreme (I believe I am Jesus Christ; I decide that a universal diet of English peas will solve most of the world’s problems), we have entered the world of the insane.

Bill Clinton came into office in 1992 under the weight of a pretty big disjunct: talk of another JFK, a truly reformist government, etc. Didn’t take long for reality to set in, and he—and we—paid the price for such disjunctive thinking. (Of course the obsessive-compulsive Clinton haters suffered from their own disjunct—for which we also paid a price—but that’s another story.)

George W. Bush entered office suffering from little disjunctive disadvantage. Only his most rabid supporters even believed he had won the election fair and square. Events have now placed him in one of the all-time great—and thus all-time most dangerous—disjuncts in American history.

In Dubya’s case we may have to roll out a new term: the bi-polar disjunct. Because the Dubya situation has two aspects: 1) internal/domestic, and 2) international.

Our present internal disjunct is itself bi-polar, as regards Dubya: 1) Him, and 2) Us.

Him:
As a result of 9-11, he has been forced into a situation where real, critical leadership is called for, a skill in which by all indications he is totally lacking. What we see now in and from the White House is basically a ventriloquist’s dummy, speaking other (hidden) people’s lines, advancing other (hidden) people’s ideas and agendas. His handlers and promoters skillfully maintain a pretense that all is well, that the shadow play is reality itself.

Us:
Sustaining the hollowness of this puppet (we have only one president), the populace is asked to support and praise a leader who doesn’t exist. Being loyal, patriotic Americans we have done this across the board, from flag decals on our cars to selecting Republicans on the voting computers.

As this administration moves with ever greater alacrity in the direction of totalitarianism (rights and laws which impede its self-described war on terrorism are either changed or ignored), the internal disjunct between America-land-of-the-free and America-land-of-the-serf grows and grows.

Add the economic disjunct—the growing disparity between the rich and the non-rich (the richest 1% of Americans now own or control 40% of the wealth of the country), and you have a psychopathology of alarming and dangerous proportions.

So too internationally. Bully-like, we stride the planet making our own rules. Who needs a Kyoto Treaty? Who needs to be attacked before waging war on another country? Who needs qualms—legal, political, or moral—about targeted assassinations?

Not us. Not anymore.

Oh, we used to. At least most of the time we tried to play by the international rules. When we didn’t, for whatever reasons, we at least tried to hide our misbehavior.

Now we flaunt it. Unashamed, unembarrassed. What’s to be ashamed of? Why be embarrassed? We are not only America the Beautiful, we’re America the Bully, the biggest, baddest kid on the block. Who’s to stand in our way? Who’s to say otherwise.

Who—if this is truly a pathological disjunct—dares call our behavior insane?

We are after all fighting a global war on terrorism for the good of the whole planet. If the rest of the planet can’t see that what we’re doing is for their own good, too bad.

We hope this doesn't inconvenience anyone.

Right across the board the government of the United States is at this time delusional: What environmental problems? What problems of corporate corruption? What problems of economic disparity? What problems of rogue-state behavior?

We have defined the world and it is us. You are either with us or you are against us. Good vs. Evil, as Dubya likes to say.

If I am Jesus Christ, then my perceptions are by definition right and yours—to the extent that they differ from mine—are wrong. And of course, if I happen to be a Jesus Christ who spends $350 billion a year on "defense," then any suspicion you might have that I’m not Jesus Christ is subject to immediate correction.

Not just insane, but insane and rich and possessed of brute, destructive force on a scale undreamt of by leaders in the past who were seduced and wholly corrupted by power.

Alienated Children
All the above is your standard pundit-blather that talking heads can run off by the yard on demand: glib (if correct) analysis enlivened by the occasional clever turn of phrase. Cotton candy for the mind, that fills the TV channels and op-ed pages daily.

Not much new there, really.

But what if this take on American disjunctivitis has a bit of substance to it? What if our long-running stance of Presumed American Goodness has now so diverged from reality that it has truly spilled over into a psychpathology that defines everday American life? What if we go on pretending we’re THIS way when in fact we’re THAT way, where "THAT way" means WE’RE the rogue state?

Here’s a little test that may indicate the truth behind such blather.

Assume that you have children, say a boy and a girl of elementary-school age.

Now, here’s a list of prominent Americans. You’re job, as assumed parent, is to decide: Which of these prominent Americans would you like your son or daughter to grow up to be like?

In other worlds, here at the height of American imperial glory, where are the role models for our children?

Do you want your son to grow up to be like:

     George W. Bush?
     Dick Cheney?
     John Ashcroft?
     Donald Rumsfeld?
     Tom DeLay?
     Trent Lott?
     Clarence Thomas
     Antonin Scalia?
     Ken Lay?
     Bernie Ebbers?
     Bill Gates?
     Arnold Schwarzenegger?
     Eminem?

Do you want your daughter to grow up to be like:

     Laura Bush?
     Hillary Clinton?
     Condoleezza Rice?
     Elizabeth Dole?
     Madonna?
     Katherine Harris?

The fact that NONE of those people have put principle before profit, the fact that one would be ashamed to tout any of those people as role models for your children reveals the true depth and width of the disjunct between American pretense and American reality.

What must it be like today to be a child immersed in the media swamp of 24-hour sham patriotism? Where in the adult insanity of America Triumphant does a child find hope for a future in which "freedom" might mean more than freedom for the rich to get richer, where "homeland security" might mean more than helping the wealthy to safeguard their wealth, where "one nation under God" might mean more than the laissez-unfair God of the one percent who control 40% of American assets?

Yet those would-be role models are on the TV everyday proclaiming their own vibrant sham patriotism. Which is hardly surprising. America has indeed been good, very good to them.

But what of the children, what of the pain of the children who see so clearly that the king and his greedy, obsequious attendants have no moral clothes? Naked they stand, pretending to be covered in red, white, and blue finery.