I would like to settle something. For the record, once and for all. I do not work for the CIA, nor am I an NSA spook. Wherever I travel some people either openly accuse or quietly imply this of me. I just happen to speak some Arabic and think hanging out in places like Afghanistan or Pakistan is “fun.”
That cleared up, another annoying thing I am asked about is which way do I swing. It’s not my sexual orientation for which they seek clarity. Well, usually not. Unfortunately, it’s a myopic inquiry as to whether I swing to the Left or the Right.
It seems contradictory to some that one can comfortably consider Social Darwinism and borrow from Ayn Rand’s objectivism while assaulting the mendacity and deceit-a-go-go of our government. And many people make the automatic-, if ill-informed, assumption that equates all journalists with the left. From my experience in the profession, including the throng of power-bar crunching war correspondents in Talibanland, most reporters tend toward the conservative. But it doesn’t have to be just Democrat or Republican.
Has this bipolar and limited model done anything to advance us as a species in our post-evolutionary world? No, because they are two sides of the same Roman drachma. Both are guilty of the same illogical, narrow and judgmental thinking. Both subscribe to the Patrick Swayze mantra: “My way or the highway.” Both rely on emotional and moral outrage to motivate us into a constant state of reaction instead of well-considered action. It’s a false choice. Much like the freedom of choice we congratulate ourselves for enjoying. It’s no better or meaningful than Pepsi or Coke. With either “choice” you enjoy the same syrupy crap and dental rot.
Look at both parties. Apart from some hot-button issues that politicians—and their Media surrogates—bloody their fingers pressing to make us all squirm, there is little discernible difference.
At least with the current administration, their motives and actions are hardly crouched behind any believable semblance of nobility or justice. Don Rumsfeld makes no effort to hide his bloodlust and the power-erection he gets as podium-commander. I love that guy. Give him an island and a secret base in a volcano—with a podium constructed from the bones of his enemies’ children to stand behind—and he would attain his nihilist’s nirvana.
The truth is, for the most part, JFK2 will not run America much differently from Gee-Bush2. Both candidates and both parties are about consolidation of control and wealth. They are about Business As Usual; doing things the same way they have been done for thousands of years. All the while chanting words like “freedom” over and over again until we forget what they mean. Folgers or Yuban? Paper or plastic? Debit or credit? The millions of electronic voting machines awaiting our sweaty touch might as well be rigged, for our one democratic act is little more than placebo to keep us from rioting. Perhaps they could dispense a thimbleful or Coke® (or Pepsi®) after deleting our votes, and play a legally-licensed MP3 as we dance off for a triumphal tour of the Magic Kingdom.™
Maybe we need to just carpet-bomb the Middle East with Sony plasma screens and network programming to win this century’s Crusade. After all, it worked pretty well in the ghetto.
Kenneth Todd Ruiz, a senior journalism major, is editor in chief of the Campus Times. He can be reached by e-mail at kruiz@ulv.edu.
