Procrastinet

Amman, Jordan - 11/5/04: The New Zionism

filed under: Despatches

A continuing series of periodic Procrastinet Despatches from Amman, Jordan. By Nicholas Seeley.

[Editor's Note: Nick's rage has cooled somewhat since last we heard from him, from apoplectic to merely seething. This post is his retort to my earlier reply, and came with a note: "You wanna build something? Build this."

Oh, and for anyone selling political correctness? Nick ain't buying. You've been warned.]

For several years now, the libertarian Cato Institute has been incubating this really wild idea. The concept is to pick a sparsely-populated state and re-settle there en masse. Libertarians from all over America have been signing themselves up with the institute as potential “settlers” – the idea is that with enough numbers, the libertarians can overwhelm the state’s legislature and institute on a small scale their agenda of minimal taxation, near-total deregulation of business, decriminalization of drugs, sex and other forms of private conduct, and independence of local institutions from federal or state control.

Okay, there’s a certain creepiness to the idea (what will happen to all the “Native Wyoming-ans, after all?) but in some ways it’s not half bad. And not just for libertarians.

I say this because the post-election polls are coming out, and the pollsters are highlighting the “issues” they believe decided the election for Bush – if there really were any issues here beyond Americans’ radical self-justifying nihilism.

The CNN pollsters pick out two. Voters who said that their primary concerns in this election were the war in Iraq voted overwhelmingly for Kerry. Voters concerned with the U.S. economy -- usually seen as the key issue in presidential contests – also voted for Kerry, with about a 70/30 split. So who the fuck voted for Bush? What motivated the 51 percent of the country that elected this guy?

Something like 90 percent of people who cited their primary concern in this election as “moral values” voted for Bush.

“Moral Values?” What moral values are they talking about here? It’s certainly not honesty. Temperance also seems doubtful, under the circumstances.

But we know what they’re talking about, don’t we? It was summed up in a letter to CNN this morning, which read “Thank God Americans voted for George Bush, because the average American shouldn’t have to explain to their child why little Billy has two Daddies.”

Here’s the news flash for America’s gay and lesbian community: time to start looking for a homeland. Make no mistake folks: this election was a referendum on your right to exist, and you lost. Half the country DOESN’T WANT YOU HERE, and the other half doesn’t care enough to fight for you.

It’s not just gays, it’s Muslims and atheists, it’s scientists and intellectuals, it’s people who believe in the miracles of technology rather than “Touched by an Angel.” It’s anyone who has provoked the hatred, bigotry and envy of America’s massive evangelical Christian underbelly: the people who mobilized to elect George Bush.

Even now, politicians are uttering soothing screeds about coming together under a new president, and working to build a better future.

Don’t believe their lies. You are not a part of their better future. You are not wanted.

Despite all America’s problems with racism and discrimination, it has for a long time been the best place in the world to be a member of a minority – particularly to be queer – and the reason is that there has always been some kind of legislative framework protecting the idea that everybody gets rights. Still, the reason minorities in America have been so strident in defending their rights – leading Republicans, Christians, and Neocons to coin terms like “liberal elites,” and “homosexual agenda” – has always been a strong and pernicious suspicion that if you were not a white undereducated rural protestant, you were living in a country where a large number of people don’t believe in your right to live.

The Neocons pooh-poohed your concerns, saying they were the real party of tolerance – look how they let the black folk help out around the White House. Then they caught you by surprise with the “Defense of Marriage Amendment.” They surprised you with the restriction of stem cell research, the prohibition of sex education and family planning education, the bans on vaguely defined abortion procedures. They surprised you with “special registration” and the attacks on the rights of legal immigrants from suspect countries filled with unnecessary brown people. And they surprised us on Tuesday.

How many times are we gonna get surprised?

Now they have both houses of Congress and a blank check to pack the Supreme Court with Bush appointees, putting America’s last bastion of rationalism and enlightened leadership firmly in evangelical hands. Do you think they’re going to quit now?

They will come for us, by force or guile. They will get their Christian nation, one way or another, and we will just disappear. Soon even those urban enclaves like New York City, Seattle and San Francisco won’t be able to protect us from the gradual erosion of our right to sexual, religious and reproductive autonomy. After all, two of those states are already under Republican control.

History 101: coexistence with folks who don’t acknowledge your basic right to, y’know exist? Pretty much blows. Examples? Everything ever.

I say, we need a state of our own – for the liberals, the intellectuals, the homosexuals, the atheists, the scientists, the women who would like at least as much control over their bodies as over their cars, the people who suspect that maybe Jesus didn’t mean that bit about smashing them all with a rod of iron, the folks who would like to be able to research their incurable diseases, or at least get medication for their pain. Y’all know who you are. The 10,000 of us who aren’t assholes.

We can re-christen our new state “Sanity.” Or possibly New Canada. But we’d better make sure we’re well armed, because Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson will be calling for our destruction from the pulpits of the new, Christian America. And we’d better make sure our security force is as efficient and vicious as the Mossad, because the Ted Kaczynskis and the Eric Rudolphs and Tim McVeighs and the other home-grown American Osama ben Ladens will be coming for us.

“Wait,” you’re thinking, “This guy can’t seriously be advocating pre-emptive sectarian violence in the good ol’ USA! He’s just parodying the psychotic xenophobia that has seized America as it seizes every place where the majority begins to feel itself embattled.”

Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m not that crazy. Then again, if you’re a gay American, maybe you better take a long, hard look at your options: you can get ready to fight now, or you can just trust what the white men tell you.

That usually works out well.

- Nicholas Seeley, 11/5/04

Posted by rjt at November 5, 2004 10:56 AM