Felling Giants

On the new world order

Like many, I woke last Saturday morning to the news that my country had invaded Venezuela. We’d bombed their capital, killed dozens, and abducted their President. For oil.

Happy new year and all that.

Welcome to the new world order.

The thing is, it looks a lot like the old one.

Because if you’ve been paying the least bit of attention, you can recognize Saturday’s story.

Venezuela and Nicolás Maduro and oil.

Like Libya and Muammar Gaddafi and oil.

Like Iraq and Saddam Hussein and oil.

[Insert different country]

[Insert different political leader, calling him ruthless dictator]

[Insert different desired resource, or just oil]

Like a mad lib.

Except that the oil is typically called freedom.

Except that the oil is typically called justice.

Except that the oil is typically wrapped in a flag, laced together with speeches of morality, and addressed to all the children of the world.

But no longer.

Because our President says so plainly that it is about the oil.

A lot’s been made of Donald Trump’s lies.

But perhaps not enough has been made of his honesty.

Because, yes, he lies pathologically. About just about everything. All the time.

Yes, he tells so many and such outrageous lies that even his most ardent supporters have a hard time explaining or legitimately defending them. It’s why his supporters so often meet confrontation with, “What about [insert Biden or Obama or any Democratic or formerly moderate Republican politician]?

But that has always been beside the point. The lies have always been beside the point.

Because there is an honesty to these lies.

He does it so regularly, with such brazenness, that it becomes clear he does not really care whether it sounds believable. He cares only whether people go along with it.

He cares whether someone is with him or against him.

This is what so many, myself included, have repeatedly failed to understand about Donald Trump’s supporters: they are not the ones being fooled; we are.

When you play by an articulated set of rules—when you endorse the rule of law, when you endorse pluralism and globalization and democracy—, you cannot break those rules.

Which becomes difficult when trying to maintain U.S. supremacy in an increasingly delicate and entangled global order.

So previous presidents broke the rules they swore by. Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize and proceeded to kill thousands by drone strikes.

Joe Biden campaigned by saying that “character [was] on the ballot” and proceeded to justify the U.S.’s unwavering support of ethnic cleansing.

Hillary Clinton’s presidency would have been a grand symbol that, in the United States, a woman could do anything that a man could. She’d already lent support for that idea as Secretary of State, helping to orchestrate the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya.

Kamala Harris’s presidency would have been the same. But it was difficult to argue that democracy itself was at stake in the general election when she had never won a true primary.

This is the contradiction inherent in the governance of the United States for the past near century.

Because the city on a hill cannot hide. A fact which has sometimes made the United States better, such as the way that preaching equality abroad made it difficult to justify segregation at home.

And sometimes made it a charlatan: crusading for oil or power or influence under the guise of freedom.

Setting the stage for someone who won’t be so coy about it.

Because when your only rule is pursuing, maintaining, and obtaining power, it doesn’t matter how you do it. Lying, cheating, and stealing only prove your resolve.

Get enough voters to agree and Congress, the Courts, the media, the corporations, they’ll all lie down. Call it democracy.

Which is why Donald Trump now says so plainly that it is about the oil.

Just as he said so plainly that he believes he has the supreme right to strike other sovereign nations.

That he has presidential immunity.

That noncitizens have no rights here.

That anyone who dissents is liable to be arrested or deported.

Or killed. As we just saw in Minneapolis.

In the history of the United States, you can tell how much someone cares about something by who they’re willing to kill for it.

What they’re willing to kill for it.

That now seems to mean citizens and non-citizens alike. For the impunity of masked men.

The soul of our country. For a fraying flag planted on a patch of dirt.

A flag planted in Venezuela. Or in Greenland. Or in Gaza.

I’m quite sure we’ve traded the soul of the country for prime real estate in hell.

I didn’t think I believed in hell. As a bad place that bad people go when they die, I suppose I still don’t.

But I do think that I know a different kind of hell.

And that’s the hell of the loneliest place on Earth.

It’s not a refugee camp. It’s not an occupied territory. It’s not a disaster zone.

No, in these places, people have been belittled, ransomed, and abandoned by the rest of the world. But the people, knowing that there is no deal they can make, no vote they can cast, no amount of striving they can do to be rescued from their fate, belong to each other. This should not be romanticized, but neither should it dismissed.

No, the loneliest place on Earth is the seat of power. The place where the policies are written, the militaries are ordered, the wheels are set in motion.

The place where who’s in and who’s out—who’s us and who’s them—is chosen.

Because one who looks out from this place must do so with the knowledge that all of it happens in their name.

This is the price of living in a representative democracy: that we bear responsibility for conditions of life far removed from our corner of the world. That we are responsible to people we will never meet. Because we elect officials to represent our interests. We send them to state capitals and send them to D.C. They then send bombs abroad, extract resources and capital abroad. And we have long thrown up our hands. Pretending like this is not the world we have wrought.

We have long looked through the glass, at the world far beyond, and seen violence and instability. Looked on it all as the desperation of caged animals. And we are now, many of us for the first time, catching an errant reflection in the glass. And shuddering to see the source of it all. Shuddering and muttering, flailing and wailing,

What are we doing?

What is happening in our name?

As the future Russian President Boris Yeltsen once said, “You can make a throne of bayonets, but you can’t sit on it for long.”

The idea of the United States as the stoic, morally upright protector of the world—which is to say the United States that I clung to like a child clings to a stuffed rabbit—is dead. In the eyes of many pockets of people all over the world—from indentured Asia to indebted Caribbean, from warring sub-Sahara to drowning South Pacific—this idea never had any more life to it than that stuffed animal.

Up until now, under every presidency of the past, we have pretended that our stuffed animal is very much alive, our own guardian and a guardian for all those who cling to us. Which made us feel strong.

Now, under Trump, the illusion is gone. The rabbit is not alive. And without the illusion, we become fixed on killing and stuffing the live animals that move around us. To mount on our wall. Trophies. To feel strong again.

It was always about this. About feeling strong.

There is an honesty to this. An acknowledgement that the only feeling of strength we know is the accumulation of trophies. That we need gold, black gold, something that shines to remind us we are worth anything at all.

To distract from the loneliness of power.

This is our country.

A giant whose every step is liable to destroy lives and split communities in two. Who used to be a little more conscious of its steps, to seek—some of the time—to minimize harm. Or justified this harm by engaging in some other act of goodwill. But who now has grown tired of hearing of the inadequacy of its acts of goodwill. Tired of hearing of the pain it inflicts. Who seeks now to silence those who cry out.

This is who we are now.

And who is the “we” that makes up this giant? Is this country still yours? Is this country still mine?

Because I am not being crushed by the giant, not in a physical sense, but a part of me is being emotionally crushed, spiritually crushed every time this giant staggers forth with a license to kill.

I have accepted false names as my own for far too long. We all have. Such is the nature of an illusory representative government and these United States and an entire world order built around allowing the few to speak for the many.

For it’s always been about the oil. And it’s always been about preserving the illusion. Of feeling strong.

But none of this makes me feel strong.

And all of this makes me feel sick.

For the old world order is not dead: it has been revealed.

And it’s all well and good to dream of felling giants.

And walking away from a throne of bayonets.

And renouncing a name that no longer rings true.

It’s all well and good to string up metaphors like a ladder to the stars.

But this ladder of all these intricate metaphors remains surely bound to come crashing to the ground if we cannot answer the giant of a question: if not this, then what?

What is it we’re doing in our name?

What is it we’re doing with this, our only, life?