http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/1322Peter Michaelson: American Albatross: The Curse of Stupidity
Like Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber, the architects of the American way of life trundle down the highway ass-backwards, pathetically comic in the tragedy of their unnecessary stupidity.
We won't count the ways: The list of stupid actions and beliefs infesting our politics, economics, and social life has grown too long. The latest example concerns the refusal to allow Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit Ground Zero when he attends the opening in New York City next week of the United Nations General Assembly.
City authorities have apparently denied the request over alleged concerns about security. Nonsense! A lame excuse!
Do they expect Ahmadinejad to spit on the sacred ground of the former World Trade Center? At the site, he would presumably say something appropriate about the loss of life -- he would look cruel and foolish if he didn't.
Asked about such a visit, a White House spokesman said that "Ground Zero would be an odd place for the president of a country that is a state sponsor of terror to visit." By that logic, why even allow Ahmadinejad into the country? Or let's arrest him and send him to Guantanamo Bay when he steps off the plane.
Presidential candidates chipped in. "It is unacceptable," said Hilary Clinton. "Under no circumstances," said Rudolph Guiliani. "A vehement no," said Mitt Romney. Time magazine said the Iranian president's request is "a transparently political stunt" aimed at his audience in Iran. Nevertheless, the magazine said in an online report, he can only benefit from our demonization of him. He becomes more popular and his "stock rises when Americans put him down."
Agreed! Refusing him a visit to the site is not smart. Let's be smart: In the coming decades, technological "advances" are very likely to make weapons of mass destruction easily accessible to potential or actual enemies of the United States. Isn't it probable that one protection against them will be our goodwill and the open lines of diplomacy and communication we have established to all quarters of the world? Perhaps our best protection will be the quality of our humanity. Isn't true power the ability to develop friendship with and instill trust in those who have ambivalent or hostile feelings toward us?
We would create goodwill throughout the world by graciously allowing Ahmadinejad to visit Ground Zero. Even if his motives are impure, our power is displayed to the world in our graciousness and our lack of fear.
A moratorium on stupidity would also be very helpful. Wasn't it stupid of the Senate to vote this week, by 72-25, to condemn a MoveOn.org ad in The New York Times that criticized U.S. policy in Iraq? Why don't senators vote 72-25 to get out of Iraq? Where does all our stupidity come from? Electing George W. Bush in 2000 was stupid. Repeating the error in 2004 was stunningly stupid. Invading Iraq was stupid. Staying there is stupid. Running up gargantuan private, corporate, and government debt is stupid. Overheating the world is stupid. Where does it end?
Bush is just the tip of this obliviousness. He was elevated by deluded people who divide the world into good and evil and profit and loss. But we're all in this together. We need to be cajoled or shocked out of our stupidity.
The stupidity is apparent in religious fundamentalism, which divides the world into good and evil. Let's all pray that fundamentalists begin to understand why they do this. They are projecting onto others what they don't want to look at in themselves, namely their repressed sexuality and the cauldron of guilt, shame, passivity, and unworthiness gurgling in their psyche.
Let's all pray for the Democrats, too. Author James Carroll, a Boston Globe columnist, said this week that even the Democratic presidential candidates are influenced by this "good us" versus "evil them" paradigm. "What I hear from them, too, is a world divided between the good and the bad." These Democrats also display little capacity for criticism of themselves and of America, Carroll said. Nor do they show any doubt as to the assumed benevolence of American behaviors and intentions in the world.
The repression practiced by fundamentalists (along with others of us who deny our inner conflicts and the unresolved issues that cause us to blunder with, say, our careers or relationships) degrades their capacity for creative and effective thinking and acting. Their intelligence gets tangled up and worn out in the repression. To avoid self-scrutiny, much of their psychic energy is used up for defenses, rationalizations, and blaming.
Another expression of stupidity is economic fundamentalism, which proclaims the sanctity and self-regulating genius of the marketplace. This doctrine, now bankrupting the country and possibly the world, is promoted by profiteers of the system who themselves are unregulated. No moral authority guides their actions. Their instincts are primal, predatory, self-aggrandizing. They operate from fear as much as greed. Their fear of loss or deprival is accentuated by their inner emptiness. They are stupid people, though extravagantly cunning, who are orchestrating their own defeat and bringing pain to us all.
What would be more stupid than the loss of our democracy? Inside each of us is the power to prevent that from happening. Attention to our inner self confirms our goodness, our value, and our sovereignty. Our democracy is protected when we clear away our fears, self-doubt, and stupidity.
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
Peter Michaelson is an author and a practicing psychotherapist who offers telephone sessions and specializes in marriage and partnership conflict resolution. His books are available at www.QuestForSelf.com.
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