Americans with even the slightest memory of U.S. foreign policy over the past 80 years would perhaps be less surprised than most about the vaccine mandates of recent history. The math is fairly straightforward: perceive a threat, get ahead of the threat, become a threat yourself.
In the case of the COVID vaccine, our bureaucratic caregivers helped us believe that to best prevent something bad from happening (e.g. mass deaths from a coronavirus), we should experiment with something that may or may not cause more harm than good. The aggression of a pointed needle, for those knowledgeable of the magical arts, is but the micro to the macro of our nation’s willingness to choose perpetual foreign intervention over letting things work themselves out on their own.
How excited I am to be a father in such circumstances. Though 24 years can go by in a blink, it seems like only yesterday we were being told how military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were the only ways to prevent further loss of life. You really can’t make any of this up. For my parents’ generation it was Vietnam and Korea; to prevent communism from growing too powerful, we had to show our own power by way of Agent Orange and cluster bombs. Now, seeing my children witness their generation’s show of evil (in the name of righteousness) by way of an Iranian regime change, I’ve got that old timey feeling in my heart again. Homecoming week, eat your heart out.
Instead, give me a shifty, wannabe king (whether his name be Bush or Trump) and pour me a strong drink of reassurance that the justification of war is necessary for our parasitic and capitalistic way of life to continue. After all, these are just ignorant people who want to destroy us, right? If they only had “freedom” and shopping malls, that would sort everything out and the world might finally hold hands and remain in a state of ever-lasting peace.
For me, I’m totally convinced. Sure, the present landscape our bombers are bombing is the homeland of my father’s people, but hey … did you see that new trailer for Superman? Lay upon me that soft, comforting blanket of ignorance and distraction, and I will tell you how many yards the starting running back is likely to tally this upcoming football season. At this point, who really cares? Such confidence I have in our society’s future, when my children are directed to focus upon their “personal goals” instead of engaging in the civic process. Self, self, self is all I want for them, because who ever made any money off caring for others who are in the process of losing everything?
Commentary is all that is left for the American. Trump calls for war, drops bombs, and launders money by way of telecommunications and cryptocurrency, and pointless chatter is the only response. No one can really stop what our executive branch is doing, and that therein lies the checkmate. Everyone might very well be too infected by the opinions which flash upon their distraction devices to notice the elites grabbing more of what’s left of this idea called the United States. Joking of course, because as most of us realize, there isn’t anything left.
Phantom limbs of our “once great nation” wiggle erratically whenever I visit a different city. The American metropolis is no longer what is was; it is simply a hologram of what we imagine it to be. Go to New York, for example, and you can find yourself bombarded by imagery representing the dawn of the 20th century set on repeat. This, quite possibly, is the fuel which continues to drive our machinery of destruction. A copy of a copy of a copy of “manifest destiny” which held that any dark-skinned person standing in the way of greed is in need of either a bullet or “re-education.”
Same as it ever was, since now those pesky Iranians, who actually think they can stand up to us, are clamoring on about how they believe they should be in charge of their own fate. Ha, well, there’s only one way to deal with that. Arm the jets, get the hippies to march for a peace that will never come, and make sure the water coolers are well stocked for summer. Democracies are so amazing, as they never seem to not result in a tyrant wielding the “hand of God” by means of placing blame onto those who disagree.
Ahmad Esfahani lives in Greenfield.