WALLACE SHAWN ON THE RUN-UP
TO THE INVASION OF IRAQ

From the Nation last year courtesy of Eschaton:

In school we were taught various terms to characterize political systems--"oligarchy," "autocracy," "democracy." What is our system? No term for it exists. To call it a democracy puts a false picture in the mind. How can you call it a democracy when, for example, the people don't even know today why in 1991 the first President Bush seemed to seek out the opportunity to attack Iraq, circumventing opportunities to avoid war? Yes, we're allowed to vote for our leaders, but we don't know what they're really like, because we're not allowed to know what they do. The enormous enterprises of the government are conducted sometimes for the benefit of some of the citizens, maybe even occasionally for the benefit of all of the citizens, but the citizens don't even know what the government is doing, much less why, much less who the beneficiaries are. The citizens can hardly be expected to comment intelligently on the government's decisions, because the citizens don't know what's actually going on, and they can't find out. We are lied to, manipulated and brainwashed, and then we're brought in at the appropriate moment to cheer and applaud, and we're never even told what we were being asked to applaud. If that's "democracy," then we're using the word in a very restricted fashion.

Sometimes a man like Jimmy Carter may blunder into the White House and sit down behind the desk in the Oval Office, and the rules of the system have to be explained to him. Jimmy Carter declared when elected that he would "never lie" to the American people. This was like a new man being selected as CEO of General Foods and announcing that from now on he planned to bake every General Foods cookie himself in his own kitchen. It didn't take long to teach Carter the ropes.

And

Why do they want this war so much? Maybe we can never fully know the answer to that question. Why do some people want to be whipped by a dominatrix? Why do some people want so desperately to have sex with children that they can't prevent themselves from raping them, even though they know that what they're doing is wrong? Why did Hitler want to kill the Jews? Why do some people collect coins? Why do some people collect stamps?

We can't fully understand it. But it's clear that Bush and his group are in the grip of something. They're very far gone. Their narcissism and sense of omnipotence goes way beyond self-confidence, reaching the point that they're impervious to the disgust they provoke in others, or even oblivious to it. They've made very clear to the people of the world that they value American interests more than the world's interests and American profits more than the world's physical health, and yet they cheerfully expect the people of the world to accept their leadership in the matter of Iraq. They're so unshakable in their belief that everyone will like them that they happily summoned the world, a year ago, to observe what they'd done to the people they'd taken as prisoners, proudly exhibiting them on their knees in cages, under a ferocious sun, with their faces hooded and their bodies in chains. In other words, the only thing you can really say about them is that like all of those who for fifty years have sat in offices in Washington and dreamed of killing millions of enemies with nuclear weapons and chemical weapons and biological weapons, these people are sick. They have an illness. And it's getting to the point where there may be no cure.

Click here for the rest.

I wish I had read this when it first hit the internet; I guess Wallace Shawn wasn't quite on my radar screen the way he is now since I've performed in one of his plays. But, hey, better late than never, and it is quite a good read. Check it out.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$