The International Writers Magazine: Reality Check + Readers Responses

The Age of Political Inertia • James Campion or How A Humanitarian Crisis Sheds Greater Light on Washington Dysfunction

We are the world, we are the children
We are the ones who make a brighter day
So let's start giving
There's a choice we're making
We're saving our own lives
It's true we'll make a better day
Just you and me

– Michael Jackson/Lionel Richie

Remember that crap?
It was the sort of utopian farce that conjures odd memory when first seeing footage of rabid faux nationalists cum Birchers shouting obscenely racist falderal at frightened children sitting on a government bus in some cow town north of San Diego. Many of these goobers weren't even aware that the displaced refugees from Central American slaughterhouses they were “protesting” against were not immigrants – legal or illegal – nor were they from Mexico. Neither did they have the minutest understanding of the legal procedure for detaining and providing due process for such unfortunates or the policy of the USA since 2008 to provide shelter for displaced children from non-bordering nations.

But that is to be expected. What most Americans don’t know you could barely cram into the Grand Canyon. They are busying themselves with talk radio, porn and whatever Labron James is tweeting. I am sure Michael Jackson had no idea what manner of disarray Africa found its political system in when he decided that somehow “we” were the world back in 1985, like some half-mad, crotch-obsessed, effeminate Jesus/Gandhi figure. But he got everyone singing about it. Americans like to sing. It keeps us from knowing what the hell is going on, so we can get our signs together and rush out to scream at children.

Hell, MJ was not so far off, since much of his pie-in-the-sky nonsense rang a bell in the loftiest halls of our federal government; long before Ronnie Reagan started playing footsies with Nicaragua; arming hordes of raping and pillaging jungle warriors in a wildly misguided attempt to “stem the tide of Communism”.
Nope. Our meddling and upheaval in Central America, coupled with our money-pit of failed and damaging anti-drug policies in Guatemala (Harry Truman’s 1954 coup de tat folly that led to decades of bloodshed and anarchy) and El Salvador, (Jimmy Carter’s 1979 “secret support” of a politically ambiguous civil war that appeared to only include drug cartels), has long-since led to the hellscape it is today. Granted, Reagan’s obsession with Nicaragua should have gotten him impeached and eventually led to the dilution of the Central Intelligence Agency, allowing its fractured remnants to orchestrate the sad joke that became the Iraq War, but this “crisis” emanates from our American soul.

But explaining this historical minutia to yammering goobers is not our aim here, nor should it be. Shit, these are the same crackers that spat at my ancestors generations before; the “Irish Need Not Apply” set, who spread the same ignorant hate-speech about “diseases” and burnt Catholic churches to the ground. Fearing those fleeing to this country from famine, death and genocide is human nature. Far be it for me to quibble with that.

However, what we aim to do now is point out that our elected officials, both houses of congress and our president, appear to not have a handle on our national responsibility to uphold our laws and get a handle on some sort of humanity – not necessarily a “We Are The World” kind of craziness, but maybe a sense that if we demand of other nations that refugees be taken in after say something as horrifically sweeping as the Holocaust to the unmitigated disaster in Syria/Iraq today, then certainly it needs to be summarily addressed on our own continent.

It’s mostly important to point out that this “crisis” has become microcosm of how completely inert this government is; from the executive branch on down. Everything has now become so political that it has crippled the government to work together to solve even an obviously open/shut case.

Congress’ responsibility during such a crisis is to act; in this case to appropriate funds to secure parts of the border, enhance the legal proceedings involving refugees, and at the very least provide care to the displaced. This is the basest form of legislative powers: Shit hits fan, act. Congress seems to think that this is an opportunity to point fingers, rewrite history, soapbox a restructure of immigration policy or cause a panic among the unwashed that somehow this is some sort of de facto invasion.

How is it that acting swiftly when it comes to bombing something or to scream about providing weapons and money to underground Syrian kill-clubs is no problem, but this is clown time?
This congress, now officially the most inactive in the history of this republic, has completely become so dysfunctional it is a headless quagmire of inner-bickering and grandstanding. But it pales in comparison to how Barrack Obama has handled this mess.

Why the president – especially after how abysmally his predecessor dealt with the devastation of Katrina – did not get his ass down to the border, is beyond explanation. Granted, there is a sense of theater and photo-op phoniness to such a trek, but it is incumbent on every president, whether Calvin Coolidge after the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 or Jimmy Carter patrolling the burned-out remnants of the Bronx, NY in the ‘70s, to show up. Again, like congress’ inability to understand its job – as in failing to uphold the faith and credit of the nation in favor of showboating – Obama needs to show support to these disposed and frightened refugees, many of them children, and, more pointedly, for the citizens along our southern borders.

It is almost comically tragic that I am writing about this today, halfway through July and weeks after this reached “crisis” proportions.

There are limits to what this country can do about what is going on the Middle East – despite our obsession with it. Civil wars and cultural unrest has been going on before there was even a Bible or a Qur’an. The latest violence in Israel will likely change nothing. And Russia’s grand plan of annexing Ukraine is already disintegrating. What to do about the genocide in Africa or the ethnic cleansing in Syria or whatever the hell Iran is up to this week is something to debate. But this?
Action is required; morally, legally, historically.
What we are getting instead is inertia.
© James Campion July 18th 2014

READERS RESPONSES July 28th 2014

This was another hard hitting column, Campion. (VA SCANDAL: OUR IMPRINT, OUR LEGACY, OUR SIN – Issue: 5/29/14)
Where do you get the insight or the guts?
This is a wake-up call to those who waste our time with crap like Benghazi and the IRS or the NSA when our veterans are being murdered by us; that’s right, the American people, who ultimately represent themselves and thus must take responsibility when something like this continues to happen right under our noses.
I am ashamed to be an American. I am ashamed to ever having said I support the troops. We do not support the troops. We only support the actions of this government again and again for decades to send our young into harm’s way for Enron and GE and Exxon and the macho call of useless politicians who NEVER go to war, but have no problem sending the few who are called.
You are so right. This is not a problem made of the VA, but it is the problem with a nation that now for almost 15 years has been embroiled in war and it affects us in no way. Our taxes don’t go up, our families do not have to sacrifice like so many who have military kids in theirs. Where is our sacrifice? Why does no one ever answer that? Why do only a few give their life and limb for us? We whistle along as the stock market rises and the economy slowly comes back and we bicker about who is American and who is a socialist and who loves which country. It is a childish game to ignore the truth; we are broken and have been broken and we are now killing our veterans, while they rightly expect to be taken care of.
Is there a more horrible sin than that?
We are leaving those poor souls who gave their lives to protect and keep us free to die. Die! In our care.
For shame.
And thank you for saying it.

Dorothy Levine


Sir,

It has been an absolute pleasure to read your work each week. You are the most honest columnist of our times. I almost feel as though you should have a larger following (Sorry - I am assuming that since you have not been co-opted by the cable news rabble to add to the dumming-down of the U.S. that you are not more famous).
This was a sobering account of the sins of our nation. This VA scandal is so hard to stomach. It is an embarrassment that I cannot imagine we will ever be able to accept. My heart goes out to the victims of this crime, their families, and those who have faith in this nation to not only go to war but remember the debt that those have paid for these decisions.
I hope too that when people are screaming for us to get involved in every possible violent act across the globe that we first must clean up and take stock of what we have done with the last wars.

DR780909


I am so sad that no matter whom we elect from what party and all the shouting and finger-pointing, that we still have a military industrial complex that chews up and spits out so many soldiers with little regard to what would become of them once the battles are over. The battles are not over for them.
Bush should be made to answer for this. Also Cheney, Obama, Clinton and every member of Congress since 2001. And especially the Pentagon.
What have we become?

TRR


This VA scandal is a perfect example of how the red tape of our federal system, this huge, unchecked conglomerate of bloated bureaucracy can screw something up so important. This is the fear that most of us have about a national health care system. What will become of us now? That is a question that needs to be asked and only time will answer it.

Garbage-In/Garbage-Out


Under NO circumstances should this country go back into Iraq!!! (TIME WARP – Issue: 6/18/14) Who the hell thinks this is a good idea?? Dick Cheney? DICK CHENEY??? How dare this broken-down, pathetic war-monger, whose ENRON war set this nation’s foreign policy into the Middle Age! John McCain? The man who doesn’t see a conflict he doesn’t want us in the middle of? Fox News? Because they were so right about that disaster in the first place? Who thinks this is a good idea besides these imbeciles?
Thank God Obama is president!

GI Jane


While the distaste of all things Iraq, past and present, is on our collective palates, let's step back a sec and realize that the same diseased thinking that went into that horrendous blood folly is also at play in every other sector of our more-tyrannical-by-the-day Federal Government, whether it be healthcare, amnesty, regulation of almost everything except my rashy asshole, and that means EVERYONE who's been in the Big Chair on down, Democrats and Republicans. What a bunch of fucking cretinous barnacles we've allowed encrust our country. If we're stupid enough to elect another Clinton, Bush, or (God forbid Obama) then we deserve the Orwellian future we're going to get.

Ken Eustace


Nice, and war is always about tiny penis reasoning.

Bo Blaze


IRAQ? NO!


B. Kissel


Can you imagine if we had given weapons to the supposed Syrian rebels? Right now this ISIS group is using U.S. weapons and tanks to wreak havoc in Iraq. How much damage are we suppose to unleash on this mess? You are correct. Enough is enough. I cannot believe we are even discussing this.

henrygo-pa-pa

Do yourself no favors and “like” this idiot at www.facebook.com/jc.author

In Praise of Freedom of Speech
James Campion
The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the First Amendment by striking down a 2007 Massachusetts law that created a 35-foot buffer zone around family planning centers.

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