Dear America, Wake the fuck up. Love, Shakespeare’s Sister

Mark, seriously pissing me off not because he’s wrong, but because he’s exactly right:

The death knell for our secular, balanced-power democracy will be sounded before a somnambulant, unconcerned, and flaccidly assenting silent majority. To pass off the final outrage, it will only be necessary to whip up the basest xenophobic terror. The Final Dismantling will be performed by bureaucrats promising liberty from a “new fascism” by imposing one. They will promise peace through war. They will promise freedom through arbitrary detention, and human rights through torture. They will label thoughtful discussion as treason, and careful analysis as unserious.

Sound familiar? That’s because most of their work is already done.

What has him in such a state of despair? Our president, explaining that the ruling of a Federal District Court is wrong, because it does not address to his satisfaction—and according to his definition—“the world in which we live.” Our government, barring two American citizens from re-entering the country, because they refuse to consent to FBI interrogations in Pakistan—interrogations which violate their civil rights. Our Secretary of Defense referring to administration and war critics as appeasers of "a new type of fascism." And all the bloody rest of it.

I can’t imagine what it will take to jolt the sleepy, lackadaisical masses from their blissful ignorance, because if they wait to get outraged about the plans for massive detention centers until someone they know is actually relocated to one, it’s too late. If they wait to get outraged until the redistribution of wealth until they’ve lost their own home to foreclosure, it’s too late. If they wait to complain about dissenters being branded traitors until they object to something and find themselves at the blunt end of political marginalization, it’s too late. Nothing seems to matter to Americans until it directly affects them, and, by then, it’s almost always too late.

Instead, they will suffer all manner of indignity being imposed upon others to preserve themselves. Wiretapping other people without a warrant is fine. Holding other people indefinitely without access to an attorney or due process is fine. Torturing other people is fine. Maligning other people for dissent is fine. Disenfranchising other voters is fine. Rewarding corporations for moving jobs filled by other people offshore is fine. Destroying the environment for other generations is fine. Cutting federal funding for programs that benefit other people is fine. Denying equal rights to other people is fine. Using other people as a wedge issue is fine. Denying bodily autonomy to other people is fine. It’s all fair play as long as it’s not being done to me, and you tell me it’s keeping me safe and happy.

It’s all about me. What is perhaps most despicable about this attitude in America is that we are largely a nation of Christians (as we are constantly reminded by the most ostentatious adherents), a religion which has as its centerpiece the notion of personal sacrifice for, literally, everyone else, yet the majority of Christians seem to have drawn from the story of Jesus not the notion of self-sacrifice, but the notion that someone else will make the sacrifice for them. God sent his only son to die so that we might live forever, I was told week after week after week in church, my entire childhood, and as I look across the American landscape and see nothing but people willing to let others suffer and despair for their security, I can’t help but think that too many Christians have not learned to identify with the savior, but are instead quite content to sit back and be saved. They reaped the rewards of the Messiah’s death; might as well reap the rewards of the lashes on the backs of the prisoners at Gitmo, too. (And false rewards, at that.)

It’s all about me. There is no sense of an American community, and certainly not a global one. Americans look at those in worse circumstances than themselves and see not the myriad of ways to help, but instead breathe a sigh of relief—at least I’m not them. And when we’re not busy using the less fortunate as a way to bolster our own trembling sense of security, we hold them in contempt, and claim it’s because we resent the drain of resources they create, cloaking the reality that they remind us of our dereliction of duty toward our fellow citizens, and, worse yet, that they remind us what a thin line separates us from them.

It’s all about me. We still remain a dreadfully segregated nation, and much of the country shields its residents from even a passing familiarity with any alternative American experience to their own, leaving the majority of Americans incapable of comprehending how someone outside their race, sexual orientation, and particularly social class might arrive at a drastically different destination in life than they have. Knowing people who aren’t like us is the key to empathy, to caring about the struggles, blockades, and even the most basic circumstances of people who don’t share our individual experiences. People sniff at multiculturalism and shrug at the suggestion that international travel is a necessary experience to broaden our own isolationist horizons. We are actively discouraged, by omnipresent reassurances that “America is the best country in the world!” that we don’t need to experience other cultures because they have nothing to offer (and we are actively prevented from world travel by being provided with the shortest vacation times in the Western world). America is the center of the universe for many Americans—and often, not even the whole of America, but just their own region, state, town, neighborhood. Best place in the country in the best country in the world. Why leave, even for a day? Incuriosity. Ignorance. It’s all about my home, my experience, me.

It’s all about me. The American Dream is not, and has never been, that we collectively eradicate poverty, provide equal opportunities, and celebrate our shared success, but that each of us as individuals would achieve some sort of perfect destiny of wealth, health, and security. And always—obscured, inextricably—tied to that is the notion that for some to succeed, others must fail. The American Dream is a zero-sum game, and once I got mine, I don’t have to give a shit about everyone else who ain’t got theirs; in fact, it’s because they don’t that I’m so fortunate. Oh, but did I mention I got here on my own steam? It’s completely, irrationally schizophrenic, and it’s an intractable component of the American definition of success, to which we are all, subtly and overtly, encouraged to aspire.

It’s all about me. If it’s not directly affecting us, most Americans just don’t feel the need, or the obligation, to care.

Except it’s not all about me. “In Germany, the Nazis first came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.” — Martin Niemoller, Lutheran pastor in Berlin, arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Dachau concentration camp in 1938; the Allied forces freed him seven years later.

By the time it affects you, it’s too late.