[Newspoetry] Sophie's Choice or Bushie's Choice?

[Donald L Emerick]

Tom Friedman opinion, 2-19-03 in the NYT:
on the ostensible legitimacy of Bushie's Choice
(by way of contrast, see Sophie's Choice.)

An upcoming war in Iraq
is not mostly about oil,
at least not directly,
the way that crass analysts say,
who connect some dots too quickly,
who ignore and trample over dots
that do not fit a pattern of an image,
a preconception of wrongdoing,
that secures a certain psychology
of resistance and its opposition.

And, I quite agree with Tom,
that the ostensible is never real,
never truly a cause of anything:
Bush does not plan to fight for oil,
in a simple way we might understand,
as someone who thinks to enrich
himself in ally and associate guises,
enrich himself just here and now.

And, the debunking of imperialism
as a foreign policy reason is quite clear:
by the time that most leaders emerge,
as visible and significant players
on national and global stages,
which are far wider in time
than they ever could site in space,
such leaders are already well endowed,
already about as wealthy as one can be.

Wealthy nations are led by wealthy people;
it's only impoverished world regions
that choose log-cabin born,
bamboo-hut grown-up leaders.

America was once a third world nation,
and its political ideals were formed then,
for wealth never inspires any ideals at all.
satisfaction and satiation respond only to threat,
which explains many crazed American responses
to Eleven September in Twenty Ought One.

No nation is ever evil in its own eyes:
leaders of wealthy nation know there is no evil,
but impoverished peoples believe in good and evil.
and as leaders of wealthy nations know,
you can't fight present ignorance,
you can only continue to play upon it,
if you want to stay wealthy,
if you want to stay leading.

Nobody is better than Bush
in this leadership game which features
the eternal war between, on one side,
those who believe in good and evil,
and those who believe there is no evil,
there is only good and bad,
better and worse,
more or less.

Regardless of what his true beliefs may be,
Bush would truly have us believe
that he believes in the distinction
that the common man draws,
as he also would have us believe
that he is better able to draw the line,
better able to distinguish good and evil --
and he makes this persuasion factual,
pointedly claiming secret information
which can not be exposed to view
without ending its further replications,
its self-perpetuating scheme of rule.

All leaders claim to know more than the people
about good and evil, abstractly and presently.

This is what Friedman justifies
when he claims Bush's choice is not tainted
by immediate personal considerations,
even as Friedman and many others
continue to malign Hussein,
to suggest that he, by contrast, is an upstart,
a nouveau principality of a lineage unrooted,
easily uprooted, invasively threatening
established and preferred species,
cultivated plants orderly growing
in well-tended, well-producing beds.

Ideal production is always servile,
as it listens to no frictions and
imagines oil soothes complaints
of peaceful machinery struggling to keep-up,
working overtime, nights and weekends,
and on holidays, too, to catch-up,
always never producing enough of anything
to make everyone richer than kings.

There is nothing evil in all of that,
and nothing good at all,
except what is bought and sold,
traded and exchanged:
Bush fights for a way of life
that may not be worth having,
not the way that things have been going,
as it is unimposing as exemplar,
inspired by no ideals,
but powered only by rhetorics
that seek to describe ideals
with intents never to attain them.

Bush, said his Barbie-Mom,
thinks he is an American Moses,
leading us from Egypt's fleshpots,
to long-overdue Promised Lands,
where everyone will have his share,
where everyone will pay his debts,
where everyone will kneel and pray

So, Bush talks, on and on,
about these Promised Lands,
and thinks conquering infidels
makes a Lord's Way straight,
makes paths of righteousness smooth,
soft and easy to walk upon.

But, I think the way is always rugged,
truth is never found on smooth plains
nor even in austerely simple deserts,
and this is how, so I sadly claim,
the wealthy lose sight of evil, first,
and then think that there is none
because it does not show up in mirrors,
not for very long, nor for very much,
as Cassandra's are always ousted.

Thanks for listening,
Donald L Emerick
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