Super Size Me

Tomorrow's "Super Tuesday" in the States, which has me wondering why America the Beautiful is so obsessed with size. Nothing can be just what it is--it's got to be "SUPER" Tuesday, or Super Bowl Sunday, or Super-size french fries, or Superman, Super Girl, Super Dog, or just plain "Super-duper."

Nuttin' wrong with that, I suppose. It makes life seem more exciting somehow. Sounds better than "Primary Tuesday," which is pretty bland, I admit. Who's gonna show up to vote for that? I mean, besides the people who care who the next leader of the free world is. By the "free world," I mean all those lands where people are able to vote without fear of repercussions, where people can speak their minds even if the State, the media, and the creepy old busybody next door don't agree with what you're saying.

I've been a bit obsessed by American politics lately. Granted, I've never paid much attention to it in the past, but this time seems different because there's so much at stake. Sure, I always knew who the president was, and I got particularly interested in it during the Clinton years. Those were actually pretty good years--a veritable "Camelot" compared to the Bush years (both Senior and Junior editions). Sure, Bill Clinton was no John F. Kennedy, but by all accounts, neither was John F. Kennedy. Like everything else, the American people (by which I mean the media) tends to make Supermen out of mere mortals. People (by which I mean the media, as well as the average Joe, not to be confused with Super Joe, Sloppy Joe, or G.I. Joe) often forget that JFK had some heavy-duty baggage to carry, especially in his alleged affairs with other women, notably Marilyn Monroe, and the little affair with Nikita Kruschev in which the American president brought the world to the very brink of nuclear self-annihilation. Camelot, indeed. Clinton's eight years weren't exactly peaceful, thanks to the overblown (pardon the pun) affair in the oval office with Monica Lewinsky. Other than that distraction, for which he was nearly impeached by the megalomaniacal, Puritanical Republicans who couldn't stand to see a Clinton in the White House, things weren't so bad--at least in comparison to today. The Blue Meanies took their hatred for him out on the entire country, refusing to let America enjoy its moment in the sun when the economy was going great guns (after those dreadful eight years of Reaganomics), and terrorism most often happened "over there". People still hated America, but it just didn't seem to personal, real and up-close in those days. Or maybe we (meaning North Americans) were just oblivious. Sometimes, igorance truly is bliss.

With George W. Bush in the White House, I'm sure there hasn't been much sex in the oval office. Pretty sure, anyway. He came to power on a morality ticket--promising to clean up American politics and make America respectable again on the world stage. Beware of any politician who comes to power on such a campaign. The morality ticket is one that gets played way too often and usually comes with a booby prize (aka Stephen Harper, who promised to gut Canadian politics of its corrupt Liberals). Almost single-handedly (unless you count the puppeteer Dick Cheney and Iago-like Karl Rove), Bush Jr. managed to make the United States the most reviled place on the world and its people the most hated in the so-called free world. It was a world that was a lot freer before wire-tapping, e-mail scans, and eternal damnation in Guantanomo Bay became well-known realities. Not so well-known were the unofficial policies of torturing prisoners suspected of plotting terrorist attacks (reminds me of Orwell's nightmare world in 1984) and sanctioning humiliation of p.o.w.'s in Afghanistan and Iraq. His father promised a "kinder, gentler" America, and both father and son delivered a more brutal, more insane America.

I miss the old days. I grew up on stories of cowboys riding the range and roping cattle, of opening up the West, of Daniel Boone and Davey Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. Of the Wonderful World of Disney, where dreams came true. Of Highway 66 and going to San Francisco to wear sunflowers in your hair. I read the great novels of storytellers like Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, and even the benign horrors of Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King. All the best music came from the U.S.A--jazz, blues, pop, and rocks. Sure, we knew about the serial killers like Son of Sam, Gary Gilmour, and the Boston Strangler. But those wacky American storytellers could make anyone sound like a Sunshine Superman, and these guys seemed like isolated nutcases, larger than life, and almost like folk heroes because of the way people wrote and talked about them in the media. Nobody emulated them, but they did seem like anomalies on a landscape full of normal, good folks.

America was built on certain ideals of the pursuit of happiness, freedom, truth, and justice. It's been a long time since anyone could say that that's what really came out of the war for Independence or the Civil War, Korean War, Vietnam War, or the World War II fire-bombing of Dresden or the holy shit moments and aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But, strange as it sounds, at least you usually felt like you were on the side of right, of justice, and truth. Even when JFK double-dared Kruschev to just go ahead and pull the trigger on nuclear warfare, people largely felt that at least the guy in the white hat, metaphorically speaking, was on our side. Even though Bill Clinton embarassed himself and his wife and family, as well as his party and country in the eyes of the world, you felt like he was still a good man and a good president--someone capable of making things right somehow, if only by the eloquence of his language, the brilliance of his brain, and the good intentions of his heart (even when he was lying; but the thing is, if you're gonna cheat, what's the sense in 'fessing up to it without at least trying to squirm out it?).

Long story short, America used to be something to believe in. I had this argument with my brother-in-law a few days ago. He's a fair bit younger than me and, far as I can tell, he only remembers the Bush years. He doesn't remember "America the Good" (and I don't mean the one that Ginsberg told to "go fuck yourself with your atom bomb"--that's a different America, which co-exists with the other America). He knows only that America is messed up and continues to go around the world, sticking its nose into other people's business and creating chaos and dismemberment everywhere it looks.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure I remember that "America the Good" either. I only remember believing in it as a POSSIBILITY because, somewhere along the line, the people who founded the country used to believe in it too. America is a concept--and that's why people get so upset with evil-doing presidents, with terrorist attacks on American soil, with threats on the Statue of Liberty, with the falling of the twin towers in New York, and with people like Donald Imus and the Jenus Six. It's not that we're all (by which I mean people in the Western World) any better or holier than thou. It's just that, sometimes we're reminded of how good we used to want it to be and that somehow we fucked it up.

And yet...and YET...we think we can make it better. It's never too late to turn the ship around and make it right.

And every election year, there's an opportunity to become the America that the people of that country, and of the rest of the world, think it's possible to be. I don't know who's going to win. I like Obama and Hillary Clinton alike. I think he's youthful and idealist, and he's saying all the right things and truly believes in them. I think she's intelligent, well-intentioned, but a bit more realistic because she's "been there and done that," to use her own words. I think they'll do just fine with either of those candidates as president, and preferably a Democratic ticket that includes both.

But let's hope the American electorate get it right this time. They almost elected Al Gore, but he wasn't bright and shiny enough for them, not enough of a celebrity just yet. Plus, they really did give him the most votes, but the courts decided to over-rule the American public and crown King George II. It only matters to me because the world's in an awful mess because the United States is in an awful mess. I also figure that once one right-wing ultra-Christian, control freak is gone from power, it's only a matter of time before that same wicked witch loses its grip on our own little fifedom to the north.

Mostly, though, I just want to return some sanity to the world again. Just a little. Whoever wins the American election is going to have his or her hands full, and it'll take years to clean up the farm after such an enormous, long-lasting twister has hit it full on. In some ways, it's like that big whole in the ground in New York City that still hasn't been re-built. It's a monumental clean-up job, but you've got to at least have the right person with their hand on the broom.

Still, I don't think they need a Superman (or Superwoman) for the job. They just need someone who thinks it's possible to stand for truth and justice, while making "the American way" something other than the punchline of a joke.

Up, up, and away!