The Interregnum Revisited by Copeland Morris

"The absence of objection on the part of the American public and the American media suggested that the truth did not matter, that motive was irrelevant, that the Bush Administration was free to do as it pleased".
--Lewis H. Lapham (From NOTEBOOK, the demonstration effect, Harper's Magazine, June 2003)


Conscience is blunted by silence. And corruption is swift to advance in American public opinion, through an unapologetic indifference to lies. "Disasters sent by the gods cut short our follies in a flash", Robert Fagles writes, in his translation of Antigone. And under the shameful circumstances, reluctant citizens may admit that the Bush Administration has lost all respectability, and has been evasive, mendacious, and incapable of moderation. It does not escape the public mind that there has been ballot tampering, judicial connivance, invisibility of suspects under detention, and a war in Iraq which was made possible by cynical misrepresentations to Congress and the people. This White House has now become both transparent and sinister; and it stands to reason that catastrophe is its best friend, that havoc on the heads of immigrants and the hijacking of our personal lives into databases are only a few of its trespasses.

The Interregnum is an essential concept: a political term familiar to Roman Antiquity. It describes an interval of time when the legitimacy of government has broken down.It may be a metaphor in our present situation; otherwise it could be a long, dark night for many of us. Moral validation is absurd if it makes fanatics of us. But it can happen here. We can stumble if we are unwary. In more ways than one, it's possible to repeat the history that has not been learned. We are potentially Roman and we should admit that much. Like them we might contemplate a regime that has passed away and nervously await the legitimacy of government, as it returns to us. We don't want to mourn the loss of our Republic or feel ashamed when we consider the moral incoherence of preventative war. Dissenting voices will seem more poignant in retrospect if we fail to hear them now. Unspeakable recognition occurs most clearly at the instant when The Interregnum is understood as real.

The Abyss Of Hysteria, Be Warned

In a story that was run in Alternet, entitled The Silencing of Dissent on Graduation Day, By Amy Goodman and Chris Hedges, Democracy Now! (May 22, 2003) Hedges' address to the class at Rockford College, Illinois, was cut short by the antics of a handful of the graduating class. Hedges, a long-time War correspondent and Pulitzer Prize-winner, who reports for the New York Times, was soon speaking without a microphone (it was cut). His address had to be curtailed; and out of concerns for his safety he was escorted from the hall by campus police.

In the Goodman/Hedges article, Hedges answered a question about the response of The New York Times in this way: "Well, they're looking into questions of whether I breached protocol in terms of my very pointed statements about the Iraqi War. I mean, that's something that makes them uncomfortable". He goes on to say that he didn't think his book, War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning (on which his address was based) , was a problem for them in itself.

The reader who takes a look at the text of his speech (in The Rockford Register Star Online) will more likely come to the conclusion that the response of his editors was odd and disturbing.

Athena's Temple at Delphi

Window Of Conscience

I've got a good book to suggest: Chris Hedges' autobiographical, contemporary history, "War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning". In this book he says, among other things that, "War leaves behind not memory but amnesia". There is that violence that remains in the psyche and a legacy of pain that is impossible to calculate. But people try to bury and revise history. They forget. Some have already begun to forget the crimes, the lies. But Chris Hedges' book reminds us of the pity of war.

FREE BURMA COALITION

"Even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man" --Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom From Fear


"Sometimes it is better to have the people of the world on your side than the governments of the world" --Daw Aung San Suu Kyi

FREE BURMA COALITION

"Saints, it has been said, are the sinners who go on trying. So free men are the oppressed who go on trying and who in the process make themselves fit to bear the responsibilities and to uphold the disciplines which will maintain a free society." --Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom From Fear

***

"My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity" --Wilfred Owen

copeland morris DRAFTEES (for Wilfred Owen)

Near sunrise they lean back. As headlights blink,
A bus pulls out. Inside, the boys still shivering,
Still slumped, withdraw into silence in their coats.
While dawn is red the color seems to flee
Invisible flesh and scandalize December.

And it would be better if there were secret messages
To capture the misgivings of these sombre children.
Draftees who suffer obscurity, uncomprehending,
Begin with nothing else; but they don't cry
Or disarm those who will never be recovered.

"Letters from the next of kin to newspapers
Arrive each week"...

Once More, Dear Friends by Grayson Harper

In 1964, the United States invaded a little country in Southeast Asia, which posed no threat to us and had never attacked us. Our excuse for that invasion was the Gulf of Tonkin Affair, in which it was alleged that our battleships were being attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. This turned out to be a pure fabrication. A Boldfaced Lie.

But the American people seemed to swallow it without much question. There was a good deal of hysterical patriotism and flag-waving. And then we watched our children, fresh from high school, go running off to the killing fields.

Now, we just got through invading another one. This time, we were told that the brutal dictator of a small, weak country was in possession of weapons of mass destruction, and that he intended to use them against us at some future date. Not that he ever actually spelled out what he had in mind; we simply decided--in advance--what his intentions were, and we acted on that. We launched a full-scale military attack on a country based on its president's alleged state of mind. It didn't matter that we could no more figure out his state of mind that we could determine the future by a careful reading of tealeaves.

And this is now our nation's accepted war policy. Such will determine the fate of human beings, the possible destruction of towns, cities, and even countries.

And so we appear to have left the world of logic and reason.

Not that any war particularly relies on those things. But with Vietnam, at least we were still pretending they attacked us first, thereby upholding a sacred tradition, dating clear back to the Mexican War. Now, suddenly with Iraq, we're being asked (demanded) to throw out one of our most cherished illusions. This is going to take some getting used to.

Well, I'm not buying it. I don't think Americans really ever swallowed any of those lies in the first place. Well, okay, some of them did. All right, maybe a lot of them did.

But let's be reasonable. Everyone knows that the leadership of the U.S.--from the top down through both houses of Congress--is almost completely corrupted by corporate interests, from Halliburton to Lockheed-Martin, from Exxon-Mobil to Walmart. Everyone knows this. And ever since the days of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, everyone knows our government systematically and habitually lies to us. Not even a largely pro-Administration, pro-war press can prevent all the lies from leaking out of the halls of power. They don't have duct tape enough to plaster over all those cracks.

Recent case in point: Colin Powell's report to the U.N. Security Council about nuclear weapons in Iraq, which we later learned was based on falsified documents. This was flashed across the nation by all the networks and made the front pages of most newspapers. Did it matter to Colin Powell? Not much. Did it make an iota of difference to the American people? A high percentage seemed to say not a bit. They just waved their flags, looked the other way, and off we went again.

There's nothing new about any of this. Take the Mexican War--the granddaddy, the crucible for just about all our subsequent wars. There was President James Polk doing everything he could to invade a country without seeming to invade. Meanwhile, the pro-war press reflected what was on the minds of most Americans, stating that Texas was ours by right, that California would soon follow. Moreover, they said it was our "manifest destiny" to acquire this vast empire, put here by God for the benefit of "our multiplying millions." Thus, war against Mexicans, Indians, whoever got in the way, was completely justified. Indeed, sanctified by religion--just as our current president tried to sanctify our war with Iraq.

Americans have always known what they wanted. And if that means having a ripping good war, so much the better. To that end, the blatant lies and feeble excuses are little more than an archaic formality--"sound and fury, signifying nothing." For, even when Americans surely have known they were being lied to, it doesn't appear to have mattered in the least.

How can this be? Perhaps it is simply because Americans love war. They love gunpowder and fireworks and they love waving the flag. They love the trappings of war, the rousing speeches, the pious prayers for victory, the parades, the guns, the ships, the tanks, the planes, the heroes in uniform, and even sham heroes in flak suits. You can tax them to death, take away their jobs, break their schools, bust their pension funds and steal them blind. But just give them the rocket's red glare, and they'll give you their undying love.

From Blue Norther, A Play by Grayson Harper

ALBERT: Man, I should'a stayed on the loose like you, Stan. I swore I'd never let some woman tie me down.

CLAY: All men say that, Albert.

ALBERT: Did you?

CLAY: Sure.

ALBERT: I thought things would be different with Darla. She was a hippy when I first dated her. She had long straight hair and never wore brassieres. Just those thin little summer dresses. You know, with flowers on 'em? You could see through the flowers in a certain light. See everything she had. Of course, her breasts weren't all that impressive. But I think it was just the idea that they were never--you know--contained in anything. That sort of got to me. She was makin' jewelry back then--out of broken glass. You know, she'd take pop bottles and smash 'em to bits. Now, that's what I call low overhead. She made earrings and necklaces out of that stuff and sold it at craft fairs. That's where I first met her, was at one of those fairs. Now, she works in a mortgage company. On a computer. And she wears business suits. Brown and grey business suits. And plain old white bras. Playtex. She could be a Republican, now, for all I know.

copeland morris THE ROSE...THE MIMOSA

To stand outside the world or within it, facing the rose,
The words are surprised,
As silence is.

And hardly a shelter, intricate mimosa
Barely fends off the oppression of summer, almost without
Shadow.

He thinks of those unpossessed hands that gather
In brilliant vases
A passion.

She thinks of the mimosa, a subtle mist,
A coolness the face can just perceive and bless.