thedrifter
07-04-05, 07:28 AM
Trey Ellis: I Want Us to Be the Good Guys Again
Trey Ellis
Mon Jul 4,12:57 AM ET
HuffingtonPost.com.
The founding fathers were this nation’s first liberals. This is our holiday. If the conservatives had had their way back in 1776 then Tony Blair would now be leading George Bush around by the nose instead of the other way around. (Wait, come to think of it, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.) And of course the great irony of history is that had we lost our war for independence then black folks like me would have been freed thirty years earlier, in 1833, when monarchic Great Britain abolished slavery. But I digress.
Despite its despicable treatment of my people I love my country and, just like the neocons that bumbled us into Iraq, I believe that it is our moral responsibility as the only ones who can, to encourage freedom and democracy throughout the globe. I grew up in the 70s watching Rat Patrol reruns and Vic Morrow’s Combat. My friends and I feasted on films like The Dirty Dozen, Patton and Frank Sinatra’s Von Ryan’s Express. I am enormously proud of my nation for saving the world in WWII and jumped for joy when I was allowed to write the script for the HBO film The Tuskegee Airmen. Ever since I was a kid I’d fantasized about flying a P51 Mustang over wartime Berlin or parachuting into occupied France and joining up with the Resistance (and some lovely French partisan).
I remember studying Greek archaeology in college and we had just visited the oracle at Delphos. Walking through a tiny village nearby an ancient Greek widow rushed out of her home and grabbed my arm.
“Efharisto” she said. “Thank you.”
“Parakalo,” I replied. “You’re welcome,” but for what I had no idea.
That was pretty much the extent of my Greek so I didn’t understand a word of what she kept saying to me but a younger man stepped up and translated for her. Apparently black American GIs had liberated her village from the Nazis forty years ago. She just wanted to thank somebody who looked like those men. I was so proud. My adolescent fantasy had finally come true.
I think all of us Americans had a similar realization of the depth of the world’s gratitude the day after 9/11. We were the world’s father and the day we needed comforting all our kids rushed to our bedside. Then, in about a year and a half, thanks to the Bushies’ palpable contempt for everything beyond our shores, the world’s kindly dad seemed to turn into an uncaring, abusive drunk. Like the sad history of ancient Rome (or to go even farther back in time to the Star Wars epic), a band of a few in power seem hellbent on converting a once shining, noble Republic into a cold, high-handed Empire.
Empires are no fun. They are lonely and can only survive through repressive force and it is not at all the system of government that any of us, on the left or on the right, had envisioned when we last cast our ballots. Instead it is an abuse of power by this present administration and a foolhardy perversion of the noble principles upon which this nation was founded.
I’m not a peacenik per se. I was furious that the Clinton administration didn’t do more and much earlier to stop the bloodshed in Yugoslavia. I thought Colin Powell was downright cowardly to turn the marines around when they were about to restore order in Haiti just because a bunch of thugs were brandishing machetes down by the docks. And Rwanda? Clinton and the U.N. could have stopped the extermination of 800,000 human beings had they deployed even a modest crew of peacekeepers.
Afghanistan? Of course. I wouldn't have minded even a more robust attack on them, especially the Al Qaeda camps, even before 9/11.
And then came Bush's elective war in Iraq, his constant snubbing of the U.N. and the string of international treaties he feels are too beneath him to sign. I don’t think most Americans realize the extent to which our image in the world has devolved from good guy to villain. When one country was recently polled and asked which was a greater threat to global security, Osama bin Laden or George Bush, the country in question was about evenly split. And that country…Canada.
This week's New Yorker cover hit the nail on the head.
Happy Fourth of July
Ellie
Trey Ellis
Mon Jul 4,12:57 AM ET
HuffingtonPost.com.
The founding fathers were this nation’s first liberals. This is our holiday. If the conservatives had had their way back in 1776 then Tony Blair would now be leading George Bush around by the nose instead of the other way around. (Wait, come to think of it, that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.) And of course the great irony of history is that had we lost our war for independence then black folks like me would have been freed thirty years earlier, in 1833, when monarchic Great Britain abolished slavery. But I digress.
Despite its despicable treatment of my people I love my country and, just like the neocons that bumbled us into Iraq, I believe that it is our moral responsibility as the only ones who can, to encourage freedom and democracy throughout the globe. I grew up in the 70s watching Rat Patrol reruns and Vic Morrow’s Combat. My friends and I feasted on films like The Dirty Dozen, Patton and Frank Sinatra’s Von Ryan’s Express. I am enormously proud of my nation for saving the world in WWII and jumped for joy when I was allowed to write the script for the HBO film The Tuskegee Airmen. Ever since I was a kid I’d fantasized about flying a P51 Mustang over wartime Berlin or parachuting into occupied France and joining up with the Resistance (and some lovely French partisan).
I remember studying Greek archaeology in college and we had just visited the oracle at Delphos. Walking through a tiny village nearby an ancient Greek widow rushed out of her home and grabbed my arm.
“Efharisto” she said. “Thank you.”
“Parakalo,” I replied. “You’re welcome,” but for what I had no idea.
That was pretty much the extent of my Greek so I didn’t understand a word of what she kept saying to me but a younger man stepped up and translated for her. Apparently black American GIs had liberated her village from the Nazis forty years ago. She just wanted to thank somebody who looked like those men. I was so proud. My adolescent fantasy had finally come true.
I think all of us Americans had a similar realization of the depth of the world’s gratitude the day after 9/11. We were the world’s father and the day we needed comforting all our kids rushed to our bedside. Then, in about a year and a half, thanks to the Bushies’ palpable contempt for everything beyond our shores, the world’s kindly dad seemed to turn into an uncaring, abusive drunk. Like the sad history of ancient Rome (or to go even farther back in time to the Star Wars epic), a band of a few in power seem hellbent on converting a once shining, noble Republic into a cold, high-handed Empire.
Empires are no fun. They are lonely and can only survive through repressive force and it is not at all the system of government that any of us, on the left or on the right, had envisioned when we last cast our ballots. Instead it is an abuse of power by this present administration and a foolhardy perversion of the noble principles upon which this nation was founded.
I’m not a peacenik per se. I was furious that the Clinton administration didn’t do more and much earlier to stop the bloodshed in Yugoslavia. I thought Colin Powell was downright cowardly to turn the marines around when they were about to restore order in Haiti just because a bunch of thugs were brandishing machetes down by the docks. And Rwanda? Clinton and the U.N. could have stopped the extermination of 800,000 human beings had they deployed even a modest crew of peacekeepers.
Afghanistan? Of course. I wouldn't have minded even a more robust attack on them, especially the Al Qaeda camps, even before 9/11.
And then came Bush's elective war in Iraq, his constant snubbing of the U.N. and the string of international treaties he feels are too beneath him to sign. I don’t think most Americans realize the extent to which our image in the world has devolved from good guy to villain. When one country was recently polled and asked which was a greater threat to global security, Osama bin Laden or George Bush, the country in question was about evenly split. And that country…Canada.
This week's New Yorker cover hit the nail on the head.
Happy Fourth of July
Ellie