] kac [ weblog ]

Let's start small.... As a native New Yorker, and a big fan of all the Law & Order franchises, one may understand my frustration while watching CSI: NY, which so insultingly shoots in L.A. It's one thing to suffer sitcoms--including Seinfeld--from the last few decades that shot on similar (if not the same) studio sets, or movies where Toronto have served as an Empire City backdrop.

Turns out, the entire CSI franchise shoots in L.A! Fraudulent, I agree. Did you know that furtune cookies were created in America? Restaurants in China didn't start making or serving them until the late 90s--that's 1990s, A.D.! Many of the non-English words on Chinese food menus aren't really Chinese at all.

Remember the Italian actor who played the American Indian who shed a tear over someone throwing a half-empty cup onto the highway? Wasn't it a Italian explorer who "discovered" America, which eventually started the near wipeout of the American Indian (as we know, called Indians because Colombus--whose real name is actually Christobal Colon--thought he had discovered India?

I love the shock of telling some old school-minded "purists" who still voice their preference for a "true" America, and how America doesn't need any immigrants. I especially loved telling someone, a couple of decaces ago, who was expounding how ethnic groups like the Italians represented a rising criminal element and were completely not what America is about, that America was named for an Italian: merchant, explorer and cartographer, Amerigo Vespucci.

Though these misrepresentations provided a source of amusement, the amusement stops when there are lives at stakes. I don't usually discuss politics in my blogs--ironic since the present ubiquity of blogs was spawned by political discussion--but when we are losing the lives of young men and women in a supposed effort to bring democracy to a country, it would be nice to be that shown example of democracy at work.

However, it seems that our President boldly and openly insists he will not hear the words of anyone who doesn't support him. How refreshing that the country voted for a change of course; how dictatorial that the President says he doen't care. Democrats, even some Republicans, voicing their opinions and alternatives to the present course of action--and the new proposal for "more of the same", and it may make no difference at all?! Then what as the use of voting for all of these people?

It becomes more evident every political season how powerless the American public is. The logic is not faulty, but dangerously misleading: The only way to win in Iraq is to stay until the job is done. That is the identical rational of a gambler who argues the only way to win his lost earnings back is to keep throwing money, our "money", on the table. (How ironic, again, that a casino is probably that only place where an American Indian would want the "white man's" stay to be longer!)

Not that it is so easy to just "walk away from the table" in Iraq; whatever mess that would be left would make us look worse, weak, and unmighty in our enemies' eyes, and reckless bullies in the eyes of any country that used to or still supports our actions.

It's just that I would prefer the truth (I hear a Jack Nicholson movie quote here in the back of my head!). I choose to believe that the present administration is not just trying to preserve the President's legacy, but our own as well--I don't believe however that is the only reason they want to stay in Iraq!

The most honest quote of recent note was when President Bush declared that he was "The Decider". Victim of derision by pretty much every comic and/or pundit, but refreshingly to the point. Our democracy really only works because politicians will say--far, far more than they will do--anything to curry favor with the American public to gain political office. Once there, their obligation to that same public dwindles expenentially, until, of course, the next election season.

So when the top politician boldly states during his mandatory last two years in office that popular opinion, as well as that of the House and Senate, does not matter, it exposes the truth about the president and the lack thereof of the democracy that voted him such. We chose him to do our bidding, so to speak, and he has generally, genuinely given us the bird. And there is nothing we can do about it (at least for the next two years)!

Our democracy works only to the extent that we believe it works, and so it does. We believe CSI: Miami is filmed in Miami because we choose to, and we don't know any better. And even when we do know better, we are willing to accept it nonetheless. McDonald's years ago stopped showing commercials where vegetables were being cut on wood cutting boards, cheese was freshly sliced, and hunks of steak were being freshly ground; but since no one ever saw that when they got to McDonald's--where their kitchen looks more like a Dupont lab where the "cooks" all were long white coats. Yet once there, forgive the atmosphere and order our Happy Meals anyway.

We accept our democracy the way it is, as well as the very real freedom we have to even criticize it. However, it would be more prudent in the long run--for the American public, less so for politicians--that the bulk of the "powers that be" of We, the People, on Election Day, is in choosing the "powers that be" of I, the Deciders to patronize and near condescend to us for 2, 4 or 6 years at a time.

Not that I trust the same people who can't decide on which celebrety is a better dancer to decide on issues of national security and foreign relations; just let those same people know that, whether or not the government thinks they can handle the truth or not, the government, for the most part, has decided that they don't deserve the truth.