[Infowarrior] - Enquiry in America Today

[Richard Forno]

September 1 / 2, 2007
The Don't Show Me State
Enquiry in America Today

http://www.counterpunch.org/tripp09012007.html

By BEN TRIPP

The quality of enquiry, or quirth, is one that has largely evaporated from
American life, like the water set to boil in a pot of frogs intended to
demonstrate that frogs don't know they're being boiled if you raise the
temperature slowly enough. Vestiges of that spirit (of enquiry, not frog
boiling) endure, but they have become almost nonsensical: take Missouri's
motto "The Show Me State", for example, which is not the condition of latent
homosexual voyeurism it seems to describe, rampant among Republican senators
in public lavatories; rather it is an expression of skepticism. Show me
proof, and then we can talk. Not a bad sentiment. Unfortunately one no
longer found in most quarters of the United States.

This may come from the explosion of information to which we are subjected,
in the form of advertising and storytelling (or the amalgamation of both, in
the case of televised programming). 500 channels, we are promised. 500
channels of what? We now have an acronym for it, TMI, which stands for
either "Too Much Information" or "Trombone Meat Infringement" if you prefer
acronyms made up of random words. It is hard to formulate sensible questions
when a million answers have been thrust upon one before the first question
had a chance to get out. Some years ago, the nuclear energy industry in put
out a preemptive "educational campaign" to allay fears expressed by the
millions of Americans that lived alongside the railway routes by which said
industry had decided to move nuclear waste.

The industry patiently and unrelentingly answered all question about the
safety of this program by saying, "this spent fuel" (they call it "spent
fuel" because "nuclear waste" sounds, oh, you know, so negative) "this spent
fuel cannot, and will not, explode." But can it get into the air or the
groundwater? It will not explode. Can it be flung by that commonplace
railway accident, the impact of two trains, out of its containers and into
the sorts of places a fellow is likely to come in contact with it? Is not a
single flesh-rotting molecule of the stuff an absolute guarantee of death?
Hush, little commoners. It will not, cannot explode.

You know what? I have no idea if they're shipping spent doomfuel around on
trains these days, There were too many other things going on around then,
and the subject just got swallowed up along with the fate of Joanie Loves
Chachi or Twin Peaks or whether Boy George could stay off heroin-- I don't
even remember what the distraction de jour was. I suppose they do ship the
stuff by train; the old system with donkeys was hopelessly outmoded even
then. The point is that I haven't even thought about it, me who prides
himself on quirth in abundance. Jesus, I can't even remember what I was
going to ask my fiancée when I go downstairs with an unmatched sock and a
necktie in my hand. It's too much to imagine I'm also going to remember to
ask what's happening to the nuclear waste, let alone demand an answer to
whatever I asked last time. But is the only problem that we Americans suffer
from Trombone Meat Infringement? I think there's something else, as
expressed in a motto ginned up by the Clinton people: "Don't ask, don't
tell".

If ever there was a rubbishy catchphrase dredged up from the large intestine
of a Madison Avenue disinformation factory, this is it. Are you gay? Don't
ask, Sergeant. And Private Danglers, whatever you're thinking in those
lathery showers, think away, but don't tell. Let's all pretend the issue
isn't even there. Homophobia is one of the most pervasive and pointless
problems facing us today: if a certain congressional poofter that recently
made headlines with his clumsy solicitations to an undercover policemen had
merely been able to say, "gold dang, I'm as queer as bull tits", he might
still have a career. Instead, he was forced to make an elaborate defense of
his solicitations by describing in nauseating detail every peculiarity of
his seated bathroom habits (TMI) in an attempt to answer the explicit police
report filed by the officer to whom he made the advances (whose name has not
been released to the press, but apparently he goes by the moniker "Swingin'
Hammer").

What I mean to say is Americans now expect to find something horrible under
every Rock Hudson. [Note to editor: remove previous cheap gag and replace
with simple word "rock"]. Ask the most innocuous question, like "when we
inevitably do leave Iraq, what is our plan for doing so?" and the hideous
truth flashes out like the fangs of a hideous truth: there is no plan. This
all began when someone said, "is that pop combo Milli Vanilli really
singing?" It's been downhill since then. Ask any question regarding the
American Gertztramufiner('sup, yo') and if an answer is forthcoming, it will
certainly be what you least want to hear. One finds oneself not asking.

Then of course there's the explosion of faith-based thinking. We have
started to think Word is better than word. The abstract authority of the
preacher or the evangelist president, the simple demand that they be
trusted, believed, is deadly to any spirit of free thinking, of doubt, and
even the ability to absorb basic information that doesn't quite line up with
what the Daddy Figure is telling you. You add that to the endless streams of
falsehoods and fudging in which every American is bathed today, you got
yourself a nation of dupes.

So have we seen the end of the American tradition of self-reliant doubt?
Will we, as a nation, ever work up the gumption to question the word of the
'expert', the 'authority', the 'talking head' out loud, even if we secretly
lack any faith that we're being told the truth? It appears, I regret to say,
that we're in for a further spell of incuriosity. Maybe it started with the
Reaganite anti-intellectual vogue, or earlier, when Joe McCarthy turned
inquiry into inquisition. It could be the decline of such subjects as
rhetoric, or the decline of schooling in general. Maybe it was Trivial
Pursuit. I (by which I mean me, or the guy most people think is me, because
who can ever really know anybody?) hope we can restart that useful
skepticism that helped us rebuff the blandishments of kings and courtiers.

There are signs this is happening. Only a handful of truly damaged
individuals still believe what the government is telling them any more. A
lot of people are profoundly discouraged by the energy wasted on the fad for
9/11 conspiracy theories, replete with invisible airplanes, missiles
disguised as jumbo jets, and a host of demolitions experts coordinated by a
White House that couldn't organize a birthday party if the kid brought his
own cake. This line of questioning may be misguided, but at least it's
questioning, and I'm glad the doubt is there. Building seven: why did it
drop? I don't know, but Bush sure as hell wasn't behind it. He couldn't drop
his own pants.

The Iran war is going to be a much harder sell than Iraq was, for an example
of progress. You can already see the White House people getting out of
breath just trying to keep the media drumbeat going, regardless of how
compliant the reporting is. There are a million other distractions, for one
thing; for the neocons it's like trying to write a best-selling novel while
being eaten alive by locusts. It's not the media asking the questions, it's
the American public. This is encouraging. If we imagine Wolf Blitzer or that
most closeted of closeteers, Anderson Cooper, is going to pitch anything but
the slowest of softballs to the evil sods destroying this and other nations,
our imaginations have up and quit on us. But ordinary people, meaning
consumers, consumers, and voters, in that order, are asking tougher
questions. They're taking less on faith. They're starting to experience the
thrill of quirth, that feeling of not believing an unproven answer, of not
letting someone else ask the wrong question and trying to pretend the answer
will suffice.

Will it turn into a change in the national character? I don't know. Disco
was just a fad, thank fuck, and probably the intense Evangelical frenzy
gripping certain segments of the population will wear off once old-time
religion turns out to be of less utility than Disco. One can hope. I'll take
a slight decrease in the level of bovine credulity. Hey, Nancy, why are you
really so determined not to oppose Bush? First ask the question, then
question the answer, and at last you'll have a better idea of what the real
question is. For me, it's enough that I remembered why I was boiling a pan
of frogs on the stove.

Ben Tripp, author of Square in the Nuts, is a hack in many mediums. He may
be reached at credel at earthlink.net.

Creative commons copyright 2007 by Ben Tripp