USA: IN THE BELLY OF THE IMPERIAL WHALE

I spent a week penultimate week in the United States. It was my first visit in ten years. My last visit was in 2000, in the wake of the controversial elections of “hanging and dimpled chards” which inflicted George W. Bush on the world, as the president of the most powerful country in the world. 9-11 would tragically happen and the gloves went off as the reactionary regime of Bush and the neo-conservatives went in search of enemies in the Muslim world. The gung-ho approach of that regime worsened perceptions of the United States around the world, as a super power, or hyper-power, as the French used to describe it, went about diplomacy with a militarist attitude, which alienated the whole world.
I have always had an ambiguous relationship with the United States. On the one hand is the incredible diversity of that huge country; its achievements in science and technology and the success it has made of its economic life not to talk of the warmth of its people. Diversity is a major strength ofthe United States and the vibrancy that it brings to the making of the country cannot be over-emphasized. Everywhere I travelled: Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, you see the multi-cultural influences which weave like a tapestry to making the United States the most unique country in the world, as a nation of emigrants sourced from every culture and influence. Multiculturalism has the strength of a constant renewal and a permanent vibrancy that keeps the country on its toes, and the fact that a lot of those who come from the far-flung comers of the world believe there is an “American Dream” to lap into keeps that innovative spirit alive.
As a young man, I was fascinated with an American education and wanted to study in America but my life took a different trajectory, as I have described on this page in the past Education is certainly something that is taken very seriously and as the leading capitalist country in the world, it is quite good to see that the public school system is central to the formative years of American children. I must not forget the incredible influence of American popular culture on my life for as long as I can remember. I have listened to the jazz greats: Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald from so long ago, and when I was a Disc Jockey on radio I presented Jazz music and other popular forms for years and the influence of the cinematic tradition, the great classics of literature all continue to be some of the great American contributions to the treasure house of human culture. Who can be the same again after reading Mark Twain or the poetry of Langston Hughes or hearing the uniquely rebellious poetry/ music of Gill scot Heron or watching the provocative and insightful cinema of Spike Lee? Yet they are all American!
But there is also the America which gallops around the world like a demented cowboy: the America which killed thousands of people in Korea, in Vietnam and Iraq. That is the America of imperialist arrogance and contempt for the humanity of other peoples and nations. That America is built on the doctrine of might is right because the military industrial complex needs to create weapons of war which must make profit; in the same manner that imperialist transnational corporations must lengthen the margins of profit around the world. In order to keep this world going, even other countries have to implement policies which favour the American way of doing things. This America elaboratelytalks about democracy, but in real terms, it is undemocratic.
It rejects the choice of democracy once it is determined that dictatorship serves its best interest. So Palestinians voted for HAMAS for example, but the Americans reject democracy in that instance, but they accept the massively rigged election in Afghanistan, in the same manner that they organized a coup to topple a democratically-elected Salvador Allende in Chile!
I was also struck by the surfeit of media in the United States. Television is pervasive but most of it is simply trash. There is a consumerist culture which dominates the lives of people. The transition from citizen to consumer wired to buy and drop dead happened in the United States a long time ago! I travelled with a SONY world band radio, to listen to international broadcasting stations and I also had a frequency guide. They were useless in America. The imperialist countries, who broadcast into our homes from London, Washington and Paris, do everything to harvest our minds in manners that suit their imperial interest but spare themselves of the same propaganda output, doing it in a different way, from domestic platforms. There is shared honour among the imperialists to do as they like to us, but respect territorial integrity amongst themselves. In the week that I was in America, President Obamas landmark health care reform bill was passed by Congress, which means that 32million Americans hitherto without health insurance cover will now get a look in. It remains a very divisive issue, with right wing conservatives literally up in arms, egged on by the good-looking but empty-headed, shrill-voiced, Sarah Palin, described as the most powerful individual in the Republican Party now.
That is one of the many contradictions of American life: that the richest country in the world will not give its people free access to health care, and unfortunately for us, it is this uncaring attitude of the American system which is imposed on us as part of a baggage of neo-liberal reforms!
It is this hegemonic duality of remarkable vibrancy, scientific development, and incredible popular culture on the one hand, and the imperialist arrogance of the American ruling class on the other, which has been responsible for my own ambivalent attitude to the United States. But when you travel in the United States and take in its multi-sidedness, you discover that you simply cannot ignore the country in any way. Trust Nigerians to make the best of the vibrancy of the United States; there are Nigerian intellectuals, doctors and scientists making a contribution to the United States. Even our greatest writer, Chinua Achebe, is resident there now. But at near-grass roots levels are Nigerians who run small restaurants selling Nigerian food such as the one where we ate pounded yam and egusi soup in New Jersey. This week, I returned to the United States, this time to travel in California. If you are wondering why I am travelling in America this time, it is because I am on vacation and desperately trying to take my eyes off the ball of Nigerian political life, at least for a week or two. I have visited Barnes and Noble, the American bookshop chain, and you can bet that I have purchased a few really juicy titles, including a history of coffee and of salt, titles on politics, photography and slavery and an intriguing book on Jews and Judaism in African history. I am savouring life in the giant belly of the imperialmAmerican whale!