Lament

2003-05-06 - 8:01 a.m.

The other day I watched a documentary called "Dear Jesse." It was an "open letter" to Jesse Helms by a gay man who grew up in North Carolina, a movie that asked North Carolinians what they thought about Senator Helms and his homophobic and racists statements. It was also a larger look at politics in the "south," a territory that most see as a monolithic bastion of the right wing.

The documentary was filmed in 1996, in the months before Jesse ran for reelection to the senate, and while there were some good moments in the documentary (specifically, people talking from a leftist point of view with a Carolinian accent isn't something you see in the media very often), it left me in shock.

Part of the shock was that he managed to get some footage of a young Matthew Shepherd, a couple of years before he was beaten and left dead, the few seconds of Matthew and his then-boyfriend were pasted on the end as a moving "postscript."

But most of the shock was the creeping feeling that the mid- and late-90s were another age. 6 years ago, on a day-by-day basis doesn't feel that long, but I realised that my politics, reflected quite strongly in Dear Jesse, don't reflect the politics of today. 1996 and 2003 are vastly different countries.

I feel like I've been left on the wrong side of some terrible paradigm shift, that the liberties that I -still- take for granted have been taken away without even a show of protest. I feel like I could suddenly find myself living in a world where homophobia is a -real- threat to me (it's often been a real threat, truthfully, but it's always been a small threat...along with getting hit by a car or becoming part of the capitalist elite), it felt like, by the end of the documentary, I could find myself on the bad end of a lynching for holding hands with Pookie or for wearing a "peace badge."

Everyone, on all points in the political spectrum, has commented on how September 11th, 2001 has changed things drastically, and while on an intellectual level I saw that, I don't think I ever realized just how true it was. I think I'm finally being struck by just how emotionally removed our society is from the 90s. And it feels like my little social/ideological environment, as well as the environments of my friends and "the left," are suddenly the exception. We're like the leftists in pre-nazi Germany, still thinking up bon-mots to describe the deplorable state of the world while at the same time our rights are being stripped.

I've been scared before, but seeing how much things have changed without yet feeling the effects of those changes has me really concerned.

Star Wars, the heatedly debated missile defence system, will soon be up and running.

People can be arrested without being charged, without knowing what their crime might have been, without knowing what evidence is being held against them.

People are being forced to resign or are out-and-out fired for not toeing the party line of the government.

Book and CD burnings are in vogue again.

Media is owned by so few people, and they all sound off with the same voice: there isn't disagreement, there are only varying degrees of agreement.

France and the US have agreed to using biometric information (finger prints and retinal scans) to help curb terrorism.

The US has successfully managed to wage an illegal war, to win, and to (so far) escape culpability without even showing proof of what "caused" the war in the first place.

Voter apathy remains at a disturbing high in North America.

Talk of a possible new "Cold War" between North America and Europe has been discussed.

For those of us who came to awareness of activism in the 90s, where are we now? It seems like the world is so much more dangerous than it was half a decade ago. It almost seems like we had it frickin' good back then.

I hope this is as far as the pendulum swings, this time.

Cheers,

The Magus

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