Dispatch From America: Dark Days on This, the Darkest of All Continents

MEMO

Date: 7/30/2006

To: Editor-in-Chief, Psychedelic Kimchi

From: TMH, Foreign Correspondent

RE: Increasingly Dire political situation/cause for hope

I can only hope this dispatch reaches the home offices of Psychedelic Kimchi in some reasonable amount of time. I had to give my text to a llama farmer as he passed through Ellensburg, WA on his way to the coast to ply his wares. He promised me that once there he would give it to a sea-faring compatriot of his who could get it safely out of the country and to civilization. To reveal anymore of my whereabouts or methods would endanger not only my work but also my life and the lives of those who have aided me in my charge: To shine light into this misbegotten, god-forsaken little hole in the world; to attempt to convey the seriousness of our situation in stark enough terms that the international community is forced to take action. Make no mistake friends, America may not be the most pressing human rights crisis yet, but the harbingers are on the horizon, and they portend doom for freedom, egalitarianism and brotherhood.

When accepting the assignment to become embedded in America I was naturally reluctant, but even at my most paranoid I could never have fathomed, while sitting safe and sound in Korea, just how bad, how positively Orwellian, things had gotten in this once proud land.

The newest tactic of the ruling elite (having taken power in a coup d'etat in all but name in 2000) is to distract the voting populace with moronic and inconsequential domestic issues while pursuing an aggressive foreign policy that is steadily bankrupting the nation. Issues as mundane as gay marriage, flag burning (a tactic I have come to refer to as Wag the Flag/Wag the Fag) and deciding on an official language (we made it 230 years without one, but we definitely have to get it done now) are trumpeted in the state-controlled media (FOX News) as life or death matters, while lists of the war casualties are considered unpatriotic and pictures of returning coffins draped in flags are outright banned. The President and his staff engage in forms of blackwhite that would make Big Brother and his Inner Party blush, as they manage "to tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed.”

Is there then, no hope? Has this one proud beacon of freedom and justice gone too far? Has she betrayed her beliefs in a fit of brazen cowardice? Did she lack the courage of her convictions after all? Is there no one left like Joseph Hewes who, on July 3rd, 1776, while representing North Carolina at the continental congress, was informed that a written threat of a bomb in the cellar had been received and responded: "Mr. President, I am against wasting any time searching the cellars. I would as soon be blown to pieces as proclaim to the world that I was frightened by a note"?

Admittedly, the causes for hope had been few and far between. I had begun to despair in my little bunker office in Ellensburg, WA, with the subversive books and the forbidden typewriter stashed in a cupboard in case of an unannounced search. But then something began to happen. Slowly at first, but then it built. There was a brief setback in the middle of the month, but for the most part the phenomenon lasted the entirety of June and it was blissful to behold. 18-8, it wound up, and by the time the dust cleared tonight, the 1st of July, there they sat, where I thought I'd never see them again. The Mariners were a game out of first place in the AL West.

These are dark times indeed, and far be it from me, your humble American correspondent, to sit here and tell you everything's going to be alright. I wouldn't insult your intelligence in such a manner. Things are bleak. The evil, and rich, and stupid hold the power. They hold the cards. It is a blistering hot summer in the Yakima Valley, friends, and every night through my tiny slit of a window in my tiny bunker of a room I see the light fade and I see the darkness fall.

But the sun also rises.

Vive le resistance.

Vive le Ichiro.