Free Things that Can and Cannot Be Said by John; Arundhati; Cusack Roy Page B

Arabia . In Syria, you’re on the side of those who want to depose Assad, right? And then suddenly, you’re with Assad, wanting to fight ISIS. It’s like some crazed, bewildered, rich giant bumbling around in a poor area with his pockets stuffed with money, and lots of weapons—just throwing stuff around. You don’t even really know who you’re giving it to—which murderous faction you are arming against which—feeling very relevant when actually . . . All this destruction that has come in the wake of 9/11, all the countries that have been bombed . . . it ignites and magnifies these ancient antagonisms. They don’t necessarily have to do with the United States; they predate the existence of the United States by centuries. But the United States is unable to understand how irrelevant it is, actually. And how wicked . . . Your short-term gains are the rest of the world’s long-term disasters—for everybody, including yourselves. 8 And, I’m sorry, I’ve been saying you and the United States or America, when I actually mean the US government. There’s a difference. Big one.
    JC: Yeah.
    AR: Conflating the two the way I just did is stupid . . . walking into a trap—it makes it easy for people to say, “Oh, she’s anti-American, he’s anti-American,” when we’re not. Of course not. There are things I love about America. Anyway, what is a country? When people say, “Tell me about India,” I say, “Which India? . . . The land of poetry and mad rebellion? The one that produces haunting music and exquisite textiles? The one that invented the caste system and celebrates the genocide of Muslims and Sikhs and the lynching of Dalits? The country of dollar billionaires? Or the one in which 800 million live on less than half a dollar a day? 9 Which India?” When people say “America,” which one? Bob Dylan’s or Barack Obama’s? New Orleans or New York? Just a few years ago India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh were one country. Actually, we were many countries if you count the princely states. . . . Then the British drew a line, and now we’re three countries, two of them pointing nukes at each other—the radical Hindu bomb and the radical Muslim bomb. 10
    JC: Radical Islam and US exceptionalism are in bed with each other. They’re like lovers, methinks . . .
    AR: It’s a revolving bed in a cheap motel . . . Radical Hinduism is snuggled up somewhere in there, too. It’s hard to keep track of the partners; they change so fast. Each new baby they make is the latest progeny of the means to wage eternal war.
    â€œ Radical Islam and US exceptionalism are in bed with each other. They’re like lovers, methinks . . . ”
    JC: If you help manufacture an enemy that’s really evil, you can point to the fact that it’s really evil, and say, “Hey, it’s really evil.”
    AR: Your enemies are always manufactured to suit your purpose, right? How can you have a good enemy? You have to have an utterly evil enemy—and then the evilness has to progress.
    JC: It has to metastasize, right?
    AR: Yes. And then . . . how often are we going to keep on saying the same things?
    JC: Yeah, you get worn out by it.
    AR: Truly, there’s no alternative to stupidity. Cretinism is the mother of fascism. I have no defense against it, really . . .
    JC: It’s a real problem.
    ( Both laugh )
    AR: It isn’t the lies they tell, it’s the quality of the lies that becomes so humiliating. They’ve stopped caring about even that. It’s all a play. Hiroshima and Nagasaki happen, there are hundreds of thousands of dead, and the curtain comes down, and that’s the end of that. Then Korea happens. Vietnam happens, all that happened in Latin America happens. And every now and then, this curtain comes down and history begins anew. New moralities and new indignations are manufactured . . . in a disappeared