The teeth in the smile
America's karma: Happiness for some paid for by the misery of others


By John Kaminski
 skylax@comcast.net
17th Septembr 2003


There is no light at the end of the tunnel, at least not in this world.


There are those who seek and claim their light by believing in
messiahs or philosophies that provide peace no matter what the
conditions in the world in which they live. But despite the constant
promises of true believers, this type of light is more apt to result in
bloody death over semantic differences than it is in world peace when
one version of the ultimate truth collides with another.


But on the political level, there is simply nowhere to turn. The
world is ruled by guns and greased by bribes, and morality and honesty
seemingly have no place in it, except as pathetic pleas from the
have-nots begging the haves have mercy on them ... lies which are
always ignored without the appropriate gratuity.


The greatest hope of all, democracy, has been revealed to be an
alluring but deceptive scam, as persuasive patrician propaganda
misguides the hordes like a flock of birds whose natural radar has been
somehow scrambled, and the masses cheer for mass murder in the same
enthusiastic tones they spew when rooting for their favorite sports
team.


Personal corruption the notion that everyone has a price beyond
which they cannot maintain their integrity dooms even Jesus's brand of
communism into an exercise of coercion and cupidity, where the cost of
maintaining your honesty can easily be your own life.


And the comfort of that ever-elusive benevolent dictatorship on
which so many of the religions are based fails miserably on the
political level when doctrinal consistency does the death penalty trip
on sensible, individual compassion.


So how do we govern ourselves equitably? Are the choices only
fascism or anarchy? Is the only question a matter of liberty vs.
security? Will we give up everything merely not to be killed by those
who wield more power than we can ever dream of?


So it seems in the world of AD 2003, where the powers of material
consumption reign supreme and the wistful melodies of harmony and
altruism gather mold like obsolete stock certificates in the trashcan of
a fast-buck telephone boiler room.


As a society, and perhaps as a species, we are doomed, condemned by
our shortsightedness to rip off the quick profit and laugh another day
despite the clear knowledge that the pieplate is almost empty, and one
day soon there will be nothing left to eat. And knowing that the feast
is almost over only makes us eat faster.


I believe this is called "whistling past the graveyard," and I also
believe that this is the time in history when this tune can be heard,
almost in unison, being whistled all over the world.


The clock is ticking, and seemingly no one has the sense or the
discipline to develop and implement a conceptual chemotherapy than can
arrest the tragic spread of the cancer known as the rationalization of
human avarice. Everybody's too busy stealing.


Lately I've been canvassing my old friends, many of whom do not know
about my recent evolution as a writer. I've been asking them how they
felt when they learned the disaster called 9/11 was really a political
operation engineered by the highest levels of government in Washington.


Because they are my old friends, many of them respond with a genuine
fraternal concern. How could you possibly believe such a thing, John?


I ask them if they've read the literature how the Twin Towers
could not possibly have been brought down by airplanes, how Arab
hijackers preparing to donate their lives to Allah would not be seen in
strip clubs, how no American official was ever penalized for the
catastrophic failure of the air defense system, how the incriminating
debris was carted away before it could be forensically analyzed, how
officials insisted they didn't know such a deed could happen but
nevertheless knew the names of the hijackers, how the official probe of
the greatest disaster in American history was conducted at one tenth the
cost of the probe into Clinton's blowjob ... and other items. I ask them
if they know the details of 9/11, if they've bothered to look into it.


They always say no. It's just too depressing to contemplate. And
then comes the clincher. They always say, "I just know my country
couldn't do something like that to its own people."


Have you ever heard a clearer sign of pervasive brainwashing?


I usually stop trying right at this point. There's simply no sense
in mentioning to such people that the great opportunity that has been
missed in the 9/11 mystery is the possibility of perceiving how America
has raped the world throughout the 20th century, cloaking sophisticated
schemes of exploitation and theft in the noble rhetoric of freedom and
upward mobility. Actually, the mobility for most of those who come in
contact with the forces of American liberation is straight down, into a
square hole in a cemetery. And those are the lucky ones. The unlucky
ones, like so many recent examples in Iraq, are left where they fall to
decompose into rotting detritus and eventually, into dust.


But you can't tell most Americans about this. They shift
uncomfortably, and if they're your friends or those who used to be
your friends before you started conversations like this they merely
smile fraternally, with a feigned compassion that masks an inner panic
and an overwhelming urge to run screaming from the room and straight to
the nearest hard liquor provider.


They smile fraternally, kind of like the smile you get from a
salesperson selling a product he knows you don't need, right after you
tell him you don't need it. It's a particularly American smile, one that
will never have the cognizance linking American prosperity to dead,
dark-skinned peasants.


It is a fake smile that seems to say, "Y'all come back soon." But
you know that if you ever do, the door will be locked as tight as the
door to reality is locked for them.


I read somewhere recently that a baby learns to smile by emulating
the look on the face of his or her loving parent, and by mimicking that
facial expression communicates that their relationship is both
satisfactory and safe.


I also read somewhere else lately that the first impulse in every
laugh is relief that the fear of death has been avoided for yet another
instant.


And I contemplate how someone of little power in a Third World
country would view an American smiling during a debate of someone trying
to explain how his or her own government would have killed a large
number of its own citizens merely to increase the prosperity of its own
privileged class.


This person would not mimic the smile indicating mutual satisfaction
and safety, nor would they laugh reflexively indicating their fear had
been relieved. It would not be the shape of the lips they would see and
respond to. It would be the teeth, and what those brightly polished yet
clenched teeth of vacuous and insincere American smiles have done and
are doing to the rest of the world.




John Kaminski is the author of "America's Autopsy Report," a
collection of his Internet essays. For more information, see
 http://www.johnkaminski.com/