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CounterPunch
March 22,
2003
Drowning in Niceness
The
Lessons of Elizabeth Smart
By GORDON SOLBERG
When Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped from her home
last June, she was taken to a camp only 3 miles from her home,
from which she evidently made no attempt to escape. When she
was apprehended 9 months later, she had taken a new name and
a new identity. Her relatives say she was brainwashed by her
kidnapper. I say it's obvious that she was already brainwashed
by the "nice" culture she grew up in, which allowed
her to be easily controlled. She was already programmed to be
a "good girl," to be nice to everybody, to get along,
to obey authority. When she was kidnapped, her pre-existing programming
merely transferred her loyalty to her new authority figure, the
kidnapper.
Elizabeth Smart cannot be blamed in any
way for her actions, since she did not make a conscious decision
to obey her kidnapper, or to transfer her loyalty to him. If
there is any blame to be cast, we need to look at the nature
of the conventionally "nice," fundamentalist culture
she grew up in.
There is a lot of security, and often
a very comfortable living, to be had from following "the
path most traveled." This path can be called "the lifestyle
freeway" -- it's a broad, easy highway (the path Jesus said
leads to destruction, but that's another essay). Everybody seems
to be doing it, so why not you? It's simple -- just follow the
guidelines that have already been laid out for you to follow.
There's no need to invent anything, or make any difficult decisions.
One merely has to accept the traditional religious beliefs (fundamentalist
Christian), the traditional lifestyle (high impact consumer),
and traditional politics (conservative, almost always Republican).
At all times, get along. Be nice. Don't make waves.
There is no need for overt coercion within
this culture. Everybody is always so upbeat and friendly. Elizabeth
Smart's programming boiled down to, "be a good girl."
This meant always being polite, always being helpful, and always
doing what you are told. Of course, everybody is always very
polite whenever they ask you to do anything. And when you do
it, they say "Thank you; you are a good girl." It's
easy to feel secure and well-loved within this insular little
world.
There is no room for doubt or skepticism
here. Life is good, and a good life is guaranteed for all who
truly believe. There will always be plenty to eat, nice clothes,
a safe bed to sleep in, good friends at school and church, the
friendly neighborhood policeman to lock up criminals. Jesus died
for our sins, so the afterlife is already taken care of. What
a blessing our life is. America is the best of all possible worlds
-- isn't America nice, and aren't we Americans nice people.
Some children, upon reaching adolescence,
rebel against their childhood programming. When this happens,
the coercion of the "nice culture" becomes explicit.
If children refuse to behave, then they will be argued with,
and pressured to conform. Those who persist in their rebellion
become the prodigals, the black sheep. Every family seems to
have a black sheep or two. Often, these black sheep seem to have
traded a certain amount of conventional happiness for a certain
amount of authenticity. Many peaceniks are black sheep.
When the children who didn't reject their
programming become parents, they automatically replicate their
programming with the next generation, and so the cycle continues
-- an entire culture of "nice" people who profess the
expected dogma, follow the expected leaders, and tune out whatever
external events make them feel uncomfortable.
Consider the "pro-life" "Christians
for war." Whenever I remind them of all those poor, unborn
fetuses destroyed by Bush's "shock and awe" massacre,
they go into disconnect mode. George W. Bush would never destroy
fetuses, therefore fetuses are not being destroyed (along with
infants, toddlers, preschoolers, preteens, adolescents, young
adults, adults in their prime, older adults, the elderly, and
those on their deathbeds who would have died soon anyway). Nice
Americans don't want to think about all those fetuses being denied
their right to life by George W. Bush. He is, after all, our
president, and he would never do anything like that.
This ability to disconnect at the slightest
provocation is what makes nice Americans so dangerous, because
this allows our government to get away with any outrage. Our
planes bombed a wedding party? Never heard about it. Our country
supports ruthless dictators except when they control vast amounts
of oil? I never read that anywhere. The entire world opposes
Bush's massacre? That's not what CNN says.
Needless to say, this conventional culture
of nice Americans is what the peace movement has been up against
all along. I don't know about where you live, but in my little
city, it has been very difficult to get anybody to wake up to
the extent of actually doing anything. Making a very generous
estimate, maybe 1% of the population (750 out of 75,000) has
participated in local peace activities. Hopefully, more than
that have contacted their "representatives," but who's
to know? I am going through life feeling like I've got not just
an albatross hanging around my neck, but 10 very nice Americans
as well, pulling me back and dragging me down.
I'm not sure what to do about all these
nice, suffocating Americans I'm surrounded with. There's just
no reasoning with them. If I could emigrate to another planet,
I would have done so 30 years ago. I feel trapped. America is
strangling me. Nice Americans think they're immortal; they think
Jesus will rescue them soon; I think they're deluded. They think
"One Nation Under God" is just dandy as long as they
get to define what "God" is; I think they're theocratic
fascists. I try to keep a positive attitude for pragmatic purposes.
No sense further demoralizing people -- including myself -- who
are half scared to death already. I try to remember the words
of French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, "One does
not have the right to be discouraged." I try to remember
my own words, "Never back down, and never shut up."
I bootstrap myself into thinking that hopefully somehow, surely
somehow, we will tough our way through this and will emerge victorious.
But in the meantime I feel like I'm drowning in niceness that's
really not very nice at all, is it?.
Turning back to Elizabeth Smart, people
are speculating, "did she or didn't she?" Well, of
course she did. She had no choice. She was his "wife,"
wasn't she? But you know what? No matter how "nice"
he may have been to her, and no matter how thoroughly she bought
into his reality, it was still rape. Coercion is coercion. Surely
there is a lesson here for Americans regarding the Bush administration's
relationship with the rest of the world, especially when you
consider that our government doesn't even make the pretense of
being nice anymore.
Gordon Solberg
is a beekeeper who lives near Radium Springs, NM. You can email
him at earth@zianet.com.
Yesterday's
Features
Ben Tripp
Blood
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Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
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Them Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic
Protest for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz-Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
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The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
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