America's Deadliest" is a book of wisdom
and wit that ponders "how this world became so unbearably cruel, corrupt,
unjust, and stupid?" In a pointillistic
approach, sowing aphoristic seeds for thought, Blum enumerates instances of
that cruelty, often with wry, pained commentary. "War can be seen as America's religion," he
tells us. Reflecting on Obama's
octupling Bush's number of drones used to assassinate, collaterally kill and
terrorize, he affirms: "Obama is one of the worst things that has ever happened
to the American left." And, he avers, "Capitalism
is the theory that the worst people, acting from their worst motives, will
somehow produce the most good." And then
turns around and reminds us--lest we forget--how the mass media have invaded our
lives, with memes about patriotism, democracy, God, the "good life": "Can it be
imagined that an American president would openly implore America's young people
to fight a foreign war to defend "capitalism'?" he wonders. "The word itself has largely gone out of
fashion. The approved references now are
to the market economy, free market, free enterprise, or private enterprise."
Cynthia
McKinney writes that the book is "corruscating, eye-opening, and
essential." Oliver Stone calls it a
"fireball of terse information ."
Like Howard Zinn,
Ralph Nader, Paul Craig Roberts, Cindy Sheehan and Bradley Manning, Blum is
committed to setting the historical record straight. His book is dangerous. Steadfast, immutable "truths" one has taken
for granted--often since childhood--are exposed as hollow baubles to entertain
the un/mis/and dis-informed. One such
Blumism recollects Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez's account of a videotape with a
very undiplomatic Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and cowboy George Bush:
"'We've got to smash somebody's ass quickly,'" Powell said. "'We must have a brute demonstration of
power.' Then Bush spoke: 'Kick ass! If somebody tries to stop the march to
democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! " Stay strong! " Kill them! "
We are going to wipe them out!'"
Blum's
intellectual resources are as keen as anyone's writing today. He also adds an ample measure of humanity to
his trenchant critiques. He juxtaposes
the noble rhetoric of our professed values with the mordant facts of our
deeds. The cognitive dissonance makes
for a memorable, very unpretty picture of how an immensely privileged people
lost themselves, while gorging on junk food, junk politics, junk economics,
junk education, junk media. Like an
Isaiah, a Jeremiah, he lambastes his own--us!--flaying layers of hypocrisy and
betrayals while seeking to reveal the core values of human dignity, empathy and
moral rectitude.
Gary
Corseri has published
and posted prose, poetry and dramas at hundreds of periodicals and websites
worldwide, including OpEdNews, The Village Voice, CommonDreams, CounterPunch, The
New York Times, Dissident Voice, BraveNewWorld.in. He has published novels, poetry collections
and a literary anthology (edited). His
dramas have been presented on PBS-Atlanta and elsewhere, and he has performed
his work at the Carter Presidential Library.
He has taught in US public schools and prisons, and at American and
Japanese universities. Contact: Email address removed .
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