The United States of Whatever
Tom Wilson 03.09.04

Aaagggh! Thanks to the Republican National Conference being held right now in New York, my life has become unbearable. I've been waking in the middle of night, drenched in cold sweat with a wild look of terror in my eyes. There is one very good reason why Jenna and Barbara Bush, the twin daughters of George W. Bush, have been 'out of the media spotlight' for the last three and a half years - because they put the fear of God into anyone that claps eyes on them. And their very image - those smug, self-satisfied grins that look as though they've just watched some poor Negro being publicly lynched - seems to have burned itself into my retinas.

I'm not sure if these two Medusas actually uttered the word "whatever" during their time centre-stage at the Republican National Convention, but I'd be shocked and awed if they didn't slip it in somewhere. You can just picture their response to a serious political interview: "What is your stance on the Israeli-Palestine conflict? Will further tax-cuts boost the American economy? Should there be a trade-off between state security and personal freedom? Their answers would undoubtedly be the same two syllables - 'What-ever' - spat out in a whiney, nasal accent that would drive any normal person to dig out their own eardrums with the closest item to hand.

"We're not very political," the gum-chewing girls gurgled during their speech. Come again? The Bush twins are the two most political people ever to grace the stage of a Republican conference. They might not back up their beliefs with point-scoring words like 'freedom' and 'democracy', but their very nonchalance says more than any of Arnold Schwarzenegger's quasi-ideological chest beating. Not giving a shiny dime about 'politics' is the most political stance that you can take. It means giving your tacit consent to everything that a corrupt administration carries out. You can tell that Jenna and Barbara would quite happily agree to the torture of brown-skinned people somewhere on the other side of the globe if it meant that they could continue to drive their SUVs to Frat-parties in peace. Which is precisely what is actually happening in America today. They probably don't realise that their oil-intensive existence requires the provision of US support to numerous dictatorships (Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan; Teodoro Mbasogo in Equatorial Guinea; the House of Sa'ud in Saudi Arabia...). But more worryingly, it clearly wouldn't trouble them one jot if they found out.

This is the whole point about modern America. Between making embarrassing movie references (like "America is back" and even worse, "Terminate terrorism") Arnold Schwarzenegger poured scorn on those who claimed that there are 'two Americas' "Our young men and women in uniform do not believe there are two Americas!" he quipped. He obviously never spoke to any black male soldiers, then, who have more chance of going to prison than they do of going to university. Or to anyone with children, who happen to living in the country with the highest level of child poverty in the developed world. America is divided; it is a nation at war, with itself. There are those who believe that the Bush administration is the only thing preventing the floodgates opening to allow gay marriages; abortions on demand; rampant immigration; and compulsory burqas in state schools. And there are those who oppose the regime, who see the way that the world's single hyper-power has come under the control of a clique drawn from the American oil industry. But, for once, Arnie was right. There are not two America's. There are three. There are also those, like Jenna and Barbara, who simply don't give a damn.

Allow me to make a few predictions for the future. The girls are almost certain to wind up like that infinitely more endearing rich-kid, Paris Hilton - the subject of a graphic sex-tape circulated which will make its way onto the internet, probably involving a full American Football team all with pearly-white smiles. As a result, the girls will shoot to fame, and will wind up presenting a youth-oriented TV show. It might look a little like 'Jackass', the MTV series that shows teenagers from the worlds richest nation stapling things to their eyelids, riding bicycles into brick walls and generally bathing in blissful Jenna and Barbara-esque ignorance. In a similar vein, the Bush twins' programme will probably involve a single Hispanic mother, a sum of money that would secure her son's college education, and a number of utterly humiliating challenges. God bless the United States of Whatever.

© Tom Wilson / ZF 2004