I’m With Stupid

There’s really nothing much to do in my small town. But having grown up in picture-perfect suburbia, criss-crossed by plainly paved streets named after the trees that were killed to make way for them, I’m used to that. One learns to take long walks in the wood, join a gym, play outdoor sports (with varying levels of success) and value the friends one has, because apart from dining at restaurants with names like Friendly’s, there’s little like what others would find in more diverse or urbanized areas.

Living in a small town also means renting lots of movies, like I did last Sunday. My brother and I picked “8 Mile,” the movie starring rapper Eminem almost playing himself. For those of you who haven’t seen it, do so. It’s surely not one of the greatest movies of all time, but it is a good deal better than you’d expect. A thoroughly enjoyable, engrossing and dare I say enlightening film.

If your father has a beard and your mother wears hijab, you might also want to wait till they fall asleep.

Living in a small town also means living apart from many of America’s political, social and cultural currents, relegated instead to hearing about them or experiencing them at the book display in Barnes and Noble (There’s one fifteen minutes from my house and I probably keep it in business). But having gone to university for four years in New York City, I experienced 9/11 and the hysteria afterwards. What worried me – or, rather, stunned me – was how seriously people took the threat of terrorism over here in our quaint little town of a few thousand souls. They were really scared people might blow up Westfield Shopping Town, which is so deserted that when my friends from Manhattan visit it during the middle of the day, they ask me: “Haroon, is the mall closed?”

Sympathy with the events of 9/11 is one thing. Freaking out over them, to a degree never before witnessed, is troubling. If there are terrorists out there waiting to strike at America (and that seems doubtful in the short-term), they are certainly not going to attack a little place like Somers, Connecticut. Most people who would wish to blow something up would want to blow up something important, places that are symbolically, economically and politically important. So why is rural America going nuts on a scale I can hardly comprehend?

Living in a small town also means going grocery shopping at stores called “Big Y,” behemoths of foodstuffs and stocks arranged with cold, calculating precision, heaven on earth if it didn’t seem so mundane after all these years. Indeed, most people in the world would love to have affordable access to a place like it. Many would kill for it and many, in fact, do. A few weeks ago I went looking for desserts and found the bakery absolutely mobbed by star-spangled motifs and displays, a patriotic outburst that would only make sense had we defeated Japan and Germany all over again.

I thought to myself, as I searched for the right kind of chocolate fudge cake, that I was now living in an ascendant empire, the most powerful country on earth and perhaps in all of human history. An empire! Not a fake one, like Libya or Iraq, that likes to talk the walk and nothing else. A real empire, the kind that can push a few buttons and send any nemesis to neverland. And there’s nothing anyone out there can do about it.

Can you imagine? I grew up without many friends. That was probably because I was what a nice person, perhaps a school guidance counselor, would call socially awkward. As a result, I had and have a worrisome attachment to books. As a young boy, I’d read tomes of history, spending the day fantasizing about life in imperial Rome, Islamic Constantinople or some other similarly martial, noble and dead civilization. But having felt empire in the aisle of a food market, I decided that I did not like it. Really, I hated it and I loathed it.

So go ahead and rent “8 Mile.” It’s $3.79 at Blockbuster and you can keep it for a whole week. Watch a bunch of kids drive down streets that look like war zones, every other word a curse, with few higher goals than getting some, scoring some weed or the like. They have simple dreams. Not of empire, really, but something a little more touching: Getting a slice of the one they live in.

I’m not going to pretend like I love urban, black culture, that I’m a part of it or that I could even relate to it: I live in an excellent neighborhood, in an excellent home, with excellent opportunities. God blessed me with plenty and not nearly am I thankful enough. Nor do most Americans, or for that matter, most people of the world, have what I have been fortunate to have through no effort of my own. Most people live with small horizons, because and only because they have had no chance to expand them.

President Bush, who cannot speak English properly (I’ll get to that later), has promised that he will rebuild Iraq. For something like $100 billion. Let’s pretend that he’s not lying (I know, I know, but hey, everyone enjoys fantasy – remember how popular Lord of the Rings was?) and that he actually cares about rebuilding Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, which is now doomed to another cycle of fanaticism, oppression and violence. It’s like a rollercoaster, except it’s not fun.

Now, why in the hell would President Bush be willing to spend $100 billion on another country, when he cannot spend that much for education, healthcare or the like in his own? America’s public schools are falling apart. America’s healthcare system is a wreck. Major surgeries and life-saving procedures are out of the reach of most everyone, leaving families in need in debt for the rest of their lives. We have a population made slave to media madness, conglomerates ruling over entertainment, lifestyle and now even education, such that obesity amongst toddlers is now a serious issue in American society. Can you imagine that? I volunteered to teach at an Islamic school, and though I’m pretty young (only 22), the amount of energy a five year-old kid has is disturbing. Like a nucular power plant. And now a significant proportion of kids that age are so fat that they’re at risk for diabetes.

Poor families have little access to nutritious food – their cheapest options include McDonald’s and Taco Bell. Poor families have little access to education. Poor families have little opportunity to advance. Poor families often aren’t families. When Mommy’s getting knocked up when Daddy’s not beating her, there’s no one to cook food, instill values or encourage growth. Young children are not able to fend for themselves. Most people should know that. So why haven’t we struck against it?

We live in an empire ruled over by self-proclaimed religious conservatives, men who invoke God left and right while bombing the rest of the world up and down. I have more respect for the kid on the street who might not have the best values, but only because he hasn’t had the best chances. What of those rich, spoiled brats in power, who tell everyone to be moral, and to hold to faith, while simultaneously pursuing greed and gluttony on a global scale?

All countries have this problem. Imam so-and-so in such-and-such town in Pakistan is calling for us to refuse peace with India, while Little Ali and Fatimah are drinking disease-infested water. But it is important we Muslims throw all our money into inter-continental ballistic missiles, so we can lob the wrath of God onto evil little Indian kids drinking disease-infested waters. Ameen.

I don’t like the vulgarity and violence of urban culture, but I respect some of it because it’s honest. I have never come home to see my father drunk. I have never been on welfare. I have never had to go hungry for want of food. I have never seen guns in school. I have never seen drug dealers on the side of my street. I have never seen a lot of things a lot of Americans have.

Being the nerd that I was and am, I’ve read enough to know that when a nation rises flexes its muscles with abandon, then it is in fact in decline. For then it cares more about its power and its territory than it does for its people and their welfare. We all know India and Pakistan would do well to settle their differences over Kashmir and put the nukes away. Would have. Could have. Should have. The same goes for America, which might do well to think about where in the hell it’s going. The clock, ticking tock, has sounded the alarm bell but nobody listens. This is the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end. China? You might be empire next. Pay close attention. Listen. Learn. Take notes.

People are proud of America’s victory over Iraq and our imperialist project, even describing it as such in mainstream magazines, as if a war that is the equivalent of a grown man beating a four-year old to a pulp is something to be proud of. Not at all are America’s citizens concerned that more and more money is funneled to the military, when there are few significant threats to our safety. Al-Qaeda has been neutered, Saddam has been ejected, and still, we’re on high alert, with weird-color coded bars warning us that President Bush is about to ramble on about the boogeyman and what we must do to stop him. The boogeyman, that is.

Last week, President Bush delivered an address that made a mockery of Shakespeare’s tongue, with sentences so convoluted and meaningless that even his ally, Australia’s Prime Minister, looked away in embarrassment. Yet the TV reporters, working for news channels that now fly the American flag as part of their logo, declared, “It’s good to see the President makes an effort speak on the level of the common man.”

Excuse me? Basically, the reporter believes that the average American is a moron and President Bush is only trying to connect to said moron. Please. President Bush was not lowering himself, he was visibly straining to find the right, monosyllabic words – though his grammar still lacked in many respects, we can ignore that, because who after all can do two things at once?

If the average American does speak at the level President Bush does, this should be cause for concern. If. I’m not entirely convinced. But I do know that Eminem has more command of the English language than does our emperor. That, at the least, should be cause for us to go and see his movie.