Good Morning Afghanistan!

Terrorism? Don’t believe it… Oil? No way…

Drugs? Yeah, right…

The real reason?

TV.

Seriously. Need proof? OK, this week it was announced that for the first time ever in the war torn country of Afghanistan, American style programming will air, debuting in the form of a new show laughably titled “Good Morning Afghanistan”. Finally! No doubt the entire country of Afghanistan is breathing a collective sigh of relief, having finally procured some good American style TV programming to accompany their delicious American style TV dinners. (Mmm, macaroni and cheese. No doubt the perfect foodstuff for the Afghan digestive tract. Don’t forget the Du Pont yellow dye # 3!)

“Allah is good… How good? Find out this Tuesday, on a very special “Just Don’t Shoot Me” when Dhaviidhad Spahdihazikstash, complete with a sporty new Nike turban, trades his old, sweaty camel in for a shiny new American-made garbage disposal. Coming soon to an Afghani rubble field near you…”

Sure. Why not? I’m sure those new Northern Alliance TV Execs are drooling all over themselves as they eyeball the yet untapped Afghani, bearded and extremely disgruntled male four – to – 84 year old “death to the infidels” market. No doubt the ‘Afghanis’ (Afghanistan money; at 4,700 to a dollar, almost as prized as the Peso) will be flowing like Old Milwaukee at a High School kegger once the Northern Alliance resumes that once lucrative poppy and opium racket those Taliban evildoers did away with a few years back. What were they, stoned? No, the other kind. You think Old Spice sales are brisk in the US? Just wait until those filthy, unwashed heathens half a world away get wind of their new aromatic destiny, courtesy of the tube, the great glassy Allah of America. Plus, once the joys of capitalism are unleashed on the unsuspecting rabble of the Middle East, Afghanistan’s petty and annoying claim of mass starvation will be nothing more than a minor inconvenience. Nothing quiets annoying hunger pangs quite like an evening chock full of must see TV, Afghan-style!

“This week, it’s an all new ‘Real Dusty World’, number seven. Watch the artillery fly when we stick three Pashtoons, two Uzbeks and eight newly veil-less Afghani hotties in a two story cave outside of Kandahar. Brought to you by the many good folks at Unocal and the White House.” (Good luck determining who’s who)

“And let’s not forget Walker, Texas Ranger starring Chuck Norris. This week, Walker, the ‘Texas Ranger’ takes on . . .John Walker, the ‘Taliban Ranger’. How much resistance can a confused 20-year-old 150-LB malnourished Central California kid possibly offer up against Chuck and his tenth – degree black belt? Find out this Friday as these two not-so-distant cousins fight to the finish!”

Hatred of America abroad is about our unyielding allegiance to capitalism and our long-standing practice of arrogantly imposing it upon other cultures as an improvement to their inferior and substandard way of life. That’s why we’re hated. That the Pretzel-choker and co. has neatly pinned it on jealousy of our “values and freedoms” without so much as a whimper of protest speaks volumes to the degree to which we’ve already lost those “values and freedoms.”

Values? What values? I sat in a crowded movie theatre yesterday, surrounded by 200 people, enduring the now mandatory twenty minutes of advertising, theatre rules and trailers before the feature. One of the trailers was for the latest Denzel Washington vehicle, “John Q”. The movie’s plot? A man’s son is unexpectedly felled by an unknown heart ailment, and unless a transplant can be arranged quickly the child will die. Unfortunately, his insurance won’t cover the operation, and hospital policy is to release the child anyway, thus sealing his fate. Denzel, AKA “John Q.” (His hands tied by what must surely be considered an anomaly in the rosy panacea created by merging America’s values and healthcare for profit, right? Hardly. But I digress. Anyway…) John Q/doe now heroically takes the hospital staff hostage, tearfully screaming about burying his son, etc…Fact or fiction? Without Denzel Washington, who could say? Certainly none of the two hundred people I was with seemed to find the movie trailer a reach. A health care system more committed to profit than health and all it’s attendant lack of “values” seemed to be no more of a disurbance to the crowd than their 4.75 bucket of popcorn, (.04 cents to make) oozing with chemicalized artificial butter flavor, (don’t forget the Du Pont yellow dye # 3!) being washed down with a refreshing tub of carbonated sugar water. (Another .04 cents to make)

Those values?

Or is it’s our freedoms? What freedoms? You know, the ones currently best exemplified by Enron, the upper execs all waving cheerfully from the “sell now” lifeboats to the rank and file, gasping for breath handcuffed to Enron’s 401 K Titanic? Whoops! Sorry about the lifeboat shortage, but you know the rules, women and children… last. Not to worry though, a few scapegoats will be found, a few planks will be walked and ultimately nothing will be changed, save for the usual the realignment of legal loopholes; have to do our part to keep the nation’s lawyers out of the soupkitchens! (See the Savings and Loan bailout, junk bond fiasco, etc…) And why should anything be changed? In the greatness of America’s “free market no matter what” philosophy, you’re going to have to break a few of the peasantry’s retirement eggs to make that “anybody in upper management can get rich here in America” omelet.

Thank god there’s enough Lottery Winner pictures, Don Beaupre commercials and Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes envelopes to keep the riff-raff compliant.

As Alexis de Tocqueville (who says the French are worthless?) so insightfully pointed out in the late 1800′s, at least in an aristocracy or a monarchy, the people know up front the reigning, ruling class is out for itself. The most frightening aspect of America to him was the government’s potential to get away with so much more, thanks to the illusion of a government “of, by and for the people.”

Of, by and for the people indeed. I’m sure Afghanistan can hardly wait to exchange their ability to be satisfied with so little for the shimmering oasis of unfettered capitalist consumption.

Mirage my ass!

“Let our backward Afghani brethren emerge from the Dark Ages to watch TV with us, and so too let them graze freely at the limitless trough of capitalism,” we say. “Let them also eat cake!”

Or at least some of Du Pont’s yellow dye # 3.