Martin LeFevre: The Hole In America’s Soul

The black goo spewing from the abyss is a complete metaphor for the hole in America’s soul. Indeed, the dark crude erupting in the Gulf of Mexico is so rich in metaphysical symbolism, that one can’t help but heed the call to “drill, baby drill.”

We thought Barack had capped the Bush years, but his best shot turned out not to be a graceful three-pointer from beyond the circle, but just more corporate junk shots from Washington.

BP and the federal government supposedly have things under control now. Or so Tony Hayward and President Obama are saying.

If you have trouble telling which one is in charge, that’s because at bottom there’s essentially no difference between the most powerful corporations, and the United States government.

The crude extruding in the Gulf of Mexico has exposed Obama’s core weakness—he’s an obsessively cerebral president unable to recapitulate the mandate of the stirring candidate at the moment the nation most needs it.

Barack seems incapable of an expression of genuine feeling. Ironically, given that he rode a clean wave of inspiration into office, you just don’t sense any outrage and passion from the guy. It makes you wonder whether the “Yes we can” campaign was a scam perpetrated on the American people. Is that why he smiles with restrained annoyance at people at public rallies whenever they start shouting that slogan?

As an editor-friend said in a recent letter, “Obama is not the change we were looking for, but given the alternatives, the best we could get.” At the political level, I would agree.

But pardon a philosopher for asking a metaphysical question: Is Obama worse than Bush? At least we knew what we got in Bush, and he didn’t crush the hopes of people whose hopes weren’t already crushed.

It’s time to stop mourning and wearing black for the loss of the American spirit however. After all, if this isn’t bottom—an oil volcano a mile down in the Gulf’s seabed—there won’t be one at this time.

There’s still a strange sense of resignation in the land, as if the only thing that mattered is a ‘way of life’ for the people in Louisiana--a microcosm of a dead and gone way of life in America. People are sentimentally projecting their grief onto photos of feathered friends coated in tar, as if we’d suddenly become a nation that cares about animals, other than our dogs.

The country floats along, adrift on its unexpectedly apparent sea of physical and metaphysical pollution, in a state of unaddressed mourning, with women, men, and children draped in black for every occasion.

The high school graduation notice of my youngest sister’s oldest boy came in the mail today. In the family photo, parents, daughter, and the two sons are all donned in matching black attire, perfectly posed with happy faces.

That’s a bit much, but de rigueur in America these days. Asking family or anyone else what or whom they’re mourning receives not a quizzical look, but a slightly reproachful one. People know at some level they’re conforming to the outward expression of inward deadness, though it’s a faux pas of the highest order to draw attention to it.

But it’s the additional photo of the two boys and girl that stopped me. Against a jet-black background, my 12, 16, and 18 year-old nephews and niece are set, their black tops blending in seamlessly with their environment.

I lived in the late great Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco 20 years after the explosion of flower power and the summer of love sent paroxysms of panic across America, and cultural shock waves throughout the world. As we all know, that brief interlude in creativity and foolishness was soon swallowed and absorbed by the dark tide of the dominant culture. But we have forgotten the innocent best, while increasingly venerating the dissolute worst of those times.

Even as an 18 year-old Midwestern kid during the heyday of the hippie/anti-war movement, I felt that the so-called revolution would fail because it had no philosophical foundation. It was all feel good, and what feels good soon feels bad when it wears off, when the yin returns to the reality of being yanked around.

Transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau in the early to mid-19th century came the closest to an effective critique and practical response to the black plumes of American society. But they too were overwhelmed by the dominant culture, at that time in the form of the first industrial war, between the North and South.

America’s Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery, but as Lincoln understood in a way that I hope Obama soon will, what was at stake then, and what is at stake now, is the soul of the American people. This time however, we have to begin by plugging the hole and recovering as much of it as we can.

Most of America’s voices argue that there were much worse times in the nation’s history. But I would argue that the spiritual and intellectual undertow of self-pursuit, privatization, and greed is much more devastating to what used to be called the American spirit than any outbreak of violence, however horrific.

Such times don’t just try the souls of men and women who still have a soul. Nor do they simply demand that we plug the damn hole through which our lifeblood as a people is seeping. The times require a creative explosion, an inner revolution.

Standing at the edge of the continent, we can perhaps better see the trajectory of civilization. Here in California, a few people are beginning to ask: Can lightening strike twice in the same place, this time illuminating all levels and places at once?

Ultimately, the gusher of grease in one of the most beautiful gulfs in the world is one of nature’s last warnings, and clearest proclamations to our age: Quit fouling the Earth; Man is not in Control; Radically Change.

- Martin LeFevre is a contemplative, and non-academic religious and political philosopher. He has been publishing in North America, Latin America, Africa, and Europe (and now New Zealand) for 20 years. Email: martinlefevre@sbcglobal.net. The author welcomes comments.

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