While Botox is derived from a bacteria that carries a low risk of botulism, many Americans spend millions every year injecting it to reduce wrinkles around the eyes with the hope that it will make them look younger and hide their years. In fact, the cosmetic fix permeates every nook and cranny of American society and is propped up by a multi-million dollar industry. Tummy tucks, facelifts, breast implants, liposuction, hair implants, and penis enlargements are readily available to change our appearance and make us feel better about ourselves.We are indeed a Botox Nation, and every day we celebrate the big lie and the big fix. The cosmetic fix is applied everywhere -to our politics, our wars, our environment, our news. We are incapable of seeing who we are, what we do.
We cannot see our own violence and its impact on the rest of the world. We are a nation that needs to lie about our war in Iraq. The war is now in the process of being “Botoxed” -the wrinkles are being removed and a smooth brow now shows. The environmental crisis has also been Botoxed – all we need to do is drill for more oil; buy up Iraqi oil contracts, and we can drive our big trucks and SUVs as carelessly as before. In politics, it is the same -Presidential candidates are symbolically Botoxed and polished to remove obvious wrinkles and contradictions. Reality must not be allowed to intrude. Let’s face it, the Bush Presidency has been a Botox Presidency par excellence -everything we were told and sold actually served to hide reality from our eyes.
And what do the wrinkles represent? On an individual level they represent the realities we don’t want to see, the wear and tear of living and aging that eventually leaves us with a furrowed brow. But we can’t face aging so we botox the reality as if we can fool mother nature and postpone the inevitable. People do this for practical reasons(jobs, love), but now we have a whole industry telling them they should, that they must, do this. And why not? After all, every other aspect of reality in America has already gotten the cosmetic fix.
Just take a look at our Botox Congress. They are incapable of impeaching the President because they themselves can’t face reality – that they sent over 4000 American youths and over a million Iraqis to their unnecessary deaths. They prefer the “culture of make believe” which says that there was something honorable in our mission in Iraq, that our boys are fighting to “defend America.” So what does Congress do when the Botox has worn off and the realities of war become visible? They vote over and over again to refund the war, and apply more verbal cosmetics and nostrums to make it look better than it really is! The mass media didn’t want us to hear about the real ongoing violence so they completely blacked out the 2008 Winter Soldier testimonies last March. The picture of the war and its every day brutality that the soldiers testified about would have interrupted the ongoing cosmetic fix, shown the wrinkles, and further weakened support for the war.
The network news is the biggest supplier of symbolic Botox to our make believe world. Most of them, including the so called “liberal” New York Times, lied us into this 6 year Iraq war. They told us it was about WMDs, told us that Iraq had a role in 9-11, told us that Iraq was an immediate threat to the United States, even though the country had been militarily devastated in the First Gulf War. We were told that if we didn’t launch a pre-emptive war and attack first, we would be seeing mushroom clouds outside our bedroom windows. Of course, we were told that our own motives were exemplary. We now know that we actually fought the war to liberate the Iraqi people and sow the seeds of democracy throughout the Middle East. Only in a Botox world could this preposterous lie be given even a smidgeon of credibility.
Few of the media or politicians have really accepted responsibility. They may soon be lying us into another war against Iran, or Venezuela, or some other chosen enemy of the Botox oil hungry empire. Since the Iraq war and occupation, the media have been systematically applying the cosmetic fix to the war – the military slaughter in Falluja, Haditha, the realities of the “surge”, were deliberately hidden from our perceptions. I guess such depictions would have been just too real for us to see.
Remember the attempt by the Bush administration at the beginning of the war to prevent us from seeing pictures of caskets filled with dead Americans? That’s what I mean when I say this war has been “Botoxed.” Its been made to look a lot better than it is.
The war is in reality a crime against humanity, an unnecessary war of aggression, according to the standard set down at Nuremburg. But we cannot be allowed to see or grasp this reality, can we? So Congress keeps on funding the war. And why not? In the Botox nation no one’s responsible because no one has been or will be made accountable! Everything in America finally gets the cosmetic fix!
{ 0 comments… add one now }