Premature Monuments

Posted on April 23, 2003 in Folly Watch

It’s an odd hypocrisy which taunts Saddam Hussein for putting up monuments of himself and naming an international airport for himself while he remains in power and yet insists the time has come for the still extant persons of George Bush Senior and Ronald Reagan to be memorialized. Both men have airports named for them, schools, and other facilities. The previous American practice was to wait for the person to die and allow a little history to pass before the names of the public facilities were changed. Now a certain segment of our society, eager to show what money can buy, has adopted the practice previously reserved to dictators, the creation of a cult of the living.

Hero worship — whether it be of a movie star, a saint, or a politician — negates us and negates our obligations. As citizens, we must remain conscience of our responsibilities towards the country, not leave it in the hands of a “we know better” elite which manipulates our news and our symbols for its own gains. When the present American system of government falls (and is replaced by a more democratic one), one of the first act of the new must be to erase all the names that were bought by wealthy lobbyists, especially of these living devils who set the stage with their appointments and their policies for the present era of war and terrorism.