Disgust

W.J. Astore

Disgust is the word today that captures my feelings about the actions of “my” government. Disgust at facilitating and defending the Israeli genocide in Gaza, as casualties among Palestinians soar above 100,000. Disgust that Congress only clamors for more billions for Israel ($14 billion in the Biden administrations’s bill; $17 billion in the alternate bill from the House Speaker) to enable more killing. Disgust at the strenuous efforts being exerted to get $61 billion in more weapons and aid to Ukraine while denying any oversight over or insight into how that money is spent. Disgust at the government seeking more billions to arm Taiwan, possibly stirring up a hornet’s nest of trouble with China. Disgust at constant fear-mongering about Russia hacking the 2024 presidential election, as if that “threat,” such as it is, can’t be countered and contained. Disgust.

To think that as a boy I stuck American flag stickers all over the house, including on the entry door and the washing machine, which must have just thrilled my parents, though I can’t recall them punishing me for it. To think that I saluted the flag innumerable times while standing at attention in uniform while serving in the military for twenty years.

Here’s the thing. I’m not disgusted at America. I’m not disgusted with Americans. I meet people every day who are kind, helpful, and generous, from the nurse who took my blood pressure this morning to the postman who delivered my mail and waved to me this afternoon since I happened to be outside when he came. Americans, generally speaking, are decent people. But there’s something seriously wrong with the U.S. government and its owners and donors, who are basically unaccountable to the rest of us.

Disgust is my prevailing emotion. So I write about it, I speak about it. I could do more, much more, but I suppose I am too risk-averse, too reluctant to act in a disobedient way to prevailing authority. So, in a way, I am part of the problem as well.

I am perplexed at how my fellow Americans can keep voting for men like Biden and Trump. Or any of the “usual suspects” who occupy Congress. Nothing will change for the better if we keep electing the same corrupt no-accounts. Why do we persist in such folly?

I suppose Senor Airman Aaron Bushnell couldn’t take it anymore. He was so disgusted, so demoralized, so damaged, by what he was witnessing in Gaza that he burnt himself alive in front of the Israeli embassy, crying out against genocide and for a free Palestine. When not ignoring his sacrifice, the mainstream media has been busy dismissing him as a radical anarchist raised within a religious cult. He was no “radical.” His “cult” was a devoted Christian community.

Aaron Bushnell, a brave and principled young man, sacrificed himself to draw attention to an ongoing crime against humanity. And so I feel more disgust when I see how his sacrifice is being twisted, when it’s addressed at all, by media sites in America.

Disgust. It’s not enough, I know. But I think when we open our eyes and truly seek hard truths, and truly see them for what they are, maybe then we can begin to move the needle in a better direction.

As a reader here says, hope is not a plan. But hope can sustain us as we come together to make a plan. A plan for a better America, one that isn’t constantly fear-mongering and warmongering, whether here or abroad.

A new America that might make me proud to slap a sticker of the flag on my door, as I did with such innocence a half-century ago on a door now long gone …