God Bliss America
by Alan Bisbort

April 22, 2003 -- HARTFORD (apj.us) -- Years ago, when I was going through a patch of self-doubt and decided to seek alternatives to partying my troubles away, I became enamored of yoga and meditation. The vendor, so to speak, of this particular type of yoga meditation -- as I learned, Eastern spirituality has more vendors than Cheney's got pipeline deals -- was a sect headed by a beatific woman from India. The sect's branch in Washington, DC, where I lived, met weekly, and I looked forward to the two hours of meditation like those more inclined toward athleticism than I might look forward to a good hard physical workout.

The meditation regimen made me feel more focused and took me out of that deep dark place where I had long resided. And the people who sat on mats and counted their breaths and chanted their mantras alongside me in that darkened basement room were in the same spiritual boat -- lawyers, musicians, government personnel -- each with a good personal reason for being there. Nobody, to my knowledge, felt like brainwashed Hare Krishna adherents for having partaken of this discipline.

That summer, I decided to visit the ashram in upstate New York that was the worldwide headquarters, so to speak, of this sect of yoga. I'd planned to stay a week, participate in some workshops, hike the surrounding woods, read and meditate upon nature. I did not last out the first weekend. The mandatory KP duty was bad enough, but what really gave me second thoughts were the illustrations of the guru, that grinning Indian woman, that were displayed everywhere one looked. Her enigmatic smile peered down on us from posters and murals and was emblazoned on all the literature handed out to new arrivals. I noticed that some people even wore necklaces with this woman's likeness displayed inside a dangling locket.

The final straw, for me -- the moment when I realized that it was time to turn away from this spiritual path before trekking any further -- was the behavior of the other "pilgrims." Far be it from me to question the motives of other seekers, but something about these "pilgrims" seemed so phony that I could not block it, or them, out of my mind long enough to enjoy the fruits of my own pilgrimage (after all, the key to meditation is to banish any and all niggling dark thoughts).

At first, I thought there must be something wrong with me. Then, I took a closer look at my fellow spiritual travelers. In fact, something about them demanded that you NOT ignore them. Their behavior positively screamed, "LOOK AT ME!" Some, for example, tried to chant louder than anyone else. Some stood up and made spectacles of themselves by throwing back their heads and wallowing like noodling Deadheads in the aisle of a concert hall. Nearly all sported some sort of fetishistic Eastern-style fashion; the more exotic the garb, the more histrionic the caterwauling and writhing of the wearer. To a person, the pilgrims were the most unfriendly group I've ever met with the possible exception of the young Republicans who tried to rough me up at a Bush rally last year.

Most annoyingly of all: THEY NEVER STOPPED. You couldn't even go to the mess hall for your morning granola-gruel without some blissed out Wannabe Moonbeam sitting down nearby and interrupting your thoughts with their mindless (literally) chanting. Enough, already, I muttered at one point, I'm trying to eat my breakfast here! I had an epiphany recently that made me recall that ashram experience.

What I had seen there, in the oneupsmanship of that group's behavior, is not unlike what I sense these days with people displaying their alleged patriotism. I am not against displaying patriotism. I am willing to wager my mortgage that I have had, and displayed, my American flag on all the appropriate occasions years before the vast majority of these folks got in lockstep mit Herr Fleischer, Commandant Busch und Field Marshal von Rumsfeld. My father was buried with full military honors three years ago, and the flag from atop his coffin is one of my most prized possessions. He was a decorated Army colonel, my grandfather was a Japanese prisoner of war during World War II, and my uncle was wounded in the Korean War, and I have nothing but the deepest respect for their service to their country. I also had the good fortune to have been born and raised on American military bases, about which I have nothing but happy and secure memories.

Thus, putting a flag on the porch and a decal on the car is fine with me. What turns me back from this patriotic path are the bandwagon patriots who've joined in the chorus like they gave a damn all along. Something about a behemoth SUV or Hummer with a cloth flag draped from both antennae, a yellow ribbon around the bumper and several menacing bumperstickers is not my idea of loving one's country. (It also violates all rules for the proper display of a flag).

Let me give a for instance from my own neighborhood. I get along famously with my neighbors. They are what you might call "good" Americans. They care about their community, they are not ideological zealots and they respect the opinions of others, even if they don't agree with them. Hell, some are even Republicans.

The one exception that proves my rule is the guy at the end of the block. He has the largest flag I've ever seen outside of a car dealership, draped like a prayer rug from the second floor of his house. He has not one or two, but five separate flag stickers on his gas guzzling extended cab truck (which he really doesn't need, because all he does is putter in his yard). He has the obligatory "SUPPORT YOUR TROOPS" bumpersticker and the menacing dog -- some sort of mongrel offshoot of a pit bull -- which he lets roam free, in clear violation of leash laws. He has illegally carved a driveway entrance onto two separate streets and put down an illegal barrier on a public access road that runs parallel to his driveway because he simply doesn't want anyone to come near his house. (Though this is in clear violation of the law, no one has the energy or time to fight him over it). It is not surprising to me that, both now and before 9-11, he's the least liked person in our neighborhood.

The hallmark of this nouveau patriot's true character occurred last year, when my wife was seven months pregnant with our son. Feeling somewhat impaired, my wife decided to take a shortcut home while walking our dog by detouring along the public utilities road alongside this man's house. He came out and yelled at her, all the while holding his vicious snarling beast by the collar, the implicit message being that he'd think nothing of loosing his dog on a defenseless pregnant woman.

In short, he is a bully and a lout and a profoundly uninteresting man (prior to my having figured this out, I made the mistake of getting in a conversation with him and had to listen to him hold forth about Clinton's penis... even after I'd turned my back and walked inside and shut my front door). It is absolutely no surprise to me that this man has suddenly become the most outwardly patriotic person in our small Connecticut town.

Such extravagant and ostentatious displays of patriotism, in my opinion, often say more about the mental pathology of the person than it does about their love of their country. Much of what passes for patriotic displays these days is more like a psychological fist in the face of anyone who has doubts about the Bush administration, who genuinely questions the sanity, if not the very legitimacy, of this administration, and who, by daring to exercise one's freedom of speech, is somehow putting our troops in peril.

But just look at the sorts of people who are most vociferously propounding this point of view: the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys and Michael Savages and Bill O'Reillys and Ann Coulters. They are all like my despised neighbor: blowhards whose own behavior stands in hypocritical contradiction to everything for which they pretend to stand. Rush is, of course, the quintessential example: his real name is not Rush Limbaugh, he was once on welfare (he's always railing about welfare mothers), he avoided the draft during the Vietnam War via the dubious excuse of an anal cyst, and so on. Stand any of these pretenders up against their own tests of patriotism and they'd fail miserably.

The smiling guru leading these patriots around by the nose is, of course, the smirking chimp himself, George W. Bush: draft dodger, National Guard deserter, drunk driver, dry drunk, aborter, election thief, mass executioner and liar.

The mantra they are chanting goes something like this: "You're either with us or a member of the axis of evil" and their cult of personality is propagated by the most one-sided media on the planet.

And the brainwashing seems to have taken hold.

Witness the following example of mindlessness relayed to me by a member of my own town's council. She was at a gathering of educated, seemingly informed people, and most of them insisted -- despite her increasingly despairing denials -- that Saddam was behind the events of September 11th, 2001. These people would not hear the truth: that the hijackers were mostly Saudis and Egyptians, two of our valued allies, and that the Bush family has had a long and financially fruitful relationship with the bin Laden family. These are facts. These are not epiphanies that arrive via meditation or grow on the sides of special trees deep in the primordial forest. These are as real as death is real.

And yet, they are denied by sane, educated, "normal" Americans.

Alan Bisbort is a columnist for the Hartford Advocate. His most recent book, coauthored with Parke Puterbaugh, is California Beaches, 3rd edition (Avalon/Foghorn), published this month.