Americans Unsure Who is Evil in Haiti

ll over the United States the average viewer is being treated to the site of black people running through the streets, burning flags, and throwing shrapnel as well as shooting guns, in the midst of full-blown rebellion. Unfortunately, this isn't in America, it's in Haiti, and Americans everywhere nervously wonder: Who exactly is the bad guy and whose side am I supposed to be on?

It's a fair question, as the White House has yet to make an announcement on where they stand on the Haiti situation, pending a review of the situation by a panel heading south, which should have an answer this coming week. Of course, angry black people are something the Bush administration traditionally stands against, and this is no exception; but the real question for them is, can President Jean-Bertrand Aristide keep the population down and the bucks flowing to America for a few more terms? Or is it time to scrap him and install a new puppet government?

That's right, the p-word: Puppet. The unofficial word is a claymation Gumby would have more spine for standing up to the U.S. than Aristide. Now the U.S. seeks damage control as Aristide finds himself the victim of a coup yet again. The wonderful "liberal" administration of Bill Clinton helped put Aristide back in power after his earlier ousting in 1994, and he was certainly a good lapdog after that. Clinton defended the action as restoring the rightfully-elected Haitian president to power, but nobody in the country bothered asking how he was elected or by whom. In recent years Haitian voter turnout has peaked at about 5%—even for Americans, that's pretty low turnout.

For those Americans with your average high school education, Haiti may seem like a mystery. It is one of Caribbean island nations not communist and therefore of little interest to U.S. diplomats. It is populated almost entirely by black people, but it's not the one Bob Marley is from, and it's not a popular resort. It suffers from extreme poverty and high occurrences of AIDS and HIV, and the last time you saw it on TV may have been when a boatload of refugees were drowning in an effort to reach the continental United States, unless they were being turned back by U.S. coast guard.

There are positive things about Haiti, though, like its friendliness to American investors. When it's not in the midst of revolution, which is admittedly quite often, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere with a per capita income of $250; less than half of its population is literate and 80% of its people live in poverty, which means low, low wages for investors. The U.S.-friendly puppet government, put in place and held there by military force, means no minimum wage and bizarre laws that lower tariffs on imports and punish exports—a country with a high yield of agricultural products can't even produce rice for its own people, since it is cheaper to import it from American agricultural concerns, thanks to commerce legislation.

For the Bush administration, it's obviously good business to enforce "trickle down" economics and protect investments there by reinstalling a U.S.-friendly government by whatever means possible, even militarily, but since it's an election year and the American people are already getting a little sour about our efforts to protect business concerns in the Middle East, the stance our country is going to take on recent Haitian uprisings isn't quite square yet. But if it can be done without lowering anyone's approval rating, you can bet Haitian rebels and their underclass associates, maybe even Aristide himself, will soon join the Octagon of Evil, or whatever shape evil's taking these days.

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This is dedicated to my wife, on the occasion of our three year anniversary. The time… where has it gone? Out of my soul and into you, through several orifices, that's where. And would I change one second of it? Not one second.

Nancy, you are the light in my bedroom early in the morning as I get out of bed for a drink of water, or perhaps to use the bathroom. You are my reason for getting out of bed in the morning, as you wake me up so I will not be late for work. You are my one, my only, my everything, even the things that you would not initially think you are. Like the dressing on my salad that adds flavor and zest to it, or the potato peeler that keeps me from having to eat skins.

When I first saw you all those years ago, when I was dating your friend, I knew we would one day be together. But I thought at the time we would be together in a sort of group thing, with your friend, my then-current girlfriend, and some person you were likewise dating. But fate twists and turns, wobbles and falls down, smashes your glass coffee table and sleeps with your sister. And you became mine, when I called you and asked you if you wanted to bring over my laundry from your friend's house for me.

But Nancy, that small errand became the first of many you would do for me. You would carry my heart on your back like it weighed nothing and bring it back to me, bringing with you hope and happiness and your beautiful smile. Though I'm sure my heart already was pretty heavy, it's as if you shrugged it off and said, "No, I can take it with me. Just throw it on top of the heart. Careful, don't squash it or nothing."

Nancy, you are the song in my heart. A song I never get sick of, like that "I get knocked down but I get up again" song that I at first liked and then got sick of hearing at every football game we went to. What would I do without you? It's a stupid question that you're dumb for asking, because I would not spend a day without you. I would find you anywhere, at any place—I would sail the seven seas and find you, except for the fact I do not have a boat. But it is fine because you are already here.

Where are we going, where will it all end? And how? These are questions I don't really care about.

Sometimes I picture us growing old together, a happy old couple like Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, only you have not died. Sure, your looks are gone and I look more like my dad than I ever wanted to, but we are still together and happy. Though sometimes bored. And our house is full of our children and grandchildren, because you have pampered them all their lives and they refuse to move out and take care of themselves even though they are well old enough. We have had many arguments about this, our future selves, but they are never severe and the words we say we always take back.

This is our life together—yes, one life, as in we are one person. I, Chals, and you, Nancy, we're like Chancy. One person, one mind, two differing sets of genitalia and one large closet full of man and woman clothes. Our independent thought processes buried under the will of our new two-person collective. I refuse to let you go even if you would scream to be released, I would rather be dead. And you feel the same way for me.

So if you're reading this, Nancy, please come back. My friends have moved out of the garage and will not be back, I promise. I miss you. My one, my only, my everything.

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Thanks for offering to let me borrow anything from your CD collection, Joey, but I really have to decline. It's nothing personal, it's just that all your music sucks major wank.

I know most people get all offended when I say that, but c'mon: It's not like it's your fault you don't know good music from the sound of a rhino fart. You were just raised by a torturously dull family and surrounded all your life by automatons who eat what they're served without asking any questions. Some of us manage to break out of that mold and question the mundane garbage surrounding us, but if the most people don't, that's hardly something they're to blame for. But don't worry, because you happened to have hit on a music whiz, and I'm going to spot you while you flex your non-mainstream muscles.

We should start with the easy stuff, of course. Everybody's heard of Pirate's Cove, so let's just go back that far—please tell me you've heard of Pirate's Cove? I mean, I don't see how you could call yourself a fan of '90s grunge rock, as I know you do, and not know it all started with Pirate's Cove in 1985, and their top 100 hit "Chest Pains." Of course you do. I mean, if Cobain had never heard that—well, fuck, I don't need to tell you that Nevermind is a direct song-for-song answer to that third Pirates album. But maybe that's starting too simple. Not trying to insult you or anything.

You can't really fully understand what Pirate's Cove is all about until you know about Sheen and Glue Galaxy. But that goes without saying. A lot of people will tell you that Sheen sold out when they let Ivan Parkichov use that song in his movie Badgrarov, but in their defense, that movie was only supposed to play in the Soviet Union, so they kind of got tricked when it was released to Finland and Norway, too. Yeah, they're not as pure as a band like Bruntshot, but they're a guilty pleasure. Anyway, if it wasn't for their electric pop and the high tenor of lead singer Justin Vincent, Pirate's Cove would probably have sounded like a complete Glue Galaxy knockoff. Like the world needed that!

What's that other band you like? Green Day? Yeah, I suppose they're alright. I mean, alright if you've never heard Hot Chalk. Can you say Green Day completely stole every fucking thing from them? I mean, Chalk even has a song called "Church on Sunday," you telling me that's a coincidence? If that Green Day guy isn't totally copping Chalk lead singer Eddie Ward's singing style, I'll eat my entire 8-track collection. Oh, I suppose you listen to CDs? Vinyl? That's even worse. It's been proven that 8-tracks can carry up to 15% more ambient room sound in any recording. I can't even hear a fucking vinyl record anymore without wanting to jam my fingers right through my ear drums, it's fucking blasphemy when you can hear all that room sound missing. I guess my ears are just more sensitive than yours.

Oh, I remember now—you like the Strokes, right? I like the Strokes, too. Well, I should say I liked the Strokes. Back in 2000, before they sold out and released that album and shit. Don't get me wrong, I'm just saying they're the kind of band who sounds fucking awful when you commit them to a pressed recording. But I still like all those original bootleg live recordings I heard before anyone had heard of them. Now they're just a pale imitation of their former selves.

If you really like the Strokes, you've got to hear this new band I've been listening to—Carnal Rule. They're like the Strokes if they had never given up and just decided to play that shit they play now. Believe me, in six months, nobody but me will have heard of this band. That's the purest proof I need that a band is better than anything anyone else is listening to.

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