Norman Mailer lashes out at ‘self-serving US patriotism’

NORMAN Mailer has sounded what he hopes will be a “wake-up call for America”, warning that the wave of patriotism sweeping the United States as it prepares to go to war with Iraq could swiftly turn into fascism, The Drudge Report said yesterday.

In a vitriolic, 8,000-word article expected to be published in tomorrow’s Sunday Times, the legendary writer tells of his admiration for British patriotism, but lashes out at Tony Blair and President George Bush.

“This century is going to be the most awesome of all centuries to contemplate – there is a real question whether human kind will get to the end of it... America’s so big, so powerful, and so vain ... I get angry when I see it being less than it can be,” the internet news magazine quoted Mailer as saying in the article.

“The British have a love of their country that is profound. They can revile it, tell dirty stories about it. But deep down their patriotism is deep. In America we’re playing musical chairs – don’t get caught without a flag or you’re out of the game.

“Why do we need all this reaffirmation? It’s as if we’re a three hundred pound man who’s seven feet tall, superbly shaped, absolutely powerful, and every three minutes he’s got to reaffirm the fact that his arm pits have a wonderful odour.

“We don’t need compulsive, self-serving patriotism. It’s odious.

Mailer, who supported the previous Bush administration during the 1991 Gulf war – reportedly because he felt the United States was failing and needed a war – tells Americans that “when you have a great country it’s your duty to be critical of it so it can become even greater...

“Culturally, emotionally America is growing more loutish, arrogant, and vain. I detest this totally promiscuous patriotism. Wave a little flag and become a good person? Ugly.

“If we have a depression or fall into desperate economic times, I don’t know what’s going to hold the country together...

“There’s just too much anger here, too much ruptured vanity, too much shock, too much identity crisis. And worst of all, too much patriotism. Patriotism in a country that’s failing has a logical tendency to turn fascistic.”

Mailer writes that after 11 September Americans appear to have lost their perspective. “Let’s suppose ten people are killed by a small bomb on a street corner in some city in America. The first thing to understand is that there are 280 million Americans. So, there’s one chance in 28 million you're going to be one of those people.

“By such heartless means of calculation, the 3,000 deaths in the Twin Towers came approximately to one mortality for every 90,000 Americans. Your chances of dying if you drive a car are one in 7,000 each year. We seem perfectly ready to put up with automobile statistics. I fear I am ready to say there is a tolerable level to terror... ”

Mailer accuses Tony Blair of being a US “toady”, but leaves his most vicious criticism for President George Bush.

“One of the things I’ve always found least attractive about Tony Blair was his toadyish attitude toward Clinton,” he writes. “Clinton made a point of surrounding himself with people who might be 90 per cent as intelligent as himself, but never his equal. Bush is smart enough to know that he couldn’t possibly do the same, or the country would be run by morons.”