The Golem

Don't Burn, Baby, Burn

2012-02-25T22:50:00.002-05:00

The latest instance of our stepping on our shvantz in the Middle East is the burning – or partial burning, which is worse, I guess – of a bunch of Qurans. Now... the most obvious question, which is the first one our sterling media should have asked, but didn't, is: What's the American military doing burning _any_ books in Afghanistan, to say nothing of Qurans? I mean... where in the job description of the average soldier does the phrase “burns books as needed” appear? But apparently it has something to do with security in prisons, or something. But if that's the case, why not just confiscate the books and store them in some safe place until the war is over (heh heh)... or donate them to the nearest mosque? And finally, what on earth business does the American military have “handling religious materials” in other countries? How would we feel if some occupying army came over here and started “handling religious materials”? The question pretty much answers itself.

But there is a broader issue of which this is only one small instance. It has to do with the “face of America” that is presented to the rest of the world. And in the case of military occupations, that face has nothing whatsoever to do with the pompous pronouncements of the president, or the mealy-mouthings of generals in air-conditioned “briefing rooms”. No, it consists mainly of the interactions of our military – our “boots on the ground” -- with the local populace. It's at that interface that our image is formed... and make no mistake, the data gathered at that interface has a way of percolating upward and outward, as we see on a daily basis. Ordinary Afghans don't need CNN to tell them what's happening in their own country, nor do they need NPR to make excuses for our commander-in-chief's aggressive posturing. They can see it right outside their own homes – or inside, in worse cases. So this is where our image is formed, and this is also the seedbed of the next generation of rebels, insurgents, fighters, “terrorists”. We reap dragon's teeth everywhere we go, it seems. And yet the spirit behind the burning of the Qurans – just as the spirit behind the urination scandal – is as pervasive as it is simplistic: We (Americans, that is) are the master race, and you'd better do things our way or accept the consequences. (Or – you'd better at least pretend to be doing things our way, which is all we ever do ourselves.)

Now, I'm not claiming that direct interaction with our troops is the only way the natives get news of what we're doing and what our intentions are; that's just the most immediate source. Other sources include news of Evangelical preachers burning Qurans over here... “contractors” (who turn out to be Evangelicals) being paid to brief our troops about what a horrible religion Islam is... political pep rallies where candidates (including Evangelicals) promise to start wars with any Moslem country we're not already at war with once in office... see any trends here? That's right, class – we're engaged in a religious war here, and there's no sense denying it. The “wall of separation of church and state”, which has never been all that secure on the domestic front, doesn't even exist when it comes to our foreign policy. We have, in effect, declared war on Islam on behalf of Israel and on our own behalf – and, again, no stammering denials by “top officials” either here or overseas is going to convince the Moslems otherwise. The few remaining Moslem leaders who are unambiguously on our side are increasingly accused of treason, treachery, and infidelity.

And while we're on the subject, let me point out some of the things the typical Afghan (or Iraqi, or any other) native _doesn't_ care about; they aren't even on his radar. He doesn't care about our “freedoms”, nor is he particularly envious of them. He doesn't care about the “American way of life”, unless his local imam has told him that it''s hopelessly decadent. He doesn't care about “democracy”, because – once again – all he see of that is what the puppet leaders that we set up do, and how's that supposed to appeal to anyone? He only cares about “regime change” as it directly affects himself, his family, his tribe, his sect. And when it comes to American money... well, if we fly it over there by the planeload, he'll line up to grab whatever he can grab, and run off chuckling like the Beagle Boys in an old Scrooge McDuck comic. But if we're tying to buy loyalty by handing out the long green, forget about it. Might as well try and buy loyalty from a pet rattlesnake.

Well, I don't want to belabor the farcical aspects of our endless wars in the Middle East, because we all know by now – or we should – that none of this matters to the people in charge. They don't care how foolish we look, or how many people we offend, as long as their agenda is pursued with diligence, and that agenda has nothing to do with good will, or enhancing the life style of the natives, or bringing them the blessings of a benign government. And so yes, it is a bit hypocritical of people like Obama to fall over themselves “apologizing” for Quran-burning, and it's equally hypocritical of the Republican candidates to take Obama to task for these apologies. Don't they realize he doesn't mean it? Don't they realize it doesn't matter anyway? All it does is highlight the foolishness of what was, long ago, determined to be a fool's errand.

An Academic Question

2012-02-14T00:19:00.003-05:00

The question came up recently in conversation, why is the academic (college and university) sector so overwhelmingly liberal in its outlook? This has been the case for so long that we've come to take it for granted – of course academicians are liberal; that's just the way it is. And I suppose that this stereotype (which is nonetheless true) falls into line with liberals' own stereotypes – like the one that conservatives are stupid, primitive, ignorant, superstitious, rural, inbred, etc. ... whereas liberals (i.e. themselves) are intelligent, advanced, sophisticated, enlightened, humanistic, compassionate, etc. (This has led to, among other things, the characterization of “compassionate conservatism” as a contradiction in terms.) And I also suppose that American conservatives don't always help themselves much by embracing no-neck Evangelical preachers and allowing into their ranks people who are really and truly bigoted (even if their numbers are a small fraction of those alleged by the liberals). The truth is, there are knuckleheads on both ends of the political spectrum, and all along it. If you want to see liberal ignorance in action, just check out any of the numerous Jesse Jackson- or Al Sharpton-led “rent-a-mobs” over the years. Check out the people who voted for Obama then wondered where “their” money was the day after his inauguration. Check out, for that matter, the “Occupy” crowd, whose sense of entitlement rivals anything the Northeastern elites ever came up with.

The liberals/Democrats certainly have a multi-tiered social structure, with academicians and the media at the top, and politicians a step down (yes, I got that right – politicians are not “in charge” of liberalism, they are its product and are completely dependent on anointing by the people at the top). Below that level are the activists – some in academics, but more in politics, non-profits, churches, unions, and so forth. These are the people whose voices we are most likely to hear on the street, by way of bullhorns – and the people who get interviewed on the Sunday morning “talking heads” shows. They are supposed to represent the masses – the “people”, who are widely assumed to be incapable of speaking for themselves (and when they do, they turn out to be upsettingly conservative in their views, like Joe the Plumber).

Then we have the mass of “educated” liberal voters – the liberal elite as well as populists in fly-over country... followed by “cultural Democrats” (blue-collar or the descendants thereof), followed by the vast reservoir of tax receivers, welfare recipients, resentful minorities, and anyone motivated by envy and a desire for vengeance. Make no mistake, this is a caste system, and is every bit as ossified and impacted as anything you'll find in India. The theoreticians at the top define what is politically correct, the politicians follow their lead, the media and the activists push the agenda as far as possible, imposing it on the rest of us... the “moderates” follow along in lock-step, and the proletariat wait in readiness for the next signal to take to the streets.

So this is, basically, where academics appears in the overall political picture. Of course, their stated task is to educate youth, which they do with – let's admit – an admirable sense of duty and self-sacrifice. Because nothing is more important than to enlist the next generation in the never-ending battle against... well, whatever liberals are against, which is a heck of a lot. It starts, as it must, with the revelation -- to tender and callow youth -- that their parents don't know everything – that their knowledge base doesn't cover the waterfront, and that there are, in fact, viable alternatives to their priorities and values. (Of course, anyone who gets as far as college who hasn't already figured this out might need more than a few hints from professors – but let that go for now.) The process is, in a way, similar to that in Marine Corps basic training – first you forcibly remove all traces of certainty, ego, security, and self-respect, then you rebuild from scratch. The student who staggers, dazed, out of his first philosophy or “poly sci” class will return, like a starving dog, to his victimizers in order to partake of the fare they have substituted for everything he has known up to then. It will be strange and exotic, and contradict common sense, but it will have the advantage of being certified as true by every authority within reach – and youth of that age, contrary to stereotype, value certainty above all... even if that certainty is tied to moral anarchy, political authoritarianism, and economic pipe dreams. As long as it's not what “the old folks” think or say, it's OK.

Thus, the many-faceted mission of academics in our time – the corruption of youth as well as the inoculation of the body politic with a succession of fevers and delusions. And in this latter, they have no ally so vital and indispensable as the media – full of pseudo-intellectuals, poseurs, and frauds. The Sunday morning talking heads are the link between the halls of ivy and the heads of mainstream liberals, just as union bosses, public school teachers, and black preachers are the links between academia and the working classes. The system is admirable in its completeness and in its pseudo-democracy – by which I mean everyone is welcome as long as they know their place. Clearly, anyone who is otherwise qualified for membership – by being black, for instance – but who wanders off the reservation – by being conservative, for instance – is consigned to the outer darkness. This is simply the way the organism defends itself, and it would not have lasted all these many years if it had failed to do so.

Now, you might say, why am I only picking on liberals and Democrats? It's because the topic is academics, and we already know who enjoys the imprimatur of the vast majority of academicians and academic institutions. Plus, most of the so-called "conservatives" in academia and the media -- not to mention in politics -- are frauds. Their "conservatism" -- AKA "neoconservatism" -- is little more than a vehicle for American militarism, which is, historically, more of a liberal/populist cause than one that is truly patriotic or intended to preserve the nation and its citizens' liberties.

But even this is only a snapshot based on the current scene. A proper approach to the question also has to include a historical survey, which is what comes next. If you look back far enough, you find that, to quote an article in a recent issue of Chronicles, concerning medieval universities, “The income from the tuition charged went in large part to maintain the faculty in their pursuit of truth, an activity blessed and further underwritten by the Church, with which universities maintained a close association. Faculty took religious vows and typically lived in poverty, or close to it.” The picture we have from that time is not one of academics and scholarship “versus” the Church, but in harmony with it and with Church teachings. Even the science of that time (and yes, there was science back then, and plenty of it) was conducted within the wider context of faith – there being no better example than the work of St. Albert the Great. It would have been inconceivable to anyone at that time that there could arise a clash and a parting of the ways between science and religion – or between any sort of learning (the humanities, economics, history, etc.) and religion. It was a model of reality based on the premise that everything is part of the created order, and thus worthy of study, but also – again within the context of faith – on accepted premises that did not require scientific proof (logical proof being another matter, as exemplified by the work of Aquinas). To put it another way, science was the figure and faith the ground. The scope of science was broad, but still contained within the broader scope of non- (not anti-) science.

But then a few things happened – to put it mildly. One was the rise of heresies of various kinds, which eventually led to the Protestant Reformation and then, later on, to the secularization of most academic institutions. It was, in effect, a rebellion on all fronts -- spiritual, theological, and philosophical. It was no longer “unquestioning” faith that mattered, but only man, however defined – thus “humanism” became the leading theme in academics. Humanism, and materialism – which is why Marxism found such a ready reception in academic circles and continues to do so. But all academic disciplines suffered to some degree, not the least being economics, which Catholic social teaching was intended to speak to – which it has, but with very little tangible success. By the time the encyclical Rerum Novarum was issued in 1891, the juggernaut of secular, materialistic history, politics, and economics (as exemplified by the Industrial Revolution, socialism, and capitalism) was already up to full speed.

On the scientific side, most people would agree that Galileo's work was the first major battle in a war that continues to this day. Suddenly it appeared that faith and science could be incompatible – and the mindset of the time (and of ours) dictated that science must, inevitably, win. Any time faith and science ran into conflict, or appeared to, it was faith that had to butt out, apologetically. Two other major battles of note are Darwinism, or evolutionary theory, and Freudianism, or psychoanalysis. And what do we have in our time? I would say that the controversy over “when live begins” (in the womb) is paramount – but the battle over evolution rages on, as does a less noisy controversy over human nature. (Are we mere animals? Or animals with a spiritual side? Or animals with an illusion of a spiritual side? Etc.)

Now, I'm not going to try and condense a few libraries' worth of work into a single paragraph, but suffice it to say that, in Galileo's case, the Church may have dug in a bit too hard – or, let's say, it may have over-interpreted what faith requires in the face of observed phenomena. It's not as if faith has boundaries, but it certainly should be able to accommodate any and all true findings about nature; this was certainly the premise upon which St. Albert and St. Thomas operated. Even being willing to consider the validity of evolutionary mechanisms does not require a compromise with faith – providing that said mechanisms are kept within the bounds of science and not granted extra-scientific or metaphysical status. And as for Freud, he dismissed religion as an “illusion”, which is curious considering that he was perfectly open to all other human traits and habits, and anxious to describe their functions – their “survival value” if you will (thus, an area of overlap between Darwinism and Freudianism that today's liberals are curiously phobic about contemplating).

Another problem was that, since the Church and science had different missions and priorities, and spoke a different language, the Church did not have ready scientific answers for Darwin, for example. All the faithful could do was kind of sputter and say, well, it can't be true, because it's against faith – and thus the fault line became wider and deeper. Since then, however, at least one major line of research (and mathematics, and logic) has come along, namely Intelligent Design theory, that is able to ride out and do battle with Darwinism on its own terms... and this, I hasten to add, is not the same as “creation science” or “creationism” -- although liberals love to conflate the two. (This is also why you hear a lot more about "creationism" than about Intelligent Design, since secular materialism has ready answers for creationism, but is strangely silent about Intelligent Design.)

There are also plenty of perfectly sound economic arguments against Marxism, some of which actually predate Marx and some of which have come along since – and many of these are compatible with Catholic social teaching. So in this sense the tide is turning, and we find, in small, isolated pockets of academia, robust theories and models that are a match – and more than a match – for Marx, Darwin, and Freud, but which are also compatible with faith. And yet there is still a long, uphill climb ahead, simply because many areas of science, economics, etc. are no longer (assuming they ever were) matters of fact, data, and logic, but matters of – dare I say it? -- faith.

Yes, there is a “secular faith” that has grown, and broadened, over the years to take in virtually every human endeavor (including religion, if it's studied in an anthropological and/or psychological way) – and its premises are simple (if seldom stated) and self-serving – namely that anything worth study must fit into a “scientific” mold, and that only findings resulting from this process are valid as a basis for human activity (to include education, government, etc.). But at the same time this secular faith is corrupted by decidedly non-scientific premises having to do with the nature of man and the significance (or lack thereof) of human existence. Whether we say that it's all about economics, or survival, or sex, and nothing more, we are are not making a scientific statement. But because this “faith” is purely secular, it fails to answer man's highest needs, including the need for meaning – and it is thus a form of despair. At least the existentialists were willing to go all the way in this regard – if life is meaningless and absurd, then each of us is set back on his own devices; we are lonely people in a lonely world, with naught but cold infinity on either side. But this is taking a very negative “is” and deriving from it an even more negative “ought”. Most so-called humanists don't have this sort of courage – they insist on making up values out of whole cloth as a poor substitute for genuine faith. The problem is that so many of the values they come up with turn readily into catastrophes like revolution, war, totalitarianism, collectivism, etc. If human beings are, somehow, provided with a consciousness, but then given nothing to think about other than their own mortality... well, then doesn't this make us the most pathetic of species? Hateful, even? And sure enough, one typically finds, within the ranks of secular humanists of all stripes, people who hate themselves, but who hate humanity even more. Their “humanism” is just a disguise for despair. Is it really an accident that all attempts to change human nature... to collectivize... create little but death, destruction, and misery? They want us to believe that a life without faith is perfectly benign... that it doesn't hurt anyone else... “live and let live”, “tolerance”, "diversity", and all that – but the results tell a different story. And I don't care whether you're talking about left-wing secular humanism or right-wing fascism; the end result is the same. Deny a big part of human nature, and you deny man. Deny man, and you deny his right to live in a meaningful way – or to live at all. The tragedy of our time is that the academic world, which should be the strongest force against this point of view, is its biggest promoter. But this is a consequence of the great schism I have tried to describe above... and the answer is not for the Church to pull further away from science, and from academics, but to reclaim both and put them back into their rightful place within the larger context of faith.

I know there's much more that could be said on this topic, but I hope I've made a good start.

The Church Non-Militant

2012-02-11T17:43:00.002-05:00

The waves of totalitarianism are lapping at the feet of the American Catholic Church, in the form of the new “initiative” on the part of the Obama administration to provide “reproductive services” to women as part of health plans connected with Catholic institutions. And what are ordinary American Catholics likely to do about it? Yeah, I mean the folks 54% of whom voted for Obama in 2008. Talk about sheep to the slaughter! The chaplain of my local Latin Mass community pointed out that there is nothing new about this – i.e. about Catholics lying down and playing dead in the face of intrusive and persecutory policies on the part of the government. We have tolerated every fresh assault ever since the country was young, so what reason would the government have to expect us to stand firm now? Everyone knows that Catholics have been, historically, tolerated in this country as a source of cheap labor and Democratic votes, but have never been more than second-class citizens. Even John F. Kennedy had to, basically, apostatize in order to keep his campaign for president alive... and it still didn't do him any good in the long run. No, anti-Catholicism has been part of the life blood of America since its founding, and I suppose that we can only claim to have held our own in the areas of primary and secondary education and big-city politics. But even that is a thing of the past, since parochial schools have fallen on hard times and the (admittedly corrupt) big-city machines have fallen victim to the ethnic cleansing of blue-collar whites from the cities. So there's really nothing left of Catholic political or social power these days – and the final blow was (or was supposed to be) the exposure of “pedophile priests” in every diocese and parish. So the Catholic Church in this country is, undoubtedly, on the ropes, politically speaking, without a friend in the world – which means that it's ripe for the picking, especially if you're a Democratic/liberal power-hungry demagogue (including those who are nominally Catholic).

And, for that matter, what is “the Catholic vote”? Does it really exist? I say that it doesn't, for the simple reason that, statistically, the “Catholic vote” is indistinguishable from that of the general populace. And when there is no statistically-significant difference, you have to conclude that the groups are, for all intents and purposes, the same. So if most people would have no objection to the government imposing its own “health care” values on Catholic institutions, why should Catholics? Why, in particular, should Catholics who themselves make use of artificial birth control and even, heaven forbid, abortion? As far as they're concerned, the government is simply validating what they already felt to be the case – that the Church was being a fuddy-duddy, and behind the times, and imposing their rules and standards on everybody.

Of course, what no one has yet mentioned in the current controversy is that anyone working in a Catholic institution who doesn't like the health-care plan that is offered there is free to leave, or to purchase their own policy outside the institution. It's not as if we're talking about a bunch of slaves here, who have no choice of where to work or whom to work for. Another option – also unmentioned to date – is that the Church simply disengage from the institutions in question. I don't know what their legal relationship is now, but I can't imagine that most of them would not survive being independent – if their services are truly needed. I mean, is a hospital or charitable organization going to go out of business just by ceasing to be “Catholic”? Still another option would be for the Church to simply refuse to cooperate, and take the government to court on the matter – and this seems most likely at this point... more likely than capitulation, which would be a complete disaster, because then all we would have to do is wait for the government's next outrageous demand... like that Catholic hospitals start performing abortions, “or else”.

This is, truly, a time for the Church to stand tall and reclaim the moral high ground – yes, even as the “pedophile priest” cases plod drearily through the courts and new revelations crop up with each passing day. It's time to say that the current generation will no longer put up with attacks and insults – and that the “wall of separation of church and state” has to operate both ways, not just to protect the state from religion (which it does very effectively if you're talking about the Catholic Church) but also to protect religion from the state.

The problem is, Catholics have such a long history of compromise – of going along to get along. We know that, outside of the old urban enclaves and a few isolated rural areas, we are in a vast landscape of anti-Catholicism and hostility... or, at the very least, skepticism and distrust. What, after all, was the great fear about John Kennedy? That he would be “more loyal to the Pope than to America”. (Funny how no one seems to have a problem with our politicians being more loyal to Israel than to America...) Well, when it came to JFK, that was the least of their worries – but it's still a good question. If America is a moral country, and if the Catholic Church teaches morality, you would expect their interests and values to seldom, if ever, diverge. Right? The problem is that America embraces a Protestant version of morality, which has little or no use for, for example, Catholic social teachings or “just war” doctrine. So whenever these come into conflict, the Protestants invariably win, while the Catholics are open to charges of disloyalty and not being “real Americans”. And this is, quite simply, why “Catholic” politicians leave the Church behind when they get into politics – the two are incompatible and can never be reconciled. I mean, it must be tough enough to be a politician in a “Catholic country” like Spain or Italy, with all the conflicting pressures; over here it's impossible. And yet, these characters persist in identifying themselves as “Catholic” in the expectation that this will give them some advantage in elections – although if the “Catholic vote” is an illusion, then one has to wonder if it's worth the trouble.

Ideally, the Church should, without delay, excommunicate any politician who supports, in any way, abortion. Occasionally, some isolated bishop threatens to do this, but to my knowledge it has not yet been done. The most they will ever say is that politicians of this sort “have excommunicated themselves”. Yeah, well... whoop-te-do. I think it would more dramatic if they were officially excommunicated, and then driven from church with a flaming sword if they ever tried to receive Communion. That would be the “church militant” -- that would be a church with, if you'll pardon the expression, balls. That would be a church that is unapologetic, assertive, and willing to stand up for its rights, rather than the cringing lap dog we see so much of the time. That would be a church that – come to think of it – acts like the Jews and Moslems do all the time. Imagine that!

It is to the credit of some bishops that they have stood up and protested this most recent offense – and likewise some politicians (even those who are less-than-stellar Catholics). And sure enough, the Obama administration has backed off a bit -- maybe too small a bit to be significant. But it is too little, too late? Is it all too pathetic, like the half-hearted opposition to abortion on the part of the Catholic establishment? Are we afraid that we might wear out our welcome, and be put on boats and shipped back to Europe and Latin America? Well? I mean – what on earth do we have to lose? If the bishops rose up as one man and simply said, do not vote for any politician who supports abortion, period – what's the worst that could happen? Ooo, we might lose our tax-exempt status or something. Well... it's been my observation that, historically speaking, the true moral power of the Catholic Church seems inversely correlated with its material wealth. This is certainly true if you break it down to the level of religious orders, or even dioceses or parishes. We might say that in poverty there is (moral) strength, and in riches there is, inevitably, compromise with the world. What this administration is asking us to do is compromise – fatally – with the world, even when there are no discernible advantages to doing so, and no discernible disadvantages to refusing. If you work day and night for years... decades... centuries to rob the Church of its political and moral influence, what incentives are you then going to offer for its “cooperation”? The answer is – none. We have arrived at the point of brute force... of the last battle between church and state, at least in this country. The Protestants are already fatally compromised, and have been for decades; the Jews have traded their spiritual birthright for a mess of political, social, and economic pottage; the Moslems in this country are the new minority that it's politically correct to hate and oppress... and so who is left to take a stand? Basically, it's the Catholics or no one – and yet we have become so unused to the idea that it seems downright shocking, and possibly in bad taste as well. Wouldn't it be easier just to allow ourselves to sink into the same “melting pot” -- the same morally-indifferent mush as everyone else? But I call to your attention Dore's illustrations of the Inferno – just being in the majority in no guarantee of comfort and security.

Chain of Fools

2012-01-29T17:16:00.002-05:00

We have the “one each” (except for Ron Paul) wins in the three caucuses/primaries so far. We have the road kill brigade – Bachmann, Perry, Cain, and Huntsman. And to add to the, ahem, “drama”, we have the pagan love feast that was the state of the union address. No one on the Republican side wants to face the fact that they are outnumbered by tax receivers, who are the new “silent majority”. All they can do is scurry and scuttle among the three least unelectable candidates, and occasionally feel their faces burning with shame when Ron Paul convicts them of being not really conservative, and shameless war mongers. And all the Democrats have to do is sit back and enjoy the show, secure in the conviction that their man is unbeatable in November. Unbeatable, that is, unless some real disaster intervenes. But what could that possibly be? We've gotten used to our economic woes, having come to accept the way things are as the new status quo... so it's hard to imagine a new economic catastrophe (or revelation about the old one) sufficiently grave to threaten Obama's chances. Plus, the Democrats – to give credit where credit is due – are absolutely brilliant at blaming anything bad that happens to the economy on the Republicans, no matter who's in the White House. Of course, in this they have the unstinting help of the mainstream media, who work day and night to maintain the halo and messianic aura that they placed on Obama's brow a few years back, when he was made president by popular acclaim (the election of 2008 being a mere technicality). If Reagan was the “Teflon president”, then Obama is the guy coated with the same tiles they use on the space shuttle to keep it from burning up on re-entry. When it comes to deflecting blame, his skill level is stratospheric... before which we can only prostrate ourselves and cry “We are not worthy!”

And that's an interesting point, actually. How smart, really, is Obama? He is a first-class orator... “presents well”... has “curb appeal”, as they say in real estate... has an attractive family... but does he really know anything, or is he, basically, the product of a committee? Is he nothing more than a "machine politician" but with more charisma? We know that in George W. Bush's case, for instance, he was completely unable to hide the fact that he was an idiot... and of course Carter's incompetence was so titanic that it was impossible to conceal. But most modern presidents have been, more than anything else, skilled actors – literally in the case of Reagan. So it really is impossible to penetrate far enough to determine whether there is anything inside of that well-groomed head. Clinton may have been intelligent, but his pathological personality was right out there for all to see, and I suspect that his close advisors had plenty of “cringe moments”. The ideal president for our time would, in fact, be someone like the Dowager Empress of China, kept within many layers of walls and guards, and never allowed to be seen or heard in public. We need, in fact, the White House to become the new Holy of Holies, which only the select few can enter, and even then with fear and trembling. I mean... our president is little more than a figurehead anyway, so why not admit it? Why not give in, once and for all, to the personality cult that seems to infect communist societies, despite all of their egalitarian pretenses? The fact that the person occupying the office can change every four or eight years is not a problem; after all, royalty come and go, hereditary dictators come and go... and that doesn't prevent personality cults from arising and being replaced by updated versions. And after all, look at the aura that clings to our presidents long after they retire – they are still called “Mister President”, they still get Secret Service protection, and all the rest of it. They are temporary, and accidental, royalty – but royalty nonetheless. If voting represents the egalitarian side of our system, then abject worship of the presidency, and of the president, represents the authoritarian side. As someone once commented, we Americans are a curious lot in that we elect a king every four years. We mold a man out of clay (or allow him to be molded for us) and then turn around and worship him like a graven image or golden calf. And I suppose that by doing so we actually worship “democracy”, i.e. ourselves.

The amazing thing is that, for a figurehead position, the presidency is nonetheless sought after with a zeal rivaling a religious crusade – which, I suppose, reflects the level of delusion of the people who declare their candidacy. And that delusion persists right through the primaries, the nomination process, the election, and the inauguration – at which point the hapless newly-minted president is finally let in on the secret... namely that he is a glorified servant, and that the real power is totally elsewhere. Oh, he can work at the margins and pursue his own pathetic agenda to some extent, but none of the real decisions – the ones that matter – are his. (The fact that George W. Bush referred to himself as “The Decider” should be sufficient to convince you on that point. No one with any sense would have let him "decide" anything, except maybe his choice of power neckties. He basically spent his eight years in office locked in a room with a bunch of Fisher-Price toys.)

Thus the flush of victory quickly turns into a scapegoating process – and the president begins to grow visibly more gray and worn out. You've seen it – it happens every time. And it's not because of the “pressures of the office” -- it's because the president is in the same position as the “executive monkey” in the classic experiment – he has superficial authority but no real power, and has to take all the blame for everything. And yet people who seem, otherwise, reasonably sane seek after this office more fervently than a drowning man seeks for air. It's a mystery.

Then we have foreign policy, which is a non-factor since Obama's is indistinguishable from the Republicans' (excepting Ron Paul, as usual). We are ready, prepared, and eager to go to war with anybody, at any time, for any reason; this pretty much sums it up. Oh, except that “no reason” also serves as a reason – so all of the bases are covered. But ask yourself this – is there any sort of folly in foreign policy that would turn people – especially his left-wing “peacenik” supporters – against Obama? Would a full-scale war with Iran do it? Doubtful. How about North Korea? Ditto. How about China? He might lose a few votes there, but not many. Our perpetual-war and ever-escalating foreign policy is, in other words, totally risk-free for a president or any other politician – which shows you what we have become as a nation. The liberal left that was so anti-war during Vietnam has developed a strange new respect for war... and the right, e.g. mainline conservatives, have always preferred to shoot first and ask questions later (if ever). So this is one area where we “stand united” as a nation – which is, I guess, why it never comes up in any discussions. But having said all that, it is somewhat possible that Obama is putting off a war with Iran until after the election – on the (realistic) expectation that it would be no more of a “cakewalk” than Iraq was. If he were really confident, he'd take us into war right now – today! But he's smart enough to realize that our goals in war no longer include actually winning, or even having a definite purpose in mind. He is as much a captive of the war racket as anyone else, so has to walk a tightrope between the demands of the war cabal and what he thinks ordinary people would prefer.

So the strategy of the MSM is working admirably, breathtakingly well. The Republican candidates have been forced to highlight each other's many failings – a process which will be taken up by the Democrats with vigor once the real race begins. And no one will be able to accuse them (the Democrats) of mean-spiritedness, because, after all, it's no more than other Republicans have already said. So if Rockjaw Goodhair gets the nomination, it'll be all about his status as a hard-core robber baron and corporate predator. And if The Grinch gets the nomination, it'll be all about his lobbying, his wives, his moon base... you name it. The Republicans are, even as we speak, writing the script for every one of Obama's election speeches; nothing further need be added. And as I said, the overall idea is to keep the Republicans off balance – to make inroads on that “inevitability” issue that seemed to make Goodhair a shoo-in before people found out he was rich.

Of course, the ultimate dream of the Democrats would be if Ron Paul decided, after the convention, to peel off and become a third-party candidate. This would – or so they believe – take a big enough chunk out of the Republican fan base so as to insure the defeat of Goodhair, or Grinch, or whomever. The problem I have with this theory is that I don't think many of Ron Paul's supporters would be caught dead voting for any of the others in a general election – no more than they would be caught voting for Obama. In other words, they are only engaged in the mainstream political process because of Ron Paul, and if he left the scene so would they. In fact, it's just possible that we're talking about people who have seldom if ever voted at all – so the erosion effect may be overestimated. (I know in my case that if I'm given a choice between a war-mongering Christian (or Mormon) Zionist and a socialist, I'm going to cast a write-in vote for Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog.)

So, as I said, everything is going according to plan. The Republicans are in disarray and Obama has his base -- as secure, unthinking, worshipful, and robotic as the North Korean army. The only saving grace in this election is the annoying (to everyone else) persistence of Ron Paul as a thorn in the side of... just about everyone. Pretty much everything he says is an indictment and an accusation – not just of liberalism but also of neoconservatism... and of statism, collectivism, totalitarianism, and big government in general. His are words that are seldom heard in the public forum, and they should make nearly all other politicians and “national leaders” cringe with shame. But we're in a different era of our history now, when the values of old are considered “hate” or some sort of “-ism”, and the new values (or anti-values) are those that any enemy of the United States would gladly aid and abet – either because they agreed with them, or because they knew it would only bring the system crashing down sooner.

So we dive into the deep to “save” the economy of Europe, only to find ourselves in that awkward situation of a lifeguard who isn't strong or skilled enough to get the distressed person off their neck – with the result that they both drown. Or, we commit our armed forces and our national wealth to the “defense” of a very small, very obnoxious country in the Near East, only to find that we've thrown ourselves on their funeral pyre. We are living, in other words, in the era of reductio ad absurdum – where all of the basic premises underlying “the American system” have finally shown their fatal flaws. It's like owning a car with multiple warranties, all of which expire on the same day. It's not that we were “right” before but are “wrong” now – it's that the flaws, like those in a physical structure, were always there but were subliminal... for a while. But they tend to spread and become more serious over time, eventually becoming fatal. It's not – as Pat Buchanan seems to believe – that we were once good, and great, and near-perfect, but have been taken over and co-opted by evil socialists, internationalists, and moral relativists. The seeds of our present discontents were there at the beginning, and have been slowly germinating... and are only now erupting as a mass jungle, to entrap the unwary and snuff out liberties. The fact that we were, apparently, “part of the solution” in times past only showed how much worse off the rest of the world was. But since World War II, we have been in the position of “the ugly American” -- riding in on a white charger to save people, and nations, from themselves... and our efforts are seldom appreciated, especially when people realize what we have to offer in exchange. Would anyone in any other country, witnessing what we are witnessing, really want to have a system like ours to select their leaders? Would anyone want to adopt our model of public education? How many would turn their economic fate over to bankers and the international financial cartel? How many would be willing to go into debt that can never be repaid, but which will be the basis for our servitude for generations to come? How many would be willing to sacrifice the economic future of their country for the sake of some other country (that gives us nothing in return but more demands and insults)? We commit all of these follies, and more – and yet there are people who sincerely want to be “in charge” of this process? I say we declare them all insane, lock them up, and start over.

Shakin' His Booty

2012-01-19T20:17:00.002-05:00

A column by Max Boot in Monday's paper (“Mistakes in military assumptions”) contains more begged questions per column inch than anything else I've read recently. The point he is trying to make is that our defense budget, and our vigilance, and – I would say – our paranoia, cannot, and should not, be reduced one iota just because we appear to have made a strategic withdrawal from Iraq. No, because all of the dangers and perils are still out there! The world is full of drooling, ravening beasts, like cartoon wolves in the Little Red Riding Hood story – and they are, by and large, Moslem, which means less than human... and they are, needless to say, all “terrorists”, which means they don't fight fair. They don't stand up and fight like a man, but use crude weapons like IEDs – whereas we, who are much more gentlemanly, prefer to use unmanned drones.

Well, he doesn't say all of these things in so many words, but they are all strongly implied by what he does say. And his sense of history is somewhat... distorted, let's say. He has what I would call "causality issues". He starts off by criticizing Obama, of all people – a shameless servant of the armaments industry – for allowing our “readiness” to slip while, at the same time, warning against anyone getting excited about a post-Iraq “peace dividend”. In other words, while Obama preaches an endless and perpetual war footing, he's not putting the taxpayers' money where his mouth is – and Boot finds this objectionable. If we are to be in a state of perpetual war, then we should unabashedly provide the appropriate resources, and stop mealy-mouthing! The economy and “social issues” can just pick through whatever's left (if anything) after the war bucks come off the top.

So Boot points out that “defense spending was slashed by $487 billion over 10 years”. “Slashed”!! Now there's a scare word for you. $487 billion over 10 years is about like the average citizen saying they're going to buy one less pack of gum a month. Absolutely no felt need to question the magnitude of our current defense spending – especially how much of it is spent on bona fide “defense” as opposed to wars of aggression, religious crusades, and empire building.

Then we have that “special committee” that – as planned – failed miserably, resulting in an “automatic” $500 billion in additional defense cuts. Well, everyone knew that was a hoax in the first place. Sure, go ahead, hold “defense” hostage in order to force Congress to make budget cuts elsewhere. Actually, the committee's failure was the best possible outcome – now the “social programs” don't get cut and, when the day of reckoning arrives, neither will defense. They'll find a way around it, trust me.

So with all these faulty assumptions, Boot concludes that “the defense budget could shrink by 31 percent over the next decade” -- again, not questioning whether even larger cuts might not be in order. After all, as he points out, previous cuts were 53% post-Korea, 26% post-Vietnam, and 34% post-Cold War. It strikes me that 31% is about right from that perspective. But ah, that was before we were placed on a perpetual war footing by the Regime and its servants in Washington.

But how does Boot make his argument? He seems to believe that the “mistakes of the past” can be summed up in one phrase: “peace dividend”. If there is no such thing, in reality, as real peace, then how can we expect a peace dividend? If the wisest thing to do after any war is to begin preparing for the next war, than anyone who expects a peace dividend is living in a dream world. And I suppose, on some level, he believes that the best way to prevent war is to prepare for war – as he implies by citing previous instances of “failure” in this regard, like World War I, World War II, and Korea. Is it possible that the promoters of perpetual war are actually the realists of our time? And that, paradoxically, if we prepare sufficiently for perpetual war that the result will be perpetual peace? An argument can just as readily be made the other way – that if we prepare for war, we will be more likely to get into wars simply because we are prepared, and feel confident of the result. After all, and as I have pointed out, our post-Vietnam war preparations (despite that 26% cut) made it as easy to engage in the Gulf War as falling off a log. The military was ecstatic, in fact – at last, an opportunity to exorcise the ghosts and demons of Vietnam, and try out all the new “hardware” as well.

But what Boot doesn't ask – because he seems incapable of thinking along these lines – is, was our involvement in World War I really advisable? Was it (for us) a “just war”? Or was it simply an early manifestation of our missionary zeal to remake the world in our own image? Pat Buchanan has even asked if our involvement in World War II was legitimate. Does Boot really believe that if we had hung around Europe after Armistice Day, it would have prevented the rise of National Socialism? How precisely would we have managed to do that – maybe by prohibiting all meetings of over 3 people? And would we have stepped in before Hitler was made chancellor? I mean... you seem to have all the answers, Max, so let's hear it. (And when it comes to Japan, we actively sought out conflict in the Pacific – so how does his position square with that?)

But after World War II, we seemed to have learned a lesson – right? We kept troops in all of the defeated Axis powers, where they remain to this day... but that wasn't enough for Max, no siree! We apparently should have also stationed troops in South Korea in order to prevent an invasion from the north – as if, once again, we had any vital interests in that area. The Korean War may have been a war worth fighting if you were South Korean... but was it really worth all of our own dead and wounded? Then – to descend further into the inferno – we have Vietnam, which no one since has had the nerve to seriously defend. Boot cites many of the problems the Army had in the post-Vietnam era, which presumably led to lack of preparedness. Well, right – because Vietnam was a disaster, Carter punished the military (rather than the real guilty parties) with budget cuts and incompetent civilian leaders. And the “drug use, racial tension and insubordination” that Boot cites were, in many cases, direct or at least indirect symptoms of the Vietnam episode. In other words, one war led to lack of preparedness for the next war (which we didn't fight); it's hard to see how this is accounted for in his model – if war is good, then how can it have such bad effects? Shouldn't wars complement each other?

Curiously, Boot pretty much skips over the Vietnam war per se in his discussion, only citing some sort of mysterious “massive drawdown” in the 1970s. But shame on us! We failed to keep the Russians from invading Afghanistan, and did not respond with military force when the Iranian radicals captured our embassy staff. But let's say the post-Vietnam era was not the debacle that it was. Would we really have jumped into the ring to defend Afghanistan against the Russians, as he implies we should have? What we did do, it seems to me, was much more strategic, which was to support Afghan partisans. The fact that they later morphed into the Taliban... well, that's another story.

And why would we have needed a world-class and global army to rescue the hostages in Iran? This sounds like a small, elite unit operation to me. What kept it from happening was not lack of readiness, but gross incompetence on the part of Carter (who, it can be argued, caused the crisis in the first place by giving the Shah sanctuary). Let's not forget that the hostages were set free about five minutes after Reagan took office – not by an army magically transformed in that short time, but with a promise (made through diplomatic channels) to, basically, vaporize Tehran if they weren't let go.

But all was not lost. Things improved markedly later on, and the evidence for this is our victory in the Gulf War. But then, on the heels of that victory, we once again greedily insisted on a “peace dividend”, and I guess the result was the events of 9/11/2001. I mean, gosh, if we hadn't been so hedonistic we might have managed to prevent 9/11! (Once again, Max, let's see some evidence on this.)

And finally, we reach the bottom of the pit with Iraq and Afghanistan – and yet Boot seems to think that these, as well as all previous, involvements were perfectly jolly, fine, and necessary. He says, for instance, that “our abdication of leadership [after World War I] made a second world war more likely.” Well... who ever said that our involvement in World War I automatically made us a “leader”? A leader over Europe? Did anyone over there agree with that? Only in the feverish delusions of Woodrow Wilson would such a thing ever seem like a reality.

Do you see the reasoning (or lack thereof) here? Whenever anything good happens, it's because we were “prepared” and “ready”. When bad things happen it's because we insisted on doing something else with our lives besides making war. Or, as Richard Spencer pointed out in “Israel and Empire” (Taki's Magazine, June 25, 2008), “Setbacks are opportunities for demanding we redouble our efforts; successes are justifications for a long-term presence. All outcomes lead to the same policy.”* And with the current emphasis on small, agile, elite, high-tech units, why is Boot arguing for what seems to be the massive military structure of wars up through World War II? Isn't it obvious that human wave tactics are a thing of the past? Or maybe he doesn't think so.

And mainly, there is never any question about the justifiability of our war-fighting efforts – any war we get involved in is, by definition, just and proper. The only fault Boot ever finds is that we don't act sooner, or with more resources. Or, that we're not already in any place where war breaks out, in order to nip it in the bud. Clearly, his ideal world would be one in which the United States was heavily armed beyond even the wildest dreams of the Pentagon, and had troops stationed on every acre of land on the planet, in order to keep anyone else from starting anything. The fact that this would be, number one, impossible, and number two, self-defeating doesn't seem to enter his consciousness... nor does the question of whether this should be the sole mission of the United States. Were we really put on this earth to do nothing but police everybody else? While the rest of the world occasionally enjoys periods of peace, this is forbidden to us, because we have a higher duty to perform – and yet who gave us this assignment if not ourselves? Why is our military budget greater than that of the rest of the world combined... unless we really are supposed to be the world's army? But if that's the case, why does the rest of the world typically object to our efforts, and urge us to leave at the earliest possible opportunity (except the ones who are making big money from our military bases, etc.)?

It really is difficult, at times, to tell the difference between a ruling, dominant empire and a bunch of short-tempered, paranoid, delusional dupes. Max Boot is all for empire, but the delusion shows through as bright as day.

*http://takimag.com/article/israel_and_empire#ixzz1jriENEOn

Warfare Art Thou?

2012-01-12T17:49:00.002-05:00

You can't have class warfare without class consciousness. But mere class consciousness isn't enough; there has to be a feeling of injustice to go along with it, plus sufficient motivation to result in action – not just simmering resentment, but out-loud speech and political activity, with the possible addition of physical (“direct”) action.

For one thing, class consciousness of some sort has always been with us – in every known society down through history and in the present day. It is manifested in different ways and called different things, but it's always there, even in the most ostensibly egalitarian societies. (For in those societies, you still have to have someone in charge, and a ruling class or nomenklatura.) So we have classes, castes, estates, orders... what have you, all reflecting what I will claim is the natural state of human society, which is to be, or become, stratified.

But what is, or should be, the basis for this stratification? The old-time royalists will say that “blood” is the thing. A materialist will say land and/or wealth (as will the Protestants with their “prosperity gospel”). Then we have caste systems based on religion, sect, choice of prophet, cult... and race, ethnicity, occupation, place of birth, place of residence... just about anything that can be used to “unfairly” discriminate among people. And make no mistake about it – despite all of our pretensions, all of these factors, and more, come into play in this “democratic, egalitarian nation” when we start thinking, and talking, about social class, discrimination, and all of the thousand different "-isms".

And then we have the more enlightened view, summed up in the term “meritocracy”. This is the notion that people's standing in society should, by rights, be a function of their talents, achievements, and contributions to the general welfare, and that other considerations of the more atavistic kind should not be allowed to interfere. The major flaw in this position is that it ultimately amounts to a popularity contest; after all, who is to judge the worth of a person's talents, achievements, and contributions? Is it a matter of popular vote, AKA the market? Or should it be left to a council of wise persons, the way the Nobel Prize supposedly is? And if left to the market, then to which sector of the market? After all, a billionaire can “outvote” any number of ordinary people in just about any marketplace you care to name. If some Mr. Big decides that Joe Snuffy is the greatest artist since Rembrandt, and decides to built a museum to house his works... and this results in the price of Joe Snuffy's paintings skyrocketing, and Snuffy becoming inordinately rich... well, who is in any position to argue? The marketplace has spoken, and there is no use trying to confuse the marketplace with “public (or popular) opinion” because they are not the same, although they can, and do, influence each other. Public, or popular, opinion at least has the merit of being somewhat democratic, whereas the marketplace can be subject to the most extreme distortions (at the hands of the government, or speculators, or single individuals).

At any rate, we – in this country – have traditionally held that merit, whatever that might entail, is the most appropriate determiner of social status. And that really seemed to be the case in the beginning, with the Founding Fathers as examples – Jefferson most of all, perhaps. When you see prosperity, popularity, creativity, intelligence, and contributions to society going together – coming in the same package – it's easy to sit back and say, yes, that's how things ought to be. It's even easy, in those cases, to humbly acknowledge our own limitations: If I were more worthy, I might deserve more in the way of success, recognition, wealth, power, etc. -- but because I'm not, then I must be content with my lot, and, in fact, appreciate it as my just desert and no more... a manifestation of divine justice, if you will.

Unfortunately, these sterling qualities very seldom – at least in our time – seem to occur in the same person. Are there any Jeffersons out there? Not that I'm aware. So this forces us to choose among many possible signs of merit, and these can come into conflict and contradiction at times. Who is not, for instance, way too familiar with the philistine millionaire who could afford any sort of house and furnishings but seems content to live in the most oversized, kitsch, and tasteless surroundings? And do I even have to mention the obvious fact that talent as an actor or performer is not a good predictor of political sophistication? Supply as many of your own examples as you like; the point is that there is a massive, multi-faceted anachronism in our day between achievements and assessments of overall merit – and this is one thing that has contributed, in my opinion, to the friction and tension between classes. On the most basic level, the notion is that the person above me on the totem pole doesn't deserve to be there. Rather, I deserve to be where he is, or he deserves to be where I am, or both. This is class consciousness with the “wrongness”, or judgment, added to it. All that is missing then is me going down to the polling place and voting for the politician who promises to put that S.O.B. in his place – mainly by taking some of his money and giving it to me. (And if you don't think this is what motivates at least half the voters in this country, I'll have some of what you're drinking.)

But there are those for whom voting isn't enough – or who see it as, basically, a sham (and I can't disagree). So they are more inclined toward protests, demonstrations, writing, speechifying, and what not – hoping that some of the sleepier, more apathetic members of the oppressed class will wake up and join the cause, and ultimately convince, or intimidate, those in power to change their behavior. Or – as a bonus – making some of those who are living high on the hog feel guilty enough to change their behavior... AKA “liberal guilt”, a time-honored tool of the agents of change.

But what if this isn't enough? Then we have the option of violent demonstrations and strikes, rioting, insurrection, and revolution... some, but not all, of which we have been spared in this blessed land. And not to be dismissed is the mere threat of violence – you know, the “long, hot summer”-type rhetoric that is nearly, but not entirely, extinct at this point. What we are left with these days is demonstrations – on both the left (Occupy... whatever) and the right (Tea Party) -- with nothing behind them... no “or else”. It's a combination of moral claims and physical and economic impotence. In other words, it's an appeal to decency and good will – even though we all know that those qualities are notably lacking in the people being appealed to. When confronted with sheer, invincible power, we should not be surprised that there is not even a sham of decency and good will coming back the other way... and I, for one, see this as a healthy curative for so much naiveté among our activist class. Once you realize that the people in power just don't care, you can stop wasting time. But yeah, I know, hope springs eternal, and we have this fetish of free speech, and where there is free speech someone must be listening, right? Wrong. The ruling class of our time has learned to cool it with the ham-handedness, so we get pretty much all we want of the freedoms of speech, the press, assembly, etc. -- only that it does no good, because it's not going to result in any real change. And the reason for that is that the ruling elite has, at long last, consolidated its power to such a degree that it can simply no longer be threatened by anything “the people” think, want, or do. We might as well all be peasants trying to storm a castle with pitchforks and torches, and a moat full of alligators. We are, to put it another way, in that most unenviable and humiliating position -- that of being ignored, like a retarded child locked in a closet. Life goes on for the power elite, but we're not part of it and never will be. Our only strength is in our value as cannon fodder and a source of labor – which is like expecting farm animals to be proud of the fact that they may wind up on the master's table one day.

But let us return to this tantalizing concept of “class warfare” for a moment. What does it mean? Is it real war, like with guns and stuff? Well, it has been at various times down through history – most notably during revolutions, but also in the periods following revolutions (assuming they were successful). I mean, during the French Revolution the ruling class really was sent to the guillotine; this is not just stuff some Hollywood writer made up. Similarly during the Russian Revolution – except that now the bar was lowered to take in some of the bourgeoisie, that group which had been despised by the French revolutionaries but, as far as I know, not exterminated en masse. Then we had the (second) Chinese Revolution, in which not only were the upper and middle classes eliminated, but considerable numbers of the lower class – those who were deemed “uncooperative” or “counter-revolutionary” -- typically members of the peasantry. (I could include the Ukraine in this, vis-a-vis the Russian Revolution, except I'm convinced that was more of an ethnic and religious genocide than a class-based one.) Then we had the various “mini-me” revolutions that took after their larger exemplars – Cuba after Russia, and North Korea and North Vietnam after China. The most extreme case was probably Cambodia, where virtually everyone was considered a counter-revolutionary and undesirable, and it was only because Vietnam (of all places) stepped in that the Cambodians were prevented from exterminating each other completely. And yet that case served as an object lesson – a reductio ad absurdum – to show what the communist ideology ultimately amounted to... and why it was worth waging a struggle against.

But let's step back from the brink a bit and consider the other kind of class warfare – that kind more familiar to Americans, where violence is usually (if not always) replaced by politics. This, as I've pointed out before, goes back at least as far as the Progressive Era, and includes the labor movement, the New Deal, the civil rights movement, the cultural revolution of the 1960s, and brings us right up to the present day with Occupy and the Tea Party. And! It includes the media and the commentariat, who are actually using the term “class warfare” more and more these days.

But why? What makes what is going on now – much less violent than its historical predecessors – a “class war”? Does the use of the term just sell more newspapers and magazines, and increase TV viewership, or is there a more serious reason? Well – it's not always the media's fault, let's admit. The middle class and its representatives have been claiming, at least since the 1960s, that some sort of war is being waged on them. The composite working class and non-working (i.e., welfare) class has been claiming the same thing for much longer than that... as have their allies, the activist left. But again, language means something – and I don't recall the term “class warfare” having been in as much use during the Progressive Era, or the New Deal, or the 1960s, as it is now. And what I definitely don't recall – because it didn't happen – is the use of the term by the middle class to describe its own political/social/economic plight; that is something truly new under the Sun.

Let me clarify that. The cultural revolution of the 1960s was definitely a “class war” of sorts, but not based on social or economic class as much as on politics and foreign policy. And it was, above all, a culture war, as E. Michael Jones points out – a war not of class against class, or even between races or political parties, but of one cultural/aesthetic/moral vision against another. There were even philosophical overtones, which took us way back to our own revolution and that of France... and the metaphysical/epistemological aspects were prominent as well, in the endless discussions and debates about drugs. In short, everyone was involved... or could have been if they wanted to. Social class, race, ethnicity, religion, occupation... none were barriers to participation. And sure enough, when you look at the long-term results, they seem to have occurred all up and down the social and economic scales, and among nearly all racial and ethnic groups. In fact, they greatly enhanced the visibility and political power of a number of minorities. Just about the only people who seem to have remained untouched were the white ethnic working class, the farmers, and the ruling elite. What does that tell you? It was basically a revolt of the middle class against itself – or of the youth of the middle class against its elders. And as such, it had much in common with more “traditional” revolutions over the years, which, typically, at least start with a small cadre of disgruntled bourgeoisie and spread out from there. (The middle class has to convince the proletariat that it's oppressed, in other words.)

But because the “revolution” of the 1960s was more about culture and aesthetics than it was about politics, it was never a threat to the power structure. It was, in other words, easily contained and fenced off – so that what we wound up with was the appearance of change, and genuine change in some areas, but no real change in the overall power relationships... in “the way things are”. All you have to do for evidence of this is compare our foreign policy from World War II to the 1960s (including Vietnam) with our foreign policy since. See any significant differences – any real ones? No, me neither. Just substitute “terrorism” for “communism”, and plug & chug. If you want evidence of real change in this society, don't look to the society itself – to its superficialities. Look at its interface with other societies, other nations – that's where it really hits the road. We were “the ugly Americans” before, and we still are. And what makes us ugly is not even our warlike tendencies; that sort of thing has been around forever, and virtually defines “great” nations and civilizations. No, what sticks in the craw of the rest of the world is our pretensions and hypocrisy – the notion that we do what we do for their good, rather than for ours. Would the Romans ever have made that claim? Or the Crusaders? The British colonialists kind of did, but not seriously. No, we may be unique in history as a nation that makes staggering sacrifices for the alleged good of other nations, and receives very little but hostility in return. I suppose it's a tribute to our sheer energy and productivity that we've managed to keep up this charade for so long – and yet, it's finally beginning to show signs of terminal wear and tear.

But I'm not here to talk about foreign policy, honest. The “class war” if it really exists, is primarily a domestic matter. And if we are willing to ignore the media, and politicians, and their endless prattling, we have to admit that there is, in fact, something to the idea. We have moved from class consciousness – which is, as I said, universal – through the “injustice” stage (where we've been before) to the “war” stage... but what makes it so? After all, it could have been claimed, at any number of times in our history, that there was a war on between “the people” and the ruling elite... or between the black race and the white race... or even between men and women (if you want to stretch the definition of “class” a bit). Is what we have now any more war-ish than those examples? I would say yes, in one major respect – namely, that this time around the government has been actively enlisted in the war, on the side of the ruling elite. (Note that "the government" and "the ruling elite" are not synonymous; the government can be described as the visible cutting edge of the ruling elite, but the people who make up the government are, in nearly all cases, no more than highly-paid servants.)

Go back to the Progressive Era, the labor movement, the New Deal, and the civil rights movement, even feminism, and in all cases the government was – or appeared to be – on the side of “the little guy”, “the people”, “the working man”, “progress”, “minorities”, “the oppressed”, etc. The picture is a bit mixed when it comes to the labor movement, but I think we can see that, in the long run – or at least up to NAFTA – labor was favored. Even the income tax, which now reaches down to Joe the Plumber, was originally designed to punish – er, extract a “contribution” from – the very rich.

The first time the government appeared to be on the wrong side of the populist divide was during the 1960s, when – not coincidentally – we were also fighting the most blatantly unjustified and unwinnable war in our history (up to that time). So the government was not only against sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, but it was giving all the young guys haircuts and sending them over to Southeast Asia to be blown to smithereens -- “class war” indeed! The government that had up to that time stood for the people now became an instrument of persecution and vengeance against those people – or at least a goodly portion of them. This, in a sense, was the real seismic/tectonic/quantum shift in the relationship of the American government to its citizenry – or at least the first stages thereof, since the trend continues to this day. Others will claim that the biggest shift occurred at the time of the Civil War, or World War I, or the New Deal – and those were all significant, no doubt. But I say the image, almost more than the role, of government underwent a more radical change during the 1960s than at any previous time. Up to then, only the most die-hard, what we would now call paleoconservatives, would have considered the government the “enemy” -- but since then there has been nothing particularly rare or unusual, to say nothing of scandalous, about that characterization.

But even if we accept that government can, and does, wage war on the people, is this the same as “class warfare”? It is if you consider the ruling elite a distinct class – which they are. But if they are waging war on everyone else, what is it called then? Is it even about class per se, or is it about something even bigger and broader? Because “class” takes in so much; it is a frustratingly rich concept, as I tried to point out in a previous post. But if the rulers are out to crush everybody underfoot, in a non-discriminatory, “equal opportunity” way, it seems to me that's too crude an idea to be described as “class warfare”. It's more like a tyranny of old, where there was the ruler and his bodyguard and his army on one side of the wall, and everyone else (all other classes, etc.) on the other. It is, in other words, neither subtle nor nuanced... and everyone is involved, to some degree; you can't opt out.

Now, admittedly, this is not how most of the aggrieved groups see things. The “Occupy” movement is the inheritor of the populist movements of old, so in their book it's Wall Street vs. the little guy, and the middle class is... well, it's just not important, that's all. The Tea Party, on the other hand, sees the new style of class war as the ruling elite, by means of the government, stomping them all to dust while at the same time throwing their bones to the rabble – leading the middle class to the slaughter, in other words, while placating the unwashed masses... and all on the road to a two-class system with a missing middle. And one facet of this operation – a tried and true one – is to sic the rabble on the middle class, not only directly but through law, regulation, and sheer intimidation (including that hoary hag “political correctness”). Because, as we should all know by now, the chief emotion that motivates the middle class is fear – fear of losing not only their “stuff” but “the country we grew up in”... and also fear of the rabble and of their own powerlessness. And what, after all, are the mainstream media most adept at? Surely you don't think they write, and broadcast, all that stuff for the benefit of the proletariat! No, it's to manipulate and exploit the fears of the middle class. The proles are kept quiet and contained by “games and circuses” (and sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll) and are only occasionally riled up as the need arises (and typically only by “leaders” like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, or their Hispanic equivalents).

So – bottom line time! -- there is a “class war” going on, but there's nothing unusual about that per se. What's new is that the middle class is (finally!) conscious that it's being waged on them... and that it's being waged by the government on behalf of the ruling elite. And see, this is shocking for... well, for a number of reasons. One is that the middle class has always thought they were more or less in charge – through the voting booth, that is. After all, there are more of them than there are of rich people, right? And we all get one vote, right? So what's the problem? Exactly – so this is why the Regime gradually took over, and co-opted, the selection process for politicians so that only the ones who have their stamp of approval have a chance of being elected and of remaining in office. So again – the “right to vote” didn't have to be tampered with, only the amount of difference it made. (See how the fears of the middle class have been kept at bay for so long, and why the Tea Party movement is so significant?)

Now I've already considered, at length in other posts, whether the Regime is really acting in its own best interests in the long run by working to eliminate the middle class. For one thing, who's going to pay all the taxes? I guess in a true slave state there won't be any need for taxes – it will be the ultimate Marxist nightmare where a select few will own the means of production and the vast bulk of humanity will work at subsistence wages. In other words, the slavery is the tax. But I can't help feeling that there will be a major structural problem if the middle class vanishes – kind of like what would happen to a person with no backbone... nothing between the rib cage and the pelvis but a bunch of loose meat. But that's a discussion for another day.

The real question, at this point, is not whether there is a class war on, because there is. Why it's suddenly being called that is another matter – and I suspect that most of the people doing the calling are the self-styled victims, namely the middle class. They have, in other words, expropriated a favorite term of the left for their own use – causing great resentment, I'm sure. When a catchword of the red-flag-waving agitators, anarchists, and “wobblies” becomes a middle-class tic, you know things are evolving in an interesting direction.

For further evidence, take a look at who's saying there's _not_ a class war – mainstream politicians. And the media basically agree, because their position is that only the radical right-wing loonies actually believe there is a class war going on – imagine! With no Molotov cocktails, no barricades, no mass arrests... some people have mighty easy criteria for declaring something a “war”. And yet, if you're middle class, the assaults you see happening on your lifestyle and well-being are every bit as severe in your eyes as strikebreakers beating union members over the head with nightsticks would have appeared back in the era of severe labor strife. It's all a matter of perspective and expectations, in other words. The middle class never expects to get beaten about the head and shoulders, or thrown in the cooler, and they typically aren't – but they have seen their morals, customs, values, and culture assailed non-stop for close to 50 years, and are now witnessing what may be the mother of all battles – the war against their prosperity and their pocketbooks... against frugality, thrift, and responsibility... against long-suffering good citizenship and “working within the system”... against sobriety... against bourgeois refinement and good manners... and all the rest of it. And what must gall them even more is the spectacle of politicians and candidates who seem to be like them, more or less, going off and becoming members of the enemy camp – becoming the oppressors! (Oh, that left-wing word again – and it sounds so weird when it is spoken by middle-class lips... but these are desperate times.)

But if politicians refuse to admit there's a class war on, they nonetheless use the term “middle class” in every other sentence these days – which is in itself quite notable. Since when have they stood up for the middle class? After all, don't we, as I said, have a history of standing up for “the little guy”, “the people”, “the working man”, “minorities”, “the oppressed”, etc.? Isn't that about class? But it was seldom identified that way, perhaps because it would have been considered too provocative – or too condescending. After all, if you're “for” the working class (defined, I guess, as people who “work” with their hands rather than with some other body part), don't you have to be “against” the middle class? Because, after all, the economic model the government has gone by for many decades now is a zero-sum model; for someone to win, someone else has to lose. So any loose talk about the “rights” of the lower classes was seen – and rightly so – as an existential threat by the middle class. “We're coming to get your stuff” was the message – and if the ghetto riots of the 1960s hadn't been so tightly controlled by the Regime, it might have turned out that way.

As I've said before, politicians typically start talking about something just before it's about to be taken away or lost – and this case is no different. Suddenly, politicians who've spent a lifetime railing against middle-class people, values, and priorities have turned into their champions – don't be fooled! It's all a way of preparing for that day when they will have to say, “Well, we tried, but what could we do? The banks, mortgage companies, and brokerage houses were too big to fail, and you weren't.” Or words to that effect. Not that the middle class (or what's left of it) will ever rise up in arms, but politicians do, still, like to be liked – that is the one remaining weakness in their character.

But consider, for a moment, what the non-middle class must think when they hear all of this babble about the middle class (assuming they listen to, or read, any speeches or statements by politicians). Don't the old class resentments bubble up? “I mean, what's this guy got that I ain't got? Does he work any harder? Or even if he does, why does that make him more deserving than me? I mean, people are people, y'know? We all have the same needs, so why does the government let him have more than me?” And so on. You can hear it in any tavern in Pittsburgh – or anywhere else in the country, I'll wager. It seems that politicians like Obama are taking a big chance when they get up and start defending the middle class, that they're going to offend more people than they please. In Obama's case, he's going to offend his base, just to please some people who might or might not vote for him. Unless it's all a sham, and is being done just so they can say “I did what I could”. I'm sure Obama's base is quite secure no matter what he says – and once again, who's listening? It's the middle class, quaking in fear, that hangs on the words of politicians; the lower class just goes on about its business (or lack thereof).

So... anyone who thinks all this class talk is just theory, or paranoia, needs to listen to politicians. They don't say anything, or use any terminology, that their masters would disapprove of. Talking about the middle class in those terms, in public, is a political ploy, but it's also a warning signal. What it means is that this is a real issue, we don't deny it, and we already know how it's going to come out, because that's the plan. Sayonara, baby.

Sing a Song of Futility

2012-01-04T02:47:00.003-05:00

The writing of campaign songs is, truly, a lost art... although I have made a few modest attempts over the past few years, as my long-time readers may recall. Well, the Iowa caucuses have offered fresh inspiration, and thus I submit a... maybe it should be called an "anti-campaign" song. In any case, it's designed to be sung by, let's say, Rick Santorum to Newt Gingrich, or by Newt to Rick. And it's short -- short enough that even Rick Perry might be able to memorize it, assuming he stays in the race, which seems doubtful at this point.

It's sung to the the tune of "Unforgettable", and bears an eerie resemblance to the classic:

Unelectable, that's what you are
Unelectable, though near or far
Like an apathy that clings to me
How the thought of you doesn't sing to me
Never before has someone been more

Unelectable, in every way
And forevermore, that's how you'll stay
That's why buddy it's incredible
That someone so unelectable
Thinks that I am unelectable too

How's that? I think it has "legs". And I offer it free of charge to any candidate who wants to use it. But it has to be sung by them, not by any hirelings... and no lip-synching! And it has to be done in public. Otherwise, there are no strings attached.

Your Resolution

2012-01-01T01:47:00.003-05:00

I normally don't make a practice of New Year's resolutions, for the simple reason that my cup of unfulfilled resolutions – past and present – already runneth over. There is a backlog that can supply New Year's or any other occasion for years to come. And it's not that I don't act on resolutions; they aren't totally neglected. It's just that my talent for making resolutions far exceeds my talent for seeing them through. I am, in other words, a better starter than finisher, and I don't think that's an unusual trait in our time. The landscape (both physical and otherwise) is dotted with the hulks and remains of follies -- of what must have seemed like a good idea at the time, but the resourcing, persistence, and endurance just weren't there. I suppose it's human nature to come up with ideas – and Americans are, after all, “idea people” extraordinaire – but much less common is the ability to accurately count the cost – especially what are called “opportunity costs”, i.e. the things you can't do because you're spending that time doing something else. Most resolutions are neither bad nor foolish; they are simply based on willful ignorance of what it would take to actually carry them out. Call it over-optimism... call it delusion... but we could avoid a lot of guilt and self-incrimination if we never overreached in the first place.

But! Having said all that, I will, nonetheless, offer a proposal to anyone who is shopping around for a resolution. You may think your life cannot be improved on, and have therefore despaired of coming up with any meaningful resolution. But, like any good marketer, I can offer you something you didn't know you needed. And I got the idea from none other than the old hippie guru Timothy Leary, who advised us to “Tune in, turn on, drop out” (not necessarily in that order). But how does this advice to furry freaks and acidheads of the 1960s apply to us today? Watch and learn...

TUNE IN: First of all, “tune in” to what's really wrong with this country. And that involves, above all, turning off the mainstream media, AKA the Ministry of Propaganda. All they want you to do is believe that things are just groovy... or that the minor problems that do exist can be readily remedied if only we allow government to grow even larger (completely ignoring the fact that the vast bulk of the problems were caused by big government). And by “mainstream media”, I don't only mean what “conservatives” usually mean, which is the liberal media which constitute the overwhelming majority of the mainstream. No, I also mean the loyal opposition – the supposed “conservatives” like the FOX Network, the Washington Times, etc. that are content with twiddling around at the margins of some issues, but are never willing to attempt any major surgery. The best evidence for this is that the liberal and “conservative” media are pretty much in agreement when it comes to foreign policy – one area where the misdeeds and folly of the government are most blatantly on display. And yet they all seem to think that everything's just peachy in that department.

So yes, don't listen to, or watch, or attend to in any way, the MSM, or its alleged counterparts, unless it's in preparation for a battle of ideas. And this would include virtually all TV networks, radio stations, and newspapers, and the vast majority of magazines. So where is the truth to be found these days? Well, on the Internet, for starters, and we can all be eternally grateful that something that was invented by the Defense Department has turned into such a useful tool for the political counterculture (I mean the real one, not the frauds like the Occupy movement). There is a certain delicious irony in that.

Now, when I cite the Internet, and the odd print media, and the even odder electronic media, as potential sources of truth, I know I'm introducing a virtually infinite array of possibilities. And when it comes to the question of “what's wrong”, there is a wide expanse, or spectrum, of opinion, ranging from the mildest right up to militant conspiracy theories, anarchism, what have you. So how to choose? What's the average citizen to do? In the old days, you might have one or two newspapers to choose from, and three virtually identical TV networks... and a handful of virtually identical news magazines. Were those really simpler times, or did the limited choices just make it seem that way? There were voices of opposition and protest even then... and some have vanished, others have been co-opted, and others are alive and well, if virtually underground. In fact, it's ironic in a way that the “old left” media have gradually been absorbed by the mainstream media blob, which means that most of the alternatives are either radical newish left, or paleoconservative (the Neocons being the main segment of the “loyal opposition” as discussed above). And I suppose, in a sense, this is the way it always has to be – the spectrum (or political bell curve) gradually shifts leftward, carrying the majority of the unthinking masses with it... and only the most radical “eggheads” have the courage and persistence to stay outside the blob, either on the left or the right. It's hard work these days being a true leftist, for instance, since the president, who has all sorts of claims to being a leftist, is acting like some fascist puppet the Nazis would have installed if they'd won the war. On the other hand, it's fairly easy to be a paleoconservative, since all one has to do is adopt the positions of mainstream Republicans of 60 or so years ago, as exemplified by Robert Taft. Another way of putting this is that there is a lot more room on the right than on the left these days... and, of course, there is all sorts of room on the libertarian side, whereas the collectivists and totalitarians have to be feeling a bit claustrophobic, since there are so many of them and they are all crammed into the same box.

But to return to the question – what to do? Where to go? And what I say is, start reading, start thinking, start surfing the Net on topics you're interested in. When you run across people and ideas that make sense, explore further, and never mind the ceaseless propaganda that portrays them as “nuts”, “crazy”, “haters”, “radical right-wing”, “conspiracy theorists”, and what not. Bear in mind that the establishment – the ruling elite – want, more than anything else, to retain the power they have and to increase it – and they have enlisted the media to aid them in that quest. Therefore, anything the media present in the way of “news” or “information” or “data” is designed to support that. Not to support liberty, or true education, or individual freedom – only to support the interests of the Regime. In fact, one can do worse than study who the MSM really have it in for (Ron Paul comes to mind), and then try and figure out why. The results can be very enlightening.

Let me go a bit further with this. I say don't believe the propaganda, but also don't accept the media's notions of what's important and what isn't... of what constitutes “news” and what doesn't. They not only put their own “spin” on stories, they also decide what stories are worth reporting – and that also falls under the heading of “supporting the Regime”. Look no further than the virtual news blackout on the Ron Paul campaign for evidence of this. But also, consider that no one in the MSM ever seriously questions the “two-party system” that has wrought so much destruction over the years. They never question the “War on Drugs” -- or any other war, for that matter. They never question the existence, or actions, of the Federal Reserve, or the IRS. I could go on, but you get the idea. The key is to assume nothing, when they want you to assume everything. To accept nothing and to question everything -- this is the truly radical position, which our so-called “leftists” these days are absolutely averse to. They sport bumper stickers that say “Question Authority”, but they are, in fact, the last people on earth to do so. Authoritarianism is not – nor was it ever – the exclusive province of the right, or of “fascists”; that in itself is left-wing propaganda of the first order. Any form of unthinking loyalty to a political party, a political cause, or even a nation, qualifies as authoritarianism, and should be subject to repeated hard questioning.

So... erase what's in your mind. Become pure... childlike. I'm serious! Be like the five-year-old who never tires of asking “why”, or the 14-year-old who says “prove it!” every five minutes. Skepticism is the one thing most lacking in the American character – although I dare say it was not always so. We supposedly escaped Old Europe and sailed over here on leaky boats to escape tyranny and dogmatism – and yet have established a more comprehensive system of both, sporting our own brand. And this is one of the countless things that should be questioned: It's “the American century”? Prove it! Our brand of “democracy” is the best model for governments world-wide, regardless of geography, economics, religion, culture, custom, tradition? Prove it! We are the “last, best hope of mankind”? Prove it! Because our actions demonstrate anything but. We go over to places like Vietnam, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, and start acting just like Vietnamese, or Iraqis, or Afghans – or worse. We “go native”, in other words – aided and abetted by technology.

So don't drink the Kool-Aid, as the saying goes... don't become a mind-numbed robot, or a complacent, obedient serf. “Rage against the machine!” There is all sorts of talk about “minority rights”, but what about “majority rights” -- i.e. the rights of the ordinary, average, halfway-decent citizen against those who want to control his every thought and movement, and turn him into some sort of android?

TURN ON: What I mean by this is to “turn on” to the alternatives – because, as people keep nagging the Occupy crowd about, “what's your plan?” I mean, it's one thing to point out things that aren't right – and that's a perfectly healthy first stage in the dialogue. But sooner or later people are going to want a plan. And the problem is that a fairly clear vision of what's wrong doesn't necessarily yield up a clear or workable plan. After all, even Karl Marx had a lot of insight into what was wrong with the Industrial Revolution in Western Europe – but his solution, his alternative, left something to be desired, as was so convincingly (to everyone but American academics) demonstrated decades later.

The most simplistic, perhaps, version of “the plan” is to just go back to the way America was before... you pick the catastrophe of your choice. Before the New Deal... before the Federal Reserve and the income tax... before the “robber barons”... before the Civil War... whatever. Everyone has their own idea about when America was still “OK” -- before it started downhill. (For my money, the War of 1812 was our last “just war”, so the slide happened somewhere between then and the Civil War. But that's just me.)

The problem with coming up with a plan – even in retrospect – is that there were built-in flaws present from the beginning, in our country's foundation. There was the moral, philosophical, and spiritual burden of the Reformation and the Enlightenment, which had a profound impact on our founders, on our founding documents, and on our “origin myths”. There was also – not unrelated by any means – the baleful influence of Freemasonry. There was our Puritan heritage, which, among other things, dictated that the Catholic Church was anathema, and that the truth was not in it – including its very valuable social teachings. There was our tradition of Protestant zeal and fanaticism, which impacts our foreign policy to this day – and, on the domestic side, a tradition of Utopianism, which impacts our domestic policy, and has at least since the Progressive era.

So the dilemma – in theory, of course – is, can America be re-made or do we just have to start over? Can we salvage anything from the ruins? Because if not, we are set back, on almost all fronts, more than 200 years. My modest suggestion for our thinking is that we adopt – at least on a tentative basis – the outline and basic structure that is represented by the Constitution, with improvements as needed (ones Justice Scalia and Ron Paul might agree with)... and then embellish that with Catholic social teaching, particularly in the economic area, like distributism and subsidiarity... but also with Catholic teaching on “just war”, which, if it had been put into practice 150 years ago, could have helped us avoid most of the catastrophes which have befallen this country.

My personal dilemma in all of this is that I consider myself to be a paleoconservative, and also a libertarian, and also a supporter of Catholic social teaching... and I'm convinced that, somewhere out there in n-space, there is a place where the three meet and can get along without falling into disharmony and fisticuffs. My solution, from day to day, is to adopt a kind of “shell” approach, with the libertarian model being the first, or outer shell... and the rule is to use libertarian principles as a baseline “unless proven otherwise”. The middle shell is paleoconservatism, which is more of a political model than a set of principles, although it overlaps with libertarianism to a surprising degree, the main differences being centered on Christian morality, which libertarians would typically not have much interest in. Morality, as in “ethics”, yes; “Christian” per se, no. So that's where I have to make a break with strict libertarianism, at least as far as genuine Christian morality goes – by which I mean to exclude such ephemera and crazes as the War on Drugs, unquestioning support for Israel, etc. Those are examples of things that are often presented as moral issues, but which are, by and large, political or just plain neurotic in nature. Then we have the inner shell, namely Catholic social teaching, which cannot be described as “Christian” if that includes Protestantism and the “Protestant ethic”, social Darwinism, etc. So basically, it's a good day when I come up with an idea that is consistent with all three lines of thought – and I have my work cut out for me when it violates one or two out of the three.

Part of this approach – at least for me – is reading books and articles by the few people in our day who think clearly. This would include, for instance, Thomas Sowell, Justice Antonin Scalia, Walter Williams (economist), Joseph Sobran (recently deceased), and Pat Buchanan – also print media like The American Conservative, Chronicles, and The Wanderer (Catholic weekly newspaper). Then if you want to go back down memory lane a bit, there's G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. But avoid the Neocons and their various organs like the plague, because that's what they are. Ditto “liberal Catholics”, “progressives”, socialists (needless to say), etc.

And I don't say that everyone ought to adopt this approach; by no means. It is, I admit, a bit wonkish and egghead-esque. But on some level everyone has to decide what they believe, “in their heart” as Goldwater might have said, and how that ought to apply to the ways of the world. Otherwise we're all living in separate cocoons, and are ripe for exploitation by the people who do think about these things, and come up with answers that are evil, but they work... at least in the short run.

DROP OUT: Now we get to the tough part, because it involves that which we value most, namely our creature comforts and convenience. And I do not present myself as a model for this variable, since I am probably as addicted to my “stuff”, and technology, as most people. But it goes back to questioning, once again, the propagandists' line about how we ought to live – as “good citizens”, “voters”, “consumers”, and unquestioning slaves to any idea or program the Regime decides to impose on us. You can stay in the thick of things – in the midst of the battle, like Richard III in the Shakespeare play – or you can draw back, with the thought that with a certain distance comes freedom... freedom to think, and to reassert your individuality – two human rights that are scarcely mentioned per se in the founding documents, but which are always implied. For was this nation not founded on the assumption that its citizens would be thinking individuals? (And wasn't that assumption a bit far-fetched, at least in retrospect?) There is always the risk of confusing “thinking” with “ideas”. But in fact, some ideas – like communism – are so seductive, so appealing to our lower nature, that they cause all further thought to cease. In fact, I would go so far as to say that a person with only a single idea is not thinking at all; only by means of comparison of ideas – not only initially but as part of an ongoing process – can we claim that thinking is taking place.

In any case, what I want to suggest is that each of us, to the extent of our abilities and inclinations, “drop out” as much as possible from the servitude that the Regime expects of us. Get out of the matrix; pry that mind-control metal plate out of your skull.

This would include, for instance, not going into unsecured debt (or even better, no debt at all) except in the very short run. An example is the popular, but largely ignored, advice, “pay off all your credit cards each month”. But consider – what is the real engine of the Regime, of our rulers and oppressors? It's debt, and that means our debt, and that means what is euphemistically termed “consumer debt”. Get rid of that and you get rid of one of the major hooks that the Regime has in each one of us.

Another thing – boycott the mainstream media. Don't watch the shows, don't buy the papers and magazines. The sponsors will notice, believe me.

Don't support the “agents of change” who continually burrow into the body politic like a plague of termites. Whenever you have an opportunity to support “public education” and the social work establishment, don't do it. “Just say no.”

Like distributism? Then keep your money in small banks and credit unions, and to hell with Wall Street. Give to charity rather than voting for government social programs. Invest in real things, not just paper.

Like subsidiarity? Then support local governments and their span of control, as opposed to state governments, and support state governments over the federal government. Also, try and support local merchants; I know the “big box” stores are tempting, but they are soulless. Anything that drives people off the land and into big cities is highly suspect.

Don't invest in businesses that do bad things. Don't invest in mutual funds that invest in those businesses. And so on.

On a slightly more radical side, try to become self-supporting in ways other than simply earning a wage. One book that I've found quite inspiring in this area is “Better Off” by Eric Brende.

You don't have to rage against the machine in the streets, with pitchforks and torches. Yes, there is a place for that, but there is also a place for more subtle sabotage. What if, for instance, everyone just held on to their car for one more year before trading it in? Imagine the rolling impact that would make.

Why do Americans, who are known, supposedly, for their feistiness, willingly put up with all sorts of inconveniences, insults, and barriers to living a serene life? As the hippies used to say, “shoot your television”. Just start turning things off! Incessant noise is a time-honored brainwashing device, and don't think that's not one reason why we encounter it in a daily basis.

Try, just once, to cut down on the artificial – foods, clothes, smells, tastes, materials, and so on. These things blunt our senses and separate us from nature and from our natural survival instincts (which is, of course, one reason why they are pushed so hard by the system). And BTW, this includes air conditioning.

Embrace the classics – and I don't just mean books; also movies, art, architecture, drama, music... stuff that was done by men who knew they were men, and women who knew they were women. Yes, I mean that. I doubt if there is anything more demoralizing or alienating than this repeated (by the media etc.) mantra, “we're all the same”, when anyone with a grain of sense knows different. We have this hoax called “diversity” as a flavorless, nutrient-free substitute for real, meaningful differences among people and among groups – things that really deserve to be celebrated, but are now suppressed.

Don't be a “consumer”; be a frugal user. And most of all, take a vow of abstinence when it comes to “fashion”. What has the “metrosexualizing” of our society ever done for anyone except people selling things that no one really needs? And I'm all for real diversity and self-expression and all that, but have you had a look at what passes for “public art” these days? It's enough to make you want to go back to the Art Deco era with those allegorical statues around the Mall in Washington, DC, where everyone's neck is bigger than their head.

Assume that anything the Regime, by way of the media and the “entertainment” industry, tells you is not important is, in fact, important. This would include religion, family, ethnicity, and – yes – race, in the good, constructive sense. Prefer patriotism (genuine pride in place and heritage) to nationalism (a hoax, by and large). And above all, be unashamed. Shame has been brought back from the grave and has been turned into one of the principal motivators (or de-motivators) in American society – shame, and guilt... for being who we are, for being the way we were born. It's all designed to make the masses feel penitential (in a bad way) and dependent on the government for validation.

“Support the troops” by bringing them home and keeping them here. What if we defended our southern border with 1% of the resources we pour into the Middle East?

Try to avoid, or at least not totally buy into, any of the major rackets of our time. This would include conventional medicine and “health care”, processed food, “agribusiness”, “big pharma”, televangelists, professional sports (full disclosure: Go Steelers!), fashion (as I said above)... anything, in fact, that tries to separate us from our hard-earned money (and time); anything that requires us to trade our birthright for a mess of pottage.

See how simple it is – or can be? No one piece of this is all that radical, but add it all up, and let enough people do it, and there's a possibility we can reclaim some of what we've lost... or, better yet, stake a claim on something new... something that is alive, and not rooted in any of the many American mass neuroses. If this is truly the land of opportunity, it should also be the the land of opportunity to overthrow much of what has gone before – not our true and valid heritage, but all of the sick and perverse accretions that have built up over the years. But it can only happen if we, on some level and each in our own way, “tune in, turn on, and drop out” -- and it can only happen one individual at a time.

War Rains On Our Parade

2011-12-30T01:49:00.003-05:00

Now here is a headline that is truly sad (from AP). “Big parade unlikely for troops back from Iraq: Some say celebration improper while Afghanistan war continues.” The idea being, why celebrate the (alleged) end of one war while another (nearby and presumably for the same cause) is still going on? Well... we did have “V-E Day” (May 8, 1945) four months before “V-J Day” (September 2, 1945), but those were more coherent, less ambiguous times. In those days, one of the main goals of any war was – believe it or not – actually winning. How much more sophisticated and realistic we've become since then! We pull most active, uniformed, combat (add as many more qualifiers as you like) troops out of Iraq, and within about five minutes the terrorist bombings begin again. Hey, wait a minute – aren't we supposed to stick around for a while after “winning” a war? How does retreat constitute winning? See what I mean about how much more “nuanced” we are now in our approach to these things?

The problem is that even though this may all be perfectly acceptable to the powers that be in Washington, New York, and elsewhere, the American people may be starting to catch on. On the most basic – some would say primitive – level, the entire vindication for war comes in the victory parade. And this has been true from time immemorial. At that moment, one can, at least temporarily, forget those left behind (POWs), those who came back in body bags, and those who came back missing body parts or their sanity. The iconic significance of the victory parade is not to be underestimated, because of the statements it makes: It was all worthwhile, and shame on anyone who nitpicks or quibbles. We have, once again, proven our manhood (or womanhood) and the supreme worth of the American way of life. We have taught another bunch of baddies not to screw around with the U.S.A. (even if that's not what they thought they were doing). And – best of all, perhaps – we can now settle back into our accustomed lifestyle, surrounded by war heroes, and proceed to train up the younger generation in preparation for the next war.

Yes, Americans can't get along without triumph. It's never enough to sit under our vine and fig tree and mind our own business, as long as there are wrongs to be righted anywhere in the world. And the satisfaction that comes from having righted those wrongs – ah, that is not to be matched. And as to what it costs us to be the policeman and enforcer for the entire world? Well worth it, we say. Because the resulting pride and triumph are things that most other countries can only dream of. Who else ever got to police the entire planet? Not the Romans... not the Moslems... not the British (although they came as close as anyone)... not the Soviets. And besides, doesn't it all vindicate our origin myths – our original self image as embodied in the founding documents? We always knew we were special, and so it only makes sense that we have to go out and prove it on a regular basis. Otherwise, the world might forget. _We_ might forget!

But now here we are – slouching home victory-less, and with nary a word of thanks from the beneficiaries of our exertions... no parades, no ticker-tape (is there even any such thing any longer?), no big open cars (ditto), no iconic photographs of sailors kissing nurses (same-sex or otherwise)... but mainly no victory, no winning. And it's not as if we're totally new to this experience; after all, it happened in Korea (although we were loath to admit it), and it happened in Vietnam (which resulted in an orgy of self-flagellation over many years). We did get a taste of victory the old fashioned way in the Gulf War, but that turned out to be only a prelude to the debacle that followed.

So we really are in a new era when it comes to warfare, and the causes are many. One is, of course, a change in the nature of war itself, which has ceased to feature set-piece battles by opposing armies in uniform and evolved into, typically, a dispersed, small-unit-based army fighting natives, rebels, insurgents, and “terrorists”. And behind this trend are things like geographical, cultural, political, and religious differences – not to mention economics. World War II was, perhaps, the last pure case of rich countries fighting each other – which meant that they had the same general concept of war and of strategy... and the similar level of economic development and industrialization led to a kind of symmetry in tactics, armaments, munitions, transportation, logistics... even down to unit organization and uniforms. That symmetry persisted with the Korean conflict primarily, I think, because we were fighting a clone of a much larger power (China) or fighting the much larger power itself. But then it all broke down with Vietnam because, guess what, the other side was not only fighting on its home turf but it was fighting in the ways that worked there – whereas we were still trying to get them to “fight like a man”, you know, with flags and uniforms and bugles and all that. (And this, by the way, is a non-trivial matter as well. As long as we were fighting Europeans, we and they shared a certain set of expectations about how war was to be done; this was eventually codified in the Geneva Conventions. But those Asians (whether East or Southwest) -- well! They're just dirty little beasts, and that's all there is to it.)

So yeah, I guess there were probably “victory” parades after Korea, although I certainly don't remember any, having been a bit young at the time. But I also imagine that people might have been standing there on the curb with a flag in their hand, kind of wondering in the back of their mind, now what exactly are we celebrating here? Did we really “win” anything, or did we just break even? And was it worth it? Et cetera. Vietnam, of course, by the time it was finally over, had shown itself to be a debacle of cosmic proportions... and many Americans hung their heads in shame, and insisted that others do the same. But did we learn? Not really. When it came time to kick the Iraqis out of Kuwait all those scars had healed – there was a new generation in charge, and plenty of new toys that the military was anxious to try out. And the thing about that conflict (the Gulf War) was that it actually worked – I mean, it resulted in an unambiguous victory, and was, arguably, a bargain (relative to what's gone on since). So that sharpened our appetite – ah, maybe the days of glory are not past after all... maybe Vietnam was an anomaly. And thus was paved the way to folly and absurdity in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So yes, much of it can be attributed to the ongoing history of warfare, world politics, the evolution of technology, and what not. But those are minor concerns compared to the forces that are keeping us in a state of perpetual war. I've gone over this before, but I'll at least mention the continued existence and dominance (over both major parties) of the unholy cabal that is primarily responsible for our current situation – namely the Neocons, the Evangelicals, the armaments makers, and the Israeli lobby... not that those groups don't overlap considerably. And what makes this such an effective cabal is not that the various groups have the exact same agenda. On the contrary, the armaments makers are interested in profits, the Israelis in security, the Neocons in power (and Israeli security), and the Evangelicals in fulfilling the promises found in Revelations. Their strength is that they have found common cause in perpetual war in the Middle East – what I refer to as the War on Islam.

And by “armaments makers”, I don't mean only people directly involved in the design, manufacture, and sale of weapons; it has to include the vast array of suppliers, shippers, and support personnel as well as financial interests, investors, and so on – an entire sector of society, in fact, that thrives on war and fears peace like the plague. (And, by the way, in case you hadn't already noticed, the vast bulk of support and “advice” to the Republican contenders for the presidency comes from this cabal. They are to the Republicans what the unions, minority activist groups, and trial lawyers are to the Democrats, even though the Democrats, once in office, follow their orders as well.)

So when this many people are making money, and acquiring power, by means of war, what difference does it make whether those wars are won or lost? The truth is, it makes no difference at all – as long as the wars persist. Which means it's actually most convenient if we neither win nor lose, but keep struggling – and you'll notice that our wars these days are designed with that in mind. But there are always alternative plans in someone's back pocket, “just in case” something happens like our ostensibly getting out of Iraq. Resources can then be redirected to Afghanistan in a seamless manner... or to Iran... or North Korea... or China. The possibilities are endless.

But even though winless wars may make some people happy, they have to be eroding our self-image as a nation, and they have to be creating a state of chronic depression among the citizenry, do they not? And, as the article points out, “(m)any troops who fought in the Iraq War could end up being sent to Afghanistan.” In fact, many already have been. So there you have it – perpetual war, an endless rotation among third-world pestholes, an endless cycle of provoking even more enmity which we are then compelled to combat, and so on. And so far this technique has been limited to Southwest Asia, but who is to say? We're rattling sabers at Iran and China now, and have rattled them on and off at Russia and North Korea – not to mention here and there in Latin America, and even sub-Saharan Africa. Truly, the world is ripe for the picking, and there are any number of American politicians and leaders who will rush in without counting the cost -- and presidential candidates who promise to do so.

So the article in question ends – as it should – with a whimper: “A parade [I guess that means any parade – a kind of generic parade] might invite criticism from those who believe the United States left Iraq too soon [! -- When were we supposed to leave? In ten more years?], as well as from those who feel the war was unjustified. It could also trigger questions about assertions of victory.” That's for sure. But wait – who, exactly, is “asserting victory” in this case? No one that I know of. Oh sure, we read interviews with returning troops who are programmed to say stuff like, “we helped the Iraqi people obtain their freedom”. But guess what, bub? That's not why we went over there. Anyone remember WMDs? Oh well...

And finally -- “President George W. Bush's administration referred to military action in the Middle East as part of a global war on terror, a conflict that's hard to define by conventional measures of success.” Excuse me, is this an “Onion” article? No – the behavior of the Bush and Obama administrations is beyond satire. Just consider the expression “global war on terror” for a moment. Number one, “global” -- meaning anywhere in the world, regardless of whether we have any vital interests or not. If “terrorists” from Mali attack the Central African Republic, we're there, dude. And it's because “terror” is just... well, it's bad! Evil! And it has to be wiped off the face of the earth! Little attention is paid to what any military scholar knows, which that “terror” is just a loaded term for “unconventional warfare” or “asymmetrical warfare”, which is, in turn, simply the way poor countries make war on rich countries (or their surrogates). And what is it, after all, that makes what _we_ do in the Middle East not “terror”? It feels the same to the civilians who wind up getting killed and wounded. I'll tell you what it is. We wear uniforms and have a flag. Yeah, that's about all it boils down to. If the “terrorists” wore uniforms and had a flag, we'd have to call them an “army” and give them a lot more respect.

And as for “conventional measures of success”, well... that's what I've been calling “victory” or “winning” all this time. So... what would non-conventional measures of success be? “Helping the Iraqi people obtain their freedom?” But there is no guarantee that we've even done that much; the jury is still out. And as far as suppressing “terror” overall, it can be argued that we've only made things worse by our actions. No, the true non-conventional measures of success are the increased riches and power that have accrued, and will continue to accrue, to the people who sponsor these wars, and their political servants. The problem is that these measures cannot be admitted to in public, leave alone bragged about (except in corporate annual reports and “think tank” position papers). And they represent values that are, for some mysterious reason, simply not shared by the public at large – you know, “You go to war and get killed so I can make money and gain power.” In their naïve, simplistic way Americans still long for victories – for something they can take pride in. But this is all to be denied them, because they have no voice and no standing in the world as it has become.

No Pall on Paul

2011-12-22T22:45:00.002-05:00

Suddenly, and seemingly overnight, some of the major house organs of both liberalism and neoconservatism are evincing what appears to be a strange new respect for Ron Paul and his candidacy. Some have even hinted that, to use the words of Chris Berman, “he might go all the way!” -- at least as far as the Iowa Caucuses are concerned. So what's going on here? I mean, Ron Paul has inspired equal parts fear and loathing among both liberals and neocons for years now – and they have responded in typical fashion by labeling him “crazy”, “a fringe candidate”, “radical”, and all the rest of it. Have they changed their minds? I suspect not.

Once again, I think that the mainstream media have been running their own version of Rush Limbaugh's “Operation Chaos” for these many months, namely by setting up a succession of Republican candidates as “the front runner” then proceeding to shoot them down as only the mainstream media can do – by, if necessary, digging deep in order to find that one unforgivable sin that will doom their candidacy. Up until recently, Mitt Romney has gotten more or less of a pass, and no one seemed too terribly threatened by the idea that he might wind up getting the nomination, for reasons discussed in previous posts. To the liberals, he's seen as the least threatening candidate (in terms of what he might do if actually elected), and to the neocons he's “one of us”, with no discernible populist baggage. The idea being, in the unlikely event he were elected he would cause the least damage to liberal interests and require no bringing-up-to-speed on neocon interests – and do I have to belabor the point that those interests are, in most cases, indistinguishable? -- especially when it comes to foreign policy.

But then a funny thing happened, and my theory is that some people started to think Romney might actually win. But rather than attack him directly at this point, the decision was made to start giving Newt Gingrich more “face time” and to ignore most, if not all, of his “issues” and offenses against good taste. But Gingrich turns out to be way too much of a temptation, and what I see is that he has already passed his high water mark. He had his fifteen minutes (weeks, months, whatever) of fame as a candidate, and is now being gently, but firmly, ushered out of the limelight.

And that leaves us with whom... or what? No one wants to backtrack and start putting Rockjaw Goodhair front and center again... and after all, the whole idea is to divide and conquer, right? And who better to divide (but not conquer) than Ron Paul, who has already been termed “divisive” simply because he's not in lock-step with the other Republicans on foreign policy (or domestic policy either, for that matter). So the thing to do is stop calling Ron Paul crazy, and start reflecting on the very real possibility that he might be a viable candidate – even though they know he can't win. This might be enough to keep some voters in his camp, and even attract new ones. But Ron Paul has a built-in “ceiling” when it comes to Republican voters, and any attempts to attract a following beyond a certain point has to encounter diminishing returns. After all, even people who “sort of like” some of his ideas will still shrink from the idea of actually having him as the nominee – to say nothing of president. Because, well... he might actually mean what he says! And he might be the first winning candidate in generations to not go to Washington and immediately get that plate surgically implanted in his head that turns everyone else into a neocon killer-robot “war president”, and into a socialist on the domestic side.

I think the fact that Ron Paul scares the daylights out of both the liberal establishment and the Republican neocon establishment says a lot about his ideas... like, for instance, that they might be right. Not only right, but sane. But truth and sanity are, like “rare earths”, the commodities that are in shortest supply in Washington these days – and always have been, in fact, but especially now. When people call him crazy or radical, what they're trying, in their feeble way, to do is express their lack of capability to understand what he's talking about... or if they do understand, their complete disorientation. After all, this country has been running on about the same set of principles and ideas for generations now – at least since the 1930s; there is no living memory of anything else. What was once radical has become established, and what were once “emergency measures” have become business as usual. And after all, the system has “worked” all that time, right? I mean, the Republic still stands; we have not descended into chaos or anarchy – just the opposite, in fact. Our political options have been narrowed and compressed until we're all drinking through a conceptual cocktail straw... comfortably and contentedly, it seems... unaware that there are any other possibilities. Our foreign policy has taken on a perpetual war aspect, and our domestic policies are impacted... petrified... frozen in place. The biggest arguments that break out on Capitol Hill concern maybe 1% or 2% of the national budget... and here Ron Paul is, saying that he would eliminate entire departments – close 'em down! Fire everyone! Drive the bureaucrats out of Washington with guns, hounds, pitchforks, and flaming torches! (At least that's what it would seem like to big-government types.) And then what would happen to all of our “benefits” and “entitlements”? No, surely, this is something that cannot be contemplated – and, in fact, is not contemplated by the majority... not even by the Tea Partiers or the Occupiers. Only a few nut-case “survivalists” living out in the mountains of Idaho would feel good about something like that.

So why is Ron Paul suddenly being presented as a possibly-sane candidate whom possibly-sane voters might vote for? Again I say, it's all about divide and conquer. You split off a good chunk of Republican voters, the way some of the third-party candidates of the past have done, and you have a guaranteed Democrat victory. You don't even have to try and make Obama look good; that act has gotten a bit stale of late. And you don't have to make anyone look bad either. Just present two (at least) Republican candidates as “viable”, and you've done your job.

But – you'll say – in the end, the Republicans can only nominate one candidate. True, and I'm sure the media are hoping that Paul will peel off at that point and try a third-party run, which would pretty much put the icing on the cake. But even if he doesn't, you might wind up with a good number of Ron Paul supporters sitting out the election, or going with some other third party, because once people have tasted the fresh, clean air of Ron Paul's ideas they're unlikely to slouch into the voting booth and go back to Rockjaw Goodhair, or whomever. There is, in fact, an alienation process going on, which the Tea Party is a symptom of – what the media call “disgust” with Washington and all of its pomps and works. But note, that disgust is almost entirely on the conservative side. The Occupiers are not disgusted with Washington – not really, not in principle. As far as they're concerned, the federal government is still the answer to all their woes, if only it can be redirected a bit. All we have to do is “reprioritize”, from bailing out banks to paying off everyone's student loans. And they have yet to say anything bad about Obama, right? So the Democrat base is firm, and solid – and even the few who say that Obama doesn't “deserve” a second term will vote for him anyway, because what choice do they have?

Let me put it another way. The bulk of the Democrat, therefore Obama, base is made up of tax receivers, vs. tax payers. It's really that simple. And we know now that half the populace is in that category. To which must be added people who are liberal on principle – academics, media types, “entertainment” types, East and West Coast elites... small in number but highly influential. Not to mention the vast majority of career politicians and lobbyists. This includes the people who are chronically afflicted with what is termed “liberal guilt” -- they don't mind supporting socialism as long as they still get to keep most of their own “stuff”. And the tax receivers – the bulk, again – get to keep _all_ their stuff, and maybe get more besides! So it's the perfect coalition. In the long run, economically, it may be unsustainable, but since when has that bothered anyone? No one worries about the national debt if they don't think they'll ever have to pay any of it. See, that's the beauty of socialism, and of collectivism in general – you get all the benefits but none of the responsibility and none of the accountability. No one's ever going to show up at your door with a bill. And all the pleading from the “reality-based community” (I love that term) about the long-term corrosive effect of economic insanity... well, that's easy to ignore, even by people who are starting to feel the effects (like not having a job, for instance).

Now, I'm not saying that this newfound respect for Ron Paul among the establishment elites is going to go on indefinitely; it will depend, to a large extent, on what happens in the Iowa Caucuses and other pre-primary and primary events. The media are quick on their feet, no doubt – once Cain was out of the way, for example, it was as if he'd never existed. There wasn't even any time spent gloating; there was more important work to be done. And if Gingrich continues to slide, there won't be any gloating then either – in wartime, those sorts of niceties tend to get neglected.

And it's funny too because, as I've always said, the Republicans have a built-in handicap when it comes to national elections. They don't own the big-city political machines, and therefore have a much harder time stealing votes or doing other sorts of shenanigans than the Democrats do. So you can count on a lot more Democrat than Republican votes being cast by dead people, or non-people, and legitimate votes being misplaced... but even at that, the Democrats don't win every election. And this doesn't bother the people at the very top of the heap, because they're in control and will continue to be no matter what. But it does upset the political junkies, who still seem to think it makes a difference who's in the White House. Well... it would if it were Ron Paul, but again, that's simply not in the cards. The difference between Obama and Rockjaw Goodhair might be an aesthetic one for some people, but for the controlling elite, as for the international financial elite, it's a trivial matter. In fact, all of American politics is trivial from that ten-mile-high perspective... but it wouldn't be if people starting taking Ron Paul's ideas seriously. Which means that he has to be dealt with – and there's no one better equipped to perform that function than our mainstream media.

Our Long National Nightmare is Not Over

2011-12-15T18:30:00.002-05:00

Well, it looks like we're just about out of Iraq. Just about, kinda, sorta... except for the troops that are staying for “security” purposes, and as “trainers” and “advisors”. (Remember how Vietnam started?) And of course, we will stand offshore, at the ready, in case anything goes wrong, fully prepared to go in again in order to protect “American interests” -- which can include virtually anything, including nothing.

But shame, shame on the people out there who would claim that Obama is only getting us out of Iraq in order to contrast himself with the would-be warriors of the Republican party, who have, basically, promised to drastically escalate the war on Islam the minute they get into office. Why, those are the real war mongers, aren't they? -- compared to whom, the Democrats are the party of peace, etc. Well, it all depends on whom you ask, and the time frame of reference. World Wars I and II, Korea, and Vietnam were all Democrat wars – or at least started during Democrat administrations, and then (in the case of Korea and Vietnam) a Republican administration had to go in and do the clean-up (successfully, more or less, in the case of Korea, and disastrously in the case of Vietnam). But more recently, there has been a bit of a sea change, and now the roles have been reversed – the Republicans start wars, and the Democrats are expected to go in and do the clean-up... and so far the only “success” in this regard has been Iraq, which is ending in more or less of a stalemate, not unlike Korea. Heck, we could pull out and the terrorists and insurgents could move on Baghdad five minutes later; who knows? And as for all the troops who were sent home in body bags having died in vain – well, those are words that will never cross any mainstream politician's lips. Wars are worth fighting more or less by definition... and you'll notice that the criteria for starting, and ending, wars have deteriorated of late so that now there really are no effective criteria. An American president can attack any foreign country on the globe for no damn good reason, and then turn around and leave, or stay, for no damn good reason. (And, BTW, so much for "division of powers".) And yet the populace at large still fails to realize that this is the way things are, and insists that we “support the troops” by supporting the tyrants who send them off to die for unworthy causes. We have become numb to absurdity to the point where the perpetual war program doesn't seem to bother anyone; no one sees anything amiss in being on a war footing at all times, and in devoting the bulk of our national wealth to fighting other nations and entities that really don't have bad intentions toward us – or, if they do, it's typically our own fault.

So yes, Obama and the Democrats are only continuing the madness that started under the Republicans – but that madness has overtaken the entire nation, so it doesn't really matter who's in office. One would be tempted to think that, as Pat Buchanan has suggested, a vote for the Republicans in next year's election is a vote for war. Perfectly true, but a vote for the Democrats is also a vote for war. Would the Republicans attack Iran (or North Korea, or China, or Russia) any more readily than the Democrats? They claim they would (speaking primarily about Iran), but who knows? History shows that the Democrats are enamored of war, not least because it creates an opportunity for government to grow by leaps and bounds, both in power and in resources. The Republicans, on the other hand, are enamored of war because they're still enamored of the Monroe Doctrine (especially as applied to places like ex-Soviet Georgia), Manifest Destiny, “spreading democracy”, and “defending the American way of life” -- which, again, can include almost anything. The Republicans have the added advantage of being dominated by the Evangelicals, who are completely unabashed about desiring a holy war on Islam, not only on their own behalf but for the benefit of Israel. It somehow makes perfect sense for the United States to go to war in order to speed the realization of some (alleged) Biblical prophecy – even though we are, supposedly, a “non-sectarian” nation.

So if you're a pacifist these days – as some of the “Occupy” crowd seem to be – times are tough. But they have never been good – I mean, there have been periods in our history when we enjoyed a “peace dividend”, but the most recent was the 1920s and 1930s, and look how that turned out. As a nation and a culture, we definitely do a much better job at war than at peace. We find peace disorienting, somehow – after all, there are ideas and causes worth fighting for, and we hold a brimming hand of those ideas and causes... enough to justify wars into the foreseeable future and beyond. When, for instance, one of the causes is spreading American-style democracy around the globe, we find that this is, in fact, a fool's errand and can never be achieved, and yet we keep at it -- much to the delight of our military leaders and armaments makers. Wars with a definite goal – like conquest, or peace – are just so out of fashion these days; it seems almost quaint to recall that we felt our work was done when the armistice was signed at the end of World War I... or when the Germans and Japanese surrendered at the end of World War II. What an idea, that wars can (and should) actually end! We know better now – or, at least, our thinking is programmed better now by the powers that be. Now there is no “morning after”, or hangover, from war, because it never stops. Neither are there any “peace dividends” because they only spoil people into thinking that things are going to stay that way. No, we have become like one of those “rogue states”, like North Korea, that considers itself at war continuously with the rest of the world – and we're doing our best to make this a reality. I mean, when you take on Islam, and then start threatening China and Russia... well, who's left? Sub-Saharan Africa? Oh no, wait, we've gone in there too at this point. I guess maybe New Zealand doesn't have much to worry about, but you never know.

In any case, Obama has – perhaps cynically... OK, for sure cynically – now positioned himself as a war-ender and peacemaker, even as Hillary marches up and down Southeast Asia huffing and puffing about the “law of the sea” vis-a-vis China. Is he only trying to free up resources to go elsewhere? I mean, the stalemate in Afghanistan should be enough to satisfy anyone. What I think he's trying to do is contrast himself with the Republican candidates, who – with the exception of Ron Paul, as always – are all foaming at the mouth to start as many wars as possible as soon as possible after they get into office... believing in what they say, and believing that's what the American people want, and, unfortunately, they're probably right. Or if the American people don't exactly “want” what amounts to a world war on six or seven fronts, they at least won't object, and will ever be willing to “support the troops”. Obama, on the other hand, must think, or suspect, on some level, that Americans are truly “war-weary”, as they are so often described by the mainstream media – so he's willing to take a chance of letting peace break out in Iraq.

But I always argue with this; I don't think Americans are “war-weary” at all. I think they are a combination of misled, conned, numb, and delusional... and that war is about the only thing that brings light and life into their otherwise dull and despairing lives. OK, this is somewhat of an exaggeration, but you get my point – I hope. We are a warring nation because we are an ideational nation, and one of our ideas – the “meta-idea”, if you will – is the insistence that everyone else on the planet should share in those ideas, and be willing to adopt them... or if not, we will be glad to help them along... to gently change their attitudes through persuasive techniques like bombing. One idea that has never really taken root in this country – or, if it ever did, it was quickly uprooted – was the simple one of “live and let live”. We think we believe in it – you know, with the Bill of Rights, the “Four Freedoms”, etc., but we really don't. We may believe in it, up to a point, for individuals, but we believe just the opposite for nations, cultures, and even religions if you're talking about Islam. In those cases, whenever their ways are not our ways, we pronounce their ways “evil”, and do everything in our power to change them. And one of the perennial rationales for this is that it will make people freer, happier, more content – they will enjoy the many fruits of democracy (think “inky thumbs”). And indeed, many of the “beneficiaries” of our largess have become adept at putting on an act of being, or feeling, freer, happier, more content, etc. -- except that when it's only on our terms (as in the case of Iraq) then they are forced to deny their cultural (and maybe also religious) heritage... and this, in turn, causes resentment, hostility, and rebellion, and in the long run things wind up worse than if we'd never interfered.

As much as we are loathe to admit it, other nations and cultures prefer to be left alone – yes, even in what we consider to be their benighted state. They may be ruled by tyrants... be fond of “cruel and unusual punishment” (as if we aren't)... embrace ignorance and “superstition” (AKA traditional religion of the non-Protestant kind)... eat funny-smelling foods and wear weird clothes. But dammit, it's their culture and it's where they feel at home. We step in, trash what they have, and offer what in return? A sort of watered-down and distorted version of American culture, which as we all know is succeeding so admirably these days, ahem. An American overlay where all the bad things are amplified, and the good things are minimal or non-existent. A mess of pottage in exchange for a birthright! But we are all too familiar with this bad deal, since we've imposed it on so many of our own – so many immigrants as well as non-conformists among the native-born.

And really, what, after all, is this all-hallowed criterion of what it means to be an “American”? I guess if you wouldn't fit readily into a Norman Rockwell painting you don't qualify. It all comes, ultimately, out of New England, which was settled by religious fanatics who got thrown out of England. And they set the tone for the rest of us, from that day forward. Yes, don't ever think that we are not still a Puritanical society. Nothing proves it more readily than our foreign policy and our attitudes toward other nations and cultures – and, in fact, toward the bulk of our own citizenry. It is the most bizarre of things – oppression by a dead minority. I have yet to see an active church or congregation up in New England, or anywhere else, identified as the “Puritan Church of...”, and yet their cold, clammy hands continue to reach out, after lo these many years, to influence everything we do. Consider, as one case, the “War on Drugs”; pure Puritanism! (And what, after all, was Prohibition?) The buckled, blunderbuss-toting Pilgrim fathers could not be more proud. Consider the domination of anti-life attitudes in our culture – not just abortion, but the ridiculous battles about breast-feeding “in public”... about medicine and health care... about diet and nutrition... and so on. Behind them all, looming in the background, is the glowering visage of Puritanism – hating life, loving death, counseling despair. It is so ubiquitous that we can hardly imagine what its opposite is... what life would be like without that constant, nagging fear of living and resentment of those who seem to know how to do it. I actually suspect that most of the nations, and cultures, we wage war on are better at embracing life and existence than we are – which is, I suspect, one reason we are so anxious to wage war on them, because we see them as a metaphysical threat. Their cultural successes only serve to point out our cultural hollowness. People in those places squabble, fight, and kill each other cheerfully and with abandon... but in the meantime they “live large” -- at least much larger than so many Americans, with their pinched, intimidated, fear-ridden approach to things. I always marvel at photos of sub-Saharan Africans, living in some of the most horrendous, violent, flea-bitten places on earth, and they have bigger, and more genuine, smiles on their faces than almost any American I ever see. What's their secret? Are they idiots? Or do they know something we don't? They are part of an authentic culture, the value of which we've long since lost track of – and maybe that turns out to be the most important thing for true quality of life, as opposed to just “stuff”. Their lives may be “nasty, brutal, and short” to our way of thinking, but what if they're really living, as opposed to merely pretending to live, as so many of us do? Doesn't that mean they have taken the better part? And what does it then say about our attempts to destroy them?

The Gingrich That Stole Romney's Christmas

2011-12-12T19:02:00.002-05:00

One of my readers has commented that he thinks I'm wrong about the mainstream media's love affair – or, should I say, non-hate affair – with Mitt Romney, AKA Rockjaw Goodhair. He thinks they are definitely swinging over to the Gingrich side (while ignoring Ron Paul, of course – as well as those they have already succeeded in shooting down), and the question is why? Especially considering the roasting they gave Newt back in the “Contract with America” days. Remember then? Ah yes, those bygone times before 9/11 “changed everything” -- and, wouldn't you know, it happened on the watch of a Republican president, or we might never have gotten the Patriot Act, the war in Iraq... maybe not even the war in Afghanistan. But that's all a pipe dream at this point. Besides, we're “getting out” of Iraq, aren't we? By the end of the month! Well... anyone who has a one-square-mile embassy in Baghdad isn't exactly what you'd call “out” of Iraq. And as I've said before, what about the CIA's private army? They'll be over there until this country sinks into the ocean... and probably beyond.

But I digress. As I said, if you go back to 1994, the Contract with America, honchoed by Newt Gingrich, was described by the MSM (and comedians everywhere) as the worst thing to ever come down the pike – pure hate speech on paper. And of course it lies, unused and neglected, on the ash heap of discarded ideas, just like everything else that accompanies elections. All it takes to derail good ideas, and set the country back decades, is another war... and, sure enough, the events of 9/11 were just what the doctor ordered in this regard.

So Gingrich left Congress in 1999, under a multi-layered cloud... and that cloud remains; not a jot or tittle of it has been washed away. In fact, new layers keep getting added... and yet here he is, the apparent beneficiary of “newfound respect” by the media.

Well, it's all nonsense, of course. The media are no more interested in having Gingrich as our next president than they were having Romney. But here's the difference. The idea now – or so I'm told – is that the media are starting to worry that Romney might just be able to beat Obama next year. Unlikely, true... but not impossible. See, the rationale for supporting, or at least not pillorying, Romney was a classic case of bet-hedging. The media are sure Obama's good to go for a second term, but in case there is a shadow of a doubt, they want the least-threatening (to their agenda) Republican candidate to be nominated, so that if he (or she) gets in, he'll be easily co-opted... or, more likely, already be co-opted upon taking office. But again, it's based on the premise that he doesn't have a chance; otherwise they'd put their full weight behind a less-likely candidate who couldn't be elected in a million years.

So if Romney has become too threatening, then the media have to shift the limelight onto Gingrich – once again hoping that he'll win the nomination but be unelectable... but if elected (one chance in a million) wouldn't be all that much of a threat. Forgotten are all the fears, hysteria, and condemnations of 1994... but, I guess, if the alternatives are the likes of Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum, Newt is going to look like a cute little fuzz ball. Gingrich is, at least, someone they can “work” with, since he's a known flip-flopper, compromiser, and “pragmatist” -- i.e. a politician. Whereas some of these others... well, who knows? They might turn out to have principles, and surely we can't have that.

So anyway... perhaps we've identified a trend here, or maybe it's just an anomaly. But it is striking how a guy who was Pure Evil back in 1994 almost seems acceptable now... that is, until you realize what the agenda is. And if Gingrich is the MSM's second choice, imagine how they must feel about the other candidates! And with many months still to go before the convention, what happens if Newt develops some blatant, non-ignorable fatal flaw... some political sucking chest wound? Do they switch back to Romney? Do they finally discover Huntsman? Who knows? I'm glad it's not my problem.

The Great Transition

2011-12-08T00:36:00.002-05:00

It's always risky to call a given span of years an “age” or “era” while it is still going on. Events that seem so salient at the time might turn out to be not all that historically significant, or trends that we thought were the start of something really big might fizzle. When's the last time, for example, that you heard anyone refer to “The Space Age”? It sounded good when we were ready to establish colonies on Mars, but now look – most of the NASA program is ending with a whimper rather than a bang, and it seems highly far-fetched at this point that we'll even get back to the Moon. Things that fail to live up to the hype tend to make for bad “ages” and “eras” -- and I guess one disadvantage in our time is that everything is so hyped that it's impossible for even successful enterprises to live up to expectations. Right now we're supposedly living in the Age of Automation, the Digital Age, the Post-Industrial Age, the post-Christian era, and so on, with other ages and eras hot on their heels. When the present gets redefined every few months, one suspects that it's based on a longing for historical significance – but unfortunately that cannot be forced. Only future generations can offer a final verdict on what is historical and what is ephemeral.

(If Mount Rushmore were carved today, would one of the four heads be Teddy Roosevelt? Seems kind of unlikely somehow. Of course, if it had been carved in the 1960s it would have included both FDR and JFK... so let's be thankful for small favors.)

(On the other hand, how many prognosticators and “futurists” have predicted a short life for something that turned out to actually define an age or an era? Rock 'n' roll comes to mind, as does the computer. I suppose the automobile qualifies as well... and the steam locomotive... and the airplane... and so on. ) (Funny how often it has to do with transportation. No one ever talks about the “Age of Penicillin”.)

(And does anyone else remember when computers were supposed to be the size of a football stadium by now? That was when they still ran on vacuum tubes. And the aesthetic movement called “steam punk” is, in a way, an exercise in nostalgia for an era that never existed because electricity took over from steam as the major power transmitter.)

With that note of caution, I will proceed, nonetheless, to hypothesize that the current era – socially, economically, culturally, politically – will be seen by future generations as... well... let's call it The Great Transition. And by that I mean the transition from a three-class society to a two-class society, a process that is well underway, so there is already ample justification for this idea.

I refer, of course, to the no-longer-gradual, no-longer-subliminal, reduction in the state of the middle class from prosperity to (relative) deprivation... from complacency to fear... and, perhaps most importantly of all, from the class that exerted cultural dominance to the one that is chronically under attack and feels like a persecuted minority. In the broadest sense, if the old three-class system consisted of the “doers-to”, i.e. the upper class, and the “done-to”, i.e. the lower class, and those suspended in between, i.e. the middle class, we are now seeing the middle class being moved into the “done-to” category at a rapid rate. A vast gulf is opening up between the ruling elite and everyone else -- and I'm only about the 1,000th commentator to point tht out. Or, to put it another way, we are seeing the middle class being forcibly shifted into the lower class – but without having been born in that environment, and without having lower-class expectations (characterized by low locus of control and metaphysical despair, as I've discussed before). If you show me, in two adjoining houses on the same street, a lower-class family that has never known anything else, and a middle-class family that has fallen on hard times and therefore now has the same household income as the lower-class family, I guarantee you that the middle-class family will be the one that is stressed out. It's all about expectations, in other words – and although this is a feature of human nature in general, we are seeing most of the symptoms these days among the “no longer, or at-risk, middles”, as represented by the Tea Party movement.

Now, this whole class thing, when it comes to history, economies, forms of government, and so on, is an extremely complex subject, and you could fill a large library with books on it. But my overall impression, at least when it comes to “modern”, by which I mean post-Industrial Revolution, history, is that a three-class system is highly correlated with democratic forms of government as well as with commerce, technology, and urbanization. After all, who were the original “bourgeoisie”? I would say mostly merchants and traders. And where did they live? By definition, in towns and cities, particularly in areas and countries that, for whatever reasons, had a thriving commercial and trading sector. And to their number were eventually added what are called “professional” people – doctors, lawyers, and the like – followed by other “white-collar” groups like teachers. And this arrangement held true, more or less, for centuries – right up to the mid-20th Century, in fact, since it's the way things were when I was growing up. Can we at least agree that this lasted long enough to define an “era” or even an “age”? At least in Western Europe and North America?

I would never have imagined, as a kid, that the social-cultural-economic arrangement I grew up with was, in fact, the last flowering of something that had been around for centuries... and that a revolution was at hand. Well, of course, as we all know, the bourgeoisie are always the last to know when it comes to revolution. There might have been early signs (the beatniks? Jazz? Rock 'n' roll? Sack dresses?) but no one was willing or able to see them as such. And I guess this is one of the defining things about the middle class – that it's in the perpetual position of being that frog in the pot on the stove. If only we were more sensitive to the signs of the times – as sensitive as the proletariat are, even! But then we wouldn't be middle-class any more, would we? At least not in the strict sense. We would then be revolutionaries who came out of the middle class, and who despise their heritage, as so many revolutionaries have down through the centuries.

Now, I'm trying to make as “value-free” a presentation here as possible, because I'm not one to carry a torch for the middle class. It has its “issues”, its serious flaws, its absurdities... and in some ways maybe it's due for a cleansing experience. But I do think that it is being assaulted in our time by people who are no better -- and usually worse -- and who have evil intent... so I don't think it's out of place to offer a bit of sympathy, even though it can be argued that most of the middle class's woes have been brought on, or at least aggravated, by its own actions (like always voting for the wrong candidate, for example – and not starting to protest things until it's too late).

And allow me also to dismiss, with a single wave of the hand, people who claim that “class analysis” is a thing of the past... or that it was never a good model anyway. Nonsense! You can debate all you want as to the fine points of class distinctions, and how many sub-classes there are, and how this correlates with other factors like race, ethnicity, religion, etc., but the phenomenon we call “class” has been with us always, and always will be – no matter how “democratic” or “egalitarian” we are, or fancy ourselves to be. And in fact, you'll notice that every time a government tries to eliminate social class, they only succeed in substituting a new kind of class structure that is typically more oppressive than the one it replaced. So social class really does seem to be, on some profound level, a universal aspect of human nature in groups – an inevitable thing that arises at all times and in all places, whether this is willed by people and whether or not it is conscious. It's as hard to eliminate as are differences in intelligence or athletic ability for individuals – i.e. impossible. And yet we have never seemed to learn to live with it – at least in this country -- which is an interesting thing since it's been taken for granted and not questioned in most societies down through history, and in the bulk of societies in our time, I would say. I guess if one were compiling a list of bad ideas – i.e. ones doomed to fail – eliminating all class distinctions would have to be at the top of the list. And yet this is what has motivated all revolutions in the modern era, and it's what motivated all communist and many socialist governments over the past century or so. And it's what continues to motivate and energize liberals/Democrats in the present day -- or so they claim.

But if we accept class analysis as a valid approach, we cannot thereby fall into simplistic assumptions. The most obvious and simplistic in our time is that it's just a matter of money, and nothing more. You can find a chart in most any issue of most any periodical in the land that shows you exactly what “class” you're in based on your household income – completely ignoring other factors like values, taste, life style, political attitudes, social customs, diet, dress... and so on. And much of this adds up – or did at one time -- to that mysterious thing that has become virtually extinct in our society (and in most others), namely breeding.

There, I said it! That most feared word, since it denotes, inescapably, a class distinction that cannot be erased by winning the lottery, or by government mandate. And yet its utility in our time can be questioned, since it's so rare that one seldom sees it even among the super-rich. When one does see it, it's most likely among European royalty or “old money”. And it is, of course, blatantly un-democratic; no one gets to vote on who is well-bred and who is not, and you can't buy it in a showroom or on eBay. It is something that few people have the time or money or motivation to cultivate any longer, and yet it is, I would say, the most reliable and traditional sign of true “class” that we have.

In trying to think of an example from post-war America, I come up with a mere handful, which probably means that I've spent way too little time (i.e. none) in the correct social circles. But who's going to argue when I say that the last well-bred resident of the White House was Jackie Kennedy? Her husband's family had more money, but she had the upbringing. She was a shiny, gleaming, finished product of all that the upper reaches of society have to offer – and it is offered in a straightforward, unabashed way. After all, who wouldn't want to be well-bred, if they had the choice? Other White House residents have been perfectly nice people – some of them at least – but I would be hard-pressed to call any of them, even the rich ones, well-bred. I'll spare you the most blatant examples; you can consider that homework.

So if breeding is “out” as a practical criterion, because it's basically extinct, then what do we have to take its place? Money, and nothing more? That might work in places like Texas, but most people suspect there is a bit more to it – even though the expression “nouveau riche” has fallen on hard times. And when it comes to rich people who happen to have good taste, which came first, the money or the good taste (a possible sign of breeding)? I can point to guys who give millions a year to the symphony but whose taste in food is limited to steak and lobster, and who insist on driving abominably-designed big-ass American luxury cars. And who live in the mansions that the “McMansions” are designed to emulate. Maybe we should be satisfied with partial solutions when it comes to such things as taste; after all, this is still America, a rough-and-tumble frontier wilderness territory, where a man has to be hard, steely-eyed, and rock-jawed to stay alive. All of that decadent, sissified European stuff can come later. (Well, isn't this the attitude?)

The subject of taste is incredibly complex – more so than the subject of class, even – so I'm not about to get bogged down in it at this point. Suffice it to say that it is a factor, and nothing distinguishes the three classes in America more than the composite of clothing, grooming, houses, cars, food, and drink. You tell me where a person stands in these areas and I will ring up a class designation for that person, guaranteed accurate or your money back.

OK then, how about education? Yes, that counts, as long as we recognize that a “college education” is no longer a guarantee even of literacy, to say nothing of becoming an “educated person”. No, it takes much more – way more – than what is offered in the typical college or university at the undergraduate level. There are exceptions, of course – redoubts of the “liberal arts” in the true sense – but they don't contribute to social class precisely because they are so rare. Our society doesn't know what to do with scholars – assuming it ever did. But there was a time when “a classical education” meant something. I guess that was at the same time that not everyone who was not brain-dead (not to mention some who were) went to college. It was also a time when there were other paths to success, and being self-supporting in a respectable occupation, than having to get the college ticket punched. But the advocates and propagandists of “higher education” have had their way, and now anyone who didn't attend a “four-year school” is considered somewhat of a second-class citizen. Needless to say, if everyone goes to college, it's as if no one went to college, and we have to start all over again.

Now, when I dismiss “higher education” as a reliable criterion, I don't want to, by doing so, dismiss the symbolic and literal value of attending the “right” school. There are, clearly, schools that the “good” families send their offspring to, and it has nothing to do with education, and everything to do with appearances, contacts, and “networking”. There are schools – preparatory and collegiate – that are simply the property of the ruling class, and the riff-raff are simply not welcome (even assuming they could afford it). So while “education” per se is of little consequence, having the right colored school tie most definitely is.

To get back to money for a moment – do you need money to be considered upper class? I refer you to the film “Gray Gardens”; it might stimulate your thinking on the subject. The short answer is – yes, and a lot of it, except for a very few freakish exceptions. OK then, do you need money to be considered middle class? Yes, if it's only about money – but I hope I've at least suggested that it's also about taste and education (genuine or symbolic), and I will extend these to a concept of “life style”. There is, like it or not, a middle-class life style, and a lower-class life-style... more than one of each, I suppose, but there is no mistaking them, and no possibility of confusing the two. And yet even though it's about money, and taste, and education, it's also about attitudes and values... about the entire approach to life... about one's premises when it comes to dealing with the world, and the way in which one deals with it. And this, I suspect, is actually the most profound difference, and why we find, especially in this country as in all “new” societies, people who seem upper-class in every way except... they just aren't. And people who are middle-class in most respects except you can tell they're well-bred. And middle-class people who obviously just last week clawled their way up out of the lower-class muck. This is something people can tell about each other; call it unfair, call it “undemocratic”, whatever – it's undeniable, and it would be folly to try and eliminate it from our psyche. (Might as well try to elminate cliques from middle schools, or gangs from the inner cities.)

So really, it's these intangibles – these undefinables – that are the surest sign, and yet they are in some ways the most subtle, and are certainly the most difficult to change. At what point in our upbringing did we acquire our world view? I can't remember ever having been without it, although I suspect it has evolved quite a bit over time. I have often commented on the fatalism that characterizes the lower class – that and the self-destructiveness, and there's no doubt they go together. But at what age does this attitude enter the thinking and feeling of the person? At what age does the child of wealth realize that he is rich, special, exceptional, privileged, superior -- and eminently deserving of all of it? At what age does the middle-class person define his place in the firmament – above the unwashed but below the privileged... a state much more precarious and challenging than it appears, and one that requires an exceptional effort to follow the rules, conform, and exercise self-control?

So what I'm coming around to is that class is not simply a matter of any one thing in particular, but is a complex matter. And yet, there are predictable correlates – at least there used to be, and this is part of what I'm working up to. There was a time when rich people, with breeding, acted like rich people with breeding across the board, with few exceptions. They had a self-contained, highly-reinforcing (or highly regulated, depending on one's point of view) culture that offered all who stayed within its bounds great rewards. There was really no reason to leave, or to stray – and very few did. The middle class as well, although there was room for ambition and advancement, had well-defined social, economic, and cultural boundaries within which there was very little “wiggle room” (with small allowances made for ethnic and religious heritage – but not too much!). In terms of political attitudes, the vast bulk of both groups was “conservative” in that they wanted to maintain the life style to which they were accustomed – or better yet, acquire more of the same. The middle class might have envied the upper class, but the most they would ever do about it was to study books on etiquette, and try to act rich on those few occasions when they could afford it and were not in danger of too many derisive comments from the neighbors.

Then we had the vast lower class – the “working class”, “labor”, “blue collar”, the proletariat... the “people”... and they came in many shades and varieties, but their social stratum was what it was, and no one would mistake it for anything else. And it was, of course, the primary source of raw energy in favor of “change” if not for outright revolution – a force for populism, equal rights, “fairness”, economic liberalism... and the elimination, as much as possible, of class distinctions. And this is not to say that the bulk of lower-class people thought about these issues all the time, or even some of the time, or at all – but they wound up being represented by institutions, like labor unions, the NGOs of their day, and political parties, that did. In fact, that's about all they thought about, 24-7. So we have the basis for class conflict, class warfare, whatever you want to call it, which brings us right up to the present day. Every other word out of any politician's mouth, regardless of party, has something to do with class and class conflict. It might be euphemistic... it might be “coded”... but it's there. In fact, one could say (and I do) that politics is the natural outgrowth of social class, which, as I said, will always be with us... and so will politics, I fear. Another way of looking at it is that politics is about economics, nearly all the time... and economics is about money, and so is social class. So you're going to eliminate politics from the human experience about as soon as you eliminate money, or social class – namely never.

An elegant, elderly Southern lady I knew had a succinct piece of advice for her granddaughter: “Don't act like trash.” She didn't say “be rich”, or “have good taste”, or “get a good education” -- even though those would all be considered fine things. The main point was not to act like “trash” -- i.e. not to betray your upbringing, and your social class -- not to mention your family -- by “acting” (vs. actually being, which was impossible) like people on the low end of the scale (said scale being composed of all the complex factors discussed above, and many more besides). And of course there are always temptations for people to wander far from their roots, and to rebel against their upbringing (especially its associated signs and symbols) – and sometimes a permanent shift is made... and sometimes it even seems to succeed. But I suspect that few people stray very far, firstly because it's a lot of work, secondly because it takes the kind of imagination most people simply don't have, and thirdly because things are found, in the long run, to be safer, more secure, and more familiar back on one's home turf (socially speaking). This has, of course, been the topic of any number of books, plays, movies, etc. -- and it always comes back to the question of what, precisely, is social class, and can it/should it be changed, altered, defied, done away with, embraced, made fun of... the full range of possible responses is put on the table on a daily basis, and yet the problem persists. And, as I've discussed before, this country is an “ideational” culture, and among its ideas are those of endless progress and advancement, unto a secular utopia (which seems strangely elusive considering how long we've been working toward it). This idea is, of course, focused on the society in general, but it readily trickles down to the individual level, so that everybody feels that if their standard of living is not “better than their parents'”, they've failed, somehow. (And I don't know how many obituaries I've read in the local paper in which the subject was described as being “the first in his family to go to college”. I can hardly wait to read one where he was the last... ) What this means is that, in the long run, the goal is to make everyone at least middle class (not unlike Lake Wobegon where “all the children are above average”); this is certainly the picture that politicians paint for people, especially at election time. It's not quite the “Every Man a King” of Huey Long, but it's every bit as demagogic and delusional. I would much rather live in a society where people at all levels had self-respect rather than all of the gadgets and fripperies that, they believe, make them middle class (or better). I met people in Mexico who lived in houses with dirt floors, and yet they had a dignity that I have found in very few people (of any class) up here. There is clearly something seriously wrong with our concepts of self-worth, and I think it has a lot to do with endless striving after unattainable ideals -- not just "stuff" but notions and fancies. Even within the middle class, the notion of being satisfied with things just as they are seems suspect; one ought to want more... to have “ambition”... “get up and go”... and all the rest of that Horatio Alger stuff. What is this country, and this society, if not one of doers rather than thinkers... people of action rather than contemplation... supreme self-confidence based on the quixotic pursuit of ideas? No wonder people elsewhere think we're kind of nuts.

Now, the only reason I've indulged in this brief (ahem) introduction to the concept of social class is to provide background for the main point of this post, which is that we're in the middle of a revolution when it comes to many of these factors. Not only have many of the traditional lines of class started to fray and break down (not always for the worse, I hasten to add), but, paradoxically, “class consciousness” has reached a new high – higher, even, in some ways, than during the populist era or the New Deal. And a big part of this is that the middle class has, at long last, acquired class consciousness – which they did not have, at least in the political sense, before. What class consciousness means politically is simply that you come to want something for your social class, and therefore for yourself, that you didn't have before... or you want to regain something you've lost, or keep from losing that which is at risk. In other words, it's, psychologically, a non-”conservative” mind set – and imagine the trauma for the typical “bourgeois” person when he or she is forced, at long last, to not only acknowledge that things are not as they ought to be, but to actually go out into the streets and say so. This is what has happened with the Tea Party movement, and it's hard to overstate what a shocking change that represents when it comes to the basic premises, and world view, of the middle class, which is rightly considered fat, happy, and complacent. To actually take to the streets! Like union organizers, civil rights demonstrators... or plain rabble! It's unheard of! And this is one of the many reasons why the media can't cope with the phenomenon. They don't understand it because they don't realize how big it is – how “radical”. They just think it's the usual grumbling and griping on the part of the “uptight squares” -- but it's not. And because they don't realize that, they also don't realize what it took to get those people out into the streets. It wasn't just the usual government harassment of the middle class by taxation and social/cultural attacks; that's been going on for generations. It has now occurred to the middle class – the way it occurs to horses and cows in a Gary Larson cartoon – that their number might really be up... that they might be on the way to the slaughterhouse. This is, if you will, the “great awakening” of the middle class – and might serve to at least partially define the present era.

Now... I've said that this process has been going on for a while. Certainly the maintenance of the middle class as milch cows, to be tapped periodically by those in charge in order to bribe the proletariat and stave off revolution, has been going on since the New Deal. But a system like this, even if it involves exploitation of the middle class, cannot require its elimination; that should be obvious. If you have a dairy farm, you have to keep the cows happy, sheltered, and fed – and also fenced in. This has been the strategy up until now. I always say there are two major types of propaganda -- the pro-change, or rabble-rousing, kind and the “don't worry, everything's under control” kind. The former has been the steady diet of the lower class throughout the modern era, and the latter the steady diet of the middle class. But now it appears that the “reassurance” diet has turned to ashes in the mouths of the middle class, and they have adopted their own version of the pro-change diet -- another phenomenon that has the mainstream media totally baffled, upset, and hostile. And, by the way, it has not escaped the attention of the more traditional rabble-rousers that they now have competition for room on street corners, and they kind of resent the fact. “Who do these boozh-wah people think they are, anyway?”

On the cultural front it's a different matter. In that area, the middle class, and its tastes and values... its life style... have been under continuous assault since... oh, I would say in a serious way since the cultural revolution of the 1960s. And it's not as if the hippies took over – although they did in some respects. It's that the media, that already had left-wing, populist, collectivist leanings dating back to the 1930s, and were initially skeptical about all the cultural upheavals of the 1960s, eventually decided that this was just the thing to start seriously attacking the middle class “where they live” -- in terms of values, habits, life style, and, yes, taste. The beatniks had failed as shock troops of cultural change because they were too intellectual and there were too few of them. Rock 'n' roll softened up the battlefield, but it was largely non-conceptual. But the hippie movement and all of its cultural accompaniments – ah yes, there was the ticket! So the revolution that may have begun in hippie enclaves was embraced, and spread, by the media, which had been looking, lo those many years, for something with which to deal a stunning blow to the middle class... to, basically, neutralize it or co-opt it politically, and put it on the defensive culturally, so that it would no longer constitute a serious hindrance to the achievement of the long-wished-for socialist Utopian society. If the middle class had stood in the way of the complete triumph of New Deal liberalism thirty years earlier because it was the culturally dominant class of its time, it would no longer be able to do so once hobbled by the cultural revolution of the 1960s.

But that's not all. At about the same time, one of the most formidable upholders of tradition, and traditional values, in this country was also under assault, both from the larger culture and from what has been dubbed “the spirit of Vatican II”. Yes, the Catholic Church in America was undergoing its own “cultural revolution”, which served many purposes. One was to neutralize it politically, and this in conjunction with the elimination, by the government, of the old-time urban white ethnic enclaves by means of “urban renewal” and its mutant offspring like “blockbusting” and forced busing. The Church, partially through its own folly and partially as the result of political and social attacks, ceased to be a source of moral authority in this country – and I'm not even talking about the much later “pedophile priest” scandals, which did little more than put frosting on the cake. This was an attack on the Church by attacking its people – just as the communists in Eastern Europe had done, but in a less blatant and obvious way.

So, to the extent that “middle class” and “Catholic” overlap (yeah, I know, we're not talking about Episcopalians here... ) the woes of the Church and of Catholics were, and are, a subset of the larger class war. Even working-class Catholics were impacted in such a way as to arrive, once they had climbed the socio-economic ladder, deracinated – and therefore politically neutered -- in the middle class. Plus, in the case of Catholics, who have generally been much less class-conscious than other groups, it's not about income or social standing as much as about values. Do I have to mention that any present-day politician who brings up Natural Law is going to be laughed off the stage? I don't think this would have happened in the 1950s (not once he explained what Natural Law is, I mean).

So to review, briefly, the assault on the middle class on many fronts: Politically beginning in the New Deal... socially and culturally beginning in the 1960s... so what was left? Economics, by which I don't mean the slow bleeding that also began in the New Deal, but the greatly-intensified assault which is under way in our time, and which, by necessity, has to be accompanied by endless streams of political rhetoric and propaganda. The most blatant of these, paradoxically, is the endless prating by our politicians about the middle class having to be “protected”. Well... the minute a politician starts talking about “protecting” something, you can be sure that whatever it is is on death row – this is just the way the political discussion works in this country. Once something is no longer a threat, it's OK to talk about preserving it (as a museum piece, I suppose). I mean, think about it... has any politician, in our lifetimes, up until the last couple of years, ever used the term “middle class” in public? Not that I'm aware. This is huge. What it means is not only that the middle class is in danger, but that many members of the middle class know it, and many of our politicians know they know it. So it has become a “talking point”, whereas up until recently it was a term that was simply never heard in the public forum.

But right away we can see a danger, which I'm sure the politicians sense with their ever-keen political insect feelers. You can only talk about the middle class when you're talking to middle-class people. Try it with a lower-class crowd and all you'll get is boos and guffaws -- “Hey, they're finally starting to hurt just like us. Cry me a river!” The lowers have never had any use for the middles, and I'm sure they laugh and punch each other every time they see a Tea Party rally – the way the black slaves in “Roots” shook their heads when they heard about the revolution, and the whites' war for “freedom”. You can, on the other hand, talk about the sufferings of the lower class to a middle-class audience, assuming they're of a mind to offer sympathy and “contribute” more in the way of confiscatory taxation.

The problem with those fine distinctions is that, in our hyper-media age, the word tends to leak out. When Obama talks to a lower-class audience about giving them a fair share of “the pie”, middle-class people who read about it know full well whose “pie” he's talking about. When Obama criticizes bankers and Wall Street to a middle-class audience, he can be sure that the bankers and Wall Street are listening, and ready to yank on his chain if he starts sounding too militant. And so on. It's getting much harder for politicians to promise different things to different groups and get away with it – and for that, at least, we can be thankful.

But if we go beyond the political rhetoric – which has, I would say, much less truth value than the average Chinese fortune cookie... if we go to what is actually happening... the vast economic, or tectonic (or teconomic?) shifts... we see that the time is at hand for the middle class to be offered up in sacrifice. But what has changed? The lower class, as I said, has never had any use for the middles, and will be glad to see them go... so we have to look to the upper, or ruling, class for an explanation, and apparently they've decided they simply don't “need” the middle class any longer – that when the cow runs dry and the sheep is sheared naked, they can be sent off to the dog food factory.

But if, as I said, there is a high, if not perfect, correlation between the existence of a middle class and the prosperity of a society, as shown by modern history... then won't the overall prosperity of the country suffer if the middle class disappears? And won't that, in turn, impact the fortunes of the ruling elite? Plus, who wants to be in charge of a nation of serfs? Isn't there something more “enlightened” about a three-class society than about one on more of a Medieval or Third-World model?

Frankly, I wish I knew. I wish I knew what makes the “masters of space and time” tick. It really seems like they'd rather rule over a desolate wasteland (economically at least) than be part of a more prosperous, democratic, three-class system. Look what's happening in Europe, for instance – and it is a cautionary tale for us, you may be sure. The less-rational, less-responsible countries (or governments, if you want to claim there's a difference) were offered the most addictive drug there is, for people in positions of power – namely loans with which the politicians could, basically, buy votes. I mean, that may not have been what happened literally, but that's what it amounted to in the long run. Well, this went on for decades, and everyone got thoroughly hooked... to the point where there is little or no living memory, in those countries, of living under any system other than borrow-and-spend socialism, where virtually everyone was able to live above their rightful means. (See why we should be paying attention to this?) And then came the day of reckoning – the loans were called in, and no more were offered... and people woke up one morning to find that, not only were they poor, but they had been poor all along – only fooled into thinking they were rich, or at least prosperous. And they reacted the way people usually do when they feel they've been conned – with protests, rioting, strikes, and so on. And it would be easy enough to say, well, you have no one to blame but yourselves... or your rulers, and therefore yourselves for voting them into office, or allowing them to remain in office. And this would be true, but it's about as effective as lecturing a junkie. If he were amenable to that kind of reasoning he wouldn't have gotten addicted in the first place, would he?

So... what happens is that the junkies fall into the hands of the pushers (Germany et al.) and are in the process of becoming officially enslaved to them. So much for the grand design of the E.U. -- it was never anything more than a plot to put Germany back on top. (Well... I'm not really sure about that, but it is something to ponder.) The point is that whoever winds up running the show is going to be, basically, a slave owner. Europe will be divided between slaves and slave owners, basically – and I have no doubt that it could have been otherwise, but the people in charge prefer it this way for whatever reasons. Likewise, our own ruling class (not unrelated to that in Europe, I hasten to say) apparently prefers to be slave owners rather than mere “participants in democracy”. I won't delve into their possible motives or ways of thinking here; I just want to point out what seems to me an obvious fact. The ruling class is perfectly content overseeing a class of slaves... they just don't want the middle class getting in the way and marring the purity of the landscape. And in this, they bear a striking (and non-accidental) resemblance to the ruling classes of communist countries over the years. To reign in Hell rather than serve in Heaven – that is every collectivist/totalitarian's fondest wish... and, truth be told, the wish of many of our present-day liberals. Of course, a society of that sort will, in one sense, be free of politics. If politics is about money, and “the 1%” has all the money, then politics will wither away the way the state was supposed to under Marxism. A three-class structure is a fertile basis for political life as well as economic life; a two-class structure with nothing but the rulers and the ruled is a recipe for eventual death and decay... and yet, again for reasons of their own, that seems to be what the international masters of finance want. Call it short-sighted... inhumane... reactionary... whatever. It could be that, as some have theorized, the age of democracy is coming to an end because the whole democratic idea was limited, in its viability, to certain times and places, and certain cultures, but not others. This remains to be seen. Perhaps we will have an era of warlords, like in medieval Japan – except with banks, investment houses, and corporations making war on one another rather than states, provinces, and tribes. That, at least, could make for some interesting viewing.

Current Events 101

2011-12-03T20:37:00.003-05:00

Well, I guess it's time to, once again, trip the light fantastic through a selection of current events, since no one story seems big enough to devote an entire post to... unless you live in Pennsylvania, and I'll deal with that as well.

The Republicans

As I've pointed out before, the media have already made their selection among the motley crew of presidential candidates – namely Rockjaw Goodhair, of whom no fault can be found... at least not until he finds himself running against Obama, and then the truth will come out: Don't you realize he's a Mormon? With that totally wacked-out theology? Et cetera. But that's a phase we'll have to wait until next summer to witness. In the meantime, the other candidates are being picked off one by one, like ducks in a shooting gallery – the latest being Herman Cain, who had committed the unforgivable sin. And what is that, you ask? Surely not by being found black... or even a Republican... or even an alleged conservative. And as to all of these adultery/affairs allegations, those are things that are laughed off when the perp in question is a Democrat and/or liberal, and anyone who dwells on them is dubbed a “hater”. No, his sin, in the eyes of the liberal establishment, and therefore of the mainstream media, was that of being black _and_ Republican _and_ conservative (allegedly again). This is the one thing that simply does not compute among the media, and therefore anyone who exhibits these traits has to be declared a social pariah and relegated to the outer darkness. After all, who would want anyone as president who is “a traitor to his race”, an “Uncle Tom”, and so forth? Heaven forbid anyone who is black should question the maintenance, by the liberal establishment, of blacks as a permanent underclass that will need special attention, preferences, and “help” from liberals until the end of time. A highly-achieving, self-confident black man who did not attain to success thanks to affirmative action and with the help of the public dime? Theory forbids it. He is, in other words, a liberal's worst nightmare – which is why he had to go. And believe me, if they hadn't managed to dig up the current pile of dirt on him they'd have come up with something else. So he will be relegated to political history wearing the newly-defined mark of Cain.

Hillary

Now there is something at least semi-new under the sun – namely Hillary Clinton making nice with both the rulers of Myanmar and their opposition – an impressive balancing act, if only it weren't part of a blatant attempt to move in on China's turf. The timing is interesting too – just as we're supposedly “winding down” in Iraq and Afghanistan, up pops Southeast Asia and the South China Sea. What a coincidence! Now, a cynic (ahem) might say, well, this is just to distract from our manifest failures in the Middle East and the tremendous cost of said failures. Think about that cop in the movies who always says “Nothing to see here, folks, you can go back to your homes now.” Well, no – the Middle East is going to remain a festering sore for generations to come, is my guess... and going up against China is, to put it mildly, a fool's errand. Which is, in fact, why Obama has sent Hillary on her mission... and frankly, it amazes me that she was even able to find the place. I mean, here's a country that not only changed its name, but also changed the name of its capital, and then moved its capital out somewhere in the middle of the jungle. All designed to fool the Yankees, I'll bet – and yet there she is, wearing that diplomatic grin that required complex surgery to implant on her face. But hey, she's no stranger to delusion; this is a woman who still thinks she was the target of sniper fire in Bosnia. So... let her parade on, I say; it sure couldn't hurt, and it gives the late-night talk-show hosts ample fodder for their monologues.

Imitations of Life

I always say that you can find more out about the people who are running the world from art auctions than from any other single source. And sure enough, in the midst of world-wide economic woes (except for China, I guess) the high-end art market (and its spin-offs, like gems and cars) is doing a bang-up business. An article about “Art Basel Miami Beach” points out that “Those attending... will include some of the world's most well-heeled art investors, many of whom appear to be impervious to the global economic downturn.” I couldn't have put it better myself. And, “Gallery owner Marco Berengo says that, for the most part, the attendees 'don't really feel the impact of the financial crisis'.” Gee, I wonder why? Maybe it's a “crisis” for everyone else but not for them. Maybe it was planned that way! Could this be a sign of the times? Well, when were all the Duesenbergs sold? During the Depression, of course! There is something about hard times that brings out the divide between the classes in sharp relief – and there is no divide more palpable in our time than that between the people in charge and everyone else. Now don't get me wrong – I'm not a “redistributionist” like the Occupy crowd, or like Obama pretends to be. In fact, I firmly believe that the vast bulk of higher culture, both in our time and historically, can be attributed to the benevolence – or whims – or tax lawyers – of the wealthy. You show me a society where radical socialism, communism, and “leveling” have taken place, and I'll show you one where most cultural activities of any value have come to a screeching halt – or where the ones that remain (think Bolshoi Ballet) are holdovers from an earlier, less egalitarian age. Collectivist societies build monuments, certainly – but they are monuments to bad ideas, and they look like it. The cities of Eastern Europe are still festooned with some of the most tasteless buildings of all time, holdovers from the Soviet/Warsaw Pact/Iron Curtain era. And for that matter, what do we see when we tour a really ancient site – in Italy or Greece, for example? We see things that rich people built; the stuff poor people built for their own use crumbled to dust centuries ago. So I'm not objecting to wealth per se, but to “ill-gotten gains”, and I wish I could tell you whether the wealthy of our time have more of a criminal bent than the wealthy of former times; I truly don't know. Maybe it's true that, as Balzac is supposed to have said, “behind every great fortune there is a crime”. I hope and wish this is not the case, since I can very easily imagine a great fortune being made simply by inventing, marketing, and selling goods and services on the free market. But when it comes down to actual cases, one is hard pressed to find a pure example like this – especially in our time, when so much depends on things like no-bid government contracts, government-granted monopolies, bribery, and various forms of fraud and deception, made even more virulent by the use of digital communications. At any rate, it is clear that the people at the top aren't worried about a thing, even as the ground appears to be quaking beneath their feet. Perhaps they're deluded; perhaps they're living in a dream world... but I suspect that all it means is that they know something the rest of us do not, and that our leaders and the media pretend not to know – namely that everything is firmly under control.

Pre-Occupied

And speaking of the “Occupy” movement, it seems that it is past its high water mark, thanks to inclement weather and local authorities losing patience with Woodstock-style detritus marring the otherwise-pleasing vistas of our major cities. All perfectly predictable, of course – and I, for one, am shedding no tears, because it has become obvious (tho' always suspected) that the core agenda of the Occupiers has always been the elimination of private property and the elimination of “wealth” of any sort (legitimate or otherwise – although they would not regard any form of wealth as legitimate, as discussed above). And who better to undertake that task than the government, even though it has failed spectacularly in every other regard of late? I mean, the mere sight (and scent) of a gaggle of anarchists is not going to be enough to cause the “masters of space and time” to descend from their blue-tinted glass towers and mingle in a penitent way with the rabble, so the answer has to be the government. And sure enough, Obama has said enough to encourage their delusions, even as he builds his election war chest from contributions from those very same captains of industry and finance. So as usual, the lumpen proletariat is feeling used, deceived, exploited, and made fun of – and rightly so. Populism of all sorts is the kind of thing that crops up time and again in this country, only to be bought off, compromised, and co-opted, leaving its advocates no happier and primed to rise up again under the right circumstances. And one might say, well, isn't this part of the dialectic? Don't we “need” people of this sort to take to the streets now and then, just to serve as a counterweight to the oppressive, manipulative, greedy controllers? The problem with this is that it presents a false dichotomy. The temptation is to think – as they want us to think – that the Occupy types are all for individual freedom, social justice, “small is beautiful”, “green is good”, capitalism is bad, tailored suits are bad, and so on... and that the denizens of the glass towers are the greedy oppressors, akin to the robber barons of old, or to the royal families of even older. The problem is that, in this day and age, both sides are thoroughly committed collectivists. In other words, on the most basic metaphysical level they are in complete agreement, and this is why true conservatives and libertarians shun (or ought to) both sides. The Occupiers believe that the only truly legitimate human institution is the government – and the more centralized and totalitarian the better, as long as that centralization and totalitarianism is for the right cause, namely a radical leveling of not only opportunity but outcome – to say nothing of social status. The government, in other words, is the answer for everything. The Wall Street types, on the other hand, not only believe in government, they have basically taken it over and made it an appendage of the world financial system. How else can they make sure that it does all the right things – like keep getting us into endless, but immensely profitable, wars... debasing the currency... engineering inflation... collaborating in the engineering of various financial “crises”, “panics”, and so on? The government in our time (if not always – the jury is still out on that) basically exists to do the bidding of the kings of finance, and if the outcome is not always to the Occupiers' liking, well, that's too bad, but it has nothing to do with any real difference in world view.

The Schoolyard Gates

And speaking of rich people and what they do with their money... well, didja ever notice that people who know how to make money seldom know how to spend it? And people who might know how to spend money (like me! Ahem.) don't know how to make it? I've commented before that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation seems especially adept at tossing money down rat holes and flushing it down toilets, and anything given to either the U.N. or to public education certainly fits both metaphors. Well sure enough, now it seems that, according to an article in the local paper, a full one-third of the Gates money given to the Pittsburgh Public Schools has been spent on “consultants and contractors” -- that's 1/3 of $40 million, folks! Hardly chump change. But you throw it at the large and bottomless maw called “public education” and it can be consumed in a jiffy, with the recipients crying for even more. Hey – I worked for the government, and I ran into plenty of “consultants”, OK? A few of them knew their stuff and were even worth the money... but the vast majority were windbags, con artists, and hacks. Some of them, I swear, if they hadn't landed a consulting gig would have had a hard time holding down a job as fry cook for McDonald's. Oh, they were good at organizing, and directing, “off-site” meetings in fancy resorts with five-star buffets, but if you wanted to see any bottom-line impact – something that actually aided the “mission” -- you'd better look elsewhere. Of course, I'm one of those people who says that if you think government workers are bad news, you ought to see government contractors. They do less, but earn more – a lot more. So basically, it looks like Bill 'n' Melinda have been chumpified by the Pittsburgh schools – but, well, they can afford it, and who knows, otherwise the money might have gone to something even worse.

Paki-Man

Now this is genuinely interesting. As a result of our latest ham-handed escapade in Pakistan, which resulted in the deaths of 24 of their troops, we have been given notice by the Pakistan high command that “the country's troops (will) return fire should they come under attack again from U.S.-led coalition forces.” So... what this means is that we could wind up in an undeclared war with a country that we are also giving billions to in foreign aid each year. But, see... in this age of perpetual war, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with an arrangement like this. Foreign aid, first of all, is only intended to enrich the leadership of the recipient country; that has long since been established. Any other “intended use” is poppycock. And our many wars, both overt and secret, have long since been relieved of the burden of having any mission or goal, or having to result in “victory”. The goal of war nowadays is self-perpetuation, pure and simple... and it's an easy goal to achieve. We are currently in what is alleged to be a “drawdown” phase in Iraq in Afghanistan – even though you can be sure that the CIA and its mercenary army are still firmly in place in both countries, as well as in most other countries around the world. But are they looking for victory – assuming that can even be defined these days? No, and the primary reason is that the military, like all other government activities, is basically a jobs program. You don't protect jobs in the military by winning wars – you protect them by not winning... but also by not giving up, not “cutting and running”. The alleged withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan will be amply balanced out by upticks elsewhere, you may be sure – the groundwork for this is already being laid in the South China Sea area. And if a Republican should win next year, heaven forbid, we'll have troops in all of the breakaway republics of the former Soviet Union – or at least all that will take us. The American dollar still goes a long way in those places – but apparently Pakistan, for one, is growing weary of our bad habit of showing up for dinner then staying for ten years. It's actually harder for our “friends and allies” to get rid of us than for our enemies to do so (especially if those enemies managed to kick our ass, the way the North Vietnamese did). In any case, it's a highly intriguing situation that bears watching. Pakistan may decide that the price of American “friendship” is just too high.

Hugo and Our Gang

Elsewhere on the international front, the Latin American countries are having a party, and we're not invited (and neither is Canada – like they can't tell the difference!). “We are sentencing the Monroe Doctrine to death” -- thus speaks Daniel Ortega. So... what Hugo and the gang have come up with at their summit in Venezuela is something unheard of – namely an organization that actually unites all of Latin America in a common cause, namely not us. This is held up as a contrast to the OAS, which has never been more than “the U.S. and some other guys” -- the same way NATO is “the U.S. and some other guys”. We've always been in the position of getting together for baseball with the neighborhood gang, but we owned the bat and the ball. So right away, everyone else was a second-class citizen. It's been a long time since the U.N. wandered off the U.S./Europe/New World Order-dominated reservation; NATO has not done so yet, and probably won't, since it's a synonym for the American-European cabal. But here's Latin America, feeling a new sense of empowerment – led by the old communist guard (Chavez and Ortega, among others) but also sporting one of the so-called “BRIC” countries, namely Brazil, that shows every sign of becoming an economic powerhouse (and which, by the way, may be the only country on Earth without a “race problem”, which has to be contributing mightily to its prosperity and morale). Frankly, I don't blame these countries one iota – they've lived out behind the big house in sharecropper shacks for long enough. And what has our ceaseless meddling in their affairs ever done for them – or us? Wouldn't it be nice to get an entire hemisphere's worth of countries off our “to do” list? I think so.

It's Alive!

Hey, anyone out there remember AIDS? I thought it was one of those countless things – like homelessness – that had disappeared the minute Obama took office, but it turns out, no, it's alive and well (so to speak), and Obama, just in time for next year's election, has “recommitted” to the “war on AIDS”. In fact, he's about to “redirect” $50 million to said war. (As to where the money is being “redirected” from, you can bet it's not from war – don't we spend that much each day in Iraq and Afghanistan? And “recommits”? When did he “de-commit”? Oh, never mind.) But the article (from the L.A. Times) doesn't hesitate to point out that “Obama's announcement drew praise from activists at a time when he hopes to renew the devotion of the liberal base that helped elect him in 2008.” Just another blatant, sleazy political ploy, in other words... or maybe not. It's just funny that issues like this only seem to enjoy popularity in the 12 months preceding an election, and the rest of the time they might as well not exist.

Penn State

OK, I said I'd mention this, and I will... but fair warning! I've had an animus toward big-business college “sports” since I was in grad school and had to put up with the sight of gleaming athletic palaces on large university campuses, surrounded by the lowly huts of the peasantry – i.e. “academics”. Do I have to point out the obvious, that “football schools” and “basketball schools” are seldom known for anything else? I mean, if you were a professor of English at Clemson, would you admit it to anyone outside your immediate family? My modest proposal is that the government (Arne Duncan, call on line 1) simply declare some schools to be sports schools, which are allowed to exist for that purpose and that purpose alone, and move all the academic departments elsewhere – namely to schools that exist in order to be... hold onto your hats... schools! Hey, it could work! I mean, there are art schools, acting schools, music schools... why not sports schools? And anyone who was serious about academics – about real learning – could avoid them like the plague. Well... a guy's gotta dream, right? But in any case, Penn State is a perfect example of what happens when football becomes a religion and its coaches the high priests – they become a law unto themselves, and constitute a political, social, and economic monolith that no one dare touch. And I think a lot of the reaction that is sweeping the commonwealth is based precisely on this – that the most hallowed institution we have has developed serious cracks, and many of its heroes are turning out of have feet of clay. And this is totally aside from the merits of the accusations. It sounds bad, I'll admit – real bad. But does anyone remember the child sexual abuse witch hunts of the 1980s, in which prosecutors and their minions scoured the land like a plague, arresting people left and right? There was “overwhelming evidence” then too, but the vast majority of those cases fell apart because they turned out to be pure fabrication and the result of political ambition and mass hysteria. And we see some of this hysteria, and some of this piling on, in the Penn State case as well – things that, I suspect, hide something even deeper and more embedded in the American psyche. But having said that, I have to admit to a certain schadenfreude when it comes to seeing a big-time football “program” brought to its knees – because those programs have become a monstrosity, and maybe it's only events like this that can start to sober people up as to their value vs. their deleterious effects.

Ideas in Flight

2011-11-23T21:06:00.003-05:00

I don't suppose there could be a better day all year to start off a post by talking about public transportation – even though that will turn out not to be the main thrust of the discussion. But I have to credit public transportation with at least serving as a muse in this case. There's nothing like standing in an airport security line to get one thinking... like, how did things come to this sorry pass? I thought we were living in the “land of the free”, etc. (As a sidebar, I should comment that airport security is, for most middle-class people, the first opportunity they have to experience the “America” that the lower classes experience on a daily basis – a landscape of frowns, suspicion, paranoia, random searches and friskings, obtrusive questioning, etc. And this, I submit, is what has airline passengers – the vast majority of whom are middle-class – the most upset. They feel they are being treated inappropriately for their social status, not on an absolute basis.)

I'm old enough to remember what might be termed the “golden age” of air travel – or at least its twilight years. In those times, you could walk right up to the gate even if you weren't “ticketed”, either to greet someone or see someone off. The airlines served hot meals on real china and with real silverware and linen – not some poor imitation of fast-food carry-out, with everything embalmed in plastic bubbles. And on the first jumbo jets – ah, the memories! -- there was a bar at the top of the winding staircase from which even the “coach class” passenger could look out, in a leisurely and luxurious way, upon the moving landscape.

Now, this is not to say there was not a downside – the main one being the absurd custom of having “smoking” and “non-smoking” sections on a sealed airplane. Whoever thought that up has to have his bust included in a pantheon of marketing geniuses – but he'll certainly never win any awards from the American Lung Association.

But those days are gone with the wind, and now all but the most privileged must stand in a line fit for refugees from some Eastern European conflict – gray and dismal, punctuated only by crying babies and the occasional outburst from a fed-up passenger. And of course the TSA personnel, like everyone else who experiences real power for the first time, lord it over the crowd like concentration camp guards, tripping you up with ever-changing, arbitrary, and senseless rules. Not only are no two airports alike when it comes to security provisions, but it turns out that no two security lines are alike! The randomness works itself down to the smallest and most trivial details – and it's all designed to keep people off balance, to render them helpless in the face of authority.

So really – aside from the privileged few, as I said – air travel is no longer a pleasure, but is a gigantic pain in the ass, if you'll pardon my French. Not that train travel is a whole lot better – I mean, there are no luggage restrictions and no security lines, and the seats are larger, and there is more leg room, but the food is execrable, the schedules are surreally sparse and bad, and American trains have the curious habit of running hours (or even days) late, even though weather is, to say the least, not quite the factor it is with air travel. And then there is bus travel... and I'll spare you the horrors of contemporary bus stations, all of which seem to be situated in the very worst parts of town. And... well, really, so much for public transportation! Americans, who value the freedom to travel far above all other freedoms, are more assaulted and mistreated when it comes to travel than anyone in Europe and a good proportion of people in Asia. We sit over here in this benighted desert of public transportation turning green with envy every time we contemplate the transportation systems of Europe, Japan, and (increasingly) China. They somehow managed to make it happen – but we couldn't manage it with all the money in the world; therein lies the mystery.

I suppose that, in an odd kind of way, public transportation represents, for most Americans, a kind of capitulation – a giving up of the real thing, travel-wise, which means the freedom to drive one's own car wherever and whenever one pleases. Compared to that, all other forms seem vaguely socialistic, somehow – compromises. I mean, would Jack Kerouac have written “On the Road” about bus travel? Would “Easy Rider” have been the same if it had happened on a train? “Travels With Charley” on airplanes? No – the whole thing is absurd, a violation of a big part of the American dream. What began as a simple, practical means of colonization, settlement, and the movement west gradually morphed into an American ideal and icon; the closing of the frontier did not end the American urge for movement, it only forced it to morph in a different direction. Rather than “heading west” we now head, basically, wherever we aren't at present. Americans are restless and migratory – and it's no accident that this characterizes a society built primarily on ideas rather than a sense of place. Because to think of America-in-general as a place, we have to be motivated not by a reality, but by an idea of America – by a myth, in other words. When people think of a real place, they think of a home town, a neighborhood, a farm – not an entire country, and seldom even an entire state. People who think in those latter terms are likely to be “rootless cosmopolitans” -- to resurrect an old expression – who may or may not be deracinated (i.e. deprived of racial, ethnic, and religious roots, either voluntarily or by force) but who certainly have no loyalty or consideration for the land. Even the old-time wanderers, hobos, “rolling stones” -- celebrated in song and story – were “from” somewhere. (They often had nicknames that included their point of origin, like Cincinnati Red.) What we have now is a nation of people, many of whom are from nowhere – I mean, they had to have grown up somewhere, but they have no sense of place, either past or present. And it's hardly necessary to point out that the great American suburb is the worst place, and the most aggravating factor, for this sense of rootlessness... of “nowhereness”. And sure enough, when the central planners and “urban renewal” enforcers wanted to deracinate and demoralize a given racial/ethnic/religious group, where did they send them (or force them to go)? Why, to the suburbs, of course! A different city neighborhood, or even a small town, might have enabled them to keep some of their culture and sense of identity intact, and surely we can't have that.

So in a sense, the current, residual fetish for travel that infects Americans is a symptom of this deracination and displacement – an endless and futile search for that which is lost. Who knows? It might be just around the next corner, or over the next hill. So the quest goes on – and we wind up in a state of despair that does not know it is despair, to use an expression from Kierkegaard. There are many American pathologies, and this may not even be the most severe, but it certainly has a huge impact on our sense of being and identity as individuals and as a people.

But let's return to our cozily depressing and humiliating security line for a moment. A young traveler won't notice that anything has changed; he or she will assume it has always been this way, and might vaguely wonder why, but decide not to worry about it – the way most people simply accept the fact that there are always long lines at the DMV. (Imagine the shock and disorientation of a typical Russian who woke up one morning after the breakup of the Soviet Union and found that he didn't have to stand in line 3 or 4 hours to buy a loaf of bread!)

But for people like me, who remember the “golden age”, questions arise. The TSA was supposedly formed to guard against “further terrorist attacks” -- and if you look at the numbers, you might almost think they were succeeding, except for all the newspaper articles that point out repeated failures (most of which have non-fatal consequences, at least). You can only credit something with success if you can count the number of times it has kept something bad from happening – and this is, of course, impossible with an outfit like the TSA. For all I know, they have been successful – wildly so. But there is no way of proving it, so it quickly sinks into the usual bureaucratic quicksand and starts to exist for the sake of existence, like most other government agencies. My theory, as I've explained before, is that 9/11 was “mission accomplished” for the “terrorists”, or whoever was responsible, and that it doesn't need to happen again – no repeat performance necessary, since we are being bled white by endless wars in the Middle East, our economy is in a shambles, and our national morale is on life support. What better reward could any enemy hope to gain than that? The events of 9/11 did not bring down the American Empire in a single blow... but our actions since that date have served just as well, if not better. The terrorists didn't have to lift a finger to do anything else over here; all they have to do is keep things hot in the Middle East, and they have their revenge for all real and imagined offenses by America over the years. If, by a single act, you can get your enemy to destroy itself – well, that has to rank as one of the cleverest tactics ever devised... and yet it seems to be working. (And in fact, it works no matter who was ultimately responsible for 9/11; the model is “robust”, as they say in statistics.)

So OK, if our security-line woes are the fault of TSA, and if their existence is the fault of “terrorists” (or whoever), and the trigger for all of it was the 9/11 attacks, then what caused those? The best answer, still, is the one provided by Ron Paul, which caused Rudy Giuliani to suffer an apoplectic fit right on stage: “They're over here because we're over there.” OK then, why are we over there? And this is where the arguments bifurcate. Some will say the necessary and sufficient reason is the “defense” of Israel (a euphemism for “fighting their wars for them”). Others will say it's oil. Others, a combination of the two; neither one would have been sufficient for us to make that much of an investment. To which I have to add, there is also the factor of a new Crusade – this time preached by the Protestants – a new war on Islam, which might not hinge on either Israel or oil as essential elements. This might sound unlikely, but have a look at what is coming out of the intelligence agencies and the military commands these days – a relentless propaganda campaign (for the morale of the troops, of course) that says nothing about either Israel or oil, but plenty about Islam – not just as a source of “terrorism” but as an evil in its own right. Yes, this is actually being preached to military personnel and intelligence personnel, with the help of “advisors” from the Evangelical community – to which I say, whatever happened to “the wall of separation between church and state”? I think the answer is that the warfare is asymmetrical, in that it involves a secular state (us) against a religion (Islam). So “terrorism” is the excuse, but religion is the basic motive – for us as well as for them. Notice what a hard time we have deciding how, when, and where to try “terrorists”? It's because we can't decide what their status is, and that's because we can't decide what sort of conflict we're engaged in, and that's because there is no provision in the Constitution for wars of religion – and yet that's what we're fighting.

So in a broad sense – and as Ron Paul's statement implied – 9/11 was a self-inflicted wound. Some form, or aspect, of American empire building had inexorably led to it – and once it occurred, what was our response? To rethink our foreign policy and our overseas military and economic adventures? Not a bit of it. Our response was, predictably, to double down on our “commitments” overseas, or – to put it another way – everywhere but at home. The surest sign of a dying empire is that the citizenry starve while the military prospers, even in the most remote, out-of-the-way locales. This process did not start with 9/11, but those events solidified the pattern and established the process as one which is unstoppable until it leads to utter destruction. And sure, we will have our Mideast oil for a while, and will “defend” Israel for a while, but in the long run it is all doomed. That is, if we follow the trajectory of every other empire known to history – and what makes us think we have the will or the power to be any different? But it's another trait of empires to perpetually think, “we're different” -- we can dodge fate, we can sidestep karma. Yet it's that very attitude that accelerates the process of destruction, decay, and annihilation.

And I might mention as another sidebar the latest farce to come down the pike, namely our supposed “getting tough” with China – on economic, financial, trade, and “human rights” issues. When I was over there recently, I couldn't help but notice that every map of the country included the South China Sea, with a scattering of islands. Yes, they are totally convinced that that is their territory, and to heck with any “law of the sea” treaties. So now we are about to challenge them on this, as well as some other things? We, who owe China trillions in national debt? We, who can't keep a lid on two completely-wrecked countries in the Middle East, are now about to challenge China for dominance in East Asia? A country made up of sane people would immediately move to lock up anyone who came up with an idea this crazy – but when everybody's insane, only the few sane ones get that sort of treatment.

But really, it's all just huffing and puffing – no genuine confrontation with China is contemplated, simply because none is possible, and it wouldn't work; we'd just make fools of ourselves. What counts is not the reality, but the playacting, and I suspect that China is complicit in all this. In other words, they are perfectly willing to allow us to blow off steam once in a while, just as we allow them to – as long as nothing comes of it, which it never does. I mean, when's the last time they took our advice... on anything? All they have to do is wave that huge I.O.U. in our faces, and the conversation comes to a screeching halt. And yet it's considered politically expedient to mouth words once in a while... like we insist on having a “presence” in East Asia and in the Pacific. Well, fine – we can have all the “presence” we want, as long as it doesn't alter the power structure. Can't you see that it's nothing more than a desperation move to distract people from our abject failures in the Middle East? (Not to mention from our economic woes.) Oh yes, by all means – let's expand the American empire, already in its death throes, to another entire area of the globe. It's pathetic, really.

But there's another question I want to deal with here, and it goes back to my excellent adventure in the airport security line. Given that the events of 9/11 took a good chunk out of the American dream – or maybe woke us up from it, at least temporarily – what, precisely, is it that we have lost? And I don't mean the convenience of air travel; that's much too superficial an issue. There is a widespread feeling that we have lost some of “what it means to be an American” -- not just in convenience but in self-image and self-respect, not to mention various "freedoms" and "rights". The biggest worry is that we might, someday, become “just another country”, just another place on the map, with no extraordinary charism... no mandate to go and conquer the world in the name of “democracy” or some other idea. Now, you'll notice that we're talking about ideas here, and only ideas – not anything tangible that people traditionally value... things like race, ethnicity, religion... and “place”, as I discussed above. Nothing really “died” on 9/11; our innocence was long gone (thanks to Vietnam etc.). But what suffered a stunning blow was our notion that just having the right “ideas” was enough – enough to merit our claim to world domination (politically and economically). It turned out that there was a big, wide world out there that didn't give a fig for our ideas, but preferred either its own, or (perhaps worse) no ideas at all. That was one blow. And the next was, again, self-inflicted – the fact that, in order to defend ourselves against “terrorism”, we had to start canceling the freedoms that the “terrorists” supposedly despise... the very reason they attacked us, in fact! Because they hate our freedom! (This either sounded absurd when Bush said it, but sounds reasonable when Obama says it, or vice versa, depending on your party affiliation.) So they attacked us because they hate our freedoms, with the result that we were forced to give up some of those freedoms, which means they win! Right? But, of course, that wasn't the reason they attacked us at all, and only the most shameless demagogue would claim that it is.

But aside from this massive exercise in irony, it must be admitted that we are, indeed, a different country than we were in those – now seemingly cheerful, innocent, and sepia-toned – days prior to 9/11. We have lost some obvious things, but some less obvious things as well. With each stunning blow – starting at least as far back as the Civil War – we lose another piece of our self-image and, truth be told, our self-esteem... although the latter effect can be indefinitely delayed through the use of bluster, propaganda, and military adventures. And why is this such a bad thing? After all, every nation suffers setbacks from time to time. Our problem is that we have nothing to fall back on; if our ideas fail, and if our ideals turn out to have feet of clay, we are devastated. This nation was founded with, among other things, an explicit mandate to do away with all of the old verities – things like race, ethnicity, and religion (of the confessional, vs. deistic, kind) – and replace them with ideas. So the “American character”, of which much has been made over the years, has no real solid basis; it's one part abstraction and one part accident. We fancy that we are, as a people, what we say, or think, we are – but all of those ideas are easily disproven by historical evidence as well as current events. The beauty of the old verities was that one could identify with them without their having to be perfect, or without the act of identification having to be perfect. A bad Frenchman was still a Frenchman, in other words – whereas a bad American is really not an American at all, since he has failed to live up to an abstract and impossible-to-achieve ideal. You can't go home again if there is no such place.

And national character – when founded on the old verities – had a funny way of surviving even the severest tests. Frenchmen were no less French after their revolution than they were before, even though that revolution was the most idea-laden event in history. The Russians were certainly no less Russian after their own revolution, or after their own reign of terror... and I found out, by first-hand observation, that the Chinese are still very much Chinese, despite all the best efforts of Mao and his Cultural Revolution. In other words, if there is one strong thing in human history, it is national (or regional, tribal, whatever) character, which is a composite of race, ethnicity, and religion as well as language, the arts, and countless other traditions, customs, mores, habits, and so forth. And yet, in the name of “ideas”, we have been more than willing – anxious, even – to give all of this up for the sake of becoming some kind of universal, generic exemplar of “democracy” or “freedom” (as we define it). And if the long-term goal of our revolution, and our founding, was to turn out a race of deracinated, culturally-sterile androids, we have succeeded to a great extent. This pure American type – a counterpart to the New Soviet Man – is alive and well (so to speak) in all American suburbs, and in other enclaves of the middle class. Their strength is that they have no loyalty to anything but ideas. Their weakness is... well, the same as their strength. As long as the ideas remain on the winning side, all is well – but when things start to fall apart, what is there to cushion the fall? Nothing, really – and this is the real source of the middle class's current spasm of discontent, as expressed in the “tea party” movement. The secular god we have been worshiping for all these many years has failed... the scales are falling from many eyes... and people are realizing they've been robbed. They traded the birthright of every man down through history – the right to pride of place and of belonging to a group defined by objective criteria – for a mess of ideational pottage that, as it turns out, most of the people in charge never believed in anyway. They were, in other words, fooled, duped, and misled by a bunch of cynics – and they continue to be! Nothing has changed except that the consciousness of a few has been expanded a bit. But they will soon be swamped and carried back into the vast sea of ignorance and subservience that everyone else calls home.

Down and Out in Omaha

2011-11-16T17:34:00.002-05:00

It's notorious that every American city, even ones of relatively small size, has at its heart (if not its exact geographical center) an area known, euphemistically, as the “inner city”... less euphemistically as “the ghetto”... and, by those who live nearby, as a “bad neighborhood” -- which almost always is code for “black”, although the Hispanics are gaining ground in this race to the bottom. This is a feature unique to the American landscape, and -- lest anyone wonders how things got this way -- it was not an accident, but part of a meticulously-conceived and implemented plan. The best outline (I say that with a touch of levity, because it's 668 pages long) of this is found in E. Michael Jones' “The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing”. It also helps explain why there are “inner cities” in some of the most unlikely places – places where you would not think black people would settle of their own free will... places like Omaha, Nebraska, whose inner city represents a small island of blackness in a vast sea of white. In places like that, I want to stop black people on the street and ask, “How did you get here, anyway? I mean... surely your ancestors didn't live here a hundred years ago. How did this all come about?” And mainly, if they, or their forebears, moved there of their own accord, for, presumably, good economic reasons, why have they nonetheless slid into the same inner-city doldrums that characterize places like Washington, DC and Philadelphia?

What started me thinking (again) about all of this was a recent late-evening excursion through Omaha in search of food – a search which started out with “interesting food” as a criterion and ended with “_any_ food” as a criterion. I've been out in that area enough times now that I ought to be able to remember that you can't get anything to eat after 9 PM – I mean zero, zip, nada. Even the fast-food places close at 9, except for the odd drive-through window. It's definitely a plot against effete Eastern urban elites like me -- to show us that we don't belong. So I was in a state bordering on starvation when I happened to find myself in Omaha's modest but not-to-be-trifled-with “ghetto”, and sure enough, what to my wondering eyes should appear but a McDonald's, and it was open! And I also remembered that I had resolved to finally have a crack at this “McRib sandwich” that has received so much hype of late. (Its reputation is slightly overblown, to say the least, since it consists of, basically, a squashed loaf of mystery meat with a halfway-decent sauce, but on the usual balloon-bread bun. Plus "a fries" that, if allowed to cool off, dies a horrible and malodorous death right before one's very eyes. Nuff said.)

And actually, it wasn't until I walked into the place that I realized exactly what neighborhood I was in... but I soldiered on, figuring that if I can survive West Memphis, Arkansas I can survive anything. So now... the staff, all black of course, were jovial enough even if overly-loud and boisterous to my ears, so that was all OK. The customers, on the other hand, with one exception (which I'll get to soon), were all black, all hooded, all baggy-panted, and all sporting some sort of earpiece, connected, visibly or otherwise, to some sort of electronic gadget that was, I suppose, spewing out some sort of brainless, hypnotic “music”. And this is something one sees in those neighborhoods – everybody is tuned in to something else... some event that is occurring, or has occurred, at some other time and in some other place. And who can blame them? If your own life, as (apparently) dictated by your environment, is “nasty, brutish, and short”, as the saying goes, then why not try and escape it as best you can and for as many of your waking hours as possible?

And I guess the most adept of all those present at this exercise was a guy at the next table who had to, number one, have weighed in at at least 400 pounds. Not only was he hooked up to a laptop, and had something in his ear, but he kept humming loudly the whole time... and then punctuated the humming with the occasional combination cough/sneeze that would have exceeded the average shotgun in decibel level. Twenty-four hours in a room with this guy, and you'd be ready to confess to anything! But actually, the most unusual personage in the place was the one I dubbed “the ketchup dispenser ogre”. He was also the only white guy in the place – besides me, that is. So his shtick was to sit so close to the ketchup dispenser that, in order to get any ketchup, you had to violate his personal space, in return for which you got this helter-skelter glare, like “how dare you?” So that was all very pleasant, and added immeasurably to the overall atmosphere.

It is, in short, a world where sudden, explosive violence alternates with long periods of numbness and depression – not unlike a war zone, in fact. So yes, it's no wonder that the people who live in that world don't really live in it; I mean, they are there physically, but mentally or psychologically they are somewhere else (or nowhere at all). And the fact that this phenomenon can be fully manifested in a place like Omaha, Nebraska, is, in my opinion, worthy of note.

What Drives the Regime Bonkers?

2011-11-09T19:37:00.002-05:00

Well, nothing, really. Everything is firmly under control, and don't be fooled by the gyrations of the EU or by our own government's responses to the economic “crisis”. Remember that continuing crises are the health of the Regime, the way war is said to be the health of the state. How did Chairman Mao consolidate power, for example? Why, by coming up with the Cultural Revolution and its cutting edge, the Red Guard. The rest of the world saw what appeared to be anarchy – revolution from below – but in fact it was revolution from above, and not even revolution, but consolidation of power. The object was to eliminate, or at least intimidate, the people in the middle – use the lumpen proletariat against the settled, complacent middle class, for the ultimate benefit of the ruling class, after which the proles could be exterminated like flies... which many of them were.

And this all bears a striking resemblance to what is happening in this country today. The “usual suspects” -- the rent-a-mobs and malcontents of every sort – are being augmented in their efforts by the “Occupy” movement, in order to get the middle class – the bourgeoisie – shaking in its boots, while the people who are really in charge look on placidly. And just as with the Red Guard, the Occupiers should expect no mercy from the Regime once their work is done and their usefulness is at an end. At that point, they will become just as much enemies of the state as the tea partiers – bourgeoisie all – already are.

Chairman Mao also used the massive propaganda apparatus of the state to further his aims, the way the Regime of our time uses the mainstream media... but at least the mainstream media have some competition, in the form of a small but feisty independent press and a substantial sector of the Internet. And yet those are not enough to prevent, or even slow, the continuous concentration of power... the “trickle-up effect” to the upper reaches of power and finance.

So with that as an introduction, let me go back to what I indicated, in my previous post, would be my next topic: “If the Occupiers are not a threat to the Regime, but the tea partiers are, what else is, or would be, a threat? How can one determine where the Regime has vested interests? And the best place to start answering these questions is, once again, with the mainstream media.” In other words, if we assume (and this is not a difficult assumption) that the media are the obedient, servile voice of the Regime, then we can say that whatever seems to get their attention – and to disturb, upset, or enrage them -- is also what the Regime would like to see go away. Or to put it another way, whatever the media accept as being natural and right and not subject to change – not open to discussion – is also what the Regime wants to remain in place in perpetuity.

But right away you might ask, if things are completely under control as I said, then why should the Regime even bother sending out its media attack dogs on a regular basis? Why not just let things run their course? This, I think, is primarily a question of convenience and efficiency. It is more convenient, and less trouble, for the Regime if the vast majority of Americans remain silent and distracted... and if the few who do speak up are, whether they know it or not, supporting the Regime's agenda. A restive populace is certainly more troublesome than one that is placated and anesthetized; even quiet despair is preferable to protest. After all, a happy slave is part of the solution, productivity-wise, whereas an unhappy one is a drag on the system. Plus, as I've said before, we are an ideational culture, and blind adherence to the politically-correct ideas can serve to cover a multitude of actual ills, hardships, and inconveniences. As long as most people believe that whatever the government does is “for the good of...” something-or-other, there will be more cooperation and less resistance.

So with that in mind, let me present an at least preliminary list of things the Regime cares about enough to sic the media on anyone who thinks differently. These are things which are, by and large, status quo – since the Regime has had decades to consolidate its power, and there are very few pockets of resistance left. In that sense, we're dealing with a profoundly “conservative” entity here – but one that, paradoxically, requires a certain amount of “anarchy”, as described above, and the occasional taste of revolution, to keep in optimum operating condition. The dynamics of this are quite subtle, in fact. The Regime has at its disposal an army of entitlement junkies and malcontents, who need very little in the way of suggestion or stimulation to take to the streets (or the Internet). So when things start to get slack – when the lower classes start to become de-politicized – it's time for an intervention, in order to tighten things up a bit and put us firmly back on the class warfare track. And likewise, when the middle class starts to realize that it's eating grass – to reference a classic Gary Larson cartoon – it needs to be lulled, and intimidated, back into silence and mental oblivion.

Note also that contrary voices are very seldom subject to frontal assault or overt oppression; that's a tactic of totalitarian regimes of the past, and it has a tendency to backfire. No, this is much subtler, more subversive process which, in the case of the media, involves simply ignoring certain people or suppressing certain stories. In this way, the media, for all intents and purposes, define not only what constitutes “news” but also what constitutes reality. And the centralization of power is such that it leaves most people with only the media as a source of information; direct experience with the issues of the day is extremely difficult to come by. People who are unemployed, for example, know that they're unemployed – but they seldom know why, and no one is about to tell them. And how many Americans, even in uniform, have ever visited Iraq or Afghanistan? And how many have the vaguest idea of what the Federal Reserve is, or what it does – which is why Ron Paul's call to “audit the Fed” falls on deaf ears? Might as well send a crew of astronauts to the Moon to see if it's really made of green cheese; that's about as remote as the real issues are for most people. And don't think that this centralization of information as well as power is the least bit accidental; it's all part of the plan to alienate people from processes and events that are not right under their nose (and even those get “spun” continuously, until people start disbelieving their own eyes and ears). You see, government doesn't have to be entirely cloaked in secrecy in order to operate in what amounts to a secret, mysterious way; all that's necessary is that all the decisions that count are made by other people – preferably people unknown, unelected, and inaccessible. So with all of that in mind, here's the list:

PERPETUAL WAR. This is the ultimate in non-negotiables as far as the Regime is concerned. What it does is enable a continuous accumulation and consolidation of power. It also provides a convenient means of redistribution of wealth from the productive to the non-productive (a category which includes overt as well as covert war, and nearly everything masquerading as “defense”). And it also provides something for the ideationally-trained and conditioned populace to latch on to – relying on, among other things, the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance, as I've explained before. (“Anything that costs this much must be worth doing”, in other words.) And if we remain on a perpetual war footing, there is none of the pain and inconvenience of transitioning from a peacetime economy, and peacetime politics, to a wartime economy and wartime politics; it's all the same at this point.

THE “WAR ON DRUGS”. This is the counterpart to perpetual war on the domestic side. And again, it provides a means for the accumulation and consolidation of power, and for redistribution of wealth from the productive to the non-productive. It has an ideational savor, relying on Puritan concepts of morality and that universal tendency to profit (psychologically) from the sufferings of others. It is also, by the way, a huge generator of jobs – in law enforcement, the courts, “corrections”, and so on. And – perhaps most importantly of all – it serves to make a huge proportion of the population into criminals... not that they are all caught and rounded up, but that they lose all respect for the law, and all expectations that the government is fair, rational, or concerned with their welfare. Thus, and also very importantly, it makes a huge proportion of the populace subject to arrest at any time, certainly a resource when you're trying to suppress dissent in other areas. So this will never end, as long as the Regime has anything to say about it; it just serves too many agendas. And I might add that even though the War on Drugs represents a uniquely American obsession, or fetish, it has not for that reason found disfavor with the Regime, which has an international base. It not only serves to energize one part of the American populace in an unhealthy way, but creates a demoralized, legal underclass – both fit subjects for further predation.

PRIVATIZING SOCIAL SECURITY. Hey, if you had access to the world's biggest bank account, and could raid it any time you wanted without the people whose money you were stealing even knowing about it, would you want that system to end, or be changed even slightly? I don't think so.

AUDITING (or doing anything else about) THE FEDERAL RESERVE. Well, you control the economy, and therefore all economic activity, and therefore the populace, by controlling the currency, right? And if you want to reduce the populace to a state of perpetual penury, nothing beats tempting them into ever-greater debt while at the same time reducing the value of their money. In the old days slavery was defined around things like slave collars and leg irons; now it's simply a matter of making everyone into a debtor on paper, and thus binding them to the system that is responsible for their woes. In this sense, the government – the Regime – has become the ultimate pusher; tempt people to buy into a system that is bent on their destruction, and then keep them alive just enough to continue to work in a state of economic slavery.

ABORTION. This isn't going away because the Regime has already decided what the optimum population levels (broken down by class, race, religion, etc.) ought to be in order to foster world dominance – a kind of “Goldilocks” approach to population: Not too many, not too few, just right. Now clearly, unlimited access to free abortion “services” is more important when dealing with the “Third World” than with “industrialized Western” countries – but the U.S., for example, has its own internal “third world” -- namely the inner cities or “ghettos”. And those are prime targets for the international population controllers.

SUBSIDIES/BAILOUTS/DIRECT PAYMENTS TO “PRIVATE” INDUSTRY. I use the quotation marks around “private” since, at the upper reaches, there is no such thing any longer – either in this country or in Europe (or probably anywhere else). And this is not because private industry has become an arm of the government; it's just the opposite. Government is the means by which, once again, wealth is redistributed from the truly productive – i.e. people who are providing goods and services that people actually want, and are willing to purchase on the free market – to the non-productive... especially those whose main “business” is the massive, speed-of-light manipulation of paper, resources, “securities”, accounts, currencies, and entire economies. There is a continuous, as I've said before, “churning” in the financial/economic world by which the resources of ordinary people are continually buffeted about, taxed, subject to fees, inflated, and so on – a hidden and gradual bloodletting, not severe enough to kill the host (in most cases) but enough to keep the machinery of the Regime operating at top speed and efficiency.

STATES' RIGHTS. This is a, by-and-large, American issue, but it does have echoes in the various “breakaway”, or would-be breakaway, provinces, states, and regions in Europe. It's a complete non-starter for the Regime because, once again, centralized control is key, and “regionalism”, which means having some regard for cultural differences, is highly frowned upon. I mean – you let people develop a feeling of pride as to their home turf and native culture, and who knows what might happen next? They might develop skepticism as to the desirability of central governments, globalism, perpetual war... all the earmarks of 21st Century totalitarianism. So states' rights, and the equivalent ideas in other countries, have to be strictly suppressed.

CLASS WARFARE. This, as indicated above, has to be kept on the front burner, with the heat turned up, at all times. Nothing so distracts the proletariat as the feeling that they're marching into battle with “the man” (AKA “the establishment”, “the oligarchy”, “corporations”, etc.)... but their exertions are quickly and skillfully turned against, not the people who are really in charge, but the hapless middle class. And likewise, the bourgeoisie are mesmerized by visions of “welfare queens” and thus made blind to the real source of their troubles. The Regime keeps these groups busy fighting each other so that it may have more time to work its will on all.

THE “ENEMY” INDUSTRY. This goes hand-in-hand with perpetual warfare. Please notice how readily the “enemy” -- those whom we have to keep in our cross hairs at all times – morphed from the Warsaw Pact (and communism in general) to Islam. It only took 10 years, and in the meantime we had a smattering of minor-league conflicts to keep us amused and to keep our military from getting rusty, fat, and lazy. So let's see... we had the Cold War to keep us busy for 45 years or so, then a brief “vacation from history” in the 1990s, and now we've embarked on a war on Islam that, if history is any indication, ought to be good for at least 100 years or so... and we've only been at it for 10! Truly, there are no jobs more secure than those in the Pentagon. The bottom line of all this, media-wise, is that anyone (like Ron Paul) who questions the basic premise that Islam is the inevitable and perpetual enemy of the American way of life, and of all that is good, is dismissed as a nut case.

THE EDUCATION RACKET. All this means is that the public education system is designed to produce citizens who are all totally “down” with all that the Regime has in store – from unquestioning adherence to the dictates of the Regime to unquestioning adherence to all of the political, social, economic, and moral propaganda that goes with it, to the willingness to become addicted to whatever the Regime offers up in the way of popular culture and “entertainment”. Again, it's another variation on the Matrix principle – not that people are totally unconscious, but what they are conscious of is a totally artificial creation designed to keep them from thinking or perceiving reality.

THE HEALTH CARE RACKET. This has now switched into high gear with ObamaCare, and it's designed to accomplish a number of things: (1) Accelerate and maximize the transfer of wealth from the middle class (i.e., people who have to pay for at least part of their health care) to the arms of the regime represented by “Big Medicine” and “Big Pharma”; (2) Suppress any awareness of alternatives in medicine and nutrition, because that will only hurt business; (3) Maintain the public in a kind of state of low-grade infection, where they are dependent on government for not only their (perceived) health, but for their very lives. This will insure, among other things, a greater attitude of awe combined with submissiveness, as though we were all perpetually gazing upon the visage of the great and powerful Wizard of Oz. The last thing the Regime wants is a populace that is empowered, health-wise. Much better to severely limit individual choices (not unlike what happens with presidential elections) and sanction those who dare wander off the health care reservation.

And I'm sure many more examples could be cited. But I hope I've demonstrated that anyone who questions, or expresses skepticism, about any of the above topics is instantly subject to the disciplinary actions of the media – ignored, or when impossible to ignore then suppressed, censored, defamed, called every name in the book, and so on. We think that totalitarianism ended with the dissolution of the notorious “bad” regimes of the 20th Century – Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, Hitler's Germany, and so on. No, what actually happened is that totalitarianism changed its strategy and its tactics, and underwent a geographical morphing process. Perennial enemies like France and Germany have now united against the rest of the EU – especially the hapless “PIIGS”, who were, once again, provided the most addictive drug available, namely an implied “backing” and safety net for all of their foolish policies and programs. But the pusher will have his way in the long run, and at this point the “PIIGS” belong, body and soul, to the master pushers in Paris, Berlin, and elsewhere among the more sensible and sober countries. And there is nothing the least bit accidental about any of this – it's all part of the plan. Once again, what looks like chaos and like a “crisis” is simply a stage in the full flowering of the plan. And likewise, what appears to be a “crisis” in this country is part of the same plan – or of an even bigger plan. Please note that we, mysteriously, find ourselves on the hook for the misdeeds of European banks and economies. How did that happen? Simply because there was a secret marriage among many national economies, including ours – nothing that the American voter had anything to say about, for sure. People who worry about this oil pipeline between Canada and Texas would be better advised to worry about the hemorrhage of wealth between the U.S. and Europe, which is already well underway.

Power is a Feeling

2011-10-19T22:43:00.003-04:00

As the “Occupy” movement seems to gain momentum and spread to the remotest parts of the fruited plain, I keep having to deal, on a daily basis, with vivid feelings of deja vu. Wasn't there some other movement fairly recently that behaved in the same way? Oh yes – the “tea party”... and while it hasn't quite yet been absorbed into the Republican Party blob, it stands in imminent danger of being so – the question (for the Republican establishment) being, do they “need” the tea partiers or can they get along just as well (if not better) without them? And while the tea party movement may have receded a bit, the tea party idea, or set of ideas, still has enough traction to occupy some of the attention (or annoyance) of the Republican establishment. But will it make any difference in the long run – and particularly in the 2012 elections? Will the candidates elected under the tea party label in 2010 remain under that label, or will they have sold out? And, will new candidates claiming that label come into view? And will the tea party movement have any impact, however slight, on the Republican nominating process? (My guess is a resounding “no”, since the nominee of choice seems to be Rockjaw Goodhair, who has nothing whatsoever in common with the tea partiers.) All of this is, of course, contingent on Obama continuing to pursue his collectivist/socialist/totalitarian programs, which he shows no signs of letting up on – indeed, he continues to aggravate the situation, on the assumption that his base is secure and hoping that the “undecideds” will finally see the light. Plus, he knows that the Republicans are pure evil; he says so every chance he gets. His main problem is convincing everyone else of the fact – everyone but his base, that is, who already feel that way because they always have.

Obama is in a peculiar position, in fact – a “man of the people” and yet he feels constrained to pronounce a good portion of those people fools and ignorant dupes – and their duly-elected representatives fear mongers, haters, bigots, etc. It seems to me that a politician ought to take a bit more of the high road than to just automatically call anyone who disagrees with him on any issue an idiot – but that's apparently what plays well among his base, so he keeps it up. And the fact that he does so in that resonant, Martin Luther King-wannabee tone, rather than in the whiny way Bill Clinton always used, certainly helps. Clinton always took everything personally, including any kind of political opposition... whereas Obama at least presents an image of not being so thin-skinned. He basically lets things roll off his back – or, better yet, ignores them – whereas Clinton was an easy sucker for any kind of political bait that was thrown his way. So in that sense Obama is a better politician – but he still takes the low road much too often.

But let's get back to the “Occupiers”. They feel their star is rising... it's springtime in America (even though it's fall)... those of like mind across the land are getting up in the face of the oligarchy, the corrupt, the exploiters, the robber barons, and so on. (And never mind that their man Obama is one of the Regime's loyal servants!) But there is already an air of futility... of the pathetic... about the whole thing. The “Occupy” movement represents – if not strictly in the economic sense, then certainly in the socio-political sense – the rabble. These are the people who, for instance, supported Obama because they expected him to get us out of Iraq and Afghanistan – which already shows you what their delusional quotient is. They believe, as I've discussed before, that “the people” still have a voice – surely another delusion, but at least one that runs across the political spectrum, since few people from anywhere on that spectrum have given up voting. They have – as has been pointed out – more of an “anti” program than a program... and I don't claim that that's an entirely bad thing, at least not in the early stages. I don't fall for the notion that you have to have answers before you start asking questions – or an alternative plan before you're allowed to protest the way things are now. This is a rhetorical scam perpetrated by the establishment in order to avoid confronting the issues. But it seems to me at this point that the Occupiers are running out of their no-program grace period.

I also suspect that the Occupiers' tent cities will disappear with the first snow fall. Ever wandered around lower Manhattan on a bitterly cold and windy winter day? All you can think about is where, and how soon, you might be able to get indoors. But that's not going to discourage anyone at this point, because “the people” -- the “99%” -- are on the rise! To the barricades, mes amis! And it's this intoxication with... not with real power, but with imagined power... that so energized past movements – not just the tea parties, but the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War/anti-draft movement. The trajectory is familiar; we've seen it all before. And the main differences among these various populist outbreaks is how they are resolved. Either the issue goes away, or the movement disperses, or it gets co-opted and absorbed into something else... there are many ways in which the waters become smooth again. The civil rights movement, for example, actually accomplished many of its goals – its original goals, that is, which included equal rights as opposed to affirmative action, which was added on later as a way of upping the ante and keeping the movement in business. Civil rights activity since blacks gained equal legal rights has been focused primarily on the attainment of equal (or greater than equal) outcomes – a demand that even the federal government, even under Democratic administrations, finds tough to meet. So the civil rights movement did not perish from its own success, but at least became relatively defused bordering on the anemic... and ridiculous at times. (Compare, if you will, the gravitas of the likes of Dr. King with that of Al Sharpton. 'Nuff said!)

Then you have the anti-Vietnam War and draft movement (and I conflate the two because I am increasingly convinced that neither would have existed without the other) – and the way the Regime dealt with that was to (1) end the war, and (2) end the draft. How clever! And I think they realized, on some level, that there are very few true pacifists in America... that everyone has some idea about the kinds of wars worth fighting. For the Democrats, this means any war presided over by a Democratic president – even ones he inherited. And for the Republicans, it means any war supposedly intended to “spread democracy”, or “defend the American way of life”, or support Israel. So yeah, it's hard for any genuine pacifist movement to gain traction in this country, since the vast majority of our leaders, as well as of our citizens, is pretty much willing to go to war at any time, in any place, and for any reason. And the traditional concept of “just war”, to which the Vatican keeps trying to introduce American leaders, gets lost in the shuffle.

Let's put it this way. How many American politicians have been voted out of office, or not voted into office, for being against war – either war in general or a specific war or wars? Versus how many have been voted out of office, or not voted in, for being pro-war, or in favor of starting or continuing a specific war or wars? You do the math. I think you'll find that being against war of any sort is a non-starter for anyone seeking office on the national level. And the U.S. is certainly not unique in this sense, except for the fact that our wars are almost invariably ideational in nature, i.e. not designed to increase the general welfare of Americans one iota (even though this is at the top of the list of rationalizations).

But the “Occupiers” don't really say anything about war, do they? This is because they don't want to say, or imply, anything against Obama, whom – on some mysterious level – they still believe in. And they certainly don't say anything against big government, because they see that as their principal weapon against the predatory behaviors of Wall Street. So let's see... not against Obama, and not against big government, even though both are the abject slaves of Wall Street. See how hopeless their cause is already? I mean... at least in the case of the civil rights movement, and the anti-Vietnam War movement, there was a line of logic and reasoning behind it, and some notion as to what should change and how. There was, in other words, a vision; the criteria were operational and feasible. But the Occupiers have no discernable program – and neither do the tea partiers, for that matter. The tea partiers are hobbled by that fact that they like big government at least half the time – when it's waging war overseas and abominations like the “War on Drugs” on the domestic front. So, just like the Occupiers, they want someone – Superman, I guess – to go in and, with surgical precision, remove all the parts of big government they don't like, and keep the rest intact. And what's funny, of course, is that the tea partiers and the Occupiers want almost the exact opposite things excised or left alone. So I guess if they joined forces either nothing would change or everything would change... but that's not going to happen.

Now, allow me to shift gears a bit and talk about the reception the Regime and its organs have given to these respective movements. To begin with, the mainstream media – the barking dogs of the Regime – are treating the Occupy movement with total respect and diffidence, whereas they couldn't find enough bad things to say, often enough, about the tea parties. Now, does this mean that the Regime is “pro” the Occupiers while being against the tea parties? Don't be silly. All it means is that they see absolutely no threat from the Occupiers, whereas the tea parties are a bit disturbing. And why is this? It's because the Occupiers are, as stated above, rabble – by and large. Fairly or not, they are seen as the same people who complain about everything else... the chronically dissatisfied, chronically outraged and demanding, by and large infantile, and hopelessly powerless. Perennial losers, in other words – with clothing and grooming choices to match. When the Occupiers start hollering through bull horns, all the elite in their high, blue-tinted towers hear is a faint buzzing. The tea party, on the other hand, is made up almost entirely of white, middle-class people – the very people the Regime depends on to provide not only labor and support (and votes if needed) but also to remain silent. While it's true that the Regime is, over time, depending less and less on the middle class as a source of transferable wealth, they aren't quite ready to put them all in camps yet – but they are most certainly not ready to put up with the complaints that follow when the scales fall from the middle class's eyes. So it's the middle class – contrary to almost any socio-political theory out there (with George Orwell being a notable exception) – that must be kept down... kept content, and distracted, and wed to ideas that benefit not them but the Regime. There are plenty of games and circuses – and addictive substances – for the proles; we don't care what they think. Whereas the war on the middle class is, as much as anything, a war of ideas – mainly that any ideas that didn't come out of a middle-school social studies textbook are most unwelcome. The matrix is designed for the bourgeoisie.

So the media, following the lead of the Regime, practices benign neglect when it comes to the Occupiers – looking on in a paternalistic way wherever the tent cities spring up. But when it comes to the tea party, it's total war all the time: These people are evil! Reactionary! Haters! Racists/sexists/homophobes! And all the rest of it. And this is despite the fact that the tea partiers are not really against big government, as I pointed out above. We're talking about what happens when some members of the middle class wake up to the truth about their situation, and about the system. And granted, they are only half awake, and know only half the truth at best – but that's enough to threaten the Regime, and thus to energize the media.

But aside from the media, how else is the Regime responding? One way is through law enforcement – and I guarantee that if the tea partiers were setting up tent cities in public (or private) parks across the land, there would be plenty of push-back on the part of federal, state, and local troops and police. But as it stands, benign neglect seems to be the policy, nearly always – and again, it's because these people are no real threat. The Regime can pretend to look on benignly, the way an indulgent parent surveys the antics of a two-year-old... because the situation is completely under control, not only physically but politically and psychologically. There will be no revolution from this quarter -- not now, not ever.

But now, you might ask, if the Occupiers are not a threat to the Regime, but the tea partiers are, what else is, or would be, a threat? How can one determine where the Regime has vested interests? And the best place to start answering these questions is, once again, with the mainstream media. This is the topic I'll deal with in my next post.

The Curse of "Inevitability"

2011-10-14T23:47:00.003-04:00

As I've indicated before, the mainstream media have clearly already picked their man in the race for president – on the Republican side, that is... the Democrat side being trivial. That man, of course, is Rockjaw Goodhair, aka Mitt Romney... and the reason he's the people's choice (the people who work in the media, that is, who are all that count) is that he's the least threatening to their agenda, and he doesn't cause a one of them the slightest pang of conscience. And ironically, even though he belongs to what some consider a “cult”, he appears the least religiously-motivated of any of the top-tier candidates... compared to whom the likes of Perry and Bachmann are Bible-thumping, perspiration-streaming, tent-meeting rabble-rousers.

But as I've also pointed out recently, the MSM will only make a choice of this sort predicated on who is likely to win, because Job One is to protect their candidate – namely Obama. So the dynamic of this is as follows: If Obama were in real trouble, which he is not, then they would be supporting one of the more conservative, “extreme”, marginal, “radical” Republicans, i.e. one of the less-electable ones. But since Obama is not in real trouble, and can still beat the pants (or pantyhose) off anyone in the Republican lineup, they can afford to be... scratch that... to _appear_ moderate, centrist, and reasonable in their support of someone like Mr. Goodhair.

Now, please bear in mind that by “support” I don't mean anything like actually coming out and declaring for a given candidate; nothing that proactive. No, what I mean by “support” is engaging in non-stop slander, dirt-digging, and character assassination of everyone else except the preferred candidate. In other words, attach all kinds of “negatives” to everyone else, so the one they want will be the only one left standing without a thick coating of fecal matter oozing down their bodies.

But... why should the MSM ever be “reasonable”, you ask? Aren't they already known for being wildly biased in favor of liberal/Democratic candidates? True, and they will never couch their hypocrisy in anything but terms like “We vastly prefer the Democratic candidate, but must reluctantly observe that the least amount of catastrophic damange will be done to the United States if the following non-Democratic candidate should be elected.” Talk about faint praise! If, on the other hand, they feel like emulating Rush Limbaugh's “Operation Chaos” and advocating someone showing a sharper contrast with the Democratic candidate... well, wouldn't their hypocrisy show through, bright as the Sun? It might – but we forget how subtle they can be. They can always find “a good reason” for hard-core Republicans to vote for any given candidate, no matter how unelectable he or she might be. How much, for example, maneuvering by the MSM did it take to get Bob Dole nominated for president in 1996? He won out over more credible (OK, photogenic) (OK, more lifelike) candidates who might have been able to beat Clinton, who was in a bit of trouble. And! Not to forget, Ross Perot wound up with 8.4% of the vote – and did the media do anything to stop him from running? Not a bit of it. Perot's total plus Dole's could have put Dole closer to Clinton than Bush was to Gore in 2000 – and Bush won!

I think the only Democratic candidate the MSM have ever totally given up on during the campaign was Jimmy Carter in 1980 – they knew he had fouled his own nest so many times that he was a lost cause, even against a “right-wing radical conservative” like Reagan. Plus – in their sly way, I think they were hoping Reagan would make such a mess of things and turn so many people against him, and against conservativism in general, and against the Republican Party, that the Democrats could come back in 1984 and establish a dynasty that would last 1000 years. And just to show you how badly that strategy turned out, the Democrats ran Walter Mondale in 1984 – an act of despair comparable to the running of Bob Dole in 1996.

Admittedly, this is a far-from-complete analysis... and the situation is often way more complicated than implied. But I just want to point out that the MSM have a very large spoon which they're more than willing to dip into any pot – Republican ones included – in order to influence elections in favor of their agena. And the spoon this time around seems to be coming up with a thin, flavorless broth with Rockjaw Goodhair's name on it – hence the plaint, “Waiter, there's a Goodhair in my soup!”

OK, that was a cheapie, but who could resist? But! The point of this whole meditation is that if anyone, including the MSM, declares a candidate to be “inevitable” too early in the game – and let's all agree that over a year to the elections is way too early – it can place an undue burden on that candidate and offer breathing room to all the others. From here on out, Romney is going to have to be perfect... flawless... totally in command... unflappable. His image has already been built for him by, ironically, his enemies – and they are expert at setting the bar impossibly high. They have arranged things so that he seems inevitable (if not invincible), but have included some delayed-action fuses... some land mines... in the mix, as they always do – to be set off at just the right time down the road.

And, after all, how much of a guarantee is inevitability anyway? Let us recall, for example, that, a mere four years ago, there were two inevitable candidates aspiring to succeed George W. Bush – Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. Oh sure, they had rivals, but they were each riding, or so it seemed, white steeds to victory. But then things started to unravel a bit – because, as I said, they had time to unravel. Giuliani had a conniption during a debate over something Ron Paul had said – for which we should be eternally grateful to Dr. Paul, by the way – and then decided to base his entire campaign on the votes of expatriate New Yorkers living on the East Coast of Florida. Fail! Hillary, on the other hand, discovered that people were starting to notice the decaying corpse of her husband – or of his administration – hanging around her neck. Too late for a divorce! Darn! And then she had to confront the Black Messiah – the man who walked the hills and valleys of America promising to heal all wounds, fill all bellies, and make the rough places plain. Compared to which, John Kerry promising to raise Christopher Reeve out of his wheelchair was a cheap parlor trick.

So, by declaring a candidate “inevitable” the media effectively set him up as a target – and they, and anyone else, have 12 whole months to take aim and fire. Not that they will take the lead, mind – he's been chosen for a reason, as detailed above. And I'm sure they have someone else in mind just in case: “Regrettable that no truly moderate Republican candidates are in the running now that Gov. Romney has retired from the field”, etc. It's kind of... well, it's kind of like walking into a rug store. Which rug are you going to be interested in buying, one that is lying neat and unsoiled on the stack, or the one in the middle of the floor that people are tromping on with their muddy shoes day in and day out? You get the idea.

Anyway... it's all part of the fun, and it is instructive how the media have a way of hedging their bets on these things... not unlike the way the biggest Wall Street firms donate generously to both major parties. It's more important not to make enemies than to be seen as anything but a manipulative, scheming, calculating hypocrite.

The Semi-Triumph of the Will

2011-10-14T00:17:00.002-04:00

George Will didn't quite hit one out of the park with today's column comparing the tea partiers with the Occupy Wall Street crowd, but he came awfully close. He rightly describes OWS as a progressive movement, according to which people should have a perpetual right to support by the state regardless of their contribution (even Lenin didn't believe in that sort of nonsense), and the government should provide, basically, everything else required for the good life. (This, I hardly need point out, has been the basis for European government programs and policies going back as far as World War II, and we see the result quite clearly in today's headlines.) He characterizes another OWS demand as “forgiveness of 'all debt on the entire planet period'” -- which leaves one wondering, what if this jubilee year really came? Would anyone, from that point on, even assuming they had the resources, ever be willing to loan any money to anyone ever again? Seems unlikely. If we forgive all debts, then we effectively forbid all loans and all borrowing... and it's hard to see how that degree of Puritanism would yield up a net benefit to the human race. Surely there has to be an acceptable in-between point... something like what Kiva is doing, for instance.

Will refers to OWS as a “countermovement” to the tea party – although I have pointed out that, in many respects, they are opposing the same thing. The problem is getting them to realize it. On the other hand, the OWS crowd's visceral opposition to work for pay, higher education having to cost anything, and -- implied -- property in general (when held in quantities exceeding those required for mere survival) would not sit well with most tea partiers, who are solidly middle-class with values attached. And I don't suppose the tea partiers' adherence to conventional religious creeds would sit well with the OWS crowd, which, I suspect, has an unnaturally high incidence of atheists, skeptics, pantheists, and the like. When it comes to war, the picture is bit less clear, since the OWS folk don't seem to say a whole lot about war per se, and yet surely they realize that it's war that keeps most of the corporations they are protesting against in business. The tea partiers, on the other hand, like war for war's sake, no matter which president is in charge – as witness their stunning silence on the matter of Obama's having embraced the role of a war president.

And yet, as I said, there is a common ground... or there should be. But neither side sees the big picture enough to realize it. Even George Will doesn't realize it, or so I suspect. What he sees are “the tea party's splendid successes” -- I'm not sure how “splendid” they've been as yet – and that the OWS movement may be paving the way for a conservative reaction, the way the anti-Vietnam War movement supposedly paved the way for Nixon's election in 1968. Well... but you'll notice the hand-off of the Vietnam War from LBJ to Nixon was slicker than greased bear crap on glass... and I suspect the same will happen if a Republican should replace Obama in 2013, vis-a-vis both the wars and the economy. They're all working for the same master now – a fact that Mr. Will doesn't seem willing or able to perceive.

But in the meantime, he does aim some pithy observations straight at the progressive heart of OWS – and they hit the target. “(OWS's) meta-theory is... clear: Washington is grotesquely corrupt and insufficiently powerful.” Ouch! This statement could be made of the tea partiers as well, of course; it's not about size of government but its priorities. And how about this: “Government of the sort progressives demand... is not just susceptible to corruption; it _is_ corruption.” Wow. One doesn't often hear it put that way... and it's probably because progressives' good intentions tend to defuse criticism – at least early on. But in the long run, every “progressive” program turns into just another tentacle of government, with all the bureaucracy, corruption, finagling, and waste of any other government program without such benign pretenses. What has the FDA done for you lately? It's probably keeping you from drinking the beverages you'd like to drink and eating the foods you'd like to eat, taking the supplements you'd like to take, and undergoing the medical treatments you'd like to undergo. It is, in short, totalitarian – and progressives have nothing, in principle, against totalitarianism, as long as it's for a good cause. The supreme irony of this is that progressivism is a subset of populism -- which supposedly believes in the wisdom of the common man. And yet every government program or policy ever dreamed up by progressives implies just the opposite -- that the common man is an idiot, and a sheep, who needs constant attention and guidance in order that he might not destroy himself.

But really, as I've said before, there are no degrees of freedom left for the tea party, OWS, or any other movement to operate in. All the cards have been taken off the table – which is why the administration and its state and local appendages have shown so little concern. Oh sure, the mainstream media have kept up a non-stop diatribe against the tea party ever since it was named... but that's just their job. The fact that the Regime, and its servants in government, have ignored both it and OWS is the best indication that they feel they have absolutely nothing to fear. (You'll notice, by the way, that they have not yet come to the point of ignoring threats from “third parties” -- they still fight like demons to keep them suppressed and in check... which tells you something about how much the “two-party system” means any more. When third parties are as good as outlawed, that means that there aren't two major parties, but only one.)

So... all I'm saying is, don't get too excited about either the tea party or its left-wing, through-the-looking-glass doppelganger. They are no wiser than any two of the blind men trying to figure out what an elephant looks like. That they each suspect that something is terribly wrong is commendable, no doubt – but, in the tea partiers' case, they have already been at least partially co-opted and absorbed by the Republican blob... and who knows, the OWS crowd may suffer the same treatment from the Democrats before long. Unlikely, you say? But you'll notice that they never blame Obama or the Democrats for anything that's going on; only big business. Problem is, Obama and the Democrats are the servants and enablers of big business, every bit as much as the Republicans are. But again, that is part of the big picture... way too big to be seen by people camped out in Zuccotti Park.

No, Pat, No!

2011-10-10T17:34:00.002-04:00

I often fancy that I'm engaged in a friendly debate with Pat Buchanan, regarding issues near and dear to paleoconservatism. Of course, the truth is that he doesn't know me from Adam, although we have had eye contact once or twice at the Latin Mass at Old St. Mary's on the edge of Chinatown in Washington, D.C. And the point – that I have made on many occasions – is that he is right 99% of the time, and I would not say that about very many other human beings, the late lamented Joe Sobran being another example. Where Buchanan is “wrong”, or slightly off the target, it's usually based on his admirable patriotism, which occasionally seems to edge into nationalism. But he is under no illusions that our constant overseas meddlings are anything but destructive to our economy and our national life; that is not the question. It has more to do with what I call “nostalgia for a past that never was” -- for a nation that, at one time, stood for what it should still stand for. But in fact, I see our history as one that was flawed from the start – which contains within itself a “heart of darkness” that is a compounding of secular humanism, deism, the revolutionary spirit (i.e., revolution for its own sake), Freemasonry, and a marriage of Enlightenment idealism and Puritan fervor... with, early on in our history, an overlay of Manifest Destiny, “making the world safe for democracy”, and all of the follies that have followed. America may, in fact, be the first purely ideational society in history... although it was followed fairly closely (if less durably) by France, and much later by Russia, China, and their various clones in the Third World.

And an ideational founding really is radically different from a founding based on what I call “the eternal verities” -- race, ethnicity, and religion. What it means, for starters, is that the entire nation becomes infected with a kind of missionary zeal, and that self-defense takes second place (at best) to the spreading of ideas – and to their implementation, no matter how difficult cultural differences make it. Note, for example, the irony in our use of words. We call wars on behalf of ideas “defense” whereas most nations call wars on behalf of race, ethnicity, and religion “war”. You'd think it would be the other way around.

Now, in France's case, the revolutionary fervor was pretty much snuffed out by the time of Napoleon's ascent, and it became just another empire-building state (but with the founding myth and language unaltered), and enjoyed awe-inspiring success, at least for a while. (And has any nation worshiped a spectacularly-failed leader the way France worships Napoleon? I don't think so. This is another example of how an obsession with ideas separates people from reality.)

But the ideational motive did triumph, for many decades, in the case of the Soviet Union, which made extreme sacrifices in order to spread communism world-wide – and this, ironically, in the face of Stalin's fight with Trotsky, the hard-core internationalist, which Stalin won. And Cuba – a Soviet clone – made sacrifices in order to spread communism in places like Angola. Even China, as much of a basket case as it was in the Maoist era, managed to lend considerable support to fellow communists in Vietnam and Korea – and elsewhere in East Asia. In the meantime, we were busy spreading “the American way” through whatever means necessary, starting in earnest in World War I and continuing right up to the present day. (Imagine! Nearly a century already of trying to spread the American way – and, by and large, failing – and never learning the slightest lesson from the experience!)

So what I'm trying to point out is that “ideas” trump welfare – of the domestic sort, that is. (And the spread of ideas trumps considerations of individual liberty – as can be seen every day in this country.) And this is not, actually, a brand-new phenomenon, as witness the Crusades. There again, extreme sacrifices were made for the sake of an idea – but at least that idea was based on faith of the religious sort, vs. faith of the purely secular sort which is the dominant force in our time, thanks to the “Enlightenment”.

What makes men willing to die for ideas that have no bearing on eternity? It's a mystery. What I will say, at least, is that it's a co-optation, or short-circuiting, of higher impulses – motives that should be directed toward spiritual ends are misdirected, instead, toward purely material, secular ends – and not even those directly benefiting the actor, but benefiting other people. Again, I say that the Regime uses things like this to exploit people. They set up things like “spreading democracy” as a secular religion, and expect people to adhere to it the way the crusaders of old adhered to their faith. And the damnable thing is, it works! At least often enough for the abomination to persist.

So with all of that in mind, let's look at what Pat Buchanan has to say in a column from last Saturday. His point is that, with the major parties deadlocked in terms of budget issues – what to cut and what to maintain – the only option left on the table is to cut defense. (I call it “war”.) He even says “the Pentagon will be first to ascend the scaffold”. Great imagery there! Right out of “A Tale of Two Cities”. Problem is, it ain't gonna happen – not in any serious way. His point is that the Republicans are going to hold the line on new taxes, and the Democrats are going to hold the line on entitlements. No argument there. So what's left? Defense! But hold on a minute. We didn't get into this fix by passing balanced budgets every year. Au contraire, we borrowed trillions in order to “balance” input vs. spending... and there is no sign that it's going to stop. Has anyone told us that they're not going to buy any more of our debt? Not that I'm aware. They know that this is the best way to acquire a death-grip on our economy and foreign policy.

OK, so “defense already is scheduled for $350 billion in cuts over the decade”. Whoop-de-do! That is so totally chump change... and not to forget, most of the time the “defense” budget doesn't even include the costs of ongoing wars! And – even if we do pull all the uniformed troops out of Iraq, there will still be a mercenary army there, working for the CIA, with a budget that is top-secret. In other words, any funds that are allegedly taken from defense will be kicked right over to “intelligence”, and life will go on. (Although, it must be said, the mercenaries are probably better at their job than our uniformed troops are at theirs; for one thing, they don't have to abide by the Geneva Convention.)

See... it always amazes me that no one ever asks where all the wealth goes. It's like someone in a boat that is filling up with water not even vaguely entertaining the idea that there might be a hole in the hull. We are, supposedly, a “prosperous” country, blessed with endless natural resources, “human capital”, and plenty of good, old-fashioned American “get up and go”. And yet all we hear are cries and moans of complaint and discontent. We're on a weird kind of starvation diet – the kind that makes you fat but leaves you malnourished. Conservatives blame it on the parasites – the tax receivers and entitlement junkies – and that's partially true. But there are much larger and more powerful vampires sucking our blood on a daily basis. Some are on Wall Street... some are in the armaments business... some are in the international financial cartel... there are many sources of our discontent. But we soldier on, believing in our “divine mission”, even if our leaders don't and view those who do with contempt.

And then there is the so-called “supercommittee” -- a body which apparently has awesome powers heretofore not witnessed within the Beltway. Either they come up with some cuts, or defense gets chopped! In other words, defense is being held hostage. Yeah, right. What Pat fails to mention is that the Republicans are as immovable on defense as they are on taxes – even more so, frankly.

But here's the key line in the column – and there is always a key line, and it's always easily overlooked. Among the dire consequences of a defense cut is “a 'hollow force' unable to meet America's commitments”. Well yeah, gee whiz, we can't have a “hollow force”, now can we? But that's not the key. The key is the term “America's commitments”, and it begs the question, to whom? And why? And, did the American people agree to any of this? And, if it means the destruction of our economy, do those “commitments” still hold? Are they to be honored, no matter what – right down to the last man and the last dollar? See, these are questions that are never – and I mean NEVER – asked... on the floors of Congress or anywhere else. At what point do those “commitments” become null and void? When we're bankrupt? (In which case, they already are null and void.) Or, when we cease to exist as an economy (coming soon to a theater near you)? Or when we cease to exist as a society? Sooner or later, someone has to say “game over!” and declare all “commitments” null and void.

But here's where I differ with Pat Buchanan. He thinks that defense cuts will be the only thing left. “America approaches her moment of truth.” The alternative is to raise taxes – not only on “the rich” but on everyone. And my point has been that raising taxes on “the rich” doesn't work, because “the rich” are smart enough to avoid taxes. So raising taxes on the rich really means raising them on the middle class, who are not smart enough... and thus we revert to the Clinton era, where anyone who wasn't feasting on cat food at least once a week was considered “rich” for tax purposes.

Along similar lines to the “commitments” issue is Buchanan's statement that “... the United States must retain a surplus of power to defend all of its vital interests and vital allies...” And what, pray tell, would constitute a “surplus of power”? We already spend more on “defense” than the rest of the world combined; is that enough? Isn't there a point at which the term “overkill” becomes relevant? And when it comes to “vital interests” -- that's usually a code word for oil. But the last time I looked, all the oil-producing countries on Earth were perfectly willing to sell us their oil for the right price, so why is this a “defense” issue? And as to “vital allies” -- well, once again, for the 1000th time, there is no such thing as a permanent alliance; it's all a matter of politics and pragmatism. And who are these “vital allies”, anyway? The only one I can think of that is always described that way (if not as an “eternal ally”) is Israel, and frankly, the best thing that could happen to our foreign policy and our economy would be to cut them loose.

So what does Pat propose as a means to cut defense? What he talks about in the column is pulling troops out of places like Europe, South Korea, and Japan. Funny he doesn't mention Iraq or Afghanistan – but he has criticized overseas adventurism often enough, so I'll let that pass. And yes, he does have the big picture, but maybe not quite big enough. My point has always been that we're no longer even fighting wars over “ideas” -- for which one could gin up some small amount of respect. No, now we're fighting either on behalf of other countries or entities, or on behalf of our own war industries. In other words, we're fighting for the lowest and coarsest of reasons, despite the hysterical pronouncements of the Evangelicals and Neocons. The Evangelicals have been tools and dupes of the Regime, and the Neocons, basically, _are_ the Regime – or an important arm thereof. I don't think they believe in ideas any more than anyone else... but it's the language in which they feel they have to speak.

The other flaw in Buchanan's argument is one of premise. He seems to think that our government, and our wars, and still under the control of sane people... and that they will make sane decisions when the chips are down. But I think we've had more than ample time to come to the firm conclusion that our foreign policy, and our military, are under the control of lunatics – either that or traitors.

Let me explain. If our foreign policy is doing absolutely nothing to enhance the welfare of the American citizen, and yet is spending him, and the economy overall, into bankruptcy, then something is seriously wrong. Either the people in charge are working for someone, or something, other than the American people – ample justification for a treason charge – or they are totally deluded in their notions of reality. If there's a third possibility, I don't perceive it. If our leaders are sane, then they must be working for someone else, because they certainly couldn't be working for ordinary Americans or their interests. If they're insane, then it really doesn't matter who they're working for, or who they think they're working for, because the end result is disastrous either way.

And the question arises, which do we prefer? Sane but cynical, corrupt, and evil people running the nation, its economy, and its people into the ground for the sake of someone, or something else? Or certifiably insane people who are doing what they consider the right thing? And here I have to comment that even when the overall trend is one way, elements of the other can enter in. For example, the armaments makers can be considered simply cynical and greedy, whereas the Neocons are motivated by both power and ideas... and the Evangelicals are motivated purely by ideas (which are wrong). So, if one is motivated entirely, or largely, by ideas, and the result is failure every time, then the persistence of those ideas has to be considered insanity – which means that whereas the Neocons are half-crazy, the Evangelicals are cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs... and sure enough, this is what we see whenever we read or hear pronouncements from either group. And yet I say that the topmost layer is anything but crazy... especially the portion of it that resides somewhere off our shores. The Regime may be cynical, but it's in no way crazy; they know exactly what they're doing, which is why I'm always skeptical when I read about all the alleged economic woes of Europe. Since that is where the Regime's power base is, I suspect this economic crisis is nothing but an elaborate act designed to, among other things, open a new spigot to more speedily drain blood out of the American economy and taxpayer – and sure enough, this process has already begun. Whenever you read that the IMF or the World Bank is going to “participate” in some bogus cliff-hanging, lifesaving scheme on behalf of European banks or economies, you can be sure that “World Bank” and “IMF” are code words for “the American taxpayer”. So we will be bled white long before any form of sanity gains the upper hand – and I don't expect it to happen even then.

See, if you disallow sanity and/or patriotism from the motives of our leaders (not to mention their masters in Europe and elsewhere), then all bets are off, and no one can expect any policy decision to be reasonable. Which means, overseas bases will not be closed, and we will continue to borrow. And yes, eventually taxes will be raised on the middle class, disguised as taxes on “the rich”. And defense, rather than suffering drastic cuts, will remain untouchable... or, let's say, the defense/intelligence cartel will remain untouchable. And all of this is a perfectly natural, predictable stage in the decline of empires; it has happened any number of times before in history. While the citizenry collapse from hunger in the streets, the armies remain strong and spread across the map. I'm sure there are cases in history where the armies even survived after the home country had vanished – such is the durability of armies, which can at least live off the land wherever they happen to find themselves. And this is how it is going to be with us – for one thing, we are the Regime's fighting force; there is no other. And so they will do whatever it takes to keep that force in the field, while draining the life blood from its home nation; they won't be finished with us until the last soldier is killed by the last IED... but by that time, the U.S. will be a barren waste. And, as “fast-forward” as world events seem to move these days, this particular denouement may take quite a while to occur – not centuries, certainly, but possibly decades. But the plan is in place, and the mechanisms are operating... and our politicians and leaders have been bought, bribed, threatened, or deluded into submission. And no amount of “tea partying” or “Occupying Wall Street” is going to turn back the tide; it is way too late for that. If the American people has stood up decades ago, there might have been hope... but, again, the ideational nature of our society has, among many unfortunate consequences, a way of causing people to worship government in a way other societies would find insane and laughable. To lose faith in government! Not only is this not the American way, but it seems to contradict all of the most closely-held premises on which the nation was founded. Surely government of, by, and for the people cannot turn, overnight, into government of, by, and for someone else? But as I've pointed out before, this did not happen overnight. The realization of it might have happened overnight for some people, but the transfer of power and resources from the people to the ruling elite has been going on for many lifetimes. And we might have awakened to all of this sooner if we hadn't been hypnotized by “ideas”. But hypnotized we were... and now that a few of us have awakened, we find ourselves wandering through a landscape in which most people are still hypnotized. They are living, comfortably and secure, in the Matrix, and the rest of us are strangers in a strange land – one that we were born in, and yet it has turned into a monstrosity before our eyes.

Did "The People" Ever "Have" America?

2011-10-06T00:29:00.002-04:00

Surely you will indulge me for a moment while I present a take-off on “Particle Man” by They Might Be Giants. (It's more fun if you listen to the original on YouTube and read these words at the same time!):

Tea party man, tea party man
Doing the things a tea party can
What's he like? It's not important
Tea party man

Is he a fool, or is he a schmuck?
Maybe he's nothing but a hockey puck.
When his house is underwater does he get wet?
Or does the bank get him instead?
Nobody knows, tea party man

Wall Street man, Wall Street man
Wall Street man hates tea party man
They have a fight, Wall Street wins
Wall Street man

Neocon man, Neocon man
Size of the New World Order man
Always blind to a smaller man
Neocon man

He's got a watch with a minute hand,
Millennium hand and a Zionist hand
When they meet it's the Promised Land
Powerful man, Neocon man

Person man, person man
Hit on the head with a frying pan
Lives his life in a garbage can
Person man

Is he depressed or is he a mess?
Does he feel totally worthless?
Who came up with person man?
Degraded man, person man

Wall Street man, Wall Street man
Wall Street man hates person man
They have a fight, Wall Street wins
Wall Street man

Well, that was fun. And as you can see, I didn't even have to change some of the verses. The point being, we're in a situation where a number of different gangs who barely speak to each other dominate the political scene. We have the “tea party”, “Wall Street” (which represents the money power – i.e. the international finance facet of the Regime), the Neocons (who represent the political/foreign policy facet of the Regime and who are inseparable from Israel), and then the average schmo who doesn't know what to make of it all, but mainly doesn't want to get involved. And why should he? He suspects, on some level, that he is totally powerless, and has decided to adopt that as this baseline and spend his time on more productive pursuits. The tea partiers, on the other hand, persist in believing that “the people” somehow have a voice in how things go – in how the country is run. So Wall Street and the Neocons, who make up a large part of the oligarchy, look down with barely concealed contempt on the ordinary, non-committal “person man” types, and laugh at the exertions of the tea partiers.

But now a new element enters the scene (and there was no room for them in the song) – namely the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters, AKA (by some people looking for a buzzword) “leftist tea partiers”. And they're on to something to the extent that both the tea party and the OWS types are populist movements, dedicated to the proposition that “the people” still have a voice... or ought to. The problem is that they have wildly differing conceptions of what constitutes “the people”. To the tea partiers, “the people” refers to an increasingly-disenfranchised and stressed-out middle class, who see the economic flood waters rising enough to get their feet wet, and also see that their values are under constant attack. And – the more perceptive among them realize that there is a connection between the two. To the OWS gang, “the people” refers, I guess, to themselves – a rag-tag bunch of humanists, leftists, populists, graduate students, etc. who don't feel disenfranchised because they never felt enfranchised. They are trying to reclaim something that, in fact, they never had... whereas the tea partiers are under the illusion of having, somehow, “had” America at one time, but no longer.

Now – why can't these two groups join forces against the oligarchy? Well, it's because they don't share the same core values; all they share is the suspicion that something is terribly wrong. But the tea partiers are hesitant to blame Wall Street and big business, etc. because they grew up thinking that those entities exemplified the American Dream... and that any boy (or girl) born in a modest bungalow in Levittown could grow up to be CEO of a Fortune 500 company. The OWS types have, at least, never trusted Wall Street or big business, and even if their distrust might have been ill-founded at one time, it's perfectly reasonable in these times. But they also have little or no regard for private property, and probably little regard for religion or traditional values – so the gulf between them and the tea partiers would be a very tough one to bridge. And besides, despite the fact that Wall Street and the government are, for all intents and purposes, a single entity, they persist in believing that government is the cure for all human ills. I don't think you'd find many libertarians among the OWS crowd – could be wrong, but that's what I suspect. And by the same token, you won't find many libertarians among the tea partiers; they too think that government is the cure for... if not all human ills, then a great many. When they say they want “smaller government”, they don't mean so small that it can't go out and defend traditional values in the fashion of Saudi Arabia's Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

What I'm trying to say is that the Wall Street protesters and the tea partiers share the same ambivalence toward government. They don't like what it's doing now, but believe that it can be set upon the path of virtue. And this, as any libertarian can tell you, is a fatal misconception. And what the Regime is highly skilled at is taking advantage of these ambivalences and co-opting the people who suffer from them – offering to fix whatever ails the nation but then turning around and using the power granted to them by the people against those same people. The OWS types are just the latest in a long line of progressive movements – and the progressives, after all these years, continue to moan and groan about what a monster the government has become – when it is they, and their views, who have as much to do with the growth of government as anyone. The tea partiers, on the other hand, think big government is just groovy when it comes to “force projection” and a “muscular” foreign policy, but resent it when the same resources are turned back on them on the home front. And just try telling either of these groups that they can't have it both ways! It's impossible. So they just march on, and rave on, and the people in charge chuckle and shake their heads.

But there is one question plaintively asked by these groups that bears some thought. They both ask, on a regular basis, how “the people” “lost America” -- as if “America” (whatever that means) was, at one time, something that “the people” had, or possessed. Now, certainly if one reads the founding documents and other historic pronouncements, it does give the impression that the people's voice was intended to count for something – although one can question whether this country was ever intended to be a “democracy” in the radical or literal (as in “rule by the people”) sense. I think the term, “consent of the governed” expresses it better; after all, radical self-rule would be hard to distinguish from anarchy. So what does “consent of the governed” imply? At the very least, it should imply that people elect representatives to governing bodies who share their values and priorities, and are willing to promote those values and priorities in the process of governing. In other words, we don't vote for Dr. Jekyll and wind up with Mr. Hyde in Congress – which is what happens more often than not under the current system. I've discussed before how big government corrupts those who are part of it, even if they did, at one time and in all sincerity, promise to work for the benefit of their constituents; the temptations and pressures that impinge upon crossing the Beltway are too overpowering for all but a very few secular saints to deal with.

The main point is the both the tea partiers and the OWS crowd act as if the transfer of power from the many to the few is a recent event – the implication being that anything that happened that recently should be relatively easy to undo. What I say is that, while public figures were mouthing words about democracy and representative government, the Regime was gaining strength and gradually taking over... and I don't think this is a recent trend at all. One has to trace it at least as far back as the Civil War, and probably to the Mexican War. And speaking of war, when was America's last “good war”? Some will say World War II... possibly Korea. Me, I nominate the War of 1812. Every war since then has been, to a greater or lesser degree, a racket, and has been started primarily to benefit those in high places – politically and financially. And I would say that the degree to which the people “rule” is negatively correlated with war – the more wars we fight, and the greater a portion of our resources and productivity that goes into them, the less the people have any voice in things. When, for example, is the last time the American people actually voted yea or nay about getting into a war? The answer is that they never had that opportunity. And if a choice of this magnitude is kept out of their hands on a recurring basis, how much power do the people have? Very little, I'd say. So what does that tell you about what has become an economy based on perpetual war, with the required political, propaganda, financial, and “intelligence” infrastructure? It's the biggest single piece of the economy and it has a larger impact on national life than any other factor – and yet the people have absolutely nothing to say about it one way or the other. To the average schmo -- “person man” -- war just happens, the way recessions just happen. To the middle-class tea partier, dropping real estate values just happened; he doesn't know why and no one can (or will) explain. So what they are all faced with is an increasing frequency of events that make them feel helpless – but unlike the Great Depression, which featured a kind of universal fatalism, people now have at least developed some modicum of skepticism. They're not sure that everything they are told by the government is true – and that is certainly the beginning of wisdom. But it is also, I suspect, way too late – which is why the tea party protests and the Occupy Wall Street protests are exercises in futility. Not only has the horse escaped from the barn, he's been rounded up and turned into dog food – and yet people persist in thinking that if the barn door is made secure, the horse will somehow be reconstituted and come back to life.

The “bottom line” to all this – if there even is one – is that, on some level, the concept that “the people rule” is not only an illusion now, but it always has been. Like the new car that starts losing value the minute it's driven off the lot, vested interests started to erode the people's power from day one – and the Civil War proved how far that process had progressed in a mere “fourscore and seven years”. And yet, the illusion persisted, and continues to persist right up to the present day – as witness the efforts of the Progressives, the left during the New Deal, the anti-war movement during Vietnam, and the people currently protesting Wall Street or big government. And this is not to say that the Progressives accomplished nothing, or that the left (including the labor movement) didn't have some impact on New Deal programs. If fact, rumor has it that the New Deal came about as a way to head off revolution – which, if true, shows you how much has changed just since then. Imagine entertaining the thought of a “revolution” of any sort these days? The last one of any significance, I would say, was our own cultural revolution of the 1960s, which was relatively bloodless... but the funny thing is, although it did change the face of America, the power structure remained completely intact. Things had gotten to the point of almost complete consolidation at that point – more than in the New Deal era, even, and certainly more than in any earlier era. The possibility for change – real change – had pretty much vanished by the post-war era, for the simple reason that – I'll say it again – the war enabled the power structure to consolidate and tie up all the loose ends, and the result was the Regime as it stands today.

So this notion that “the people” (of whatever stripe) once had, or owned, America but somehow lost it along the way is misguided, and a source of considerable frustration. What we have lost is not America but our illusions – and even that has been a gradual process that not everyone has shared in. Most people just keep their heads down and try to stay out of the way. The reason that the “tea party” is so dramatic is that it consists of people who were non-boat rockers from birth, but who have finally gotten fed up. And yet, the notion of a middle-class revolution is a contradiction in terms; they don't have the persistence or – dare I say it? -- the capability for violence that must always be part of a successful revolution. And that motley crew down on Wall Street... well, they're about as effective as the freakazoids who come out to protest at G-20 and IMF/World Bank conferences. And to suggest to either group that they might find common ground with the other... well, you'd get every expression of revulsion and disgust ever invented. It would be “those long-haired, pot-smoking, oversexed hippies” all over again, on one side... and “those bourgeois, uptight, square churchgoers” on the other. Ne'er the twain shall meet – and yet if they did, what a bonfire we could have!

Hankerin' for Trouble

2011-10-04T19:03:00.002-04:00

I can't believe that I'm the only one who got mightily tired, years ago, of Hank Williams Jr.'s Slim Jim-, Jack Daniel's-, and testosterone-fueled bellowing of the Monday Night Football theme song all during the NFL season. Well, fortunately, he seems to have blown his major (only?) paying gig by running full-tilt into the PC juggernaut. The offense in question was... well, that's the question, actually. What, precisely, was his offense? And this is not to say that there had to be one; after all, if just about anything can send the thin-skinned American political class into a high hover, this is doubly true in election season – and yes, sorry to say, that doleful season is already upon us.

So anyway, here's what our man Hank is supposed to have said, referring to a golf game between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner: ''It'd be like Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu.'' OK... first of all, you don't play the “Hitler” card anywhere within 100 miles of the nearest Jew, living or dead. But aside from that, my first question, on reading the quote, was “which is which”? Are we to automatically assume that Obama = Hitler and Boehner = Netanyahu? The assumption, of course, is that Hitler and Netanyahu are polar opposites, which... well, let's just say we could have an interesting discussion about that. And the further irony – which I'm sure escaped Ol' Hank entirely – is that Obama and Boehner are both working for the same boss, namely Netanyahu. So he actually said, at one and the same time, both more and less than he intended to say. Not a bad night's work, and certainly more interesting than hearing the Monday Night Football theme for the umpty-umpth time.

But actually, Hank did offer an immediate “clarification”, in the best political tradition. Obama and Biden are apparently “the enemy” -- which I guess means Boehner/Netanyahu is the friend. I guess there's no room in Hank's philosophy for the possibility that they're all enemies -- of normal Americans, that is -- whom Hank supposedly speaks for.

See why no one who makes a living singing should ever be asked to talk? It's a train wreck waiting to happen, every time. But ESPN did its bounden duty, and instantly pulled Hank's intro song from the program – which must have been a great relief for the fans, one which I would have shared if I were able to pull in ESPN on my rabbit ears.

So... well, I guess Hank has already apologized to Obama. But is he going to apologize to Boehner? I'd think that he would. But let's return to that golf match for a moment. I have to admit I felt a certain frisson of horror when I saw the O-man and the B-man exchanging Bozo the Clown grins across the green. That voice that always lies just below conscious awareness suddenly spoke up: “There is only one Regime. There is only one party.” I could never look at Boehner the same way again – although I was never a fan anyway. (No white man is that color, I'm sorry...) And I have to give Hank credit for at least representing the chronic bewilderment of the vast lower stratum of American society. They don't understand politicians, or why they do what they do; those sorts of speculations are left up to someone else. And they don't understand what a black guy is doing playing golf instead of basketball – and how someone who is supposedly his sworn enemy during working hours can get all giggly and wiggly when in his august presence o'er the greensward. Yes, these are all puzzling things; Hank got it right. The only thing he did wrong was to point it out in public and use some unfortunate names for comparison. After all, only liberals are allowed to compare people to Hitler; when anyone else does it it's racist, anti-Semitic, blah blah. Oh well, he'll learn. Free speech is a thing of the past in this society, but it's perfectly acceptable to retain the delusion that it still exists.

Footnotes 'n' Follies From Near and Far

2011-09-30T15:15:00.001-04:00

Isn't it funny that, right in the middle of an adversarial action on the part of the NLRB having to do with where it's allowed to build airplanes, the FBI and DEA stage a drug bust on a Boeing plant outside of Philadelphia? Well, we know the government would never stoop so low as to intimidate anyone in this fashion. Right? Right?

A local columnist refers to the presidency as “the hardest job on Earth”. Frankly, I don't see what's so hard about it – you just follow orders, like an Army private. The decisions are all made somewhere else. Hasn't it become pretty obvious that this is way things are – especially when it comes to foreign policy and economic “programs”?

A local woman wound up with two counterfeit $10 bills when she consented to trade a $20 bill for the two tens. Now... who goes around asking other people to “unbreak” $10 bills? (And a better question is, how can they tell what sort of person would fall for it?)

“Pope frustrates listeners with conservative message.” This was in Germany. Well... I guess one way to not be “frustrated” by the Pope would be to not attend gatherings where he's speaking. But I guess that would be asking too much of people who have nothing better to do than gripe about the “outdated” Catholic Church. (If it's so outdated, then just leave! Go join the Episcopalians; they're never outdated. In fact, they're at the vanguard of nearly everything.)

Researchers in Europe claim they've detected a particle that travels faster than light. It's temporary, catchy acronym is ARSHASHDeGloWDED; that stands for Accusations of Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Anti-Semitism, Holocaust Denial, Global Warming Denial, and Evolution Denial. (And what's so new about that? These particles have been zipping around the U.S. and Europe at greater than the speed of light for decades!)

Now it turns out that the (former) director of Al-Jazeera was in the back pocket of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency – or so it appears. Which, once again, brings up the question, are we all living in the Matrix? I mean, if Al-Jazeera is a DIA, or CIA, front, then what isn't? Maybe Al Qaeda is too (we know that the Taliban were – originally at least). Maybe we're just fighting ourselves in Iraq and Afghanistan... or maybe those places are fictitious, and the wars are actually being fought somewhere in the Nevada desert, the way the Moon landing was filmed on some sound stage in Los Angeles. (Time to feel around the back of your neck for that shiny metal plate.)

And speaking of wars in the Middle East, which side are we on in Yemen? I keep reading about events over there but no one ever mentions who we're supporting, or why... and yet we are involved. Weird...

Oh, and in case you were skeptical when I claimed that we're really fighting a war on Islam, please note that the FBI has been “orienting” its employees and other law enforcement personnel on the dangers of Islam – not on militant or radical Islam, but simply on the danger presented by devout Moslems. And, of course, now that this has come out all the usual excuses are being made, blah blah blah. But what I suspect is that if you get any U.S. law enforcement organization, or military organization, behind closed doors you'll find that the story line is that Islam is bad, period – and that it's Islam that we're waging war on. Just a hunch... but it makes sense. After all, there were no “good” Germans or Japanese during World War II, and no “good” Russians during the Cold War. When you're waging war on someone, you have to, for the sake of “morale” and to erase any doubts or confusion from the minds of the simple, identify the entire nation, culture, race, religion, whatever, as evil and bad. There is plenty of time for fine distinctions and nuance later on, one we've pounded them all into fine powder.

We used to laugh about how corrupt other nations are... but lately I've noticed that people elsewhere are getting locked up, and even executed, for doing things that, at the most, cost an hour or two before a Congressional committee here. Even in places that share, with us, a belief in state socialism, it seems that higher standards of conduct are expected. I'm willing to count this as still another measure of our ongoing decline; we can't even do socialism right!

According to a recent report, “Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi... said he was a 'generous, diamond-like' person who had not made any mistakes in his political career.” And, further, that “I have a high regard for myself and I have nothing to reprimand myself for when I look at myself in the mirror”. Hmmm... and here I thought Bill Clinton was unique.

In the latest round of schizoid behavior regarding Israeli spying, a NASA scientist pleaded guilty “for trying to sell classified information to a person who (he) thought was an Israeli intelligence officer”. That's right, “thought”. It was a sting operation, mounted by the FBI! So... now the FBI is pretending to be Israel in order to catch people for espionage, when everyone knows that Israel has unlimited access to our technology (not to mention our politicians, our military, and our national wealth). The article also mentions that he participated in a project that found ice on the south pole of the Moon – bet he wishes he was there instead of in the loony-tunes world of American intelligence ambivalence about Israel.

Anyone who claims that the U.N. is soft on bad behavior ought to consider this. At Al Fateh University in Libya, during Gadhafi's reign, the “Revolutionary Committee spied on students and protesters”, even hanging a number of them right on campus between 1977 and 1988. This assault on academic freedom only ended “when a U.N. agency threatened to decertify the university.” Hear that? “Threatened to decertify”! Wow. Those U.N. guys are not to be trifled with, that's for sure. (Wonder what it would take to get them to decertify American public schools?)

Hugo Chavez must know something. He's calling back $11 billion in gold reserves from American and European banks. “He says the recall of the gold reserves is intended to help protect (Venezuela) from the economic woes in the United States and Europe.” Well, fair enough... but gold is still gold, no matter where it's being stored. So why does he feel it will be more secure in Venezuela than in the U.S. and Europe? (And for that matter, why did he stash it overseas in the first place? Better interest rates?) OK, given that Chavez might be a bit on the paranoid side... still, it's intriguing that he thinks there's some risk involved in keeping his gold in the U.S. and Europe. And I don't think it's the kind of risk that places like Iran run, when if we don't like something they're doing we “freeze” their accounts. I think it's more like, he doesn't want his gold to remain in the greasy, corrupt hands of American and European bankers any more. 'Cause, gosh, if things got tough, who knows what they might do with it? They might decide they need it more than he does. After all, haven't they been treating the American taxpayers the same way for years now?

How come the MSM seem to consider Obama a shoo-in for reelection, and yet spend all of their time engaging in character assassination against all of his potential opponents? All but one, that is – who seems to be getting pretty much of a pass from the media... and that's Mitt Romney. The media, for example, never breathe a word about his Mormonism – which is kind of remarkable since it was considered a big deal when his father ran for the nomination way back when. So yes, it appears that the media have picked their Republican candidate – i.e., the one that would upset them the least in the wildly unlikely event he unseats Obama. Hey, if Wall Street campaign donors can hedge their bets, why can't the media? It's only fair. The main point is that the media don't have to come out in favor of Romney; all they have to do is render all of the other contenders unelectable – and, as can be plainly seen, that process is well underway, and contenders are biting the dust faster than characters in a Sam Peckinpah movie.

And speaking of the MSM... every time another scientist wanders off the global warming reservation, he's immediately declared a non-person and consigned to the outer darkness. Problem is, that outer darkness is starting to get kind of crowded... and the global warming buffs aren't helping their cause any by hopping into bed with politicians and squealing like stuck pigs every time their sacred model of climatic reality is questioned. And have you noticed, no one ever converts “back” to global warming orthodoxy; once people become skeptics they tend to stay that way. Doesn't that tell you something? My feeling is, if you don't want to be accused of being dogmatic, quit acting dogmatic. Authoritarianism has been shown, over many centuries, to be a particularly flawed mind set in the world of science... and yet it is nonetheless engaged in, with each new generation, and most often in the pursuit of non-scientific goals – like big government and collectivism.

And speaking of orthodoxies – who else is getting mightily weary of the almost-monthly revelations from the “scientific community” as to the descent of man from other life forms? The more models that come along – each supported by “solid evidence” -- the more skeptical I get. Because these models are, typically, not compatible – it has to be either one way or the other, or “none of the above”. And yet they keep getting trotted out, based on evidence that wouldn't be enough to get someone a ticket for jaywalking... but upon which we're supposed to base our entire conception of the human race – its origins, its significance (typically “none”), and its destiny... not to mention the total irrelevance of religion and “superstition”. Sometimes I wonder – who is more “superstitious”, the man of faith or the man who creates a world out of a tiny piece of bone, and demands that we believe in that world, and be satisfied with it, and teach it to our children to the exclusion of all other ideas?

The Rights (and Wrongs) of Nations

2011-09-25T00:36:00.002-04:00

I need to comment further on the topic of a nation's “right to exist” -- because this topic has serious implications for diplomacy and foreign policy, not unlike the concept of “just war”. I indicated in my previous post that “every nation on earth, basically, has the same right to exist as every other, and that can be summed up as 'the right of conquest'”. Now, I do not mean to imply that the “right of conquest” has any moral or ethical status, for it does not; it's purely a matter of power – of which group, or race, manages to exert sufficient power over another to take over a given piece of territory. So when I say that the right of conquest should be “recognized as the premier criterion for diplomatic recognition”, I'm not taking a moral/ethical stand, but one based more on what's known as “realpolitik”. Which is to say, in most cases we prefer not to question how things “got that way” -- we just accept the status quo and work with it. This is, in fact, the essence of “diplomacy”, which is probably the least ideational of any government enterprise. Diplomats are notorious for being what one might call “value-free”, even though they might be weighted down with various agenda items. And it's this relatively pragmatic, level-headed approach that stands in eternal opposition to the more idealistic, ideational, zealous mind set of many elected representatives, as well as the populace at large. Our diplomats are criticized on a regular basis – by persons on both the left and the right – for being too “soft” on one thing or another... for being relativistic, cynical, jaded, and so forth. And so they are – and so they have been trained to be. If there are few if any permanent alliances in diplomacy, but plenty of “interests” of varying degrees of permanence, then it does make sense for the people who are hired to pursue those interests to be pragmatic and non-idealistic -- “unprincipled” even, if it comes to that. If, for example, cozying up to a dictator or tyrant in Africa or Asia is in the perceived best interests of the United States, then that, clearly, is what ought to be done – and never mind the objections of idealists on the left or right (depending on the alleged political views of said dictator or tyrant – not that it makes any difference in the long run). And this is precisely what has been the case up to now in the Arab/Islamic world – but our counterparts in those places (“counterparts” because they are equally pragmatic and non-idealistic) are falling, one by one, to the forces of change – in this case “change” back to a more traditional concept of what an Islamic nation properly ought to be – back to a form of absolutism that despises, in principle, the cynical, blasé diplomatic attitude. The taking of our embassy personnel as hostages by Iranian radicals back in the 1970s was virtually unprecedented, and was an early indication of this growing gap in world view, which can be summed up as absolutism vs. relativism. The “Arab street” has consistently voted against relativism, cynicism, and collaboration with the power structure of the West, and for what is called a “confessional state” -- i.e. one that is, unabashedly, in favor of a certain creed, and opposed to all others. (I might add that Israel is, and has been from the beginning, a confessional state – but their version is considered perfectly acceptable, unlike the Islamic version. The U.S., which cherishes a mythical “wall of separation between church and state”, seems to have no problem with other countries ignoring this concept – as long as those other countries are Jewish and not Moslem.)

So if the right to exist is based largely on the right of conquest, should any other considerations be relevant in our dealings with other countries? It depends on how far you want to go in enforcing ideals – and whether you consider those ideals to be uniquely American, or Western, or “Judeo-Christian”, or whatever. How much weight, for example, did the right of conquest have in the case of Nazi Germany? We might call the ascendance of Hitler and his cronies a “revolution within the form” -- it was, after all, the “Third Reich”, and not the “First Reich” of a brand-new country. Germany was the same place before the Nazis, and it remained the same place after (speaking now of its core culture). And yet, I think it is still valid to consider it a “conquest” of sorts, because, as I pointed out, “conquest” can also include “insurrection, revolutions, 'regime change'”, and so on. And there is no particular, established moral hierarchy or template by which our State Department decides which forms of conquest they are willing to recognize (and therefore validate) and which ones they aren't. Those decisions are made on a purely political basis, and there's no use denying it. We recognize coups d'etat by the military when it's convenient, and “democratic” elections when it's convenient – and everything in between. So again, one cannot accuse the State Department of idealism – or, let's say, hardly ever (with a few bizarre exceptions like Cuba – and even that may have more to do with politics than anything else; there are a lot of votes in the “Cuban exile” community in Miami).

The point I'm trying to close in on is this. Aside from the right of conquest, nations really have no right to exist – not on an absolute basis. We can argue all we want about a “moral” or “ethical” right to exist (and those arguments have been applied in the case of Nazi Germany more than in any other single case) – but that always involves applying our moral and/or ethical standards to another nation, and another culture. Tempting as it might be to say that one ought to declare war on a place like Nazi Germany just because they're “wrong”, or “evil”, we have to face the fact that, as far as the Nazis and many of their subjects were concerned, they were the greatest thing since sliced bread – and that Germany was going to conquer, and dominate, the world in the name of the Master Race. Are our neocons any more rational or reasonable, when they talk about “spreading democracy” through the use of bombs, bullets, missiles, and drones? Is the “democracy” they claim to want to spread really democracy, or is it just a cover story for expanding the American Empire? And if so, how does it differ, in principle, from the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia or Poland? If all ends are political, and power-based, and everything else is words, then I don't see how we can claim any sort of moral superiority. Granted, the yoke of the American Empire may be lighter than that of the Greater German Reich, but, in principal, it amounts to the same thing.

All I'm saying is when we start to judge another nation's “right to exist” based on what we consider sound moral and ethical considerations, we enter upon a slippery slope. For one thing, we risk mistaking “democracy” for the height of human freedom and liberty – and, in fact, it is nothing of the sort. “Democracy”, in pure raw from, can be every bit as tyrannical as the most blatant of tyrannies... and, at the same time, an absolute ruler can be benign and benevolent if he so chooses. So it's a matter of confusing structure with principle, or “system” with moral/ethical standing. We promote “democracy” overseas because we expect those who adopt it to conform to our interests – diplomatic, military, commercial. And let's not forget that we promote a certain form of democracy; not just any one will do. It has to be the kind that holds elections that Jimmy Carter will find no fault with. That, right off the bat, should tip you off that there's something wrong with that scenario. Carter was notorious in his adulation of Third World dictators, and never mind how they acquired power.

Another point, and perhaps the most important, is that nations are made up of people. Now, the rights of individuals and the “rights” of nations are not the same. Some would argue, in fact, that nations have all the rights, and individuals have none; this was certainly the premise underlying the Soviet regime. In our time, the issue has come down to an energetic debate among various contingents, the “tea party” and the Obama administration being, perhaps, the two leading contenders in the debate as to which comes first, the government or the governed. But the real argument for liberty comes from the libertarian side – and very few of their arguments fully penetrate the muddled skulls of the tea partiers. For the latter, it's more a matter of pragmatics; for the former, it's a matter of principle. Liberals, on the other hand, hold that the basic unit of human existence is the group, or state – not unlike a bee hive or ant hill. Under this model, the individual is of no intrinsic value and is justifiably dispensed with once his “value” to the group is exhausted (or before he even has a chance, as in the case of abortion). When they talk about “freedom”, for example, you'll notice that they're always talking about freedom of a group, not of individuals; individual freedom would be far too threatening to their agenda.

But let us, for the sake of argument, relegate the delusions of liberals to the ash heap of history where they belong. Let us propose, for example, a completely radical notion... one that only the most fervent, fanatical zealot would come up with... the notion “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Oh, very good, class! This is from the Declaration of Independence, which is supposed to be one of our “founding documents”, but which, if uttered today in public, would be considered “hate speech”. But that is beside the point, which is that there really are such things as individual rights, which, I would say, are infinitely superior in stature to any alleged “rights” of nations. In fact, I would suggest that any “rights” of nations are no more than the aggregate of the individual rights of their citizens. And notice also that the source of these individual rights is not the state (no matter what Obama says) but the Creator – i.e. God. Now, we can argue all we want about whether the Founding Fathers were Deists – and whether they were pursuing a purely Freemasonic agenda – but they did, in fact, use the world “Creator”. That's what's in the document. It's not “blind watchmaker”, or “spirit of the Universe”, or “mutual aspirations of mankind”, or any other sort of humanistic/agnostic nonsense. And were they simply catering to the inclinations of the mob? It doesn't matter. It remains as a definition – not perfect, perhaps, but superior to most – of human rights. And, by contrast, any alleged “rights” of the state fade into insignificance. Without the support of a free people, a state or nation has no rights. With the support of a free people, it only has the aggregate rights of those people, not some sort of emergent, extraordinary rights based on popular consensus or mandate.

What does this all add up to? In judging whether a nation has “the right to exist” we have to, first, defer to the time-honored concept of “right of conquest”. It may seem cold and non-idealistic, but without it we would be confronted with chaos on all sides. It would be like what we see now on the domestic side, where a new group demanding “reparations” comes into existence every week or so. Everyone has grudges... everyone has been bullied and mistreated by someone else at one time or another... and, heartless as it may seem, the message that should be delivered to these groups, more often than not, is: Get over it!! A life of resentment is no life at all. And, once again, these “class actions”... these resentments and feuds... are the product of “group think” -- of the notion that my value, my worth as an individual, is predicated on the recognized worth of the group to which I belong (racial, ethnic, religious, gender, etc.) and nothing else. So if I'm born into a loser group, I'm a loser, and vice versa. Isn't the whole idea of America to get past this mind set? I mean – if there is anything still good and commendable about this country, it's the idea that we don't have to be prisoners of our heritage... or background... or DNA. And yet every “victim group” will assert precisely the opposite – that they are, indeed, prisoners, and helpless, and the only thing that can make them whole is new entitlements and preferences. This is the new “American way” -- but it will wind up destroying the old American way and all that it has produced.

So when it comes to diplomatic stances and strategies, what would I recommend to all of those jaded, elitist, WASP-ish types who fill State Department ranks? Number one, recognize, in a non-abashed way, the right of conquest as a pragmatically valid starting point for any sort of diplomatic negotiations. In other words, the people who occupy a territory are, and should be, in nearly every case, the people we should be dealing with – not the “right” people who are probably already in exile, or in retreat, or in hiding. And yes, this is the epitome of “realpolitik”. Then, we might want to venture, very cautiously, into the area of a moral or ethical right to exist. But here's where there is a fork in the road. The typical American diplomat will define “moral or ethical” as no more than the extent to which a given nation's, or regime's, point of view matches our own – which, in this day and age, amounts to the extent to which they're willing to become part of the American Empire. But that's not what I'm talking about. If our diplomats would, just once, sit down on a quiet Sunday afternoon next to a cozy fire, with a dram of Scotch at hand, and study the Declaration of Independence, they would discover that individual rights are not only paramount, but they are the basis for all other rights and privileges – i.e. of the collective sort. And if they were to – in a fit of subversive derring-do – add to their reading list the Constitution, they would discover, basically, the same message, with hints as to its application. So, if this set of basic principles is good enough for us, why isn't it good enough for other nations – or, at least, for our dealings with them? In other words, why can't we turn the usual paradigms of “realpolitik” upside down and say that the “system” of government of any given country doesn't matter as much as the human rights of its citizens? That no matter what the system is called, or what its leaders claim, it means nothing if the basic rights of the citizenry are violated on a regular basis. This would be diplomacy, or statesmanship, of the highest order – but it would also grossly violate the values and priorities that are implanted into the skulls of anyone who wants to enter into diplomatic service. It would amount, that is, to us really and truly defending that which we claim to believe in – and surely a violation of hypocrisy of that magnitude would shake the foundations of American diplomacy.

To put all of this into a schema of sorts, I propose that we recognize, first and foremost, an individual's right to exist, as stated, quite explicitly, in the Declaration of Independence. This could be called a metaphysical right – based on our status as creatures, i.e. created beings – and also as a moral right. Another way of saying it is that we have a right to exist because the Creator – i.e. God – put us here, presumably for a reason. In other words, our existence is superior, in some way, to our non-existence – but only if we accept that it has purpose; a random/accidental model like that proposed by the hard-core “Darwinists” doesn't do the job. (How does one establish the superiority of one type of randomness over another, or of one result of randomness over another? It can't be done.) Even a hard-core existentialist, who has no interest in religion, will hold that existence is, in some way, preferable to non-existence. In fact, for them, material existence is all that there is, which means that they will hold it in even higher regard than someone who believes that we are a combination of matter and spirit.

And our existence as individuals is a moral right because any threat to our existence has to have moral implications; this is why murder is “immoral” -- because it violates another person's moral right to exist. And if ethics follows from morals – as it should – then we also have an ethical right to exist, i.e. undue impositions on our freedoms and liberties by others are unethical acts on their part (and this includes the government, by the way).

Compared to all of this, the “right of conquest” seems like a crude, materialistic, arbitrary, conditional thing, subject to the whims and accidents of history. And so it is! A nation is not a creation from on high... it has no metaphysical status, and very little in the way of intrinsic moral or ethical status. Its highest claim, in other words, is that of conquest – although it may offer endless rationalizations to the contrary. And in this era of philosophical relativism – which might be termed anti-philosophy – one cannot even claim, with any hope of success, that one nation is wrong, or evil, compared to another. If everything is relative, then, in fact, everything is relative – you can't have it both ways. So the delusions of the Nazis – the “master race” idea, and “lebensraum”, and so forth, cannot be shown to be – using the currently-in-fashion tools of philosophy – any less valid than the delusions of the neocons. This fact troubles our academic philosophers very little, of course, since they are perfectly willing to set “reason” aside when something threatens their subjective prejudices.

Once again we're faced with the phenomenon that when the typical secular humanist of our time proposes a system of ethics based on a supposedly-universal, agreed-upon vision of humankind, he finds that there are, in fact, countless mutually-incompatible visions of humankind, and that he, working strictly on the level of ethics, with only the tools available (i.e., permitted) to philosophy at this time, has no basis for preferring one over the other, aside from pure subjective preference. Even the most abject tyranny has what it considers a valid ethical system based on what it considers a valid view of the nature of man – and when we have two or more competing systems using only materialistic premises, we cannot hope to ever settle the issue. We wind up with a stalemate – or a “Mexican stand-off”, in popular parlance. Either ethics must defer to morality – i.e. to revealed standards for the conduct of humankind based on a higher truth – or it must remain self-referencing, which means subjective, arbitrary, and, ultimately, subject to politics and the collective whims of the moment.

So while “the right of conquest” is a pretty thin, relativistic argument with no moral standing or nobility, it's the best we can do, on a day-to-day basis, in terms of how to deal with other nations. What makes it tricky is that it's neither “conservative” nor “revolutionary”. It seems to favor the status quo, but that will change the minute a new element gains the upper hand, as has recently happened in Libya. Then any and all loyalty and attachment to the previous regime will be forgotten. Cynical? Fickle? Perhaps. But I'd like to know what the alternative is, that does not involve our chronically getting involved in other countries' business. If we decide to support the status quo at all costs, that's a problem. If we come down on the side of revolution, that's another problem. If we try to come up with a unifying theme that makes sense of what appear to be arbitrary decisions... well, other people can see through all of that very readily. We should adopt a hands-off attitude in order to preserve our own sanity, if nothing else; at least that's a motive people can respect.

In lieu of neatly winding up this discussion and gathering up all the loose ends, I will simply note that if we take the nation, or state, as the starting point in our discussion of ethics, then anything is possible, simply because the nation or state is a work of man – with all of the arbitrariness, cupidity, and viciousness that one would expect from such a thing. So any talk of the “rights” of a nation is already premised on the notion that a nation is something special – superior to the individual. And this is, in fact, the central premise of the collectivist mind set – and, not incidentally, the way in which collectivists work to shirk any sort of individual responsibility or accountability. It is more challenging, in fact, to see the state as an outgrowth of individual human aspiration – since that implies that any state that finds itself working assiduously against the interests of its people is, by definition, a failure. How something can be good for the state, or the collective, but bad for the individual, is the conundrum of our time. But the Gordian knot can be cut simply by recognizing that the state does not exist, in any valid way, independently of its citizenry... and that the only valid basis for its continuing existence is that it serves the interests of those citizens. Otherwise, it might as well wither and die, and the notion that this would be a terrible thing is based on a fetish and a delusion.