But It's Just a Movie

With Cheney running on low batteries for his heart machine and wanting to take as many with him when he goes as possible, I am just imagining nightmare scenarios here.

I have a basic question about the ability of subversive elements within the government to undermine and in some way bypass law and the constitution.

Is it possible that the Cheneyites/neocons have burrowed so deeply and stealthily into the government infrastructure that they could carry out plans to bring on a war with Iran even without executive knowledge?

I am imagining something along the lines of Syriana where you have these very powerful groups with huge amounts of money outside the govt but who have tentacles deep inside the military/intelligence community.

I've sometimes thought how lucky America has been that it's never had military style coup. I grew up during the days when such a coup seemed a live possibility. I was 8 years old when the film came out, but Seven Days in May made an impression so great that I still remember it.

I know, it's just a movie. Read more!

War Porn: A New Genre of the Dead

The spectacle of the tyrant, the most despised man on earth--as Americans like to think of their country--is over. The tyrant is dead, long live the tyrant. America the tyrant killer, the castrater of dictators, the lyncher of Babylon, regains its renown for frontier justice in a shoddy, sometimes despicable, affair that the politicians call justice, though a few call it what it is: a piece of theater whose genre has increasingly become known as Iraqi snuff films. ...

Like many an egotist, I imagine, who blogs, I watch my sitemeter readings religiously. Perhaps the best interpretation of this is that I--with my background in marketing and business writing--want to perform a minute by minute audience analysis so I can gauge the reading habits, the likes and dislikes of those poor souls who happen upon these pitiful postings.

Early on in this blog's evolution, I picked up on articles that piqued my fancy and either provided a blurb about the piece or simply quoted it and provided a link. One of those pieces was on an article about Iraqi war porn, which was first brought to my attention by Helena Cobban. I wrote some chatter about it and provided a link to the pages where these XXXXXXXX porn pictures were (once) housed.

(Also see Occupation, Sex, Murder, and Prositution, and Trophy Video.)

If I were to rate the most entered page on my blog--according to my maniacal site meter reading habit--it would have to be this posting about Iraqi porn. I know this because sitemeter provides a listing on the search terms that the visitor used on the search engine that pointed them to my blog posting. I can only imagine their consternation when they see that the posting contains some tripe about how immoral this type of porn is.

I first became aware from a Law and Order: CI show that there's a subculture that's grown up around this type of porn. The issue is rather tangential to the storyline of the show, but it's interesting nonetheless that the phenomenon has reached a level where it can form part of the action of the characters in the plot.

The genre of War Porn itself became known in the wake of the Abu Ghraib torture revelations. The couple involved in that torture were filming their acts and hording them, along with their own personal BDSM porn.

The fascination of BDSM porn is best exemplified by the David Cronenberg's film, Videodrome. There the main character (played by James Woods) is a small-time cable owner trying to find content that will increase his audience share. The famous scenes of moderate masochism with Blondie singer Deborah Harry is only a prelude to more and more violent forms of sadomasochism.

In one scene, the James Woods character is watching the torture of naked women and says something along the lines of, "I can't take my eyes off of it. There are no production costs. It's genius."

The moral of the story is that the signal carrying the can't-take-your-eyes-off-it video causes cancerous tumors in the viewer. The whole thing turns out to be the effort by a zealous Christian-style group who wants to kill off anyone who doesn't have the moral sensibility to react in revulsion at the pictures and instead becomes hooked on it like heroin.

I doubt that our own theocrats are smart enough to carry off anything similar to the one shown in Videodrome, especially given their anti-scientific prejudices. Yet, the underlying premise--that a normal, god-loving individual will find such acts shameful and therefore will turn in revulsion--that our god-given shame shields us from such temptations, is one that many Xtian believers assume, though they rarely state it.

(See my postings on Martha Nussbaum's work [here, here, and here]. She has documented this type of argument that is marshaled by those on the right to defend a conservative legal agenda.)

Yet, the film's message makes a powerful statement about the attraction of violence to a sensory-hungry public whose jaded palates crave more and more stimulating images that go farther and farther into depicting the dehumanization of other human beings.

Having said this, let me make a confession. I wanted to see the execution of Hussein on television. I think that it should've been beamed into every household in America and the world. If the man was a monster, and American justice was triumphing in having this execution go forward, then there should have been no qualms about televising it.

Perhaps this is the lesson then: Americans are so dishonest that we can't or won't face the products of our own violence in Iraq. Instead, we want to cover it up, hide it away, make like it didn't happen. But this type of repression is how neuroses form, not to mention psychoses.

Or is the repression itself an indication of the mass psychosis that realizes itself in a delusory world where the horrible deaths of men, women, and children become fantasy attractions for a libidinous tyranny that refuses to acknowledge its own depravity?

And maybe Videodrome is more realistic and prophetic than I imagine.

PS Sorry to all you folks on bloglines who'll see this posting twice; but anyway: I just remembered something I heard on a show dealing with Richard Ramirez, the so-called Night Stalker, who terrorized LA during the mid-19080s. According to one source interviewed for the expose, as a young teen Ramirez used to visit a former ViteNam vet with whom he did drugs. The Vet also showed Ramirez pictures that the Vet had taken of his rape, torture and mutilation of Vietnamese women.

With the prevalence of war porn on the web, it makes you wonder how many young Ramirez's are being formed for future night stalkings and that unique brand of American terrorist, aka serial killer. Read more!

The Rabid Dog -- Exihibit A

I quoted Helena Cobban in the original post. Her understanding of Mideast politics is quite extensive. In consultation with other Mideastern political experts like Juan Cole and Pat Lang, she produces some of the most in-depth analysis of Mideastern politics than anything you can find in innumerable think tanks and talking heads on the MSM.

Beamed over the MSM all day today was Pres. Bush's meeting with Shiite parliamentarian Hakim. Amid all the emprty talk and spin, I was left scratching my head in confusion about why the heck Bush was meeting this man at this time. The so-called analysis on the MSM just didn't make sense. Imagine my surprise, then, to read Cobban's understanding of what's afoot in Iraq. ...

That is, while Bush is flailing about like a drowning man but with that shit-eating grin that's really starting to get under my skin, while US troops seem engaged in an insurgency of attrition, Bush's brain trust seems to have had some type of "thinking outside the box" and brought in far left field perhaps a misstep that will not only worsen the political situation but exacerbate the carnage.

Cobban writes quite convincingly that Bush's A-Team has misjudged, misunderstood, and stepped into the cow paddy up to his hip this time.

According to Cobban, the story that the MSM's missing is that the movement that Bush should be concerned about and perhaps backing is the one being ndertaken by the very man that Bush's fascist minions are presently saying he should assassinate--or "take out" as Wolf Blitzer and Lou Dobbs so nonchalantly suggest.

Cobban writes:

I mean, what is happening is that apparently Moqtada al-Sadr-- who was crudely caricatured on the Newsweek cover this week, and portrayed as some kind of near devil-incarnate-- is entering a coalition with Mutlak (a "Sooni") and Allawi (pretty much of a secularist and a fairly strongly Baath-style enforcer)-- and between them the three of them are also hoping to split Maliki's party and lure a sizeable chunk of its members over to their new Front....

Important stuff, don't you think?

The politics of the new Front haven't been described in any great detail that I've seen. But I'm fairly confident that this group of people would be fairly strongly Iraqi-nationalist and anti-occupation. (Though Iyad Allawi looms like a bit of an outlier in this regard.) They are also determinedly cross-sectarian.

So my question remains: Why don't we hear anything about this in the MSM?

I mean, I know journalists can tend to get lazy and use handy labels like "Shiite" or "Sooni" in a fairly sloppy way... But doing so at a time like the present seems to run at least two serious risks: (1) Inasmuch as western media people have any effect on attitudes in Iraq, the too-sloppy use of such labels would seem to essentialize and harden the inter-sectarian differences in question; and (2) This sloppiness leaves the average US consumer of media-- and the average US policymaker-- completely in the dark about what is really going on, while strengthening these people's beliefs that all Iraqis are simply primitive, unidimensional beings who are "consumed by ancient tribal hatreds", etc etc (and thus, that they more or less "deserve" whatever horrendous things befall them.)

You have my vote Helena for Secretary of State. Or how about a position as editor at WaPo?

PS This is an amazing little interview with al-Sadr's spokesman, Baha al-Araji. Listen to this guy; he's intelligent, articulate, knowledgeable about American politics. Imagine seeing this guy on TV--wouldn't that dispel something of the MSM's portrait of the insurgents, al-Sadr etc. as stupid, parochial blood-feeding zombies?

al-Araji says:

The emergence of militias in Iraq is a natural response to the situation here. There is a principle which says that for every action, there is a reaction. So, when there are occupation forces on the ground, there should naturally be a resistance to that occupation. We choose peaceful and diplomatic resistance, so the government and the coalition forces should not exaggerate our activities. Because those of us who are affiliated with the Sadr movement are sensitive, we don’t like to provoke this contentious question.

Do you know that 60 percent of the Mahdi Army already serves in government programs and installations? One of our biggest challenges with this issue is getting the Americans to understand it. The problem is that the U.S. leaders in Iraq, even though they are here, still think in an American way. But Iraq totally differs in its nature, its economy, and its culture from the United States.

Or maybe it's this guy that the Bush brain trust is listening to:

Washington is abuzz with theories offering a potential way out of Iraq, one risk expert poses a new option: split Iraq in two. "We need radical thinking. The military situation (in Iraq) cries out for political experimentation," David Apgar, a risk and development strategist and author of the book "Risk Intelligence."

Read more!

Daily HotShots! 22*11*06

Just a day before the turkeys thaw and the table's set for our yearly family sit-down. I'll be working all night tonight so it's gonna be late tomorrow when we sit down. Football will take a back seat to sleep.

Bush: I would understand if Israel chose to attack Iran - Haaretz - Israel News Don't go to sleep with this guy at the wheel. To mix metaphors, does this guy's psych nurse get any sleep? Who knows how dangerous he is to himself and others around him.

Sacrifice Israel to Win Iraq Despite the (intentionally?) provocative title, this posting suggests a quite modest proposal. It will earn the ire of many rabid Zionists but it suggests like a sacrifice of Israel, only the return of illegally occupied Palestinian territories.

civil war in lebanon If you've read my postings here for some time, you will remember that civil war in Lebanon is one of the potential causes that Israel will use to justify attacking Iran. I know, I'm paranoid--and anti-semitic to boot. .....

Israel ups the stakes in the propaganda war And you thought that war was about killing people. Wake up and smell the coffee, look at your newspaper and see the naked breakfast served up by the propaganda machines. Ho Chi Minh said this years ago--the Israelis and the Americans understand this quite well. Heard about the Pentagon's own internet propaganda effort? Look it up.

Grim prognostications from the dismal science Okay, I am what you'd call socially critical humanist/existentialist cynic. Economic arguments for change take a back seat to ethical and self-actualization issues in the bizarre book I read. Still, if you think you're sitting on a nest egg worth maybe $200K plus--ie, your house--this article is going to be a real bummer to read. Since I am semi-nomadic, this means little to me, although those dear to me will think I am being paranoid when I bring up facts like these.

US Special Forces Manual Ever wonder what those black ops guys do for a living? Want to see the reality behind fictional accounts like The Unit (CBS)? Well, even with most of the manual unavailable for public perusal (otherwise I'd have to shoot you), this description gives some insight. What I find a bot unsettling is that I think this guy is saying that special ops teams operate in the continental US. I thought that was illegal.

CBS on the "Group of Weirdos" Who Ran the GOP House So what's wrong with the press coverage of the carnage and disastrous undertaking in Iraq? How come the press doesn't cover the neocon putsch? This article suggests it's a matter of the press' sense of civility. They just don't want to talk brass tacks. I like this article because it calls the liberal mumbling points to task while taking the gloves off ... Have I used enough cliches yet?

Has a fresh look at 118-year-old evidence revealed the true face of Jack the Ripper? The century old fascination with this serial murderer deserves more comment. But seriously, if the main suspect is supposed to be a Polish immigrant, how come this guy looks... Arab! Talk about historical irony. I'm having flashbacks here evoking Orwell's 1984 and his description of the uber-enemy Goldmann.

The myth of the selfish gene Gritty gut check about our most basic nature or a way to salve guilty consciences and pin responsibility onto deterministic processes? That was a mouthful but you know what I mean, right?

The Weaponized Phallus (and five easy-to-remember steps) Okay, language is just one of those things that reflects the faults and unseen designs of deception--not to mention unheralded anger, violence, and baser instincts.

Thousands Of Evangelicals Rally To Reclaim Wal-Mart's "Biblical" Heritage Thank God for Walton beer, soda, and smiley faced-welfare. Do I hear an amen? Give me a shout-out!

Roskies on Neuroscientific Challenges to Free Will Those pesky academics have nothing better to do than doubt their own existence? Maybe they're right. Seriously, I am less free than I think; I am more free than I think--put that through your biological computer once called the mind.

Book Review: Overblown! Saying that the so-called war on terror is hyperbole might get some stony stares. Saying that the threat from terrorists is all hype and empty propagandizing could get you an ass-whipping. This guy's thesis that that is indeed the case is not exactly new, but it does have facts and facts and many more facts to back it up. The American Prospect blog beat me to it.

More Book Talk: Zen and the Art of Mo-Cycle Maint. The cult classic that tore up the book charts in the early 80s is still drawing readers. My son just read it and I had some time eliciting any meaning for him from my hazy memories. My memories of the work included more of a story of why I read the book in the first place: a fellow student dying from cancer recommended it; he eventually left school but his motorcycle sat unused near the back door to the kitchen all year. At night I'd hear a motorcyclist pass the Santa Fe foothills where the college sat like some ghostly reminder of the spirit that had passed. (The interview with Pirsig is here.)

Movie Review: Pan's Labyrinth I love the use of fantasy to present serious subjects. What better way to explore fascism than through the unwinding nightmares that plague the individual and communal unconscious? How long do I have to wait for it to get on Sundance or IFC? Not long I hope.

On-line Vote Against Torture There are so many reasons not to sign this petition aren't there? It won't do anything; it's not real political action; it's by a religious group. But then there's so much wrong about torture. Besides what you done about it that could really stop it?

In Memoriam: Robert Altman The man was a genius--and had a wicked wit, something I find amenable. MASH is still the funniest movie that quickly comes to mind when I think of such things. Needless to say, I hated the TV show based on what's a masterpiece movie. McCabe and Mrs. Miller set the next stage in how people did westerns, right Clint? As it is, for those who think that art has no impact on the "real world," I can tell you that MASH added much to the growing anti-war movement against VietNam. This goes to show that irony and satire can still play a part in how people develop their moral and political views. Did you ever doubt it? Read more!

Bring Back the Draft?

Representative Charlie Rangel of New York has recently proposed that America institute the draft.One point that I think many miss about Rangel's proposal is the social aspects. I believe that his proposal is a liberal response to something that the neo-cons have partly right: the threats to social cohesion and its inherent corruption. The neocons have made their case quite explicitly that the US faces the danger of fragmentation and moral corruption.

This type of civic fragmentation ultimately makes the US--they argue--incapable of defending itself from its enemies. Granted they emphasize and highlight the wrong points and their proposals verge on fascism, the issue they raise is a very real one. ...

Look at the world from Rangel's world: black America is torn by immense social problems. From vast swaths of of poverty to tremendous alienation among the young, all attachment to the American ethos or ideal is on the verge of death or already dead among many young people in the young Black community.

Take a look at perhaps the best show on TV, The Wire. You want to see the decline of America, the reality of many young Blacks is incredibly vicious, bleak, and ultimately threatening the social fabric--within the black community itself as well as to America as a whole.

Rangel's proposal certainly has many vectors to it. The type of corruption he sees seething among the young Black community also can be looked at from the perspective of white America and the millions of disaffected, alienated, and apathetic young.

Many have interpreted Rangel's proposal as a way of getting at the hypocrisy of the idle rich in their bloodthirsty demands for more war. Yet, I believe the more socially significant of his proposal is that it confronts the social anarchy that will finally bring about a decline in the American dream.

The media has glommed onto the military conscription aspects of his proposal. Yet, in interviews he continually makes clear that he is not just talking about military service. He is saying that there should be a term of service to the country in diverse ways, including those familiar to Americorps.

I personally do not believe that this type of mandatory social service will save America. Yet, to ignore the noble intentions and the wider extent of the social impact does a disservice to the reality that Rangel hopes to address. It also shows that those running this country and their Charley McCarthy puppets in the press wish to keep the country ignorant of the very real dangers that threaten the republic.

I agree that these economic inequalities are important factors. I'm very encouraged that Senators-elect like Jim Webb and John Tester are highlighting this very point, at least in their interview on Meet the Press Sunday.

I think that even were some form of economic equality to occur, though, the notion of service and sacrifice that Rangel seems to be advocating might still remain inert. Indeed, isn't that the point about the super-rich? They have plenty of money but they feel no need to pay back the society that has given them such bountiful plenty.

Some have mentioned Teddy Roosevelt. From what I have heard about him, as rich and privileged as he was, he felt that he must help others and repay the society that made it possible for him to have so much.

I think that Rangel sees the diversity of black Americans--perhaps better than you or I (who am not black). I imagine that he sees the social circumstances of many blacks in terms of his own personal experience of having served in the military and how that positively affected his life. You can point to many blacks in the military who have succeeded and continue to succeed after life there.

I think of the young soldier in John Sayles' "Lone Star." I paraphrase: she says that this (the military) is the best deal they (meaning whites) offer a young black person without any other way out of dire circumstances. I imagine it might be in that spirit that Rangel is proposing this "social service" draft. Read more!

HotShots!

Disclaimer: I voted a straight Democratic line. It's like I told a young socialist coworker the other day who said she wasn't about to vote for a capitalist candidate: you have to understand that realizing longer term goals are built from short-term steps. This administration is a threat to every possible thing that any socialist might find repulsive. The Dems--while weasly, whining, and spineless--would not have passed the torture laws, Patriot Act, invasion of Iraq, consolidated immense power in the presidency, etc. For all those idealists out there--and believe me, I've been there--the country stands on the verge of tyranny and a form of soft fascism that could deteriorate into more forbidding forms of political oppression.

The Elections, National Security Policy, and Wars If the Dems win the midterm elections, will they work with Bush? Or will there be a constitutional meltdown that could equal a bloodless purge not seen since the heydays of the fascist demise in Germany?

'Allah is my Lord and yours': Talking with Ahmadinejad The President of Iran's challenge to George Bush to live by his faith was treated as a joke by much of the press, if they even mentioned it. But really George, what would Jesus do?

"Christian" politics Evangelicals love to quote CS Lewis. But would good old CS turn over in his grave thinking about the devil's pact the Religious Right has made with the Beast, Ubu-Bush?

A Brief History of Wedge Politics An excellent review of the way politics is machined in the US--all to guarantee that certain ruling class interests are not challenged.

"What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that practically I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all.....I have not got to answer for having read a single President's Message. A strange age of the word this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-beggin to a private man's door and utter their complaints at his elbow! I cannot take up a newspaper but I find that some wretched goverment or other, hard pushed, and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for it, - more inportunate than an Italian beggar." -- Henry David Thoreau, "Life Without Principle."

The lessons of Iraq 'state-building' Another decent posting by the commie atheists at Lenin's Tomb.

THE COMING CONSTITUTIONAL SHOWDOWN Okay, let's assume that the Reps don't intimidate, steal, deceive their way out of a Democratic win today. What might the Dems do to bring some real accountability to the political landscape, especially in getting the White House to account for its unconstitutional actions during the last six years?

Religion and Politics Analyzes recent Newsweek and Time cover stories on religion and politics--notes the odd fetish many Xtians for things sexual rather than social justice. Thank God Jesus wasn't that uni-dimensional, huh?

Religion and the Profane Investigates the intersection between the notions and how they play into the political.

Science & faith work together, Pope says The guy's got nute. While I don't believe it for a minute, it's good to hear the old dude say it and put some of the more odious neo-creationists in their place.

Dawkins Interviews Haggard Seriously. Hear the two go at it...

The Top 50 Books That Have Shaped Evangelicals In case you had some spare reading time... These are what you might call "light"reading, written for popular consumption, which might explain their ability to "shape" evangelicals.

The New Testament and the 'State' Some will say that this piece by the good Bishop of Durham is dated, perhaps hearkening to days of a liberation theology that had already been brutally oppressed by secular and religious authorities. On the other hand, you could say that the hope it conveys in staid, pedantic terms cannot never be suppressed because it always lives in people's hearts. Read more!

Arendt on Totalitarianism

In a time when people throw big terms, and perhaps meaningless terms, like fascism and authoritarianism around, it's often important to be reminded of the work by important researchers about what these words and concepts mean. One of the more prescient thinkers of the 40s, 50s and 60s, was Hannah Arendt. Her work in political philosophy can still be read today and not sound hollow. ...

A piece in Forward magazine provides some perspective on Arendt's writing on authoritarianism and how it fills in some of the misconceptions informing the current debate about Islamic extremists and their so-called authoritarian proclivities.Benjamin Balint writes:

Still, Arendt predicted that totalitarian tendencies will survive the death of the era of totalitarian states. Arendt’s lens thus helps us see more clearly how the new jihadism bears the mark of those tendencies by bringing some of the telltale signs into sharper focus: the totalistic Islamic worldview that reaches into every facet of life, demanding from the individual total loyalty and achieving over him total domination; the retreat from the anxieties of modernity into an idealized, heroic past; the masses who feel themselves the outcasts of globalization; the contempt for the “decadence” of the West; the obsessive antisemitism that was also intrinsic to both Nazism and communism (hence the widespread dissemination in the Arab world of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”); the fetishized violence spread by the shahids; the pan-Arabist echoes of the pan-German and pan-Slav movements that Arendt saw as preludes to full-blown totalitarianism; the antidemocratic denial of human plurality; the desire for limitless expansion and global domination; and the notion of a united, supranational umma where once there was a racial volk or worldwide proletariat. Each of these is what Arendt called a “catalytic agent” for totalitarianism. Yet the most important element of the totalitarian impulse past and present is the will to annihilate human freedom, to surrender it to the march of historically irresistible forces. This takes us to perhaps the deepest lesson to be gleaned from the investigations that Arendt conducted into “the grammar of political action.” She insisted that the possibility of political freedom — not the same thing as an individual’s freedom from politics — is universal. Quoting Sophocles’s suggestion that freedom can “endow life with splendor,” Arendt called freedom the raison d’être of politics. The highest political action, she thought, is free speech in public about public affairs.

While the emphasis here is on jihadism, the author of this article ends with some important remarks about Arednt's other work, On Revoltion, where she investigates the meanings of the American and French revolutions.

Balint writes:

Hence Arendt’s lofty regard for the wisdom of the American Revolution — and her fear that contemporary Americans are in danger of forgetting it. For such people as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, she wrote, “life in Congress, the joys of discourse, of legislation, of transacting business, of persuading and being persuaded, were… a foretaste of eternal bliss.” A sophisticated indulgence of those joys and freedoms — together with an awareness of the urgent necessity to protect them where they are threatened — may be just the thing to counter the bleak vision of eternal bliss that animates today’s would-be totalitarians.

While this sounds as though Arendt was a sentimental idealizer of the American Revolution in much of her analysis of revolution, she notes the American revolution's disregard for the larger perspective of human inequality and injustice. Read more!

Assessing the Successes of the Neocon Putsch

We'll all remember Orwell's 1984 descriptions of Winston Smith's manipulating the news, ostensibly history. The current 911 movie that ABC is showing only extends the effort by the neocons to neutralize the massive organs of cultural reproduction that are the MSM and Hollywood. Perhaps more ominously, it is the shadow of things to come as the Pentagon's efforts to "influence" the news stream becomes more integrated with the Internet. ...

It's not news that those who control the telling of history hold the reins of power. That crudely conceived cliché has been a commonplace among deconstructionists for some time. As much as the neocons and other Rightist culture warriors have castigated the Left's attachment to this deconstructionist insight, they put its truth into practice every day. I imagine the neocons and rightists believe that because they practice a historiography that espouses absolute values--versus the relativist ones of the left--their version of history is the most correct one.

It’s been said by some that the modus operandi of the neocon propaganda machine is to take the strengths of the Left and turn them against them. I think the brilliance of this propaganda machine is to take Leftist clichés and turn them on their head by filling them with neocon content. This no doubt reflects the Trotskyist background of many of these same neocons. Concepts such as fascism and international democracy take on a seemingly new and vibrant life when they find a new enemy and a new threat. Such concepts account, no doubt, for how formerly ultra-leftists like Christopher Hitchens joined the neocon cause after 911.

Americans have never liked intellectuals. The "smart-allecky" eggheads make a nuisance of asking too many questions when there's always a healthy need to see things closer to the bone. But the intelligentsia has always played a key role in asking the hard questions, keeping the corporate memory free of errors, and formulating the big issues which then get disseminated to the masses by lesser minds.

The neocons have been very effective, I think, at decapitating the US intelligentsia. This effort began directly after 911 when teachers and professors were scared into silence by threats of losing tenure if they taught a different line or interpretation from the one espoused by the neocon white house. In effect, what the neocons have accomplished is a bloodless version of what the Soviets did in 1940at Katyn to the Polish intelligentsia after it invaded Poland.

Of course, the ivory tower types often only have themselves to blame for this, since their abstruse interests rarely intersect with the reality of the masses. Still, that they would rather engage in their vicious internecine department wars than deal with the freedoms that underpin the republic will only make them less and less relevant.

The neocons have filled the ensuing vacuum left by the decapitation of the intelligentsia with their think tank luminaries like Kristol, Brooks, Perle, et al. Backed by infusions of millions of dollars from conservative backers, they’ve taken over the cultural apparatus that has solidified the basics of the republic’s intellectual heritage for 200 years. Now we face the prospect not of free and open dialog and discussion about the republic’s fate, but an ideologically based regime with effective means of disseminating that ideology.

In a speech before the Nazi Party at Nuremberg, Hitler defined what it meant to be a Nazi. What distinguished the Nazi party from every other political party, he said, was that it was a party of ideology. It would be ruled by ideology and assessed by how well and comprehensively that ideology was put into practice. Obviously, anything or anyone that questioned, opposed, or undermined this ideology was to be exterminated.

While the atmosphere of ideological intimidation that came after 911 has seemingly dissipated, there are warning signs indicating that there’s more ideologically based efforts afoot by the neocon Bush white house. Infusing the reified term fascist with the blood and skin of Islamic jihadists is one such effort. The new 911 film is another. Just as an iceberg is unseen, it seems well to determine how much the ideologically based programme of the neocons has adapted to twist the facts of history to their advantage.

In a little noticed article on the web, sociologist Richard Sennett noted that there are two types of fascism—hard and soft. The hard type is the jack boot in the face and the iron fist. The soft type is an environment of intimidation and fear that squashes all dissent, internal or external. Orwell called it thoughtcrime. We haven’t reached that nadir in ideological austerity. As the disinformation of the Pentagon-based propaganda machine ratchets up its efforts, we will face further confusion and further displays historigraphical fascism. Read more!

Do You Have the Will (balls) to Defeat the Fascists? Or Are you Helping Them?

US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told a crowd of American Legionnaires that not only is there a new form of fascism afoot in the world, but that there are appeasers of these fascists among us. Without exactly defining who or what these fascists are, Sec. Rumsfeld appeared to say that those who oppose his and the President's so-called "war on terror" (WoT) are appeasing these fascists.

As some commentators have already noted, a majority of Americans are against the war in Iraq. Since that war forms the cornerstone of the WoT, then it would seem that Rumsfeld is accusing many Americans of either consciously or unconsciously appeasing incipient mini-Hitlers. ...

As I have written at this blog several times, what constitutes fascism is difficult to assess because the term is used by so many on Right and Left that it can mean almost anything or nothing. In a posting on Islamic jihadism and fascism Ibn Warraq tries to correlate the teachings of Islam with a definition of fascism proposed by Umberto Eco, the Italian philosopher/novelist.

I think that Eco's definition, while accurate, is too abstract. It certainly captures the main features of the structural elements of fascism, but I wonder how useful this abstract framework is when it comes to identifying the subjective aspects of the fascist mentality. In a previous posting, I have tried to present a more "street level" exploration of fascism, which I know does not capture the more superstructure of the political aspects of the ideology but does provide a way for people to see fascism "from the inside."

In his analysis of fascism and Islam, Ibn Warraq's rhetorical strategy is to take Eco's main points and then identify incidents and Koranic verses and Hadith to show how Islam exhibits those features that Eco says are essential to fascism. Warraq starts out his essay saying the following:

Islam is the quintessentially tradition-bound religion. First, the Koran is the eternal and infallible Word of God, and contains the whole of God’s final revelation to man, and must be obeyed in all its details. "This day I have perfected your religion for you and completed My favour to you. I have chosen Islam to be your faith." The Koran is immutable, "Say: ‘It is not for me to change [the Koran]. I only follow what is revealed to me. I cannot disobey my Lord, for I fear the punishment of a fateful day." "Proclaim what is revealed to you in the Book of your Lord. None can change His Words. You shall find no refuge besides Him." The Koran is a faithful and unalterable reproduction of the original scriptures which are preserved in heaven.

Now, I don't know about you, but it seems to me that you could replace Islam and Koran here with Christianity, Judaism, or Hinduism and not fall far south of verisimilitude. Indeed, in many of the points that Eco makes, one could apply those to many religious traditions, not to mention political systems and thereby "prove" that they are fascist.

I believe that a more useful understanding of fascism has come from Richard Sennett, whose article on soft fascism I have quoted several times in these pages. After differentiating what he calls hard and soft fascism, Sennett goes on to argue that Post-911 America exhibits many of the features that characterize this latter term. Sennett writes:

We could think of fascism itself as either hard or soft. Hard fascism rams home to the citizen that he or she is held in that iron grip, as in Mussolini's theatre of force or George Orwell's nightmare Nineteen Eighty-four. Soft fascism is not so much a velvet glove as an invisible hand, the operations of control hidden from scrutiny as Patriot Act II, and more, internal repression presented to the public as merely preventive action against threats that have yet to materialise. The Bush administration acted in this preventive way, for instance, by shutting three of the larger Muslim charities in America, not for anything they had done, but for what might happen, some time, somewhere. In hard fascism the state exploits concrete fear, in soft fascism the state exploits diffuse anxiety.

Without going into the question of whether Mr. Rumsfeld is serving up several fallacious arguments here, most notably begging the question on what constitutes fascism, here is some of what he wrote:

Someone recently recalled one U.S. senator's reaction in September of 1939. Upon hearing that Hitler had invaded Poland to start World War II he exclaimed, "Lord, if only I had talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided." I recount that history, because once again, we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism, with the growing lethality and the increasing availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow, some way, vicious extremists can be appeased?

Numerous Left and Right pundits replied to Rumsfeld's accusations.Keith Olbermann wrote a response that has earned widespread recognition. Turning the tables on Mr. Rumsfeld, Olbermann accuses the Bush administration itself as being the Neville Chamberlain in the current face-off with terrorism:

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have — inadvertently or intentionally — profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer’s New Clothes?

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?

The confusion we -- as its citizens— must now address, is stark and forbidding.

But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note -- with hope in your heart — that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.

Other, less prominent, commentators also chimed in. Summerisle, for example, notes the following:

"They are actively manipulating the media in this country" by, for example, falsely blaming U.S. troops for civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

"The enemy lies constantly _ almost totally without penalty," he told the veterans group, which presented him with the Dwight D. Eisenhower Distinguished Service Award. "They portray our cause as a war on Islam when in fact the overwhelming majority of victims of their terrorism have been the thousands and thousands of innocent Muslims _ men, women and children _ that they have killed."

He added, "While some at home argue for tossing in the towel, the enemy is waiting and hoping that we will do just that." "

You either have to be a master bullshitter or totally insane to make a statement like that about Iraq and Afghanistan. This level of projection against an apparant enemy, who doesn't have the weapons to wage conventional war much less have a media bureau, is so extreme that to believe in it is to believe in conspiracy theory.

[Xposted in part at Spengler Forum Read more!

Guilt, Israel, Radical Evil, and Beyond

Pat Lang is known for his realpolitik. A former military man, he sees war through a pretty clear lens and multiplies his perception with intelligence, experience, and learning. His views on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon are unique in this regard, as well as in their ability to raise questions and present perspectives that you just don't find in the mainstream media.

Given this background, you'd expect a less sentimental view of the Mideast conflict than from many others. ...

In one of his postings on the Israeli-Lebanese conflict, Lang takes on Charles Krauthammer's view that Israel is an investment by the US. Lang's analysis here is somewhat ironic, since he's taking on the neocon view that Israel is fighting in US interests and that Israel's interests are US interests.

At the beginning of his analysis of Krauthammer's article, Lang summarizes the sentiments behind much US popular support for Israel. Lang writes:

The Holocaust is something nearly all Americans feel strongly about. A nagging feeling of guilt still exists over the issue of whether or not antisemitism played a role in decisions about welcoming Jewish refugees to the United States in the World War 2 period. Did we Americans act quickly enough against Hitler? Are we really not prejudiced against Jews? In spite of the evidence presented by the prominence of Jews in our society, these feelings of guilt linger on.

Lang clearly states the way that many in the US feel toward Israel. The atrocities experienced by Israel throughout history call for a deep and profound sense of reflection on how a single people can undergo so much pain and yet maintain their heritage and their sense of self throughout.

What's important to note in Lang's remarks is its expression of guilt. It's not obvious that I or anyone should feel guilt for what happened to Israel. In most respects, I would probably not know anything about Israel if I had not grown up in the culture I have. Lang points to particular instances where the US did not do enough to help Jews who fled Nazi Germany.

This inaction or even indifference toward their plight is sufficient reason to feel guilt. Given this guilt, we are compelled, it’s often asserted, that we should help and support Israel’s interests in the Mideast since one of the reasons for the founding of that nation is that Jews will never once again face the possibility of persecution by other countries. Indeed, any military action taken by Israel after its founding has been portrayed in these very terms; that is, the fight of Jews against another Holocaust.

Guilt is one of those strange phenomena that can be tied to both real and imagined offenses. This offense can be against anything a person feels is worthy of respect, an authority to whom I owe something that often rises above simple monetary payment. That is, while I expect to get a thing or something similar in return for paying a price, with guilt the return is a seemingly subjective event that others might or might not understand.

In ancient religious practices, guilt is often pictured as a stain or impurity that attaches itself to a person. In more literal explanations this can even be seen as skin diseases or physical infirmities. Perhaps there's no greater testament to this view than that illustrated in the Hebrew book of Job. Job, innocent and "righteous" as he is, is struck down with not only the death of his children and loss of his property but is touched with a horrible skin disease whose boils he scrapes off with potsherds.

Job's friends allude numerous times to the fact that these events and the disease is the consequence of some sin committed by Job. To return to health, Job must confess his guilt. But, as Job asserts over and over again, his innocence is complete. His mind is clear of any fault that could cause guilt.

Few are as innocent as Job believes himself to be. Yet many suffer tremendously and have visited upon themselves many evils that Job would understand deeply, from the inside. Given the fact that few are guiltless or who feel that they have committed nothing to cause guilt, it's not hard to see how many consider the present circumstances in the world to reflect their own guilt.

When one faces horrendously evil crimes such as the Holocaust, the feelings of guilt become even more profound. We all seem implicated in these terrible events. The atrocities committed, the demonic means used to entice people to their deaths, the factory system developed to systematically and coldly kill innocent men, women, and children--all impinge in some way on conscience and call for not simply an expression of horror but a complaint against creation itself.

How could we have let that happen? In a world filled with such evil, the notion expressed by French philosopher Jacques Derrida that we are all guilty yet not guilty becomes understandable, if still disturbingly paradoxical. Its disturbing aspects are the recognition that living in a world with others brings to bear interdependencies and associations that carry with them historical actualities that we may not even be aware of bit that may have a blood-soaked hand attached.

This knotted world of contingency, where innocence is an illusion that the snake-oil preachers wish to sell, involves too much pain and suffering--too much history for anyone to ever be guiltless. The desire to be so or to believe that you are either self-delusive or demonic.

But once you suffer, once you have been reduced to nothingness, there is the desire to say that the suffering was for something, that it earned you something. One thing it could earn you, of course, is the right to exact vengeance on the world. Suffering teaches me justice and my suffering itself becomes the measure of justice. Who will measure up to the nothingness that fills my memories, seeps into my bones and makes them ache for an echo of retribution?

How else explain comments like the following quote from an Israeli politician. Lenin's Tomb quotes:

To those who are disturbed by the images of Lebanese refugees, Itzik said: "There is no nation who can teach us what it means to a refugee and uprooted. They invented the term 'refugee' for us. Enough of the self-flagellation and the self-righteous moral preaching. Anyway we are conducting this war with one hand tied behind our back because of our interest in protecting humanitarian and moral principles against a murderous enemy who makes no distinction and value of human life. I am still waiting for the first Hizbullah members, the first Lebanese, who will express regret or apologize for the suffering of innocent people on the Israeli side."

It is not uncommon for victims of great atrocity to feel guilt. As irrational as that may seem. The victim feels perhaps that they invited the pain or suffering, something in their behavior of lives brought about the conditions in which attack seems justified. What makes this picture even more warped and contorted is the notion that perpetrators themselves can use these feelings to bend the victim to his or her purposes.

As Freud and others who have tried to understand the labyrinth of guilt have shown, along with guilt goes the need for punishment. The punishment is expected and when it does not come, a person will often do something to bring about punishment. Yet, that feeling for punishment can just as easily become the desire to punish others. Whether innocent or guilty, all are seen as complicit in the web of deceit and illusion that brought about the pain and suffering visited upon me.

The guilt-punishment dialectic often turns into a vicious circle of vengeance and retribution. While Freud and others attempted to neutralize the cycle through understanding the guilt. This process involves identifying the source of guilt, talking about it, and understanding its emotional effects. By shining the light of reason on the source–seeing the guilt as perhaps a misunderstanding of what happened (still thinking as a child, for example) or even an attempt to hold on to the guilt for the emotional effect itself–the guilt and its associated need for punishment will disappear.

Perhaps it is right to search through one’s conscience to identify the sources of our guilt feelings. Yet, as once guilt feelings come to the surface and we begin exploring their sources it also often comes to light that there is something in the human psyche that wishes to do evil–above and beyond all reason, simply for the sake of doing evil. Carrying out his radical critique of the limits of reason, the philosopher Kant came late in life to realize this fact about human nature. He called it “radical evil.”

Commenting on Kant’s notion of radical evil, the Japanese philosopher Tanabe Hajime notes:

Radical evil is impossible to comprehend from the standpoint of hermeneutics because as radical it is something from which the self cannot be released by the self’s own power. It is a transcendent moment of negativity for which the self will always be guilty as long as it exists. It is the dark abyss that cannot be annihilated by the immanent transcendence of self-consciousness. – Hajime, Philosophy as Metanoetics, p. 148

In less philosophical terms and more personal understanding, Hajime describes the appropriate understanding of one’s own impulse of radical evil is the following:

I feel especially obliged to share in the corporate responsibility for irrationalities like the injustice and prejudice evident in our country [fascist Japan]. I feel responsible for all of the evils and errors committed by others, and in so doing find that the actual inability of my philosophy to cope with them compels me to a confession of despair over my philosophical incompetence. More than that, I find that this predicament obliges me–the ordinary person, ignorant and sinful, that I am–to admit that such a confession applies not only to me but to all persons everywhere who are similarly ignorant and sinful.

Related Links

• Evangelicals Quiet About War in Lebanon
  
• Israel Authorizes Expansion
  
• France Urges Israel Pullback
  
• Lebanon Could Lead to World War

Read more!

Pale Horse Rider

... has an excellent review of the current Mideast crisis' players and their scripts at his blog, Ride a Pale Horse. While I don't agree with everything this blogger says, the recent posting on Israel is exceptional in several aspects. ...

First, its perspicuity is clear and it provides a wide-open lens on how the players and their different agendas calesce. He points out, for example, the relationship of Benjamin Netanyahu to Jablotinsky, an alleged fascist. EHud Olmert's assoication with Jablotinsky's heritage is also noted by this author.

Second, his selction of material is not only pinpoint and precise, but he unearths some documents not currently under discussion in the public sphere. I am particularly intrigued by the French letter of ben-Gurion.

Third, the reconstruction of events is inspired. Tying tog ether the ragged ends of everyday life, especially while we are in the midst of their occurring, is an art. The reconstruction has enough detail to support the connections that are made, although time will tell how well the picture stands up.

My favorite passage is the following:

That viewpoint concurs with that of the United States administration. The control of areas rich in hydrocarbons defined by Zginiew Brzezinski and Bernard Lewis as the “arc of crisis”, ie. the arc reaching from the Gulf of Guinea to the Caspian sea going through the Persian Gulf, demands a redefinition of borders, States and political regimes: a “remodeling of the Greater Middle East,” to use the expression of George W. Bush.
That is the new Middle East which Miss Rice claims to be the mid-wife of, and whose painful birth she is watching.
The idea is simple: substitute to the States inherited by the collapse of the Ottoman empire, smaller entities of mono-ethnic character, and neutralize those mini-states by setting up them permanently against each other. In other terms, the idea is to reconsider the secret agreements concluded in 1916 by the French and British empires, the Sykes-Picot agreements [6] and to establish rather a total domination of the Anglo-Saxons over the region. But in order to define new states, the existing ones must first be destroyed. That is what the Bush Administration and its allies have been doing since 5 years with the enthusiasm of a sorcerers apprentices.

Read more!

The Apocalypse WILL Be Televised

I got my semi-monthly visit from the Jehovah's Witnesses yesterday. Traveling in twos, the women walked up the driveway smelling the rosemary growing by the back-door porch while I put a T-shirt on. It's been so hot and humid here that I sit out the bare-chested famine.

We stood in the hot sun partly through my design, partly through my embarrassment at the house's disarray. The design part reflects my desire--after I learn that they're here to proselytize--that they not stay too long. The embarrassment reflects many things, perhaps foremost my disregard for keeping a clean house.

I've always tried to welcome these messengers of the Apocalypse. I imagine that they receive enough incivility and brusqueness as it is int heir peregrinations around the county. Besides, I imagine that if they want to convince me that the world is ending, I might as well make them comfortable so that they can hear my skepticism out without thinking I do so from fear of their message or dislike for them as people. ...

As you'd expect at this time in the world’s upheaval, they were more focused than usual on the coming end-time. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon has stoked their fears and anxieties and fortified their belief that biblical prophecies are playing out in their own day and age. For those who believe and expect to be going to heaven soon, the Israeli invasion and the so-called "war on terror" in general is tacit proof that the final battles described in Holy Writ are about to come true.

The end-time has achieved mainstream status in the MSM. Numerous TV news media outlets run everything from "panels of experts" to hour-long segments on the subject. In many cases, these news shows focus on the religious Right's interpretation of the events. In much coverage, the iconography of the Apocalypse is combined with assertions by politicians like Newt Gingrich and John McCain that the fight against Islamic exremism is WWWIII.

I've discussed in several postings on this blog about American Dispensationalism and its connection to conservative evangelicals. I've also noted that there are apocalypticists (those who believe in a coming apocalypse) now governing the major state powers who glare each other down with a finger itching for the nuclear button. Iran's president, the US president, and the Israeli prime minister appear to subscribe to various versions of the end of the world. Bush believes in the Second Coming of Christ, Ahmedinajad believes in the coming of the Mahdi, and Ehud Olmert believes in the coming of the Messiah.

What has become known as the postmodern world should probably be now known as the pre-Millennial world. After the specters of communism and fascism fade into the maelstrom of history, the threat of world nuclear annihilation seemingly is jammed back like jack in the box, peoples and nations of the world seem strangely mesmerized by this looming world battle that will bring final peace and lasting justice.

On CNN, last day authors Jerry Jenkins, co-author of the gargantuan best seller Left Behind series (along with its multi-million dollar line of Left Behind accesssories) and less well-known auhtor Joel C. Rosenberg, wove their apocalyptic rohrshach, while CNN host Kyra Phillips seemed to smile in blissful accord.

From the CNN transcript, Jenkins and Rosenberg said:

ROSENBERG: Well, this is -- this is about -- this is the prophecy that says that God is going to cause the nations of the world -- the leaders of the nation almost get drunk with the dream of recapturing Jerusalem. Now, the Bible says that Jerusalem will come back under Jewish control in the last days. That'll be one of the indicators. Well, that's where we are today. But, what are we watching? Saddam Hussein or Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Hezbollah leader [Hassan] Nasrallah, they're all drunk with the dream of capturing Jerusalem. That's what [Rosenberg's] The Copper Scroll novel is about, which is this battle, this intense battle to liquidate the Jewish people and liberate Jerusalem. I mean, are we seeing that happen? It's hard not to say that we are. I mean, that's why I've gotten invited over to the CIA and the White House and Capitol Hill, because people -- it's not that they necessarily believe the prophecies, but they want to understand the prophecies in the Bible in light of what's going on right now.

PHILLIPS: Do you think they're taking what you're saying and incorporating it into foreign policy?

ROSENBERG: I wouldn't go that far. But I would say -- I would say that Bible prophecy is an intercept from the mind of God. It's actually fairly remarkable intelligence, and that's why my novels keep coming true, because mine are on this side of the Rapture, leading up to Jerry and Tim's books, but they suggest events that the Bible does lay out that will get us closer to those events. And, in fact, one by one in The Last Jihad, my book The Last Days, The Ezekiel Option, and now The Copper Scroll, have this feeling of coming true. I think that's why a million copies have sold. They're New York Times best-sellers, because they're based on Bible prophecy, and they are coming true bit by bit, day by day.

There are so many nuggets in this comment for snarky comments and snide asides in that I find I have to restrain myself from voicing them. But such sarcasm is misplaced and beside the point. Taking such an attitude--which I am not above exhibiting--misses the very serious implications of what's happening here.

I could quote ad nauseam the learned, sociologically based, studies of the apocalyptic genre and its origins in historical and social realities related to persecution of believers. From the biblical books of Daniel, the great eschatological prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel to apocalyptic works in what are called the Pseudepigripha (religious writings from Jews living from the end of accepted Jewish prophetic activity and the Gospels) to the canonical book called Revelation–all these works emanate from momentously catastrophic times when religious Jews and Christians faced personal and group extinction.

In some ways, resorting to scholarship trivializes these writings. I don’t disparage the great work–often done from a sincere desire to get closer to a more authentic faith experience–done by scholars. Yet, I have my suspicions that what gets looked at through the lens of the historical microscope often ends up pinned and mounted in a catalog of natural history’s oddities.

Having said this, my own interpretation of an apocalyptic text like Revelation would take a liberation theology interpretation, which is indeed informed by many of these historical critical studies. Yet, what I find uniquely authentic and important about the liberation theology understanding of a apocalyptic texts is that it helps to place the words and images into the present-day faith struggles with forces and powers that transcend any one human’s power of comprehension.

Revelation itself is a wonderfully rich symbolic representation of the faithful’s interpretation of historical events from the perspective of those trying to understand God’s will in the world of social, cultural, and historical facts. Using the symbols and themes of apocalyptic, early Christian believers who were not historians or anthropologists or sociologists attempted to make sense of the impending disasters that threatened them and their small communities.

Consider the following statement from Revelation:

Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more: The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men. And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all. The merchants of these things, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing, And saying, Alas, alas, that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls! For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off, And cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What [city is] like unto this great city! And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.

It does not seem to stretch the bounds of reason to say that this passage refers to a great trading capital. Symbolizing this great economic power as a whore–a licentious and wanton power that will do anything for money and financial gain–the early Christians documented their awareness that power and economic interests go hand in hand. Not only that, but this power- and money-hungry entity brings terrible suffering and desolation to the powerless and poor.

I am not conversant enough with Hal Lindsay or the Left behind authors to know how they interpret these verses in their mythology. From my own perspective, I think that the image of the Whore of Babylon could be applied to the United States as easily as it can ancient Rome or any other current politico-economic powerhouse.

Recent polls show that many Americans buy into this end-time scenario. The idea that the world is headed for flame and damnation fits into an ever-growing, deepening despair on the part of Americans. Unfulfilled with their consumer life-styles, a workplace unusually precarious for its insecurity, shadowy threats of terrorism by peoples half-way across the world... all these shades and mysterious movements bewilder a person who has no time to eviscerate the lies and deception perpetrated by their own government nor the equally fatuous and empty criticisms put up by the "loyal opposition."

As the media blitz continues, and Armageddon and its iconography begins to form an accepted backdrop for our lives--as we search the trees and rocks for tell-tale signs of the end-times--what will be lost in our understanding of world events as they apply to our lives is something more precious than innocence. This innocence that Americans pride themselves on, but which is an innocence that the writer Kierkegaard called demonic. For it is an innocence that denies the true nature of our ability to perpetrate and rationalize evil through violence and political intrigue.

It is this demonic innocence that gives birth to the pride that we Americans have in washing themselves clean of the past and making a fresh start. But no one can be born fresh from nothing–either through becoming a citizen of a nation or through the sacrifice of innocent lives. As Americans, we believe that we have shielded ourselves from the evils that beset the old world. By uprooting ourselves from that world, we think can now bring the experience born of the democratic experiment to cure those old ills and maladies.

We cannot uproot ourselves in the way many Americans believe you can. The past comes back to haunt us, whether we will or no. And this past goes back to the Eden now known as Iran and Iraq, that paradise left behind when I or you or any other decides to perpetrate the worst crime of all--making ourselves gods who believe that they can bring about their own beginning and end in wishful and demonically innocent daydreams.

-----------------
When the ladies who witness to Jehovah walked away under the sun that omens a new kingdom to come, I think of the biblical passage that I could not find during our discussion about what it means to witness for Christ. Later, I find the passage, Matthew 25:31-46:

When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth [his] sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed [thee]? or thirsty, and gave [thee] drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took [thee] in? or naked, and clothed [thee]? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done [it] unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done [it] unto me. Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did [it] not to one of the least of these, ye did [it] not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

The world may indeed be in its last moments. Or not.

If so, I imagine that what judgements might take place will be measured by this criterion: what were you doing when the angels came?

Right now, at least, many of the religious in America are selling books wishing death and destruction on their enemies.

They fantasize about getting on the news so they can see themselves–as though that will legitimate their cause; as though their faith requires everyone to think, feel, and believe as they do. It is as though they think that having this message and these beliefs plastered on the TV screens somehow makes what they believe real.

That belief either says a lot about how much people reared on television and the news media believe that if it appears on TV then it must be real and true, or it is a pitiful commentary on how much despair lies at the heart of many of the religious right.

That is, if you require legitimacy from the multitude or demand that your beliefs become the status quo, then there’s more to you wishing your faith to be so than that it is so.

Update 1 The Rt. Rev. Riah H. Abu El-Assal, Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, writes:

In her recent article, “The Insane Brutality of the State of Israel,” American, Kathleen Christison, a former CIA analyst says, “The state lashes out in a crazed effort, lacking any sense of proportion, to reassure itself of its strength.” She continues, “A society that can brush off as unimportant an army officer’s brutal murder of a thirteen year old girl on the claim that she threatened soldiers at a military post (one of nearly seven hundred Palestinian children murdered by Israelis since the Intifada began) is not a society with a conscience.” The “situation” as it has come to be called, has deteriorated into a war without boundaries or limitations. It is a war with deadly potential beyond the imaginations of most civilized people.

Related Links

• Hagee lends support to Israel's struggle
  
• CNN still fixated on Apocalypse predictors, still ignoring alleged invitation to White House, Capitol Hill
  
• Are These the End Times?
  
• Bush, Blair Urge Multinational Force
  
• Israel, Hezbollah Militia Clash Along Border
  
• Froomkin on Bush's Lighter Side
  
• Cease-Fire Now
  
• Condi's War
  
• Rice, Asian Leaders Huddle on Mideast
  Israelis, Hezbollah Keep Up Attacks
  
• ABC jumps on Apocalypse bandwagon: GMA host Roberts welcomes End Times authors' "insight"
  
• The upside to Hezbollah
  
• In Middle East conflict, other crises, conservative media find signs of Biblical prophecy of Armageddon
  
• Right-Wing ‘Guide to World War III’: ‘Kill ‘Em All, Let Allah Sort ‘Em Out’
  
• In Europe, Islam rises, Christianity falls
  
• Holy War
  
• Hardball, Fox & Friends hosted "Middle East analyst" whose chief experience is in "prophecy"
  
• 666 ridiculousness
  
• Expediting the end: Various religious groups are trying to play God and hasten the arrival of their messiahs
  
• The Cultural Contradictions of Christian Fundamentalism
  
• Smart Bombs, Serial Killing, and the Rapture: The Vanishing Bodies of Imperial Apocalypticism
  
• Bibi: Evangelicals are Israel's best gentile friends

Read more!

Authoritarianism and Despair

John Dean's recent book, Conservatives Without Conscience, has evoked much debate among conservatives, as well as political commentators on both sides of the political spectrum. Although it has not yet gained wide discussion in the MSM, it has made the rounds of the blogosphere.

I have not yet read Dean's book so the following will not be a book review as much as it is the investigation of certain themes that I have addressed before in this blog, themes which seem associated with Dean's main thesis. This thesis, according to many discussions, is that those who call themselves neoconservatives and their Bushite followers are uniquely prone to authoritarian models--either as leaders or as followers. ...

Authoritarian is another one of those terms like fascism that is used in so many ways by so many different political interests that it's almost useless without giving it some more profile. I tried to do this in my tract on fascism, seeing it from my own personal experience with my father, a self-avowed Nazi.

In a similar way, the term authoritarian, as either a noun or an adjective, needs further context to provide it some pith and meat. Context does not only give emotional and intellectual depth to the term. Context also helps to see a way to counter the authoritarian personality and its associated evils.

A potential problem with writer's like Dean's work is that it might lead us to look at the authoritarian from the outside. While this is important because it helps to identify and perhaps locate what authoritarianism is and where it occurs--much as a scientist pinpoints a subatomic particle so that they can further analyze it--this is just a first step in a process that must work in a direction not known by scientists. This direction is from the outside in--in to one's personal life and motivations, not from the outside out--out to the world before some form of inner analysis and reflection.

That such a direction is required is apparent from the criteria identified by studies used in assessing authoritarian personalities themselves. That is, as Dean's own title indicates, it is conservatives without conscience that one must focus on. The context for the question of authoritarian personality involves a distinctly subjective state: conscience.

This is not as obvious as it seems. One tendency by those who interpret these scientific studies on authoritarianism is to forget the subjective factor and to ascribe to human beings an innate, "hard-wired" tendency to authoritarian expression. But if the focus is conscience, then that would seem to rule out any hard-wired, biologically determinative cause. That is, if we understand conscience as a subjective state that is not purely caused by environment or genetics or anything else. Further, it means that we are talking about something that humans respond to the commands of--if they are listening.

A concise formulation of the view that authoritarianism might be biologically determinative comes in the following commenter from an anonymous poster at Glenn Greenwald's review of Dean's book [misspellings have been corrected]:

But you know, this has got me to wondering if politics is at a very deep level determined by DNA.

We are hierarchal animals just like our chimp cousins. Across any given population maybe the genetic urge toward hierarchy is a continuum. Maybe democracy came about in part because the human population in those areas were less inclined to strict hierarchies and could live as loose clans.

Maybe in some ways the New World self selected for humans with less strong hierarchy genes as many came here to avoid the rigid class systems in Europe. The gene pool was being stacked with those who could deal with the free flow of democracy and its birth in the New World with the Revolution.

To me, republicans act like male chimps living under the thumb of a very dominate alpha male. It may not even bee a matter of having a super male, but their DNA pushing them toward absolute obedience to the hierarchy.

This means the following: What the studies on authoritarian personalities show is that people give up their moral decision-making to authority figures. That is what makes them dangerous. They would rather listen to someone with a white coat on and electrocute someone to death than make the decision to follow their own conscience.

One of the findings of the authoritarian studies is that those prone to exhibit this personality dysfunction express a desire for certainty and a reality beyond question. These factors create a certain anxiety, it's inferred, and the authoritarian alleviates that anxiety by putting their trust--and thereby their conscience--into the hands of a figure who asserts a world-view that radiates absolute truth and veracity.

Many have taken these inferences as indicating a lack of reason or rationality on the part of the authoritarian-prone personality. These conclusions are drawn from the supposed fact that authoritarians will not listen to/accept examples or facts that apparently contradict the views espoused by their leader or their own absolute understanding of the world.

Philosophically at least, these conclusions seem unwarranted, if only because they miss a very basic point about all world-views. That is, all world-views are provisional and open to debate--even the ones asserted as fact by scientists. Depending on tools and conceptual paradigms, the absoluteness of all assertions is simply untenable. Every assertion has its counter-assertion, every fact a counter-factual. Except perhaps at the level of natural phenomena which follow rigid laws of necessity, little in the world of human action could not be "otherwise than it it was or is," to paraphrase Aristotle's Rhetoric.

Be these comments as they may--and as controversial and open to discussion and perhaps discounting--the point about authoritarianism is that people who give up their moral decision-making to authoritarian thinking or leaders do so out of an immense sense of anxiety. I would go further and call it a deep sense of despair. They despair not only over their own material welfare but even more importantly over themselves. In a very real sense they despair over who and what they are.

In this despair over themselves, they therefore turn over their conscience to others and their messages who seem most like them and who set their minds at rest. Those who can alleviate the despair by various means--whether appealing to material comforts, patriotic sloganeering, scapegoating, warring against others who are different--it is these that those in despair follow and give up their consciences to.

As human animals we are all formed and shaped by our environments and genetics. There is no way around that. Yet, it also seems true of the human animal that it has capabilities other animals do not. These capabilities include language and thought. Along with these go reason and reflection, as well something that some call conscience.

Conscience itself seems to be an ability–rational, yet somehow above reason because its source appears above and beyond human rational–to discern when we are acting in a way that is wrong. It is wrong not because it goes against our material interests but because it betrays something more essential to who or what we acknowledge as being more ourselves than what our material affairs and interests add up to.

Having given up their moral decision-making powers, they are open to manipulation by authoritarian leaders who are eager to play into their fears and anxieties about who and what they are. Fear that group, destroy that nation, hate the world–all these endanger who and what I am. What the authoritarian personalities do, of course, is to give up their freedom to easy answers and deceptive certainties. They are unwilling to live with a despair so great and act in despite of it, that the allegiances they make and the prescriptions they write often result in not only self-deception but a greater deception perpetrated towards and against others.

Having said this much, it is important to recognize that few of the those who echo Dean’s observations on authoritarianism identify the true causes of the despair and its associated anxiety. These writers seem content on identifying the symptom, ascribing it to a psychologico-biological cause and then note its various political ramifications and exploitations. This is almost as bad saying it spontaneously generates itself.

You do not have to look too far to find a reasonable answer to one of the sources of authoritarian anxieties as described above. In his work on the modern workplace, Richard Sennett documents the precarious insecurities many people face in their jobs. Sennett shows that the precarious work conditions promote insecurities in situations where character-building frameworks are required. Character here refers to the emotional and intellectual make-up that is required for ethical decision-making.

By promoting a workplace that allows no true basis for character-building, the modern business also promotes a state of despair within its workforce. People working under these conditions are not only unsure of themselves, they are also uncertain about their families and their welfare. These conditions promote despair and uncertainty to such an extent that those who experience it search out any type of certainty that will allay their fears and suspicions.

Anything that fills the vacuum of their lives and defines the world for them in a rigidly concrete way. And the more rigid and circumscribed that world is in opposition to others only makes it easier to emotionally attach oneself to that vision of the world. Indeed, this comparing ourselves with others and defining ourselves against or with them is perhaps a constituent part of how we become selves in the first place.

Yet, there are some things to bear in mind with regard to those who despair in these ways, as opposed to those who would set themselves up as judges. I mean those who seem to think that they themselves are immune to despair. In a minimal sense, I would say, the authoritarian types are at least–however minimally--aware that there is something to despair over. Those who would set themselves up as judges, however, perhaps do not even reach this level of self-consciousness. Self-assured in their reverence of reason or science’s certainties, they refuse to acknowledge that even these cannot provide the type of conscience that is required for attaining a true self-awareness.

Related Links

• The Faustian Generation

Read more!

The Birth of Terrorism

Interesting discussion of the birth of terrorist methods in Ireland and its migration to Palestine via Zionist revisionists. One thing I found out here is that Ehud Olmert is a Zionist revisionist in the tradition of Manehm Begin. ...

According tot hese guys:

The irregular warfare concept was imported to the Middle East by the Revisionist Zionists who wanted to use terrorist methods to get the British out of Palestine. There is an interesting book on the fascist Zionist movement, Revisionism, about a discussion in Warsaw during the 1930s between the movement’s founder Vladimir Jabotinsky, an admirer of Mussolini’s Fascist Italy and his disciple, future mass-murderer and Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, by Lenni Brenner, The Iron Wall: Zionist Revisionism from Jabotinsky to Shamir, about using the Irish example in Palestine to drive the British out and set up a state for the Jews. As we note that the current Israeli Prime Minister, Mr. Olmert, comes from this Revisionist Zionist tradition can we, just to be fair, refer to Israelofascists as often as we refer to Islamofascists?

Read more!

Leo Strauss Waxes Poetic About Fascism

Here's an interesting discussion of Leo Strauss (via Leiter via Balkin), the father of neoconism. The posting features a letter from Strauss wherein he waxes poetic about what's right with fascism and how much he despises the democratic notion of the rule of law. Sound familiar?

The influence of thinkers on everyday life is often thought to be ridiculous. What do thinkers have to say that affects what Joe or Jill in the street think and feel and carry out their lives?

Tell that to those who suffered from Nazism or Communism--both of which were cobbled together from the books and ideas of thinkers.

Of course, for a philosopher the very thought that their ideas can have an impact on everyday life is somehow conformation of their life's work. Too many scholars and thinkers live in that proverbial ivory tower, often hermetically sealed off from the rough and tumble of "real things."

Yet, given the track record for recent philsophers--from Marx to Nietzsche--and their ideas translated into the real world is not so sanguine. The barbarities and atrocities committed in the name of their ideas should certainly make us leery of following one more thinker.

As the posting above makes clear. Strauss' ideas flirt with fascism at best or embody the fascist world-view at worst. To think that major neoconservatives have the ear of the President should cause concern. Read more!

Are Neocons Fascists?

There's much use of the fascist term in political dialog these days. The term comes up most naturally in connection with neoconservatism. Some would maintain that the dissimilarities between the two political ideologies allow no comparisons. On the other hand, the rhetoric being used on the neocon airwaves does sound somehow familiar, ca. 1930s. ...

The neoconservatives have had nothing more nor less on their agenda than a takeover of the government. The sooner we recognize this the better. Comparing them to fascism or authoritarians of any branch means little to most people since the horrors of those phenomena can't be brought home on a human level. For most people, talk of a government takeover in the US--where these things just don't happen--is like talking about fairies in Beulah land.

Much of the discussion about whether neocons are fascists or not still works at the level of abstractions and fog. The reality of what a takeover might look like or how it might be felt and experienced slowly seeps into consciousness and is soon forgotten. Remember the days after 911 when people walked around in a despondent funk--when people were fired for voicing minimal opposition to the so-called "war" on terrorism?

I suggest that that reality is what covers most of the dealings we have with the world now. The neocons have indeed changed the way we think about the world--and it is a much more brutish, nasty, and short-sighted vision of American ideals than has ever existed in America.

Hitler to Himmler:

The discovery of the Jewish virus is one of the greatest revolutions that has taken place in the world. The battle in which we are engaged today is of the same sort as the battle waged, during the last century, by Pasteur and Koch. How many diseases have their origin in the Jewish virus! We shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jew.

It's well-known that Hitler believed Jews to be a bacillus.

Radio talk-show host Michael Savage on July 6:

Liberalism is, in essence, the HIV virus, and it weakens the defense cells of a nation. What are the defense cells of a nation? Well, the church. They've attacked particularly the Catholic Church for 30 straight years. The police, attacked for the last 50 straight years by the ACLU viruses. And the military, attacked for the last 50 years by the Barbara Boxer viruses on our planet.

As Stephen T. Katz has argued in his monumnetal study of the Holocaust, the unique brand of anti-semitism that Hitler espoused was uniquely determined by the scientistic context of his time/place. Just as his anti-semitism was conditioned by this historical context, I also think the very terms of the fascistic terminology was influenced as well. The use of the virus/bacillus terminology is unique to a modern, scientistic mind-set.

The neoconservatives have had nothing more not less on their agenda than a takeover of the government. The sooner we recognize this the better. Comparing them to fascism or authoritarians of any branch means little to most people since the horrors of those phenomena can't be brought home on a human level. For most people, talk of a government takeover in the US--where these things just don't happen--is like talking about fairies in Beulah land.

Much of the discussion about neoconservatives still works at the level of abstractions and fog. The reality of what a takeover might look like or how it might be felt and experienced slowly seeps into consciousness and is soon forgotten. Remember the days after 911 when people walked around in a despondent funk--when people were fired for voicing minimal opposition to the so-called "war" on terrorism?

I am still persuaded by Richard Sennett's distinction between two forms of fascism, what he calls soft and hard fascism:

We could think of fascism itself as either hard or soft. Hard fascism rams home to the citizen that he or she is held in that iron grip, as in Mussolini's theatre of force or George Orwell's nightmare Nineteen Eighty-four. Soft fascism is not so much a velvet glove as an invisible hand, the operations of control hidden from scrutiny as Patriot Act II, and more, internal repression presented to the public as merely preventive action against threats that have yet to materialise. The Bush administration acted in this preventive way, for instance, by shutting three of the larger Muslim charities in America, not for anything they had done, but for what might happen, some time, somewhere. In hard fascism the state exploits concrete fear, in soft fascism the state exploits diffuse anxiety.

I suggest that that reality is what covers most of the dealings we have with the world now. The neocons have indeed changed the way we think about the world--and it is a much more brutish, nasty, and short-sighted vision of American ideals than has ever existed in America.

The neocons practise the "double-truth" theory, which was first espoused by Plato in Republic and then taken up by Ibn Rushd (aka Averroes) and other Islamic philosophers. This theory teaches that there are truths for the unlettered and ignorant and truths for the intellectual and "scientist." In most cases, these philosophers limited the theory to divine scripture.

Neoncon theoretician Leo Strauss took over the theory from the Islamic philosophers and Plato and noted that philosophy is destructive to the state and therefore should only be practised by the initiated. He therefore backed the notion that democracy (in true Platonic and Aristotelian fashion) is a retrograde political system. The truth of political power is to be exercised by the initiated few who understand the true workings of how power and force are to be used.

There's something that Americans have never been able to face, even though they have committed atrocity after atrocity. That is the dark secret that lies behind the neocon takeover--they know that Americans will never ever allow to come to consciousness exactly how evil America’s precious innocence and ignorance are. Read more!