Moral Hypocrisy in The Foley Case

The Republican Congressman from Fla. was on a committee that oversaw legislation dealing with the Internet and child predators. He solicited sex from congressional interns. The IMs that Foley sent the young man contain unsavory suggestions. In the 1990s Foley attacked Clinton for his "sex addiction."

Republican leaders hid the facts for a year.

I wonder how many other skeletons will fall out of the oh-so-pure Republican party closets? ...

According to SFGATE.com:

ABC News reported Friday that Foley also engaged in a series of sexually explicit instant messages with current and former pages, all male. In one message, ABC said, Foley wrote to one page, "Do I make you a little horny?"

In another message, Foley wrote, "You in your boxers, too? ... Well, strip down and get relaxed."

Foley, as chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, had introduced legislation in July to protect children from exploitation by adults over the Internet. He also sponsored other legislation designed to protect minors from abuse and neglect.

"We track library books better than we do sexual predators," Foley has said.

The political implications of the Foley scandal have some more import than those reported in the press as of yet. These political consequences will go far beyond consensuality and age. I believe that in many a republican and religious right heart there's the suspicion that liberals and democrats actually secretly condone pedophilia. Explicated in rational terms, this innate "sense" of these people is voiced as a war against cultural values that they believe the liberal or democratic policies promote, i.e., sexual promiscuity and aberrant sexuality such as pedophilia.

The "family values" aspects of the republican and religious right political agenda are an attempt to attack this supposed liberal ideology. What this scandal is 1) espousing family values and fighting a culture war does not make you any more righteous than anyone else; 2) the hypocrisy of the rightists when it comes to policing their own when they commit these acts; and 3) the possibility that the republicans are simply mouthing family value platitudes to gain power.

I think this story is going to turn off many moderate Republicans to their party candidates. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a massive reluctance on Republican voters' part to vote, simply out of disgust at the shortcomings of the current Republican platform. Yes, the hardcore Bushistas will continue to vote for the authoritarian policies of this administration, but they may be the only ones. Even the religious right voters may find it hard to stomach the growing perception that they've been used by the neocons and Republican leadership.

There are further implications of this scandal that I don't have time to go into now. These include the notion that any attempt at cultural reform based on religious teachings is impossibility. In the first place, as Socrates used to say, you can't teach virtue, whether it's by culture or otherwise. Second, the prevalence of original sin makes any socio-cultural programme bent on inspiring or inculcating faith is impossible.

Update 1 October 4 -- Several days out, Media Matters for America documents the various dodges taken by the Bushistas and conservatives to deflect focus on the underlying scandal in this affair.

Update 2 -- Media Matters documents attempts by Republican apologists to link the Foley scandal to the supposed issue of homosexuality and pedophilia:

On October 2, Perkins issued a statement on what he claimed was "the real issue" in the Foley scandal -- the purported "link between homosexuality and child sexual abuse"; the statement was uncritically reported by the San Francisco Chronicle in an October 3 report on the scandal. Similarly, on the October 3 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews failed to challenge the claim by Perkins that "there's clear research that shows that homosexual men are more likely to abuse children than straight men." Perkins's claim appears to be based on an article on the Family Research Council's website by Timothy J. Dailey, a senior research fellow at the FRC's Center for Marriage and Family Studies, which asserts that there is a "disturbing connection" between homosexuality and pedophilia because "homosexual pedophiles commit about one-third of the total number of child sex offenses" whereas homosexuals make up only "1 to 3 percent of the population."

Read more!

Shake-and-Bake Christianity

I haven't been to a megachurch, so I have to take the following description at its word. Once a longtime ago, I did visit some of the prototypes for the megachurch back on the late 80s when the evangelicals were first making their move out of a long isolation. (Back then, these churches were sometimes called warehouse churches; this was before the Jimmy Swaggart/Jim Baker/Tammy Faye scandals.) I saw then what this guy's describing now is happening within Christianity. ...

Whats strikes me most about the following piece is the attempt to found a community within the secular world that is not of the secular world. I imagine that many of these folks believe that they are existing in smething like a Christianized environment--a bubble world--that will perhaps serve as the model for the rest of how America might evolve into.

Second, there's that sense of bubbleness--it's reminiscent of the artifical and ersatz reality created by the Bush administration re: the War in Iraq. That is, as Zizek notes, we are at war but it feels like we are not at war. We are isolated from the terrible sufferings of those in Iraq and those who soldiers who are fighting there, who die (no news coverage), or who end up in a corner of a VA hospital ward. The sense of irreality is what is so striking about the megachurch phenomenon--at least if this description is to be believed. It's almost like a Disneyland of the New Jerusalem, but without the rides (or are those only a few years away?).

Born at the Crest of the Empire writes:

First, they represent an effort to build cultural gated communities within the larger city of Houston. Second Baptist, the local mega with the probably most enveloping "community" has within itself itself a complete social structure carrying its members from cradle to grave. They have daycare, a school, mixers, singles functions/matchmaking, exercise facilities, job assistance, social functions, counselling, right up to senior care.

Effectively, a church member can live their life totally within that "Christian" context. It does have a lure primarily among families with children in that it allows those kids a "safe place." But, interestingly to me, that "safe place" isn't only objects in the real world; the megachurch culture also works to construct a safe virtual world, movies, TV, music etc. An entire industry has grown up to serve Christian rock, literature, and Veggie Tales to this "safe community."

The megachurch fully engaged has the effect of segregating church members in a self reinforcing belief system that extends well beyond Christian tenets. So, when you hear wacky polling or absurdist comments around the "culture war" understand that there are people who live within this self reinforcing reality.

Second: The other major shift that has taken place within the structure of the Megachurch is the actual deemphasis of traditional Christianity. The "traditional" Christian virtures, mercy, charity, humility, and love, have been replaced with a narcissistic philosophy of Christian self improvement.

The whole thing is underpinned by a Christian backbone, but if you look at the sermons and products of Joel Osteen as example (the main guy at Lakewood,) they actually have very little to do with Christianity.

This, I think, is one of the reasons for the growing popularity of the megachurch. Listening to bible verse is boring, but "Living at my Full Potential," that has zazz.

I would argue that this populist new Christianity represents a fundamental shift in values from "what would Jesus do?" to "What can Jesus do for me?"

That's not an absolute shift by any means, but I do think it's big and historic change in the interpretation of Christianity and the relationship of God to the individual. I'm not yet sure what the long term implications of this are.

Related Articles

• GOP's Hold on Evangelicals Weakening
  
• Evangelicals Fear the Loss of Their Teenagers
  
• New generation of evangelicals embraces a more moderate focus

Read more!

More on Privatizing Terror as a Service Sector

Harper's continues its investigation into the privatization of the counter-terrorism effort.

Harper's writes:

One former senior CIA official told me that the implications of the “enhanced revolving door” are being felt in a broad variety of ways. “There are many people inside who aspire to work for a private contractor because—overnight—they can at least double their earnings,” he said. “It undermines morale and doesn't build a competent system. But the bigger story is that this is symptomatic of a new ‘counterterrorism-industrial complex’ that's popping up and that is starting to look a lot like Eisenhower's military-industrial complex. It's a multibillion dollar industry and it's beginning to drive policy.”

Read more!

Could This be the Problem in Iraq?

In my continuing effort to explore threats to the republic, I have mentioned the dangers posed by private security firms that provide military services to the US government. The following information shows not only the level of activity underway by these firms inside Iraq and its consequences but also has wider ramifications, which I have written about in other postings.

Specifically, the question is what danger do these military entities purely under the control of the executive branch and with minimal congressional oversight have with regard to executing the will of the people? ...

Global Guerillas reports:

PSCAI (Private Security Company Association of Iraq) estimates that there are 35,000 private military contractors (those who are using lethal force) in Iraq. Note that the vast bulk of these contractors are operating outside the realm of any counter-insurgency strategy (and by their actions, defined by their missions, typically undermine it).

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!

Counterpoint: Oil Industry Bets On No War in Iran

The oil industry seems to be betting on the idea that Iran will eventually negotiate its position on nuclear power/weapons, and thereby forestall any porjected US invasion/attack. ...

It's a good point. If you accept the idea that the military invasion of Iraq by the US was in part motivated by a desire to secure Iraqi oilfields, then what the oil industry says might lead you to believe that it does not see an invasion of Iran in the same light as it saw the Iraq invasion.

According to Reuters (via Nergol @ Spengler's Forum:

Oil fell more than a dollar to less than $68 a barrel on Monday, pulled lower by expectations that any sanctions against oil producer Iran were some way off and would not necessarily disrupt export flows.
....
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Monday stressed the need to avoid a confrontation with Iran.

He was speaking after a visit to the OPEC oil producer, during which he said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had reaffirmed Iran's willingness to negotiate a solution to the nuclear dispute, although he said it would not suspend uranium enrichment.

Iran failed to meet an August 31 deadline to halt its enrichment program or run the risk of U.N. sanctions.

"All along the nuclear issue has been a lengthy play of many acts. Probably, we're coming up to another act, which is sanctions, but there are likely going to be negotiations of what these sanctions are," said Mike Wittner of Calyon bank.

Read more!

Congress Okays Cluster Bombs in Iraqi Civilian Areas

Why not? We were going to send Israel more--or did they ship anyway--cluster bombs to use against the Lebanese. ...

ThinkProgress reports:

In a 30-70 vote, the Senate defeated an amendment by Sens. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to ban defense spending “on the purchase or use of cluster munitions near civilian areas.” Cluster bombs are “the type of weapon responsible for the majority of civilian deaths in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.”

Read more!

Scenario 1: Provoking Iran for US Invasion

Recent reports in the media are

* Putting Iran behind Hizbullah's attack on Israel,--who Bush says the US promised to defend if attacked--

* Accusing Iran of material and logistic support for Shiite insurgency and militias in Iraq

* Showing provocations along the border of Kurdistan with Iran by Kurdish rebels (and Israeli special ops teams?), which both Turkey and Iran have responded to by bombarding the guerilla camps (according to some reports)

At this point, I am surprised that the Pentagon has not made more these than they have so far. Perhaps they are simply waiting to tighten up supply lines in Iraq, moving US forces into positions of support for an attack/invasion of Iran, or waiting for Israel to attack as it is reported to be preparing to do.

The latter points are highly speculative.

--------------------

Uzi Mahnaimi, Tel Aviv, and Sarah Baxter, New York write

THREATENED by a potentially nuclear-armed Tehran, Israel is preparing for a possible war with both Iran and Syria, according to Israeli political and military sources.

The conflict with Hezbollah has led to a strategic rethink in Israel. A key conclusion is that too much attention has been paid to Palestinian militants in Gaza and the West Bank instead of the two biggest state sponsors of terrorism in the region, who pose a far greater danger to Israel’s existence, defence insiders say.

“The challenge from Iran and Syria is now top of the Israeli defence agenda, higher than the Palestinian one,” said an Israeli defence source. Shortly before the war in Lebanon Major-General Eliezer Shkedi, the commander of the air force, was placed in charge of the “Iranian front”, a new position in the Israeli Defence Forces. His job will be to command any future strikes on Iran and Syria.

Possible scenario for provoking an attack includes the following:

Israel attacks Iranian nuclear sites. Hizbullah launches retaliatory strikes wither in suicide attacks and/or rockets. Or: Iran launches missles into Israel.

Bush declares that Iran is behind these attacks, and that the US is committed to protecting Israel's security. He goes to Congress for an authorization to use military force. Congress supports him because: 1) the Jewish lobby 2) American sentiments supporting Israel.

The chances of the Congress not supporting an AUMF if Israel is attacked are close to nil, I believe. Read more!

In Discussion on What's Wrong w/ Us

At Glenn Greenwald's blog, inconversation I posted the following:

According to JGA Pocock, the reason that the founding fathers wanted to put brakes on commercial interests is that it promotes a form of false consciousness (yes, they were familiar with this concept long before Marx, via the English Machiavellians) that occurs by way of credit and economic speculation. They hoped to counter this with the expansion of the republic westward thereby giving the people a way of holding land, a real value as opposed to the false value created by speculation.

But once the empire reached the western shores of the Pacific and land itself became a means of speculation, the corruption of false consciousness set in among the masses. We see this in the proliferation of diverse ways to create fantasy personalities and living in false worlds that populate the "post modern" world. Much of this would be considered by the founding fathers as a corrupting influence as great as or greater than the abuses of unchecked political or commercial interests.

It is the corruption of the masses that has led the neocons, for example, to promote the military and patriotic ethos--in conjunction with the imperial expansion to overseas markets and oil fields--as a countering impulse to the corruption of the masses. What's odd here is that the liberals have no counter-argument or agenda to this corruption of the masses. In the past, it may have been the populist religious movements that provided that balance but in distancing themselves from the great liberal religious traditions, the liberal left is left swinging any which way hoping that the Right will piss the masses off so much with military and imperial missteps that the masses will simply opt for the Left as a "not-them" choice.

Iraq and perhaps some economic discomfort has disturbed the false consciousness of the masses to the point that they will opt out of the Republican game plan for the short-term. In the meantime, what sort of counter-balance to the corruption of the masses can the Left come up with? All we've had so far is Clintonian neoliberalism, which is the non-militaristic version of imperial republic.

-------------
Everyone wants to get outa here doing well and leave something for the kids. As you note, that's getting harder and harder for those without. What I dislike is the way that those in power and with the cash continue to pass on not only money but power to their progeny. It is this oligarchic principle that spells ruin for the republic.

I also understand the notion of noblesse oblige. While I find it somewhat patronising, I guess it's okay as far as it goes. However, as capital solidifies its hold on the social and cultural infrastructure of the country, those who already have continue to profit and maintain their status quo while those in the middle and at the bottom get squeezed harder and harder.

Perhaps there was a notion that the rich and those in power once thought owed something to society for their success. Even Habermas notes that the founder of IBM back in the early 60s opposed the reduction from 90 percent in income taxes to 50 percent by Kennedy. He did so because he believed that the rich should not tear the social fabric of equitability that mercenary capitalism is prone to destroy.

Perhaps it is this ovearching sense that duty is towards each other and the health of the whole rather than the individual that's been lost by the rich. The founding fathers believed that they could stem the corruption that many of them (except perhaps Hamilton) foresaw would come about by leveling the playing field to include the competition of interests. The balance would be maintained because the various interests would negate each other. I do not think they foresaw the vast influence that capital could play in buying those interests and ultimately by the power of controlling the means of communication that the commercial interests can deploy.

Walter Lippmann long ago understood that the public is a fiction. It is created by and manipulated by the press whose interests ultimately lie with the ruling oligarchy.

The historian Pocock notes--following Hannah Arendt--that the founding fathers opted for the notion of representative democracy as a kind of stop-gap to the inevitable corruption that every republic is heir to. As he has also noted in a recent essay, it is these representatives who form the oligarchy--bought and sold like so many boxes of All-Bran.

You wonder why the president has gotten away with the abuses he has? Look to our representatives and the commercial interests they represent.

--------------
I've always been struck by something that former Russian strongman Boris Yeltsin said. Commenting on his meeting with US govt. officials, he noted how free and independent they seemed in their interaction with each other and their superiors. He admired them for this and said that the Russians lacked that type of freedom but that he felt he must inculcate such an attitude in Russia.

I always thought that that attitude of freedom is what money and status bring you. I certainly don't think that most people in the US exhibit such an attitude of freedom. Tied down by financial concerns, as well as the limitations of social and cultural constraints, I always wondered how many in the US ever attain that type of freedom.

I imagine that Bush feels like those men in superior positions of power and money. My question then becomes: how much does he understand that this position is a product of his own privileged background? How much does he understand that freedom in an imperial republic requires checks and balances, rather than just the exhibition of entrepreneurial initiative and freedom afforded by class?

I personally think that Bush suffers from a case of "false consciousness" that inhibits his ability to understand those varaiables that enable to experience his expanded sense of freedom. Read more!

In Memoriam: Deadwood

And I didn't even know it was over, though seeing Bullock let Hearst leave town alive raised my suspicions. ...

There are so many myths about the old West, that's why this series on HBO was important in many ways. It's probably more realistic than other show about the west has ever been; on the other hand, its very surreality is instructive in showing how much our understanding of our own myths reflects more of who we want to be than what those in the past understood themselves to be.

Consider the following analysis of the American myth from JGA Pocock, writing in The Machiavellian Moment:

A romanticization of popular energies, akin to the romanticism which Wood detects in Madisonian liberalism, makes its appearance in frontier rhetoric; but, following the paradigms laid down by Machiavelli, virtue in this sense must be as dynamic as popular virtù. A dynamism of virtue was being invoked to counter and contain the dynamism of commerce, and must partake of the latter's passionate and fantastic qualities. The primitive and half-comic heroes of frontier legend, however, were insufficiently political to embody virtue in its republican form--Davy Crockett was not imaginable as the congressman he was in real life--and the myth found its personification in Andrew Jackson. Frontier warrior turned patriot statesman, successful adversary of the second attempt to charter the United States Bank, the Jackson of legend has a good claim to be considered the last of the Machiavellian Romans and the warlike, expanding, agrarian democracy he symbolized a Fourth Rome, perpetutaing republican virtus as the Third Rome of Moscow perpetuated sacred empire. -- p. 535

Scott McLamee does a pretty decent--albeit predictable--autopsy; I might take a hand at it once I get over my grief...

McLemee writes:

The final image of the series really did sum it up perfectly. It shows a man [Al Swearingen] on his knees, scrubbing a pool of blood off the wooden floor.

Another character, Johnny, has just asked for some reassuring words about the event that led to the giant stain. Johnny leaves, and the man with the brush gets back to work. “Wants me to tell him something pretty,” he says.

It’s not a rebuke, exactly — just a reminder that, as someone once put it, every document of civilization is also a document of barbarism.

Read more!

Wildcards, "Democracy", and Neocon Game Plans

In response to the following analysis of the Pentagon's recent report to Congress on the state of the US military situation in Iraq and Pat Lang's analysis of that situation, I wrote the following:

I think that the talk about democratization etc. is merely a way of making that plan palatable to the rather idealistic sensibilities of Bush. The only form of democractization that he neocons hope to establish is the imperial republican's notion of client state in Iraq. All other concerns are simply window-dressing. ...

With a weak central government in Iraq, the US will continue to impose its will to expand further destabilization in the region. The present anarchy in Iraq allows Iran to look like it is gaining influence; but this appearance only makes the neocon call for invading/attacking Iran look stronger. Whether or not that influence is real is really beside the point.

Just as long as it looks like Iran is gaining influence--to a president whose grasp of socio-cultural or geopolitical realities is tenuous at best, to a press that relies on the think-tankers who mouthe neocon platitudes--is all that counts.

On a more macroscopic level, the pieces continue to fall into place for an eventual invasion/attack of Iran. The Israelis have a forward operating base in Kurdistan. While in a more precarious situation, the US troops can simply reinforce its rear and swivel toward Iran and either feign an attack on Iran's western border or actually use it as a base for special ops tactics.

The wildcard in this scenario is Turkey and its continuing concern about Kurdish guerilla groups based in Kurdsitan. They've already made incursions into Kurdish terrotory to attack these groupos and they've bombarded the guerilla camps. Interestingly, they've done this in seeming coordination with Iran, which has also bombarded these guerilla positions.

No doubt, the State Department is taking strong measures to assess Turkey's intentions here, perhaps promising more economic aid. We must remember that it was Turkey's refusal to allow US troops to use it as a base for invading northern Iraq that caused Rumsfeld conniptions.

MSNBC writes, quoting a US Pentagon report:

"Death squads and terrorists are locked in mutually reinforcing cycles of sectarian strife,'' the report said. The Sunni-led insurgency remained "potent and viable", it said.

"Conditions that could lead to civil war exist in Iraq, specifically in and around Baghdad, and concern about civil war within the Iraqi civilian population has increased in recent months,'' the report said. "Nevertheless, the current violence is not a civil war, and movement toward a civil war can be prevented," it added.

Commenting on this report, former Defense Intelligence ret. Col. Pat Lang writes:

What lies within the psyches of the peoples of Iraq is a belief that their communities are not "Iraq" as President Bush imagines it. He believes that these peoples see themselves as individuals, acting as individuals within the polity of Iraq, but most of them see themselves in far older and more deeply rooted categories.

These categories are now engaged in combat on the dusty plains of Mesopotamia. They are like lions fighting over the "kill" that our intervention has left for them.

Related Links

• A Warrior's Warning on Iraq

Read more!

Who Should Muslims Blame for Their Malaise?

The notion that Muslims worldwide are looking for someone or something to blame for their problems is perhaps a dangerous over-simplification. I don't think it's too much to imagine that many if not most Muslims rely on their innate talents and common-sense to get through life, like many people of all ethnic and religious backgrounds. I can imagine that most--faced with the complexities of the modern world--also try to answer numerous questions with the same quizzicalness that inhabitants of a modern, post-secular world do.

So why ask the question about what Muslims have to blame for their malaise? This question is directed mostly at answering why some Muslims resort to terrorism or support the terrorist mentality. At a deeper, more empathetic level, it attempts to answer questions asked by those in the Arab world who are not faring well in the neo-liberal world economy. To answer this question might go some way in addressing the sources of discontent, to use a cliche. ...

My own answer to a question like this is perhaps confined by my experiences as an American who has befitted from the freedoms--economic and political--that living in this country affords. At the same time, no doubt, my views are limited by that very experience. While I have dealt with hardships, some worse, some not as worse, as others, I have striven to expand the boundaries of that experiential prison as much as possible.

I have lived on the streets--by choice and by circumstances. I have dealt with fallout from family issues--again, some worse than, some not as bad as, what I know of others' lives. Through various religious, behavioral, aesthetic, and intellectual experiments I have tried to both flee from, struggle with, and resolve my relationship to the past, personal and communal.

In this way, I have tried to see the world as others might see it. Indeed, I have done so sometimes I think to the point where I think that I have completely lost myself, if that's possible without going insane. Or perhaps that insanity is the edge over which we must indeed go and at which many simply refuse to either draw near or acknowledge.

I am not saying that this is the answer to the questions asked by those who face hunger, poverty, want and so on every day. The questions they face are much more material, much more urgent. The types of questions that I have faced are actually a luxury afforded by my environment.

Having described my anxieties about my ability to truly understand others in their own existential circumstances, however, does not leave me weaker, as some who lampoon and parody such a view as pathetically liberal. Indeed, I think such anxieties make whatever it is that's me stronger in a way.

Without trying to push this on anyone or even identifying myself with the author, I have found that Paul's words on weakness in 1&2 Corinthians somewhat resonant. Of course, my own experiences are simply pale shadows of anything the Apostle experienced but it does show something I have found to be worth striving for in some way.

Paul writes:

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong. I am become a fool in glorying; ye have compelled me: for I ought to have been commended of you: for in nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostles, though I be nothing. (2 Cor. 9-11)

Be that as it may, it is this weakness, these anxieties and questions that bring me to the boundary where I and others disappear but remain, perhaps transformed; where weakness turns to strength that seeks meaning not in power but in something above power; where loss and pain are seen as gifts.

I imagine that some will see this little confessional posting as an attempt to oppose one religion to another. Not at all. If anything, I hope that it will show that those questions that make us human are not confined to one religion versus another. I don't think this means, either, that all religions are one and indistinct.

Perhaps it does show that there's some level respect for the unknowability of the Transcendent that all such differences--while important for knowing who and what I am or you are--ultimately mean more when they are seen through that transcendent without wishing to profane it by knowing what it expects other than the demand to love others as they are through it.

According to Haroon Siddiqui:

He who wrongs a Jew or a Christian will have me as his accuser on the Day of Judgment. — Prophet Muhammad
...
Muslims do not have much to be proud of in the contemporary world. So they take comfort in their burgeoning numbers. At the turn of the millennium in 2000, there were many learned papers projecting the rise in Muslim population. But if Muslims have not achieved much at 1.3 billion, they are not likely to at 1.5 billion, either.

To escape the present, many Muslims hark back to their glorious past: how Islam was a reform movement; how Muslims led the world in knowledge, in astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, natural sciences, philosophy and physics; and how the Islamic empires were successful primarily because, with some egregious exceptions, they nurtured the local cultures and respected the religions of their non-Muslim majority populations. This is why Egypt and Syria remained non-Muslim under Muslim rule for 300 years and 600 years, respectively, and India always remained majority Hindu.

As true as all that history is, it is not very helpful today unless Muslims learn something from it — to value human life; accept each other's religious differences; respect other faiths; return to their historic culture of academic excellence, scientific inquiry and economic self-reliance; and learn to live with differences of opinion and the periodic rancorous debates that mark democracies.

It may be unfair to berate ordinary Muslims, given that too many are struggling to survive, that nearly half live under authoritarian regimes where they can speak up only on pain of being incarcerated, tortured or killed, and that they are helpless spectators to the sufferings of fellow Muslims in an unjust world order. Yet Muslims have no choice but to confront their challenges, for Allah never changes a people's state unless they change what's in themselves (13:11).

Read more!

SlowMo Coup?

With Bush and Rumsfeld's present attack on those who disagree with their Iraq policies in the air, it seems time to assess the state of the military-industrial complex. The militancy of the military has never been so great.

The military takes an oath to uphold the constitution, but if they buy in to the unitary executive theory, they think that the Pres. has ultimate authority--and that he has the right to declare what is and is not constituional. While I do not think a military coup--as in direct confrontations, etc.--is in the works, I am concerned that the framework is in place for a coup behind the scenes (also see here). ...

I floated this idea a few months ago, when Harper's held a round table of defense brass and intellectuals. They noted that, while they thought the military part of the equation might remain loyal, the civilian part might indeed carry such a coup out.

I quote from Harper's:

The question that arises is whether, in fact, we're not already experiencing what is in essence a creeping coup d'etat. But it's not people in uniform who are seizing power. It's militarized civilians, who conceive of the world as such a dangerous place that military power had to predominate, that constitutional constraints on the military need to be loosened.

Someone left a comment to that posting, writing:

Blackwater USA
http://www.blackwaterusa.com/ , friend of C/B and contract defender of the Green Zone has announced the evolution to full combat operational services. A "turnkey service" for those nastiest of ops that might prove reportable, accountable and embarrassing. (opposition assassination anyone?) A heavily armed, special ops trained by our elite US commando forces, now retired to six figure income, private corporate army right here in the Tar Heel State.

I think that many are concerned--as I myslef am--with the seeming flowing of power to the executive branch. As Machiavelli pointed out, when one person or branch of government takes unto itself more power, or most of it, and creates a situation where all others depend on that person or entity that is by definition a tyranny.

Pres. Bush has shown himself immune to congressional oversight, makes end runs around the judiciary, and pays no heed to laws and legislation passed by congress. These issues are not making their way into the so-called "liberal" press nor, obviously, in the conservative side of the media. I don't know how much you follow the military-idustrial complex. I used to work in that industry, and I know something about how they operate. The number of sole-source contracts has risen, as has the influence of this industry in congress via campaign donations. That's a sign of tyranny and corrupton in a republic.

Update 1 Global Guerillas writes:

The war in Iraq has catalyzed the growth of the mercenary industry (populated with a wild array of private military/security companies), and serves as yet another sign of the return of the pre-Westphalian warfare documented here. A good way to get up to speed on the topic is to watch the documentary "Shadow Company" by Nick Bicanic and Jason Bourque.

Read more!

Iran and the US, a Machiavellian Reading

I've always distrusted the idea that the Bush administration's means to introduce democracy in the Mideast. At times, I've almost despaired of this because I want democracy to succeed but I see that if that's what Bush wants then it simply cannot be true. This last statement is more than simply a visceral dislike for the man of few words from the Texas plains--it's a reaction to the uses and abuses that word democracy has been used to promote throughout the world. ...

My own distrust of that word reflects sentiments voiced by eminent historian JGA Pocock's comments on fundamentalism and foundationalism:

In our own time, the notion of representative government is in some measure in crisis, because it is harder and harder to believe that those we elect to govern us do in any sense represent us. Accordingly, if we identify ourselves with them, we are giving ourselves to them, and if we don’t, we are allowing them to rule us. The political class begins to look like an oligarchy of professional politicians, who from time to time oblige us to legitimate their rule by choosing between the alternatives they determine and present to us.

Politicians, regarded in this light, look less like representatives of citizens than they look like what the early modern world called courtiers—brokers of power and influence who are useful to the citizens because they know and command means of access to those who possess power, but who are part of the structure by which the citizen is governed. Some say there is no other way of governing a modern society, but the method of government is nonetheless early modern. There are moments at which the president of the United States looks like an early modern monarch; we want to know who is giving him counsel, how he chooses his counselors, who controls his household, and the means of access to his person. These are the questions one asks about the politics of courts and palaces, and they seem applicable to the politics of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Pocock is noted for his tracing through history the Machiavellian thinking on the modern republic and its influence on the American Founding Fathers.

As Pocock notes in the passage quoted, what one means by democracy depends on many things. One's use of the term cannot simply mouthe it without having some historical understanding of what democracy is. This historical understanding itself must be clarified--what you understand as an abstraction does not necessarily mean that you understand its lived, experiential actuality. In this regard, I am very skeptical of Pres. Bush's own assertions about "democracy"--what in his life or political career might lead me to believe that he knows what democracy is? Indeed, coming from one of those oligarchic families that Pocock suggests might run the US, suspicions about Mr. Bush's understanding of freedom and equality--key democratic values--become more pertinent.

Of course, Pres. Bush's own understanding of the democratic virtues of freedom and equality may not be the best criterion for determining the reality of non-reality of US democracy. When politicians bandy this term about, they often assume that their audience knows what they mean because they live it. Yet this appeal is perhaps fallacious since it could conceivably only reflect the experiences of those who have a voice to say, "yes, American democracy is great." On the other hand, there might be those whose experience of American "democracy" is not voiced and does not make its way into the discussion.

I have written several times that some in the Israeli government openly reject the notion of democratic in the Mideast. Their line of thinking seems to be democracy means opening up the Mideast to movements and political factions that will inevitably be anti-Israel. There's some evidence for the first part of this belief, especially with recent open election wins by various Islamic jihadist groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt and the more radical wing of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

Again, however, the rest of the assertions by these same officials ignore significant changes within those very extremist groups. Both groups condemn violence. There's some evidence that the Palestinians are on the verge of recognizing Israel's right to exist, a significant break from previous platforms of the more violent groups within the Palestinian political landscape. Unfortunately, recent incursions by Israel into Gaza, its imprisonment of 25 percent of the Palestinian legislators, and bombing of Palestinian infrastructure leave little doubt that the moderates in Palestine can maintain their hold on power--an occasion that Israeli strategists no doubt are hoping to bring about.

The calls for democracy in the Mideast by western powers therefore seem hollow to many Moslem and Arab citizens. Until there's some acknowledgment of a framework that identifies the essential outlines of a "democratic" government, there's little hope for rising above the suspicions that the west, especially the US, is not simply begging the question with a definition of democracy that accords with their own self-interests.

Indeed this seems part of what Iranian dissidents themselves, for example, understand:

``The best thing the Americans can do for democracy in Iran is not to support it," Baghi, the activist, said recently in his office, next to a stack of his politically risky published books -- ``The Tragedy of Democracy in Iran," ``Clerics and Power," and a study that criticizes the government on its own terms, using Islamic teachings to indict Iran's justice system and its arbitrary arrests and executions.

Receiving US aid -- whether cash or simply public statements of support -- could destroy democracy advocates' chances of building grass-roots credibility at home, say Baghi and many other Iranians critical of their government. They prefer to steer their own course, pushing for gradual change and navigating a middle ground between accommodation and conflict with the Muslim clerics who rule Iran.

These dissidents understand what machiavelli long ago pointed out--that each republic will reflect the virtue or character of its constituent members. For Machiavelli, this meant that each socio-cultural grouping has unique characteristics that will color and determine the features of the government that they create. In this way, therefore, Machiavelli recognized that there are probably as many forms of republic as there are different peoples.

Machiavelli's reflections on politics and the republic could be gone into in detail here. Most relevant in the present context, perhaps, are his observations about the role of religion--or not--in forming the basis of a truly free and equal political framework. It would also prove helpful to explore Aristotle's "mixed government" model that Machiavelli appropriated and expanded on.

But these issues must wait for some other time to come under discussion in these pages. For the moment, I'd note the Iranian dissidents' reluctance to receive help from the US in their political efforts toward freedom. This reluctance to form relationships of dependence is uniquely Machiavellian. As he pointed out, freedom is most valuably understood as a state of non-dependence. This independence from relying on others for one's own freedom--and these dependencies can include everything from economic, to social, to cultural attachments--characterizes the capability to meet the exigencies of time and necessity on one's own terms.

According to JGA Pocock, describing the Renaissance Humanists’ understanding of Aristotle’s political philosophy as it relates to the individual and his or her dependence on others:

Particular men and the particular values they pursued met in citizenship to pursue and enjoy the universal value of acting for the common good and the pursuit of all lesser goods. ... The polity must be a perfect partnership of all citizens and all values since, if it was less, a part would be ruling in the name of the whole, subjecting particular goods to its own particular goods and moving toward despotism and the corruption of its values. The citizen must be a perfect citizen since, if he was less, he prevented the polity from attaining perfection and tempted his fellows, who did for him what he should have done for himself, to injustice and corruption. To become the dependent of another was as great a crime as to reduce another to dependence on oneself. The dereliction of one citizen, therefore, reduced the others’ chances of attaining and maintaining virtue, since virtue was now politicized; it consisted in a partnership of ruling and being ruled with others who must be as morally autonomous as oneself. ... – Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment, p. 75 [my emphasis])

It seems then that the Iranian dissidents have understood one of the basic points of democracy: non-dependence. They see any attempts by the US to impose itself and its will–“in their name”–would form a dependent situation that would defeat and corrupt the democratic project from the start. Of course, my statement assumes that the US in any way intends on “helping” the Iranian dissidents. As my previous comments show, one can suspect otherwise, adding the further qualification that US interests in the region are imperial and related to commercial interests far more than they are to “spreading freedom.”

In this respect, Machiavelli’s own concerns about dependence and the corruption that follows revolve around the need for self-defense. Assuming that any vibrant republic must expand, he asserts that an army is needed to maintain the push outward–the military ethos itself helps maintain what he calls the virtu or spirit of the republic alive.

As JGA Pocock interprets Machiavelli (in the Discorsi, Machiavelli writes:

If it is the castles and retainers of the gentiluomini [gentlemen] that make them a cause of inequality and corruption, the uncorrupt republic must be a state lacking military dependencies and one characteristic of “equality” must be that all warriors are alike. There must be the political conditions which permit the arming of all citizens, the moral conditions in which all are willing to fight for the republic and the economic conditions (lacking in the case of a lord’s retainers) which give the warrior a home and occupation outside the camp and prevent his becoming a suddito, creato, or mercenary whose sword is at the command of some powerful individual. The economic independence of the warrior and the citizen are prerequisites against corruption. If these conditions are lacking, a city which eschews expansion and cuts itself off from the world may still limit its armies and its citizen body and escape corruption ... ibid, p. 210

Machiavelli’s comments here are not for a form of libertarianism. He is too much an Aristotelian, whose model of political activity assumes the interdependence of all on the proper working and virtue of a living and viable political entity. What one should hear, however, or at least suspect those areas in present-day American politics where economic dependence and the military-industrial complex play such a large part behind the scenes of US domestic and foreign policy.

You could also note the dependence of this standing army on the apparent will of “some powerful individual.” With the continuing assertion of commander-in-chief powers and “executive privilege,” it does not seem too much of a stretch to find in the Bush administration’s unprecedented use of the military-industrial complex in all its forms–operational, intelligence, and so on–lay the basis for suspicions that the US republic’s freedom and virtue are presently under attack–not by foreign powers or agents but by those commercial and political interests in the US who wish to assume unto themselves power that does not belong to them.

Related Links

• Bush Delivers Strongest Statement Yet to Tehran
  
• How We're Losing the War
  
• Bush to Urge
  Focus on War Against Terror
  
• U.S. Intel on Iran: Is It Iraq Again?

My Previous Iran-Related Posts

• Does Ahmedinajad Want To Destroy Israel?
  
• Iran and US in Dialog?
  
• Bush to Go to Iran?
  
• Iran Undermining Iraq?
  
• 1,000 Iranian Women Protest Lack of Rights
  
• Iran: The Enemy We Want
  
• Iranian Negotiator Reveals How He Duped ...
  
• Regime Change in Iran
  
• US Marines Seeking Regime Change in Iran?
  
• US War on Iran Drumbeat Grows Louder
  
• Brazil on Verge of Processing Enriched Uranium
  
• Israel Changing Pre-emptive Strike Policy?
  
• Condoleeza Rice Lied About Syria and Iran
  
• Holding Iran’s Feet to the Fire
  
• Overblowing Iraq's Threat
  
• One More Manufactured Crisis for the Road (to...
  
• Senate Unanimously (Yes That's Right...
  
• President Sees the (Radioactive) Light on Iran?
  
• Why Worry About Iran?
  
• The Inside Poop on Iran: Hysterical Neocons
  
• US/Israel Hypocrisy on Iran's Nukes
  
• US/Iranian President Goes Over Deep End
  
• High-Noon in Iran
  
• Israeli Lobbyists Upset At Bush Iran Plan
  
• US Ready to Bomb Iran?
  
• Stop Isolating Iran
  
• US Army War College: Detente with Islamic...
  
• Israel Prepared to Strike Iran
  
• Israelis in northern Iraq (Kurdish Area)
  
• "Yugoslavia on Crack"
  
• Mirror of Islam

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!

Pedophiles, Innocence, Historicality

The recent media frenzy and hilarious, if shocking, denouement of the media coverage of the purported capture of JonBenet Ramsey’s killer John Mark Karr will play itself out in various accusations against the Boulder prosecutor for overplaying or mismanaging the accusations against the man.

I must admit that I was struck by the pedophile's demeanor and aloofness. In answering the media’s questions about the murder, he was very nonchalant and obviously short on details about his complicity in the crime. Even with the minimal facts during the first few days, combined with his demeanor, it seemed to me at least (as well as others) that this man was a fantasist whose grasp of reality was questionable. ...

Those on the political left have already noted how this story generated so much press that one google produced over 10 million hits--for a story that was just more than one week old! The political Right jumped on the story as another indication of moral corruption in American society. The middle-of-the-roaders tried to keep some perspective and focused on the Ramseys and the false accusations that surrounded them for many years.

It certainly does seem to be some form of irony that a story that started with false suspicions against the family of the slain girl ended in false accusations of a man who perhaps is an opportunist seeking publicity (or a free ride back from Thailand) at best, or at worst a fantasist whose world is so wound up with the death of a young innocent whom he lusted for that he appears to actually believe he did commit the crime.

Many will criticize–rightly I believe--the press for its prurient interest and its playing into the infantilized imaginations of the American TV viewer and news consumer. That's a pretty blunt way of saying something that can probably be put in a more nuanced way, but I think that the media's overblown sense of what is news has become so tabloidized that it simply leaves one almost dumbfounded by the press’ lack of moral responsibility, not to mention the unbalanced sense of priorities which the press sees that the public needs to know.

What many political leftists and liberals have noted is that the Karr story knocked coverage of important events in Iraq and Iran not only out of the headlines but to the back pages. While the policy wonks were up to date on these issues, during the last week the average American never would have known that last month was the deadliest for civilians in the Iraq civil war, not to mention that there is a civil war in Iraq.

On top of this, very few average Americans would have guessed--if they were interested--that the Bush administration is making more than farting noises towards Iran. There's a steady drumbeat of leaks and so-called back-stories about the Iranian “threat” in the media that it's hard not to believe that war with Iran is "inevitable"--inevitable, of course, because the neocons and the Pentagon have played the media game so well that by the time many people wake up to the issue, it will be a "done deal."

I will leave for another time the issue of the culpability of the media in all of this. There's plenty in the media and the counter-media that deals with this subject. The press loves to beat this phantom all the time--the phantom that arises from a public that is immersed in not only what some have called the narcissism of American culture but deeper issues that relate to how Americans understand themselves as historical beings.

I want to look at what I’ll call the historical aspect of this story and its related non-happenings, i.e., Iraq and Iran coverage. The surface aspect of what I will call the historical void in the American consciousness is that the media themselves contribute to denying the public a historical context on everyday political and cultural events. Dwelling on the immediate, up-to-the minute story, refusing to or incapable of providing historical context, they cater to a short-attention span mentality that simply denies that there is anything beyond the NOW.

But there’s more to why the American public seems to want to know about the pedophile Karr and his fantasies. This story, ostensibly about the past, pushed the present and future concerns about Iraq further out of public consciousness. A story about a lurid past event takes the place of a story of the present lurid reality of thousands of Iraqis dying as a direct result of US actions, i.e., invasion and destruction of the socio-political structures of Iraqi civil society.

The Karr-Benet story—a small-town crime with terrible and horrific details--fills the void of our recent past. The allure of the story resides perhaps in something human that relates to sin and guilt. The psychic threat that past sins (crimes) that are unresolved or unsolved come back to haunt us. The anxiety about a child killed horribly and profanely echoes in the public consciousness because it contains elements of guilt, sex, protection of one’s children, and innocence. Individual anxieties of members of the public who cannot resolve their own separate responses to these issues come into play.

The historical aspect of this crime shows how Americans relate to the past. The unsolved crime--an unresolved act of moral outrage--is repeated over and over in various forms in American culture. The presence of fictional and documentary TV shows about "cold cases" points to this phenomenon. These recent shows follow on the footsteps of shows like Unsolved Mysteries and the X-Files. They are augmented by shows that figure into the shows the added elements of the paranormal in fictional or non-fictional form.

In these stories of crimes that go unsolved and that contain these sexual depravities, the American public looks to a past crime whose character outrages the moral and ethical balance of individual and society alike. The crimes themselves point further and further into the past, echoing in the hollow chamber of a history that is either empty of sacred presence or pointing to a realm beyond this hollow sphere where the crimes will or should find final answer.

Such notions as crime and innocence resonate in the American conscience because Americans are uniquely situated to deny their history. That history is one of revolution, which as Hannah suggests in On Revolution involves an original crime, the revolutionary act. Arendt writes:

[W]hatever brotherhood human beings may be capable of has grown out of fratricide, whatever political organization men may have achieved has its origin in crime. The conviction, In the beginning was a crime–for which the phrase “state of nature” is only a theoretically purified paraphrase–has carried through the centuries no less self-evident plausibility for the state of human affairs than the first sentence of St. John, “In the beginning was the Word,” has possessed for the affairs of salvation.

We live in a society that prides itself on cutting away from history, making a new start and building our lives from zero. We pride ourselves on the notion that we need nothing but our own self-awareness and the absence of preconceptions and accretions from the past to guide us in meeting the challenges of the present and hopefully the future.

These assumptions work at the personal and social level in various guises. At the personal level, they perhaps do not work as well, since life calls forth the need to account not only for our present actions but those we have done in the past. This past is not simply our own, moreover--the things we do or have done since we were born–but they also include the actions of my parents, my family, my town, and ultimately my country. Unless and until this history is dealt with in a way that sufficiently accounts for them, the future will not be what it is but will be instead the past resurrecting itself as ghosts of past actions.

In this context of unresolved crime, we seek innocence, the innocence of our childhoods. We wish to be pure and unsullied by the past, reforming ourselves according to the present and for the future. We seek an innocence that we can never regain but only infantilize ourselves and shelter ourselves in a fantasy of reshaping the present in an ersatz innocence built from either denying the past or seeking an innocence in a time and place before history.

In his magisterial study of history and Machiavelli’s discovery and investigation of what it means for humans to live in history, in a world where humans have no recourse to supernatural realities but instead must work out their destinies and fates within time, JGA Pocock writes:

It was seen as the essence of modernity [by Rousseau, among others] that one inhabited a world of fictions in which self and other were creations of the partial encounters between humans in a world of exchanges. It may well be that we have ourselves reached a condition where the knowledge of fictiveness is unsatisfying to the point of being intolerable; in doubting whether the oligarchy of politicians who oblige us to choose between them represent us in any way worth speaking of, we doubt whether we have selves left to be represented. The global economy finds an ally in that postmodernism which informs us that self and society are alike fictitious and that our only choice is which fiction to buy next. – Pocock, p. 582

Condemned to living in history, we deny the present atrocities and crimes that occur in faraway lands by fantastically reliving and repeating the atrocity of our own innocence that is slain and profaned in the form of children whom we do not know.

We seek a solution and resolution that never comes except in further fantasy. We are captured by our inability to live in the present except by repeating the past that haunts us with these unsolved mysteries, these crimes that make us alive in their heinous violation of moral and ethical blamelessness. They seek the shock of shame because we have none and because its absence only makes us more aware of our lost innocence.

We become the spectators of our own present, hoping to watch it unfold in some apocalypse that will finally provide the key to why our innocence was lost and bring to us that purity and innocence that we lost seemingly so unfairly. So we watch--like voyeurs at the altar of history--the future come to us in the form that the past has given, atrocity on atrocity, crime on crime. We are spectators of a past that we do not want, a present we cannot accept because it is haunted by the past, and a future that will bring only more of the same haunted innocence we neither have nor will ever regain.

Helpless before the future because we have not dealt with the past, the future inevitability is left to men who have no compunction about exploiting our ghosts in the name of their own lost innocence.

It seems that at these moments, it is germane to repeat what has almost become a cliché, Santayana’s remark that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. There is , no doubt much truth to his observation. Yet, as Kierkegaard would remind us, it is not so much that we remember but how we remember the past. That is, we can remember it by seeking its source in some Platonic super-real world beyond this one or we can begin to live the past in the present as prelude to the future, seeking not so much resolution as openness to the possibility for knowing not only ourselves but also those we inhabit history with.

Related links

• JonBenet: Why the Fake Confession?
  
• Satire: DA on 'Insane' Karr Arrest

{to be revised} Read more!

The New Protocols of the Elders... [of Islam]?

The following information should be linked up with the recent report that 53 percent of British citizens think islam is a threat to civilization. ...

(via Islamophobic Watch) Johan Hari reports on a very spiteful little conspiracy theory about Moslems that is gaining acceptance in some very high quarters of the British government. Listening to Donald Rumsfled's speech to the American Legion, I wonder whether this theory is not restricted simply to the Critish hierarchy.

Hari writes:

There are intellectuals on the British right who are propagating a conspiracy theory about Muslims that teeters very close to being a 21st century Protocols of the Elders of Mecca. Meet Bat Ye'or, a "scholar" who argues that Europe is on the brink of being transformed into a conquered continent called "Eurabia".

In this new land, Christians and Jews will be reduced by the new Muslim majority to the status of "dhimmis" - second-class citizens forced to "walk in the gutter". This will not happen by accident. It is part of a deliberate and "occult" plan, concocted between the Arab League and leading European politicians like Jacques Chirac and Mary Robinson, who secretly love Islam and are deliberately flooding the continent with Muslim immigrants. As Orianna Fallacci - one of the best-selling writers in Italy - has summarised the thesis in her hymns of praise to Ye'or, "Muslims have been told to come here and breed like rats."

Rather than dismissing her preposterous assertions, high-profile writers like Melanie Phillips, Daniel Pipes and Niall Ferguson laud Ye'or as a suppressed hero, silenced by (you guessed it) "political correctness". Her name is brandished as a gold standard in right-wing Tory circles. It's interesting that writers so alert to anti-Semitism have lent their names to an ideology that is so startlingly similar. In this theory, the Star of David has simply been replaced by the Islamic crescent. If the term has any meaning, this is authentic Islamophobia, treating virtually all Muslims as verminous sharia-carriers. So why are these people still treated as serious and sane by the BBC and its editors?

Read more!

Does Ahmedinajad Want To Destroy Israel?

Contrary to the growing misinformation in the US media that Iranian President Ahmedinajad has called for a war with and eventual elimination of Israel; from the face of the earth, accurate translations of his speeches shows that he has done no such thing. While not a friend of Israel or near any short-term acknowledgment of Israel's right to exist, Ahmadinejad has not called for the destruction of 1) all Jews or 2) even Israel itself. ...

According to Counterpunch:

For months, scholars like Cole and journalists like the London Guardian's Jonathan Steele have been pointing out these mistranslations while more and more appear: for example, Mr. Ahmadinejad's comments at the Organization of Islamic Countries meeting on August 3, 2006. Radio Free Europe reported that he said "that the 'main cure' for crisis in the Middle East is the elimination of Israel." "Elimination of Israel" implies physical destruction: bombs, strafing, terror, throwing Jews into the sea. Tony Blair denounced the translated statement as ""quite shocking". But Mr. Ahmadinejad never said this. According to al-Jazeera, what he actually said was "The real cure for the conflict is the elimination of the Zionist regime, but there should be an immediate ceasefire first."

Nefarious agendas are evident in consistently translating "eliminating the occupation regime" as "destruction of Israel". "Regime" refers to governance, not populations or cities. "Zionist regime" is the government of Israel and its system of laws, which have annexed Palestinian land and hold millions of Palestinians under military occupation. Many mainstream human rights activists believe that Israel's "regime" must indeed be transformed, although they disagree how. Some hope that Israel can be redeemed by a change of philosophy and government (regime) that would allow a two-state solution. Others believe that Jewish statehood itself is inherently unjust, as it embeds racist principles into state governance, and call for its transformation into a secular democracy (change of regime). None of these ideas about regime change signifies the expulsion of Jews into the sea or the ravaging of their towns and cities. All signify profound political change, necessary to creating a just peace.

Juan Cole, Iranian expert, who's fluent in Farsi, explains some of Ahmedinajad's recent statements re Israel:

Ahmadinejad seems to be explaining what his calls for the Zionist regime to be effaced actually mean. He says he doesn't want violence against Israel, despite its own acts of enmity against Middle Eastern neighbors. I interpret his statement on Saturday to be an endorsement of the one-state solution, in which a government would be elected that all Palestinians and all Israelis would jointly vote for. The result would be a government about half made up of Israeli ministers and half of Palestinian ones. Whatever one wanted to call such an arrangement, it wouldn't exactly be a "Zionist state," which would thus have been dissolved.

Cole also explains Iran's supreme religious leader Khamenei's recent statements about nuclear weapons, statements that were twisted into a threat by weatern media:

Supreme Jurisprudent Khamenei's pledge of no first strike against any country by Iran with any kind of weapon, and his condemnation of nuclear bombs as un-Islamic and impossible for Iran to possess or use, was completely ignored by the Western press and is never referred to. Indeed, after all that talk of peace and no first strike and no nukes, Khamenei at the very end said that if Iran were attacked, it would defend itself. Karl Vicks of the Washington Post at the time ignored all the rest of the speech and made the headline, 'Khamenei threatens reprisals against US." In other words, on Iran, the US public is being spoonfed agitprop, not news.

Related Links

• # Ahmadinejad's High-Stakes Game

Read more!

Strange Conversations: Resentment Redux

One of the stranger conversations I've seen on the web is the one presently underway at Spengler's Forum. The participants are discussing the eventual demographic demise of the "liberals." Basing themselves on somewhat questionable data, they appear to believe that conservative Christian families are breeding at such a level that they and their culturally indoctrinated progeny will one day take over America. I kid you not. ...

One participant, calling herself booklady, writes:

I see the same thing happening in my parents country, Spain. The Catholic folks have the families and are fighting to maintain family values; while the more liberal Spaniards are having fewer or no children. As Spengler says, they chose a pleasurable lifestyle where children are seen as a sacrifice and a burden from their distractions.

Another commenter, ciroan, states the sentiment more irenically:

I look forward to the day when the liberal tribes - the abortionites, the sodomists, the tax-promoters, the blue-state metrosexuals (blue indeed!) - snuff themselves out once and for all. When the population of the United States becomes uniformly conservative, all will agree with one another, causing political and cultural disputation to dwindle almost to zero. Harmonious peace and prosperity will become the happy lot of each and every citizen. It will be not unlike utopia.

There's a term that has gained much philosophical study, resentment. Cloesly associated with envy, resentment differs at the psychological level in that it not only envies what or who another has or is but instead resents the very existence of another person.

In the vernacular, the psychological phenomenon is stated in the following way: "S/he's a waste of skin."

In his analysis of resentment as the outcome of alienation, Merold Westphal in God, Guilt, and Death writes that resentment comes from a sense not of lack of worth as a sense of power to be worthy or to become happy" “If I had the power, if father (God) hadn’t done that, I’d be somebody or something; I’d be happy now.”

These people obviously feel extremely unhappy that they can't be what they want to be and that they live in a society where others--liberals--are the source of that inability to become who or what they believe they can be. Liberals in their views create a society that espouses views that creates great unease and moral ambivalence, undermining the sense of certainty that they understand ethics and morality to entail.

According to Westphal, repressed envy causes resentment. In a person to person context, it is not a primary feeling but feeds on hate, envy, fear. It is the repression of a primary feeling such as hate or envy. Repression here means that the original feeling cannot be discharged in some action. The impotence from this repression and inability to act (from fear or weakness) is important to note.

Resentment can come from the following being repressed: revenge, hatred, malice, impulse to detract, spite, rancor, wrath, envy, joy when another fails. Envy--the most prominent form of social emotion in the US--is self-centeredness in the face of another’s excellence or something esteemed.

Think about how hard it is to admire someone else who is better at something you are not. One thinks: “What about me? What happens to me if they are better than I am?” Envy reflects the threat I feel to my self at the center of all that I find important about and in life.

In contrast to greed, envy doesn’t just want what the other has (good looks, say), but I must have it at the other’s expense. In existential terms, this means:
“I can forgive everything but not that you are – that you are what you are – that I am not what you are – indeed that I am not you."

The object of resentment cannot simply be allowed to live away or out of sight; no, they must simply disappear. So, when the folks at Spengler Forum fantasize about the demise of the liberals, they are playing out the trotured logic of their resentment.

The resentment can even become racist. As BabeThe GlazedHam, another participant in the conversation, has it:

And, of course, the answer is exactly as I've been trying to tell everyone: We are trading high IQ white leftists for low IQ brown leftists. Furthermore, the ratio may be as bad as 2 or more brown leftists [child or adult] for every 1 white leftist baby [who was either never made, or who was made and then murdered in an abortuary].

Furthermore, if Brooks's numbers are correct [only a 2.08 TFR for conservative women], then the conservatives aren't making enough babies to offset the flood of [low IQ] hispanics entering this country, and our nation is headed for a state of Castro-ite/Chavez-ian chaos over the course of the next half century.

PS: If you want to get really, really depressed, then read some of La Griffe du Lion's work on the economic results of importing so many low IQ peoples, e.g.

Resentment at another's existence--simply for being different and opposing those most cherished things that give my existence meaning--will find any reason to rationalize the most appalling acts of despair. Read more!

Will Culture Save Us?

The notion that culturism will save us is ridiculous. Of course, the answer might depend on how you define culture. If you're talking about literature and the arts, those are usually the province of the rich and idle elites. Popular culture might serve the bill, but it's exactly this popular culture that not only the effete elite but also the religious find distinctly lacking in the types of virtues that they believe should be informing the public. It seems that what you're left with is an elite browbeating the less appreciative lower classes and the lower classes directing resentment at the elites. ...

The Founding Fathers of the US, at least, did not rely on such abstractions as culturism to promote the underlying virtue of the republic. They set up a framework in which all could go their own way, find their own selves and thereby contribute to the overall benefit of all. If that framework is proving unsuccessful reflects more on the fact that the notion of political representation has perhaps outrun its course. We are not seeing a cultural crisis so much as we are a political crisis whose origin is the constitutional frameworks and its inadequacies for the modern world.

The great Japanese philosopher, Tanabe Hajime, discusses the culturists--those who think that by reinvigorating a culture, either through art or an aesthetic form of religion--miss the point:

It must be said that the very ones now optimistically espousing the cause of culture are mere onlookers who have no sense of social responsibility to the nation. A moment's glance at some of the current social problems--the hunger and poverty of the vast majority in sharp contrast with the luxury enjoyed by a very few owing to the misdistribution of food and goods, the stagnation and paralysis of industry despite the larger number of soldiers returning to the ranks of the unemployed--shows how difficult it will be to rebuild our war-devastated nation. One step in the wrong direction, even one day's delay, may be enough to spell the total ruin of our land. Unless we all undertake the new way of zange [repentance], free ourselves from the evil institutions of the past, and collaborate in carrying out whatever changes are necessary in the social system, there is no possibility of reconstruction. The only course open to us is metanoetics, not culturism. Does not the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah show us the way? -- Hajime, p. lxi

The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard puts the issue even more starkly. Writing in his journals, he notes:

We recognize the animal in the child by the way it wants to put everything into its mouth; this is a very characteristic trait of the animal. But to be animal to the extent of wanting to put truth and spirit into one's mouth, to live off truth, to live off others' having suffered for the truth, oneself pledged by an oath to that one thing to which those others have aspired--imitation--this is beastly! Curiously enough, this bestiality is found in conjunction with the finest culture and good breeding, which is so discriminating that it does not even see the garbage collector or, if such a being dared speak, would loftily let him understand that he is only an animal. Strangely enough, the relationship is the reverse, and the garbage collector is a human being, but this elegantly dressed, finely cultured, bemedalled man of distinction is an animal, an animal who animalistically puts truth into his mouth, thinking truth is something to eat, an animal more loathesome than any beast of prey, even living off the sufferings of others, something no beast of prey does, for it lives off its prey and if it causes its prey to suffer in depriving it of life, it still does not live off the sufferings of its prey. -- XI2 A 434 September 22, 1855

Read more!