For years on the news we’ve heard “On Wall Street today…” followed by a recital of a bunch of numbers that the majority of us don’t have the time to understand. And when something happened in the world of any importance, we would hear how Wall Street reacted. After a while, it became evident to anyone paying attention that Wall Street ran this country and pretty much dictated the terms of the debates, such as they were. Even though the words “Wall Street” don’t appear in our Constitution, the reality of Wall Street was more important. This is really the essence of right-wing and so-called free market ideology.
Conservative social and cultural issues such as abortion are only battering rams to keep the people divided, and this should be obvious if you observe that the huge corporations that have benefited from right-wing political dominance are never averse to financing and disseminating cultural products that are anything but “conservative.” NewsCorp, for instance, which owns Fox, is in the pornography business, as is Time Warner and many other big players.
The ideology of Wall Street is that profit trumps all values. We may give lip service to “all men are created equal” and other sentiments from the era of the nation’s founding, but in practice the only motive that is considered valid without question is the profit motive. Regulation, therefore, contradicts free market ideology, as does government action towards any public good considered to be independent of profit, or potentially limiting to business. At the libertarian end of the spectrum we have the absurd naivete of Ron Paul, who thinks that the market would work just dandy if government did virtually nothing. People know that it’s dangerous nonsense, which is why libertarians never win elections. The Wall Street ideology, on the other hand, sees government as a clenched fist protecting corporate interests, maintaining economic hegemony through military might abroad while greasing the wheels for privileged elites to make money off the working majority at home. The people bought into this sucker’s game because it sustained enough of a consumer lifestyle to keep them docile, and kept us divided by scapegoating minorities and playing on fear—first of communism, later, of terrorism.
The unique moment we are experiencing now is the utter collapse of Wall Street’s claims to legitimate rule over our lives. Of course people are afraid of this. Our de facto rulers, the Big Daddies of America, were supposed to have things in hand. Now we’re expected to quake with fear at the prospects of losing our jobs, our homes, our lifestyles. But at the risk of alienating some readers, I have to confess a kind of grim pleasure at the spectacle of all these government “experts” and economists and financiers and media pundits going spastic in hysteria as they contemplate the collapse of their beloved hog trough, the American economy. No, I do not enjoy the suffering of the millions of ordinary men and women who are the real victims of their masters’ rapacity. And I certainly am not pleased to witness the complete lack of consequences for the thieves who speculated the banking and credit system into the dirt. But I do think this was all bound to happen, and the fact that it is finally happening marks a decision point for our country and the world.
One of my constantly reiterated themes since I started this blog has been the distinction between the conventional view of what’s happening as some kind of malfunction within an essentially valid political framework, and my own view that corporatist rule constitutes a criminal enterprise. I include so-called “centrist” approaches within my indictment, because the interests of the financial elites still obviate all other values. The United States treasury has simply been looted by the ruling class. A criminal element gained political and military power and proceeded to steal public wealth to enrich its own private coffers. And when the stealing reached a certain point, the system began to collapse. That’s the truth, and that’s what you won’t hear in the media or from politicians.
I’ve come to believe that one of the ruling ideas of the Cheney regime (not Bush, who was too simple-minded to do anything but obey his handlers) was that a Third World-type dictatorship would be eventually necessary in the United States if rule by economic elites was to continue. For 1% of the people to maintain a monopoly on the country’s wealth, what was left of democratic institutions had to be radically modified, ensuring military and political dominance world-wide. Thus a permanent war on terrorism, a permanent state of emergency requiring a “unitary executive” (a dictator) who would be above the law, torture and other forms of state violence in order to keep people in fear, and so forth, were all components of the rightist “vision” of the future. The enemy was not terrorism, but the American people.
The ascension of Obama represents a setback to that vision, a victory for the old-fashioned East Coast establishment with its ties to European capitalism, as opposed to the cowboy Reaganist upstarts who dreamed of total American dominance. But the danger of dictatorship is not over. The centrists who are now in charge still seek to prop up the rule of Wall Street, to somehow save the system which places profit above all other values. The alternative, we are told, is socialism, which is unthinkable, so we carefully refrain from thinking about it. The danger, however, is that these attempts to save Wall Street may only exacerbate the crisis, leading to a resurgence of neo-fascism, which will be sold to us as the only way out.
So this is an important time, because we can all see that the emperor is naked. There is a lot of anger against Wall Street right now, and that’s a very healthy thing. This anger needs to build into a demand for economic justice in which the mass of working people are released from the vise of this destructive and criminal system. Thieves must be identified as thieves and their ill-gotten gains taken from them, through taxation or other means, and redistributed downwards. Yes, I’m talking about spreading the wealth to the people who actually created the wealth—us. Our work created our country’s wealth. The bankers and speculators did not create their own wealth; they gambled ours. And lost. The vast sums devoted to military dominance need also to be redirected to our real needs—housing, education, health, infrastructure. Our anger at Wall Street can be a fuel to ignite these demands. They are not only reasonable, but necessary for the survival of our republic.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Numbers Don't Lie
African Americans make up 13% of America’s population. The population of the American prison system, on the other hand, is roughly 50% African American.
The very first conclusion I draw from this fact is that our judicial system, within which I would include law enforcement and corrections, is institutionally racist. To put it another way, white supremacy is built into the judicial system as it operates today.
This is only the first conclusion. From there it is necessary to determine how we are to proceed in order to remedy the situation.
Unfortunately, only those people who are willing to consider the possibility that the status quo involves injustice will even come to this first conclusion. There is a sizeable and quite powerful segment of Americans, particularly in right-wing conservative circles, and more generally in the political establishment, who are unwilling to ever concede that the status quo involves injustice. Especially when it comes to race and race relations, these conservatives and establishment figures are determined to deny that there is anything wrong or unjust about American institutions, laws, or economic structures.
There is really no subtlety or nuance involved here, although the right wing has spent years trying to make it seem so. The simple question in this case is: why should the 13% of the population who are black furnish half of the prison population?
Once we’ve eliminated the possibility of chronic institutional racism, I would argue that the only other explanation is that there is something inherently wrong with African Americans—in other words, that they are racially inferior.
Since the civil rights movement, it has become less acceptable to maintain an intellectual position of white supremacy in public. Instead, conservatives have resorted to insinuations, code words, winks and nudges, directed at possible white constituencies who will respond with predictable fear and hatred, and then dutifully elect “tough” or “law and order” candidates.
Trying to reason from cause and effect is only a delaying tactic. If blacks are more likely to commit crimes, then why? Because of their race? Or does economic racism necessarily increase crime within the minority community? To admit the latter is impossible for the right-wingers, so they talk ad nauseam about personal responsibility, hoping you’ll forget about the lopsided statistics and settle into a complacent moralism. Nothing needs to be done, in other words, except wag our fingers at the poor black people and tell them to behave better.
The overrated gasbag Daniel Moynihan, a Democrat, began the fashion of blaming the problem on “culture.” African Americans had developed a dysfunctional culture, which led to single-parent families, drugs, and crime. Again, this begs the question, why? Are blacks simply racially predisposed to create inferior forms of culture? National Socialist doctrine, I would remind you, focused almost exclusively on culture as an indication of racial purity or impurity. The Jew’s culture was a primary threat to the German people, even more than Jewish money or politics. To try to explain racial disparity in terms of culture is to simply switch the terms of white supremacist arguments so that they sound more tolerant and civilized. We want to help these people develop a healthier culture, you see, so that they can succeed. At the same time, we don’t need to examine our judicial system or economic system with a critical eye, since the problem is “cultural.”
Every couple of decades or so, some white “scientist” or “researcher” will come out with a book or a study that proves statistically that blacks are inferior to whites. In 1994 we had a book called The Bell Curve, which actually created serious discussion and controversy. It was simply a resurrection of old fallacies in new and more sophisticated language, and mucked up with a lot of complex and ambiguous hedging about genes and intelligence and how that translated into “success.” Like the reemergence of the national id after years of attempted sublimation, white supremacist assumptions periodically resurface in order to justify the status quo.
This need to justify the status quo at all costs is a prevalent and widely held compulsion that applies across a wide range of issues besides race. It makes serious evaluation of our problems extremely difficult.
I ask again, then, and in this case the subject is racism: why are 50% of American prison inmates black, when black people are only 13% of our population? If you can’t start with the word “racism” (and then move from there into substantive discussions about how to change our society), I guarantee that you will end up twisting your mind into knots, all so that you don’t have to admit the problem—in short, so that you can stay comfortably asleep.
The very first conclusion I draw from this fact is that our judicial system, within which I would include law enforcement and corrections, is institutionally racist. To put it another way, white supremacy is built into the judicial system as it operates today.
This is only the first conclusion. From there it is necessary to determine how we are to proceed in order to remedy the situation.
Unfortunately, only those people who are willing to consider the possibility that the status quo involves injustice will even come to this first conclusion. There is a sizeable and quite powerful segment of Americans, particularly in right-wing conservative circles, and more generally in the political establishment, who are unwilling to ever concede that the status quo involves injustice. Especially when it comes to race and race relations, these conservatives and establishment figures are determined to deny that there is anything wrong or unjust about American institutions, laws, or economic structures.
There is really no subtlety or nuance involved here, although the right wing has spent years trying to make it seem so. The simple question in this case is: why should the 13% of the population who are black furnish half of the prison population?
Once we’ve eliminated the possibility of chronic institutional racism, I would argue that the only other explanation is that there is something inherently wrong with African Americans—in other words, that they are racially inferior.
Since the civil rights movement, it has become less acceptable to maintain an intellectual position of white supremacy in public. Instead, conservatives have resorted to insinuations, code words, winks and nudges, directed at possible white constituencies who will respond with predictable fear and hatred, and then dutifully elect “tough” or “law and order” candidates.
Trying to reason from cause and effect is only a delaying tactic. If blacks are more likely to commit crimes, then why? Because of their race? Or does economic racism necessarily increase crime within the minority community? To admit the latter is impossible for the right-wingers, so they talk ad nauseam about personal responsibility, hoping you’ll forget about the lopsided statistics and settle into a complacent moralism. Nothing needs to be done, in other words, except wag our fingers at the poor black people and tell them to behave better.
The overrated gasbag Daniel Moynihan, a Democrat, began the fashion of blaming the problem on “culture.” African Americans had developed a dysfunctional culture, which led to single-parent families, drugs, and crime. Again, this begs the question, why? Are blacks simply racially predisposed to create inferior forms of culture? National Socialist doctrine, I would remind you, focused almost exclusively on culture as an indication of racial purity or impurity. The Jew’s culture was a primary threat to the German people, even more than Jewish money or politics. To try to explain racial disparity in terms of culture is to simply switch the terms of white supremacist arguments so that they sound more tolerant and civilized. We want to help these people develop a healthier culture, you see, so that they can succeed. At the same time, we don’t need to examine our judicial system or economic system with a critical eye, since the problem is “cultural.”
Every couple of decades or so, some white “scientist” or “researcher” will come out with a book or a study that proves statistically that blacks are inferior to whites. In 1994 we had a book called The Bell Curve, which actually created serious discussion and controversy. It was simply a resurrection of old fallacies in new and more sophisticated language, and mucked up with a lot of complex and ambiguous hedging about genes and intelligence and how that translated into “success.” Like the reemergence of the national id after years of attempted sublimation, white supremacist assumptions periodically resurface in order to justify the status quo.
This need to justify the status quo at all costs is a prevalent and widely held compulsion that applies across a wide range of issues besides race. It makes serious evaluation of our problems extremely difficult.
I ask again, then, and in this case the subject is racism: why are 50% of American prison inmates black, when black people are only 13% of our population? If you can’t start with the word “racism” (and then move from there into substantive discussions about how to change our society), I guarantee that you will end up twisting your mind into knots, all so that you don’t have to admit the problem—in short, so that you can stay comfortably asleep.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Not Important
Rush Limbaugh says he hopes Obama will fail. Limbaugh says that Obama is unqualified. Limbaugh, blaugh, blaugh, blaugh. How do I know this? Because it’s reported on the news. Apparently, Rush Limbaugh is news. He has a radio show, you see, a conservative radio show, and, uh, it’s newsworthy.
Yeah, AM radio. That’s where it’s happening. That’s what all the kids are listening to. Hannity and O’Reilly and Lou Dobbs and lots of other guys have radio shows. AM radio shows. That’s the wave of the future, you know. AM. When I’m tired of listening to good music with good sound quality, there’s nothing I like better than to turn on the crackling old AM and listen to some bellicose ignoramus raving and whining about whatever he happens to be hating on that day. Mmm, good.
These people that report on what Rush Limbaugh says apparently think that he is significant. I’d like to know how some fucking tub of lard on AM radio gets to be significant. Honestly, these shows are the most boring piles of shit in the universe. I can predict every single thing on them. Everything is the fault of liberals. Nothing is ever the fault of conservatives. Liberals are a priori wrong on anything, no exceptions. Even if conservatives have controlled the White House for the last eight years, and the Congress for twelve out of the last fourteen years, none of the problems we have are attributable to them. It’s always someone else’s fault.
That’s it. I’ve summed up the content of every single AM right wing “talk” show in a paragraph. It never varies. Anyone who can listen to this crap day after day, year after year, and not be bored out of his skull, is lower than a moron. He’s a sheep.
Rush Limbaugh is over, and deep down he knows it. The more these parasites lose, the crazier they get. Look for even more insane blubbering in the months to come, and look for it to be reported on as if it mattered. It does not matter. The cretins sitting home during the day listening to AM radio are dying. People are turning away from the putrid stink of wingnuttery in record numbers. There are actual problems that ordinary people are faced with, and fat ugly demagogues have nothing to offer them but more of the same ignorant rubbish. Eventually even the media will stop paying attention to Rush Limbaugh, and then he and his friends will dissipate into the air like yesterday’s fart.
Yeah, AM radio. That’s where it’s happening. That’s what all the kids are listening to. Hannity and O’Reilly and Lou Dobbs and lots of other guys have radio shows. AM radio shows. That’s the wave of the future, you know. AM. When I’m tired of listening to good music with good sound quality, there’s nothing I like better than to turn on the crackling old AM and listen to some bellicose ignoramus raving and whining about whatever he happens to be hating on that day. Mmm, good.
These people that report on what Rush Limbaugh says apparently think that he is significant. I’d like to know how some fucking tub of lard on AM radio gets to be significant. Honestly, these shows are the most boring piles of shit in the universe. I can predict every single thing on them. Everything is the fault of liberals. Nothing is ever the fault of conservatives. Liberals are a priori wrong on anything, no exceptions. Even if conservatives have controlled the White House for the last eight years, and the Congress for twelve out of the last fourteen years, none of the problems we have are attributable to them. It’s always someone else’s fault.
That’s it. I’ve summed up the content of every single AM right wing “talk” show in a paragraph. It never varies. Anyone who can listen to this crap day after day, year after year, and not be bored out of his skull, is lower than a moron. He’s a sheep.
Rush Limbaugh is over, and deep down he knows it. The more these parasites lose, the crazier they get. Look for even more insane blubbering in the months to come, and look for it to be reported on as if it mattered. It does not matter. The cretins sitting home during the day listening to AM radio are dying. People are turning away from the putrid stink of wingnuttery in record numbers. There are actual problems that ordinary people are faced with, and fat ugly demagogues have nothing to offer them but more of the same ignorant rubbish. Eventually even the media will stop paying attention to Rush Limbaugh, and then he and his friends will dissipate into the air like yesterday’s fart.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Between the Lines
The U.S. was "suspected" of two missile strikes in Pakistan on Friday. "Suspected" only because the Pentagon never publicly acknowledges such things, but of course, who else would have launched a missile strike?
The American empire flexing its muscles in the Middle East never makes me feel any safer, regardless of whether the dead in this case are innocent civilians or (as is claimed) "suspected militants."
In the world of realpolitik, one always needs to read between the lines. Tom Hayden offers an interesting take in his Obama Notes:
"The night after Obama's torture order, I was at dinner with a human rights lawyer who worried that the right-wing would launch political attacks on Obama for "letting our guard down." With that in mind, I became certain that the following day's Predator attack in Pakistan, which killed at least 10-18 people, was as much political as military, a message that the Pentagon will keep on launching strikes against a sovereign country in keeping with "war on terrorism" objectives. The cold truth may be that those people died in Pakistan to make closing Guantanamo more politically palatable. Many more will die as America tries to exorcise and replace the war on terror mentality.
"Obama has good reason to worry about counter-pressures from the right and the intelligence community. One day after the executive order banning torture was signed, an odd article appeared on the New York Times' front page about a former detainee who has joined al Qaeda in Yemen. There was no apparent reason for the article's timing except the Obama announcement. The detainee in question was released by President Bush, and is suspected of involvement in car bombings in September 2007."
It would seem that a President advocating change needs to cover his back at all times, prone as he is to constant harassment from the militarists and their right-wing enablers in and out of government. When, for instance, a seemingly coincidental article in the NYT such as that cited by Hayden appears, you must assume a deliberate strategy on the part of some faction. This is what it's been like for a long time--the real maneuvering is secret, far from the phony narratives concocted to explain events to a passive TV audience. It's to be expected that the domination of politics by elites will take on a conspiratorial character, although not the neat and monolithic type as dreamed by believers in Illuminati and such. There are power struggles within the establishment, within the ruling class if you will, and that is the real story occurring behind the curtain of public events and pronouncements.
The struggle against the notion of American empire will continue to be the primary field of struggle for progressives. It will be long and difficult because we are opposed not only by the Republican right, but by the so-called centrist Democrats, including Obama, who are unwilling (for whatever reasons: self-interest, political expediency, or just fear) to advocate true peace, which would involve shifting away from old notions of hegemony. It will take many years for this gradual shift to occur, but ironically the one factor in our favor is the collapse of the financial system. The sheer cost of military dominance is becoming economically unsustainable.
The American empire flexing its muscles in the Middle East never makes me feel any safer, regardless of whether the dead in this case are innocent civilians or (as is claimed) "suspected militants."
In the world of realpolitik, one always needs to read between the lines. Tom Hayden offers an interesting take in his Obama Notes:
"The night after Obama's torture order, I was at dinner with a human rights lawyer who worried that the right-wing would launch political attacks on Obama for "letting our guard down." With that in mind, I became certain that the following day's Predator attack in Pakistan, which killed at least 10-18 people, was as much political as military, a message that the Pentagon will keep on launching strikes against a sovereign country in keeping with "war on terrorism" objectives. The cold truth may be that those people died in Pakistan to make closing Guantanamo more politically palatable. Many more will die as America tries to exorcise and replace the war on terror mentality.
"Obama has good reason to worry about counter-pressures from the right and the intelligence community. One day after the executive order banning torture was signed, an odd article appeared on the New York Times' front page about a former detainee who has joined al Qaeda in Yemen. There was no apparent reason for the article's timing except the Obama announcement. The detainee in question was released by President Bush, and is suspected of involvement in car bombings in September 2007."
It would seem that a President advocating change needs to cover his back at all times, prone as he is to constant harassment from the militarists and their right-wing enablers in and out of government. When, for instance, a seemingly coincidental article in the NYT such as that cited by Hayden appears, you must assume a deliberate strategy on the part of some faction. This is what it's been like for a long time--the real maneuvering is secret, far from the phony narratives concocted to explain events to a passive TV audience. It's to be expected that the domination of politics by elites will take on a conspiratorial character, although not the neat and monolithic type as dreamed by believers in Illuminati and such. There are power struggles within the establishment, within the ruling class if you will, and that is the real story occurring behind the curtain of public events and pronouncements.
The struggle against the notion of American empire will continue to be the primary field of struggle for progressives. It will be long and difficult because we are opposed not only by the Republican right, but by the so-called centrist Democrats, including Obama, who are unwilling (for whatever reasons: self-interest, political expediency, or just fear) to advocate true peace, which would involve shifting away from old notions of hegemony. It will take many years for this gradual shift to occur, but ironically the one factor in our favor is the collapse of the financial system. The sheer cost of military dominance is becoming economically unsustainable.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Final Philippic Against Bush
In the last week we’ve seen Bush give a final press conference and a farewell address. Before that there were some interviews, and in all these appearances Bush has sought to defend his record, his so-called legacy. It’s not enough that he leave office having been despised by close to 80% of Americans and—this is the remarkable thing—been despised by the majority for the greatest continuous length of time of any President in U.S. history. It’s not enough to simply exit quietly to enjoy his wealth and privileges while ordinary Americans sink into an economic morass. Bush must now try to justify himself. During his eight-year reign, he operated primarily in secrecy. Most of his speeches were made at military rallies, before captive audiences who were required to be silent and respectful. Or he would appear at carefully rehearsed events that were prepared by his handlers so that there would be no hard questions. Most of his interviews were granted to toadies, charlatans, and demagogues, such as Sean Hannity and other Fox “news” propagandists. So I find it unseemly, to say the least, to observe Bush trying to appear open and available in the final days of his regime. It is obvious that he was sealed in his bubble long ago, and that there is no possibility of contact with reality.
The “farewell address” (I shudder to use the same phrase to describe this pathetic piece of theater, when it brings to mind Washington’s great speech) was the usual carefully parsed pack of lies, among which was the following: “Iraq has gone from a brutal dictatorship and a sworn enemy of America to an Arab democracy at the heart of the Middle East and a friend of the United States.” Hundreds of thousands of deaths (by conservative estimate!), many hundreds of thousands of more displaced, a country in ruins, and the killing hasn’t stopped, even if Bush succeeded in paying off some of the militias to reduce violence as part of his phony “surge.” That’s what I see. But Bush’s Iraq is apparently populated by unicorns, rainbows and happy furry bunnies liberated by American kindness. There’s no grief for the murdered children, the shattered families, or even the deaths of American soldiers, because after all, they signed up.
The news conference I found more interesting, in a perverse kind of way. Bush on his own, without a prepared speech, is usually a weird experience, and revealing, if you have the stomach for it. Here his body language was sickening in itself—looking down, grimacing like a half-wit, that creepy little snigger that passes for a laugh in his mind, the way he shifted from foot to foot like a very bad boy who’s been caught and is trying to think of a good excuse—Bush is the anti-gravitas. There is no dignity in this man.
So let’s go to the press conference:
“I think Israel has a right to defend herself. Obviously in any of these kinds of situations, I would hope that she would continue to be mindful of innocent folks, and that they help, you know, expedite the delivery of humanitarian aid.”
Israel defending herself seems to mean the same thing as America defending herself in Bush World: smashing everything in sight with overwhelming military power, and to hell with civilians. In other words, Israel’s government is acting just like Bush, so any talk of being “mindful of innocent folks” is nothing but empty words for the public.
“And third, why haven't we achieved peace? That's a good question.”
Since you basically agree with whatever the Israeli government does, no matter what, that gives it carte blanche to do whatever it wants without any consequences. Your unilateralism has been disastrous for the Middle East. Your mindless policy of aggression has made everything much worse than it was in 2001 when you took office. And yet you pretend otherwise, against all the evidence. There hasn’t been a more feeble, or more futile, peace effort in the history of American Middle East policy than yours.
“The most urgent threat that he'll have to deal with, and other Presidents after him [Obama] will have to deal with, is an attack on our homeland.”
Where did you get this “homeland” word? Everyone I know has always said, “my country.” If you look back through all of our history, it always says “country,” not “homeland.” It’s really a German phrase, isn’t it? At first I thought this was some creepy way to instill a kind of proto-fascist thought-process into the citizenry. You know, dying for the fatherland and all that. Recently I realized that “homeland” implies that America owns other lands, foreign lands, like a colonial power. So it’s really a colonialist/imperialist style of terminology. Well, I’m sure you didn’t invent it. As usual, you adopted a way of speaking that you were instructed in.
“This [Republican] party will come back. But the party's message has got to be that different points of view are included in the party.”
That’s odd, because that’s not the way things were in your administration. You demanded absolute loyalty, ideological and otherwise, from the party, and they voted as an almost unanimous block for your policies. It was quite robot-like, really. So this sudden interest in diversity of opinions can’t be taken seriously.
“In terms of the economy, look, I inherited a recession, I am ending on a recession. In the meantime there were 52 months of uninterrupted job growth.”
The recession you are “ending on” is many, many times the severity of the situation you supposedly inherited. To compare the mild downturn which actually started in March 2001, when you were already in office, to what we’re going through now, which has already lasted longer than any recession in 25 years and will probably get worse, is nothing short of chicanery. You are a liar.
As for job growth, there were only 3 million jobs created in your two terms, as opposed to 21 million under Clinton. Then we lost 2.6 million jobs in 2008, the most since World War II. Are you blind?
“And so, I view those who get angry and yell and say bad things and, you know, all that kind of stuff, it's just a very few people in the country. I don't know why they get angry. I don't know why they get hostile. It's not the first time, however, in history that people have expressed themselves in sometimes undignified ways. I've been reading, you know, a lot about Abraham Lincoln during my presidency, and there was some pretty harsh discord when it came to the 16th President, just like there's been harsh discord for the 43rd President.”
Arrogant pipsqueak, you dare to compare yourself to Lincoln? You're a mental midget calling yourself a giant.
You know, I never thought of myself as that patriotic, not in the stereotypical way. But since Bush has taken office, I realize how patriotic I am, because I am so angry at the way he has trampled on the Constitution of our country and made a mockery of our traditions. Yes, I am furious, and I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror if I weren’t outraged by your actions. Just in the last few months your administration has pushed through regulations that allow mining companies to dump waste into rivers and factory farms to allow their animal waste to seep into the reservoirs. You’ve opened up two million more acres of public land in the West, in and around our national monuments, to oil drilling. You’ve removed protections from workers exposed to toxic chemicals. You’ve pushed through regulations that allow providers to deny treatment to people because of religious views. These are only examples from the last few months! Your entire eight years have been filled with nothing but this kind of thing, policies that hurt ordinary people all over this country. Many people are losing their jobs right now because all you cared about was giving more wealth to your rich friends. More will suffer from poverty. Many people have died needlessly because of you. And you wonder why there is anger! What could be more despicable than this willful unconsciousness of the suffering of others caused by your own actions?
“You know, Presidents can try to avoid hard decisions and therefore avoid controversy. That's just not my nature. I'm the kind of person that, you know, is willing to take on hard tasks, and in times of war people get emotional; I understand that. Never really, you know, spent that much time, frankly, worrying about the loud voices. I of course hear them, but they didn't affect my policy, nor did they affect -- affect how I made decisions.”
If you had really made hard, principled decisions we would be seeing some benefit from them. You might not be popular with the majority, but you would have a sizable minority in this country that would understand and agree with what you did. But there’s a difference between hard decisions and wrong decisions. You’ve consistently made the wrong ones, and to say that you’re unpopular because you’re principled is sheer vanity on your part. Do you really believe that over 70% of Americans just don’t understand how high-principled you are? That we’re all so stupid that we turned against you because you made tough decisions? We judge by the results, Bush, we see the havoc you’ve created, and the total failure on all fronts, and we judge by that. If you invade a country, for instance, and then make every wrong decision about how to secure that country, so that the infrastructure collapses and the country dissolves into civil war, while billions of dollars get poured into the toilet, do you think the people aren’t going to judge by those results? Most of the time you didn’t even make decisions, you appointed incompetent ideologues who made bad decisions that you didn’t keep track of. So spare us this idiotic nonsense about “your nature” and how you take on hard tasks. It’s a lie. You’re obviously lazy and inattentive, and the people know that.
“I wasn't kidding when I said Wall Street got drunk and we got the hangover.”
Your entire administration was about handing over our wealth to Wall Street. You outsourced the war to greedy contractors who ripped us off on an unprecedented scale. Yet you talk as if Wall Street was something different than you, something outside of you that you had nothing to do with.
“Clearly putting a Mission Accomplished on a aircraft carrier was a mistake. It sent the wrong message. We were trying to say something differently, but nevertheless, it conveyed a different message. Obviously, some of my rhetoric has been a mistake.”
Yeah, you would consider anything that goes wrong with your public relations a mistake. But since you did whatever Karl Rove thought would be politically advantageous, there doesn’t seem to have been anything else going on except public relations. You flew onto that aircraft carrier in your little flight suit, and you thought you were really cool, I bet. Oh look at me, I’m a macho man. And six years later, and many thousands dead and maimed later, the only mistake in your mind was that banner behind you.
“I've thought long and hard about Katrina -- you know, could I have done something differently, like land Air Force One either in New Orleans or Baton Rouge. The problem with that and -- is that law enforcement would have been pulled away from the mission. And then your questions, I suspect, would have been, how could you possibly have flown Air Force One into Baton Rouge, and police officers that were needed to expedite traffic out of New Orleans were taken off the task to look after you?”
You seem to think that you’re just an individual with some sort of symbolic power. Don’t you realize that you were the President during Katrina? It is grotesque beyond belief that you would think that the problem with Katrina was you not visiting New Orleans right away. People were stranded there dying, and nobody came to help, you idiot! Five days after the levees broke, and FEMA didn’t even know that there were people at the Superdome screaming for help. You were the head of the executive branch. It was your job to help those people, and you failed miserably. And you continued to fail after that. There has been no commitment to recovery in New Orleans. Most survivors have either scattered to other places or are still living in trailers. You didn’t care, and it’s obvious from your feeble response here that you still don’t care.
“I believe that running the Social Security idea right after the '04 elections was a mistake.”
Destroying Social Security was a bad idea no matter when you would have proposed it. But it’s so typical of you that a matter of political timing would be your sole idea of a mistake.
“There have been disappointments. Abu Ghraib obviously was a huge disappointment during the presidency. Not having weapons of mass destruction was a significant disappointment. I don't know if you want to call those mistakes or not, but they were -- things didn't go according to plan, let's put it that way.”
How can you call Abu Ghraib a disappointment? It was a crime, and it was really just the tip of the iceberg concerning the widespread crime of torture, which you approved. Abu Ghraib was merely a result of the policies that you, Cheney, and Rumsfeld approved. And you continue to promote torture to this day. So I guess the disappointment was that the photos of Abu Ghraib were released. If there had been no photos, no publicity, you wouldn’t have been disappointed.
And by the way, words can't express how disturbing it is to have my government using torture and trying to justify it. What is this sick obsession with torture, anyway? Anyone with morals knows it's wrong. If you're not against torture, you're probably a sociopath. Yet those of us who oppose this were said to be anti-American, as if being an American meant having to endorse your sick perversions. I honestly believe you should be in a prison mental ward instead of strutting around the world stage.
Then it’s gruesome that you would say that you were disappointed by “not having weapons of mass destruction.” But it’s very revealing. Of course you wanted to find horrible weapons to justify your unilateral, illegal war. The weapons were of course just a pretext for the invasion, because you wanted to invade even before 9/11, so you used whatever made-up arguments you could, and you twisted the intelligence to fit your desire to invade. And that’s a crime. I remember how you joked about it later at the press dinner--where are those weapons, ha ha--just like you would smirk and laugh when talking about the war, even while people were dying. I've been ashamed to even look at you. It's as if you are the personification of everything soulless and cynical in this world, while pretending to be a paragon of virtue.
“And in terms of the decisions that I had made to protect the homeland, I wouldn't worry about popularity. What I would worry about is the Constitution of the United States, and putting plans in place that makes it easier to find out what the enemy is thinking, because all these debates will matter not if there's another attack on the homeland. The question won't be, you know, were you critical of this plan or not; the question is going to be, why didn't you do something?”
How bizarre that you would say you were worried about the Constitution. Yeah, I guess you were worried that the Constitution of our country was something that made us weak, so you sought ways to nullify it, in violation of your oath of office, in which you pledged to protect it. As far as the notion that torture makes it easier to find out what the enemy is thinking, I don’t believe you. Torture never served that end. It never led to any convictions or foiled any threats. The phony examples you’ve given have been debunked over and over, but of course that doesn’t stop you from continuing to lie about it. But in any case, if you don’t think torture is wrong, how can you claim to be moral, or a Christian? Whenever challenged on this, you sputter about how you’re protecting us and our kids as if you were the big daddy and we shouldn’t question you. As if this country, which has survived a civil war and world wars and many trials, needs to crawl under the bed and shiver in fear because of a few terrorists, and then hand our liberties over to some little tin-horn wimp squeaking about the homeland. You impudent, pathetic little man, did you really think that one terrorist attack meant that we had to scrap over two hundred years of our history and become a one-party dictatorship like China? Because that’s the way you acted. To call it hubris would be to dignify it. You are simply and appallingly ignorant of what the United States of America is about. When you talk about freedom I guess you mean the freedom to buy products from big corporations, or maybe the freedom to vote in rigged elections. But freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from unlawful search and seizure—you don’t have the slightest inkling of what that is.
“Do you remember what it was like right after September the 11th around here? In press conferences and opinion pieces and in stories -- that sometimes were news stories and sometimes opinion pieces -- people were saying, how come they didn't see it, how come they didn't connect the dots? Do you remember what the environment was like in Washington? I do. When people were hauled up in front of Congress and members of Congress were asking questions about, how come you didn't know this, that, or the other? And then we start putting policy in place -- legal policy in place to connect the dots, and all of a sudden people were saying, how come you're connecting the dots?”
You were warned that bin Laden was going to attack, and you took a vacation. Not a single person was disciplined or investigated for failing to stop 9/11. Instead they got medals. So why shouldn’t the Congress ask questions, you dolt? That’s what they’re supposed to do, but as I recall, there really weren’t enough questions. And suddenly the Patriot Act is brought out, this huge document produced very quickly—and maybe you call this “connecting the dots”—yet it had little to do with actually preventing terrorism and everything to do with giving unlimited power to the executive and its spy agencies to attack the left, jail people without trial, and generally exploit the crisis for your own advantage. Then you used the NSA to tap Americans phones, without getting a FISA warrant as you were required to do. It’s not as if it would have been hard to get a FISA warrant. You would have easily gotten one. So the implication is clear—you broke the law and went around FISA because you were using the NSA to spy on political opponents, and you didn’t want that known. How contemptible.
“I believe this -- the phrase "burdens of the office" is overstated. You know, it's kind of like, why me? Oh, the burdens, you know. Why did the financial collapse have to happen on my watch? It's just -- it's pathetic, isn't it, self-pity.”
Unconscious people generally affirm what they try hardest to deny. It is clear that you are drenched in self-pity. The fact that you would use the financial collapse happening on your watch is revealing. To you, the financial collapse just happened and you had nothing to do with that. You’re just a passive observer. All the dismantling of regulations, the looting of the treasury to help your rich friends through sweetheart contracts and tax cuts, the economic sinkhole of your two wars and your phony war of terror, all that had nothing to do with the financial collapse in your mind.
What’s amazing to me is how such a narcissist could have served two terms as President of the U.S. Everything’s about you and your feelings. I never get a sense from you of the public good, or even civic duty. It’s all just a little drama with you in the center. It’s revolting to listen to a totally self-centered person with no values and realize that this was our President. It’s really shocking. Why did you even run for President? It doesn’t seem you ever cared about the country, or had a vision of any kind. I’ll bet you were persuaded by a bunch of Republican buddies that you could win, and you thought, “Wow, that would be really cool to be President.” You get to be really important and strut around and have your picture taken. You can live in the White House and get your name in the history books. Is that why you ran for President? I can’t figure it out. I could see if you were someone who was ambitious for power, but when you got to be President you basically did whatever Dick Cheney and Karl Rove told you to do. You were disengaged from the job. It was as if you wanted to be President without having to think.
The fact that you actually wore a little device on your back during the 2004 campaign, through which somebody would whisper your lines to you, really shows that you have no pride at all. Oh, we know that you were being prompted during the debates. We saw the device under your suit jacket. Of course the media never probed too deeply on that one because it was so embarrassing, and the media bent over backwards not to reveal anything embarrassing about the “commander in chief.” But I can’t imagine anyone with a shred of pride agreeing to do that. So on the one hand, you’re a narcissist, thinking about yourself all the time, and on the other hand you don’t have enough pride or resilience to really stand on your own. That’s a very sick combination.
The fact that you chose your campaign manager, Dick Cheney, to be your running mate in 2000 was a real tip-off. I mean, no other politician would have done that. Most Presidents want a VP who is subordinate, but you chose someone who manages your campaign, someone who ended up managing your administration. Why did you allow that? Why, if you really care so much about your legacy, would you hand your power off to someone else? I can only conclude that you’re basically a shiftless coward with no center. Without stronger people directing you, you’re helpless. You’ll just sit there with a lost look in your eyes, even when the country’s being attacked, until someone tells you what to do.
“People said, well, the federal response [to Katrina] was slow. Don't tell me the federal response was slow when there was 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed. I remember going to see those helicopter drivers, Coast Guard drivers, to thank them for their courageous efforts to rescue people off roofs. Thirty thousand people were pulled off roofs right after the storm moved through. It's a pretty quick response.”
Yes, the Coast Guard did their job. But no one else did. So now you hide behind the Coast Guard, just like you hide behind the troops, making excuses. Revolting.
“It's just the rhetoric got out of control at times…I don't know why. You need to ask those who -- those who used the words they used.”
You never disassociated yourself from the rhetoric. Your entire team used the rhetoric. Your Republican supporters used the rhetoric. And you used it too. You implied over and over that Democrats were somehow aiding the enemy. Cheney said that if Kerry won there would be probably be another attack. Now you act as if you played no part in any of this, as if your work with Karl Rove never happened. You’re lying.
I’m getting tired. There’s much more I could say. I could talk about how you promised to fire anyone involved in outing the CIA agent, and broke the promise, and then commuted Libby’s sentence. I could talk about how you paid phony journalists to promote your policies and planted Jeff Gannon in the press room; how you went back on nuclear “no first use” policy which opened the door for Armageddon; I could talk about your close ties to Enron, failing to support troops with proper armor, failing to support troops when they come home, not allowing dead soldiers’ coffins to be photographed, the horrendous military commissions act voiding habeas corpus, Terry Schiavo, Dubai, appointing right wing judges like Roberts and Alito, censoring global warming data, using false terror alerts for political ends, firing attorneys when they refused to cooperate in election tampering, lickspittle Gonzo and his chronic amnesia, Pat Tillman, Blackwater, oh I give up. I couldn’t possibly mention all the damage you’ve done, all the scandals and crimes and lies, because everything you did failed and everything you touched turned to shit.
Just a few final thoughts. When you and your friends argued for a theory of the “unitary executive,” did you understand that meant that you were above the law? That you were essentially lawless? What’s to prevent a President from announcing a never-ending war (remember to give it a snappy name) and then using that war to justify overriding all the safeguards against the separation of powers? In fact, that’s exactly what you did, or what you tried to do. I count that as treason because it deliberately strikes at the very heart of our republic and seeks to establish a dictatorship. You basically tried to overthrow the United States, using terrorism as a pretext.
Among the most shameful aspects of the last eight years were the elections of 2000 and 2004. You cheated in order to win Florida in the 2000 election. Most people agree that this is true. And in a way, it seems par for the course for a politician to try to win by any means. But then in 2004, on Election Day, when there was no more campaigning, you suddenly took Air Force One to Columbus, Ohio, accompanied by Karl Rove, where you met with Kenneth Blackwell, Republican campaign manager and Secretary of State for Ohio. Why did you do that? That seems very unusual for the President to make a trip to Ohio on Election Day, when there was no more campaigning to be done.
There was voter suppression in Ohio. We know that. What is obvious to anyone with eyes to see is that there was also outright fraud in Ohio. You conspired with Karl Rove to steal an election. Ken Blackwell was involved in switching computer-tabulated votes in that state to your column. And as a President, not just a candidate, that constitutes a breathtaking violation of every citizen’s trust in their government. When we can’t believe that our votes are counted, when elections can be rigged by the government, that’s a sign that freedom has ended and we can give up hope.
So in your secret little mind you know that you really didn’t earn being President. Both elections were stolen. For you to live with it requires an astonishing level of mendacity, perhaps a very complicated system of rationalization and denial. It’s certainly delusional, and it means that you were always unfit to serve, from the very beginning until now.
I gather that you are interested in how history will judge your Presidency. This is how it will be. In the list of Presidents in the history books, your name will be the only one with an asterisk next to it. Next to the asterisk at the bottom of the page it will say “Illegitimate.” You will be the President that unlawfully usurped the White House, and was therefore, technically speaking, never President at all. These eight years will be like a gap in history, an unfortunate and tragic period in which a criminal acted as if he were the elected leader of the country. Your name will be only a blot on the history of the nation.
And if your Presidency is mentioned when kids are being taught social studies at school, you will be compared to Benedict Arnold. Both were traitors to the United States; both names will be forever associated with crime and treason. This is a bit unfair to Benedict Arnold, the teacher will point out, since Arnold was a real hero before he betrayed the country. But Bush was never anything, and moreover, he betrayed the country while serving as President, which is the greatest act of treason one could imagine.
That is your legacy. Now go away. We mourn all the people who died and suffered because of you, and the many who will continue to suffer in the future because of your betrayals. There was a sign in New Orleans after Katrina that said “All looters will be shot.” In the end, all you are is a looter. You looted whatever you could and then you whined that you were misunderstood. Count yourself lucky that you haven’t been shot, because that’s what you deserve. We don’t want to hear any more bullshit from you, Go to your fucking ranch with your thorazine-addled wife, get drunk, and leave us alone. You’ve done enough damage. Get lost.
The “farewell address” (I shudder to use the same phrase to describe this pathetic piece of theater, when it brings to mind Washington’s great speech) was the usual carefully parsed pack of lies, among which was the following: “Iraq has gone from a brutal dictatorship and a sworn enemy of America to an Arab democracy at the heart of the Middle East and a friend of the United States.” Hundreds of thousands of deaths (by conservative estimate!), many hundreds of thousands of more displaced, a country in ruins, and the killing hasn’t stopped, even if Bush succeeded in paying off some of the militias to reduce violence as part of his phony “surge.” That’s what I see. But Bush’s Iraq is apparently populated by unicorns, rainbows and happy furry bunnies liberated by American kindness. There’s no grief for the murdered children, the shattered families, or even the deaths of American soldiers, because after all, they signed up.
The news conference I found more interesting, in a perverse kind of way. Bush on his own, without a prepared speech, is usually a weird experience, and revealing, if you have the stomach for it. Here his body language was sickening in itself—looking down, grimacing like a half-wit, that creepy little snigger that passes for a laugh in his mind, the way he shifted from foot to foot like a very bad boy who’s been caught and is trying to think of a good excuse—Bush is the anti-gravitas. There is no dignity in this man.
So let’s go to the press conference:
“I think Israel has a right to defend herself. Obviously in any of these kinds of situations, I would hope that she would continue to be mindful of innocent folks, and that they help, you know, expedite the delivery of humanitarian aid.”
Israel defending herself seems to mean the same thing as America defending herself in Bush World: smashing everything in sight with overwhelming military power, and to hell with civilians. In other words, Israel’s government is acting just like Bush, so any talk of being “mindful of innocent folks” is nothing but empty words for the public.
“And third, why haven't we achieved peace? That's a good question.”
Since you basically agree with whatever the Israeli government does, no matter what, that gives it carte blanche to do whatever it wants without any consequences. Your unilateralism has been disastrous for the Middle East. Your mindless policy of aggression has made everything much worse than it was in 2001 when you took office. And yet you pretend otherwise, against all the evidence. There hasn’t been a more feeble, or more futile, peace effort in the history of American Middle East policy than yours.
“The most urgent threat that he'll have to deal with, and other Presidents after him [Obama] will have to deal with, is an attack on our homeland.”
Where did you get this “homeland” word? Everyone I know has always said, “my country.” If you look back through all of our history, it always says “country,” not “homeland.” It’s really a German phrase, isn’t it? At first I thought this was some creepy way to instill a kind of proto-fascist thought-process into the citizenry. You know, dying for the fatherland and all that. Recently I realized that “homeland” implies that America owns other lands, foreign lands, like a colonial power. So it’s really a colonialist/imperialist style of terminology. Well, I’m sure you didn’t invent it. As usual, you adopted a way of speaking that you were instructed in.
“This [Republican] party will come back. But the party's message has got to be that different points of view are included in the party.”
That’s odd, because that’s not the way things were in your administration. You demanded absolute loyalty, ideological and otherwise, from the party, and they voted as an almost unanimous block for your policies. It was quite robot-like, really. So this sudden interest in diversity of opinions can’t be taken seriously.
“In terms of the economy, look, I inherited a recession, I am ending on a recession. In the meantime there were 52 months of uninterrupted job growth.”
The recession you are “ending on” is many, many times the severity of the situation you supposedly inherited. To compare the mild downturn which actually started in March 2001, when you were already in office, to what we’re going through now, which has already lasted longer than any recession in 25 years and will probably get worse, is nothing short of chicanery. You are a liar.
As for job growth, there were only 3 million jobs created in your two terms, as opposed to 21 million under Clinton. Then we lost 2.6 million jobs in 2008, the most since World War II. Are you blind?
“And so, I view those who get angry and yell and say bad things and, you know, all that kind of stuff, it's just a very few people in the country. I don't know why they get angry. I don't know why they get hostile. It's not the first time, however, in history that people have expressed themselves in sometimes undignified ways. I've been reading, you know, a lot about Abraham Lincoln during my presidency, and there was some pretty harsh discord when it came to the 16th President, just like there's been harsh discord for the 43rd President.”
Arrogant pipsqueak, you dare to compare yourself to Lincoln? You're a mental midget calling yourself a giant.
You know, I never thought of myself as that patriotic, not in the stereotypical way. But since Bush has taken office, I realize how patriotic I am, because I am so angry at the way he has trampled on the Constitution of our country and made a mockery of our traditions. Yes, I am furious, and I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror if I weren’t outraged by your actions. Just in the last few months your administration has pushed through regulations that allow mining companies to dump waste into rivers and factory farms to allow their animal waste to seep into the reservoirs. You’ve opened up two million more acres of public land in the West, in and around our national monuments, to oil drilling. You’ve removed protections from workers exposed to toxic chemicals. You’ve pushed through regulations that allow providers to deny treatment to people because of religious views. These are only examples from the last few months! Your entire eight years have been filled with nothing but this kind of thing, policies that hurt ordinary people all over this country. Many people are losing their jobs right now because all you cared about was giving more wealth to your rich friends. More will suffer from poverty. Many people have died needlessly because of you. And you wonder why there is anger! What could be more despicable than this willful unconsciousness of the suffering of others caused by your own actions?
“You know, Presidents can try to avoid hard decisions and therefore avoid controversy. That's just not my nature. I'm the kind of person that, you know, is willing to take on hard tasks, and in times of war people get emotional; I understand that. Never really, you know, spent that much time, frankly, worrying about the loud voices. I of course hear them, but they didn't affect my policy, nor did they affect -- affect how I made decisions.”
If you had really made hard, principled decisions we would be seeing some benefit from them. You might not be popular with the majority, but you would have a sizable minority in this country that would understand and agree with what you did. But there’s a difference between hard decisions and wrong decisions. You’ve consistently made the wrong ones, and to say that you’re unpopular because you’re principled is sheer vanity on your part. Do you really believe that over 70% of Americans just don’t understand how high-principled you are? That we’re all so stupid that we turned against you because you made tough decisions? We judge by the results, Bush, we see the havoc you’ve created, and the total failure on all fronts, and we judge by that. If you invade a country, for instance, and then make every wrong decision about how to secure that country, so that the infrastructure collapses and the country dissolves into civil war, while billions of dollars get poured into the toilet, do you think the people aren’t going to judge by those results? Most of the time you didn’t even make decisions, you appointed incompetent ideologues who made bad decisions that you didn’t keep track of. So spare us this idiotic nonsense about “your nature” and how you take on hard tasks. It’s a lie. You’re obviously lazy and inattentive, and the people know that.
“I wasn't kidding when I said Wall Street got drunk and we got the hangover.”
Your entire administration was about handing over our wealth to Wall Street. You outsourced the war to greedy contractors who ripped us off on an unprecedented scale. Yet you talk as if Wall Street was something different than you, something outside of you that you had nothing to do with.
“Clearly putting a Mission Accomplished on a aircraft carrier was a mistake. It sent the wrong message. We were trying to say something differently, but nevertheless, it conveyed a different message. Obviously, some of my rhetoric has been a mistake.”
Yeah, you would consider anything that goes wrong with your public relations a mistake. But since you did whatever Karl Rove thought would be politically advantageous, there doesn’t seem to have been anything else going on except public relations. You flew onto that aircraft carrier in your little flight suit, and you thought you were really cool, I bet. Oh look at me, I’m a macho man. And six years later, and many thousands dead and maimed later, the only mistake in your mind was that banner behind you.
“I've thought long and hard about Katrina -- you know, could I have done something differently, like land Air Force One either in New Orleans or Baton Rouge. The problem with that and -- is that law enforcement would have been pulled away from the mission. And then your questions, I suspect, would have been, how could you possibly have flown Air Force One into Baton Rouge, and police officers that were needed to expedite traffic out of New Orleans were taken off the task to look after you?”
You seem to think that you’re just an individual with some sort of symbolic power. Don’t you realize that you were the President during Katrina? It is grotesque beyond belief that you would think that the problem with Katrina was you not visiting New Orleans right away. People were stranded there dying, and nobody came to help, you idiot! Five days after the levees broke, and FEMA didn’t even know that there were people at the Superdome screaming for help. You were the head of the executive branch. It was your job to help those people, and you failed miserably. And you continued to fail after that. There has been no commitment to recovery in New Orleans. Most survivors have either scattered to other places or are still living in trailers. You didn’t care, and it’s obvious from your feeble response here that you still don’t care.
“I believe that running the Social Security idea right after the '04 elections was a mistake.”
Destroying Social Security was a bad idea no matter when you would have proposed it. But it’s so typical of you that a matter of political timing would be your sole idea of a mistake.
“There have been disappointments. Abu Ghraib obviously was a huge disappointment during the presidency. Not having weapons of mass destruction was a significant disappointment. I don't know if you want to call those mistakes or not, but they were -- things didn't go according to plan, let's put it that way.”
How can you call Abu Ghraib a disappointment? It was a crime, and it was really just the tip of the iceberg concerning the widespread crime of torture, which you approved. Abu Ghraib was merely a result of the policies that you, Cheney, and Rumsfeld approved. And you continue to promote torture to this day. So I guess the disappointment was that the photos of Abu Ghraib were released. If there had been no photos, no publicity, you wouldn’t have been disappointed.
And by the way, words can't express how disturbing it is to have my government using torture and trying to justify it. What is this sick obsession with torture, anyway? Anyone with morals knows it's wrong. If you're not against torture, you're probably a sociopath. Yet those of us who oppose this were said to be anti-American, as if being an American meant having to endorse your sick perversions. I honestly believe you should be in a prison mental ward instead of strutting around the world stage.
Then it’s gruesome that you would say that you were disappointed by “not having weapons of mass destruction.” But it’s very revealing. Of course you wanted to find horrible weapons to justify your unilateral, illegal war. The weapons were of course just a pretext for the invasion, because you wanted to invade even before 9/11, so you used whatever made-up arguments you could, and you twisted the intelligence to fit your desire to invade. And that’s a crime. I remember how you joked about it later at the press dinner--where are those weapons, ha ha--just like you would smirk and laugh when talking about the war, even while people were dying. I've been ashamed to even look at you. It's as if you are the personification of everything soulless and cynical in this world, while pretending to be a paragon of virtue.
“And in terms of the decisions that I had made to protect the homeland, I wouldn't worry about popularity. What I would worry about is the Constitution of the United States, and putting plans in place that makes it easier to find out what the enemy is thinking, because all these debates will matter not if there's another attack on the homeland. The question won't be, you know, were you critical of this plan or not; the question is going to be, why didn't you do something?”
How bizarre that you would say you were worried about the Constitution. Yeah, I guess you were worried that the Constitution of our country was something that made us weak, so you sought ways to nullify it, in violation of your oath of office, in which you pledged to protect it. As far as the notion that torture makes it easier to find out what the enemy is thinking, I don’t believe you. Torture never served that end. It never led to any convictions or foiled any threats. The phony examples you’ve given have been debunked over and over, but of course that doesn’t stop you from continuing to lie about it. But in any case, if you don’t think torture is wrong, how can you claim to be moral, or a Christian? Whenever challenged on this, you sputter about how you’re protecting us and our kids as if you were the big daddy and we shouldn’t question you. As if this country, which has survived a civil war and world wars and many trials, needs to crawl under the bed and shiver in fear because of a few terrorists, and then hand our liberties over to some little tin-horn wimp squeaking about the homeland. You impudent, pathetic little man, did you really think that one terrorist attack meant that we had to scrap over two hundred years of our history and become a one-party dictatorship like China? Because that’s the way you acted. To call it hubris would be to dignify it. You are simply and appallingly ignorant of what the United States of America is about. When you talk about freedom I guess you mean the freedom to buy products from big corporations, or maybe the freedom to vote in rigged elections. But freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from unlawful search and seizure—you don’t have the slightest inkling of what that is.
“Do you remember what it was like right after September the 11th around here? In press conferences and opinion pieces and in stories -- that sometimes were news stories and sometimes opinion pieces -- people were saying, how come they didn't see it, how come they didn't connect the dots? Do you remember what the environment was like in Washington? I do. When people were hauled up in front of Congress and members of Congress were asking questions about, how come you didn't know this, that, or the other? And then we start putting policy in place -- legal policy in place to connect the dots, and all of a sudden people were saying, how come you're connecting the dots?”
You were warned that bin Laden was going to attack, and you took a vacation. Not a single person was disciplined or investigated for failing to stop 9/11. Instead they got medals. So why shouldn’t the Congress ask questions, you dolt? That’s what they’re supposed to do, but as I recall, there really weren’t enough questions. And suddenly the Patriot Act is brought out, this huge document produced very quickly—and maybe you call this “connecting the dots”—yet it had little to do with actually preventing terrorism and everything to do with giving unlimited power to the executive and its spy agencies to attack the left, jail people without trial, and generally exploit the crisis for your own advantage. Then you used the NSA to tap Americans phones, without getting a FISA warrant as you were required to do. It’s not as if it would have been hard to get a FISA warrant. You would have easily gotten one. So the implication is clear—you broke the law and went around FISA because you were using the NSA to spy on political opponents, and you didn’t want that known. How contemptible.
“I believe this -- the phrase "burdens of the office" is overstated. You know, it's kind of like, why me? Oh, the burdens, you know. Why did the financial collapse have to happen on my watch? It's just -- it's pathetic, isn't it, self-pity.”
Unconscious people generally affirm what they try hardest to deny. It is clear that you are drenched in self-pity. The fact that you would use the financial collapse happening on your watch is revealing. To you, the financial collapse just happened and you had nothing to do with that. You’re just a passive observer. All the dismantling of regulations, the looting of the treasury to help your rich friends through sweetheart contracts and tax cuts, the economic sinkhole of your two wars and your phony war of terror, all that had nothing to do with the financial collapse in your mind.
What’s amazing to me is how such a narcissist could have served two terms as President of the U.S. Everything’s about you and your feelings. I never get a sense from you of the public good, or even civic duty. It’s all just a little drama with you in the center. It’s revolting to listen to a totally self-centered person with no values and realize that this was our President. It’s really shocking. Why did you even run for President? It doesn’t seem you ever cared about the country, or had a vision of any kind. I’ll bet you were persuaded by a bunch of Republican buddies that you could win, and you thought, “Wow, that would be really cool to be President.” You get to be really important and strut around and have your picture taken. You can live in the White House and get your name in the history books. Is that why you ran for President? I can’t figure it out. I could see if you were someone who was ambitious for power, but when you got to be President you basically did whatever Dick Cheney and Karl Rove told you to do. You were disengaged from the job. It was as if you wanted to be President without having to think.
The fact that you actually wore a little device on your back during the 2004 campaign, through which somebody would whisper your lines to you, really shows that you have no pride at all. Oh, we know that you were being prompted during the debates. We saw the device under your suit jacket. Of course the media never probed too deeply on that one because it was so embarrassing, and the media bent over backwards not to reveal anything embarrassing about the “commander in chief.” But I can’t imagine anyone with a shred of pride agreeing to do that. So on the one hand, you’re a narcissist, thinking about yourself all the time, and on the other hand you don’t have enough pride or resilience to really stand on your own. That’s a very sick combination.
The fact that you chose your campaign manager, Dick Cheney, to be your running mate in 2000 was a real tip-off. I mean, no other politician would have done that. Most Presidents want a VP who is subordinate, but you chose someone who manages your campaign, someone who ended up managing your administration. Why did you allow that? Why, if you really care so much about your legacy, would you hand your power off to someone else? I can only conclude that you’re basically a shiftless coward with no center. Without stronger people directing you, you’re helpless. You’ll just sit there with a lost look in your eyes, even when the country’s being attacked, until someone tells you what to do.
“People said, well, the federal response [to Katrina] was slow. Don't tell me the federal response was slow when there was 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed. I remember going to see those helicopter drivers, Coast Guard drivers, to thank them for their courageous efforts to rescue people off roofs. Thirty thousand people were pulled off roofs right after the storm moved through. It's a pretty quick response.”
Yes, the Coast Guard did their job. But no one else did. So now you hide behind the Coast Guard, just like you hide behind the troops, making excuses. Revolting.
“It's just the rhetoric got out of control at times…I don't know why. You need to ask those who -- those who used the words they used.”
You never disassociated yourself from the rhetoric. Your entire team used the rhetoric. Your Republican supporters used the rhetoric. And you used it too. You implied over and over that Democrats were somehow aiding the enemy. Cheney said that if Kerry won there would be probably be another attack. Now you act as if you played no part in any of this, as if your work with Karl Rove never happened. You’re lying.
I’m getting tired. There’s much more I could say. I could talk about how you promised to fire anyone involved in outing the CIA agent, and broke the promise, and then commuted Libby’s sentence. I could talk about how you paid phony journalists to promote your policies and planted Jeff Gannon in the press room; how you went back on nuclear “no first use” policy which opened the door for Armageddon; I could talk about your close ties to Enron, failing to support troops with proper armor, failing to support troops when they come home, not allowing dead soldiers’ coffins to be photographed, the horrendous military commissions act voiding habeas corpus, Terry Schiavo, Dubai, appointing right wing judges like Roberts and Alito, censoring global warming data, using false terror alerts for political ends, firing attorneys when they refused to cooperate in election tampering, lickspittle Gonzo and his chronic amnesia, Pat Tillman, Blackwater, oh I give up. I couldn’t possibly mention all the damage you’ve done, all the scandals and crimes and lies, because everything you did failed and everything you touched turned to shit.
Just a few final thoughts. When you and your friends argued for a theory of the “unitary executive,” did you understand that meant that you were above the law? That you were essentially lawless? What’s to prevent a President from announcing a never-ending war (remember to give it a snappy name) and then using that war to justify overriding all the safeguards against the separation of powers? In fact, that’s exactly what you did, or what you tried to do. I count that as treason because it deliberately strikes at the very heart of our republic and seeks to establish a dictatorship. You basically tried to overthrow the United States, using terrorism as a pretext.
Among the most shameful aspects of the last eight years were the elections of 2000 and 2004. You cheated in order to win Florida in the 2000 election. Most people agree that this is true. And in a way, it seems par for the course for a politician to try to win by any means. But then in 2004, on Election Day, when there was no more campaigning, you suddenly took Air Force One to Columbus, Ohio, accompanied by Karl Rove, where you met with Kenneth Blackwell, Republican campaign manager and Secretary of State for Ohio. Why did you do that? That seems very unusual for the President to make a trip to Ohio on Election Day, when there was no more campaigning to be done.
There was voter suppression in Ohio. We know that. What is obvious to anyone with eyes to see is that there was also outright fraud in Ohio. You conspired with Karl Rove to steal an election. Ken Blackwell was involved in switching computer-tabulated votes in that state to your column. And as a President, not just a candidate, that constitutes a breathtaking violation of every citizen’s trust in their government. When we can’t believe that our votes are counted, when elections can be rigged by the government, that’s a sign that freedom has ended and we can give up hope.
So in your secret little mind you know that you really didn’t earn being President. Both elections were stolen. For you to live with it requires an astonishing level of mendacity, perhaps a very complicated system of rationalization and denial. It’s certainly delusional, and it means that you were always unfit to serve, from the very beginning until now.
I gather that you are interested in how history will judge your Presidency. This is how it will be. In the list of Presidents in the history books, your name will be the only one with an asterisk next to it. Next to the asterisk at the bottom of the page it will say “Illegitimate.” You will be the President that unlawfully usurped the White House, and was therefore, technically speaking, never President at all. These eight years will be like a gap in history, an unfortunate and tragic period in which a criminal acted as if he were the elected leader of the country. Your name will be only a blot on the history of the nation.
And if your Presidency is mentioned when kids are being taught social studies at school, you will be compared to Benedict Arnold. Both were traitors to the United States; both names will be forever associated with crime and treason. This is a bit unfair to Benedict Arnold, the teacher will point out, since Arnold was a real hero before he betrayed the country. But Bush was never anything, and moreover, he betrayed the country while serving as President, which is the greatest act of treason one could imagine.
That is your legacy. Now go away. We mourn all the people who died and suffered because of you, and the many who will continue to suffer in the future because of your betrayals. There was a sign in New Orleans after Katrina that said “All looters will be shot.” In the end, all you are is a looter. You looted whatever you could and then you whined that you were misunderstood. Count yourself lucky that you haven’t been shot, because that’s what you deserve. We don’t want to hear any more bullshit from you, Go to your fucking ranch with your thorazine-addled wife, get drunk, and leave us alone. You’ve done enough damage. Get lost.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
War Crimes
That is what is happening in Gaza. Any government that uses phosphorus on human beings has lost all legitimacy. (See here also.) I said it about the U.S. government in Fallujah. I now say it about the Israeli government in Gaza. The Israeli people need to overthrow the right-wing militaristic gang running their country. Anyone making excuses for this at this point in history is either a liar or seriously deluded.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
To My Readers (you happy few)
My posting has dwindled in frequency over the past year. I know it, and I wish it were different, but so it is. What I plan to do in '09 is post shorter thoughts, insights, etc., like most blogs do, instead of thinking that every piece has to be some well-crafted essay. It just doesn't work that way.
Having said that, I also need to say that witnessing Bush making the rounds lately, being interviewed, giving a press conference, and on Thursday is scheduled a "farewell address" for god's sake, I am mightily pissed, and am planning a final philippic against that blood-stained sociopath before he leaves. Silly me, I thought such a colossal failure might just slink away quietly, but the bastard won't shut up, trying to convince us that things weren't that bad, and that he actually accomplished things. There's a reason that three quarters of the country hates your guts, douchebag. Shut the fuck up and get out.
Having said that, I also need to say that witnessing Bush making the rounds lately, being interviewed, giving a press conference, and on Thursday is scheduled a "farewell address" for god's sake, I am mightily pissed, and am planning a final philippic against that blood-stained sociopath before he leaves. Silly me, I thought such a colossal failure might just slink away quietly, but the bastard won't shut up, trying to convince us that things weren't that bad, and that he actually accomplished things. There's a reason that three quarters of the country hates your guts, douchebag. Shut the fuck up and get out.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Superficial
As a film lover, and a critic, it has become impossible to ignore the ever-increasing presence of the comic book superhero on the screen. Of course this is not a new phenomenon, but it is obvious that in the last few years Hollywood has been making movies from the Marvel Comics catalogue at an unprecedented rate, along with other superhero and comic book characters.
I’m not going to take the position that comic books rot the minds of the young. I read them myself when I was a pre-teen, and occasionally even later. An industry expert might argue that the adolescent and “young adult” market is the primary targeted demographic of Hollywood, and that therefore it makes perfect sense that it would latch on to this genre, which also happens to involve a popular element from videogames: computer-generated imagery. In terms of cinema history, this is another example of the tension between film as commercial product and art form. Hollywood’s investment in a blockbuster strategy, in which huge sums are spent on a film in the hopes of massive profits, has meant that the creative aspect of cinema keeps getting pushed farther onto the margins. It also indicates a state of “mainstream” film craft that is increasingly out of touch with what I would call “literary” ideas. Industry filmmakers seem to live in a world without books—we witness instead a steady stream of TV show remakes and adaptations of comic books and graphic novels.
What I find more interesting is how film fans and reviewers manage to convince themselves that superheroes are invested with more significance or insight when they are adapted into films. The daily newspaper reviewers, and those for major magazines and media outlets (I don’t say critics, for that’s a different matter) are going to pay attention to these money-making films or else be out of a job. Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight has gotten this treatment, and plenty of rave reviews. The film struck me as a repellent mélange of sadism, sensory over-stimulation, and traditional simplistic action-movie tropes.
What I call sadism in the movies is the exploitation of the “thrill” of witnessing immoral, amoral, or extremely taboo behavior—in short, brutal violence for its own sake, for the sake of excitement in the spectator rather than as an integral element in a story idea or theme. It took off in the horror genre, and has since migrated to the action/adventure and suspense films. This aspect has come to overshadow narrative itself in many cases. The amped-up “aesthetic” of a film like The Dark Knight reminds me of stronger, more potent forms of drugs that are made to provide a greater “hit” for the addict who has already developed a tolerance for previous forms. In any case, fans and reviewers praise the way Nolan (and the late brilliant actor Heath Ledger) invests this superhero story with “darkness.” I would argue, however, that the nature of the superhero genre itself resists any deeper meanings, either associated with dark themes, or any meaningful themes at all.
Superhero comic books express an adolescent fantasy that is a reaction against fear and powerlessness. A child is confronted with control and interference from adults and from the powerful influence of society. This becomes something of a conflict when the child reaches pre-teen age, about eleven years old, sometimes earlier. We crave autonomy, but we’re not old enough to exercise it wisely. Adolescent rebellion is in large part a striving for separation from the controlling adult forces.
In literary fiction, and in all forms of art that are meaningful and of high quality, the desires of human beings are portrayed and expressed in the context of real life realities. A primary reality is pain and mortality—in other words, the natural limitations of any sentient being or in fact any existing thing or condition. I don’t restrict this to realism or naturalism in the arts. Symbolist or mythic art engages with reality. Lewis Carroll’s playful fantasy, and even the best science or fantasy fiction, engages the human condition in some way that is meaningful.
With modern popular genres, however, we observe a steady flattening effect, a reduction of human reality to much smaller dimensions. In simplest form, genre becomes an expression of wish-fulfillment fantasy. The romance novel or the paperback western don’t give us the unexpected—what the reader wants is the same thing over and over. The good guy beats the bad guy. The woman meets and marries the prince. And so forth. The pleasure of repetitive genre is very crude, but effective. It feels good to see good triumph over evil because it’s a fantasy. In reality, things aren’t that clear cut. Art forms that seek to express the truth that is not “clear cut” are often rejected by the genre lover. The common aversion to the “unhappy” ending, for instance, is really the genre lover objecting to the wish fulfillment being frustrated.
There is a distinct pleasure involved in the literary or non-genre arts. It is the perception of truth. An increase in awareness, which usually involves an increase in emotional presence, is pleasurable, but it is a pleasure that needs to be learned. It is more complex than genre pleasure, and needs more time to develop. The fact, however, is that both elements are often blended together in works of art. Some filmmakers, for example, have employed genre structure while also expressing truth—the results can be very effective. Wishes, desires, are an important part of human nature, so it’s only natural that they should take a prominent place in art.
The superhero tale is a genre in which wish-fulfillment no longer tries to conceal itself within physical reality. H.G. Wells’ Invisible Man had a mythic precursor: the folklore hero with the magic cloak that makes him invisible. But then there’s The Time Machine. It’s curious that no author in all of recorded history ever conceived of time travel before. The scientific and industrial revolutions solidified a world-view in which magic no longer had a place. There’s a sense in which science fiction explored the possibilities within that world-view. But there was also a strong impulse to defy this new regime of thought.
In a popular form of the superhero tale, the main character is a nebbish, a loser who is often bullied by stronger people. Somehow this loser gains supernatural powers. He puts on a costume and fights crime—a hero in disguise. Meanwhile he maintains his old identity as a loser, continuing to be slighted and ignored while secretly knowing that he is a super-powered hero. This isn’t the only form, though. Batman is a rich playboy in “real” life, and he has no supernatural powers, only far-advanced technology and fighting skills. Still, in most cases there’s a “secret” identity (the ordinary identity he was born with) and a separate superhero identity.
Why would this genre originally be aimed at pre-teens and adolescents? Because the peculiar frustration of this group is that they are prevented from exercising autonomy in the world even though they feel the need to express it somehow. And the forces arrayed against their autonomy are so powerful that there is no hope for the child to prevail. The fantasy, then, requires extraordinary powers, powers that defy physical reality, in order for the hero to triumph over the forces that oppose him. The ordinary frustrating life, the real life of the child, is preserved in the story by a secret identity, with the superhero identity expressing the wish for power. (With time, when the readers became thoroughly accustomed to the genre, it became impossible to abandon the “secret identity” altogether. The reader could still identify with the superhero without having to keep a foot in reality.)
I no longer read superhero comic books, for a few reasons. The main reason is that as an adult I have developed a need for the awareness of truth, an engagement with reality through the transforming power of art. I haven’t lost all my wish-fulfillment tendencies—they’ve simply taken a less central role. As a critic, I now view genre fiction and other pure forms of genre narrative, as less interesting, less vital, less important. Therefore I get accused of being a snob, which I’ve co-opted in a humorous way as part of my identity as a critic. Personally, I can’t do much about this. It’s as if I’ve dined regularly on filet mignon and can therefore no longer find the appetite for a Burger King “whopper,” to which the whopper lovers respond by calling me an elitist. But the truth is that I don’t consider the pleasures of genre to be worthless, and I even partake of them sometimes, though less often. I simply think that they are less meaningful and less important than art forms that engage with the truth of human life in an honest and uncompromising fashion, and that an art form that becomes dominated by genre to the point where reality becomes a dirty word is an art form that is in poor health. In terms of film, then, I don’t see anything wrong with superhero films per se. But when the film industry devotes a huge percentage of its resources to the creation of superhero films, I sense something wrong, in fact something dishonest.
I don’t refer to graphic novels in general, but only to the superhero narrative. The notion of the super-powered individual as hero is based, I believe, on a fantasy, and it’s a fantasy of the impossible. When this story emerges from its adolescent origins into the cultural mainstream, what it tells me is that frustration and powerlessness are expanding elements of our experience. The only form of wish-fulfillment that can remedy this is an impossible infusion of power. There is no balance between the autonomy and capabilities of the individual and the powers that restrict him. In social terms, the national security state and the advanced technical power of destruction achieved by the armed forces reduces the powers of the individual protagonist to insignificant proportions. Even the non-superpower action heroes, such as Jason Bourne in the Bourne movies, regularly perform and endure things that are beyond belief. The demands of wish-fulfillment, in short, become more and more exaggerated as our actual powerlessness increases.
The pretensions of a film like The Dark Knight are insurmountable, simply put, because the hero, wearing tights and a cape, is an adolescent fantasy that cannot be transformed into meaningful content since it defies the core human reality of death and limitation. For the same reason, the exaltation of violence in Hollywood cinema, not just in superhero or action films but in almost every genre, is meaningless because it is intended as an addictive hit for a powerless spectator rather than as a truth that actually engages us.
A vital art, a vital literature or cinema of the future, would need to explore the actual power and capabilities of human beings without giving way to nihilism and despair. The superhero narrative reduces all power to the physical—it’s the counterpart to the doctrine of pure force and domination that is destroying the world. Higher art forms present wisdom, intelligence, love, emotion, presence, connection, and engagement as forms of true power and meaning in the world. The hero himself, or herself, has long ago lost relevance to the degree that he or she has lost human fallibility, and with it human depth and complexity. The story that Joyce tried to tell in Ulysses, that the mythic hero was a lie that needed to be transcended in favor of the “ordinary” (yet marvelous) narrative of real life, has not yet been absorbed into mass culture. Perhaps it is an adjustment that must come from social conditions as a whole. When the fantasy bubble bursts, there is a chance for light to come in. One of the tasks of art nowadays is to burst the bubble. And it doesn’t take superpowers to do it—just a commitment to honesty.
I’m not going to take the position that comic books rot the minds of the young. I read them myself when I was a pre-teen, and occasionally even later. An industry expert might argue that the adolescent and “young adult” market is the primary targeted demographic of Hollywood, and that therefore it makes perfect sense that it would latch on to this genre, which also happens to involve a popular element from videogames: computer-generated imagery. In terms of cinema history, this is another example of the tension between film as commercial product and art form. Hollywood’s investment in a blockbuster strategy, in which huge sums are spent on a film in the hopes of massive profits, has meant that the creative aspect of cinema keeps getting pushed farther onto the margins. It also indicates a state of “mainstream” film craft that is increasingly out of touch with what I would call “literary” ideas. Industry filmmakers seem to live in a world without books—we witness instead a steady stream of TV show remakes and adaptations of comic books and graphic novels.
What I find more interesting is how film fans and reviewers manage to convince themselves that superheroes are invested with more significance or insight when they are adapted into films. The daily newspaper reviewers, and those for major magazines and media outlets (I don’t say critics, for that’s a different matter) are going to pay attention to these money-making films or else be out of a job. Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight has gotten this treatment, and plenty of rave reviews. The film struck me as a repellent mélange of sadism, sensory over-stimulation, and traditional simplistic action-movie tropes.
What I call sadism in the movies is the exploitation of the “thrill” of witnessing immoral, amoral, or extremely taboo behavior—in short, brutal violence for its own sake, for the sake of excitement in the spectator rather than as an integral element in a story idea or theme. It took off in the horror genre, and has since migrated to the action/adventure and suspense films. This aspect has come to overshadow narrative itself in many cases. The amped-up “aesthetic” of a film like The Dark Knight reminds me of stronger, more potent forms of drugs that are made to provide a greater “hit” for the addict who has already developed a tolerance for previous forms. In any case, fans and reviewers praise the way Nolan (and the late brilliant actor Heath Ledger) invests this superhero story with “darkness.” I would argue, however, that the nature of the superhero genre itself resists any deeper meanings, either associated with dark themes, or any meaningful themes at all.
Superhero comic books express an adolescent fantasy that is a reaction against fear and powerlessness. A child is confronted with control and interference from adults and from the powerful influence of society. This becomes something of a conflict when the child reaches pre-teen age, about eleven years old, sometimes earlier. We crave autonomy, but we’re not old enough to exercise it wisely. Adolescent rebellion is in large part a striving for separation from the controlling adult forces.
In literary fiction, and in all forms of art that are meaningful and of high quality, the desires of human beings are portrayed and expressed in the context of real life realities. A primary reality is pain and mortality—in other words, the natural limitations of any sentient being or in fact any existing thing or condition. I don’t restrict this to realism or naturalism in the arts. Symbolist or mythic art engages with reality. Lewis Carroll’s playful fantasy, and even the best science or fantasy fiction, engages the human condition in some way that is meaningful.
With modern popular genres, however, we observe a steady flattening effect, a reduction of human reality to much smaller dimensions. In simplest form, genre becomes an expression of wish-fulfillment fantasy. The romance novel or the paperback western don’t give us the unexpected—what the reader wants is the same thing over and over. The good guy beats the bad guy. The woman meets and marries the prince. And so forth. The pleasure of repetitive genre is very crude, but effective. It feels good to see good triumph over evil because it’s a fantasy. In reality, things aren’t that clear cut. Art forms that seek to express the truth that is not “clear cut” are often rejected by the genre lover. The common aversion to the “unhappy” ending, for instance, is really the genre lover objecting to the wish fulfillment being frustrated.
There is a distinct pleasure involved in the literary or non-genre arts. It is the perception of truth. An increase in awareness, which usually involves an increase in emotional presence, is pleasurable, but it is a pleasure that needs to be learned. It is more complex than genre pleasure, and needs more time to develop. The fact, however, is that both elements are often blended together in works of art. Some filmmakers, for example, have employed genre structure while also expressing truth—the results can be very effective. Wishes, desires, are an important part of human nature, so it’s only natural that they should take a prominent place in art.
The superhero tale is a genre in which wish-fulfillment no longer tries to conceal itself within physical reality. H.G. Wells’ Invisible Man had a mythic precursor: the folklore hero with the magic cloak that makes him invisible. But then there’s The Time Machine. It’s curious that no author in all of recorded history ever conceived of time travel before. The scientific and industrial revolutions solidified a world-view in which magic no longer had a place. There’s a sense in which science fiction explored the possibilities within that world-view. But there was also a strong impulse to defy this new regime of thought.
In a popular form of the superhero tale, the main character is a nebbish, a loser who is often bullied by stronger people. Somehow this loser gains supernatural powers. He puts on a costume and fights crime—a hero in disguise. Meanwhile he maintains his old identity as a loser, continuing to be slighted and ignored while secretly knowing that he is a super-powered hero. This isn’t the only form, though. Batman is a rich playboy in “real” life, and he has no supernatural powers, only far-advanced technology and fighting skills. Still, in most cases there’s a “secret” identity (the ordinary identity he was born with) and a separate superhero identity.
Why would this genre originally be aimed at pre-teens and adolescents? Because the peculiar frustration of this group is that they are prevented from exercising autonomy in the world even though they feel the need to express it somehow. And the forces arrayed against their autonomy are so powerful that there is no hope for the child to prevail. The fantasy, then, requires extraordinary powers, powers that defy physical reality, in order for the hero to triumph over the forces that oppose him. The ordinary frustrating life, the real life of the child, is preserved in the story by a secret identity, with the superhero identity expressing the wish for power. (With time, when the readers became thoroughly accustomed to the genre, it became impossible to abandon the “secret identity” altogether. The reader could still identify with the superhero without having to keep a foot in reality.)
I no longer read superhero comic books, for a few reasons. The main reason is that as an adult I have developed a need for the awareness of truth, an engagement with reality through the transforming power of art. I haven’t lost all my wish-fulfillment tendencies—they’ve simply taken a less central role. As a critic, I now view genre fiction and other pure forms of genre narrative, as less interesting, less vital, less important. Therefore I get accused of being a snob, which I’ve co-opted in a humorous way as part of my identity as a critic. Personally, I can’t do much about this. It’s as if I’ve dined regularly on filet mignon and can therefore no longer find the appetite for a Burger King “whopper,” to which the whopper lovers respond by calling me an elitist. But the truth is that I don’t consider the pleasures of genre to be worthless, and I even partake of them sometimes, though less often. I simply think that they are less meaningful and less important than art forms that engage with the truth of human life in an honest and uncompromising fashion, and that an art form that becomes dominated by genre to the point where reality becomes a dirty word is an art form that is in poor health. In terms of film, then, I don’t see anything wrong with superhero films per se. But when the film industry devotes a huge percentage of its resources to the creation of superhero films, I sense something wrong, in fact something dishonest.
I don’t refer to graphic novels in general, but only to the superhero narrative. The notion of the super-powered individual as hero is based, I believe, on a fantasy, and it’s a fantasy of the impossible. When this story emerges from its adolescent origins into the cultural mainstream, what it tells me is that frustration and powerlessness are expanding elements of our experience. The only form of wish-fulfillment that can remedy this is an impossible infusion of power. There is no balance between the autonomy and capabilities of the individual and the powers that restrict him. In social terms, the national security state and the advanced technical power of destruction achieved by the armed forces reduces the powers of the individual protagonist to insignificant proportions. Even the non-superpower action heroes, such as Jason Bourne in the Bourne movies, regularly perform and endure things that are beyond belief. The demands of wish-fulfillment, in short, become more and more exaggerated as our actual powerlessness increases.
The pretensions of a film like The Dark Knight are insurmountable, simply put, because the hero, wearing tights and a cape, is an adolescent fantasy that cannot be transformed into meaningful content since it defies the core human reality of death and limitation. For the same reason, the exaltation of violence in Hollywood cinema, not just in superhero or action films but in almost every genre, is meaningless because it is intended as an addictive hit for a powerless spectator rather than as a truth that actually engages us.
A vital art, a vital literature or cinema of the future, would need to explore the actual power and capabilities of human beings without giving way to nihilism and despair. The superhero narrative reduces all power to the physical—it’s the counterpart to the doctrine of pure force and domination that is destroying the world. Higher art forms present wisdom, intelligence, love, emotion, presence, connection, and engagement as forms of true power and meaning in the world. The hero himself, or herself, has long ago lost relevance to the degree that he or she has lost human fallibility, and with it human depth and complexity. The story that Joyce tried to tell in Ulysses, that the mythic hero was a lie that needed to be transcended in favor of the “ordinary” (yet marvelous) narrative of real life, has not yet been absorbed into mass culture. Perhaps it is an adjustment that must come from social conditions as a whole. When the fantasy bubble bursts, there is a chance for light to come in. One of the tasks of art nowadays is to burst the bubble. And it doesn’t take superpowers to do it—just a commitment to honesty.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Clean House
Chris Wallace asked Dick Cheney what his “highest moment” in the last eight years was, and he answered “9/11.”
You know, it’s become easy to just dismiss Cheney as a bizarre Darth Vader figure, but people should pay more attention to this answer. All the Bush years are succinctly contained in it. These ghouls, these spooks who somehow gained a grip on power in the United States, were overjoyed at the events of September 11, 2001. They saw it as a great opportunity to be exploited. I’ve said this before, and for those of us who are sane it still might sound extreme, but really, it’s right there in the record. These men exploited this horrific atrocity for their own benefit—and a majority of the American people let them. Like sheep, the majority went along with using a single disaster as an excuse for overturning two hundred years of democratic tradition. They bought into Cheney’s lie about “extraordinary” and “dangerous times” that required the exercise of unfettered executive power. And after five plus years of death in Afghanistan and Iraq, and corruption and criminal incompetence at home, it still took an economic collapse for the voters to turn against the monsters that usurped their country.
I won’t take the time to analyze Cheney’s interview further—he reiterated his dishonest arguments for torture and dictatorship. Dahlia Lithwick lays it out nicely for you at Slate (not exactly a radical left-wing site), and her main point is a most dispiriting one, i.e. Cheney’s views on everything have long been thoroughly discredited, yet there he remains, giving interviews and repeating the Orwellian lies that have surrounded us like a fog.
Let’s be absolutely clear. Richard Cheney should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity, and for treason. As detestable a human being as he is, revenge is really not the point. Justice requires that when an individual holding high office in this land violates his oath of office, causes the deaths of untold thousands, and threatens the very foundation of constitutional government, there should be an accounting. Not for his sake—he’s incapable of remorse or apparently even of the recognition of ethical values—but for our sake and the sake of the country. If there’s no accountability for criminal behavior on the part of the most powerful people in the nation, then the law itself becomes hypocritical when applied to lesser crimes. Silence equals approval. If Cheney walks away with no consequences, then it’s essentially a win for fascism because it opens the door to future abuse.
I do not propose submitting Cheney to beatings, sleep deprivation, water torture, sexual mutilation, or any of the other methods he so enthusiastically promoted to be inflicted on others. I do not propose that he be imprisoned indefinitely without trial, kept in isolation until he goes insane, and then tried in a military court where he is denied the basic rights and elements of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. I would not propose that for anyone, because I believe in the Constitution of the United States, even for those who try to destroy it. No, I would like to see Dick Cheney tried in a regular court of law, with full right to counsel, and all other rights that are supposed to be guaranteed to someone accused of a crime. That’s not too much to ask. The victims of 9/11, who have been so disgracefully used by this man and his accomplices, deserve that much. So do the victims in Iraq. We all deserve some closure. I don’t want to hear any nonsense about “putting the past behind us.” The past never gets behind us unless there is some resolution.
The political establishment is afraid of bringing the Bush-Cheney crimes to account because they fear “instability.” The two parties are more interested in prestige than justice, so they maintain the false respectability of the status quo rather than bringing criminals in high places to justice. There is probably also a fear of being caught in the net—many members of Congress have been complicit in one way or another in the blood and corruption. So the consensus seems to be that nothing will be done. There will be no trials for Cheney, or Stephen Hadley, or Doug Feith, or Donald Rumsfeld. There may even be pardons—pardons before anyone has even been charged, which is a travesty.
So much the worse for us. But even given this probability, we need all the facts to come out. We need to know exactly what these men said and did. The secrecy must stop, or else it will continue to poison our society. We can’t just put our trust in some new “good” guy like Obama and leave it at that. Even if Obama turns out to be a good president, accountability and justice are structural needs that can’t be met with rhetoric or personalities. In politics, as in life, as in recovery—you don’t grow unless you first clean house.
You know, it’s become easy to just dismiss Cheney as a bizarre Darth Vader figure, but people should pay more attention to this answer. All the Bush years are succinctly contained in it. These ghouls, these spooks who somehow gained a grip on power in the United States, were overjoyed at the events of September 11, 2001. They saw it as a great opportunity to be exploited. I’ve said this before, and for those of us who are sane it still might sound extreme, but really, it’s right there in the record. These men exploited this horrific atrocity for their own benefit—and a majority of the American people let them. Like sheep, the majority went along with using a single disaster as an excuse for overturning two hundred years of democratic tradition. They bought into Cheney’s lie about “extraordinary” and “dangerous times” that required the exercise of unfettered executive power. And after five plus years of death in Afghanistan and Iraq, and corruption and criminal incompetence at home, it still took an economic collapse for the voters to turn against the monsters that usurped their country.
I won’t take the time to analyze Cheney’s interview further—he reiterated his dishonest arguments for torture and dictatorship. Dahlia Lithwick lays it out nicely for you at Slate (not exactly a radical left-wing site), and her main point is a most dispiriting one, i.e. Cheney’s views on everything have long been thoroughly discredited, yet there he remains, giving interviews and repeating the Orwellian lies that have surrounded us like a fog.
Let’s be absolutely clear. Richard Cheney should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity, and for treason. As detestable a human being as he is, revenge is really not the point. Justice requires that when an individual holding high office in this land violates his oath of office, causes the deaths of untold thousands, and threatens the very foundation of constitutional government, there should be an accounting. Not for his sake—he’s incapable of remorse or apparently even of the recognition of ethical values—but for our sake and the sake of the country. If there’s no accountability for criminal behavior on the part of the most powerful people in the nation, then the law itself becomes hypocritical when applied to lesser crimes. Silence equals approval. If Cheney walks away with no consequences, then it’s essentially a win for fascism because it opens the door to future abuse.
I do not propose submitting Cheney to beatings, sleep deprivation, water torture, sexual mutilation, or any of the other methods he so enthusiastically promoted to be inflicted on others. I do not propose that he be imprisoned indefinitely without trial, kept in isolation until he goes insane, and then tried in a military court where he is denied the basic rights and elements of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. I would not propose that for anyone, because I believe in the Constitution of the United States, even for those who try to destroy it. No, I would like to see Dick Cheney tried in a regular court of law, with full right to counsel, and all other rights that are supposed to be guaranteed to someone accused of a crime. That’s not too much to ask. The victims of 9/11, who have been so disgracefully used by this man and his accomplices, deserve that much. So do the victims in Iraq. We all deserve some closure. I don’t want to hear any nonsense about “putting the past behind us.” The past never gets behind us unless there is some resolution.
The political establishment is afraid of bringing the Bush-Cheney crimes to account because they fear “instability.” The two parties are more interested in prestige than justice, so they maintain the false respectability of the status quo rather than bringing criminals in high places to justice. There is probably also a fear of being caught in the net—many members of Congress have been complicit in one way or another in the blood and corruption. So the consensus seems to be that nothing will be done. There will be no trials for Cheney, or Stephen Hadley, or Doug Feith, or Donald Rumsfeld. There may even be pardons—pardons before anyone has even been charged, which is a travesty.
So much the worse for us. But even given this probability, we need all the facts to come out. We need to know exactly what these men said and did. The secrecy must stop, or else it will continue to poison our society. We can’t just put our trust in some new “good” guy like Obama and leave it at that. Even if Obama turns out to be a good president, accountability and justice are structural needs that can’t be met with rhetoric or personalities. In politics, as in life, as in recovery—you don’t grow unless you first clean house.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
The Perfect President
Tolstoy wrote a tale called Esarhaddon, in which a king is in bed thinking about how he will order the torture and execution of his chief enemy the next day. He wakes up to discover that he is no longer himself, but his enemy, and as such he experiences the entire process by which he is captured, put in a cage, and then led to the stake to be executed. From this waking dream he also awakes, as the king again. Horrified by what he has learned, he frees his prisoner and gives up his crown.
Miracle stories like this express, among other things, a desire that the truth could be directly known and grasped by supernatural means, thus making the world a far better place than it is. Conscience has not proven to be a strong enough force to contend with the desire for gain. In the corporate world, for instance, money has lulled conscience safely to sleep.
I wish that the CEOs of Wal-Mart, Nike, Reebok, Guess? Jeans, JC Penney, and Bloomingdale’s (to mention only a few) would wake up some morning as a 12-year-old kid working in a foreign sweatshop, or a Mexican immigrant sewing clothes in L.A. for minimum wage and supporting two kids. Because I’m sure these guys don’t think about those people--to them, the workers are just a means towards the end of profit, and their struggles and suffering don’t matter.
And I wish that Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, William Kristol, Douglas Feith, Elliott Abrams, and the rest of those fine, upstanding men who got us into this marvelous war would wake up tomorrow as Iraqi civilians, who have seen family members killed, their society destroyed, their country soaked in blood, and for what? Because I’m also sure these guys don’t think about their victims. Everything is abstract to them--ordinary people are just units in a geopolitical game. They can write the suffering off as “collateral damage,” justified for what they consider a noble end, which happens to coincide with American hegemony, as well as their own power and influence.
I thought of Esarhaddon whenever I saw George W. Bush being interviewed in recent days. It’s obvious he’s on a last-minute mission to spruce up his image, trying to appear like a decent, thoughtful person. It’s impossible, of course. Whether he’s saying, “Obviously I don't like the idea of people losing jobs, or being worried about their 401(k)s” (a far cry from admitting any responsibility for these developments) or naming his biggest regret as “the intelligence failure in Iraq” (when in fact he deliberately bent the intelligence to fit the policy of invasion, as we all should know by now), there’s simply no room for real honesty when you’re sitting on a mountain of lies.
I never dreamed I would be saying this, but there’s something absolutely perfect about George W. Bush as a representative both of U.S. power and the conservative political class. He is the end product of years of political image-making: the elevation of the talking point and the attack narrative over actual discussion, the reduction of ideology to its most basic (and stupid) elements, the shallow pseudo-patriotic rhetoric of Reaganist “pride” in country, the equation of naked greed with “principles.” Behold the apotheosis, the final incarnation of the right-wing ideal, summed up with an almost classical concision in one man, one “decider.” Leaving aside the policies (wrong and destructive 100% of the time, which I would have thought a statistical impossibility), and the corruption (as close to total as we can expect to see in American history), let us look at the man himself. The overriding characteristic is self-centeredness; indeed, narcissism of the most degraded variety. With an utter lack of self-knowledge, and certainly no awareness of an actual moral dimension to human life, Bush is all about himself--his own paltry emotions and thoughts, his image, his role, his “legacy.”
This would be a terrible shortcoming in a talented person, but in Bush’s case we see self-regard combined with a personality so mediocre, so lacking in distinction, that it should make anyone who has learned to read above the 6th grade level experience a cold shudder of fear. This is the end result, embodied in a kind of historical logic that seems eerie in its perfection, of the phony “conservative” movement--a complete cipher, an empty man, a man with no insides, no conscience, no reflection, no shadow. A grinning, head-bobbing, self-regarding fool, who doesn’t even know that he’s done incalculable harm, but thinks that the harm somehow just happened independently of him, and is therefore incapable of true remorse. If Bush woke up, like Tolstoy’s character, as a tortured Guantanamo prisoner, he would lack the ability even then to make the connection. The level of selfishness achieved here, and symbolized for all of us, is itself the true engine of capitalism, the real power behind American imperial ambition. The world’s great superpower is a feckless frat boy trying to impress his drunken friends—oh boy, I get to be the President! The specialness of Bush is not that he is different from other figures in the political establishment, but that he is such a perfect symbol of their secret aims and desires.
You see, the CEOs of Wal-Mart, Nike, and the rest--and the pack of neocons too--are no doubt family men who love their kids, and their pets too. I don’t believe in the Illuminati or any of that diabolical crap. The hidden meaning of Arendt’s “banality of evil” is that banality is the purest (and stupidest, and dullest) avenue of harm in this world. Self-interest, so called, is the most banal motive of all, and the most universal. Only rarely do we see this banality portrayed with such impeccable accuracy by the (harrumph!) “leader of the free world” as we have since 2001. Most of the time I would get so angry watching Bush that I’d switch the channel before the man had said more than two or three sentences. As it turns out, however, there was something to be learned (yet at such cost!).
It is not enough to imagine ourselves in someone else’s shoes. Or to be more accurate, it may be sufficient for those who have taken care to develop a strong conscience, but not for the rest. Why? Because power in the modern age, the age of arrogance, the tragic age when entire peoples can be vaporized with the flip of a switch--power has become synonymous with a failure of imagination.
We are all the same person, not in imagination alone, but in reality. This is the fact, a spiritual fact (dare I say a religious fact), the heaven, the nirvana, the whatever you want to call it, that we eventually confront with our own death but which we are called upon to experience today in order to truly know ourselves. As Tolstoy wrote: “You thought life dwelt in you alone, but I have drawn aside the veil of delusion, and you have seen that in doing evil to others you have done it to yourself as well. Life is one in everything, and within yourself you manifest but a portion of this one life. And only in that portion that is within you can you make life better or worse, magnify or diminish it. To destroy the life that dwells in others is not within your power. The life that was in those you have slain has not been destroyed: it has merely vanished from before your eyes. You thought to prolong your life and to shorten the lives of others, but you cannot do this. For life there is neither time nor space. The life of a moment and the life of thousands of years, your life and the lives of all creatures seen and unseen, is one. To destroy life, even to alter it, is impossible, for life alone exists. All else only seems to be.”
Miracle stories like this express, among other things, a desire that the truth could be directly known and grasped by supernatural means, thus making the world a far better place than it is. Conscience has not proven to be a strong enough force to contend with the desire for gain. In the corporate world, for instance, money has lulled conscience safely to sleep.
I wish that the CEOs of Wal-Mart, Nike, Reebok, Guess? Jeans, JC Penney, and Bloomingdale’s (to mention only a few) would wake up some morning as a 12-year-old kid working in a foreign sweatshop, or a Mexican immigrant sewing clothes in L.A. for minimum wage and supporting two kids. Because I’m sure these guys don’t think about those people--to them, the workers are just a means towards the end of profit, and their struggles and suffering don’t matter.
And I wish that Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, William Kristol, Douglas Feith, Elliott Abrams, and the rest of those fine, upstanding men who got us into this marvelous war would wake up tomorrow as Iraqi civilians, who have seen family members killed, their society destroyed, their country soaked in blood, and for what? Because I’m also sure these guys don’t think about their victims. Everything is abstract to them--ordinary people are just units in a geopolitical game. They can write the suffering off as “collateral damage,” justified for what they consider a noble end, which happens to coincide with American hegemony, as well as their own power and influence.
I thought of Esarhaddon whenever I saw George W. Bush being interviewed in recent days. It’s obvious he’s on a last-minute mission to spruce up his image, trying to appear like a decent, thoughtful person. It’s impossible, of course. Whether he’s saying, “Obviously I don't like the idea of people losing jobs, or being worried about their 401(k)s” (a far cry from admitting any responsibility for these developments) or naming his biggest regret as “the intelligence failure in Iraq” (when in fact he deliberately bent the intelligence to fit the policy of invasion, as we all should know by now), there’s simply no room for real honesty when you’re sitting on a mountain of lies.
I never dreamed I would be saying this, but there’s something absolutely perfect about George W. Bush as a representative both of U.S. power and the conservative political class. He is the end product of years of political image-making: the elevation of the talking point and the attack narrative over actual discussion, the reduction of ideology to its most basic (and stupid) elements, the shallow pseudo-patriotic rhetoric of Reaganist “pride” in country, the equation of naked greed with “principles.” Behold the apotheosis, the final incarnation of the right-wing ideal, summed up with an almost classical concision in one man, one “decider.” Leaving aside the policies (wrong and destructive 100% of the time, which I would have thought a statistical impossibility), and the corruption (as close to total as we can expect to see in American history), let us look at the man himself. The overriding characteristic is self-centeredness; indeed, narcissism of the most degraded variety. With an utter lack of self-knowledge, and certainly no awareness of an actual moral dimension to human life, Bush is all about himself--his own paltry emotions and thoughts, his image, his role, his “legacy.”
This would be a terrible shortcoming in a talented person, but in Bush’s case we see self-regard combined with a personality so mediocre, so lacking in distinction, that it should make anyone who has learned to read above the 6th grade level experience a cold shudder of fear. This is the end result, embodied in a kind of historical logic that seems eerie in its perfection, of the phony “conservative” movement--a complete cipher, an empty man, a man with no insides, no conscience, no reflection, no shadow. A grinning, head-bobbing, self-regarding fool, who doesn’t even know that he’s done incalculable harm, but thinks that the harm somehow just happened independently of him, and is therefore incapable of true remorse. If Bush woke up, like Tolstoy’s character, as a tortured Guantanamo prisoner, he would lack the ability even then to make the connection. The level of selfishness achieved here, and symbolized for all of us, is itself the true engine of capitalism, the real power behind American imperial ambition. The world’s great superpower is a feckless frat boy trying to impress his drunken friends—oh boy, I get to be the President! The specialness of Bush is not that he is different from other figures in the political establishment, but that he is such a perfect symbol of their secret aims and desires.
You see, the CEOs of Wal-Mart, Nike, and the rest--and the pack of neocons too--are no doubt family men who love their kids, and their pets too. I don’t believe in the Illuminati or any of that diabolical crap. The hidden meaning of Arendt’s “banality of evil” is that banality is the purest (and stupidest, and dullest) avenue of harm in this world. Self-interest, so called, is the most banal motive of all, and the most universal. Only rarely do we see this banality portrayed with such impeccable accuracy by the (harrumph!) “leader of the free world” as we have since 2001. Most of the time I would get so angry watching Bush that I’d switch the channel before the man had said more than two or three sentences. As it turns out, however, there was something to be learned (yet at such cost!).
It is not enough to imagine ourselves in someone else’s shoes. Or to be more accurate, it may be sufficient for those who have taken care to develop a strong conscience, but not for the rest. Why? Because power in the modern age, the age of arrogance, the tragic age when entire peoples can be vaporized with the flip of a switch--power has become synonymous with a failure of imagination.
We are all the same person, not in imagination alone, but in reality. This is the fact, a spiritual fact (dare I say a religious fact), the heaven, the nirvana, the whatever you want to call it, that we eventually confront with our own death but which we are called upon to experience today in order to truly know ourselves. As Tolstoy wrote: “You thought life dwelt in you alone, but I have drawn aside the veil of delusion, and you have seen that in doing evil to others you have done it to yourself as well. Life is one in everything, and within yourself you manifest but a portion of this one life. And only in that portion that is within you can you make life better or worse, magnify or diminish it. To destroy the life that dwells in others is not within your power. The life that was in those you have slain has not been destroyed: it has merely vanished from before your eyes. You thought to prolong your life and to shorten the lives of others, but you cannot do this. For life there is neither time nor space. The life of a moment and the life of thousands of years, your life and the lives of all creatures seen and unseen, is one. To destroy life, even to alter it, is impossible, for life alone exists. All else only seems to be.”
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Just a few questions
I watched the unveiling of Barack Obama’s “national security team,” and I have some questions for him.
Why is there not a single person on the team who opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003? I’m not suggesting that every person you appoint should have been right about the war, but I think it’s reasonable to expect at least one non-hawk appointee. One of your main selling points in the campaign was that you were opposed to this war. I don’t see why your appointments shouldn’t reflect that position in some way.
Why should we put up with having Bush appointee Robert Gates continue at Defense? As an old crony of Reagan spook William Casey, he was deeply involved in Iran-Contra and other dirty covert operations. Under Gates, the corruption and looting by war contractors in Iraq has not abated. He continues to push for massive budget increases at Defense, which does not represent any change from the past. And what about all the Rumsfeld parasites still on the Pentagon staff? Do they stay too? Really, sir, are we supposed to believe that you can’t find anyone better than this Bush toady to run Defense? If there was one chance to show courage and determination in appointments, it would be the Pentagon. All this signals is more of the same. I consider any person who worked for Bush-Cheney as already morally compromised.
Speaking of the Pentagon, will you take a good hard look at cutting the Defense budget? I realize that it’s considered politically dangerous to do so, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we happen to be having an economic meltdown after throwing away our resources on an illegal war. The war industry is in fact a drag on the economy—we can have a strong defense without having to waste billions of dollars making weapons manufacturers filthy rich. Moderate cuts in the Defense budget, including clamping down on the massive waste and fraud, will be needed if we’re going to restore the economy. If we can’t challenge this sacred cow, all the economic stimulus packages in the world aren’t going to do the trick.
What about Blackwater and the other private mercenary forces that are a stain on our honor and a threat to freedom? Will you please cancel their contracts?
Will there be accountability for the crimes and corrupt practices of KBR and other Iraq War contractors who have been looting billions from our Treasury?
You have nominated Janet Napolitano to run Homeland Security. This is a huge department created as part of Bush’s so-called “War on Terror.” Are you planning on continuing this so-called “war” which by definition can never end? Do you support the Patriot Act, one of the key items in Bush’s attack on the Bill of Rights? Do you plan to continue the illegal NSA spying “program” which uses the pretense of “terrorist surveillance” to violate the rights of our own citizens? Why is it called “Homeland Security” anyway? This is colonialist language that implies that we have other lands to administer—couldn’t we just call it domestic security?
You have said that you oppose the shameful use of torture by the Bush-Cheney regime, and that torture will end under your administration. Will you also end the so-called “renditions” in which human beings are kidnapped and sent to other countries who then torture these prisoners? Will you end secret prisons and indefinite detention without charges? Will you call for the repeal of the Military Commissions Act, which denies the age-old right of habeas corpus and violates the Bill of Rights?
Will there be any accountability for the crimes against humanity committed by the Bush administration? Will there be investigations into the unlawful actions of these people? If not, doesn’t that send the message that future Presidents can fail to uphold their oaths of office without fear of any consequences? How does sweeping these crimes under the rug help this country to change for the better?
I noticed that there was no nomination for CIA director. Does that mean that Bush appointee Michael Hayden, who has supported all the illegal and immoral foreign policy doctrines of the Bush-Cheney regime, is staying on at CIA? Isn’t it time for thorough reform of the CIA, NSA, and other intelligence agencies, especially following a period when a covert agent’s identity was exposed for political reasons by the administration, with minimal consequences?
I hear you talking about the danger of Iran getting a nuclear weapon. Could we also talk about the danger of any country at all having a nuclear weapon? How can we tell other countries not to get nukes when we’re not doing anything to reduce our own? Are we supposed to think that somehow we have the moral right and the inherent ability to wield these weapons, but other countries don’t? Will you lead by example and create a plan for gradual de-escalation of our nuclear arsenal, thereby lending legitimacy to our professed concerns about proliferation?
I haven’t heard you or Hillary Clinton questioning any of the policies of the Israeli government. Why should criticizing these policies be taboo and equated with hating Israel or being antisemitic? We can criticize the Mexican government’s policies without being accused of hating Mexicans, can’t we? Are you willing to admit that the Palestinians have rights too? This endless conflict in the West Bank and Gaza doesn’t make me feel safer—it makes everybody less safe, in fact. What do you plan to do to help Israel and the Palestinians make peace?
American politicians have been talking about supporting freedom and democracy for as long as I can remember. Why, then, do we pump arms and money into repressive authoritarian governments such as Egypt, Indonesia, or Uzbekistan? Will you end funding of such regimes?
We still hear anti-Cuban rhetoric every election cycle. Yet we continue to treat China, a totalitarian government, as a favored nation. Will you challenge China on its numerous violations of human rights? Will you open dialogue with Cuba?
The Bush administration expressed constant contempt for the United Nations. Will your administration recommit to the principles of international law and cooperation? Will you accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, or will you continue the Bush policy of defying the court, the Geneva Conventions, and other international standards of human rights and responsibilities?
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have contributed to the drastic poverty and debt of the developing world by using so-called “neoliberal” economic policies to maintain the power and privileges of rich countries and international corporations. Would you consider policies of debt forgiveness for the Third World in order to free poor countries from burdens unfairly placed on their people by corrupt leaders? Would you oppose the predatory economic strategies of international corporations that are impoverishing millions in Latin America, Africa, and Asia?
I expect the answers to a lot of these questions are going to be “no.” I know that there are great political constraints on a President in this country. Some are theorizing that you are bringing the establishment under your tent so that you can govern with less disruption than previous Democratic presidents. You’ve proven yourself to be a brilliant politician, which is a definite plus if you really want to create change. Nevertheless, I think these questions need to be asked, because change has to involve the challenging of preconceptions. And the level of disintegration we are witnessing today, socially and economically, makes this even more vital. You talk about unity, and I appreciate the sentiment, but you know, there are powerful groups who don’t want anything more than a cosmetic change, if that. And they aren’t giving up without a fight. If you just give in to these interests without confronting them, I think that there won’t be a significant enough change. This is true in every area of policy, but since I’m focusing on national security in this case, I will say that we need to make peace our priority, first and foremost. That means shifting away from our war-based social and economic structures. That means letting go of the illusion that we can be the world’s policeman. That means ending the madness of trying to exploit the world’s resources and people for the exclusive benefit of the U.S. and the international corporate classes. That means coming to our senses and recognizing our country as a republic, a nation among nations, and not an empire or superpower.
I wish you luck. I hope you prove yourself worthy of your promises.
Why is there not a single person on the team who opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003? I’m not suggesting that every person you appoint should have been right about the war, but I think it’s reasonable to expect at least one non-hawk appointee. One of your main selling points in the campaign was that you were opposed to this war. I don’t see why your appointments shouldn’t reflect that position in some way.
Why should we put up with having Bush appointee Robert Gates continue at Defense? As an old crony of Reagan spook William Casey, he was deeply involved in Iran-Contra and other dirty covert operations. Under Gates, the corruption and looting by war contractors in Iraq has not abated. He continues to push for massive budget increases at Defense, which does not represent any change from the past. And what about all the Rumsfeld parasites still on the Pentagon staff? Do they stay too? Really, sir, are we supposed to believe that you can’t find anyone better than this Bush toady to run Defense? If there was one chance to show courage and determination in appointments, it would be the Pentagon. All this signals is more of the same. I consider any person who worked for Bush-Cheney as already morally compromised.
Speaking of the Pentagon, will you take a good hard look at cutting the Defense budget? I realize that it’s considered politically dangerous to do so, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we happen to be having an economic meltdown after throwing away our resources on an illegal war. The war industry is in fact a drag on the economy—we can have a strong defense without having to waste billions of dollars making weapons manufacturers filthy rich. Moderate cuts in the Defense budget, including clamping down on the massive waste and fraud, will be needed if we’re going to restore the economy. If we can’t challenge this sacred cow, all the economic stimulus packages in the world aren’t going to do the trick.
What about Blackwater and the other private mercenary forces that are a stain on our honor and a threat to freedom? Will you please cancel their contracts?
Will there be accountability for the crimes and corrupt practices of KBR and other Iraq War contractors who have been looting billions from our Treasury?
You have nominated Janet Napolitano to run Homeland Security. This is a huge department created as part of Bush’s so-called “War on Terror.” Are you planning on continuing this so-called “war” which by definition can never end? Do you support the Patriot Act, one of the key items in Bush’s attack on the Bill of Rights? Do you plan to continue the illegal NSA spying “program” which uses the pretense of “terrorist surveillance” to violate the rights of our own citizens? Why is it called “Homeland Security” anyway? This is colonialist language that implies that we have other lands to administer—couldn’t we just call it domestic security?
You have said that you oppose the shameful use of torture by the Bush-Cheney regime, and that torture will end under your administration. Will you also end the so-called “renditions” in which human beings are kidnapped and sent to other countries who then torture these prisoners? Will you end secret prisons and indefinite detention without charges? Will you call for the repeal of the Military Commissions Act, which denies the age-old right of habeas corpus and violates the Bill of Rights?
Will there be any accountability for the crimes against humanity committed by the Bush administration? Will there be investigations into the unlawful actions of these people? If not, doesn’t that send the message that future Presidents can fail to uphold their oaths of office without fear of any consequences? How does sweeping these crimes under the rug help this country to change for the better?
I noticed that there was no nomination for CIA director. Does that mean that Bush appointee Michael Hayden, who has supported all the illegal and immoral foreign policy doctrines of the Bush-Cheney regime, is staying on at CIA? Isn’t it time for thorough reform of the CIA, NSA, and other intelligence agencies, especially following a period when a covert agent’s identity was exposed for political reasons by the administration, with minimal consequences?
I hear you talking about the danger of Iran getting a nuclear weapon. Could we also talk about the danger of any country at all having a nuclear weapon? How can we tell other countries not to get nukes when we’re not doing anything to reduce our own? Are we supposed to think that somehow we have the moral right and the inherent ability to wield these weapons, but other countries don’t? Will you lead by example and create a plan for gradual de-escalation of our nuclear arsenal, thereby lending legitimacy to our professed concerns about proliferation?
I haven’t heard you or Hillary Clinton questioning any of the policies of the Israeli government. Why should criticizing these policies be taboo and equated with hating Israel or being antisemitic? We can criticize the Mexican government’s policies without being accused of hating Mexicans, can’t we? Are you willing to admit that the Palestinians have rights too? This endless conflict in the West Bank and Gaza doesn’t make me feel safer—it makes everybody less safe, in fact. What do you plan to do to help Israel and the Palestinians make peace?
American politicians have been talking about supporting freedom and democracy for as long as I can remember. Why, then, do we pump arms and money into repressive authoritarian governments such as Egypt, Indonesia, or Uzbekistan? Will you end funding of such regimes?
We still hear anti-Cuban rhetoric every election cycle. Yet we continue to treat China, a totalitarian government, as a favored nation. Will you challenge China on its numerous violations of human rights? Will you open dialogue with Cuba?
The Bush administration expressed constant contempt for the United Nations. Will your administration recommit to the principles of international law and cooperation? Will you accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, or will you continue the Bush policy of defying the court, the Geneva Conventions, and other international standards of human rights and responsibilities?
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have contributed to the drastic poverty and debt of the developing world by using so-called “neoliberal” economic policies to maintain the power and privileges of rich countries and international corporations. Would you consider policies of debt forgiveness for the Third World in order to free poor countries from burdens unfairly placed on their people by corrupt leaders? Would you oppose the predatory economic strategies of international corporations that are impoverishing millions in Latin America, Africa, and Asia?
I expect the answers to a lot of these questions are going to be “no.” I know that there are great political constraints on a President in this country. Some are theorizing that you are bringing the establishment under your tent so that you can govern with less disruption than previous Democratic presidents. You’ve proven yourself to be a brilliant politician, which is a definite plus if you really want to create change. Nevertheless, I think these questions need to be asked, because change has to involve the challenging of preconceptions. And the level of disintegration we are witnessing today, socially and economically, makes this even more vital. You talk about unity, and I appreciate the sentiment, but you know, there are powerful groups who don’t want anything more than a cosmetic change, if that. And they aren’t giving up without a fight. If you just give in to these interests without confronting them, I think that there won’t be a significant enough change. This is true in every area of policy, but since I’m focusing on national security in this case, I will say that we need to make peace our priority, first and foremost. That means shifting away from our war-based social and economic structures. That means letting go of the illusion that we can be the world’s policeman. That means ending the madness of trying to exploit the world’s resources and people for the exclusive benefit of the U.S. and the international corporate classes. That means coming to our senses and recognizing our country as a republic, a nation among nations, and not an empire or superpower.
I wish you luck. I hope you prove yourself worthy of your promises.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
The Issue of Straight Marriage
Marriage is confusing. You can take it from me personally. But speaking solely in political terms, marriage is confusing because there are two kinds—civil and religious—that have always been confused together, if only because they’re both called “marriage.”
This constitutes one of the most basic mix-ups between church and state that we have. You go to court, you get a license, sometimes you get a blood test. (The clerk actually gave us a little bag of goodies that included detergent, god only knows why.) And then, if you choose, you can have a J.P. perform a marriage ceremony. Or you can have some licensed religious person perform it. In any case, to make the civil part legal, you sign the marriage license with witnesses, and the person who performed the ceremony signs it, and it’s done.
If you just do the religious part without getting the license signed, you’re not legally married, i.e. in terms of civil marriage.
Civil marriage confers various legal benefits involving taxation, inheritance, insurance, medical decisions, and other social advantages. An argument could actually be made that the state discriminates against single people by conferring special benefits on married couples. The idea is that marriage somehow advances the interests of the community or the nation. Traditionally that would mostly imply the advantage of producing children, although of course people who are not married do that regularly. Then we get into the whole notion of legitimate versus illegitimate children, which really ends up being about property and how it’s passed on. Marriage itself was primarily a way to perpetuate property through the male line, and it’s only been in relatively recent times that the question of love has entered into it.
Organized religion being one of the bulwarks of the social order, it stands to reason that civil marriage and religious marriage were traditionally one and the same. But the rise of the secular state has occasioned a gradual split between the two marriages.
I know I’m not the first person to point out that, considering marriage in the light of the First Amendment, it would make sense for the American government to get out of the business of marriage by calling it something different such as “civil union.” That’s what civil marriage already is, but by taking the word “marriage” out of it, we could continue to allow religious institutions to marry, or refuse to marry, whomever they wished, and at the same time allow consenting adult couples to enjoy the benefits of civil union.
Of course this isn’t going to happen, and I think if we consider that fact calmly and clearly we can understand why it is more difficult to protect equal rights for gay people in terms of marriage than such a logical solution would suggest.
The values and mores of a people change over time. It used to be considered fine and dandy to enslave human beings. That changed, and there was a considerable struggle involved in that change. In terms of marriage, we can learn from the Bible that patriarchal society used to believe that having multiple wives was okay. That changed too. The notion that is undergoing change at this point in time is that homosexuality is immoral. There is an ever-increasing number of people who no longer believe this. However, those who still believe it are tenaciously struggling to maintain this “moral” position as part of the laws. The so-called sodomy laws have been successfully challenged. Now the marriage laws are being challenged.
One of the more ironic, and even a bit amusing, aspects of the legal struggle is that gay marriage was never specifically outlawed, simply because the folks who made the laws never conceived of the possibility of gay marriage. The general social hostility against homosexuality precluded any such notion. Now that this hostility is being eroded, those who still believe that homosexuality is immoral want to “define” marriage as between one man and one woman.
In the recent controversy around California’s Proposition 8, a spokesman for the Mormons said that the church was not against gays, but only wanted to protect the institution of marriage. Other religious opponents of gay marriage have put forward this argument, and presented various imaginary disasters that will happen to society if we allow gays to marry. This argument is nothing more than a lie, or at best a piece of outrageous self-delusion. Without the belief that homosexuality is immoral, there is no reason to oppose gay marriage. Those who try to claim that they’re not anti-gay, and yet continue to oppose gay marriage, are simply afraid to state their true belief, which is becoming less popular, and thus less likely to succeed. (Of course there’s also the “love the sinner, hate the sin” canard, which only the most fervent state of denial could distinguish from the position of being “anti-gay.”)
In the case of politicians such as Obama who are, I suppose, not anti-gay, their refusal to support gay marriage is just another example of electoral timidity. They stick their fingers in the wind, and if there’s too much cross-current, they take the safe route, even if it means betraying principle. As soon as the zeitgeist shifts decisively, these same politicians will support gay marriage. This is another example of how change has to come from the bottom up.
Why authoritarian fundamentalists are so fixated on homosexuality, when they pass by the everyday immorality of their own death-dealing imperialist country, and even confer a Christ-like blessing on the nuclear bomb, is a subject for another essay, or probably an entire book. Religion as a guardian of the sexual order has become so dominant that it might escape the average person’s awareness that there used to be something more to “faith” than bickering about who gets to have sex with whom. In a world of suffering and calamity, it behooves us to ask if two loving people wanting to get married really hurt anyone, and if someone purporting to carry a gospel of “love” can reasonably dictate whom we should not love, especially when his own hatred and fear is on glorious display for all of us to see. But such is the predicament of religion in modern life. The least worthy representatives of faith seem to have a monopoly on all the megaphones.
Here is a question that I never hear asked. If gay marriage is outlawed, what of all the churches and other religious groups that have allowed it? For instance, I have attended gay weddings that were performed by liberal Methodist ministers. What of their religious freedom? Does it not violate their First Amendment rights to say that their weddings are invalid? It should go without saying that even if gay marriage is legalized, any church or other religious group has the right to refuse to marry someone within their tradition. So it really comes down to certain religionists wanting to dictate their own marriage (i.e. sexual) beliefs to everyone else.
The issue, it seems to me, is not gay marriage, but straight marriage. If the union of two consenting adults is conceived in the light of an ideological agenda that excludes certain people because of their sexuality, what does that say about the institution itself? I would argue that it diminishes it, and even threatens to invalidate it completely. The real immorality is to enjoy a benefit, civil or religious, that is inherently denied to others. It thereby becomes an unjust privilege rather than a blessing, and it loses whatever sacramental character it might have had. Allowing gays to marry, therefore, is necessary in order for marriage itself to be preserved.
This constitutes one of the most basic mix-ups between church and state that we have. You go to court, you get a license, sometimes you get a blood test. (The clerk actually gave us a little bag of goodies that included detergent, god only knows why.) And then, if you choose, you can have a J.P. perform a marriage ceremony. Or you can have some licensed religious person perform it. In any case, to make the civil part legal, you sign the marriage license with witnesses, and the person who performed the ceremony signs it, and it’s done.
If you just do the religious part without getting the license signed, you’re not legally married, i.e. in terms of civil marriage.
Civil marriage confers various legal benefits involving taxation, inheritance, insurance, medical decisions, and other social advantages. An argument could actually be made that the state discriminates against single people by conferring special benefits on married couples. The idea is that marriage somehow advances the interests of the community or the nation. Traditionally that would mostly imply the advantage of producing children, although of course people who are not married do that regularly. Then we get into the whole notion of legitimate versus illegitimate children, which really ends up being about property and how it’s passed on. Marriage itself was primarily a way to perpetuate property through the male line, and it’s only been in relatively recent times that the question of love has entered into it.
Organized religion being one of the bulwarks of the social order, it stands to reason that civil marriage and religious marriage were traditionally one and the same. But the rise of the secular state has occasioned a gradual split between the two marriages.
I know I’m not the first person to point out that, considering marriage in the light of the First Amendment, it would make sense for the American government to get out of the business of marriage by calling it something different such as “civil union.” That’s what civil marriage already is, but by taking the word “marriage” out of it, we could continue to allow religious institutions to marry, or refuse to marry, whomever they wished, and at the same time allow consenting adult couples to enjoy the benefits of civil union.
Of course this isn’t going to happen, and I think if we consider that fact calmly and clearly we can understand why it is more difficult to protect equal rights for gay people in terms of marriage than such a logical solution would suggest.
The values and mores of a people change over time. It used to be considered fine and dandy to enslave human beings. That changed, and there was a considerable struggle involved in that change. In terms of marriage, we can learn from the Bible that patriarchal society used to believe that having multiple wives was okay. That changed too. The notion that is undergoing change at this point in time is that homosexuality is immoral. There is an ever-increasing number of people who no longer believe this. However, those who still believe it are tenaciously struggling to maintain this “moral” position as part of the laws. The so-called sodomy laws have been successfully challenged. Now the marriage laws are being challenged.
One of the more ironic, and even a bit amusing, aspects of the legal struggle is that gay marriage was never specifically outlawed, simply because the folks who made the laws never conceived of the possibility of gay marriage. The general social hostility against homosexuality precluded any such notion. Now that this hostility is being eroded, those who still believe that homosexuality is immoral want to “define” marriage as between one man and one woman.
In the recent controversy around California’s Proposition 8, a spokesman for the Mormons said that the church was not against gays, but only wanted to protect the institution of marriage. Other religious opponents of gay marriage have put forward this argument, and presented various imaginary disasters that will happen to society if we allow gays to marry. This argument is nothing more than a lie, or at best a piece of outrageous self-delusion. Without the belief that homosexuality is immoral, there is no reason to oppose gay marriage. Those who try to claim that they’re not anti-gay, and yet continue to oppose gay marriage, are simply afraid to state their true belief, which is becoming less popular, and thus less likely to succeed. (Of course there’s also the “love the sinner, hate the sin” canard, which only the most fervent state of denial could distinguish from the position of being “anti-gay.”)
In the case of politicians such as Obama who are, I suppose, not anti-gay, their refusal to support gay marriage is just another example of electoral timidity. They stick their fingers in the wind, and if there’s too much cross-current, they take the safe route, even if it means betraying principle. As soon as the zeitgeist shifts decisively, these same politicians will support gay marriage. This is another example of how change has to come from the bottom up.
Why authoritarian fundamentalists are so fixated on homosexuality, when they pass by the everyday immorality of their own death-dealing imperialist country, and even confer a Christ-like blessing on the nuclear bomb, is a subject for another essay, or probably an entire book. Religion as a guardian of the sexual order has become so dominant that it might escape the average person’s awareness that there used to be something more to “faith” than bickering about who gets to have sex with whom. In a world of suffering and calamity, it behooves us to ask if two loving people wanting to get married really hurt anyone, and if someone purporting to carry a gospel of “love” can reasonably dictate whom we should not love, especially when his own hatred and fear is on glorious display for all of us to see. But such is the predicament of religion in modern life. The least worthy representatives of faith seem to have a monopoly on all the megaphones.
Here is a question that I never hear asked. If gay marriage is outlawed, what of all the churches and other religious groups that have allowed it? For instance, I have attended gay weddings that were performed by liberal Methodist ministers. What of their religious freedom? Does it not violate their First Amendment rights to say that their weddings are invalid? It should go without saying that even if gay marriage is legalized, any church or other religious group has the right to refuse to marry someone within their tradition. So it really comes down to certain religionists wanting to dictate their own marriage (i.e. sexual) beliefs to everyone else.
The issue, it seems to me, is not gay marriage, but straight marriage. If the union of two consenting adults is conceived in the light of an ideological agenda that excludes certain people because of their sexuality, what does that say about the institution itself? I would argue that it diminishes it, and even threatens to invalidate it completely. The real immorality is to enjoy a benefit, civil or religious, that is inherently denied to others. It thereby becomes an unjust privilege rather than a blessing, and it loses whatever sacramental character it might have had. Allowing gays to marry, therefore, is necessary in order for marriage itself to be preserved.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Real reasons to celebrate
The Obama victory is a cause for reflection, and there will be plenty of it in the two-month limbo which is the Bush regime’s last gasp. I here draw attention to one curious aspect of the post-election hubbub—some of the comments from left-wing and progressive voices that don’t buy into the “mainstream” political narrative. I count myself as one of those voices, albeit a small one, so what I have to say can be taken in a sense as self-criticism.
More than one writer has referred to Obama’s supporters as “cultists”—brain-dead enthusiasts with no understanding of their candidate’s adherence to establishment views on the economy and foreign policy. When it comes to policy, a critical stance is a very good thing. But when generalizations about the people who supported Obama are made with the language of contempt, I suspect that there’s something wrong going on psychologically.
Alex Jones went so far as to say that Obama would be much worse than Bush because the positive consensus, the perception of a mandate, would give Obama more power to take away our freedoms by consolidating a police state. By that logic, the less popular a President is, the better—which amounts to saying that the worse President is better because he will more effectively galvanize the opposition. This is a fallacy. The more the government is inclined to rightist, neo-fascist ideology, the less chance there is for successful progressive action. I know, I know: Alex Jones is not a good example of “leftist” thinking, but this particular idea is revealing of a certain very specific, and wrong-headed, way of looking at American politics.
One can become so obsessed with the criminal actions of the government, and the corruption of the political system, that one’s energy and motivation become trapped in what I call “enemy mind.” Instead of being fueled by a passionate love for human beings and their rights, we can end up stuck in a place of hatred for enemies. From years and years of being marginalized, progressives can become used to not making a difference—become inured, in other words, to an emotional condition of angry futility.
There were a lot of people who were celebrating after this election. I was one of them. Rather than look dismissively on this as the enthusiasm of “cultists,” couldn’t we just acknowledge the valid reasons for celebration? The media focused on the fact that Obama will be the first black President, and that’s certainly momentous. But I really don’t think that was the main reason people were celebrating. For me, there was a huge sense of relief that the right-wing Republican electoral strategy, personified in recent years by Karl Rove, had been defeated. There was relief that McCain, this year’s personification of rightist mendacity, had been denied, putting an end to the Bush-Cheney nightmare. Instead of an insane bloodthirsty criminal, we elected someone who can actually think, can conceive that there is such as thing as the public good and not just another opportunity for looting.
On the positive side, Obama signals that at least some effort will be made to deal with the tremendous problems that the world is facing. There is the possibility of actually getting out of Iraq. Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, or Souter can safely retire without being replaced by another right-wing fanatic. We have a chance to reverse the subversive actions against our Constitution represented by Bush regime torture, rendition, military tribunals, Patriot Act insanity, and Gitmo.
We need to celebrate progress once in awhile. This is part of the energy that keeps us going. Five years ago, I never would have thought that we could have come this far. People at the grassroots made this happen, and are making a lot of other things happen that are not as well known.
The least encouraging aspect of Obama is, of course, his adherence to the idea of empire. Making Rahm Emanuel his chief of staff is not a good sign when it comes to foreign policy. It signals more of the old “support the government of Israel at all costs” approach to the Middle East which is our perennial dead end. But to conclude that there won’t be any difference between Obama and Bush on foreign policy is to overstate the case. The so-called Bush doctrine could drive the world over a precipice—it is a doctrine of unabashed criminal aggression coupled with contempt for diplomacy. The traditional foreign policy establishment is still imperialist, but less dangerous. We’ve got a long way to go before the people of the United States force the state to relinquish empire. At least there’s more of a chance for survival under Obama.
Jim Hightower, speaking in my home town this summer, pointed out that FDR was not a leftist, and that his election was not in itself a transforming event. Instead, it was an opportunity for more progressives to get involved in the government and to influence American policy. The same is true in this case. The answer to the old question from the 1960s of whether one should work within “the system” or outside of it always seemed obvious to me—we should do both, of course. Change isn’t going to happen just because some writer for Counterpunch or The Nation maintained his ideological purity. It will happen gradually, in the messy and imperfect world of grassroots politics.
More than one writer has referred to Obama’s supporters as “cultists”—brain-dead enthusiasts with no understanding of their candidate’s adherence to establishment views on the economy and foreign policy. When it comes to policy, a critical stance is a very good thing. But when generalizations about the people who supported Obama are made with the language of contempt, I suspect that there’s something wrong going on psychologically.
Alex Jones went so far as to say that Obama would be much worse than Bush because the positive consensus, the perception of a mandate, would give Obama more power to take away our freedoms by consolidating a police state. By that logic, the less popular a President is, the better—which amounts to saying that the worse President is better because he will more effectively galvanize the opposition. This is a fallacy. The more the government is inclined to rightist, neo-fascist ideology, the less chance there is for successful progressive action. I know, I know: Alex Jones is not a good example of “leftist” thinking, but this particular idea is revealing of a certain very specific, and wrong-headed, way of looking at American politics.
One can become so obsessed with the criminal actions of the government, and the corruption of the political system, that one’s energy and motivation become trapped in what I call “enemy mind.” Instead of being fueled by a passionate love for human beings and their rights, we can end up stuck in a place of hatred for enemies. From years and years of being marginalized, progressives can become used to not making a difference—become inured, in other words, to an emotional condition of angry futility.
There were a lot of people who were celebrating after this election. I was one of them. Rather than look dismissively on this as the enthusiasm of “cultists,” couldn’t we just acknowledge the valid reasons for celebration? The media focused on the fact that Obama will be the first black President, and that’s certainly momentous. But I really don’t think that was the main reason people were celebrating. For me, there was a huge sense of relief that the right-wing Republican electoral strategy, personified in recent years by Karl Rove, had been defeated. There was relief that McCain, this year’s personification of rightist mendacity, had been denied, putting an end to the Bush-Cheney nightmare. Instead of an insane bloodthirsty criminal, we elected someone who can actually think, can conceive that there is such as thing as the public good and not just another opportunity for looting.
On the positive side, Obama signals that at least some effort will be made to deal with the tremendous problems that the world is facing. There is the possibility of actually getting out of Iraq. Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, or Souter can safely retire without being replaced by another right-wing fanatic. We have a chance to reverse the subversive actions against our Constitution represented by Bush regime torture, rendition, military tribunals, Patriot Act insanity, and Gitmo.
We need to celebrate progress once in awhile. This is part of the energy that keeps us going. Five years ago, I never would have thought that we could have come this far. People at the grassroots made this happen, and are making a lot of other things happen that are not as well known.
The least encouraging aspect of Obama is, of course, his adherence to the idea of empire. Making Rahm Emanuel his chief of staff is not a good sign when it comes to foreign policy. It signals more of the old “support the government of Israel at all costs” approach to the Middle East which is our perennial dead end. But to conclude that there won’t be any difference between Obama and Bush on foreign policy is to overstate the case. The so-called Bush doctrine could drive the world over a precipice—it is a doctrine of unabashed criminal aggression coupled with contempt for diplomacy. The traditional foreign policy establishment is still imperialist, but less dangerous. We’ve got a long way to go before the people of the United States force the state to relinquish empire. At least there’s more of a chance for survival under Obama.
Jim Hightower, speaking in my home town this summer, pointed out that FDR was not a leftist, and that his election was not in itself a transforming event. Instead, it was an opportunity for more progressives to get involved in the government and to influence American policy. The same is true in this case. The answer to the old question from the 1960s of whether one should work within “the system” or outside of it always seemed obvious to me—we should do both, of course. Change isn’t going to happen just because some writer for Counterpunch or The Nation maintained his ideological purity. It will happen gradually, in the messy and imperfect world of grassroots politics.
Monday, October 27, 2008
TV Wasteland
My blogging has been less frequent than usual because I’ve been recovering from carpal tunnel surgeries. Regrettably, I’ve been spending a lot of time watching the cable news networks. Hey, I already knew that TV news was a joke, but I never realized the full extent of the imbecility before.
For the most part, the news shows display a phony concern for “balance,” a stance which has become meaningless because it has been drained of content. What you get is a supposed conservative squaring off against a supposed liberal, both spouting talking points instead of imparting information, and both confined within the most narrow and superficial “centrist” mindset.
The presidential election is covered almost exclusively in the aspect of who’s winning, who’s behind, what the candidate that is behind will or must do to catch up, what the one that is ahead will or must do to stay ahead, what the latest speeches say about the campaign strategies, and endless variations on the “horse race” theme. Pity the viewer seeking insight into the actual problems and issues facing us, because the coverage only provides the most rudimentary information on that, mixed up with huge wads of “spin” that bear no relevance to any of the aforesaid actual problems and issues.
This is emphasized in the presidential race—but in fact, all the political coverage follows the same model. In addition, we have the usual tornadoes and hurricanes, along with lurid crimes and celebrity show biz stories. Last year, as you may recall, the death of a former Playboy bunny took up more air time than all the political news from Europe, Africa, and Asia combined. Somehow the purveyors of this rubbish can look themselves in the mirror and think that they represent a legitimate source of news.
One of the excuses we hear is that with 24 hours to fill up, the cable news networks have to rely on junk. But the truth is that they’re lazy, greedy, and dishonest.
To illustrate my point, take a look at Democracy Now, Amy Goodman’s daily news show that is broadcast on community radio and public access TV. Let me say first of all that I don’t idolize Amy Goodman. She has her blind spots, like any journalist. Nevertheless, Democracy Now is the most important non-corporate news program in the country.
Every day, on a shoestring budget, the show covers a wide range of issues, and features interviews and guests that you almost never see anywhere else. Goodman provides a voice for many authors, representatives of organizations, political figures, activists, and ordinary people. During the Democratic convention, for example, she would interview delegates and give them a good ten or fifteen minutes to talk, and you would learn more from these interviews about the feel of the convention than you would from an entire day of CNN. Her guests have the time to go into detail about events, issues, and problems, in a way that facilitates greater understanding.
Her approach, admittedly, is left-wing alternative, although occasionally someone from the right will agree to be on the show and be given the opportunity to explain his or her positions and debate others with different views. If the networks were to follow her methods, they might justifiably include many more establishment figures, as well as conservative, centrist, and liberal guests, etc. But the point is that there are a lot of people out there who could and should be allowed to speak and be heard.
What the networks give us instead are the same people over and over again, ad nauseam. The same political consultants and operatives, the same pundits, the same columnists, are repeatedly interviewed. In addition, CNN has a “team” of commentators who sit, inexplicably, at little computer screens, and offer up the same pablum week after week. On MSNBC, they have a resident right-wing crank, Pat Buchanan. On almost every show, the host will eventually say, “Now we’ll have a discussion with so-and-so and Pat Buchanan” and out trots the right-wing crank for the millionth time. On ABC’s Sunday show This Week we are privy to discussions between Cokie Roberts, George Will, and Sam Donaldson, all desiccated Beltway insiders who haven’t said anything new or insightful in twenty years or more.
I won’t even bother to describe Rupert Murdoch’s Jim Crow channel, which is a nothing but a wingnut propaganda organ that no one with self-respect should ever agree to appear on.
MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, it should be noted, is more informative than most cable network hosts, yet there is still a reliance on a small group of repeat guests. Rachel Maddow’s show demonstrates some progress in the right direction, but I think there are corporate restraints at work even in her case. I really didn’t encounter, for example, a strong, principled dissenting view on the bailout from watching Maddow’s show.
The excuse that there’s not enough funding for real reporting won’t cut it. Goodman’s show does real reporting every day, on a microscopic fragment of the networks’ budgets. I think the networks could easily fill 24 hours with a huge variety of voices and viewpoints, along with important news from around the world.
They don’t want to. And one doesn’t need to resort to notions of an overt conspiracy in order to understand the reason. Corporate news is set up to make money for advertisers, and to do that one simply needs to “entertain” the audience and stay within a certain narrow framework of information and opinion. The news that is conveyed on Democracy Now doesn’t fit within that framework because it reveals the darker aspects of governments and corporations. Someone working at CNN or MSNBC doesn’t need to be told not to go there—if you’ve climbed the career ladder high enough to get on these networks, you already know how to toe the line without it being explicitly drawn.
As far as PBS and NPR are concerned, they aim at a more educated audience, but their range is still circumscribed, and the right regularly threatens to cut off their funding when they don’t behave. The honorable exception: Bill Moyers, who was not so subtly squeezed off the air during the Bushevik heyday, and finally made a comeback when public opinion started to catch up with him. This brings up another important insight—the TV talking heads only come around when it’s perceived to be “safe” to do so. When Bush’s poll numbers went into the toilet, people like Chris Matthews finally started to voice skepticism. Even so, a comprehensive, critical understanding of the real damage done by the Bush regime is still lacking on network TV. It’s always framed in terms of popularity—Bush is unpopular now; the war is unpopular; etc. The alarming extent of the corruption and degradation of the country and the world is skimmed over. We now go on to the next distraction as if it had no connection to what went on before.
Can you think of an instance in which TV news has broken a national story within the last forty years? 60 Minutes might have done it once or twice—the rest is smoke and mirrors. Then there was the Dan Rather story on Bush’s desertion from the Texas National Guard—which turned out to be a Rovian trap, even though the facts were there. TV news doesn’t break stories. It doesn’t really practice journalism in the true sense. It just receives information from official sources and then chatters over it incessantly.
The newspapers are still the only news sources that actually “break” stories in the classic fashion, but that’s also become rare. Most of the revelations nowadays come from whistle blowers and other people and organizations outside of the media, such as Amnesty International, who courageously bring things to public attention that would otherwise be ignored by the press. We should be grateful for these truth tellers, but most of the time they are attacked and demonized.
There is one more saving grace I must mention—the internet. Oh, it’s not all that the starry-eyed proponents of online community would have us believe, but it’s made a difference. Before the web, the corporate media completely monopolized the political narrative. It was almost impossible for regular citizens to have their views heard in any meaningful way. The internet showed progressives that they were not alone, and that the dominant narrative was far to the right of where most people in the country really were. I’m sure the right-wing establishment hates the internet and wish it could be suppressed and controlled. The corporatists are still trying, and they mustn’t succeed. There’s a sense in which the Fourth Estate—the real one, not the faux press you see on TV—has taken refuge in the blogosphere.
We will need a free press in the struggles ahead. In the meantime, don’t watch too much television. It warps your mind.
For the most part, the news shows display a phony concern for “balance,” a stance which has become meaningless because it has been drained of content. What you get is a supposed conservative squaring off against a supposed liberal, both spouting talking points instead of imparting information, and both confined within the most narrow and superficial “centrist” mindset.
The presidential election is covered almost exclusively in the aspect of who’s winning, who’s behind, what the candidate that is behind will or must do to catch up, what the one that is ahead will or must do to stay ahead, what the latest speeches say about the campaign strategies, and endless variations on the “horse race” theme. Pity the viewer seeking insight into the actual problems and issues facing us, because the coverage only provides the most rudimentary information on that, mixed up with huge wads of “spin” that bear no relevance to any of the aforesaid actual problems and issues.
This is emphasized in the presidential race—but in fact, all the political coverage follows the same model. In addition, we have the usual tornadoes and hurricanes, along with lurid crimes and celebrity show biz stories. Last year, as you may recall, the death of a former Playboy bunny took up more air time than all the political news from Europe, Africa, and Asia combined. Somehow the purveyors of this rubbish can look themselves in the mirror and think that they represent a legitimate source of news.
One of the excuses we hear is that with 24 hours to fill up, the cable news networks have to rely on junk. But the truth is that they’re lazy, greedy, and dishonest.
To illustrate my point, take a look at Democracy Now, Amy Goodman’s daily news show that is broadcast on community radio and public access TV. Let me say first of all that I don’t idolize Amy Goodman. She has her blind spots, like any journalist. Nevertheless, Democracy Now is the most important non-corporate news program in the country.
Every day, on a shoestring budget, the show covers a wide range of issues, and features interviews and guests that you almost never see anywhere else. Goodman provides a voice for many authors, representatives of organizations, political figures, activists, and ordinary people. During the Democratic convention, for example, she would interview delegates and give them a good ten or fifteen minutes to talk, and you would learn more from these interviews about the feel of the convention than you would from an entire day of CNN. Her guests have the time to go into detail about events, issues, and problems, in a way that facilitates greater understanding.
Her approach, admittedly, is left-wing alternative, although occasionally someone from the right will agree to be on the show and be given the opportunity to explain his or her positions and debate others with different views. If the networks were to follow her methods, they might justifiably include many more establishment figures, as well as conservative, centrist, and liberal guests, etc. But the point is that there are a lot of people out there who could and should be allowed to speak and be heard.
What the networks give us instead are the same people over and over again, ad nauseam. The same political consultants and operatives, the same pundits, the same columnists, are repeatedly interviewed. In addition, CNN has a “team” of commentators who sit, inexplicably, at little computer screens, and offer up the same pablum week after week. On MSNBC, they have a resident right-wing crank, Pat Buchanan. On almost every show, the host will eventually say, “Now we’ll have a discussion with so-and-so and Pat Buchanan” and out trots the right-wing crank for the millionth time. On ABC’s Sunday show This Week we are privy to discussions between Cokie Roberts, George Will, and Sam Donaldson, all desiccated Beltway insiders who haven’t said anything new or insightful in twenty years or more.
I won’t even bother to describe Rupert Murdoch’s Jim Crow channel, which is a nothing but a wingnut propaganda organ that no one with self-respect should ever agree to appear on.
MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, it should be noted, is more informative than most cable network hosts, yet there is still a reliance on a small group of repeat guests. Rachel Maddow’s show demonstrates some progress in the right direction, but I think there are corporate restraints at work even in her case. I really didn’t encounter, for example, a strong, principled dissenting view on the bailout from watching Maddow’s show.
The excuse that there’s not enough funding for real reporting won’t cut it. Goodman’s show does real reporting every day, on a microscopic fragment of the networks’ budgets. I think the networks could easily fill 24 hours with a huge variety of voices and viewpoints, along with important news from around the world.
They don’t want to. And one doesn’t need to resort to notions of an overt conspiracy in order to understand the reason. Corporate news is set up to make money for advertisers, and to do that one simply needs to “entertain” the audience and stay within a certain narrow framework of information and opinion. The news that is conveyed on Democracy Now doesn’t fit within that framework because it reveals the darker aspects of governments and corporations. Someone working at CNN or MSNBC doesn’t need to be told not to go there—if you’ve climbed the career ladder high enough to get on these networks, you already know how to toe the line without it being explicitly drawn.
As far as PBS and NPR are concerned, they aim at a more educated audience, but their range is still circumscribed, and the right regularly threatens to cut off their funding when they don’t behave. The honorable exception: Bill Moyers, who was not so subtly squeezed off the air during the Bushevik heyday, and finally made a comeback when public opinion started to catch up with him. This brings up another important insight—the TV talking heads only come around when it’s perceived to be “safe” to do so. When Bush’s poll numbers went into the toilet, people like Chris Matthews finally started to voice skepticism. Even so, a comprehensive, critical understanding of the real damage done by the Bush regime is still lacking on network TV. It’s always framed in terms of popularity—Bush is unpopular now; the war is unpopular; etc. The alarming extent of the corruption and degradation of the country and the world is skimmed over. We now go on to the next distraction as if it had no connection to what went on before.
Can you think of an instance in which TV news has broken a national story within the last forty years? 60 Minutes might have done it once or twice—the rest is smoke and mirrors. Then there was the Dan Rather story on Bush’s desertion from the Texas National Guard—which turned out to be a Rovian trap, even though the facts were there. TV news doesn’t break stories. It doesn’t really practice journalism in the true sense. It just receives information from official sources and then chatters over it incessantly.
The newspapers are still the only news sources that actually “break” stories in the classic fashion, but that’s also become rare. Most of the revelations nowadays come from whistle blowers and other people and organizations outside of the media, such as Amnesty International, who courageously bring things to public attention that would otherwise be ignored by the press. We should be grateful for these truth tellers, but most of the time they are attacked and demonized.
There is one more saving grace I must mention—the internet. Oh, it’s not all that the starry-eyed proponents of online community would have us believe, but it’s made a difference. Before the web, the corporate media completely monopolized the political narrative. It was almost impossible for regular citizens to have their views heard in any meaningful way. The internet showed progressives that they were not alone, and that the dominant narrative was far to the right of where most people in the country really were. I’m sure the right-wing establishment hates the internet and wish it could be suppressed and controlled. The corporatists are still trying, and they mustn’t succeed. There’s a sense in which the Fourth Estate—the real one, not the faux press you see on TV—has taken refuge in the blogosphere.
We will need a free press in the struggles ahead. In the meantime, don’t watch too much television. It warps your mind.
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