The Endless War

I’m a recovering drug addict. I’ve been in recovery for almost 23 years, and that includes alcohol, of course. A lot of times when I tell people this, they conclude that I must be “against” drugs. But that’s a mistake. One of the things I’ve learned about addiction is that it’s something inside of me—it’s not in the substance. In fact, my addictive nature was manifest before I ever used a drug, and it can manifest itself in behaviors as well, such as sex, eating, spending, or even work. When someone says to me, “So, you don’t like to drink?” I say, “No, I like it too much.” That’s the difference.

I liked getting high too much. It ended up consuming my time, my thoughts, my life. My drug of choice was pot, and that also surprises people. “What, just pot?” For me, it wasn’t “just” pot, it was what I wanted all the time. But the particular drug an addict prefers really isn’t the point. The problem is that the addict can’t moderate, can’t stop, so it becomes an obsession and a compulsion.

I’m explaining all this as a preliminary to my thoughts on America’s perennial anti-drug crusade. Even though I don’t use drugs myself, I know that this so-called “war” on drugs is a pernicious and destructive lie. Most importantly from my perspective, it criminalizes addiction. Instead of making a commitment to treatment and recovery, politicians have cynically promoted punishment as a solution, in order to make themselves look “tough” on crime, and thus win votes from the large idiot demographic. Stigmatized and forced to conceal their drug use, addicts end up filling the prisons and becoming further criminalized, rather than getting help.

Marijuana is a special case, and a very curious one indeed. In terms of social impact, it causes fewer problems than any recreational drug. Yet the government spends billions of dollars confiscating weed and busting people who sell and use it. About half of all the drug arrests in the U.S. are related to pot. The Federal government acts as if pot was more of a threat than cocaine or heroin. Yet the vast majority of drug-related crimes of violence or against property are committed by the users of either the so-called “harder” drugs, or alcohol, which is of course legal. Put succinctly, the official drug policy of the United States is to stick its head up its ass and keep it there forever.

My theory is that marijuana is illegal because of culture. This is why the law seems so irrational—it has nothing to do with a tangible threat to public safety, but only with a perceived threat to a cultural norm. Alcohol is a good drug for war-mongers: it loosens your inhibitions and makes you stupid. A drunk person is more apt to be violent and aggressive, tendencies that are sanctioned and reinforced in the culture. A drug that mellows you out, makes you feel peaceful, and stimulates thought and imagination, represents something alien to the cultural norm. Despite all the hedonistic hoopla, American culture is still anti-pleasure. That is, the ideas about “pleasure” that we are normally presented with are guilt-ridden, materialistic, and stupid.

In addition, the popular identification of cannabis with the 1960s, rebellion, and youth culture, has made it permanently hateful in the eyes of the reactionaries who own and run the country, even though its actual use in the population has gone beyond those stereotypes long ago. So we continue to be told that pot is bad, bad, bad, while we’re inundated with commercial messages telling us to drink, drink, drink.

Legalization of marijuana is a necessity if we’re going to shift from a prison society to a society that values education. Ultimately, some kind of legalization or decriminalization of all drugs will be necessary. The current situation only strengthens organized crime, and always will. The War on Drugs was in fact already a colossal failure twenty-five years ago. So why are they still waging it?

I think it’s obvious that many have a vested interest in keeping this phony drug war going. The Drug Enforcement Administration needs the war so as to keep getting funded and provide more and more jobs to its legions of employees. The more busts they make, the better they look and the more funding they get. If drug arrests were to go down or go away, they’d all be out of a job. The same goes for all the state and local drug police and their operations. Then there’s the prison industry. Since Ronnie Reagan came in and established toughness as our primary political narcotic, incarceration rates have kept climbing year after year. The number of prisons increased tenfold. If the incarceration rates were to drop because the drug war ended, what would happen to all those prison contractors, planners, wardens, guards, and all the other prison employees and their families? The state and federal corrections institutions don’t really want an end to the war, do they? It’s in their interest to have as many drug convictions as possible, year after year, into perpetuity.

The drug war also serves another important function: it helps maintain institutional racism. Every statistical study for the past several decades has confirmed the basic fact that African Americans represent a disproportionate percentage of drug arrests, convictions, and subsequent incarcerations. Poverty makes the use and sale of “harder” drugs more likely, which leads to more arrests, which perpetuates poverty. It’s a perfect little trap. The exploitation has sometimes been quite conscious and deliberate: the CIA allowed the infusion of drugs into black communities as part of their international covert operations, and this was documented by reporter Gary Webb, who was attacked and vilified for breaking the story.

If you told a group of people nowadays that the CIA has been involved in drug trafficking, they would probably nod their heads in agreement. It’s been common knowledge since 1972, when the CIA’s involvement in the Southeast Asian heroin trade was exposed by Alfred McCoy. Now, of course, we’re in Afghanistan, and there have been bumper crops in opium there since the invasion. Michael Ruppert claims that drug money has been keeping the American economy afloat for many years. Whenever Wall Street hits a rough spot, a bunch of new cash eventually flows mysteriously into the market to right the ship again. In other words, the spooks dip into their huge funds of drug money and pump it into stocks. Ruppert’s ideas can be far-fetched at times, yet the close relationships between CIA veterans and Wall Street movers and shakers are undeniable.

So when you consider all this—and I can only skim the surface of this murky swamp in the limited time I have—it becomes clear that the War on Drugs is nothing more than a way to prop up a corrupt establishment. Law enforcement and the prison industry are kept pumped up, a lot of people (including large numbers of blacks and other minorities) get put away and disenfranchised, while the bosses can make huge sums on the drug traffic themselves. It serves them well, but it’s very bad for the rest of us. Our education and health care go down the toilet while our money goes to cops, prisons, weapons, and war. The truth is that ending this war involves ending all the others too, and making a transition to a sane and peaceful society.

The Question Ordinary

I ran across the following tidbit in a footnote from Wyndham Lewis’ 1928 biography of the 15th century poet François Villon:

“The Question Ordinary, or Question by Water, was applied as part of the routine procedure of Justice to recalcitrant or to taciturn prisoners. The stubborn one was bound, hand and foot, to staples in such a manner as to stretch his body as far as possible: a rack or trestle two feet high was placed under him, supporting his middle. The Questioner, with his assistant, then proceeded, the one to hold the prisoner’s nose and thus compel him to swallow, the other to place over his mouth a horn funnel. Into this water was poured…about nine litres altogether, by degrees, sometimes through a linen cloth. The patient was then unbound and allowed to recuperate before the treatment was (if adjudged necessary) repeated.”

You may recognize this time-honored method, with only slight alterations, as “waterboarding.” Villon himself suffered this torture in the dungeons of Meun, in 1461, as he attests more than once in his verse. It was common not only during the infamous Spanish Inquisition, as has been pointed out before in what remains of the free press, but as we see here, in medieval Europe in general. What’s interesting in this passage is its air of antiquarian curiosity. A great deal had changed between 1461 and 1928, and involved in that change was a general recognition that torture was an uncivilized relic of ignorant times, made repugnant to modern sensibilities because of centuries of gradual moral and intellectual progress.

It’s rather too easy to be smug about the past, because we tend to take our own ethical standpoints for granted, forgetting that they are the product of long struggles. Torture did not originate in the Middle Ages. We can trace it back to the earliest civilizations. The Romans, who exceeded all previous cultures in cruelty, codified it to such a degree that one could argue a traumatic effect on Western history. They invented, for instance, that grotesque form of the death penalty known as crucifixion, used on untold thousands of people as punishment for crimes ranging from petty theft to rebellion. That this symbol of viciousness became the emblem of the new triumphant religion of Christianity is more significant and more troubling than most of us would wish to admit.

In the case of the “Question Ordinary,” the ostensible reason for the practice is to make someone talk. Those who have taken the time to study torture have explained at length how naïve this reasoning really is. A guilty person may or may not tell the truth under torture. It depends on such factors as whether the truth will actually be perceived as such by the torturer, the preconceptions of the torturer as to what the truth is or should be, and of course how determined the tortured person is to resist the pressure. An innocent person, on the other hand, has no options whatsoever since the torturer assumes his guilt: he must simply figure out what the torturer wants to hear, and tell him that. That no innocent persons are tortured would be the most naïve idea of all, and this is of course the lie that the torturers and their justifiers continually tell us.

But beyond all these considerations, it seems to me that the crucial element here is a lack of any feeling of ethical conflict when inflicting extreme pain on someone perceived as an enemy. If this were an unusual situation that was only applied in extreme cases where vital information was needed, the practice wouldn’t have been so widespread. The fact is that torture expresses rage, hatred, and a thirst for revenge. You can dress this up with ideology, or with seemingly calm rationales based on notions of justice or expedience, but when it comes to the actual practice, the experience of torture, the unavoidable truth emerges. It is an expression of the savage, hateful side of human nature. Yet this fact is precisely what is being repeatedly suppressed and denied by our government, because it represents a regression to a previous form of civilization, one that we have supposedly grown past.

The core political principle of civilization was domination by force. It wasn’t the only principle, but it was the one constant element that authority always fell back on, so to speak. This became increasingly so in the ancient world, as states sought to create empires. In later stages it was thought that the severity of punishment acted as a deterrent to other criminals, although increasingly the opposite effect was achieved. Brutality often created unrest and rebellion rather than docility. Deterrence was only a rationale then, as it is now. The real point was inflicting pain on the criminal in revenge for the pain he or she inflicted on the victim of crime, or on authority or society.

I don’t know anyone who hasn’t fantasized about getting “even” with someone who has done him harm—human beings want to hurt back when they are hurt. This is really the root of cruelty as a method of official “justice.” In the Christian and Muslim conceptions of hell, this impulse was translated into a cosmological doctrine. Dante’s Inferno, for instance, catalogues the torture of sinners after death in symbolic fashion. The guilty suffer unending pain and punishment. When torture is conceived as an eternal condition, the human desire for revenge inflates punishment to a level that becomes self-contradictory: unlimited cruelty visited on limited human beings can never be truly just, no matter what they may have been guilty of.

So what happened since 1461? There was a little thing known as The Enlightenment. Advanced thinkers and philosophers started to recognize an inherent dignity of the individual—not a mere means to an end, but an end in him or herself. From this came the idea of human rights, and not so coincidentally, a searching critique of theocracy and systems of authoritarian domination. Certain practices were unjust in themselves, regardless of the innocence or guilt of an individual, and prominent among these practices was torture. Justice was not the same as punishment; its purpose was not revenge, but the impartial good of society, untainted by cruelty or other savage impulses. Cruelty and hate came to be thought of as human flaws and shortcomings, from which civilized government should guard itself.

These ideas were central to the founding of the United States. In practice, of course, American society was plagued with cruelty and injustice, especially regarding African slavery and the American Indians. But this doesn’t change the fact that in principle the founders were intent on establishing a rule of law that respected the rights and dignity of the individual. Thus in the Bill of Rights we have provisions against imprisonment without charge or trial, warrantless searches, and “cruel and unusual” punishment, among other things. If we could just trust in the purity and good intentions of government authorities, we wouldn’t need any of this. But the thinkers of the Enlightenment recognized that the misuse of power was as old as civilization, and that therefore protections had to be ensured by law and not by mere trust.

Authoritarians don’t get this. They have great difficulty understanding why a guilty person should be protected from anything. They don’t see a connection between the plight of a guilty person and themselves—that the treatment of one would have an impact on the treatment of the other, or on the well-being of society in general. The torturer Bush looks at a phrase like “cruel and unusual” and says, “That’s too vague.” To his mind, cruelty is only something you could do to someone you care about—as far as guilty people like terrorists are concerned, no such category exists.

It took a lot of hard work, with a lot of backpedaling and mistakes and open conflict, to get to a point where torture is considered immoral. Yet there are entire segments of the population for whom the Enlightenment never happened. It’s as if previous strata of human civilization always co-exist with the later additions. Progress means that public life is generally in line with the latest developments, which are really developments in education and consciousness. Regression means that public life has reverted to outmoded previous stages of development.

When the morality of torture becomes a contested issue in public life, it’s a sign of regression. For one thing, it means that education is failing—ignorance has come more to the forefront. If we’re really not sure about the “Question Ordinary,” then where does this movement end? We could amuse ourselves by imagining a return to witch-burning, public flogging, and the use of leeches by doctors. But to see the serious consequences we only have to look at the history of the 20th century, in Germany and Russia for instance, to note that barbarism would take deadlier forms today than they did in 15th century Paris.

One of the important insights we’ve gained since the Middle Ages is that cruelty has a destructive effect on the perpetrator as well as the victim. Soldiers who are told to torture don’t realize that the practice will inwardly degrade them, tainting their own capacity for love and self-respect, causing them to revert to a virtually subhuman state—one that will cripple their capacities for a full life and cause untold suffering for themselves and others in the future. Torture can eventually produce a kind of moral infection in society as a whole—diminishing our capacity for empathy, higher thought, or peace of mind.

I’m sure that the key torturers in our current situation don’t think this way. They operate on the ancient level of hate, revenge, and domination. They may think that torture will scare the terrorist enemy, acting as a deterrent by projecting a kind of “bad ass” image of American power that should not be messed with. But I tend to believe that this is more of a propaganda weapon against the citizens of the United States rather than against foreign enemies. The Cheney gang has taken pains to actually foster a bogus “debate” on torture, which has the effect of both softening up public opinion and intimidating critics. People will be less likely to oppose neofascist designs if they fear that they could be subjected to torture. The push in favor of torture, flying in the face of centuries of civilized social progress, is really subversion, a deliberate attempt to undermine hard-won moral standards so as to ease the way for a China-style capitalist dictatorship.

Torture has been made pretty much of a non-issue in the presidential campaign this year. The electorate is perhaps more concerned in general with their economic self-interest than with a moral issue that doesn’t seem to affect them. I suspect a lot of people are insulated to the degree that they think their middle class status, or perhaps their white skin, will protect them against the government. It’s the old “I’m not doing anything wrong, so I have nothing to fear” mistake. But I also wonder how much the media downplays the issue for its own reasons, which thereby gives us a distorted view of what the public really cares about.

Despite torture being shrugged off in this way, I think it may be the most important issue of the campaign. What goes unspoken and unremarked is often a deciding factor. Torture doesn’t just represent hatred and revenge. There’s also, in this late era, something desperate about it. The Cheney group, the neocons, and their rightist allies, all consider it important enough to fight for, again and again. I doubt whether they will let something as inconsequential (to them) as an election defeat their intentions. The next president will either continue the reign of torture, or face a backlash from the torturers themselves.

Family Panic

Right-wing dominance over the public face of Christianity in America has been so complete that the word morality may inevitably evoke the scowling face of the evangelical conservative preacher in our minds. The so-called religious right has used its financial clout and political connections to advantage. But its real power lies in the skilful evocation of guilt—primarily in the church followers or “flock” but also in all of us, like it or not, by virtue of a shared cultural history.

James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, is as good example as any of the problem. He started out as one of those radio personalities that advise listeners on how to be good parents. There’s a need out there for such guidance—corporate culture offers none whatsoever, and for the less educated, glib media personalities try to fill the vacuum. From “Dr. Phil” to “Dr. Laura,” we have experts of dubious authority making big bucks by teaching the public how to live, especially in terms of relationships and families. Dobson eventually went from there to becoming a player in the right-wing culture wars.

For Dobson, child-rearing is about winning a power struggle between the parent and the child. The will of the child needs to be molded by the parent:

“When youngsters display stiff-necked rebellion, you must be willing to respond to the challenge immediately. When nose-to-nose confrontation occurs between you and your child, it is not the time to discuss the virtues of obedience. It is not the occasion to send him to his room to pout. Nor is it the time to postpone disciplinary measures till your tired spouse plods home from work. You have drawn a line in the dirt, and the child has deliberately flopped his bony little toe across it. Who is going to win? Who has the most courage?”

There is nothing new about this. It reflects a very long disciplinarian tradition. I’m sure many of Dobson’s readers nod their heads automatically at passages like this because they reaffirm long-held beliefs. One curious aspect of the approach is how frightened and defensive it sounds. The parent gets a dreadful feeling from this “stiff-necked” rebellion, and wishes to suppress the feeling at all costs. But look at how unequal the match really is: a grown-up versus a child. Why should there be a line in the dirt, or a test of courage involved? I would argue that the parent in this case is upset (outraged, challenged, confounded) that his authority is being questioned. That’s the sign of a guilt-based authority, in other words, a bad conscience. The parent is afraid of his own vulnerability and painful childhood feelings. So they get projected onto the kid. This is how child abuse is perpetuated.

Dobson would argue that there’s a difference between what he is proposing and child abuse. Certainly there is a difference of degree, and that difference may translate into relative “success” rather than the failure evidenced in an abuse situation. But there is no realistic guideline here, because parental authority is given an absolute value. Dobson talks about the importance of loving, but every parent uses “love” as the rationale for whatever he or she does.

So what is the outcome of the power struggle?

"Some strong-willed children absolutely demand to be spanked, and their wishes should be granted…Two or three stinging strokes on the legs or buttocks with a switch are usually sufficient to emphasize the point, 'You must obey me.'"

And:

"Pain is a marvelous purifier…It is not necessary to beat the child into submission; a little bit of pain goes a long way for a young child. However, the spanking should be of sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely."

That’s really what it comes down to. Beneath all religious pretensions is the power principle—the application of physical force by the authority figure.

Most of these quotes are from a book called Dare to Discipline (interesting how the oldest, most unconscious behavior is framed as “daring”—but this is a symptom of Dobson’s identification of liberalism as the enemy, which we’ll get to later). He also wrote a book called Bringing Up Boys. The core of Dobson’s thought lies in the assumption that traditional gender roles are God-given, and that deviations from those roles are both sick and ultimately sinful. Naturally, there’s a hefty section of the book devoted to homosexuality:

“The onset of most cross-gender behavior occurs during the pre-school years, between the ages of two and four. You needn't worry about occasional cross-dressing. You should become concerned, though, when your little boy continues doing so and, at the same time, begins to acquire some other alarming habits. He may start using his mother's makeup. He may avoid other boys in the neighborhood and their rough-and-tumble activities and prefer being with his sisters instead, who play with dolls and dollhouses. Later he may start speaking in a high-pitched voice. He may affect the exaggerated gestures and even the walk of a girl, or become fascinated with long hair, earrings and scarves… The fact is, there is a high correlation between feminine behavior in boyhood and adult homosexuality. There are telltale signs of discomfort with . . . boys and deep-seated and disturbing feelings that they [are] different and somehow inferior. And yet parents often miss the warning signs and wait too long to seek help for their children. One reason for this is that they are not being told the truth about their children's gender confusion, and they have no idea what to do about it.”

“Masculine” and “feminine” are absolute categories that go unquestioned here. Dobson goes on to express his conviction that homosexuality can be “cured,” and of course he has been obsessed with fighting against equal rights for gays. In any case, it is important to realize that Dobson’s assumptions about boys are very narrow in scope. When children don’t fit into these categories, as they often don’t, Dobson’s idea is to somehow mold the kids so that they will eventually fit into them. If the child rejects the roles, there’s something wrong with the child, not with Dobson’s beliefs and assumptions.

What is reflected here is a patriarchal social system founded on gender roles, in which sexuality is maintained within certain approved forms by male authority. We avoid a lot of confusion when we recognize that this way of thinking, this belief system, takes precedence over religious identity. Dobson’s views on the family and on sexuality would make just as much sense if he was a worshipper of Zeus, or Moloch, or for that matter, Karl Marx. The authoritarian mindset uses religious belief as a dogmatic support. God is the metaphysical counterpart, if you will, of the male authority, aiding the husband or father in exacting a similar authority within the family. The real faith of these people is in the social order that they’ve internalized, the patriarchal system as they believe it should be. All this gets translated into religious terms, but without genuine religious content.

With Dobson and others like him, you don’t get a sense of humility or of the sense of human limitation realized by people who seek God inwardly. You also don’t get a sense of passionate devotion to Jesus as a direct encounter. God is like a mere third-person watcher keeping everyone in line. Of course, this is all unconscious, and whatever spiritual experiences Dobson and his sort have are kept separate from the system of social control that is maintained.

Dobson never wrote a book called Bringing Up Girls. Women are strictly subservient in his world-view. “My observation,” he once said, “is that women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership.” For a woman to have her own desires for power, self-determination, independent expression—to seek fulfillment outside of the context of men and motherhood—is simply unthinkable. They get the scripture passage from Titus 2.4-5: “Train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home.” The Bible actually offers slim pickings for the family system, especially the New Testament: the Dobson type has to be very ingenious to come up with these passages and make them relevant, because the texts are not really about living a conventional life. It’s only because Christianity is a dominant organized religion that the scriptures get used this way.

At one point in Bringing Up Boys, Dobson starts railing against Phil Donahue and Gloria Steinem, blaming feminism for the “gender confusion” that upsets him so much. The myth of these right-wing Christians is that everything was basically okay until the liberals came along and started messing with the family. But I look at old photos of people standing around laughing at a lynching and I think, these were all “Christians” the way Dobson is a Christian. The conservative churches were silent about all that. They opposed women’s rights, too. It was no thanks to the churches that women finally got the vote. The conservative churches were silent on child labor, on slavery, on civil rights, on rape and sexual abuse, on the atrocities of war. Among Christians, it’s always been the liberals who have stood up against these things and worked for change.

When your religion is actually the maintenance of a patriarchal social order, then your “morality” will support anything that bolsters that order. Therefore, Dobson is pro-war, pro-nuclear weapons, pro-torture. He supports the murder of children in other countries if his Christian president orders it, while he campaigns tirelessly against abortion here. The “love” in this religion starts with love of the switch or the paddle, and it extends itself all the way up to the bomb falling on some other guy’s family. But, you know, he’s not really aware of this. The ethos of obedience prevents critical self-examination. It’s all about controlling other people, not looking at yourself.

So when we find ourselves intimidated by the “moral” stance of the Christian right, we must realize that it’s a sham, and not a genuine spirituality or morality. The greatest threat to Christianity as a vital religion comes not from secularists or liberals, but from Dobson and his allies. They’ve already trivialized their faith to the point where it has become not much more than a lobbying group for sexual and reproductive control. Dobson’s God frets all day long about promiscuous teenagers and gays. His is a pathetic, silly God that constantly needs to be reassured and upheld by a group of hysterical narrow-minded busybodies.

So, in a world torn by strife and suffering and injustice, what worries Dobson? Why, the United Nation Convention of the Rights of the Child “has worried me for years,” he said, calling it a “dangerous document.”

That a child may have rights—this is what concerns our guardian of morality. If the absolute authority of the parent is challenged, then the entire system collapses, the entire way of life that has produced such wonderful results for centuries—centuries of twisted, miserable children growing up into lying, self-righteous, abusive adults. And we wouldn’t want that to happen.

And lo, a child shall frighten them…

The Police Society

We’ve seen it all before. An unarmed black man is shot to death by police, who are later acquitted of all charges. This time his name was Sean Bell. There have been many others over the years.

But when people point to this pattern, and protest the excessive force and brutality used against African Americans, they are inevitably accused of being incendiary themselves, using the “race card,” and denigrating the authority of the police.

The same reaction occurs when the subject of racial profiling arises, or the disproportionate number of black people imprisoned. To talk about institutional racism at all seems to be tantamount to attacking the American way of life. The rightists have achieved such a stranglehold on public discourse that it has become taboo to declare what you can see right in front of your eyes. This narrative of denial has been politically effective for the right so far because they’ve framed everything in terms of a bad conscience rather than in terms of justice. No one likes to feel guilty, so in a carefully designed atmosphere of powerlessness, people turn on the bearers of bad news. But in truth, it’s not about guilt. It never has been. It’s about the system and how people can change it. As far as the police are concerned, I would think it was ultimately healthy for law enforcement to be self-critical in order to be truly effective.

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard police chiefs and commissioners defend some indefensible action by claiming that opponents are trying to smear or denigrate the integrity of the police. Someone protesting a specific police action is attacked for being against the police force in general. Or if a corruption story breaks, there’s bound to be some spokesman or pundit railing defensively about “our fine police force” and the great job they do.

This is a curious phenomenon. Yeah, I believe most cops are just honest working folks doing the best they can, and that usually the best is quite good. But why should I have to bow and scrape and repeat this mantra every time cops do something wrong? The entire subject is weighed down by authoritarian thinking. When you really examine the premise, it’s perfectly absurd: as soon as someone puts on a uniform and becomes a police officer, he or she becomes incapable of wrongdoing or corruption, and to criticize the actions of that officer is to criticize the entire police force. No one would actually come out and claim such a thing, but this is really the operating assumption. And it prevents any real accountability.

The truth is that putting on a uniform that gives you power over other human beings always contains the potential for corruption. People have limitations, so if you put guns in their hands, some of those limited people will misuse them. The problem is compounded when the people with guns are in a big group together and develop clannish or tribal behavior, which is a common human pattern. Cops may tend to see people outside their group as insufficiently supportive, or just ignorant of what it’s really like to be a cop, which makes them more defensive and less open. Now add race to the mix. There are plenty of screwed-up racial attitudes and beliefs out there—are you going to tell me that a police officer is somehow immune from that? In fact, that could easily become reinforced in the closed inner-circle atmosphere of a particular police force or unit.

All these things are not only possible, but have clearly occurred, and that’s leaving aside the outright corruption which has been documented in the police of various cities and states over the years. To see this as part of reality is simply to be awake and reasonably sane. How are the police supposed to really do their jobs unless they’re accountable? How can we trust them if they’re not?

Unfortunately, in an authoritarian system protest is considered a security threat. The police forces become political entities with their own constituencies and interests. So the concern is no longer how to serve the people, but how to protect and enhance the authority of the police. This is not a minor concern. Modern history has seen the rise of police power as a new form of government—in the Soviet Union, for example, the police were actually the dominant class, with a clear precedence over the military. Rather than a force of protection, which is still the narrative our society tells itself about the police, the new authoritarianism sees the police as a tool to be used against the citizenry, as a form of social control. The ominous vision of riot cops concealed behind black uniforms and visors, using force to put down peaceful demonstrations, is part of this shift.

So while individual acts of injustice by police, typified by these high-profile racial cases, are alarming, it is the defensive reaction against those crying out in protest that I find more disturbing. Individuals are affected more or less by the system as it has developed. Solutions to these problems may include civilian supervisory boards, increased police-community communication, etc. But I maintain that the system itself has taken on an essentially racial character. The drug war and the prison industry combine to keep African-American communities disempowered. The police shootings and other brutalities are like symptoms of this underlying systemic problem. How and why this is so requires a much wider public debate—and that’s exactly what the authoritarian right doesn’t want to allow.

Radical Self-Care

A friend of mine has stopped reading or watching the news. Another friend tells me that he can no longer listen to Democracy Now. He gets too upset. I know the feeling. If I spend too much time surfing political blogs and news sites, eventually I feel it coming over me: a sickening feeling of rage, fear, and powerlessness. What’s a progressive to do?

There’s no doubt about it. These are difficult times. The political situation has never been worse in my lifetime. In peace movement terms, for instance, the establishment has done its best to make itself immune to protests and demonstrations. The media generally ignores them. And so do the politicians. Even though the polls indicate that the people are against the war, the corporate political structure blithely disregards public opinion, and the war continues. You can hardly blame the average peace activist for getting discouraged once in awhile.

More ominously, the government line has become increasingly extreme under the torturer Bush and his associates. A lot of things that used to be beyond the pale are now in the process of being accepted as standard by the state—a steady creep towards a 21st century version of fascism has in fact become more and more evident.

To notice that the country, and the world, is becoming more dangerous is not to confine ourselves to matters of physical or civil security. We can worry about being spied on, censored, jailed, tortured, or blown up—not that worrying will do us any good. I would argue, however, that dangers can also arise from within ourselves, dangers that are preventable. They are depression, paralyzing fear, obsessive anger and rage, fatalism, resignation, cynicism, and unhappiness.

I’ve often thought about this, and in my calmer moments I have arrived at a little bit of wisdom that I hope you will find helpful.

First and foremost, I believe that it’s important to steadily focus attention on your values. Think about what they are, for one thing. If you’re against certain ideas and policies, ask yourself why. Being against something implies that we are for something different. Why, for instance, do I oppose all torture? It’s because I believe in love, compassion, gentleness, and respect. To abuse a helpless person, no matter who it is, violates these core values. I am comfortable with this basic sense of humanity, this sense of decency. I can spot cruelty when I see it, either in action or in attitude, because I have experienced the opposite of cruelty in myself and in the actions of people I love and respect. I also know that a potential for cruelty exists in me, and I consider it important for my own well-being not to indulge that aspect.

This is not just about beliefs or ideas, but about how I experience being human, and what that means to me. I think true spirituality is our way of accessing this deeper sense of being, but even those progressives who are allergic to any mention of spirituality will surely concede that they have some inward sense of truth—otherwise they wouldn’t care about justice. We need to be conscious of this inward sense, be comfortable with it, and ultimately be sustained by it.

In the 60s and 70s we used to quote Che Guevara; who said “the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.” Regardless of what you may think about Che Guevara (for the record, I am deeply skeptical when it comes to Marxism), there’s something in this quote that is very important. Anger is such a potent force that we are easily sidetracked by it, and we become absorbed by what I call “enemy mind.” It all becomes about hating the enemy. Eventually you forget about why you were outraged in the first place, and you get eaten up by this anger and hatred, and it makes you politically impotent. You’ve lost your guide, which is love. Quite simply, being radical or progressive is about loving people and wanting happiness and well-being for them.

I’m not talking about loving your enemy. That can be a powerful spiritual experience, but it’s not granted to most of us to be Jesus or Gandhi, and therefore it’s not politically practical. Besides, a certain degree of outrage and anger is appropriate in order to spark change. If I’m not indignant when I see a fellow human starved or beaten or neglected by the powerful and greedy, then there’s something lacking in me.

No, I mean love of humanity in general, and for specific suffering people in particular. That’s the motivator and the guide. And it’s a source of strength. When you allow yourself to be conscious of that within yourself, your action isn’t frustrated or guilty. It’s genuine and real.

Another aspect of staying focused on your values is to see through the dominant double-talk and not be either confused or dismayed by it. This can be hard, because the Orwellian language now prevalent in the public discourse is a violation of our sense and reason. To see through it, you must ask yourself what words like “freedom,” or “democracy” or “peace” really mean to you. The clearer you are about this, the easier it is to spot when the words are used to mean their opposites. Immediately questioning this use is a good tool—Socrates knew a thing or two about change, and calmly questioning assumptions often accomplishes much more than directly attacking. Regardless of what effect it may have out there, the important thing is that you stay centered. That old saying about sticks and stones may seem hackneyed, but there’s some wisdom there. If someone uses words to try to wound me, it only works if I allow it to. My advantage is that I know words are just tools—I don’t have to be caught up in what other people make of them.

Another important thing, and here I’m taking a page from the anarchists, is to enjoy yourself in the moment. If all you’re doing is working towards a future goal—peace, a just society, whatever—and you’re miserable until you get there, that’s really just a mirror image of the corporate rat race, isn’t it? Always striving for some fulfillment that isn’t here yet, never feeling okay right now—that’s no way to live. The forces arrayed against us are huge—greed and the power principle aren’t going down without a protracted struggle—so it’s all too easy to get burnt out and despondent, wishing for a victory that seems forever elusive. I think working for change is much more effective when the people doing it are having fun, being happy as far as that may be possible on a given day, and therefore having more energy, which spreads more readily to others.

So in practical terms: make love, enjoy friends and food, exercise and play, laugh and express joy. In fact, express the full range of feelings, which includes the so-called negative ones like sadness and grief, because this is part of the intensity of living. If you have issues, work on them. The idea that there’s a contradiction between personal change and social change is bullshit. Just avoid extremes on one side or the other. If all you do is “work on yourself” and ignore what’s going on in the world, you can end up a shallow narcissist. If all you do is political action, you can end up a psychological mess, not dealing with your own shit and therefore inflicting it on others.

If you find yourself getting too wound up about the news, take a break. I listen to Democracy Now, but not every day. I don’t need to read every blog to figure out that Bush is a creep. Sometimes I need to take a walk instead.

Anyone who has read my articles knows that I love sarcasm, satire, and savage indignation. There’s nothing wrong with this in principle, but from time to time I have to step back and look at the big picture, recognize the principles involved, and appreciate the stakes. The real problems are systemic—the names may change, but the forces remain the same.

Of all the internal threats we face, I think fear is the most dangerous. It’s obvious that the self-appointed rulers want us to be in a state of fear—the war of terror is being waged against us, after all. Look down with humor on the fear-mongers. See them for the weak little creatures they are. Courage isn’t some mystical macho attitude. It means feeling secure enough in myself to stand up and say what I need to say, do what I need to do. What’s the worst that can happen? It would probably happen anyway if I did nothing. I choose self-respect rather than trying to hide and not be noticed. Fuck it. I’d rather stand with Gandhi and Malcolm and MLK, even though all those guys got shot, then to be a miserable pathetic coward like Dick Cheney. Do you think he’s happy? Only the way a pig is happy at the trough.

Sometimes there’s a lot of complaining. How come change isn’t happening? Why aren’t more people protesting? Well, complaining doesn’t help. Just do what you can do. My talent is writing, so that’s what I do. Everything counts. If you despair and think that what you do doesn’t count, well, how is that different from just sitting on the couch watching Fox News?

If you find all this overbearing or preachy, okay. Argue with me. I would like nothing better. Because I don’t care about being right or wrong. That’s a fool’s game anyway. My real wish is that you would come up with a lot better things than I’ve thought of , and put them into practice too. I would love to hear about it.

All I’m saying is, take care of yourself. We need you fresh. Remember that love is the guide. And happiness is a revolutionary act.

Nothing Left

The other night I heard Anderson Cooper, the latest well-coiffed fool de jour, saying something about Obama needing to change the perception that he’s “left of the American center.” He was following up on something Bill Bennett had said earlier. Yes, Bill Bennett. That bastard is now on CNN’s “best political team on television,” which should make you gag if you haven’t lost that reflex from overuse.

Left, right. Right, left. Those terms we all use, derived from the seating arrangements at the National Assembly in Paris over two centuries ago—terms that long ago lost their usefulness to any meaningful discourse. And what is most absurd is that bobble-heads in the media still talk about “the left”—as if it were a viable political force in the United States.

News flash: there hasn’t been a real left wing in this country for at least thirty years. Not if you mean a movement or a political group that has political clout within the American system. During Vietnam, there started to be one, but it was mostly confined to students and other draft-age youth. The rest of the country stayed stupid and apathetic. The powers-that-be made sure that the “new” left of the Sixties was undermined, suppressed, busted, and co-opted into irrelevance. But the vehemence of the antiwar movement, and the brief rise of a so-called “counterculture,” scared America’s owners so much that they’re still hysterically railing against them.

The wingnut nation propped up “liberalism” as its straw man, and pretended that this was the “left.” They actually wanted us to believe that Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, and the rest of the feckless Democratic wannabes, who were in fact corporate shills to the bone, were dangerous leftists. They’ve persuaded even themselves that they are an embattled minority holding out against a powerful left-liberal threat.

Every news talk show has right-wing pundits on its regular staff. George Will, Pat Buchanan, Glenn Freakshow Beck, the list goes on and on. Now, name one left-wing pundit with a regular TV gig. There’s no such thing. No, don’t give me some prevaricator like Mark Shields—he’s a reporter who tries to be “balanced,” not an unabashed spokesman for an alternative to the “conservative” paradigm the way Will or Buchanan are vocal, unabashed rightists. There is no left-wing pundit on TV. None. So when some variety of butt-licking cable anchor talks about the “left,” he (or she) is talking about someone who is not there.

They always talk about “the center,” too. The “center” is a con-man’s trick. The marker keeps getting moved farther and farther to the right. What is considered “the center” now was crazy-ass John Birch territory forty years ago when I was a kid. Ronald Reagan was correctly viewed as a hate-mongering extremist then, not the revered grandpa figure we’ve been presented with since. The Republicans have perfected the art of pushing the boundaries beyond what anyone thought possible, so that you can never be conservative enough, unless you’re with them, and even then you'd better be careful.

There is not a single person in the entire government that I know of who is willing to go on TV and say “I’m a leftist.” If there were, the news show wouldn’t allow him on. To even use the word “left” in mainstream discourse is to imply something perverse and wrong and scary, something that will undermine your patriotism, sell drugs to your kids, outlaw your religion. Every coward in the Democratic Party wants to be known as a “centrist.” If they’re not outright Lieberman turncoats who dream of obliterating nations like Hillary Clinton just did in public, then they’re timid Democrats who want to be decent, but get fwightened whenever Dick Cheney waves his Bin Laden shadow puppet at them.

If the wingnuts were to wake up one day and find that there was an actual “left” in this country, they would piss themselves in fear. In Europe they still have a labor movement, for chrissake. They have labor parties, and viable socialist parties that win fucking elections! The left is embattled in Europe, too, for sure, and was badly tainted by association with the criminal Soviet and Chinese regimes. But there is an actual left-wing there! In America, we have a right-wing monopoly on the political process with a phony straw man “left” used to prevent us from speaking up. What there is of a progressive movement is totally outside the system, and it’s still a small minority.

If you’re a student interested in getting ahead in the political game here in the U.S., what do you do? If you’re a right-winger, even a pinhead like Dinesh D’Souza, you will have opportunities galore to advance yourself. People will throw money at you. You can write for rags like The American Spectator and The National Review. You can write books and get invited on talk shows. It doesn’t matter that you can’t write, that your mind is a stagnant pool of banality. Just string the usual half-assed opinions together and you will be rewarded. Take Jonah Goldberg, for instance. Please.

You see, there’s a lot of money behind the rightist movement. A whole lot of money, and more where that came from. And if one wingnut is discredited, they'll just buy another one. There's always another one, because there's money in it. That's all conservatism is. There are no actual principles involved other than that.

Now, let’s say you’re a left-winger. What do you do? You can maybe start a blog for no pay. You can go work for a Democratic politician, get betrayed and corrupted, write position papers and get swallowed by the system. You can compete for the few low-paying gigs at The Nation or Mother Jones or whatever. Probably you’ll just go back to academia and become a professor. That’s the one place your leftism might be tolerated. As long as you don’t attract too much attention.

So don’t talk to me about the left. There is no left. It was killed when the labor unions bought into the war machine and became fat and complacent. It died when working people indulged racism and hatred and voted for smooth-talking liars who turned around and screwed them for everything they had. It was murdered when so-called liberals sent thousands of kids down the pipeline to Vietnam. Now we just sit and wait for scraps, hoping that some candidate will bring us “change.” But I don’t believe in left and right any more. I believe that there are greedy corporate pigs who own the country and are running the government. And then there are the rest of us, mostly trying to just get by.

Hint: the rest of us outnumber them.

Shallow Hopes

You might think this post is about Hillary Clinton. Actually, it’s not.

An argument I’ve read more than once recently goes something like this: “I don’t know if I will have another chance to see a woman President in my lifetime. I don’t know if my daughter (or granddaughter) will have another chance. But I see a new excitement in her eyes, just having a viable woman candidate running for the White House. And I can imagine what having a female President will do for the pride and self-esteem of millions of women and girls in this country.”

My initial response is to sympathize with this view. As a man, I can only imagine what it’s like to have my gender so unrepresented and discounted in public life, and in the narratives we’re presented with as well. The misogyny of the culture is so deep-seated that I can well imagine how a woman President could represent something of a psychological breakthrough for many women, and for that matter, many men.

But when I further consider the implications of this statement, I find it—much against my inclination, I must say—shallow and naïve.

When we think this way, we invest the office of the Presidency with a magical power and prestige that is just what the proponents of untrammeled executive power have sought for it since the last century. “The President of the United States” has been awarded such obsequious adulation—wholly independent of the qualities of the individual holding office—that this public servant is treated more like a king or an emperor, or (in a more vulgar sense) like the ultimate American celebrity. And this is a big part of why we’re in trouble as a country. The executive has essentially usurped the power to make war from the Congress, and acts nowadays as if it were completely above the law. We might think this is solely Bush’s fault, but the tendency has been building, and reinforced by the establishment and its media, from way before Bush was even born.

The notion, then, that the fact of a woman possessing this office has an absolute value in itself, as reflected, moreover, in the aspirations of our daughters and granddaughters, essentially buys into this idealized vision of the Presidency, a vision that unfortunately does not fit with reality. The reality is an ever-expanding national security state waging imperial wars of hegemony around the world.

The question is: does the assumption of power in this imperial system by women—what is in effect the exercise of authority by women in an unchanged patriarchal structure—constitute progress in feminist terms? I say it does not. There is no lack of examples of powerful women—such as, for instance, Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice—whose government careers represent no real challenge to an imperial or patriarchal system, and in fact quite the contrary.

If we had a woman President who was bombing Iran, would that be a source of emulation and pride for our daughters or granddaughters? If so, it would be a virtually meaningless pride, a pride unconnected to actual social conditions. The symbolism would merely reinforce the dominant ideology.

Behind the argument I sense a lack of connection with the world situation today. Inside a bubble of privilege, we may talk about whether we have a chance to see a woman President in our lifetime. But I look around me and I wonder, will there be a survivable world left in our children’s lifetime? The situation is so dire that I can only judge such identity-based arguments as blind and out of touch.

The question, therefore, in a campaign for President, is how the candidate proposes to help us. In pragmatic terms, that means the candidate’s position on the issues. In a wider sense, it also means the philosophical approach of the candidate—what is her world view, her vision of society, of government? What does she support, and what is she against? What has she done in the past, and how does this indicate what she will do in the future? And so on.

Fundamentally, this is a more respectful stance towards a female candidate than to posit her gender as a value in itself. That is like saying, “It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, what you say, or how good a President you might be. You’re a woman, and that’s enough.” That’s actually insulting, I think. It implies that the female candidate can’t withstand an equal consideration on the issues involved.

Of course, in the real world, women candidates face a revolting double-standard, especially in the media, that tends to put them at a disadvantage. This is especially true of progressive women, who are attacked—subtly or not-so subtly—on grounds that a man would never have to endure. This always needs to be condemned. And in a society conditioned to hate women and treat them as trivial and secondary, misogynistic thinking pops up all the time, sometimes even in the words of progressives. We’ve all internalized it to some degree.

But this is different than arguing that we should elect a woman just because she’s a woman. Hell, there are women who participate in political decisions and structures that victimize women. There are pro-war women, anti-choice women, wingnut women. It seems obvious to me that we need to judge a candidate on her merits.

Yes, this applies just as much to race. I can’t fathom arguing that someone should be President because of his or her race any more than because of gender. In the contest between Clinton and Obama, the gender and race of the candidates have been emphasized beyond all importance. Like just about every other aspect of elections as they’ve been packaged in the media, this has turned the political process into trivial, small-minded junk.

I started out by saying that this post is not about Hillary Clinton. I say that because if Senator Clinton’s statements and actions really convince you to vote for her, then by all means vote for her. But if you haven’t bothered to pay attention, and you just want to vote for the Senator because she’s a woman, I don’t really think that’s feminist. I think that’s dumb.

Imperial delusions

The feeble response of the Democratic majority in Congress to the war—meekly submitting to the threat of Republican filibusters, signing all the checks for fear of being anti-troops, etc.—made me wonder if maybe the Cheney crime syndicate had warned leading Democrats that their loved ones could meet with “accidents” if things went too far. (It’s a measure of how low we’ve sunk in the last seven years that I no longer dismiss such ideas as implausible.) A more likely scenario, perhaps, would be that some government official or other has whispered secret spook knowledge into Democratic ears—something so downright scary that the poor dears are willing to line up and salute whenever required. The public space, our space, has been stripped of all meaning and value, and “true” knowledge relegated to the realm of “intelligence”—that dark place that inspires fear and obedience in the hearts of sheep-like politicians. We citizens are outsiders now. We don’t know why, or how, or even what things are really happening in the stinking corridors of power.

In the larger scheme of things, however, the continuation of a war hated by a majority of Americans indicates a deeper struggle than our conspiracy theories can account for. Rational heads have been offering solid ways to pull out of Iraq for the last four years. The best that the war party has offered in response is that Iraq will descend into chaos if we leave—as if it hadn’t already been brutalized and demolished into chaos long ago. We’re asked to believe that something would happen in Iraq that would actually be worse than what’s already happened. The truth is that the pro-war forces couldn’t care less about the chaos and destruction, now or in the future. If they did, they wouldn’t have conducted their occupation in so brutal and uncaring a fashion. The administration wouldn’t be renewing the contract of Blackwater, for instance—a mercenary outfit that is hated and condemned by the very government that we’re supposedly supporting in Iraq.

There seems to be very few lawmakers in Washington who are willing, even at this late stage, to take a stand against the war. The dominant narrative has to do with failure and incompetence—the war has been poorly waged; it has not succeeded in its mission; it’s draining our resources. The most daring statement the average Democrat is willing to make is that the war was a mistake. At the same time, of course, they must assure us of their unflagging respect and support for our brave men and women, who have done a magnificent job, etc.

Why the hell are we still in Iraq? Because we are, and therefore we can’t leave. As absurd as it sounds, this is the actual reason.

The Cheney gang represents such a hard lurch to the right that we now tend to note the differences between the two political parties more than the similarities. We’ve heard the anti-Nader folks sputter with indignation at the statement that there’s no difference between Republicans and Democrats. Well, of course there is a difference. The trouble is, there’s not enough of a difference to really solve our problems. The members of the political establishment in this country are united, for the most part, in one thing: a faith in American empire.

There have been imperial tendencies throughout our history, of course. The U.S. waged war on Mexico and the Philippines, to name only two examples. But it was the end of World War II, with Europe in shambles and America in possession of the bomb, that gave a big boost to our imperial pathology. Now it was our duty to police the world and fend off the Soviet threat, and to that end the elites established a permanently expanding military budget. Sure, Russia and China were dangerous, but it just so happened that you could make huge amounts of money keeping the world safe, and power eventually became a self-perpetuating rationale.

Between 1946 and the present, it has become virtually impossible to question the propriety of American empire in public and be viable among the political elites in Washington. Militarism has been so thoroughly equated with patriotism that there is no mainstream voice challenging its validity.

There is probably a sizable percentage of the American public—whether it’s a majority or not I don’t know—that doesn’t care about being a superpower, but just wants to make a decent living, have decent education for their kids, and live a safe, prosperous life. Many of us probably aren’t fully aware that we’re being duped, that empire isn’t really benefiting us in the long run. In any case, that point of view has been marginalized.

The mind-set runs so deep that it is practically unconscious. More than once I have heard local news anchors refer to our soldiers in Iraq as “defending freedom.” It’s not so much a statement about the justice of this particular war as it is an assumption that the military is automatically defending “freedom,” no matter what it does. This is one way it works on the ground. In the bigger picture, it means that “America” cannot possibly be wrong—and in this formulation “America” is a military empire.

Garry Wills remarked years ago that the famous Stephen Decatur quote, “My country, right or wrong,” is truly patriotic in that it recognizes the possibility that my country could be wrong. The imperial version of patriotism, on the other hand, does not allow for such distinctions, or for any exercise of individual conscience against the assumed purity of “America.” This is all in keeping with a militarist mind-set. In the military, you obey orders. You don’t question. It’s a top-down hierarchy, a dictatorship. You’ll notice the frequency of the term “commander in chief” these days when referring to the President. This is not an accident. Constitutionally, the President is not the commander in chief of the citizenry, only the armed forces. But now we’re all being conscripted, whether we like it or not.

What we’re seeing, then, in our present Middle East debacle, is a desperate struggle to maintain the delusion of empire. A rational person might think that it would be a simple matter to admit failure and make the best of a lousy situation. But it’s impossible for an imperialist to ever admit failure. That’s equated with “losing” a war, which contradicts the image of the triumphant and benevolent superpower. To the imperialist, pulling out of Iraq would mean that we may no longer be able to enforce our special imperial privileges. Other groups or countries will be encouraged to challenge American hegemony. The imperial project is like a house of cards, or a string of carefully stacked dominoes. The old “domino theory” from the Cold War was really an expression of a mental insecurity. To manage the entire world, to steer everything in the direction of American interests, to hold a thousand competing forces in the grip of American military and economic power, is a never-ending task. The alternative is to be only a republic, a nation among nations, which is just what the founders intended, but they were apparently not ambitious enough for the modern brave-new-world crowd.

Whatever happens in Iraq, however long it takes for the U.S. to withdraw its forces from that country, and I do hope it will be soon—the overriding issue facing the country is whether we want to continue the game of world empire, or purge ourselves of this madness. The longer we continue, the more degraded our political and economic process, and our domestic life, will become. The military will become more and more dominant in our lives until we eventually succumb to some sort of martial law. At some level, although not completely a conscious one, the public has become fed up with the whole enterprise, but the people who own the country are still completely into the game, and won’t give it up without a struggle. The question becomes how spectacular the failure will have to be for the edifice to really start crumbling.

The real PC

The term “politically correct” has been with us so long now that it can be indicated by the initials “pc” and be understood by most people. If you look past its genesis in dour Maoist rhetoric, however, you’ll see that it actually gained currency as a humorous phrase used by leftists to satirize their own tendencies to rigidity and judgmentalism.

But then the Wingnut Nation, crawling out from the slime after the Reagan catastrophe, latched onto it, turning it into one of their attack-mode catchphrases, and without any humor at all, other than the oafish variety. “Politically correct” came to mean an attempt to prohibit language perceived as insensitive to women and minorities. The educational establishments at the colleges and universities were targeted, not just for policing language, but for their identity-based curricula—women’s studies, black studies, and so forth.

If you were to believe the rightists, political correctness was a tidal wave threatening to engulf free speech. The threat, however, was hugely exaggerated. Yes, there were misguided attempts to control language through speech codes or through individual cases in which someone’s use of words became a focus of protest. They were very few, and what few there were turned out to be ineffectual. But it was to the right’s advantage to continue to exaggerate this phenomenon, because it served to inflame the tempers of its reactionary supporters—white men, for the most part, who felt threatened by feminist gains, and resentful of the black civil rights movement as well.

To accuse someone, or a group of people, or an institution, of being “politically correct,” therefore, has become a mere code word for “left wing.” “Politically incorrect” is a label denoting someone with independence of thought, even an iconoclast. In general practice, though, it tends to indicate the view that sexism, racism, and homophobia are not really problems any more, if they ever were, and that everything would be just fine if the left would stop complaining.

Such are the tortuous highways of language in our sound-bite culture.

But if you think about the implications of “politically correct” without regard to how it’s been twisted by wingnut rhetoric, there’s a basic sense of restraint of speech, of the possibility of getting into trouble for saying something objectionable, something that goes against the “correct” view. And if you really examine what is considered objectionable in the mainstream discourse, in the controversies that go on within the establishment and its media, you will discover that it is the “left” that is overwhelmingly labeled incorrect. In other words, conservative ideology is the dominant form of accepted thought, it is “politically correct,” not some professor at Columbia teaching Marxist studies.

Remember Ward Churchill? He was nothing but an obscure professor at the University of Colorado. He didn’t hold elective office or host an AM radio show. But the wingnuts, always looking for someone to demonize, seized on an essay he wrote about 9/11 called “On the Justice of Roosting Chickens” and played it for all it was worth. Churchill said some stupid things, including the phrase “little Eichmanns” in reference to the victims of the WTC attacks. Were there consequences for his speech? Yes, he was later fired, supposedly for other reasons, but if you believe he would have been fired anyway, without having his essay pilloried on Fox News, you probably believe that Saddam was friends with Bin Laden.

Now, on the other hand, we have Anne Coulter saying that the 9/11 widows are enjoying their widowhood too much and should shut up. She’s actually an extreme example of wingnuttery, but did she continue to be invited on Fox and MSNBC? Did she continue to publish books? Yes. So which one is “politically correct,” Churchill or Coulter?

Other examples abound. Right-wingers can say just about anything, free of consequences. Once in a while there’s an idiot like Imus who forgets to use the right code words and he gets slammed temporarily. Most of them have learned how to speak loud and clear to their racist fans without saying “nigger.” They have less compunction about using sexist smears and language, which are still acceptable to the good old boy network.

Recently we have witnessed a “controversy” about the pastor of Barack Obama’s church. It was a controversy because it was made into one by a group of wingnuts, and the media played along as they usually do. This pastor said “God damn America.” The context didn’t matter—those magic words were enough to alarm the guardians of right-wing political correctness. America is good and holy and can never be wrong. If you are a black man and you say such a thing, you are made into an object of fear and loathing. This fear and loathing can then be associated with Obama, simply because he goes to that church.

Conservatives, among them right-wing Christians like Jerry Falwell, hung out with Jesse Helms for years, made alliances with him, and praised him. Jesse Helms was one of the most racist, hate-filled legislators of modern times. Were any of these people told to disavow their association with Helms, or even to distance themselves from him? Of course not. Helms was a white Senator, therefore respectable. A black man, on the other hand, must step carefully, even if he’s a minister, even if he’s a Senator.

Have you ever seen Republican politicians urged to distance themselves from Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Ralph Reed, Randall Terry, and their ilk? No, they embrace them publicly. The president confers with them. Yet they preach hatred against feminists, gays, liberals, and (ever so subtly) African Americans who seek justice and equality.

So you see, political correctness, in the only ways that matter—in terms of power, influence, and consequences—is a right-wing affair. Wingnuts continue to portray themselves as victims, as courageous crusaders against liberal orthodoxy, and even after years of conservative domination of the government and media, people believe it. The right is the establishment—they guard the speech to make sure it’s pure. There are still no actual antiwar voices in the mainstream media, after five years of this fiasco. And when push comes to shove, it’s the right-wing that tells you to burn your Dixie Chicks records. I don’t notice any liberals trying to ban Toby Keith.

The Weakness of Power

The Chinese government has accused the Dalai Lama of trying to undermine the Olympics. The Dalai Lama replied that he has always supported the right of Beijing to host the Olympics.

The Chinese government also says that the Dalai Lama is “masterminding” Tibetan unrest, and is in league with terrorists.

Let’s take a look at the antagonists here. On one side you have China, a nuclear superpower with the fastest-growing economy in the world and a population of about 1.3 billion people.

On the other side you have the Dalai Lama, a Buddhist wearing a robe. He has no weapons, no party apparatus, no secret police, and no territory. He lives in exile in northern India.

Yet the Chinese government, through its various interchangeable spokesmen, throws regular spoiled brat-style tantrums about the Dalai Lama and how much of a threat he is. And these people are not even aware of how ridiculous they sound.

Authoritarian states are founded on the principle of brute force. The people are considered mere raw material to be ordered about, indoctrinated, supervised, transported, or killed, at the whim of the state. But in almost every case, the elite authorities attempt to formulate the power principle in terms of some version of the “good.” The Chinese dress up their cruelty, arrogance, and venality in communist jargon, at this stage so far removed from its origins that the rhetoric can hardly be distinguished from standard old-style fascism—the “glory” and “wisdom” of the party and so forth. The American rightists, on the other hand, prattle about “freedom” and “democracy” while draining the terms of all meaning and doing everything they can to suppress the realities they correspond to. And so it goes.

But it’s a curious thing, this lip service that needs to be paid to some idea of goodness. I suppose it’s not merely meant to fool others, but a way to fool ourselves. When Bush goes on about how Saddam Hussein was such an evil despot, I’m sure he believes in his own goodness and the rightness of his cause. Any rational person (still a minority in this country, however) can see that Iraq was invaded because of oil and geopolitics, not morality—but Bush can’t come out and say that. There needs to be some good, righteous selfless reason for invading, and the invader probably even believes his own bullshit. On the other hand, the fact that the Chinese government oppresses, enslaves, and tortures its own people—the fact that there are no civil rights in China, doesn’t merit a mention from the President. China is a big market for corporations—therefore we don’t care about what its government does. We forget about goodness in this case, because it doesn’t coincide with self-interest. (I’ve remarked before that I suspect a secret envy of China in the minds of Richard Cheney and company—no protesters there, no sir, and torture is legal!)

All this is fairly self-evident. But when we see a public figure who actually practices some form of sincere good action, however imperfect, it’s amusing and instructive to see how it drives authoritarians crazy. The Dalai Lama teaches on such subjects as compassion, peace of mind, freedom from anger, service to all beings, and so forth. Everything he says is directed to the existing human being as such. Whatever political statements he might make are always in that context. In contrast, the voice of the Chinese government recognizes nothing except the human mass in abstract—the individual is worse than useless; there are only the ideas of “China,” “the party,” “the people,” etc. If the authorities were to respond to the Dalai Lama with a realistic assessment of relative strength, in worldly terms, they would act calm and courageous and unruffled—but they never do.

If I had to characterize the official voice of the Chinese state—not only in regards to Tibet, but on each and every issue on which official doctrine is challenged—it would be as a heedless, petulant pre-teen, an ignorant and insensitive bully, incapable of self-examination and reflection, who still regularly wets his bed and consequently lashes out in shame at anyone who dares to criticize him. There’s also an element of mental illness, of paranoia: all this talk about plots and masterminds and insidious enemies. These petty, small-minded elitists are infuriated by anyone who acts on principle, and they feel a loss of prestige and influence just from the existence of the Dalai Lama. Someone who takes a spiritual stance, who actually and sincerely attempts a public life of integrity, is a threat because he or she appeals to the remnants of conscience that underlie our deepest desire for the good. Thus, the Chinese government’s rage at the protesting Tibetans, and at the Dalai Lama, is founded in fear of its reputation and prestige being damaged. These people don’t even see that they have no reputation or prestige, that their power is based on nothing but brute force, in other words, nothing at all that can be rationalized as “good.” Therefore anyone who comes from a different place than this power principle is automatically a threat, whether he means to be or not. For instance, the Dalai Lama really does support the idea of the Beijing Olympics. Don’t you think that’s funny? And aren’t the statements of the Chinese authorities pathetic in their weakness and helplessness before this one bald guy in a robe?

George Orwell once remarked that Gandhi’s strategy would never have worked against the Nazis, because nonviolence presupposes a fundamental decency or conscience on the part of the oppressor. He was probably right, but what’s remarkable is how much influence decency and conscience still has in this ravaged world. After two obscene world wars and numerous smaller ones, after countless crimes and ethnic cleansings, there is still an expectation, or assumption, even on the part of the greatest liars and hypocrites in the world, that there is some standard of goodness in the hearts of men and women. We talk about the system, about the overwhelming apparatus of military power, police power, capitalist power. Still, there are only existing individuals. The power principle is a principle of weakness because it sees human beings as objects, as instruments towards some inhuman end. It is also fearful and insecure—it may bluster, but its confidence is hollow. In the end it will always betray itself and fail. The absurd ravings of authoritarians, like the pipsqueak Chinese spokesmen who point at the Dalai Lama and whine, “It’s all his fault!” reveal the fundamental impotence of power in the face of even an approximate attempt at truth.

Five years too many.

Five years of blood and death.

Five years of lies, of deadly deceit.

Five years of hiding behind “the troops” instead of admitting failure.

Five years of demonizing all of us who have been brave enough to oppose this madness.

Five years of ignoring the warnings and advice of our own military.

Five years of incompetent planning, incompetent supply, and non-existent diplomacy.

Five years of fear-mongering, of bogus links between Iraq and 9-11.

Five years of changing the reasons that we’re supposedly in Iraq, from 9-11 to weapons of mass destruction to “democracy” to the pathetic goal of “less violence.”

Five years of war profiteering by contractors like KBR, ripping us all off, and especially the soldiers, while making huge profits and remaining unaccountable to oversight, with the collusion of the Bush administration.

Five years of atrocities. Five years of cover-up and denial of what’s really happening in Iraq, including American support of terror groups, the use of chemical weapons in Fallujah, the use of enriched uranium, the bombings and deaths of civilians, including hundreds of thousands of children.

Five years of torture, five years of arguments for torture by the Bush administration, five years of moving our country into a state of acceptance of such sickening perversions as Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and the other torture sites.

Five years of Blackwater and other mercenary death squads, answerable for their crimes to no one.

Five years of cowardly politicians in both parties.

Five years of plummeting regard for our country in the world.

Five years of shame.

Five years of betrayal.

By conservative estimates: 700,000 Iraqi civilians dead.

4 million homeless Iraqi refugees fleeing the country.

The callous destruction of a country by a superpower, cynically using terror to justify its quest for oil.

4,000 American soldiers dead, not counting those who died later from wounds, suicide, or war-related illness.

At least 60,000 American soldiers wounded, not counting PTSD and trauma victims.

The sacking of the U.S. treasury by criminals posing as patriots, to the tune of $500 billion so far, and more to come, with the economic results evident today to everyone except the obscenely wealthy, blood-soaked perpetrators of this crime against humanity.

Five years. Five years too many.

Today I go once again to march in the streets. I hope you are joining me. Silence means acceptance. We must say No, again and again, for as long as there is breath in our bodies, to the murder and corruption and degradation, the destruction of what we stand for as a country and the commission of war crimes in our name.

Out of Iraq! End the War of Terror that is being waged on all of us. We must say No to a government of war and crime before we can say Yes to a meaningful future.

After These Messages

I’ve come to believe that there’s a huge disconnect between the world portrayed in the media, and the world of ordinary working people. Case in point: a co-worker—one of the nicest, most patient, most generous people I know—mentioned off-hand to me that she enjoys listening to Michael Savage when driving home from work.

It took me a few seconds to absorb this. Then I shook my head and said softly, but emphatically, “Oh…I don’t like him.”

She seemed slightly taken aback. “Oh, he does exaggerate quite a bit, I guess.”

“He preaches hatred,” I said. “He says that people like me are enemies of America, and I’m sure if he had his way I would be shot or put in a camp, along with my family.”

Visibly flustered, she changed the subject.

I had a similar experience with an acquaintance—not quite a friend, but not a stranger—who always showed me a great deal of kindness and concern, expressed his admiration for me, and was supportive during difficult times. In a casual conversation it emerged that he liked Bill O’Reilly.

“Bill O’Reilly!” I said. “He’s a right-wing extremist, and a liar.”

“Well, I don’t want to get into a political debate with you. I just know that I feel grateful for the information I get from his program. He’s a very smart man.”

“So was Goebbels.”

“Who’s Goebbels?”

At that point I became speechless, but in any case the particular circumstance was such that it made no sense to pursue the subject.

How often do we run up against these startling incongruities between the positive qualities of someone we know and their political inclinations? I don’t even know in these cases how serious or casual their beliefs might be. It seems the best I could do was express my disapproval of the persons referred to (Savage and O’Reilly) without making it disapproval of the person I was talking to. Why? Because disagreements should be about principles, and not about attacking the person we disagree with. However, this is the very idea that Savage and O’Reilly and the rest of the rightist haters never honor.

Incidents like these make me wonder about the awareness of the media audience. My co-worker is a thousand times the human being that Michael Savage could ever hope to be. So I can’t help but think that she fails to make the connection between a voice on the radio, ranting and raving, and the reality of people’s lives. Perhaps it’s something abstract to her—“other” people out there who are undermining America and need to be stopped (or whatever), and not real people that she might know, that she might like, that might even be in her own family.

I don’t know what percentage of the hate media audience consists of died-in-the-wool wingnuts. But I suspect there’s a good chunk of the viewing/listening group that resembles my co-worker and my acquaintance: people who listen and believe without thinking too hard or suspecting where the beliefs might lead. In our culture politics is made to seem like a kind of entertainment—powerful people doing things in a world from which we are both excluded and insulated. The media is very much like a drug that lulls the mind into a softly pliable, semi-conscious state of passive acquiescence.

What does it take to get through to this limited type of consciousness? But before asking that, I should ask, how do I first break away from this consciousness myself, and in such a way that I can act as a force for understanding rather than reaction? Reaction is understandable for progressives, considering the attacks that have been aimed our way for so long. It’s even necessary and appropriate, to some degree. But when I hear friends say that they love Bill Maher, I realize that the sword does cut both ways. I suppose because Maher hates George Bush, folks nod their head without really listening critically and realizing what an inane and superficial prick he is. On a recent show he asked why the Bush gang even talks about waterboarding—why not just do it and keep it a secret? There’s so many things wrong with this statement that I won’t even try to analyze it, but the point is that there’s a kind of cultural liberalism that pretends to represent an alternative, but in fact doesn’t.

Actual debate with people of a right-wing persuasion is a rare event for me. In the instances I mentioned, the topic came up in awkward situations that didn’t really allow for a meaningful discussion. For the most part, the people I hang out with share my general outlook. More importantly, though, the narcotic nature of the media has made it difficult for many people to even grasp what actual debate would look like anymore. Name-calling, catchphrases, and talking points are not methods of argument, they’re strategies for preventing meaningful discussion.

The only thing I know for sure is that it’s wrong to be silent, to deliberately avoid stating my views on a subject. If someone, no matter how nice, praises Bush or parrots Sean Hannity, or whatever, I’m going to speak my mind. Where it goes from there, however—where it can go, I still don’t know.