Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Useful Distinctions: Understanding Monomania

Here's some useful distinctions made by Richard Bernstein in THE ABUSE OF EVIL, which I review below. Keep them in mind the next time the Bush administration tries to scare the nation into submission.


"There is a difference between intelligent fear and unintelligent fear," wrote Sidney Hook, student of John Dewey and noted pragmatist philosopher. (cited on page 60)

I attended a panel discussion at the Brooklyn Public Library a panel this year on September 11. After the panel discussion toward the end of the Q&A a woman in the audience who identified herself as a visitor from Colorado, said "you people in New York seem to have gotten over 9/11 more than people where I'm from." This, I think, is a great example of how the Bush fear machine works. We who actually were in NYC that day have gotten on with our lives as best we can. Others Americans, less conntected with the actual event, more with the propoganda event, are prey to the distortion of its meaning.
Liberty is always liberation from something, whether from poverty , or from oppressive rulers, tyrants and dictators. Liberty is a necessary condition for freedom, but not a sufficient condition for freedom. Freedom is a positive political achievement of individuals acting together. And this tangible worldly freedom exists only as long as citizens deliberate, debate, and act together." (Bernstein, page 74).

Bernstein notes that liberty, freedom, and democracy are used interchangeably in Bush's speeches, and this confusion exemplifies the administration's confusion about what would happen in the wake of the invasion of Iraq. The neo-con absolutists who talked him into the invasion had equated liberty with freedom with democracy, thinking that by liberating the Iraqi people from Saddam that freedom and democracy would immediately kick in and something like the United States would appear.

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Bush's "Gray World of Religious Idealism" -- Clips from Sy Hersh's latest "New Yorker" piece

UP IN THE AIR
Where is the Iraq war headed next?
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Issue of 2005-12-05
Posted 2005-11-28

.............
Bush’s closest advisers have long been aware of the religious nature of his policy commitments. In recent interviews, one former senior official, who served in Bush’s first term, spoke extensively about the connection between the President’s religious faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former official said, he was told that Bush felt that “God put me here” to deal with the war on terror. The President’s belief was fortified by the Republican sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush saw the victory as a purposeful message from God that “he’s the man,” the former official said. Publicly, Bush depicted his reëlection as a referendum on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another manifestation of divine purpose.

The former senior official said that after the election he made a lengthy inspection visit to Iraq and reported his findings to Bush in the White House: “I said to the President, ‘We’re not winning the war.’ And he asked, ‘Are we losing?’ I said, ‘Not yet.’ ” The President, he said, “appeared displeased” with that answer.

............

“The President is more determined than ever to stay the course,” the former defense official said. “He doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage ‘People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.’ ” He said that the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. “They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,” the former defense official said. Bush’s public appearances, for example, are generally scheduled in front of friendly audiences, most often at military bases. Four decades ago, President Lyndon Johnson, who was also confronted with an increasingly unpopular war, was limited to similar public forums. “Johnson knew he was a prisoner in the White House,” the former official said, “but Bush has no idea.”

God and Halliburton

Our weak minded, (but warm-hearted!) president -- The President of Good and Evil, to borrow philosopher Peter Singer's description –- clearly sees himself as a moral leader on the order of Jehovah in the Old Testament. When asked by Bob Woodward in the run up to war if he had sought the advice of his father, the first president Bush, he replied: "He is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher power I appeal to." (cited on page 84 in "The Abuse of Evil," which I review below).

As Richard Bernstein, author of "The Abuse of Evil" says, it's okay that George W. Bush has strong religious beliefs, but "...such an appeal to the Almighty in his making political decisions is antithetical to the spirit of democratic politics, debate, and deliberation. Because the world of political action always involves unforeseen consequences, reasoned doubt is always appropriate when making momentous decisions. But this is a president that does not admit to having made any significant mistakes." (pages 84-85).

Jehovah, the original "war president" doesn't make mistakes either. That's because, as God, He is infallible. He righteously rains down death and destruction upon His people when they deserve it, and their foes when His people need help. But what's really admirable about Him, in my opinion, is that He and His Family and His Cronies never stood to realized a single cent in profit when He served up his calamitous object lessons about the nature of good and evil. After The Flood, for instance, He didn't send in his buddies at Halliburton to do the clean-up.

When conservatives talk about their "values," they only pay lip service to Jesus' teachings in the New Testament to "love thy neighbor," and "turn the other cheek:" I'm referring here to their blather about "compassionate conservatism." It is the Old Testament God, the "vengeful God" they actually prefer and emulate. Conservatives like nothing more than to cast their foes as corrupt and sinful, charge that they have fallen away from the Lord God and His commandments, smite them, and then, when no one's looking, lay their big groping hands on whatever loot they can.

Monday, November 28, 2005

Flash! Faith Not the Same as Fanaticism!

In The Abuse of Evil (see my review below), Richard Bernstein makes a number of important points on ideological fanaticism as it relates to religion and morality.

 There is difference between religious faith and ideological fanaticism (Page 52). This is a helpful distinction to those who cannot abide the un-Christian Christianity espoused by the fundamentalists, those many followers of Falwell, Robertson and their ilk.
 "In great religions, there have always been believers who have argued that genuine religious faith is open to questioning." Page 51.
 Kant said "…for its own sake morality does not need religion at all…by virtue of pure practical reason it is self-sufficient." (page 95).
 Bernstein notes that "those who say that as believers they know what evil is are guilty of the sin of pride." Page 96.
 Seeing the world as a battle between the forces of good and evil is traditionally viewed as the "Manichaean heresy." (page 117)

On this last one, next time you hear someone talking in absolutist terms about good and evil, remember to say to them: "Hey, I heard the Spanish Inquisition wants to ask you a couple of questions."

Sunday, November 27, 2005

Manichaean Manipulators Unmasked

I just uploaded this review to Amazon; more to come on this very insightful work.
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Taking as his subject the danger political and religious absolutism poses to democracy, Richard J. Bernstein, a professor at Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York, seeks to show in THE ABUSE OF EVIL: The Corruption of Politics and Relgion Since 911 (Polity, 2005) how the Bush administration has used what he calls the absolutist mentality to choke off public discussion and criticism of the Iraqi invasion (and for that matter, everything else, too). Those who wish to understand how members of this and previous administrations have deployed the absolutist mentality against American democracy, and who wish to understand how they might counter its perniciousness will find this book extremely useful.

Bernstein begins his discussion with an explanation of a pair of related framing assumptions he calls the "grand Either/Or" and "the Cartesian Anxiety." This terminology may sound fairly esoteric, but the concepts are straightforward. They go a long way toward demystifying and elucidating how the Bush administration's strategy for stifling dissent works. The grand Either/Or grows out of "what [the philosopher Descartes] took to be the grand Either/Or that we confront: Either solid foundations and indubitable knowledge Or a swamp of unfounded and ungrounded opinion." (page 27). The Cartesian Anxiety is, according to Bernstein the "quest for some fixed ground, some stable rock upon which we can secure our lives against the vicissitudes that constantly threaten us." (page 27) He goes on to say "…that those today who claim religious or moral certainty for dividing the world into the forces of good and the forces of evil are shaped by this Cartesian Anxiety." (page 28).

Those who have read Shadia Drury's account of right wing political theorist Leo Strauss, LEO STRAUSS AND THE AMERICAN RIGHT will recognize this preference for the absolute in the anti-democratic analysis and program of the Straussians. Based on their exoteric/esoteric readings of Plato's Republic and other classical political texts, Straussians imagine themselves as an intellectual pastorate who must defend society against the depredations of Liberalism -- that socially disruptive idea which insists on equality of opportunity and justice. The grand Either/Or they posit based on their readings is between a beneficent plutocracy and anarchy. They see themselves as members of the plutocracy, of course. Not surprisingly, many members of and advisers to the Bush regime find congenial Strauss' anti-democratic theories.

Those who have read George Lakoff's MORAL POLITICS, will recognize the grand Either/Or as the "Strict Father" narrative which reinforces a right-wing program of top-down ideologically reinforced hierarchy -- a disciplinary program where punishment is more important than reward -- a program which believers are told flows out of the natural moral order established by God. The "Or" in the right's formulation in this case could be called the Weak Mother / Feminized Father, who, "liberal" to a fault, is characterized as ineffective, vacillating, a coddler of the undeserving, unable to make tough decisions and stick to them.

Bernstein believes that the best counter to absolutism is "pragmatic fallibilism," or as it is more commonly known, pragmatism, as espoused by Dewey, Peirce, James, Holmes and others. Quoting Louis Menand's THE METAPHYSICAL CLUB at some length, he agrees with Menand's premise that "these thinkers were reacting against the entrenched opposition [in the years before and during the Civil War], the absolute certainty by the opposing forces of the righteousness of their cause, the sheer intolerance toward those who held opposing convictions...." (page 22). Further, Bernstein says "Menand's thesis is that the pragmatic thinkers understook to develop a more flexible, open, experimental and fallible way of thinking that would avoid all forms of stark binary oppositions, and violent extremism." (Page 23)

Bernstein's readings of Hannah Arendt works in this context are particularly useful and illuminating. Arendt's view is that a democratic politics takes real personal and social commitment and is based on continuous engagement, discussion and disagreement, similar to the beliefs of the pragmatists, especially Dewey. Arendt's insights into the nature of totalitarian evil, which were based on her experience of resistance in Nazi Germany and her later reportage and thinking about the "banality of evil" as prompted by Eichmann's trial, is fruitfully contrasted against Carl Schmitt's anti-liberal theory of politics.

Schmitt, a German political theorist and enthusiastic supporter of Hitler believed, in Bernstein's words, that "Debate, deliberation, and persuasion obscure what is essential for politics -- firm sovereign decisions for dealing with political enemies" (page 91). Grounded on the familiar conservative judgment that man is evil, that enmity is the basic existential condition of mankind from which it follow that a strong sovereign must be in place to staunch chaos and enforce order, Schmitt, according to Bernstein, contends that "Sovereigns may pretend that they are making decisions in the name of some 'higher principle' or that they are following proper legal and political procedures, but this should not disguise the fact that such decisions are ungrounded; they are solely the sovereign's decision." (page 91).

Overall, Bernstein succinctly explains, examines, defends and endorses pragmatism, America's great contribution to world philosophy. Pragmatism, he shows, served the US well as the favored problem-solving approach to governance during the high tide of American liberalism in the first half of the 20th century. Bernstein shows why it is now the appropriate counter to the political and religious and political absolutism that the US has been subject to beginning with Cold War through to the latest "war" -- the so-called War on Terror. These absolutist wars and their Either/Or demagoguery have eroded the democratic spirit in America, he believes. Yet he also sees signs that Americans are beginning to reject the "my way or the highway," "love it or leave it" absolutist mentality, and instead are embracing resistance and dissent in the name of the revolutionary spirit of democracy.

Friday, November 25, 2005

US Public Looking for Exits at Bush Melodrama

There are some signs that the American public is tired of the three-year run of the grand Either/Or Order/Chaos melodrama staged by the present "government." A morality play with spectacular special effects -- the Shock and Awe sequence hasn't been equaled -- it appears that the public has finally seen through creaky good vs. evil, either/or dramaturgy and is finally heading for the exits. With more than half of Americans expressing doubts about the reasons given for going to war in Iraq, with more than six in 10 saying that we need to leave Iraq, and with similar numbers saying they disapprove of how Bush is doing his job, it appears that the curtain may be coming down on the latest conservative coup de theatre.

As a kid growing up in Southern California in the late 50s and early 60s I experienced some of the earliest productions of this Either/Or theatrical troupe. It was during the high water mark of American liberalism, when the first blooms of the "red state" tide that since has come to infect American political discourse were beginning to become manifest.

Within shouting distance of my neighborhood in Pasadena was that breeding ground of anti-liberalism, Orange County, teeming with pro-Goldwaterites, hell and damnation religionists, and John Birchers. My father, whose own father was a railroad man and supporter of Eugene Debs, was particularly irritated by the John Birchers. Having grown up in a company town in upstate New York, where to be anything but a Republican was to be nearly inconceivable, my father thought that when he moved us to Southern California he would at last find like-minded neighbors. California, then under the stewardship of Democrat Edmund Brown was a showcase for Democratic liberal government. The economy was still enjoying the post-war boom, a boom in California fueled in large measure by federal defense spending. My father's long-term plan was to send me, my brothers and sister to the excellent state universities, free to qualified state residents.

While most of our neighbors were indeed on the liberal side of the political spectrum, close by in Orange County we could heard raised voices of Birchites shouting about a Communist conspiracy overtaking a weak, liberal America. My father was particularly annoyed by the furor the Birchites whipped up over the fluoridation of tap water. Water fluoridation, according to the Birchites, was part of the worldwide Communist conspiracy to poison Americans. And not just our minds as McCarthy and Nixon warned, but our actual American minds and actual American bodies. My father, who as a dentist had seen the positive effects of fluoride on his patients' teeth, could not believe that a policy which had clear, visible and demonstrable benefits, could be opposed on the clearly irrelevant grounds that it was a Communist plot. It was just plain crazy, he thought, but in fact, under the pressure of the Birchites' pamphleteering and local publicity stunts, a number of my father's patients became worried enough about it to ask about the dangers of fluoride in the drinking water.

Looking back on it now, I can see with the benefit of hindsight that water fluoridation is a good example of a highly effective right-wing wedge issue. And this is instructive because we can see in it many aspects of the right-wing mentality and right-wing theater which has now come to infect the American mind / body politic. A collection of resentments against science, modernity, "liberal secularism," the welfare state, liberal experts and elites, this early form of Orange County conservatism identified all of these entities as contributing to the rising tide of rising tide of Godless Communism. It occurs to me that one can see in its nascent form how this collection of resentments were crafted into a powerful scare campaign that called into question whose side the government was really on, and, in so doing, drew together people with disparate beliefs into the same anti-liberal, anti-democratic tent for a satisfying Either/Or Good vs. Evil melodrama.

The libertarian conservatives were perhaps drawn in because fluoride was introduced into the water supply by what they would call "government fiat." Religious conservatives were perhaps drawn in because putting fluoride into the water was something that only socialist liberals, dupes of Godless communists, would do. Others were undoubtedly drawn in on the politics of class resentment, rejecting fluoridation under the belief that liberal elites and experts and scientists were always trying to force something down their throats of solid American citizens (in this case literally) just like Communists did to those brainwashed people in Russia. What was particularly powerful about the scare politics of anti-fluoridation was that water, drinking water, the very basis of life had been altered from its pristine American state by a stealthy, implacable Communist-Liberal-Socialistic-Elitist-Scientistic conspiracy. So cunning was this evil conspiracy that it had already succeeded in penetrating the bodies of right-thinking Americans!

In retrospect we can see in this campaign how right-wing scare campaigns target the body to induce maximum terror and obedience. How many times have you heard this justification for the war in Iraq: "We've got to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here." Justifications like this get to people on the visceral level, short-circuiting any kind of commonsense thinking about what the chances really are of having to "fight them over here." Pretty darn low, I'd say. The Weapons of Mass Destruction justification for the war in Iraq targeted the body, too, of course. The horrific effects of chemical weapons were invoked first as teaser, then for the first scene in the first act of the main feature, we were told a tale of a nuclear attack on America coordinated by the stealthy, anti-Christian agents of Al Queda.

Other right-wing wedge issues that target the body are the anti-gay rights crusade which exclaims with a mixture of revulsion and prurient interest: "how could people do that with their God-given bodies!"; the pro-life rights of brain-dead people issue which at its core asks: "would you want to soulless technicians and liberal judges and other people who aren't your family and don't believe in miracles to have the right to kill you if you were in a hospital like Terry Schiavo was." There's the anti-evolutionist / Intelligent Design wedge: "you secular humanists can't tell me that I 'evolved' out of cosmic soups and monkeys, because my body is made in God's image by God Himself." Then, of course, there's the WMD of wedge issues, abortion: "your body is God's property, and you must not do anything with your body that God wouldn't like, because property rights are sacred rights."

All of these wedge issues also rely on what Richard J. Bernstein in "THE ABUSE OF EVIL, The Corruption of Politics and Religion since 9/11" (Polity, 2005) calls "the Cartesian Anxiety." The Cartesian Anxiety is, according to Bernstein the "quest for some fixed ground, some stable rock upon which we can secure our lives against the vicissitudes that constantly threaten us." (page 27) He goes on to say "…that those today who claim religious or moral certainty for dividing the world into the forces of good and the forces of evil are shaped by this Cartesian Anxiety." (page 28). The Cartesian anxiety is "premised on what [the philosopher Descartes] took to be the grand Either/Or that we confront: Either solid foundations and indubitable knowledge Or a swamp of unfounded and ungrounded opinion." (page 27).

Our current president, "The President of Good and Evil" according to philosopher Peter Singer, exploits the Cartesian Anxiety to pander to his more credulous supporters, and to assail his many critics. This is a president who is infallible, remember: he cannot recall any mistakes that he has made while president. It is a point of pride with this president that once he makes a decision, the decision stays made no matter what, regardless of changing circumstances, new evidence, and especially not shifting or evolving public opinion. To "cut and run" from the mess he and his cronies have made in Iraq would be to make the mistake that others made in Vietnam: not having enough backbone. This is a president whose heart is the ultimate arbiter when it comes to making decisions about whom to appoint to political office: i.e., Harriet Meiers and so many others. And once he's listened to his heart, his backbone takes over.

This government consistently frames every debate with the grand Either/Or. It also makes constant reference to the body. In this case, it goes something like this: We know what's right. Because we are right, people who doubt we are evil because doubters' doubts call into question the entire enterprise of freedom and democracy and life and God's will and all the bedrock American values we stand for. Further, doubters are evil because they promote unfreedom and tyranny, just like Hitler and Saddam Hussein and liberal elites who think too much. Doubters are weak and effeminate and think too much. Their doubt prevents them from taking decisive action when the chips are down. Doubters think so much that they can't make a decision, especially the "tough decisions." On the other hand, we shining exemplars of manly virtue, unstained by doubt, are strong-hearted, heavily backboned men of action, who because, we have no doubts, never vacillate, never question our hearts, because our cause is God's cause, are right and true and virtuous, etc., etc.

The favorite narrative structure of the Birchers and Bushies and all their kin, is the melodrama, a narrative strategy perfectly fitted to the Cartesian Anxiety. Here's the melodrama schema they often use: a virtuous heroine (God-fearing Christians, America, etc.) has been tied to the railroad track by a mustachioed villain (Commies, commie sympathizers, socialists, unionists, terrorists, liberals, gays, liberal elites, killer doctors). A massive, snorting, smoking train engine (filled with fluoride, chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, abortions, evil union bosses, non-heterosexual sex, stem cells etc.) is bearing down on her (America, remember). Right-thinking hero appears (e.g., concerned parent, Christian, Ronald Reagan, George W., Jessica Smith), plucks her from what was certain death, and vanquishes foe.

Fox Cable is a never-ending melodrama in which viewers are enjoined to hiss and boo the bad guys (liberals, mostly), and cheer the heroes (Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, etc., all of whom are stand-ins for George W. and his associates). Roger Ailes, who runs the Fox melodrama, is a long-time Republican operative. As such, he is both teacher and student of the long tradition of right-wing melodrama. He and his brothers and sisters know how to cast a compelling melodrama with simple, memorable characters, e.g., ass-grabbing murdering liberals, (Teddy Kennedy, Bill Clinton, etc.), ungrateful rich guys who hate America and bite America's invisible economic hand even though it made them rich (George Soros, Michael Moore, etc.), vicious, power-mad men-hating women of questionable sexual orientation (Hilary Clinton, Gloria Steinem, the president of NOW), out-of-touch with reality African Americans who have the gall to insist there is still racial discrimination in this country (Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton), when the real racial discrimination emanates from affirmative action policies.

Nixon, whom my father also despised during those years, was a master melodramatist. Maybe the allure of Hollywood rubbed off on him growing up in Whittier, California. He had tremendous range, sometimes casting himself in the role of spurned suitor (the Checkers speech), sometimes as hero triumphant (the trip to China), or the elder statesman (his post-Watergate years). He would nearly always cast his opponents in the role of commies or commie sympathizers, Ivy League elites and/or commie sympathizers, limousine liberals and peaceniks out of touch with the Moral Majority. Reagan was a master at melodrama, too, but his range was narrower. This was probably due to his actual experience in Hollywood, where he perhaps came to understand the parts he could most successfully play. Raised up by the denizens of Orange County to the national stage, Reagan set up a dualistic good and evil world in which he challenged his foes to accept that they were evil and America was good. These were mostly communist sympathizers, and unionists and liberal communist sympathizers, and Arab terrorists. He asked some of these evil enemies, like the Iranians, to give him money for weapons so he could give the money to right -wing death squads in Nicaragua because communism, especially in South America, was especially evil.

It does appear this latest troupe of actors has run out of ideas for scenes in their Either/Or Order/Chaos melodrama. George W. keeps making the same speech over and over again to the same enlistees, Dick Cheney keeps making the same liberal baiting, mud-slinging speech over and over again to various right wing think tanks. The theater of war in Iraq is not contributing anything new to the overall production. Clearly, as David Brooks says, they need new blood in this production. Some new ideas, a new Either/Or dilemma, a new conservative coup de theatre. Or maybe an old chestnut from the past.

The Perils of Fluoride, anyone?

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Musical Beds

From a story in the November 22nd edition of The Independent -- "Iraq's oil: The spoils of war" -- excerpted below, we learn the current Iraqi government is "already negotiating contracts with oil companies in parallel with the constitutional process, elections, and passage of a Petroleum Law." The story also makes reference to a BBC Newsnight report from earlier this year that claimed to have "uncovered documents showing the Bush administration made plans to secure Iraqi oil even before the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US."

As per my post of yesterday, I question the appropriateness of the term "Bush administration" (or the "Iraqi government" for that matter, but let's just stick to the first misnomer for now). Sure, this "administration" terminology has been used to describe U.S. governments for a very long time, e.g., the Clinton administration, the Eisenhower administration, etc. But, as I argue in my previous post, there is no Bush "administration" in the sense that we have historically used this term as a referent for the US government under the stewardship of a given president. Instead we have a military energy industrial government complex which sets policy based on sales development goals.

This is a difficult concept for many of us, myself included, to grasp. Back in the 60s and 70s we American kids were taught that business and government were separate entities. We learned that it was the job of one entity (the government) to regulate the other (business). This was because it was generally recognized that business sometimes became overzealous in its pursuit of profits and could occasionally do bad things that might harm the nation's citizens. Some examples back then were flammable pajamas and DDT. So, anyway, that's when the government would step in to sort things out. The government would do this because not only was it the right thing to do, but because there were some old timey theories of government that said that a government had to be seen by its citizens to be "legitimate." It had to do something with proving it had citizens's best interests in mind because sometimes governments would have to call on citizens to make the "ultimate sacrifice" -- fight and die in wars.

So one way the government could prove it was legitimate was to stick up for its citizens when businesses tricked citizens and stole their money or made them work for hours and hours without breaks or days off. Another way to prove its legitimacy was to keep the US out of wars unless it became absolutely impossible to avoid them. That's because if the government spent the lives of its citizens unwisely -- like for reasons involving the making of money -- then some citizens might question the "legitimacy" of the government. And, if they got angry enough, these citizens might get rid of that illegitimate government. (Of course the big legitimacy problem in the 60s and 70s was the legitimacy of the government because of the war in Vietnam. That crisis actually proves my larger point: that government and business were semi-independent entities back then. Government got into the war in Vietnam without much assistance or prodding from business).

We did learn in school of a few scattered scandals where government did the bidding of business instead of the other way around. There was mention of the Teapot Dome Scandal in the Harding administration which had something to do with government owned land oil leases, and a scandal in the Grant administration with some financiers named Jay Gould and Jim Fisk that had to do with gold. These scandals were portrayed as rare occasions that happened so long ago and were so minor as to be of historical interest only -- morality tales designed to show the general incorruptibility of the US government, to reinforce its claim to legitimacy.

Okay. So now here's the hard part. Like I said before, there is now no "government" in the United States of America. I'll say it again: There is now no "government" in the United States of America. Okay. Good. Harder than I thought, but I'm already feeling better, more clear-headed.

Instead of a "government," there is now a single entity which I'm today calling the military energy industrial government complex. In this complex the employees work for themselves, their stock portfolios, their current, former or future companies in the defense, intelligence and energy industries. They work in conjunction with current, former or future employees of those same companies who are now working in government buildings and whom we would formerly refer to as "government officials." These "government" employees work to find ways to give taxpayer money or taxpayer funded institutions to the energy, defense, or intelligence companies they used to work for, currently work for, or plan to work for in the future. Not government at all like we were taught.

Maybe a good way to think about how this works now is that old analogy of the government and business nexus as like a big game of musical chairs, where money and power means you always get to have a chair. Sometimes the chair is in the House of Representatives or the White House. Sometimes it's over at Halliburton or Exxon Mobil. Sometimes it's at the Pentagon, other times at Lockheed Martin. Sometimes it's in the CIA and sometime it's in a "security" firm. This analogy nicely shows how contingent all these arrangements are, contingent temporally and spatially, and most importantly, contingent on the getting and giving of money.

But the tonality of the analogy is wrong: musical chairs is a children's game, and while it may describe the contingent, positional nature of today's power structure, it fails to describe the nature of these dealings, these double and triple and quadruple dealings.

We could imagine something a bit more grown-up. We could imagine that government and business are "in bed with each other." This expression has the right implication of secrecy, corruption, and stealth. And it somewhat salaciously suggests the two entities closely entwined with each other in a beneficial and satisfying embrace -- the beast with two backs, to get Rabelaisian on you or a moment.

But while the tonality is right, I'm afraid the "together" part is dated. Although descriptive and, yes, suggestive, we really must break ourselves of the habit of thinking of business and government as separate entities, conjoined in mutual congress. I would say instead that the more appropriate way to think about the ruling structure in the US these days is to picture in that enseamed bed one monstrous multi-limbed entity entwined with itself in a singularly satisfying embrace.

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Iraq's oil: The spoils of war
The Independent
By Philip Thornton, Economics Correspondent
Published: 22 November 2005


Iraqis face the dire prospect of losing up to $200bn (£116bn) of the wealth of their country if an American-inspired plan to hand over development of its oil reserves to US and British multinationals comes into force next year. A report produced by American and British pressure groups warns Iraq will be caught in an "old colonial trap" if it allows foreign companies to take a share of its vast energy reserves. The report is certain to reawaken fears that the real purpose of the 2003 war on Iraq was to ensure its oil came under Western control. …

Yesterday's report said the use of production sharing agreements (PSAs) was proposed by the US State Department before the invasion and adopted by the Coalition Provisional Authority. "The current government is fast-tracking the process. It is already negotiating contracts with oil companies in parallel with the constitutional process, elections and passage of a Petroleum Law," the report, Crude Designs, said.

Earlier this year a BBC Newsnight report claimed to have uncovered documents showing the Bush administration made plans to secure Iraqi oil even before the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US.

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Angels in America

"Now that both the defense and energy industries, having thrown off nearly all vestiges of regulation, regard the US government as their best customer, they have implanted themselves at the helm of the ship of state," Carol Brightman writes toward the end (page 177) of TOTAL INSECURITY: THE MYTH OF AMERICAN OMNIPOTENCE (Verso, May, 2004). Brightman then makes a truly remarkable observation: "There is no longer much government left to defend the interests of lesser institutions, including other businesses, or the welfare of mere citizens, or the actual security of the nation."

Brightman, with this well-documented observation, demolishes the claims made by the right that they are intent on "shrinking" government. Instead, the Republican Party has expanded government into a vast patronage machine in which, amazingly, patronage flows in both directions.

Old time political machines like Tweed's in New York and Daley's in Chicago delivered favors to the little guy to get and keep his vote. The votes of the little guy kept the machine in power so the bosses could make their sweetheart deals and get their kickbacks from those businesses willing to pony up and play along.

The George W. patronage machine doesn't deliver favors to the little guy: no free lunch on election day, no job in the civil service. Instead it pays lip service to the little guy's "issues" come election time. The favors go only to George W.'s cronies in the upper strata of wealth, influence and corporate power. But secondly, and, more to the point, this patronage machine is now actively giving away many of its functions to corporations. How that for a patron? In a masterstroke of efficiency, the government officials hiring corporations to perform what were formerly government functions are the very ones whose portfolios and personal networks (cronies) most stand to benefit from these giveaways.

Take Rumsfeld's 'reorganization' of the military as government give away. In the same way that Congress and the White House have been intent on destroying Social Security in order to benefit their stockjobbing cronies with a windfall of millions of investment dollars into their waiting 401ks, Rumsfeld and Cheney are in the process of giving away pieces of the military to private contractors like Halliburton and Kellogg, Brown and Root. These contractors build the new military bases, serve the food, provide security for military officers and civiilian officials, and give tips on how best to torture prisoners.

Of course the American public is told this is being done under the shop-worn dicta of conservatism that business is much better and more efficient at everything than government. But in fact, these corporations charge top dollar for these services. Futher, coporate employees cannot be ordered into war zones to fix roads and bridges like soldiers can. Is it any wonder that the infrastructure in Iraq is in such bad shape and never seems to get any better?

Expanding on the ramifications of this capture of the US government, Brightman, a few pages later, says: "'Industry and government function as two branches of the same operation -- a military-industrial-congressional complex, if you will -- which in this instance sells off military stock to private cartels..." The instance she is referring to in this case are links between key corporate nodes and the Bush gang such as Halliburton and Dick Cheney (of course), Lockheed-Grumman and Bruce Jackson (Bush's former campaign fund-raiser who now represents the company), Lynne Cheney (who served on Lockheed's board), and Air Force Secretary James Roche, who was for seventeen years a top executive for Northrup Grumman to name just a few.

Brightman argues that business's need for new markets and raw materials has always driven American foreign policy: the Spanish American War was fought for coaling stations in the Philippines to extend the reach of the American merchant and miliary fleet, etc. Now, apparently, business's need for expansion into new markets requires that domestic opportunities be fully exploited, i.e., that the goverment be colonized. Under the George W. regime, the domestic opportunities offered to business have the added advantage of the elimination of the middleman. Now business can get contracts and favors by giving them to themselves! No bidding process! At last, an efficient, business savvy government, just like the Republicans have been promising for years!

The particular "government" of George W. works most profitably and smoothly when the corporate interests of the defense and energy industries most closely coincide. Brightman notes these interests are in often in conflict with the larger economy. "The Bush administration, in effect, is practicing economic warfare on its own economy, including a significant sector of the investor class. And it's doing so with a powerful but risky instrument of late capitalist development... ...the privatization of military, energy, and foreign policy-making by a small group of people who move back and forth between the corporate boards of Halliburton, Bechtel, Lockheed-Grumman, the Fluor Corporation, Phillips Petroleum, Booz Allen Hamilton, et. al., and the upper echelon of government."

Recently we have seen the results of the privatization of the U.S. government in the spectacle of destitute Americans dead or left for dead in New Orleans. Apparently, under the endlessly hyped free market regime of supply and demand, poor people were found to be in oversupply. This apparently depressed their value and made them unworthy and ineligible for corporate / government assistance. On the other hand, Halliburton and KBR were and continue to be super-eligible for such assistance, so much so that their former employees now in government are assigning to their former (and no doubt future) company, those sweet no-bid government contracts.

Perhaps Katrina at last uncovered for the average American a view of the devastation caused by the much heralded free market angel, this much-exalted spirit of social and economic "justice" who best serves the interests of those least in need of its blessings. Finally, perhaps, the free-market angel was revealed as a destroyer of the poor, infirm, and the elderly, scourge and goad of a struggling middle class.

A bit dated now (May 2004 pub.), but still dead on its description of the heretofore mostly hidden nodes of control of the people's government, TOTAL INSECURITY is a must read for all concerned Americans.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Hothouse Flowers

The reality created by neo-con foreign policy -- a reality which has enjoyed a short, if disastrous run -- has recently been called into question by that other reality, that reality of actual events like the death toll of 2000 U.S. service men and women in Iraq, the estimated 30,000 Iraqi civilians dead, and the botched response to Hurricane Katrina. Hothouse flowers, nurtured in Alcove I, the Rand Corporation, the right wing think-tanks, and the military industrial complex, these ideas and the reality they created have wilted in contact with open air and foreign soils.

Irving Kristol, one of the founders of neo-conservatism, wrote: 'what rules the world is ideas, because ideas define the way reality is percieved." (as quoted by Halper & Clarke, AMERICA ALONE, June 2004, Cambridge University Press, page 45). Ideas can be powerful, indeed, especially when deployed against the weak-minded, inexperienced, arrogant sons of former presidents (who we learned this Sunday didn't bother to ask Rumsfeld, his Sec'y of Defense or Colin Powell his Sec'y of State, for their opinions about whether it would be a good idea to invade Iraq.) The spectacular misrule of the Bush adminstration grows directly out of the ruling ideas of neo-conservatism, especially its foreign policies (spoon-fed, incidentally, to George W. by Wolfowitz and I. Lewis Libby at Camp David in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks.

For those who may have forgotten what reality was like prior to the current Bush administration, (perfectly understandable given the ear-splitting pro-war propaganda of the past 3 years), the US once had an assortment of pragmatic approaches to international conflict, most of which involved suasion, not invasion. Here's a quick list of the approaches that America once used, as listed in the book cited above, (on a page which I forgot to note): "Past administrations, many of them Republican…successfully employed a range of diplomatic instruments to advance American values and interests, including foreign aid, trade, military agreements of various kinds, and personal relationships, not to mention the closed-door deal making so much a part of decision making within the international institutions such as NATO." (The authors hold up as an example of the success of such tactics the case of terrorism in Northern Ireland and on the British mainland, "where negotiation and compromise turned terrorists in politicians, cast the challenge not in apocalyptic terms but as a "problem management" issue.)

Now compare that to the neo-con ideology, described by Halper and Clarke as a set of "very simple and doctrinaire notions: 1) supporting democratic allies and challenging evildoers who defy American values, 2) America's total responsibility for global order, 3) the promotion of political and economic freedom everywhere, and, (4) increased spending on defense." (pg. 101). Notice the word "doctrinaire." Halper and Clarke consciously chose this word; one of their main claims is that neo-con thinking is inhabited by many of the same intellectual moves as Marxism and Leninism.

Specifically, Halper and Clarke trace the beginnings of the neo-con persuasion to bare-knuckled bull sessions at Alcove I in the City College of New York Cafeteria in the 1930s, where the likes of Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan (among others) aggressively debated the finer points of Marxism, where the Trotskyists defended their man against the Stalinists and vice versa. Ideas were the stock in trade of these young thinkers, left-leaning ideas that shifted to the right over time but retained the teleological view of history of Marxism, as well as its cock-sure arrogance and messianism. Over time these polemicisits substituted the inevitability of the American Way for the inevitability of the state's withering away.

Recently, however, the neo-con reality (built and maintained with lavish grants from Richard Mellon Scaife, Adolf Coors and the Bradley and Olin foundations and others) was not able to hold back the flood of images from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. These powerful images at last undermined the manufactured reality of the right wing think tanks, the scores of neo-con apparatchiks in government and media, and made monkeys out of these oh-so-many flacks of the Bush administration. Not even Rupert Murdoch's reporters could spin what looked eerily like a war zone into anything but what it was, a stunning example of this administration's cavalier unconcern for the poor. In this domestic war zone, the reporters were no longer embedded with the troops but rather with the people -- bedraggled, pleading, dying refugees begging for medicine, food, help, mercy. The American people saw their government coddling its imcompetent cronies with one hand and grinding the faces of the poor with the other.

Breached at last one hopes is the neo-con assertion of US invicibility (sole superpower in a unipolar world) and inevitability (because we won against all other 'isms' of the 20th Century -- facism, Stalinism, communism, etc., a US style state is the only viable political and economic arrangement). The neo-con theories of the Kristols, the Podhereztes, and their progeny Perle and Wolfowitz, along with the 'big brain' thinking of men like Albert Wohlstetter at the Rand Corporation, etc., we now discover can only thrive in cloistered environments. These genetically inferior ideas have wilted in the light of day; we can only hope they can be uprooted and destroyed soon.

Saturday, November 19, 2005

The Importance of Being Earnest -- or Why the Cabal Won't "Cut and Run"

The Bush administration will never pull U.S. troops out of Iraq. To do so would be to violate a sacred principle of the ideologues who run George W. Bush and the U.S.: America must never again retreat.

"Again" is the operative word here. Again because this principle rests upon the foundational belief of the neo-cons that the US must never show weakness again as it did in Vietnam. According their view Vietnam wasn't an unwinnable conflict against an enemy that could not be defeated in the conventional US manner. Nope. That view wouldn't serve their imperial agenda, or stimulate their appetite for conquest.

No. According to the neo-con rewrite, the U.S. was on the cusp of victory when American leadership knuckled under to student protestors (dupes of Communism), lily-livered peaceniks, dope-smoking journalists in the liberal media, limousine liberals in Congress, etc., etc. Had the US only persisted long enough and strenuously enough, if only the military hadn't been hamstrung by the politicians who had foolishly listened to the anti-war elite, then -- and here's where I have trouble with the neo-con rewrite -- everything would have turned out the way we wanted it to turn out. Sound familiar?

I've never been very sure what that would have looked like, the American victory in Vietnam. And I'm wondering if it's a coincidence that we don't really know what the American victory in Iraq is supposed to looks like either. Here's some possible versions: A series of rigged elections the outcomes of which are consistent with US goals of freedom and democracy (and US business interests) are organized and executed. A puppet government is installed that opens the door to American business interests. Hydroelectric plants are built on the Mekong by US construction companies with loans from Citibank, suburban homes are erected in the outskirts of Saigon/Baghdad with loans from Fannie Mae. Oil fields are tended by Halliburton, roads are built across the desert by US companies paid for with Iraqi oil/and/or loans from Chase. Or maybe it just looks like Afghanistan looks nowadays what with its new birth of freedom, the reflowering of poppies and the Taliban. But I digress.

More recently, the neo-cons point to Reagan's withdrawal of the US Marines from Lebanon after their base was destroyed by a suicide bomber as a colossal misstep in recent foreign/Mid East policy. Again, according to the neo-con interpretation, by pulling up stakes, by doing the "cut and run" America lost credibility, sullied its image among consumers. Its enemies and friends saw the US as weak, a "helpless giant" -- a shameful and humiliating reiteration of Vietnam. Grenada was qickly invaded to wipe the stain from America's military escutcheon a couple weeks after, of course, but the neo-cons knew that this bit of public relations would have be redone on a much larger scale in order to build a stronger, more fearsome brand image. This new brand image would have to be scary enough so that even Arab extremists would think twice before going up against the rebranded "Bad 'Ol USA."

So the war in Iraq is an object lesson, (as well as the usual grab for the invadee's political and economic short hairs). It's a lesson to American's friends and enemies that we will not retreat again, that we are not weak as we were in the past, that, if need be we can be as resolute as any totalitarian state or terrorist gang. That in the Bad Ol' USA we will engage in torture, if need be, just as any totalitarian state or terrorist gang does. That we will not be hamstrung by an anti-war elite or student protestors or the liberal media because in totalitarian states those impediments to policy have been suppressed. There will be no further discussion, just like in any other -- but you get the picture.

That's why all the shouting and hysteria this week from Bush and Cheney, the smear tactics used on Jack Murtha, the absolute refusal to put any end date on the U.S. occupation. Perception police, they cannot brook dissent. To allow dissent would be to give credence to other points of view, to the possible desecration of the brand, maybe even to the opening the coffin of the "helpless giant" they have spent so much time, money and blood nailing shut.

The monocultural machine that they have built through intimidation, blood and terror, must be maintained at all costs.

Friday, November 18, 2005

What You Don't See

It occurs to me that in the review I posted on Amazon shown below, Amazon deleted the names of two "left-wingers" from the review as originally written -- note the bracketed ellipsis [...] in the fourth paragraph. For the record, those two people are Michael Moore and Barbara Ehrenreich. Anyway, they were singled out by DiLorenzo for that special ad hominen treatment deployed by the RadCons. He also threw in a good helping of incredulity of the kind favored by this crowd: i.e.., how could anyone disagree that capitalism is perfectly fitted to mankind, and completely contiguous with man's nature -- why only lunatics like Michael Moore and Barbara Ehrenreich! (This well-worn likening of all left-wing critics as Micheal Moores in mufti was yesterday practiced by Bush Spokesmodel McClellan in his "smear" of Congressman Murtha when Murtha had the audacity to question the Administration's policy -- a term we should all tremble to use -- in Iraq.

For another example of the ad hominen attack as practiced by RadCons, check out this clip from one of the Amazon reviews of the DiLorenzo book, a review by an "M. Goodson" that criticizes "anticapitalists" like (he presumes) yours truly:

Comments from one who actually read the book... and understood it, August 30, 2005
Reviewer:
M. Goodson - See all my reviews
It is quite obvious that many posting reviews on this book have not actually read it. This may seem fantastic, but one should not be terribly shocked at human irrationality (it's all around us). In fact, the author of the book in question wrote in some length of the anti-capitalistic mentality that contributes to this kind of behavior.

I comment specifically on the "review" by A. Epstein as his protests are typical. However, it is clear that "Arwin Ascendi", "Panopticonman", "Sgt. Rock", "Steven S.", and "F Hayek" also have not read the book (at least, their "reviews" contain no information to suggest so).


As attacks go, it's relatively mild; I will admit that my "review" contains no "specific" information to suggest that I read the book. But I did read the book. Every ridiculous assertion of the moral goodness of capitalism, every tendentious misreading of history -- I read it all. But I am more interested in showing how the RadCon tactics as practiced by its think tank goons have been absorbed and deployed by its many minions on Amazon. To wit: Goodson's method of slamming of "anti-captalist" critics is a perfect example of the adhominen attack as practiced by the DiLorenzo and rest of the RadCon gang.

First, M. Goodson asserts that we should not be "shocked at human irrationality" -- an assertion in perfect keeping with the view of the RadCon that mankind is evil. That's a lot to swallow, but trust me (or look at my review of Robert Reich's REASON for an explanation of this foundational truth of the RadCon philsophy). This belief resides at core of their "persuasion" (one simply can't call it a philosophy). M. Goodson then builds on this assertion by claiming human irrationality is typical of the "anti-capitalist" mentality. In so doing, he implicitly claims rationality for the pro-capitalist mentality.

Can you see how the argument from authority -- "we few, we wise, we conservatives unsurprised by human irrationality" is linked with the ad hominen attack? What always gets me is that if mankind is irrational -- a condition which grows out of mankind's inherent evil, then how have RadCons managed to escape this orginary curse? How can they, as part of mankind, know what "good" is if mankind, of which they are presumably a part, is evil?

Bring 'Em On

My reviews on Amazon began as a way to keep track of the books I was reading, the books I had begun reading in an attempt to understand and counter the bad-boy neo-con rhetoric that was flooding the media and that has now sadly, infected and weakened the heart of this great nation.

I soon discovered my criticisms of books like "How Capitalism Saved America" would call forth attacks from a roving pack of right wing enforcers, a gang of ideologues who patrol the Amazon site pouncing on anything that calls into question their farrago of free market fabulism, and unChristian Christianity.

Amazon contends that it owns my reviews. I'm curious to know what that means. With these re-postings, I hope to find out.
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How Capitalism Saved America : The Untold History of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present by Thomas Dilorenzo

15 of 93 people found the following review helpful:
When The Saints Go Marching In, January 19, 2005

"There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism" said cultural historian Walter Benjamin in "Theses on the Philosophy of History." Benjamin knew something of barbarism -- fleeing Germany in World War II, trapped at the border, he preferred to end his life himself rather than allow the Nazis the opportunity of taking it.

The National Socialism project promised a prosperous society based on the American model. The promise shrewdly spoke to two groups necessary to the party's success: 1) the money power of German and other capitalists (such as Prescott Bush and Herbert Walker) who would stand to profit from the contracts for the manufacture of Volkswagens, dive bombers and gas pellets, and 2) the German Volk, who would prosper not only materially but also spiritually, ensconced at the center of a nationalist mythology proclaiming their imminent resurrection within a pure and virtuous community retrieved from an heroic past.

The mythic materialist paradise, although alluring, was not sufficient to motivate the invasion of Europe and the destruction of the fascists' internal enemies. So, in addition, this ideology promised an end to the humiliations suffered in the defeat of the First World War, presented a checklist of villains responsible for the current national calamity, and an action plan for dealing with various evil-doers. The first bullet point on the plan was the formation into paramilitary units murderers who would mercilessly terminate those vermin who would dare to smother the realm of revelation that was struggling to be born into world. It was from this demonic underside that the ideology derived its true power.

The same revanchist program is everywhere evident in HOW CAPITALISM SAVED AMERICA. Fueled by a resentment of anyone who might question the omnibenevolent energies of capitalism [...], DiLorenzo offers a vision of a coming consumer society blessed with do-gooder capitalists -- economic angels -- who, once hellish government restraints are removed, will give birth to a similar materialist heaven on earth. Yea, once those regulating liberals stand aside and allow the eternal laws of supply and demand to properly engage -- under the gentle but irresistible pressure of Mr. Smith's Invisible Hand -- the mystical machine will inexorably and (inexplicably) guide capital in such ways as to bring forth, well, the millenium. (It's not surprising that a free marketeer like DiLorenzo cavils about the interference of the state in capitalism but that he is insensible to the interference of his free market religion into what he believes is a work about capitalism.)

Capitalism, in its popular neo-liberal form, employs a somewhat subtler ideology than did National Socialism. Its barbarity is submerged beneath the slick surface of a state which offers a checklist of individual rights, e.g., the freedom of speech, religion, the right to a jury trial, etc. Of course, these rights have never been well defended in the public sphere, and in the private sphere, contested at every turn. Mr. DiLorenzo would probably be unwilling or unable given his prejudices to admit that the liberal state in actual fact identifies its interests as congruent with the money power and that both work strenuously to suppress or discredit alternative views or organizations. The suppression of such views in Germany was violent; in the neo-liberal state where the press is "free," opposing views are typically not treated at all, or treated with incredulity, disdain or mockery. (Think of the many neo-con shills, who, in their interchangeability, belie their Darwinist defense of capitalism that it raises up rugged individualists -- never was a party line so slavishly followed as by these appparatchiks).

There is one good thing about this tendentious tissue of half-truths and outright lies, however. In one volume is distilled the pandering creed of the so-called Austrian School and their Chicago School followers. Like his idols, DiLorenzo fails to respond to the fundamental observation about how neo-liberal capitalism really functions: that the state and business work as partners in plunder. Instead, like his idols he believes that because there is a word for "business" and another word for the "state" that these are separate entities with separate endpoints. He clearly believes that if so-called free market capitalism could be granted its infantile wish of a night watchman state that the cabalistic prophecies of consumption everlasting will finally be made flesh.

Readers will have to make up their own minds about whether America has been truly saved, and whether this book is yet another brutal document of barbarism.