Finally we know the real reason we’re in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our military’s mission is to prepare the way for China’s commercial interests. First, China and Russia squeezed us out of the oil concessions in southern Iraq. Now the Wednesday edition of The New York Times tells us that China has won the rights to mine one of the world’s richest copper deposits near the village of Aynak in Afghanistan. (The current price of copper is $6,600 a ton.)
The article points out that, “The world’s superpower is focused on security. It’s fastest rising competitor concentrates on commerce.”
Of course, the Chinese have one advantage we don’t—they aren’t saddled with a voracious corporate-military parasite that needs a steady diet of wars and threats to survive. We destroy; China builds. Our military drags us into bankruptcy; China prospers.
As one Afghani put it, “The Chinese are much wiser. When [they] went to talk to the local people they wore civilian clothing, and they were friendly. The Americans—not as good. When they come there, they have their uniforms, their rifles and such, and they are not as friendly.”
The article notes that the Chinese “flush with money and in control of both the government and major industries, meld strategy, business and statecraft into a seamless whole.”
The copper contract China has inked with Afghanistan underscores the difference between their approach and ours.
· They will build a 400-megawatt generating plant to power both the mine and Kabul. We bomb wedding parties.
· They will dig a new coal mine, with Afghani workers, to power the generating plant. We kill women and children.
· They will build a smelter to refine the copper. We torture.
· They will build a railroad to carry ore to the smelter and refined copper back to china. We support a corrupt regime.
· They will build schools, roads and mosques. We have reduced their country to rubble.
The article goes on to point out that, “[T]he conclusion is inescapable: American troops have helped make Afghanistan safe for Chinese investment.
China is proving that the pen is mightier than the sword, especially if the pen is used to ink contracts.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Bored Violence
A life of bored prosperity is such a numbing existence that only violence can make it feel alive. The days of the prosperous are ordered before them like footsteps dried in concrete as they follow the same tread day in and day out, their life reduced to pure routine even down to the bead length of toothpaste they put on their brush.
Perfect order and perfect predictability yield the boredom that is a prerequisite for violence. Boredom gives a depth to violence that passion is incapable of giving. It is the grit that gives violence its purchase. So sublime is its stimulation that violence quickly becomes a habit.
To the children of a bored prosperity all violence is virtual like the choreographed fistfight in the Hollywood western. This suits the children of prosperity because they can remain unsplattered in their sanitary bubbles while setting into motion the policies that slaughter. Cries of agony and death never reach their ears; blood never splatters over their wingtips. And they revel in their toughness and see themselves realists though the world they occupy is one of pure fantasy: the fantasy of their immortality and the fantasy of their infinite power.
The violence born of boredom has stamina because it is violence filtered through the turgid language of policy, the pain it creates muffled by the nasal intonations of its spokesmen. Barbarity filtered through policy perpetuates itself because the justification for barbarity is constantly shifting and changing—old targets fade, new ones come into focus. The only constant is an enemy, a threat. Words are the sponges that wipe away barbarity’s gore and leave in their wake a shining monument to man’s triumph over tyranny—words sung, words spoken, words of glory; mundane words that sooth and uplift.
The proles sit with pods firmly in their ears, glazed and content to slowly die as boredom’s hand closes around them lowering them into a anesthetized indifference until the Blood of the Lamb dribbles over their foreheads and they are awake and alive, ready to cheer the slaughter, waving their colors proudly to the fetish boom of clusters spiting shards of steel through flesh and clothing. How it stimulates; how alive a man feels as the ground shakes beneath his feet and he glories in his master’s strength, his life now one of meaning and purpose.
Perfect order and perfect predictability yield the boredom that is a prerequisite for violence. Boredom gives a depth to violence that passion is incapable of giving. It is the grit that gives violence its purchase. So sublime is its stimulation that violence quickly becomes a habit.
To the children of a bored prosperity all violence is virtual like the choreographed fistfight in the Hollywood western. This suits the children of prosperity because they can remain unsplattered in their sanitary bubbles while setting into motion the policies that slaughter. Cries of agony and death never reach their ears; blood never splatters over their wingtips. And they revel in their toughness and see themselves realists though the world they occupy is one of pure fantasy: the fantasy of their immortality and the fantasy of their infinite power.
The violence born of boredom has stamina because it is violence filtered through the turgid language of policy, the pain it creates muffled by the nasal intonations of its spokesmen. Barbarity filtered through policy perpetuates itself because the justification for barbarity is constantly shifting and changing—old targets fade, new ones come into focus. The only constant is an enemy, a threat. Words are the sponges that wipe away barbarity’s gore and leave in their wake a shining monument to man’s triumph over tyranny—words sung, words spoken, words of glory; mundane words that sooth and uplift.
The proles sit with pods firmly in their ears, glazed and content to slowly die as boredom’s hand closes around them lowering them into a anesthetized indifference until the Blood of the Lamb dribbles over their foreheads and they are awake and alive, ready to cheer the slaughter, waving their colors proudly to the fetish boom of clusters spiting shards of steel through flesh and clothing. How it stimulates; how alive a man feels as the ground shakes beneath his feet and he glories in his master’s strength, his life now one of meaning and purpose.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Gentle Oppression
The twentieth century saw the birth pangs of a dynamic movement that was to reach its maturity in the twenty-first, and that was ideological totality and its child, social engineering.
The totalizing methods set into motion by Stalin and Hitler were crude affairs whose lack of sophistication and marketing acumen guaranteed their eventual self destruction.
Despite their clumsiness, these early experiments shared one thing in common with the more sophisticated ideological totality of the twenty-first century, and that was the belief that ideological implementation was possible only through the complete destruction of a nation, a community or an individual. Out of the rubble of the old would emerge a new nation, a new community or a new “man.”
The earlier attempts failed because they equated destruction with actual physical destruction. You shot all the dissidents and beat the survivors into submission. Out of this, they believed, they could build an individual who internalize the official state ideology.
You don’t rebuild the human psyche, you corrupt it. Instead of active support, the sole goal of the state should be to induce passive apathy. Once it turns citizens into consumers, the state is free to do as it pleases as long as it continues to entertain the proles. Put a prole in front of images dancing on a screen and community is doomed. This is one of the reasons the twenty-first century is devoid of alternative social movements. You have to leave the house to start one.
Parades, rallies and mass gymnastics are all passé when it come to the modern totalistic state. As long as celebs get the lion’s share of airtime and political coverage is focuses on fund raising at the expense of content there is little chance of the masses rebelling.
Corporatism is scaling heights undreamed of by the totalistic states of old because it understands that effective marketing is more important than propaganda. Noise and toys have replaced chains as instruments of control.
The totalizing methods set into motion by Stalin and Hitler were crude affairs whose lack of sophistication and marketing acumen guaranteed their eventual self destruction.
Despite their clumsiness, these early experiments shared one thing in common with the more sophisticated ideological totality of the twenty-first century, and that was the belief that ideological implementation was possible only through the complete destruction of a nation, a community or an individual. Out of the rubble of the old would emerge a new nation, a new community or a new “man.”
The earlier attempts failed because they equated destruction with actual physical destruction. You shot all the dissidents and beat the survivors into submission. Out of this, they believed, they could build an individual who internalize the official state ideology.
You don’t rebuild the human psyche, you corrupt it. Instead of active support, the sole goal of the state should be to induce passive apathy. Once it turns citizens into consumers, the state is free to do as it pleases as long as it continues to entertain the proles. Put a prole in front of images dancing on a screen and community is doomed. This is one of the reasons the twenty-first century is devoid of alternative social movements. You have to leave the house to start one.
Parades, rallies and mass gymnastics are all passé when it come to the modern totalistic state. As long as celebs get the lion’s share of airtime and political coverage is focuses on fund raising at the expense of content there is little chance of the masses rebelling.
Corporatism is scaling heights undreamed of by the totalistic states of old because it understands that effective marketing is more important than propaganda. Noise and toys have replaced chains as instruments of control.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
A Classic Revisited
The beauty of a classic is the ease with which it can be updated even as it is retold. Shakespeare’s Hamlet moves easily between the centuries with each new production. Classic literature is infinitely adaptable to time and place.
Take the French classic The Story of O, which tells the tale of the training of a female submissive. In the French version, O was a female fashion photographer who loved every indignity to which she was forced to submit. In the updated version, the submissive in training is a male politician so driven by ambition he submits willing to the demands of his handlers.
There are some differences between the two:
· In the original, the heroine admitted her submissiveness; in the updated version, the protagonist is in denial.
· The original was erotic; the revision isn’t.
Our hero is always willing to shill for his handlers. With the Senate passage of the healthcare reform bill, our hero has been trotted out to sing his masters’ song, touting the bill as a major breakthrough when all it does is force the poor to buy insurance from private insurers and fining them if they fail to do so.
His minions accompany him with their familiar descant-: It’s not perfect but it’s the best we could get. Don’t worry; we’ll revisit it latter; it’s only the first step in a long process.
Not.
It’s the same song and dance they did when the Medicare drug bill was passed.
Nothing will change; nothing will be revisited. Their masters have spoken and the bill is as it is and as it will remain.
Our contemporary Story of O could well be subtitled Much Ado About Nothing.
Take the French classic The Story of O, which tells the tale of the training of a female submissive. In the French version, O was a female fashion photographer who loved every indignity to which she was forced to submit. In the updated version, the submissive in training is a male politician so driven by ambition he submits willing to the demands of his handlers.
There are some differences between the two:
· In the original, the heroine admitted her submissiveness; in the updated version, the protagonist is in denial.
· The original was erotic; the revision isn’t.
Our hero is always willing to shill for his handlers. With the Senate passage of the healthcare reform bill, our hero has been trotted out to sing his masters’ song, touting the bill as a major breakthrough when all it does is force the poor to buy insurance from private insurers and fining them if they fail to do so.
His minions accompany him with their familiar descant-: It’s not perfect but it’s the best we could get. Don’t worry; we’ll revisit it latter; it’s only the first step in a long process.
Not.
It’s the same song and dance they did when the Medicare drug bill was passed.
Nothing will change; nothing will be revisited. Their masters have spoken and the bill is as it is and as it will remain.
Our contemporary Story of O could well be subtitled Much Ado About Nothing.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Soltice
Christmas Eve. The solstice, that night when the earth reaches the nadir of it plunge into darkness without which light would be impossible. It is part of the cycle that makes a mockery out of our feeble attempts to impose a linear narrative on the slowly turning sphere of birth, growth, descent, death and rebirth. It grinds our schemes and pipe dreams to dust as it turns, for the cycle knows what we refuse to acknowledge, that all of creation is grounded in death, that the rose blooms best when rooted in the decaying flesh of its brothers and sisters who have died and been enfolded back into the earth.
The cycle mocks our chirpy Christmas music because it knows that the manger sits in the shadow of the cross. The sixteenth century’s “Coventry Carol” captures this tension between birth and death. It is a lament sung by mothers whose infant sons have been slaughtered in Herod’s massacre of the innocents as described in Matthew 2:16-18.
All darkness contains a shard of light just as it is the shadows that give light its depth. Rather than a season of Hallmarkian joy, Christmas should be a time of sad reflection deepened by the sweet pain of memories of times long past and of innocence lost.
We put too much store in our doctrine of eternal happiness. The Spanish have a proverb that reminds us that there is no happiness, but only moments of happiness.
The paradox of darkness is that only by surrendering to it and plunging into its depths are we able to find the light that sustains.
So, may your holidays be a time of growth and of movement towards the light that is present even when the night is at its darkest.
The cycle mocks our chirpy Christmas music because it knows that the manger sits in the shadow of the cross. The sixteenth century’s “Coventry Carol” captures this tension between birth and death. It is a lament sung by mothers whose infant sons have been slaughtered in Herod’s massacre of the innocents as described in Matthew 2:16-18.
All darkness contains a shard of light just as it is the shadows that give light its depth. Rather than a season of Hallmarkian joy, Christmas should be a time of sad reflection deepened by the sweet pain of memories of times long past and of innocence lost.
We put too much store in our doctrine of eternal happiness. The Spanish have a proverb that reminds us that there is no happiness, but only moments of happiness.
The paradox of darkness is that only by surrendering to it and plunging into its depths are we able to find the light that sustains.
So, may your holidays be a time of growth and of movement towards the light that is present even when the night is at its darkest.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Fairy Tales Do Come True
The nation must have been pretty naughty last year because all it’s getting from the Obama administration for Christmas is one lump of coal after another, be it a healthcare reform bill that is gives the insurance industry a barrel of pork or a thirty-thousand troop “surge” in Afghanistan or the ever popular bailing out of a corrupt and ineffectual banking system.
With every passing day the Obama administration morphs into an extension of the GWB administration with the only change being an increase in the level of articulation. Somehow bullshit is easier to take when it’s articulate. There’s nothing worse than a mumbling liar.
Now, according to David Michael Green, another similarity is beginning to emerge. Where Bush had to clear his every move with Cheney, Obama has to clear his every move with that master of corporate ass kissing, Rahm Emanuel. And Emanuel insists that Obama sing the Populist Rag in such a way that it doesn’t upset his corporate handlers.
The mantra that guides this administration is, “Promise everything; deliver nothing.”
Emanuel’s philosophy is that it’s okay to hollow out the country as long as those corporate contributions keep pouring into the party’s coffers.
Green says he can’t figure Obama out. Then he proceeds to answer his question by pointing out that Obama is a corporate hack. He always has been and always will be until his non-policies create such a level of outrage that he is either forced to change course or is kicked out of office. With Emanuel at the helm, the preference would be to sink the administration as long as the coffers were full. Gold is heavier than idealism.
While shopping for Christmas gifts for my grandchildren, I noticed a lot of children books that have been written about the Obama presidency. This is fitting since it is turning out to be a regular fairy tale for adults.
In “Little Red Riding Hood,” the woodsman saved Hood from the wolf. In this fairy tale, the woodsman is feeding both grandma and Hood to the beast.
Green sagely points out that by refusing to make an enemy of anyone, Obama is making an enemy of everyone, except the wolf.
With every passing day the Obama administration morphs into an extension of the GWB administration with the only change being an increase in the level of articulation. Somehow bullshit is easier to take when it’s articulate. There’s nothing worse than a mumbling liar.
Now, according to David Michael Green, another similarity is beginning to emerge. Where Bush had to clear his every move with Cheney, Obama has to clear his every move with that master of corporate ass kissing, Rahm Emanuel. And Emanuel insists that Obama sing the Populist Rag in such a way that it doesn’t upset his corporate handlers.
The mantra that guides this administration is, “Promise everything; deliver nothing.”
Emanuel’s philosophy is that it’s okay to hollow out the country as long as those corporate contributions keep pouring into the party’s coffers.
Green says he can’t figure Obama out. Then he proceeds to answer his question by pointing out that Obama is a corporate hack. He always has been and always will be until his non-policies create such a level of outrage that he is either forced to change course or is kicked out of office. With Emanuel at the helm, the preference would be to sink the administration as long as the coffers were full. Gold is heavier than idealism.
While shopping for Christmas gifts for my grandchildren, I noticed a lot of children books that have been written about the Obama presidency. This is fitting since it is turning out to be a regular fairy tale for adults.
In “Little Red Riding Hood,” the woodsman saved Hood from the wolf. In this fairy tale, the woodsman is feeding both grandma and Hood to the beast.
Green sagely points out that by refusing to make an enemy of anyone, Obama is making an enemy of everyone, except the wolf.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Closing the Carcass Gap
Oppression rests on a bedrock of ideology, be it the divine right of kings, Christianism, Nazism or Communism. Without a dynamic ideology driving it, the best a leader could hope for was a tepid authoritarianism. A war driven by ideology takes on a nasty brutishness not found in wars fought for political or economic reasons. Slaughter rocks when ideology is giving the orders.
The question is how do you spin an ideology out of the raw material of life? What switch must a leader throw, what screw do must he tighten in order to create a jackbooted ideology that destroys all in its path.
We find a clue in the early days of sociology. The discipline arose in the nineteenth century with thinkers like Weber, Comte and Durkheim. These early thinkers were literate and well-red, and in many cases their writing approached poetry.
One of the tools these early thinkers used to understand the working of society was the “ideal type.” This was an abstract construct that represented a social phenomenon in its pure form. Examples of ideal types are democracy, capitalism, freedom and socialism.
It was understood by these thinkers that the ideal type was not reality. It was simply a tool with which one could analyze reality. Human beings are too contradictory, difficult, disorganized and undisciplined to ever achieve an ideal type—unless they are forced to.
Here now is the key to creating an ideology: Treat an ideal type as if it is real. Place this new “reality” on a mountain top, and drive the people up the slope with whips, cudgels and unmanned drones. Stalin did this with socialism and the end result was Communism, a mutant form of state-run capitalism.
The contemporary hotbed of ideology is the United States where every word is literalized and every ideal type is treated as a reality to be achieved. Saint Milton of Friedman is our patron saint of ideology. He took an ideal type, feral free enterprise, and treated it as a reality. The result has been a seething cauldron of poverty, misery, oppression and disenfranchisement. Just as Stalin gave us Communism, St. Milton has given us the Washington Consensus.
In the beginning, the Washington Consensus was rather wimpy as ideologies go. True, it caused its share of misery, but is simply couldn’t achiever the same body count as the traditional European ideologies.
That is until our Oligarchs decided to bring free enterprise and democracy to the Middle East. With that decision, the Washington Consensus started earning its chops as a grim reaper. We still have a ways to go before we catch up with the twentieth century ideologies, but this is America, home of the can-do spirit.
This is why Afghanistan is so important. We simply cannot allow this carcass gap to continue. We must show the Europeans that when it comes to body counts, we are number one.
The question is how do you spin an ideology out of the raw material of life? What switch must a leader throw, what screw do must he tighten in order to create a jackbooted ideology that destroys all in its path.
We find a clue in the early days of sociology. The discipline arose in the nineteenth century with thinkers like Weber, Comte and Durkheim. These early thinkers were literate and well-red, and in many cases their writing approached poetry.
One of the tools these early thinkers used to understand the working of society was the “ideal type.” This was an abstract construct that represented a social phenomenon in its pure form. Examples of ideal types are democracy, capitalism, freedom and socialism.
It was understood by these thinkers that the ideal type was not reality. It was simply a tool with which one could analyze reality. Human beings are too contradictory, difficult, disorganized and undisciplined to ever achieve an ideal type—unless they are forced to.
Here now is the key to creating an ideology: Treat an ideal type as if it is real. Place this new “reality” on a mountain top, and drive the people up the slope with whips, cudgels and unmanned drones. Stalin did this with socialism and the end result was Communism, a mutant form of state-run capitalism.
The contemporary hotbed of ideology is the United States where every word is literalized and every ideal type is treated as a reality to be achieved. Saint Milton of Friedman is our patron saint of ideology. He took an ideal type, feral free enterprise, and treated it as a reality. The result has been a seething cauldron of poverty, misery, oppression and disenfranchisement. Just as Stalin gave us Communism, St. Milton has given us the Washington Consensus.
In the beginning, the Washington Consensus was rather wimpy as ideologies go. True, it caused its share of misery, but is simply couldn’t achiever the same body count as the traditional European ideologies.
That is until our Oligarchs decided to bring free enterprise and democracy to the Middle East. With that decision, the Washington Consensus started earning its chops as a grim reaper. We still have a ways to go before we catch up with the twentieth century ideologies, but this is America, home of the can-do spirit.
This is why Afghanistan is so important. We simply cannot allow this carcass gap to continue. We must show the Europeans that when it comes to body counts, we are number one.
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