Believe In People, Not States

Why China won't be a better superpower: Believe in people, not states - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Signs of the End...

The post-9/11 mood of hyper-patriotism is beginning, finally, to run its course.

A whole generation was bamboozled, but it is beginning to see the folly of its youthful enthusiasms.

I predict that the government and allied right-wing groups will continue to find and/or create new opportunities to try to keep the mood of hyper-patriotism alive (i.e., we will continue to be subject to manufactured terror scares, to witness police entrapment of hapless immigrants and misguided nobodies, to endure more non-issues like "shari'a in our courts" bruited as the latest threat to the American way of life), but I sense exhaustion setting in.

One sign of where we might be in the curve of this arc is the increasing shrillness of the patriotic displays to be found at sporting events, in advertisements, in shopping malls and airports, in Hollywood films (Hollywood--that old reliable ally of the Pentagon's propaganda machine), on the Action McNews Network...

But the party's over. The pendulum is swinging back. The Invisible Whitmanian Republic is due to show signs of life, like mischievous green blades (Leaves of Grass) protruding, unannounced, from the cracks of a city sidewalk.

I am not predicting a full-scale people's revolution--the American Spring that we so desperately need. Not at this point. The National Security State has time, money, and momentum on its side. Things will get worse, much worse, before we can hope for better. But I do think that Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, ordinary guys, intelligent, principled heroes, true patriots, are just the beginning of the end of the nightmare orgy of mindless hyper-patriotism that has afflicted this country with disastrous results--for us and for much of the rest of the world.

God bless them.

Read It And Weep

A "must read" LRB diary entry by Yale literature Professor David Bromwich. Read it and weep.

What Say the Tea Leaves?

I'm an historian, so I'm not very proficient at reading tea leaves. When I was an undergrad, I read Alvin Toffler's prediction (Future Shock II) that, within a couple of decades, it would be common for people to own small, desk top appliances called "personal computers" that would allow them to work from home, etc. Not being able to foresee the invention of the microchip, I scoffed.

The government employs very smart people who are experts in game theory and who know how to model possible outcomes of actions and events. These experts do their damnedest to help "all the criminals in their coats and their ties" (Bob Dylan) to hedge their bets and get away with as much murder as they possibly can. I think they are pretty efficient at it.

But I am a student of Tolstoy and Al-Ghazali: rationality can work wonders but it is not all-encompassing. Nor does it work alone: greed, conceit, bigotries and garden variety stupidity all have their hands in the mix as well. So the experts are always in danger of conforming to the archetype of Daedalus, who overlooked one small detail. Or like the captain of the Titanic who, as she set sail on her maiden voyage, stood on her deck and confidently asserted that "Not even God could sink this ship." At least that's a tale I've heard; it may be as mythical as the Daedalus story, and no less true.

What I see is that the violence-prone wealthy white Protestants who run the U.S. government through financial influence have been working (since Ronald Reagan's landslide victory in 1980) to reverse the many gains that the 20th century's run of democracy-in-the-streets had provided the middle class and historically marginalized peoples--both within our borders and without. They are not a stupid bunch (for the most part); their problem is that they are self-interested to the point of blindness and corruption. They are risk-takers, though their risks are carefully calculated and always indemnified with other people's (i.e., the U.S. taxpayer's) money. I see them underwriting moves (like the Supreme Court's decision to treat multinational corporations as individuals with free speech rights or the decision to dismantle part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965) that appear to me to be rash in the extreme. I think they are pushing their luck as they re-invent the world to conform to their own self-aggrandizing and self-indulgent ambitions (which they mistake for vision). And, with their self-serving version of Jesus on their side, they believe they can continue on this course with impunity--indefinitely. I'm betting that they are wrong. But I could not begin to say where the tipping point lies--what are the precise elements of the "perfect storm" that will leave them (and, unfortunately, the rest of us--whom they hold hostage) reaping the whirlwind.

I just try to be as aware of my surroundings as I possibly can and keep in shape by practicing my duck and roll. The prophetic tradition has warned us all--since the Axial Age--that there are consequences to our actions. And Khidr, the green-man/trickster, wanders the earth unnoticed, while his traces are everywhere.

So my traveling companions are Moses and Khidr. The Jesus of Mark's gospel runs out ahead, waving me on. Muhammad reminds me to trust God but, pragmatically, to tie my camel. And he also tells me this.

The tea leaves appear to be saying: Keep your weather eye open.

While We Were Sleeping...

Infrastructure of a police state

Legal Tender?

If You Want To See Democracy, Look For It In The Streets

More than one million join Brazil protests - Americas - Al Jazeera English

Why Is Dick Cheney Still At Large?

He ought to be behind bars,  joined by fellow war criminals George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and Barack Obama.

Obama, Cheney and Snowden’s revelations - World Socialist Web Site

Instead, he and his co-conspirators remain "free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise."

The Nightmare Vision

This very interesting article suggests that the militarized corporatocracy (the unelected government of the U.S.) is well aware of the potentially catastrophic consequences of predatory capitalism for the environment, the economy, etc., but instead of pursuing policies that might avert disaster has elected, instead, to engage in "damage control" of a different kind: it plans to suppress all democratic action that would attempt to alter the corporatocracy's course. It is a nightmare vision.

Lately It Occurs To Me...

The mid-60's to early 70's was a great moment in the history of Western civilization--a moment when a youth culture dreamed a better dream than the oppressive one that the Eisenhower era had delivered: the dream of what I call the "Whitmanian Republic." The right-wing backlash began in earnest with Reagan's election in 1980, though the seeds for it were planted throughout the 1970's. McGovern's defeat in 1972 was decisive; Jimmy Carter's spineless presidency drove the final nails into the coffin. Ted Kennedy's challenge to Carter (in 1980) was undermined by his own Party (as McGovern's challenge to Nixon had been undermined by that same Party). Here's Ted being the good Party man at the Democratic convention in 1980.

Still, there are echoes in that speech which continue to call to us today. We hear the call as well in Rumi's Masnavi--where, in Book 3, he places a speech on the lips of Moses in which the prophet predicts Pharaoh's inevitable downfall. He also addresses his own followers: "With us, one must needs be a waking sleeper, that in the state of wakefulness he may dream dreams" (Nicholson's translation).

The oppressiveness of the past three decades almost makes one long for the Eisenhower era. Even so, I cannot help but think that the Right has over-played its hand. Waking sleepers are in the wings. Where else could they be?

From the Ashes of Empire...

There is much to be criticized in the life and legacy of Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), but much to be lauded as well. In the latter category, despite his militarism and often mind-numbingly bureaucratic sensibilities, there remains the uncontrovertible fact that, without Ataturk's timely intervention, modern Turkey would be a patchwork of colonialist "protectorates," professionally managed by (and in the interests of) foreign powers and their local condottieri. In other words, Turkey would be another Frankenstein created by Europe and its North American allies instead of an independent nation embarked upon the never-ending experiment of government of, by, and for its own people. From the ashes of empire, Ataturk constructed a republic. That is the proper direction for a nation to travel.

The government of the United States of Amnesia, on the other hand, continues on the mission it adopted in the early 19th century with (ironically) Thomas Jefferson's purchase of the Louisiana territory from France: the construction of an empire from the ashes of a republic.

One studies history in order to gain an intimate acquaintance with the kind of record that historical events inevitably establish: a record that discloses how unintended consequences are by far the most important factor in the determination of the course of human events.