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.

William Faulkner's Mythical Macrohistory of America

From his vantage point among the defeated, William Faulkner became one of the most perceptive observers of the evolution of American civilization this country has yet to produce. Like a latter day Ibn Khaldun, Faulkner composed a mythical macrohistory of America, "built around the conflict between traditionalism and the antitraditional modern world in which it is immersed" (Faulkner, edited by Robert Penn Warren (1966), 23).

For Faulkner, "traditionalism" entails acting "always with an ethically responsible will...[a] vital morality, humanism" (ibid., 24). "Antitraditionalism," on the other hand, involves "acting only for self-interest": it is "amoral" and "animalistic" (ibid).

The novelist personified these two antagonistic forces as families: the traditionalist Sartorises and the antitraditionalist Snopeses. "And the Sartoris-Snopes conflict is fundamentally a struggle between humanism and naturalism" (ibid). For Faulkner, humanism was essentially Romantic: informed by notions of chivalry and noblesse oblige. By contrast, his "naturalism" was "entrepreneurial" and characterized by a "low cunning" that regarded other human beings as means, not ends.

In novel after novel, he developed this mythos of the decline of the Sartorises and the ascendancy of the Snopeses and, in so doing, chronicled the downward course of America's "spiritual history."

Sic transit gloria mundi: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Would That It Were True

The U.S. Is Giving The Developing World A Run For Its Money

More US babies die on their first day than in 68 other countries, report shows

One more stat that should tell us that something is terribly wrong with our society.

My Bad

I grew up under the mistaken impression that it was possible to live in Walt Whitman's America.



Whitman's America was but a beautiful dream. The nightmare reality that I live each day is Ronald Reagan's America.



sic transit gloria mundi...