Sample Reality

The Origins of Totalitarianism

The same thought trajectory that brought me to Le Bon’s work on crowds has led me to something I should’ve read a long time ago: Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism.

The Origins of Totalitarianism is Arendt’s thoughtful and relentlessly critical dissection of totalitarian movements and nations. In a later chapter called “Totalitarianism in Power,” Arendt argues that the ultimate goal of totalitarian governments is “to conquer the globe and bring all countries on earth under their domination.”

As a result, Arendt argues, a totalitarian government rules as if it were only a matter of time until the world is in fact under its control. Totalitarian regimes, Arendt writes,

conduct their foreign policy on the consistent assumption that they will eventually achieve this ultimate goal, and never lose sight of it no matter how distant it may appear or how seriously its “ideal” demands may conflict with the necessity of the moment. They therefore consider no country as permanently foreign, but, on the contrary, every country as their potential territory. (p. 415)

Let me be clear here: Arendt is specifically talking about Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. She’s not talking about any other nation. And I don’t mean to imply—as one might infer from my politics—that Arendt’s argument can be applied to today’s powerful nations.

The United States is not Nazi Germany. Bush is not Hitler.

Yet Arendt’s remark is nonetheless highly illuminating for the present situation, if only because it underscores how power now operates in the world.

For all the bombs’ bursting red glare and all the talk of bunker busters, the new regimes operate in a fundamentally non-dominational spirit. Or at least (in most cases) the domination assumes a form more alluring than the military occupation that Arendt wrote about. The most striking difference between a totalitarian government like the Nazis and imperial powers today is that the new Empire does not seek to conquer the globe by force, but rather, by a hegemonic false sense of consensus.

In the end, it’s much easier to convince people they want to do something (through powerful media strategies, educational policies, religious orthodoxy) than to hold a gun to their head and force them to do it. That is, essentially, the definition of hegemony.

And the hegemony that has been most wildly successful, the hegemony that is the cockroach of all ideologies, the hegemony that not only convinces people they want to do something, but more importantly convinces them they want to buy something, is global capitalism.

Globalization is the new totalitarianism.

Don’t Hug that Tar Baby

It’s been widely reported (and not just on the Daily Show) that new Presidential Press Secretary Mark Snow used the racist term “tar baby” in his first televised press briefing. Responding to a question about the NSA’s secret wiretapping program, Snow answered:

I am not going to stand up here and presume to declassify any kind of program. That is a decision the President has to make. I can’t confirm or deny it. The President was not confirming or denying. Again, I would take you back to the USA Today story to give you a little context. Look at the poll that appeared the following day […] something like 65% of the public was not troubled by it. Having said that, I don’t want to hug the tar baby of trying to comment on the program… the alleged program, the existence of which I can neither confirm or deny.

Just to illustrate what “tar baby” means to most people, below is a photograph of Tar Baby’s Pancakes, a restaurant in North Myrtle Beach whose logo taps into the vast reserves of racist imagery comprising our nation’s history. I snapped this photograph in July 2005, when I was in Myrtle Beach with my family. We didn’t eat at Tar Baby’s, but when I saw the sign, I had to stop and pull over. The sign left me speechless (close-up of the sign at Flickr). Finally—and sadly—I’ve found some relevance to this photograph.

Tar Baby’s (Larger Image)
Posted to Flickr by samplereality.

The Crowd

I discovered a gem tonight in Gustave Le Bon’s classic 1895 study of crowds, La Psychologie des foules. “Civilisations as yet,” Le Bon writes, “have only been created and directed by a small intellectual aristocracy, never by crowds. Crowds are only powerful for destruction.”

I like the tone of this. All fire and brimstone and presciently tapped into the mob psychology of the Facists. Such a welcome counterpoint to the current oh-the-masses-are-so-wise thinking that dominates the networked era.

Le Bon goes on, in his quaint 19th century French manner, to discuss Napoleon’s invasion of Spain and how Napoleon, though he possessed a “marvellous insight into the psychology of the masses of the country over which he reigned,” had somehow “completely misunderstood the psychology of crowds belonging to other races” (i.e. the Spanish). And then, in a witty footnote that would be comical were it not for its uncanny resonance with the present, Le Bon comments that Napoleon’s

most subtle advisers, moreover, did not understand this psychology any better. Talleyrand wrote him that “Spain would receive his soldiers as liberators.” It received them as beasts of prey.

Now, where I have heard that before? Soldiers greeted as liberators? Sounds familiar, but I can’t quite place it. And the second part, about being received as “beasts of prey”? Again, that vaguely seems hazily to be something foggily that is very nearly barely on the tip of my tongue. But I rack my brains and I can’t come up with it.

Le Bon continues in his footnote, “A psychologist acquainted with the hereditory insticts of the Spanish race would have easily foreseen this reception.” Le Bon frames in terms of instinct and race what is better understand in terms of culture and context: invaders are not liberators, occupiers are not liberators, and, when strategic natural resources are involved—whether it’s control of Atlantic shipping in the early 19th century or Mideast oil in the early 21st—the soldiers are indeed seen by the aggrieved crowds as beasts of prey.

Immigration and National Security

Two implications of Bush’s proposal to beef up border security with National Guard troops:

The first is practical: it’s another instance of the militarization of civil society, which I had criticized in an earlier post.

The second is symbolic: by policing the border with troops trained for combat, Bush masterfully conflates two entirely distinct issues: immigration and national security. Illegal immigration is not a national security threat. (How many of the 9/11 terrorists were here illegally? None.) Framing immigration as a security issue obscures what it really is: a labor issue.

And what would happen if conservatives began treating immigration as the labor issue that it really is? They’d have to confront one of the contradictions of capitalism in the U.S.: we believe in “free trade,” in which corporations and products are free to move across borders, but not in “free labor,” in which the workers that produce those products for those corporations would be free to move across borders.

Total Information Awareness, Reprise

A few more thoughts on the massive NSA database of every domestic phone call, ever, in the United States…

The database actualizes what was once only theory: DARPA’s defunct Total Information Awareness project, which sought to “counter asymmetric threats [i.e. terrorism] by achieving total information awareness.”

Awareness of everything, godlike omniscience.

Is this the only way neo-cons can imagine protecting Americans from terrorist attacks?

Forget Total Information Awareness, this is Total Imagination Failure.

Another disturbing aspect of the NSA’s database is that General Michael Hayden, now Bush’s nominee for the head of the CIA, was in charge of it. Hayden is not a retired general. He is still on active status in the U.S. Air Force. So what we had here with the NSA (and what we might have with the CIA) is a military officer running a civilian organization. It is yet another chilling example of the militarization of domestic, civilian life.

There’s a reason the founders of the Constitution made a civilian (the President) the Commander-in-Chief of the military. Men with guns need to be kept in check. Because men with guns will eventually use those guns (and tanks and planes and phone records). Ironically, nobody recognizes this more than the neo-cons, who see Iran’s nuclear ambitions as de facto evidence that Iran will eventually deploy those nuclear weapons.

Again, Total Imagination Failure.

Can You Hear Me Now: The NSA, Me, and Papa John’s

The big surprise in today’s USA Today story about the NSA building a staggering database of every single domestic phone call in the United States is not that such a database exists, but that the NSA waited until after 9/11 to begin building it.

I think we had always assumed that the government was already gathering this information, logging every phone call, timestamping every caller and every recipient, and crossreferencing all those records. Think of it: every pizza delivery order in the U.S. stored for posterity’s sake. Oh, the marketing possibilities!

“A database of every phone call ever made”: this is how one insider describes it.

Yet, there are gaps in the record: Qwest is the only big carrier to refuse to cooperate with the NSA (unlike Verizon, BellSouth, and AT&T). Good for them. Sell your Qwest stock soon, though. (Or, maybe hoard it, and wait for that big buyout from the resurging Ma Bell…)

The sky is falling, but my phones are tapped, so I’m okay and you are too

I caught snippets of the Diane Rehm Show today, and there was a panel of experts discussing the domestic war on terror. There’s the predictable apologist for the Bush administration, spouting the standard refrain that because there’s been no terror attack on the U.S. since 9/11, all that illegal wiretapping and surveillance and profiling and warmongering has paid off. Okay, fine, that’s no surprise, what he’s saying. Typical specious reasoning, Homer Simpson style.

But what got me was one of the callers. First, he said that Robert Heinlein is one of his favorite authors. Red flags go off, right there alone. Then the guy, a marine who, to his credit, is on his way to Afghanistan, says that Heinlein has a quote, something like, You can have peace and you can have freedom, but you can’t have peace and freedom.

If I’m not mistaken, that’s Starship Troopers talking, Heinlein’s most (and there are many contenders) facistic novel, where his militaristic, kill the motherfragging aliens, and so what if a few humans die, because they were weak and deserved to die urges come to full blossom.

And this guy is citing it as a textbook for American liberty?

I bow before the almighty forces of juvenile literature!

Terrorism Means Never Having to Say Your Sorry

I’ve been on the blogging equivalent of radio silence for several weeks now, waiting for my handlers to issue the code for me to go on active status. Last weekend was it: Vice President Dick Cheney shooting a 78 year-old man in the face with a shotgun. That was my signal. (Or, close enough: it was The quail flies at dusk, which is basically the same thing.)

Now, I know this important political issue of vital national security has been covered professionally and responsibly by the news media in a very measured way. I have nothing new to add. Except for an email exchange between my friend (and occasional SampleReality commentator) Stephen and myself:

Me:

I wonder if Dick Cheney is Jack Bauer [of 24] in disguise?

Stephen:

But has Jack Bauer ever shot someone by accident, hmm? More to the point: has Jack Bauer ever wasted ammunition on someone he wasn’t planning to a) kill or b) torture?

Stephen is absolutely correct. And add to this that Jack Bauer has never had to apologize for killing or torturing (except for that unfortunate electroshock thing with his lover’s estranged husband in Season 4—but that was, like, totally a misunderstanding).

So Jack Bauer never has to say he’s sorry. But apologize is something Dick Cheney had to do.

Or sort of.

This is the closest Cheney comes to saying “I’m sorry. I did it.”:

“Ultimately, I’m the guy who pulled the trigger that fired the round that hit Harry.”

Hello, Mother Goose! This is the cat that caught the rat that ate the malt that lived in the house that Jack built.

Lyrical beauty aside, this is the linguistic equivalent of saying, I only pulled the trigger. The gun did the rest. Or really, if you get down to it, it was the round, not even the gun that did it. (So it remains true: guns don’t kill people.)

And what’s with “I’m the guy who”—instead of simply “I pulled the trigger”? As my students pointed out today, that’s like saying, I just happened to be there. It could’ve been any guy. And it just happened to be me. Wrong place, wrong time kinda thing.

MTO Database from Amazon

I’ll take a break from my travel blogging to mention Applefritter’s astonishing article Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon Wishlists.

Individuals’ public Amazon “wishlists” are, collectively, essentially a gigantic aggregate of data, waiting to be mined, and in this post, Tom Owad details how he used the wishlists to track the reading preferences of over a quarter of a million readers. Owad’s point is that the U.S. government can just as easily (but probably not as cheaply!) do the same thing, in order to track down Americans reading subversive material.

Now if only the terrorists would create wishlists at Amazon!

I’m sorry. 9/11? I’m responsible. It was me, I did it.

In his press conference this morning, President Bush was asked about the New York Times’ recent revelation that the NSA was operating a covert surveillance program that monitored hundreds of Americans’ phone calls and emails without any court supervision or warrants.

Bush responded:

My personal opinion is it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. The fact that we’re discussing this program is helping the enemy.

The fact that we’re discussing an illegal wiretap program that defies the Fourth Amendment is, right now, at this very minute, helping Osama bin Laden? The fact that I just wrote the previous sentence means that I’m helping the so-called mastermind of 9/11?

You have to admire the verve of President Bush, suggesting that the ones who question our government here are responsible for the ones who blow things up here and abroad.

Should I apologize now, finally? Should I send a Hallmark card? Sorry about those planes and IEDs, I didn’t mean it. Love will find a way, Peace on Earth and Happy Holidays?

But wait, I thought the “enemy” was Saddam Hussein. And he’s already caught and in jail. So we’re safe now, right? Or am I still at fault?

I’m so confused.

Remembering Shock and Awe et al.

I was going through a desk drawer yesterday and I found a wrinkled piece of scrap paper, which goes back to the spring of 2003. It was the early days of the Iraq War, and I had jotted down some phrases which I was hearing over and over again on the radio and tv. Looking at the list now, I think, what an innocent, nostalgic time it was.

The list seems almost quaint now. Who can forget the wonderful poetry of “shock and awe”? — Well, apparently almost everyone. It seems like a hollowed out slogan from some bygone era, like “I like Ike” or “Remember the Maine.”

yellowcake
secure undisclosed location
Coalition of the willing
shock and awe
target of opportunity
credible threat
protective custody
increased chatter

Oh, those were the days.

Some of the best things in life are classified

What I want to write is so confidential, so classified, I can’t even write it. It has something to do with the Pentagon the government. That’s about all I can say. And that people involved have signed non-disclosure agreements. Which have been broken. Apparently. Maybe not. I don’t know. The lawyers are deciding. The key word, though, is threat analysis shambles.

It’s Not Looting If You’re White

My friend Adam pointed me towards another example of egregious racism in the mainstream press: the captions on photos of looters in New Orleans. Both pictures show residents of New Orleans wading through chest-deep flood waters, carrying various goods. According to the two AP captions, in the first photograph a young black man is returning from “looting a grocery store”; the caption of the second photograph (which shows a white couple) says simply that they are returning from “finding bread and soda” in a “local grocery store.”

Salon.com also has an article about the photographs of looters.

Cellphones in Africa (New York Times article)

There’s an article in the Times about the amazing popularity of cellphones in Africa. Factually, the data is quite amazing: between 1999 and 2004, the number of subscribers to mobile phone services increased at an annual rate averaging 58 percent. There are now nearly 77 million cellphone subscribers in Africa, up from just 7.5 million a few years ago.

As I said, the data is amazing.

But the article itself and the presentation of the numbers is shockingly full of a number of egregious American stereotypes about Africa. A generous reading of the article would be that the reporter, Sharon LaFraniere, is attempting to show how Africa is so not like what we think it is. But in doing so, she replays and builds upon a dozen different negative images of Africa. The title itself—“Cellphones Catapult Rural Africa to 21st Century”—presumes that all of rural Africa is exactly the same, and that this gigantic generalized Africa has been, prior to the appearance of the cellphone, stuck in a backwards, even primitive era. It reminds me of The Gods Must Be Crazy, except substitute a Coke bottle with a Nokia. In either case, Africans are primitive people “rescued” by Western culture and technology.

But wait, there’s more.

In the following lines from the article, I don’t know who should be more offended, Africans or Mongolians:

Africa’s cellphone boom has taken the industry by surprise. Africans have never been rabid telephone users; even Mongolians have twice as many land lines per person.

Perhaps the most offensive stereotype evoked in the article is this description of Africa that would fit better in a Tarzan movie:

On a continent where some remote villages still communicate by beating drums, cellphones are a technological revolution akin to television in the 1940’s in the United States.

Did I really just read that? “Beating drums”?

Even if it’s true (and I’m not saying it is), the image of the black African beating a drum is so loaded with cultural stereotypes and assumptions that it really shouldn’t be the basis of a metaphor in a serious journalistic piece. The image speaks volumes about power, control, language, and technology, and in every way positions Europe and North America as superior to Africa.

I think it’s time to go read some Edgar Rice Burroughs.

The Evil Democracy

Here is a lesson in ironic juxtaposition: A freeze-frame of President Bush delivering his State of the Union address, with the closed captioning scrolling the words “THE EVIL DEMOCRACY.”

Ironies abound in this photograph (which I found on the Flickr Bush cluster).

First, obviously, Bush is (purely accidently, purely coincidentally) linked to the idea of an evil democracy. Now, of course, I do not believe that America is evil. I don’t even believe that President Bush is evil. Misguided, maybe, but not evil.

The second irony is the word “democracy”—which is one thing the U.S.A. (symbolized by Bush) is not. It’s barely even the republic it formally declares itself to be.

The most subtle irony is the source of the caption. “THE EVIL” and “DEMOCRACY” come from two different lines of text, maybe even two different sentences. In Bush’s original speech the adjective “evil” does not qualify “democracy.” Because remember, DEMOCRACY = GOOD (except in the case of Saudi Arabia, where Dysfunctional + Misogynistic + Monarchy = GOOD as well).

But, with some clever cropping, we have a postmodern critique of President Bush and his foreign policies, a kind of Max Headroom for the new millennium.

Who’s Your Pope?

This just in—a new pope has been chosen. White smoke around 12:15 Eastern Time says it all. Except, who the guy is.

Is it the conservative Joseph Ratzinger from Germany, or somebody else, some dark horse candidate?

Whoever it is, I’m actually a bit disappointed. The cardinals just started the conclave yesterday. And already they’ve chosen a successor to PJPII? Already? Where’s the suspense? The media build up? The commercial breaks? The days and days of sleepless uncertainty? Jeez, what a let down.

Milk, It Does the Corporation Good

There’s a disturbing article today in Salon on Horizon Farms, a nationwide producer and distributer of organic milk. Turns out “organic” doesn’t actually mean the Horizon’s dairy cows are raised in a humane manner. Sure, they aren’t injected with antibiotics and bovine growth hormones, but neither are they allowed to graze in open pasturelands like the happy cow on the Horizon carton. (Actually, I guess that cow is flying across the world, she’s so happy.)

Horizon cows are fed a diet of starchy grains (rather than grass, which is what a cows stomach is designed to digest). This carbo-loading leads to much greater milk production, but weakens the cow’s health, primarily its digestive system.

Even more disturbing to me though, is the corporate nature of Horizon, a company which comes across as some earthy crunchy local farm. That feel-good image couldn’t be further from the truth.

Horizon is owned by White Wave. And White Wave, in turn, is a division of the dairy giant Dean Foods. Dean Foods also owns Borden, Pet, Country Fresh, and a host of other dairy lines. The company is the country’s leading milk producer, and its revenue last year was in the ballpark of nearly $11 billion.

Of course, Horizon is the only organic milk my local supermarket carries, and I’ve been forking out huge amounts of cash for it for years, thinking I’ve been a good little consumer, supporting some anonymous, honest, farm family out in the middle of Iowa.

So I’ve been thinking I got to find some place that sells Stonyfield Farms organic milk. They’ve been in the yogurt business for years and they’re branching out to plain old organic milk.

These folks aren’t some part of some huge corporate conglomeration. This is me thinking, and this is me thinking wrong again.

Despite Stonyfield’s pastoral story of starting out “in 1983 with 7 cows”, the company is now 85% owned by the ginormous European corporation Groupe Danone (who sells Dannon yogurt in this country).

Welcome to Planet Starbucks. Welcome to the Archer-Daniel-Midlands National Historic Pasture. Welcome to the Dean Foods Corporate Milkman’s Baby.

Covert versus Clandestine

I never knew it, but there is a legal difference between “covert operations” and “clandestine operations.” According to today’s NYT, covert operations are missions “in which the [U.S.] government denies any role and that can be undertaken only by presidential directive and with formal Congressional notification.”

Clandestine missions are not “officially deniable” and require less oversight.

The general thrust of the Times article is that the Pentagon is seeking more covert operations—of the type that used be the providence of the CIA—for use in the Middle East.

Just think, top secret operations for which, if they screw up, the government can just plausibly deny ever happened!

I wish I had some sort of covert operations capital myself, in which I could achieve that exalted state of deniability. The nice wine glasses we just bought and which somehow are now chipped and one is entirely missing? I don’t know anything about that! Never heard of it. Didn’t happen.

Can You Hear Me Now?

There was a fascinating article in the January 11, 2005 New York Times: you know when you call customer service and a recorded voice says, “This call may be monitored for quality assurance purposes”? It turns out that’s no lie. Even when you’re waiting on hold and talking to your cat or wife or husband or maybe yelling at your kids, somebody may be listening.

The most revelatory part of the article, however, is how hard that job is, to be on quality control and listen to a hundred or so calls a week, evaluating the customer service rep but also listening silently to customers and their rants, sob stories, and in some cases, pick-up lines. There’s a huge turnover rate in these call monitors, and Ken Belson, the journalist who wrote the article, provides a striking insight that explains why: we live in a culture where listening is “a rare commodity” and “the opposite of talking is waiting to talk.”

Belson is dead-on. Listening is a dying art. In America, what counts most is how many words you can get in edgewise before you’re interrupted. And the interuptee, to coin a word, isn’t responding to what you’ve just said, but rather is simply saying something that’s been in his or her mind before you even began to speak.

We live in a world of preemptive interuptions. We live in a world, it seems, of preemptive everything.

Update on Burglary

First the facts…the word floating around town was that there were over thirty break-ins over the holidays. The police have announced that there have actually only been twenty-four reported break-ins. So already I feel safer. (So already I feel safer?)

Other facts: mostly jewelry was stolen. Yes, some Oreos. And in one case, seven bars of Irish Spring soap. No electronics, no firearms, no alcohol, none of the Christmas presents wrapped under all the trees.

The police announced all this at a recent community meeting, held on the neighborhood green, which I left feeling like I had just stumbled in and out of a Twilight Zone episode. Which episode? Any of them, I guess.

The police chief told the crowd of nearly fifty that the thief is most likely “one of us” and could even be there at the meeting. I had momentary visions of the Salem witch trials—neighbors turning on each other, fingers pointing, the gallows being readied right there in the middle of the green, hastily assembled from nearby benches. Luckily, my neighbors all had cooler heads than that.

My own theory is that the criminal is a college kid, who was home for the holidays and needed some cash. Gambling debts? It was either steal his neighbors’ jewelry or have his kneecaps broken? Or maybe he wanted to woo his girlfriend with an awesome Christmas present? The police estimate that the total value of all the goods stolen is about $31,000. That could buy a nice iPod and a few accessories. (Of course, why not just steal some of the doubtless countless iPod-shaped presents that were under everybody’s Christmas trees?)

At any rate, in our own household we were lucky. Or just a plain waste of the thief’s time. We can’t find anything missing. We don’t have many valuables, but it’s not like we don’t have any. Surely the crook could have found something worthwhile to steal after going to all the trouble to break in? Truth be told, I feel a little dissed. Like somehow I wasn’t good enough to rob.

The American dream lives on…

Pirates & Emperors

I’ve been meaning to blog this for a while, and the end of the year seems like a good time to clear out a backlog of mentionable links. This brilliant Schoolhouse Rock spoof called Pirates & Emperors got a lot of attention in the blogsphere when it came out in October, but it’s so on the mark that I think it’s worth resurfacing the link now.

The cartoon highlights the fact that the U.S. goverment routinely aids and abets “vicious, low-down thugs” who try to “to overthrow the government by attacking undefended civilian targets like schools, farms, hospitals, & outreach centers.” In Nicaragua we called these thugs “Freedom Fighters.” In Afghanistan in the eighties this was the Taliban.

One country’s idea of freedom is another country’s idea of terrorism…

I want my debt back!

Bush is set to sign into law a bill that raises the United States’ debt ceiling by $800 billion, bringing the credit limit of the U.S. government to a grand total of $8.184 trillion.

Now, according to the U.S. census bureau, the U.S. population is (today) roughly 294,791,347 and counting (there’s somebody new being born approximately every 8 seconds and somebody else dying approximately every 13 seconds). So that means for every American, the government has racked up $27,762 in debt.

On one hand $27,762 doesn’t sound like a lot of money, at least not compared to the trillions of debt that it’s a fraction of. On the other hand, $27,762 is a hell of a lot more money than the $300 instant refund check I got back from the government back earlier in Bush’s presidency.

And if you add in my wife’s and my four-month-old son’s share of the debt, the total is $83,286 for my entire household. Now we’re talking.

I want my debt back.

Preferably in cold hard cash. But if that doesn’t work, then in an infinitely deferred no-fault loan, for which I never have to pay the principal or the interest. I mean, if the government is getting all that dough scott-free, why can’t I? At the very least, could the President write a letter of reference to my credit card company, asking them to extend my credit line indefinitely?

Let me tell you, my family sure could use this money much more than George Bush and Congress could. We don’t have any costly misguided invasions of foreign countries to worry about, but we do have a mortgage. I’ve been eyeing an iPod too. And then there’s my son’s college fund.

Of course, there’s always a chance the deficit will end up being reduced in future generations. But really, come on, the government has no incentive to decrease it. Nobody nowhere never has ever lost an election because they’ve been profligate, squandering their constituents’ money and good will.

Oh, you fiscal conservatives and deficit hawks, where have you gone? Can you believe I’m actually getting nostalgic for Ross Perot’s flowcharts and hour-long infomercials?

Self-immolation on the White House Lawn

On Tuesday a man set himself aflame on the White House lawn.

As the Times reports today, apparently the man was a key informer against a Muslim cleric in Brooklyn who had allegedly raised funds for al Qaeda.

The man’s act seems, without us knowing the full details, incomprehensible. It should be pointed out self-immolation has a long history (Vietnam, Prague) and I find it unnerving that it’s happened here, just a few feet from the supposed center of the “Free World.” Self-immolation doesn’t say so much about the men and women who perform as it does about the social context in which they find it their only alternative, their only way to express their voice.

This is History

Karl Marx, who is just as much an authority on these things as any of the talking heads on the cable news channels, famously said that history always repeats itself, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. He was talking about Napoleon, but the principle seems to apply just about everywhere you look. Yesterday history once again repeated itself with a new world leader pretend leader: George W. Bush.

But to truly understand what happened yesterday, you have to flip-flop Marx’s argument: the presidential election has repeated itself, but the first time in 2000 it was farce. This time around, it’s tragedy.

Eminem’s Mosh

For the past few days the blogworld has been buzzing about Eminem’s new video, Mosh. Directed by the Guerilla News Network’s Ian Inaba, this song’s driving beat, conveying a greater sense of urgency than even Eminem’s powerful “Lose Yourself,” urges voters disillusioned with Bush to remove him from power.

There’s been a call-in drive to elevate this video to number one in MTV’s TRL. Last night, at least, the video was in the top 20. MTV was compelled to broadcast the video, but only part of it. They cut out two of the most powerful scenes of the video: a shot of a collage showing dozens of newspaper articles, their headlines announcing the grave misjudgments of the Bush administration. Before the collage stands Eminem, angrily pounding the walls. The video proceeds to show several individuals dramatically affected by Bush’s policies: an urban black man, a target of racial profiling; a working mother about to be evicted from her apartment; a U.S. soldier ordered to Iraq. These individuals and many more begin to march/mosh behind the passionately rhyming Eminem. Their destination is revealed in the final scenes, which MTV did not show last night: the army of angry moshers storm the steps of a courthouse, not to riot, as it first looks, but to orderly exercise their right—and power—to vote. I’m disappointed but not surprised that MTV (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Viacom) did not show the controversial video in its entirety. “Mosh” is one of the strongest indictments I’ve seen of President Bush since Fahrenheit 9-11. Eminem has already been targeted by the FCC and FBI, and this video probably places him squarely on Bush’s enemy list. (More likely Karl Rove’s list, since Bush doesn’t read the news.)

Embattled Presidents

Seeing Clinton on the campaign trail stumping for Kerry—a seemingly triumphant MacArthuresque return—brought back some memories of Clinton’s later years in office. One phrase that keeps coming back to me which the media used to the point of clichehood to describe Clinton in those years was embattled.

Simply doing a quick LexisNexis search in major newspapers for the phrase “embattled Clinton” or “embattled President” during Clinton’s second term in office shows over 250 results. “Embattled Clinton finds public support eroding,” announces the Boston Herald on September 20, 1998. “Embattled Clinton forges ahead; will public follow?” asks USA TODAY earlier that year, on January 28.

What was so embattling Clinton? Remember? Not his economic policies, not his environmental record, not his foreign diplomatic endeavors. Sex. Monica Lewinsky and Kenneth Starr’s pornographic report.

Now, I’ve done a similar LexisNexis search for occurrences of “embattled Bush” in lead paragraphs of major newspapers during the past five years. The results? Bush is called “embattled” only five times, and four of these are in the foreign press.

Why is it that, at this point in Bush’s presidency, so close to elections for a second term in office, with virtually every foreign and domestic policy of his administration an utter failure, Bush is not called “embattled” by the American media?

Is it because Bush’s biggest failures—Iraq and his war on terror—satisfy some sort of primeval desire in the American mind for violence? There can be no doubt about it: America is the most violent nation on the planet. And what we sometimes lack in real bloodshed we make up for in cinematic gore.

When it comes to sex, though, as the Clinton example demonstrates, America is the equivalent of a repressed Victorian.

Every evening, Americans can witness a dozen grisly murders on their television screens—and that’s before the 11 o’clock news—but show us one glimpse at a bare nipple during the Super Bowl, and it’s time to call in the morality police.

All in the Family

Thanks to the Political Wire for the alert:

A cadre of Bush’s second cousins have come out in forceful support of Kerry. On their site, Bush Relatives for Kerry, they announce that “blood is thinner than oil.” And they’re right.

Of course, as Political Wire also points out, Bush and Kerry are themselves cousins, twice-removed. It seems that something like 10 or 12 generations ago the children of Edmund Reade (1563-1623) and Elizabeth Cooke (1578-1637) married spouses who are direct forebears of President Bush and Senator Kerry.

Popular Culture: The ENEMY

In the New Yorker’s recent account of George Soros’s multimillion dollar endeavor to oust President Bush, journalist Jane Mayer points out that

“the astonishing amount of cash that Soros has poured into the Presidential race is nonetheless dwarfed by Republican efforts to influence public policy through private donations.”

Mayer then highlights a report put together by Rob Stein, which details how a handful of absurdly wealthy conservatives have contributed millions upon millions of dollars during the past three decades to conservative and right-wing institutions and foundations, in effect “financing a war of ideas to tilt mainstream thinking in America rightward” (New Yorker, October 18, 2004, p. 188).

I hadn’t heard of Stein’s report, but apparently it’s been making news. First, this summer in the New York Times Magazine, and then in September in Harper’s. In the New York Times Magazine article, Matt Bai summarizes Stein’s report as demonstrating how conservatives have established a “message machine” that spends $300 million every year pushing its right-wing agenda.

Jane Mayer lists a few of the institutions that comprise the conservative “message machine,” and one of these instantly caught my eye: the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, funded in part by Richard Mellon Scaife, one of the 200 or so “anchor donors” for the conservative movement.

Why, the study of popular culture—that sounds like something right up my alley. Not much different from Pop Matters or PopCultures, right?

Not really.

The innocuously-named Center for the Study of Popular Culture is not the place to go if you want to read a feminist analysis of the latest episode of The Apprentice or to read thought-provoking explorations of hip-hop culture.

No, it’s the place to go when you want “constant updates on the ongoing crises of our day, from multiculturalism to the war on terror.” Yes, multiculturalism is a grave threat. And if Kerry is elected, I’m sure Dick Cheney would say, multiculturalism WILL STRIKE AGAIN!!!

Those wacky white billionaire conservatives. What will they think up next?

The Presidential Debate

The next few comments are all my attempt at “live blogging” during the presidential debate tonight. Except when I wasn’t yelling at my television screen I was trying to write. You can tell I was yelling quite a bit.

9:17 PM: Watching the debate…I don’t feel so hot. Our man is a broken record. Tora Bora again? There’s got to be more you can criticize Bush for during the war…

9:19 PM: So Bush is working with Canada to see if they’ve got a flu vaccine they can share? What about their killer drugs?

9:24 PM: The president just “whewed” in a falsetto. Man, that rocks. Did the bulge in his back tell him to do that?

9:30 PM: Let’s amend the constitution. Yeah! Give the citizenshry the power! Bush doesn’t want the courts to define marriage. So he’s going to do it for them.

9:36 PM: The horse and buggy days were BAD. I’m glad I know where Bush stands on that issue.

9:56 PM: “Border Governor”—I think Bush is talking about Texas, but I’m not really sure. Bush pantomines an illegal immigrant carrying a “card.” I would’ve thought he and Ashcroft would have preferred ID chip implants. Kerry says our borders are LEAKING. Could we sink? Should I buy flood insurance? Who do I sue? Uh-oh: Kerry’s the biometric fan.

10:11 PM: Kerry hunts. But wait, I thought he was French.

10:18 PM: Bush: You can worship the ALMIGHTY, but if you don’t want to, fine. It just means you’re not as good as me. And you’re going to rot. In the ALMIGHTY’s hell. Bush: God wants everybody to be free. Little did you know that God is actually a co-writer of the seventies feel-good show, Free to be You and Me.

10:26 PM: Bush met his wife at a barbeque in Texas. It’s like The Last Pictureshow in Texas all over again, but not.

Dred Scott

Is it just me, or did Bush’s remark in Friday’s debate about Dred Scott come out of bizarro world?

In response to a question about whom he would choose to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court, Bush referred to the Dred Scott decision, in which, Bush explained,

“Judges years ago said the Constitution allowed slavery because of personal property rights. That’s personal opinion, that’s not what the Constitution says. The Constitution says we’re all…it doesn’t say that. It doesn’t speak to the equality of America.”

Does this make any sense? The only thing I can reasonably assume is that Bush means he would not appoint a Supreme Court justice who approves of slavery. Swell. How enlightened of Bush. I’m glad to know that he draws the line at reinstating slavery.

Florida, the Gift that Keeps on Giving

On Overstated, Cameron Marlow has created an interactive perl script that will scan the presidential and vice-presidential debate transcripts for particular phrases. For example, the Debate Analyzer lets you search for “hard work,” and you discover Bush repeated the phrase eleven times. The analyzer highlights the phrase and shows its context, enabling you to see that, in this case, Bush is mostly using it describe his job. Don’t you just feel so sorry for the man? Maybe he deserves some vacation time?

One thing I discovered with this tool is that in the first debate Kerry mentioned “Florida” twice, while Bush doesn’t mention the state by name at all, ever. It’s as if Bush is afraid to jinx the upcoming election by drawing people’s attention to the state. Pretty remarkable, considering the debate was held in Coral Gables, FL. Is Bush hoping Florida will once again be his trojan horse? Or is it a gift horse? Or simply a stolen horse?

Lies, Continued

There’s been so much debunking of the lies that Bush/Cheney are telling that I hardly need to repeat the truth here. But please pardon me if I do point out that I was saying they were liars all along.

Several blogs that have become daily reading in the run-up to the elections:

• Daily Kos
• Wonkette
• Talking Points Memo

Check ‘em out. They have their act together (and I don’t…Lists of Links are a poor man’s blog).

Ants

Feeling frustrated with your fellow Americans after looking at the latest presidential poll results? Vent with the Ant City game!

If the predictions are correct and Bush wins, can we all expect to be issued a “Visual Language Survival Guide”? — a glossy, colorful pamphlet given to U.S. troops and independent contractors in Iraq, intended to help Americans communicate with prisoners of war, enemy combatants, and the random Iraqi civilian.

The top image to left is presumably for those situations in which you’re not sure (a) if the sniper is in a building, and if so, which floor; or (b) if the sniper is behind a grassy knoll. (You know, I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a link between Saddam and JFK’s assassination…Has Bush mentioned anything about that yet?)

The bottom image very helpfully allows you to politely inquire about where, exactly, the mad suicide bomber hid his explosives: (a) on his yellow sweater; (b) duct-taped to a stationwagon; or (c) carefully hidden on the side of his truck.

I’ve only got two comments about this image: damn, those are big ass sticks of dynamite. And, wow, can he really drive looking out the window like that? I mean, that’s a major safety hazard. If that’s the way Iraqis really drive, then they do deserve to be invaded, occupied, and subjected to American graphic artistry supremacy.

Fraud

In my local public library today I saw a copy of Paul Waldman’s Fraud: The Lies Behind the Bush Presidency, which systematically deconstructs the populist, plain-spoken persona of George W. Bush and reveals the deceitful, misguiding and misguided policies of the current White House.

I’m dying to read the book more closely, but I decided not to check it out from the library. I’d rather leave it there and let one of the mythic “undecided” voters check it out and perhaps help them make up their mind.

I wonder, though, whoever does check it out, do they risk having their library records monitored by the FBI (perfectly legal and even encouraged by the PATRIOT Act).

The Warren Commission Report (by James Joyce)

As Salon recently reminded readers, September 24th marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of the Warren Commission Report, the official government document that announced that the assassination of JFK was the work of a lone gunman—Lee Harvey Oswald—and that he worked alone. In other words, there was no conspiracy.

Salon reports that many current and former high-ranking government officials, including Presidents Johnson and Nixon, doubted the Warren Commission’s conclusions, suspecting that there was indeed a conspiracy against Kennedy, and even more insidious, a successful conspiracy to coverup the first conspiracy.

If you’ve never had a chance to read the report, rush out now and do so. (Or just stay online and read it at the National Archives). It’s fascinating, but even more fascinating—and astounding—are the 26 volumes of materials from the Warren Commission Hearings. These 26 volumes include every word of testimony from Oswald’s wife, mother, and brother, as well as testimony from a wide assortment of government and law enforcement officials. The last 10 volumes of the hearings are devoted entirely to artifacts used as exhibits during the hearings, including a clip of Lee Harvey Oswald’s hair, his “historic diary” (as he called it), and even a copy of Oswald’s school records from the first grade (so there is a “permanent record”!). These 26 volumes were boiled down into the more portable Warren Commission Report, which is still in print, in fact.

The amount of material dredged up for the hearings, the depth of research into one man’s life is astonishing and nearly a work of art. In Libra, Don DeLillo’s fictionalized account of Oswald’s life, DeLillo calls the Warren Report the “megaton novel James Joyce would have written if he’d moved to Iowa City and lived to be a hundred.”

That pretty much sums up the Warren Commission. More fiction than fact, a modernist extravaganza.

Bushwacked

Yesterday marked the moment when the death toll for American soldiers in Iraq surpassed a 1,000 dead. This figure doesn’t count the severely injured and maimed, the deaths of American civilians, and the deaths of untold innocent Iraqi citizens.

Bush supporters seem willing to forgive all of this death and destruction. They are willing to overlook the fact that Saddam had nothing to do with 9-11 (and therefore revenge against Iraq is not justified, even if one is the vengeful type). They are willing to ignore the countless violations of human rights at Abu Ghraib, the systematic and presidentially-sanctioned humiliation and torture of prisoners of war. They are willing to close their eyes to the creeping, chilling loss of rights and freedoms here in their own country.

Even if they acknowledge these realities they insist that Bush deserves reelection because despite all this other “propaganda” he will still lower our taxes.

My jaw drops.

Bush lowered taxes, yes. He euphemistically called his tax changes “tax relief,” as if taxes were like gas or indigestion. Unlike indigestion, though, our taxes actually do provide benefits: schools, roads, public health measures, and of course, the military. But cutting taxes means cutting these government programs (or running a record $422 billion deficit).

Bush lowered, taxes, yes, but for whom? His “tax relief” disproportionately benefited only the very wealthy, the richest 1 to 2 percent of all Americans. I don’t know about you, but none of my friends or family are in the top 1 percent. Bush, on the other hand, has a lot of friends and family in this group. “The haves and have-mores,” Bush calls these wealthy supporters, who are getting back tens of thousands—and in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars, while I get back $300. Now that’s what I call compassionate conservatism.

A Nation of Fear

The Washington Post reports today that Vice President Dick Cheney “warned on Tuesday that if John F. Kerry is elected, ‘the danger is that we’ll get hit again’ by terrorists.”

Cheney and Bush are trafficking in the politics of fear, attempting to frighten American voters into supporting Bush, whose record against terrorism, it really needs to be pointed out, is abysmal. And as Bush squanders more resources in Iraq, al Qaeda is regrouping, becoming an even more elusive, rhizomatic network.

The truth is, if terrorists do strike again, much of the blame can be laid upon the current administration, whose foreign policies alienate allies in much of the world and foster hate in the rest of the world, whose domestic policies are trashing constitutionally-granted civil liberties and transforming America into a fear-driven self-censored police-state, and whose election strategy seems simply to be to reduce Americans into a cowering lot of obedient sheep who would be lost without their protector and shepherd, George W. Bush.

The Hunt for Osama

Months ago, even before John Kerry emerged as the Democratic frontrunner in the race for president, I predicted that if Osama bin Laden was captured before the November vote Bush would win reelection. And if Osama was not captured by then, Bush would lose.

And what do we have on the heels of the Republican convention, but a high-ranking state department official stating that America is close to finding the elusive terrorist. Joseph Cofer Black told journalists, “If he [bin Laden] has a watch, he should be looking at it because the clock is ticking. He will be caught.” What clock is that? The November elections, of course. Despite the fact that U.S. and Pakistan forces have no new information regarding bin Laden’s whereabouts, the state department made it sound as if counter-terrorist forces were minutes away from capturing bin Laden. So once again, we have Bush’s White House using fear (and the promise to resolve that fear) as a primary campaign strategy.

Bin Laden has become the boogeyman, the big bad wolf, which is funny, because for months Bush seemed to forget that as he squandered tens of billions of dollars of resources in Iraq. I wonder, if we had focused solely on al Qaeda would bin Laden be captured by now?

And even more unsettling: would it even matter if he were captured? As events in Iraq demonstrate, there is no one single bad guy. Saddam Hussein is gone but death and destruction continue. Most experts say that al Qaeda is such a decentralized network that it will carry on quite effectively with or without bin Laden.

So, Mr. Bush, make all the promises you want, but it’s all just politicking.

It Can’t Happen Here

It Can’t Happen Here is a much-overlooked novel by Sinclair Lewis in which a totalitarian regime slowly but irrevocably takes over the United States in the 1930s. Lewis satirically documents the rise of a fascist leader whose coming to power is met with apathetic shrugs by a easily-wooed populace who believes that a dictatorship “can’t happen here”—not in so-called democratic America. The antagonist of Lewis’s novel, Senator Buzz Windrip, marshalls his forces by appealing to xenophobia, racist dogma, and nostalgia for America’s glorious military past. Windrip wins the presidential election and quickly establishes a totalitarian state, using his private militia to enforce his increasingly brutal regime.

I too had thought that Lewis was fairly off-base, that “it couldn’t happen here,” until recently. Surely America is still a democracy? Even after the Florida debacle of 2000 I kept my faith. Now, after seeing this latest headline—“U.S. Mulling How to Delay Nov. Vote in Case of Attack”—I am thinking Lewis was incredibly prescient. The Bush administration, in short, is taking legal steps to postpone the constitutionally-mandated November presidential elections. His excuse: just in case terrorists attack. But this is a really a power-grab, one more instance of the Bush network seeking to extend and prolong its power illegally and with no regard for the American values of free and public debate (which includes, Mr. President, free and fair and regularly scheduled elections in which the incumbent is finally held accountable to the American people).

Bush Denies 9-11 Commission Findings

How’s this for a tautology: “The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.”

This is what Bush explained to reporters this afternoon. Oh, if saying it could only make it so, Bush would have had Saddam himself piloting the plane into the Pentagon. Unfortunately, no matter how many times Bush makes his wish, it doesn’t come true: Saddam and bin Laden had nothing to do with each other. And Saddam had nothing to do with September 11, 2001.

Bush concedes that the attacks were not orchestrated by Saddam Hussein. But there were, Bush argues wishes pleads “numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.”

By this logic, we should be going after Dick Cheney because of his “numerous contacts” with the illustrious Halliburton corporation, who seems to be the primary beneficiary of the war in Iraq, what with the kickbacks, overcharging, and awesome food service.

If my saying it would only make it so…

Conspiracies in America

I have been rereading the late Edward Said’s incisive book Culture and Imperialism, and I was intrigued by the following observation:

“It takes very little for a non-American to accept as a starting point that most, if not all, political assassinations are conspiracies, because that is the way the world is. But a chorus of American sages takes acres of print to deny that conspiracies exist in America, since ‘we’ represent a new, and better, and more innocent world.”

Said wrote this in the early nineties, before The X-Files made the phrase “conspiracy theory” so commonplace. Nonetheless, I do think Said’s point remains valid (in fact his entire project seems more relevant today than ever before).

The United States government and the mass media readily and insistently deny that conspiracies occur in America. Meanwhile in the rest of the world it is taken for granted that a conspiracy exists behind every political assassination. Assassinations (and their failed attempts) in America—JFK, MLK, George Wallace, Reagan—are, in the final analysis, attributed to the now archetypal “lone gunman.” This killer is characterized as an unstable, deranged, marginal figure. He is an isolated incident, and the larger community has no role in or responsibility for his actions. According to the nation’s official narrative, then, a sort of rabid madness drives assassinations in America.

What does this say about America, that this is how many would prefer we see ourselves?

It’s not a pretty picture, this vision of a stark raving madman, lurking on the fringes. Which explains the proliferation of conspiracy-laced counter-narratives, in which a cabal of reasonable middle-aged white men in smoky rooms pull the strings of history.

In either case, you or I can abdicate responsibility. It’s either a bloodthirsty lunatic or an inaccessible shadowy group who’s at fault. Both fables release American citizens at-large from any culpability, and both, therefore, are retrograde ideologies which severely limit our political imaginations.

They Rule: Mapping the Power

Lately I’ve been exploring They Rule, an interactive database of the largest American corporations and their interwoven boards of directors. The site is an example of what creator Josh On (from the Futurefarmers collective) calls “database visualization.”

They Rule opens with these words:

They sit on boards of the largest companies in America
Many sit on government committees
They make decisions that affect our lives
They rule

Quite simply, the site allows you to map connections between various corporations, using members of their boards as nodes, or relay points. It’s Six Degrees of Separation for multinational corporations. One popular map, for example, documents the connections between Halliburton and major media outlets. Aylwin B. Lewis, we find, is on Halliburton’s board of directors and Disney’s board too. Meanwhile William R. Howell sits on the boards of Halliburton and Pfizer. On Pfizer’s board is William H. Gray, III, who in turn is also on Viacom’s board. There is a direct line, then, from a war-profiteering energy conglomerate to the owner of MTV and CBS news.

They Rule makes no claim that there is a grand cabal among Halliburton directors, controlling the mass media. There is no conspiracy here. Nonetheless, it is unsettling to see so much corporate power concentrated in the hands of so few individuals. It seems that above the daily lives of most Americans there is a free-floating network of corporate entities and wealthy individuals to which we have no access. They, in turn, have little accountability to us. Their chief loyalties are to each other.

Another revealing map is Why Citicorp Really Rules, which shows a diverse group of banks, government institutions, media outlets, and consumer retailers, at the center of which is Citigroup, the world’s largest bank. (Not far behind is JP Morgan Chase and Bank One, who will soon be merging into one bank.)

The best part of They Rule is that you or I can create and save our own database visualizations for others to see. That is, we can archive these connections, print the maps, or email them to others. Some of these user-created maps can be truly informative, like the maps I refer to above. Others can be misleading, such Time Warner Has Their Hands in Everything. This map shows how members of Time Warner’s board also sit on the boards of companies like Dell, Chevron, or FedEx. This much is true, of course. What is misleading is the map’s title. Time Warner the company doesn’t have its hands in everything. Its people do. It’s essential to remember that behind every faceless corporate entity there are people. This is at once discouraging and liberating. Discouraging, because you begin to realize that there exists a class of people who seem untouchable, a world unto themselves, making decisions based on bottom lines rather than less tangible motivations, like dignity and sustainability. Liberating, because you begin to realize that power, whenever it is held by mortals, is fluid and transformable. There is space for resistance whenever humans are involved.

They Rule is one front of this resistance.

Ambiguity of War

Right now I’m reading Tim O’Brien’s 1978 novel Going after Cacciato, about a squad of American soldiers in Vietnam sent after an army deserter—a private named Cacciato, who decides to leave the squad and march all the way to Paris.

The novel won the National Book Award in 1979, and it’s easy to see why. Twenty-five years later the novel is still fresh, humming with vibrant writing and the power of imagination. And now in the midst of another war that some have compared to Vietnam, the novel seems more relevant than ever before.

I’m not saying Iraq is like Vietnam. But I’m not saying it’s not. There are some striking differences, but when I read the following paragraph from Going after Cacciato, I was left wondering how much of this description could apply to the United States’ current war. Here we step inside the soldiers’ minds, who have been patrolling for months in the Quang Ngai province of Vietnam:

They did not know even the simple things: a sense of victory, or satisfaction, or necessary sacrifice. They did not know the feeling of taking a place and keeping it, securing a village and then raising the flag and calling it a victory. No sense of order or momentum. No front, no rear, no trenches laid out in neat parallels. No Patton rushing for the Rhine, no beachheads to storm and win and hold for the duration. They did not have targets. They did not have a cause. They did not know if it was a war of ideology or economics or hegemony or spite…. They did not know strategies. They did not know the terms of the war, its architecture, the rules of fair play. When they took prisoners, which was rare, they did not know the questions to ask, whether to release a suspect or beat on him. They did not know how to feel. Whether, when seeing a dead Vietnamese, to be happy or sad or relieved; whether, in times of quiet, to be apprehensive or content; whether to engage the enemy or elude him. They did not know how to feel when they saw villages burning. Revenge? Loss? Peace of mind or anguish? They did not know. They knew the old myths about Quang Ngai—tales passed down from old-timer to newcomer—but they did not know which stories to believe. Magic, mystery, ghosts and incense, whispers in the dark, strange tongues and strange smells, uncertainties never articulated in war stories, emotion squandered on ignorance. They did not know good from evil.

- Tim O’Brien, Going after Cacciato (New York: Delacorte, 1978) 272-273.

Unauthorized Disclosure of Classified Information

Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld must despise and I mean really, truly, despise Seymour Hersh, the journalist whose New Yorker exposé of the sadistic conditions at the Abu Ghraib prison has rocked the world.

Hersh has been a thorn in the side of the U.S. government since 1969, when he was the first journalist to report on the atrocities of My Lai, where the Charley Company of the U.S. Army massacred every man, woman, and child of a small South Vietnamese village. All told, nearly 500 civilians were shot dead that morning of March 16, 1968.

Hersh continued his investigative work in the seventies. In a front page New York Times article on May 25, 1975, Hersh reported that the U.S. Navy was running extremely risky nuclear submarine missions inside Soviet waters. Not only did these missions threaten the detente of the thawing Cold War, they had resulted in several accidents, including at least two direct collisions with Soviet submarines. You can bet the hawks in the White House were outraged by Hersh and his revelations.

In fact, several memos passed between Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, in which they considered their options. (To the left is the second page of one of these memos, dated May 30, 1975. Click for a larger version.)

Should they sue the Times for publishing government secrets? Should they pressure the press through “private discussions with publishers, etc.”? Should they investigate the origin of the leak and prosecute that person? And most importantly to Cheney and Rumsfeld, should they continue the hazardous submarine operations?

The language Cheney uses in this memo bleeds with euphemism. Exactly what is the “etc.” that follows “private discussions”? An offer the newspaper can’t refuse? And what “action” is Cheney proposing they take “against those responsible for N.Y. TIMES story”?

I wish I could say I’m surprised that nearly 30 years later, similar secret shenanigans by the same secretive hooligans are taking place within the halls of power. But I’m not surprised, and I would even be disappointed if Cheney and Rumsfeld weren’t abusing the power of their offices. I’m not even surprised at their hypocrisy in wanting to “enforce laws against unauthorized disclosure of classified information,” when the current Bush administration most certainly illegally leaked classified information, like the name of a CIA operative in order to exact revenge on that agent’s husband, a vocal critic of the current war in Iraq.

I wonder what memos are flying around the White House now, especially after Hersh’s latest article in the New Yorker, in which he elaborates on his first exposé and describes how nearly everyone in the chain of command at the Department of Defense attempted to cover-up the abuses at Abu Ghraib. “Secrecy and wishful thinking,” Hersh relates, “are defining characteristics of Rumsfeld’s Pentagon.”

We are seeing evidence of that secrecy and wishful thinking every day now, and there seems to be no end in sight.

From Superiority to equivalence

On Saturday Vice President Dick Cheney said that “Don Rumsfeld is the best secretary of defense the United States ever had.” How modest Cheney is, considering that he himself was a secretary of defense under the original President Bush. If we take Cheney’s fawning words at face value (something I would rarely recommend), does that mean that Cheney was simply a more or less adequate secretary? And would this automatically make Rumsfeld a better one, or even “the best”?

Come to think of it, there is something distinctly incestuous about the job of defense secretary. Cheney had it, and now Rummy has it. It would seem that Rummy had sloppy seconds, but don’t forget that Rumsfeld was secretary of defense once before, way back under President Ford. Twenty years ago, Rumsfeld was in D.C., swaggering just as much as he does today.

It is a known known what Rumsfeld’s preoccupations are today, but what was he concerned about his first time around as secretary of defense?

Just take a look at this recently declassified memo, detailing a top-secret 1976 conversation between President Ford, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, NSA Director Brent Scowcroft, and Rumsfeld (See the larger image). The document is interesting not so much because of what is being said, but simply because it illustrates what a dinosaur Rumsfeld is. His Cold War mentality shines through, especially when he frets that militarily, America has “been slipping since the ’60s from superiority to equivalence, and if we don’t stop now, we’ll be behind.”

But back to Cheney’s statement from yesterday…

Cheney also said, “People ought to get off his case and let him do his job.” Cheney sounds a little too overprotective of his buddy, and more to the point, snidely unimpressed with the magnitude and ramifications of the Iraqi abuse scandal. Cheney demonstrates that his secure undisclosed location is as much metaphorical as literal—Cheney is out touch and not willing for a second to put himself in the place of Iraqi citizens who see these horrendous images of torture perpetrated by their so-called liberators.

The point, Mr. Cheney, is that Rumsfeld didn’t do his job. Had he done it, American forces overseas would be abiding by the rules of the Geneva Convention. These rules, to which the U.S. is a signatory, were broken, and they were broken routinely and systematically, and they continued to be broken long after Rumsfeld found out about the violations.

If this lack of leadership defines the “best” secretary of defense this nation can muster, then the ones that weren’t the best must have really been pitiful.

Dogs of War

Thinking more about Bush’s lovely dog in yesterday’s post, I remembered famous lines from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar:

And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.

Well, “remembered” is not quite what happened. I knew that the phrase “dogs of war” came from Shakespeare, but I had to look it up in the excellent Open Source Shakespeare concordance to find the exact quote. This is a dramatic monologue Mark Antony delivers after bargaining with Caesar’s murderers(Brutus and Cassius), and in it he predicts nothing but war and destruction in the wake of Caesar’s death.

Using the concordance I discovered that there’s only one other place in all of Shakespeare that the words “dogs” and “war” appear in such close proximity. It’s from Richard II and I think it’s worth quoting (thinking again of Bush’s dog):

O villains, vipers, damn’d without redemption!
Dogs, easily won to fawn on any man!
Snakes, in my heart-blood warm’d, that sting my heart!
Three Judases, each one thrice worse than Judas!
Would they make peace? terrible hell make war
Upon their spotted souls for this offence!

The “Judases” to whom King Richard refers are traitors, and he likens them to both “snakes” and “dogs.” But what I really want to focus on is Shakespeare’s characterization of dogs: they are “easily won” and “fawn on any man”—any man that feeds them.

Who feeds Bush’s dog? Who feeds Bush’s dogs of war?

Hypocrisy: A Definition and a Scottish Terrier

Hypocrisy comes from the Latin hypocrisis, which in turn derives from the Greek , which means, according to the OED, “the acting of a part on the stage, feigning, pretence.”

And it was on a stage yesterday in Maumee, Ohio, that our Dear Leader
told an adoring crowd of pancake eaters—who might as well have been lotus eaters—that he has “vision” and a “plan to win the war on terror.” That plan, the White House just announced, will require another $25 billion. And this is in addition to the $160 billion Bush has already asked for (and received).

About Iraq, Bush said that “because we acted, torture chambers are closed.” It seems to me utterly heartless and cruelly hypocritical to make such a statement at the same time the top story in the world news is the systematic abuse, torture, and murder of Iraqi prisoners of war at the hands of U.S. soldiers.

The president is fumbling around for explanations and excuses today, but what was the White House saying about this issue yesterday? Running a search yesterday for official photographs of the administration, thinking I’d find an engaging close-up of an “annoyed” Bush scolding Rummy, I instead found only two photographs on the White House website. Both were of “Barney,” the president’s Scottish Terrier playing with a golf ball on the South Lawn.

The dog’s golf ball is an issue of national importance, of course, and I can absolutely understand why Americans need to see their White House at work. Nonetheless, I wonder if there might be the teensiest bit of politicking behind this photograph. As if it could somehow be an antidote to the disturbing images of Iraqi soldiers, hooded and naked, forced to pile themselves into a pyramid, while behind them two smiling American soldiers pose for the camera. (See the Memory Hole for some of these photographs, but be forewarned they are graphic and unsettling.)

Meanwhile Bush can continue telling his supporters that “Either Iraq will be a camp for terror and tyranny, or Iraq will be a model for freedom and democracy…” The latter will certainly not happen on his watch.

I laughed, I cried

True or False: the following headline exemplifies the concept of irony:

Bush Hails His Environmental Record on Earth Day

Who Needs the Maytag Repairman?

On Sunday the Seattle Times published a photograph of flag-draped coffins leaving Kuwait International Airport. Today the paper reports that the photographer, Tami Silicio, has been fired by her employer, a military contractor resupplying troops in Iraq. Taking such photographs, it turns out, violates Pentagon policy. In fact, according to government policy, the news media are forbidden to show any image of dead American soldiers. The Pentagon guidelines warns, “The prohibition includes…the movement of remains at any point” (quoted in USA Today).

Despite the chilling aura of censorship surrounding this case, I was delighted to find that the war-profitering contractor, Maytag Aircraft, is in no way related to Maytag Corporation, makers of my washer and dryer (and probably yours) and home of the affable Maytag Repairman.

Email the White House!!

Have I been too hard on the current administration? Is our White House more representative, more responsive, more attune to everyday Americans’ hopes and concerns than I give it credit for?

I was pleased to find today that you can email the White House and they’ll write back to you. They’ll even post the most critically important email questions and answers on the White House Interactive Home Page.

Let’s take a look at what kinds of hard-hitting, penetrating questions Americans ask of their president, and how he responds.

There’s Daphne from Fresh Meadows, New York, who wonders if it’s true that the first President Bush hated broccoli “so much he took it off the White House menu?” Wow, that’s a tough one. I’m not sure Scott McClellan, the White House Press Secretary, can handle it. Oh, but wait, he doesn’t have to! When you are the product of a political dynasty founded on oil money and warmongering, you can always call up backup forces, and here, the original Bush answers the question. Yes, a cameo appearance by President H.W. Bush! Here’s what he answers to Daphne: “I never asked that it be removed from White House menus. I just vowed that I would never eat it again, and I have courageously stuck to that promise.”

Awesome!! Father, like son, sticks to his promises! That’s right, Mr. President, don’t back down now from that terrible broccoli threat. The green menace? Bring it on!!

Hmmm, what’s else have prodding Americans been asking the White House? Scrolling down the page, we see a very probing question, perhaps one of the most critical indictments of White House policy I’ve seen so far this election year. Tiffany from Canton, Ohio, bitterly writes, “Can you please move the President’s speech to another time? I want to watch American Idol. How about moving the speech to 9pm?”

Ouch! If I were Scott McClellan I’d be hiding my tail between my legs after that ass-kicking. You’ve got to hand it to this White House, though, they’re brimming with irrepressible devotion to the truth, and McClellan admirably answers Tiffany’s concerns, saying,

I think we are going to stick to the 8:30pm time tonight. There are some important issues that the President wants to discuss with the American people at a time when most Americans will be able to hear what he has to say. The good news for American Idol fans is that FOX is moving tonight’s episode to tomorrow night at 8.

Sock it to ‘em, Scott! How’s that for a White House comeback! Yes, you heard right, the White House is making official pronouncements about important domestic issues, such as our television schedules and the alarming number of bad singers whom millions of Americans can’t live without.

Now if the White House can only help me get HBO.

The President Emboldens Me

A few notes about tonight’s Presidential Press Conference…

• This was only Bush’s third prime-time press conference in which he took questions from the press. The last one was a year ago, shortly before the Iraq War began.
• Bush used the word embolden twice. Embolden: to render bold or more bold; to hearten, encourage (OED)
• Saying something doesn’t make it so. When Bush says he “honors” the troops who have fallen, it doesn’t actually perform any honoring. Unless you’re a priest saying “I pronounce you man and wife,” your words don’t actually perform any actions. For Bush to really honor the American soldiers and civilians who have lost their lives in Iraq, he needs to do something more than just saying he “honors” them. Allow their caskets to be photographed by journalists (rather than hiding the fact of their deaths). Attend their funerals.
• Bush is allergic to apologies. When he was asked directly whether he should apologize for his handling of the War on Terror, Bush dodged the question.
• Bush said “I believe that freedom is the deepest need of every human soul.” Two words: Patriot Act.
• Bush sees the transformation of Iraq from dictatorship to a democracy with free elections as central to the greater transformation of the Middle East. Bush is only promoting the rhetoric of democracy, however. What about Saudi Arabia? Any U.S. policy geared toward a democratic Middle East must address the problems of Saudi Arabia, a repressive monarchy whose citizens have very few civil liberties. As long as Saudi Arabia is our ally (in other words, supplying oil), the United States will overlook this black hole of democracy in the Middle East.

Mixed Signals

I know the White House’s policy in Iraq is schizophrenic, but this is getting ridiculous. On April 5th, Bush