or:
It's All About Us
(In response to this post by Billmon)
I realize that most of you here are far more interested in the more specific details of current events, and rightly so, but it's important to understand the meaning of what Billmon has to say, to view what's happening now in a historical context, and, I hope, to have an idea of what we can work towards in the future.
I am somewhat of a student of history myself, hardly an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I know enough to know that things come in cycles and that progress (which I define as the gradual improvement of the quality of life for the most people) occurs both geometrically and chaotically, and tends to takes a step or two back before continuing forward. (more below the fold)
I realize that most of you here are far more interested in the more specific details of current events, and rightly so, but it's important to understand the meaning of what Billmon has to say, to view what's happening now in a historical context, and, I hope, to have an idea of what we can work towards in the future.
I am somewhat of a student of history myself, hardly an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I know enough to know that things come in cycles and that progress (which I define as the gradual improvement of the quality of life for the most people) occurs both geometrically and chaotically, and tends to takes a step or two back before continuing forward.
Billmon had a great post the other day about the neoconservatives:
- What strikes me most about the Straussians - and by extension, the neocons - is that they've pushed the traditional liberal/conservative dichotomy of American politics back about 150 years, and moved it roughly 4,000 miles to the east, to the far side of the Rhine River. Their grand existential struggle isn't with the likes of Teddy Kennedy or even Franklin D. Roosevelt, it's with the liberalism of Voltaire, John Locke and John Stuart Mill - not to mention the author of the Declaration of the Independence.
Strauss, in other words, wasn't a neo anything. He was a conservative in the original European sense - fond of hierarchy, tradition and religious orthodoxy; deeply suspicious of newfangled ideas like egalitarianism, rationalism and a political theory based on enlightened self interest and the social contract. Nor was he impressed by Mill's utilitarian adding machine - constantly calculating the greatest good for the greatest number.
To the Straussians, rationality does not provide an adequate basis for a stable social order. To the contrary, the Age of Enlightenment has ushered in the crisis of modernity, in which nihilism - the moral vacuum left behind by the death of God - inevitably leads to decadence, decline and, ultimately, genocide.
I realize that most of you here are far more interested in the more specific details of current events, and rightly so, but it's important to understand the meaning of what Billmon has to say, to view what's happening now in a historical context, and, I hope, to have an idea of what we can work towards in the future.
I am somewhat of a student of history myself, hardly an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I know enough to know that things come in cycles and that progress (which I define as the gradual improvement of the quality of life for the most people) occurs both geometrically and chaotically, and tends to takes a step or two back before continuing forward.
What we are witnessing now, I firmly believe, is the last gasp of who Billmon refers to as "the Straussians" and the end of the era of great nation-states as we move towards a truly global society (which will bring with it problems of its own: I don't believe in Utopias). If I'm wrong, which I doubt, we might instead be witnessing the beginning of a new Dark Age that will plunge the world into a seemingly endless series of small conflicts that will at best either delay progress for any number of generations or at worst end with the destruction of the human race. Either way, the world of a century from now is going to be drastically different than the world we live in today, and how it turns out it will very likely depend upon what will occur in the next twenty years or so. We are living, in other words, in "interesting times," and, whether we like it or not, it will be up to us to determine what form the society of the future will take.
In order to better understand what I'm talking about, let's take a look back at human history in a very brief and general way, because what's happening in America right now isn't that much different from what has happened in many other powerful nation-states since human civilization began roughly six to ten thousand years ago. President Clinton has spoken about history as being a series of conflicts between different groups of "us" versus "them", and how we're moving slowly but surely towards a greater definition of "us". The casual observer would think that he was talking about different nations. That part of it is certainly true: nations rise and nations fall, and they make war with each other for many different reasons.
But there's another subtext to what President Clinton had to say: that the conflict between "us" and "them" has not been so much between one community against another, but by communities within themselves. No sane person, after all, wants to go to war. Even among those who have an extreme dislike for people who are different than they are would rarely desire those people dead, and even if they did it's a big jump to actually go out and kill someone. Given a real choice, most people would never go to war. So why do we do it, then? Let's ask Herman Goerring:
- Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.
The Nazis, of couse, were only one example among many: similar statements have been made by people as culturally far apart as Rome's Julius Caesar and China's Sun Tzu. War, after all, is something "they" want, for many reasons: power, wealth, prestige. The rest of us have simply gone along with it, and that's what needs to change.
Regardless of how the neocons and those before them have manipulated people, and regardless of who they point to as the enemy, the truth is clear: it's all about "them". No matter how a nation gets started, eventually it reaches a point where a few rich and powerful people put themselves into positions of power and use the tools of government for their own ends. As President Theodore Roosevelt reminds us:
- At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of freemen to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will. At every stage, and under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth.
Goerring and his Nazi pals were masters of their craft. They took advantage of the German people's sense of pride and loyalty in their country and religion, they fired up those who already hated anyone who was "different", and they intimidated everyone else. They didn't do anything that hadn't been done before, they just took it to levels no one had seen. And the neocons, the heirs of fascism, are following the same script. But Roosevelt hit the point exactly: the struggle isn't between nations, it's between
classes. The enemies of the German people weren't so much the English or the French or the Polish, they were the Nazis, just as the true enemies of America aren't the people of Iraq or China, it's the neocons and their financial backers, who only want to profit from war and conquest.
The neocons believe that the world exists for their benefit and their benefit alone, and damn everyone else. It's no different from what the Nazis believed, or the assorted emperors and monarchists before them, or the Roman emperors before them, or at any given time in the history of the East. The thinking of the Enlightenment is the greatest threat to their ambitions, because the difference between neocon self-interest and enlightened self-interest is the idea that others have the right to self-interest also. The Enlightenment and it's heir, American Revolution (as flawed as it was because of slavery), did a huge amount of damage to the idea that one class of people was simply superior to others, and the success of the New Deal, to many of our American fascists at the time, must have seemed like the final nail in the coffin. But people who think they are better than everyone else never give up, they exist in every generation, and we have to always guard against them. We progressives build communities for the purpose of counteracting the darker side of human behavior, the neocons and their ilk build systems that embrace and celebrate it. That is one of the primary differences between "us" and "them".
Marx wrote about this class struggle as well, and if you understand the working conditions of Europeans at the time he wrote his manifesto, you can see why he believed what he believed (likewise, if you understand the world Ayn Rand grew up in, you can understand why she wrote her objectivist novels). But Marx's vision of a "worker's paradise" failed because in the end it became nothing more than just another tool for a few people to grab power; Communism became very quickly about the Communist Party, in other words, just a different set of "them". What our Founding Fathers did in designing our government was to establish a system where it would take overwhelming popular support to take control of the government: not just the checks and balances in the system, but the idea that the government exists to protect the rights of all of its citizens, even (and especially) those in the minority. I'm not saying we have always lived up to those standards, because we haven't. The American Revolution is an ongoing thing, and it takes time to go against millenia of human nature.
The neocons and the GOP leadership don't seem to understand that by rejecting the idea of minority rights, by "going nuclear", and breaking the rules for their own short-term benefit, they sow the seeds of their own destruction. Should they lose power they will be subject to the same precedents that they are setting now. Again, this is nothing new:
- The Roman Republic had no written constitution but was, rather, a system of agreed-upon procedures crystallized by tradition (the mos maiorum, "the way of our ancestors"). Administration was carried out by (mostly) annually elected officials, answerable to the senate (a senior council, but with no legislative powers) and the people (who, when constituted into voting assemblies, were the sovereign body of the state). Precedent prescribed procedure and consensus set the parameters for acceptable behavior. Near the end of the second century BC, however, the system started to break down. Politicians began to push at the boundaries of acceptable behavior, and in so doing set new and perilous precedents. Violence also entered the arena of domestic politics. (This long process of disintegration, completed a century later by Augustus, has been termed by modern scholars the "Roman Revolution.").
By the time of Caesar's dominance in 49-44 BC the Republic had not been functioning effectively for at least a dozen years, some would argue for longer. Politics had come to be dominated by violence and intimidation; scores were settled with clubs and daggers rather than with speeches and persuasion. Powerful generals at the head of politicized armies extorted from the state more and greater power for themselves and their supporters. When "constitutional" methods proved inadequate, the generals occasionally resorted to open rebellion. Intimidation of the senate through the use of armies camped near Rome or veterans brought to the city to influence the voting assemblies also proved effective and was regularly employed as a political tactic from ca. 100 BC onwards. These generals also used their provincial commands to extract money from the locals as a way of funding their domestic political ambitions. As the conflict in the state wore on, popular assemblies, the only avenue for the passage of binding legislation in the Roman Republic, routinely ended in disorder and rioting.
Like those Roman generals and politicians, the neocons aren't concerned with any future beyond their lifetimes:
Why should I care about history? asks Georg W. Bush,
We'll be dead. Rand wrote that if everyone acted in their own self-interest it would all somehow work out, and the neocons believe that, even if they aren't objectivists. But they and Rand are wrong, just as Marx was wrong to suggest that we could create a classless society through a dictatorship of the masses. I could go one with numerous other examples, but I'm pretty sure you all get the idea.
In the end, the neocons will lose this fight, in part because of the work we do here and now. This is not to say that the world of the future is going to be a Utopian paradise, but whatever form it takes they and their kind won't be participating in it, at least not right away. Like the cockroaches they are, once they are defeated, they'll simply crawl back into the darkness waiting for their next opportunity to return. Our job, in the meantime, is to fight the neocons with every tool at our disposal, and at the same time work to build a world that provides people with the tools they need to improve their own lives, and to provide them with a minimum standard of living so that there is little if any fertile ground for the assorted neocons and theocrats of the future. A world where economic fulfillment takes a back seat to personal fulfillment, where the measure of someone's worth doesn't come from the size of their bank account. A world that belongs, not to them, but to us.