Deconstructing Dennis

Last week, my dad forwarded me an email from a right-wing friend of his featuring a link to this video of conservative pundit Dennis Prager speaking at some event at the University of Denver.  He wanted to know my take on what Prager was saying.  So I watched it and replied thusly:

Well, I watched the clip, and I can’t say that I’m surprised.  He offered an articulate, if disturbing, statement of the conservative/authoritarian view of the country and the world.  He explicitly identifies himself as a paleoconservative (and also perhaps a Palin-oconservative), which is not a Republican archaeologist, but someone who believes in the (mythical) purity of pre-modern life, and seeks to reshape society back into that mold (or is it a corset?).  He blames our current problems on “European professors” who came to US universities “a hundred years ago”, and the foreign, dare I say, French, ideas that they brought with them.  Now that I think about it, he’s fighting the royalist/aristocratic  position in the French Revolution: against the separation of church and state, and in favor of the concept of a (divinely mandated) hierarchy of inequality.  He even goes farther back than that: with his statement that governments that enact policies that benefit their citizens and bring them happiness are immoral, he echoes mainstream medieval thought going all the way back to Augustine in late antiquity, that human happiness is impossible and that trying to bring it about in this world is a sinful deviation from the true path.  He believes that early America somehow embodies this medieval ideal, never minding all the European Enlightenment ideas written into the Declaration and Constitution.  On this illusory basis lies his concept of American Exceptionalism: because we, or at least Republicans, are on the true path, all that we, conservatives, do is inherently good.  So thus the Iraq war was not a war of criminal aggression for oil, strategic position, genocide, profit, and the frail ego of a spoiled alcoholic brat trying to be better than his father, it was about “fighting evil”.  It follows then, that if the US is uniquely good, then everyone else is bad.  He predictably beats up on a number of foreign countries, as well as presenting a false duality between the US and the UN.  In a distorted reflection of Bush’s “you’re either with us or against us” statement, he implies that the only choices available in the world are the US and UN, when there are quite a variety of political, social, and economic orientations from which to choose.  

All in all, this is pretty typical far-right stuff, some of which can be confronted or rebutted on a factual basis, but the heart of which is metaphysical.  Is a modern society in which laws explicitly written by human beings apply to all human beings equally, preferable to a pre-modern society with a legal hierarchy of privilege in which the law, based on arbitrary and unchangeable religious dogma, written by a few elite human beings for the sake of the few elite human beings, applies unevenly by design?  Progressives, heirs of the Enlightenment, would say yes, modern society for all its flaws is better because we control it, and are masters of our own destiny.  Espousal of this view requires a certain tolerance for imperfection and mistakes, as well as the belief that the venture can be successful in improving the lives of humanity from their present state.  Conservatives obviously disagree.  Such happiness as they allow themselves comes from order: obeying strong authority and dominating those weaker than themselves.  To say that these views are incompatible is to say that one should not mix sodium and water, for the inevitable result is a violent conflagration.  And that is where I think people like Mr. Prager are leading us.

If You Think The Rahming Is Bad, Just Wait For What's Next

It seems that Eric Holder still has a tiny flickering flame of professionalism and respect for due process of law that has not yet been extinguished by the Rahming he's gotten to date. I wrote this letter to President Obama via the White House contact web page earlier in the week to encourage the President to protect and fuel that flame rather than allow it to be snuffed out. I think I was pretty restrained in my comments.

Dear President Obama,



I am writing to you in support of your Attorney-General's original decision to hold the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian Federal court. There are several good reasons that trials of terrorism suspects should be held in civilian courts, please allow me to outline them here. First, Federal courts already have a record (an excellent one) of trying and convicting terrorists - even ones that murdered or attempted to murder large numbers of people. Consider the cases of Sheikh Omar (1993 WTC bombing), Mir Aimal Kansi (1993 CIA shooting), and Timothy McVeigh (OKC bombing) as examples of our Federal law enforcement and court systems working to successfully capture and convict terrorist suspects. Furthermore, the Federal courts have a long history of and established rules for dealing with classified information, which is an inevitable concern when intelligence sources and methods are involved. Military tribunals are largely untested organizations with none of the aforementioned track record or infrastructure. Lastly, there are the positive messages that a civilian trial sends to American citizens, to our friends, and to our enemies: Trying terrorist suspects in civilian courts portrays them as what they are - criminals. It does not glorify them as soldiers or warriors. It says to the world that we are strong and confident in our institutions, and that we respect the rights of all persons in a way that authoritarian societies do not. It says to citizens that our rights are meaningful, valuable, universal, and worth fighting for.



Why then, would one want to pursue trials in untested military courts of dubious legality when it makes the statement that we are weak and fearful of the enemy warriors (combatants)? I suspect that I know, and I am certain that you know the answer to that question. Crimes, high and low, have been ordered and committed by powerful individuals who are able to bend the government to their will to avoid accountability; these would inevitably be exposed in any fair and open trial. Is this to be your legacy? Do you really want to be remembered as the protector of wealth and power? It doesn't have to be this way - Mr. President, open the windows, let the sunlight in, affirm the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and let the chips fall where they may. Then and only then will it be time to look forward instead of back.



Sincerely,

I'm not very hopeful at this point; a year is long enough to start demonstrating some change we can believe in rather than just talking about it. It's time to take the Obama sticker off my car. I don't expect my letter to accomplish anything; if the purpose of a system is what it does, then it is becoming clear that the purpose of the Obama administration is to ease the passage of the body politic down the gullet of the corporate serpent. We've got a healthcare bill that is essentially a bit of populist icing on a cake of rich, sweet, corporate welfare straight to the bloated guts of the health insurers (devil's food - don't-cha know). We've still got hundreds of thousands of combat troops in the Middle East: War enthusiast General Ray Odierno insinuates that we may need to keep up to 50,000 "advisors", and who knows how many contractors in Iraq indefinitely. Meanwhile in Afghanistan, the only Afghan force that can be said to be "standing up" is the Taliban. Israel has gotten so cocky they've publicly "kicked [Joe Biden] in the balls". I expect them to start a war with Iran any month now, forcing us to come to the aid of poor little victimized Israel. If enough people actually became fed up with all of this and began to protest effectively, the means for their kinder and gentler pacification is at hand without any of the blood and riots of past outrage at illegal government actions. And soon, oh so very soon, the means to detect and prosecute thoughtcrimes will be at hand. All of this coupled with the zeitgeist of extremist right-wing populism in our political discourse suggests to me that from here, our choices will determine not our destination (hell on earth), but only how fast we get there. Vigorous and effective protest would be met with state violence, accelerating the growth of the police state, and hastening our arrival at the fascist endpoint. Alternatively, taking no provocative actions will slow the journey somewhat; we will have arrived when we reach the point where calm speech and ordinary actions are criminalized, though we will have got there without mass turmoil. The express elevator or the stairs? Is there another way? Is there a way to get somewhere else than our current destination from here?

Yes there is, but this is not necessarily a cause for hope. Corporations are not human; they neither love nor hate, they feel neither happiness nor sorrow. They are more like some lower form of life, symbionts become parasites; they care only about acquiring and consuming resources, and growing in size and power. Anything that does not stand in the way of those goals is an irrelevant distraction. The corporate state is likely to be indifferent to individuals unless those individuals possess desired resources or stand in the way of the acquisition of resources. In order to create this dystopia, the corporations have called upon the dark forces of right-wing extremism. Unbeknownst to most of the tea-partiers, the economic and cultural malaise that has fired them up into a boiling rage is not the responsibility of "the liberal media", Al Gore, "the gay", teachers' unions, islamosocialnazicommievegans, or n***ers, but is the responsibility of their corporate sponsors and the investor class that owns them.

H.P. Lovecraft wisely reminds us to "do not call up that which ye cannot put down"; and this may be the downfall of the corporations. Hate and fear are the fuel of right-wing extremism; these are volatile emotions in an individual, but a crowd full of hate and fear becomes a mob. Corporate indifference to the objects of the extremists' hate and fear could trigger mass right-wing riots, which would be harder for the police state to repress. Liberals are too nice; when your goal is a harmonious society, it's tough to get excited about the thought of blood in the streets. Right-wing extremists are unlikely to be inhibited by their seething reptilian brains, are already armed to the teeth, and would thus be likely to fight back effectively. Some of them are even eagerly anticipating this possibility. The military would probably split with some following their orders and some their ideology (any remaining liberals in the military would just leave). The corps would respond with ultra-violence, and the second Civil War would begin. This one would likely feature all the best innovations in internecine slaughter since our last go-round, like ethnic cleansing, mass punishment, mass rape, chemical and biological warfare to name just a few... So here's hoping for a slow and uneventful slide into fascism - the alternative is worse. /primal-scream