“Summer breeze makes me feel fine / blowin’ thru the jasmine of my mind.” Kat Braun tells us that the Summer Solstice — the longest day and shortest night of the year — is a time for contemplating Mother Earth’s year-round balancing act. Providing advice about how to best celebrate the Solstice, she informs us that Magick will surely be afoot.
By Robert Jensen / The Rag Blog / June 21, 2010
[A version of this essay was delivered to the “Think outside the Bomb” event in Austin, Texas, on June 14, 2010.]
If we are serious about the abolition of nuclear weapons, we have to place the abolition of the U.S. empire at the center of our politics.
That means working toward a world free of nuclear weapons demands we not only critique the reactionary wing of the U.S. power structure, the Bushes and Cheneys and Rumsfelds — call them the reckless hawks. A serious commitment to a future free of nuclear weapons demands critique of moderate wing, the Obamas and Bidens and Clintons — call them the reasonable hawks.
The former group is psychotic, while the latter is merely cynical. After eight years of reckless reactionary psychotics, it’s easy to be lulled into a false sense of security by reasonable moderate cynics. But we should remember that a hawk is a hawk.
The next step is asking whose interests are advanced by the hawks. Even though in the post-World War II era the hawks have sometimes differed on strategy and tactics, they have defended the same economic system: a predatory corporate capitalism. Let’s call those folks the vultures.
Different groupings of hawks might be associated with different groupings of vultures, giving the appearance of serious political conflict within the elite, but what they have in common is much more important than their differences. The political empire of the contemporary United States serves the corporate empires that dominate not only the domestic but the global economy, and it all depends on U.S. military power, of which the nuclear arsenal is one component.
George W. Bush was the smirking frat-boy face of the U.S. empire. Barack Obama is the smiling smart-guy face of the U.S. empire. Whoever is at the helm, the U.S. political/economic/military empire remains in place, shaky at the moment, but still the single greatest threat to justice and peace on the planet. Any serious project to rid the world of the particular threat of nuclear weapons has to come to terms with the more general threat of the empire.
We shouldn’t expect our leaders, Republican or Democrat, to agree with that assessment of course. And they don’t. Here’s a paragraph from the Obama administration’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review:
The conditions that would ultimately permit the United States and others to give up their nuclear weapons without risking greater international instability and insecurity are very demanding. Among those conditions are success in halting the proliferation of nuclear weapons, much greater transparency into the programs and capabilities of key countries of concern, verification methods and technologies capable of detecting violations of disarmament obligations, enforcement measures strong and credible enough to deter such violations, and ultimately the resolution of regional disputes that can motivate rival states to acquire and maintain nuclear weapons. Clearly, such conditions do not exist today.
Nowhere on the list is a recognition of a more crucial fact: nuclear abolition depends on the death of the American empire.
The reason that is not on the list is because nuclear weapons are a key component of U.S. empire-building. That is as true today as it was when Harry S. Truman dropped the first nuclear weapon to end World War II and begin the Cold War. Although tonight we want to focus on the present, it’s useful to return to that moment to remind ourselves of the harsh reality of empires.
Though the culture can’t come to terms with this history, the consensus of historians is that the U.S. decision to drop atomic weapons on Japan had little to do with ending WWII and everything to do with sending a message to the Soviet Union. The barbaric act that ended the barbarism of WWII opened up a new chapter in the tragedy of empire, leading to more barbarism in the U.S. assault on the developing world over the past six decades.
Even though it was clear that after WWII the United States could have lived relatively secure in the world with its considerable wealth and extensive resources, the greed that drives empire demanded that U.S. policy-makers pursue a policy not of peace but of domination, as seen in this conclusion of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff in 1947: “To seek less than preponderant power would be to opt for defeat. Preponderant power must be the object of U.S. policy.”[1]
Preponderant power means: We run the world. We dictate the terms of the global economy. Others find a place in that structure or they risk annihilation. No challenge from another system or another state is acceptable.
In service of this quest, elites created the mythology of the Cold War — that we were defending ourselves against a Soviet empire bent on destroying us — which was grafted easily onto the deeper U.S. mythology about a shining city upon the hill and Manifest Destiny, about the divine right of the United States to dominate.
As a result, much of the U.S. public is easily convinced of the righteousness of the U.S. imperial project and persuaded to believe the lie that we maintain nuclear weapons only as a deterrent. The reality should blunt the self-congratulatory instinct: U.S. nuclear weapons were created to project power, not protect people.
In his book Empire and the Bomb, Joseph Gerson lists 39 incidences of “nuclear blackmail,” of which 33 were made by U.S. officials.[2] That helps explain the subtitle of his book, “How the U.S. Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World.”
Not surprisingly, Obama has said he does not envision abolition in the foreseeable future. In his famous Prague speech in April 2009, he said:
So today, I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. I’m not naive. This goal will not be reached quickly — perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change. We have to insist, “Yes, we can.”
Yes, the world can change — if the dominant military power in the world, the United States, can change. If the United States could give up the quest to consume a disproportionate share of the world’s resources and disavow its reliance on securing that unjust distribution of wealth through the largest and most destructive military in the history of the world, things could change.
That’s why most U.S. elites are interested in non-proliferation, not abolition. The goal of abolition will remain safely out of reach, on the horizon, just beyond our ability to accomplish in the near future — while the United States continues to imagine a future in which the rest of the world accepts U.S. domination.
Since countries threatened by the empire won’t accept non-proliferation unless there is a meaningful commitment to abolition and a scaling back of imperial designs, the U.S. policy will fail. That’s because it’s designed to fail. U.S. policy is designed to keep a hold on power and wealth, and the people running the country believe nuclear weapons are useful in that quest.
That’s why the Nuclear Posture Review of the Obama administration is not all that different from the Bush administration’s, as Zia Mian (an analyst at Princeton University’s Program on Science and Global Security) pointed out at a gathering of activists preceding the May 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. That’s why Obama’s policy includes a commitment to nuclear weapons, conventional missile defense, and modernization of the nuclear complex. That’s why Obama is increasing expenditures on nuclear weapons, now over $50 billion a year, for modernization.
Our task is to make sure we aren’t conned by politicians, either those who push the fear button or pull on our hope strings. When we take up questions of military strategy and weapons, our task is to understand the underlying political and economic systems, name the pathologies of those systems, identify the key institutions in those systems, withhold our support from those institutions when possible, create alternative institutions when possible, and tell the truth. We may support cynical politicians and inadequate policy initiatives at times, but in offering such support we should continue to tell the truth.
This commitment to telling the truth about our leaders, Republican and Democrat alike, also means telling the truth about ourselves. I have argued that any call for the elimination of nuclear weapons that does not come with an equally vociferous call for the elimination of the U.S. empire is empty rhetoric, and that a call for the end of an empire also must come with a deep critique of our economic system.
I want to end by taking the argument one step further: Such critiques ring hollow if we don’t engage in critical self-reflection about how many of us in the United States have grown comfortable in these systems. We decry injustice but spend little time talking about how our own material comfort is made possible by that injustice. A serious commitment to the end of nuclear weapons, the end of empire, the end of a predatory corporate capitalist system demands that we also commit to changing the way we live.
We cannot wake up tomorrow and extract ourselves from all these systems. There are no rituals of purification available to cleanse us. But we can look in the mirror, honestly, and start the hard work of reconfiguring the world.
[Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin. He is the author of All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice, (Soft Skull Press, 2009); Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002). Jensen is also co-producer of the documentary film Abe Osheroff: One Foot in the Grave, the Other Still Dancing, which chronicles the life and philosophy of the longtime radical activist.]
Notes:
[1] Quoted in Melvyn Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA.: Stanford University Press, 1992), pp. 18-19.
[2] Joseph Gerson, Empire and the Bomb: How the US Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World (London: Pluto Press, 2007), pp. 37-38.
In 1970, a jury convicted Robert Hillary King of a crime he did not commit and sentenced him to 35 years in prison. He became a member of the Black Panther Party while in Angola State Penitentiary, successfully organizing prisoners to improve conditions. In return, prison authorities beat him, starved him, and gave him life without parole after framing him for a second crime. He was thrown into solitary confinement, where he remained in a six by nine foot cell for 29 years as one of the Angola 3. In 2001, the state grudgingly acknowledged his innocence and set him free.
Robert King has been featured in numerous print, media and film articles and interviews worldwide including: CNN, National Public Radio, NBC, BBC and ITN as well as two films, Angola 3: Black Panthers and the Last Slave Plantation and Land of the Free. He is the author of ” From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of a Black Panther”
“After his exoneration in 2001, [King] emerged from prison a vital, socially conscious, and very caring leader.” – Terry A. Kupers, M.D., M.S.P., Institute Professor The Wright Institute
After his release, Louisiana native Robert King worked with the Common Ground Collective in New Orleans. He now lives in Austin where he works tirelessly for the freedom of Angola 3 defendants Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox. And where he has gained fame as a candy maker. King now makes and sells “freelines” to support his social activism. He made pralines in prison while in solitary confinement. He burned paper in soda cans to cook the candies and gathered ingredients from other prisoners and guards.
By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / June 21, 2010
“If we stand up to them [the communists] . . . they won’t take any next steps. There’s no telling what they’ll do if we don’t put up a fight now.”
— President Harry Truman at the outbreak of the Korean War, Philadelphia Inquirer, June 20, 2010
“On June 25, 1950, communist-backed troops from North Korea invaded a hopelessly overmatched South Korea. American-led U.N. forces quickly came to the aid of South Korea, but the war unexpectedly escalated five months later when China, in support of North Korea, launched a massive attack on U.N. forces near the Yalu River.
“Three years of brutal fighting followed as both armies hurled each other up and down the Korean peninsula. More than 54,000 U.S. soldiers died during the war, which technically has never officially ended but has been in a prolonged cease-fire since 1953.
“North Korea often states that it is still at war, but the reality is that tenacious fighting by U.S. and U.N. soldiers successfully repelled the invading communist forces and pushed them back across the 38th Parallel border. South Korea remains a free nation, one of the most prosperous in Asia, while North Korea is one of the most repressive.”
— Chris Gibbons, Philadelphia Inquirer, June 20, 2010
The annual fantasy
Americans relive and debate the Vietnam War. Analysts discuss “the Vietnam Syndrome,” the “albatross” that shackled every president, and/or claims about where every candidate for public office was during Vietnam. To the contrary, the Korean War, which in the words of the U.S. government was launched by the aggressive invasion of North Korean armies below the 38th parallel into South Korea 60 years ago on June 25, 1950, is beyond question.
As newspapers often title Korea, “Our Forgotten War,” the story is simple: Communist aggressors (inspired by Moscow) invaded a free nation (South Korea). The Americans mobilized United Nations support and boldly counter-attacked forcing the Communist aggressors back North.
Then, the story goes, the US-led army of the free people went north of the 38th parallel to liberate North Korea from its dictatorship. This invasion was foiled by a massive Chinese Communist military response. While a ceasefire was established in 1953, conflict on the peninsula remains between the prosperous and free South Korea and the poor and totalitarian North Korea.
Key facts
This fantasy, created in 1950, set the stage for a 60-year rationalization for trillions of dollars of military spending, hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers killed and wounded, and the deaths of millions of people, largely from the Global South, who were unwilling hosts of wars, interventions, and domestic violence related to the Cold War.
Just a brief examination of the history of the Far East suggests that the fantasy is just that. The Korean Peninsula was colonized by the Japanese before World War I. At the end of World War II, with their defeat, Koreans all across the peninsula believed that they, at last, would be able to establish their own independent government. “Peoples Assemblies” began to meet to plan for a post-war Korean government. However, at the urging of the United States, it and the Soviet Union agreed to divide the peninsula at the 38th parallel until such time as an independent government, desirable to the victorious powers could be established.
The United States government over the next three years brought exiled Korean Syngman Rhee back to the country to establish a government in the U.S. occupied zone. Rhee, an émigré with ties to large landowners, was not popular with South Korean farmers, many of whom rebelled against the new government imposed by Washington. In areas where rebellions were stifled, the United Nations held “elections” for a new government. Rhee and his party were victorious. And in the North, a regime allied with the Soviet Union was established, led by Kim Il Sung, long-time Korean Communist party organizer.
In 1948 Soviet troops were withdrawn from the North and in 1949 U.S. troops from the South. Both leaders, Syngman Rhee and Kim Il Sung, declared their commitments to liberate the other half to establish one Korean government. Some U.S. congressmen began to balk at Truman’s requests to continue funding the corrupt Rhee government in the South.
In May 1950 Republican spokesman on foreign policy John Foster Dulles visited South Korea and spoke in support of Syngman Rhee, whose domestic support was faltering, and then Rhee and Dulles flew off to the Tokyo headquarters of General Douglas MacArthur, overseer of post-war Japan. It is important to note that shots had been fired both ways across the 38th parallel for months before these events.
Finally, as the official story suggests, North Korean troops invaded the South on June 25, 1950. South Korean military forces, heavily subsidized and trained by the United States, fled South and within a month much of the country below the 38th parallel was occupied by Northern armies.
Then the U.S., with UN support, launched a counter-assault in September 1950, led by General MacArthur, who already had declared his vision of creating a Christian and anti-Communist Asia. North Korean armies were forced back north of the 38th parallel and with the urging of MacArthur and other virulent Cold Warriors in the Truman administration an apocryphal decision was made to take the war to the North. The Chinese, fearful of an invasion of their own land, entered the war on the side of North Korean armies. The Korean War was extended until 1953 and a troubled ceasefire was established that still prevails today.
What the real history suggests
First, as historian Robert Simmons wrote: “There were constant and sizable armed clashes and border incursions between the North and South for over a year before the final crisis… the Seoul regime enjoyed little popular support… it had announced its intention to invade the North and appeared to be preparing to do so…”
Second, the division of Korea in 1945 defied the wishes of the Korean people, Communist and non-Communist alike. In the South, Syngman Rhee was regarded as an outsider and representative of the small land-owning class of Koreans (a character similar to Chiang Kai-Shek in China, and Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam).
Third, the Korean War was in fact a civil war which the Truman administration chose to define as the first great conflagration in the global struggle against worldwide Communism. Many scholars suggest to the contrary that North Korean Kim Il Sung’s decision to invade the South was made by him without approval or support from the Soviet Union.
In fact, the Soviet delegate at the United Nations was boycotting the Security Council at the time the Council voted to condemn the invasion of the South. If the Soviet delegate was aware of the planned invasion he probably would have attended the Security Council session to veto the U.S. resolution condemning the North Korean invasion.
Consequences of ‘Our Forgotten War’
The decision by the Truman administration to enter the war to “save” the Rhee regime in the South signified a permanent commitment to an imperial policy that continues to this day. As political scientist Hans Morgenthau once wrote, after the Korean War started reversing U.S./Soviet conflicts and the militarization of the world was no longer possible.
The Korean War gave support to those Truman administration advocates for the full militarization of United States foreign policy and U.S. society. National Security Council Document 68 had been circulating inside the administration at that time. It called for a dramatic increase in annual military spending based on the proposition that each president should give the military all it wanted before any other expenditures for government programs were adopted. Specifically it called for an immediate four-fold increase in military spending, a proposal that some fiscal conservatives had opposed. After Korea virtually all restrictions on military spending were lifted.
Additional byproducts of the new U.S. commitment to a Korean War included the following: finalizing the construction of an anti-Communist Japanese economy to balance the new Chinese Communist regime; making permanent the U.S. financial commitment to the French in Indochina (a prelude to the next big war, in Vietnam); circulating the idea of an Asian military alliance to be called the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO); expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); and stimulating anti-Communist repression domestically.
As we reflect on the limited economic development in the North and the dramatic growth in the South, both products of the Cold War, the impacts of “Our Forgotten War” on the Korean people should be recalled. As Joyce and Gabriel Kolko wrote:
“The United States air force had completely destroyed all usual strategic bombing targets in North Korea within three months time, and by the end of the first year of combat it had dropped 97,000 tons of bombs and 7.8 million gallons of napalm, destroying 125,000 buildings that might ‘shelter’ the enemy. In mid-1952 it turned to the systematic destruction of mines and cement plants…” and the “…Suihu hydroelectric complex on the Yalu.”
They added that Syngman Rhee rounded up 400,000 South Koreans who were put in concentration camps. The authors wrote: “The Korean War, in effect, became a war against an entire nation, civilians and soldiers, Communists and anti-Communists alike. Everything — from villages to military targets — the United States considered a legitimate target for attack.” At least four million Koreans, North and South died, were wounded, or were made homeless (Joyce and Gabriel Kolko, The Limits of Power: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1945-54).
So despite the fact that the Korean War has become “Our Forgotten War,” the decision to enter Korea globalized, militarized, and institutionalized a U.S. policy that has rationalized wars on entire populations ever since.
[Harry Tarq is a professor in American Studies who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. His blog is Diary of a Heartland Radical.]
By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / June 21, 2010
[If you’re a Rag Blog reader who wonders how the Pentagon ended up getting stuck “waist deep in the Big Muddy” in Afghanistan (to paraphrase a 1960s Pete Seeger song) — and still can’t understand, “what are we fighting for?” (to paraphrase a 1960s Country Joe McDonald song) — this 15-part “People’s History of Afghanistan” might help you debate more effectively those folks who still don’t oppose the planned June 2010 U.S. military escalation in Afghanistan? The series so far can be found here.]
On March 29, 2010, the Associated Press reported that “a senior military official” in Washington “who was not authorized to speak publicly on the operation” said that “NATO forces in June will make a long-planned assault on the Taliban’s spiritual home in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar,” and that “military officials say they expect `several thousand’” of the 30,000 extra troops that Barack Obama recently ordered to Afghanistan “to be sent to Kandahar.”
But long before the Republican Bush II Administration ordered Pentagon ground troops to begin the endless war in Afghanistan in late 2001, the Republican Reagan Administration was involving the U.S. government even more deeply in the internal political affairs of Afghanistan .
The CIA’s SOVMAT program of arming anti-feminist Afghan guerrillas, for example, continued to operate after the Democratic Carter Administration was replaced by the Reagan Administration and William Casey (a former Capital Cities Communications media conglomerate board member who also then owned over $3 million worth of stock in companies like Exxon, DuPont, Standard Oil of Indiana, and Mobil-Superior Oil) became the new CIA director in 1981. As Angelo Rasanayagam’s Afghanistan : A Modern History observed:
Bill Casey’s CIA procurers scoured the globe in search of Soviet-style weapons. Egypt, which had large stockpiles of automatic weapons, land mines, grenade launchers and anti-aircraft missiles delivered by the Soviets was the first source… Other sources were Israel, which had a supply of Soviet-made weapons — captured during the Six-Day War and from Syrian troops and Palestinians in London — and China.
Using Pakistan ’s Inter-Service Intelligence [ISI] as a go-between, the CIA contracted with the Chinese government to manufacture rocket launchers, AK47s and heavy machine guns in return for hard currency and new equipment. China became a major source of supply. As the requirements grew, the CIA arranged for copies of Soviet weapons to be manufactured in factories in Cairo and in the U.S., where one leading firm was given a classified contract to upgrade SAM-7-anti-aircraft missiles…
The CIA’s covert military intervention in Afghanistan in the late 1970s and early 1980s represented “the biggest single CIA covert operation anywhere in the world,” according to Afghanistan: A Modern History. The money the U.S. government’s CIA secretly spent on giving weapons and military aid — via its Pakistani ISI middlemen — to the Afghan Mujahideen guerrillas grew from $30 million to $280 million-per-year between 1981 and 1985.
In addition, Reagan Administration CIA Director Casey also persuaded “Arab governments to contribute to a reserve fund that could be kept secret from Congress and the State Department” during the early 1980s, according to the same book. As a result, in late 1981 the repressive Saudi Arabian monarchical regime “began to match the CIA dollar for dollar in the financing of purchases of weapons for the Afghan resistance, …funneled more than half a billion dollars to CIA accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands,” and made “substantial direct contributions of cash and weapons to its own favorites among the Mujahideen parties” in Afghanistan.
The Bank of Credit and Commerce International [BCCI] in Geneva was the financial institution secretly used by the CIA and the Saudi government in the 1980s to manage the special “Afghan War” accounts — from which the CIA and Saudi government payments were made to the various arms dealers who supplied the weapons needed for the CIA’s covert military intervention in Afghanistan.
By 1989, around $13 billion had been spent by the U.S. and Saudi governments for subsidizing the CIA and ISI’s Mujahideen militias in Afghanistan, and around 50 percent of U.S. government-supplied weapons had been distributed to Hekmatyar’s extremely anti-feminist Hizb-I Islami guerrilla group.
Ironically, one of the strongest proponents in for the escalation of the Reagan Administration’s escalation of Casey’s covert war in Afghanistan in the early 1980s was a Democrat: a now-deceased Democratic Congressman from Texas named Charles Wilson. As John Coole recalled in his Unholy Wars:
The single U.S. Congressman who emerged as CIA Director William Casey’s champion Congressional ally, especially for appropriating money was Democratic Representative Charles Wilson of Texas, one of the most colorful figures of the Afghan jihad… Always ready to promote the interests of the Texas defense contractors who supported him, he got seats on the powerful House Appropriations Committee and Defense Appropriations Subcommittee…
Wilson made 14 separate trips to South Asia… In 1982, he began intensive work in secret hearings of the Senate Appropriations Committee to inject more and more money into the Afghan enterprise. On one trip in 1983 he crossed into Afghanistan with a group of Mujahideen…
Wilson’s best ally for money decisions below Casey’s level in the CIA was John N. McMahon, the agency’s deputy director since June 1982…
McMahon did support Wilson’s efforts for more money for the jihad, after setting up, during Stanfield Turner’s watch as CIA Director [during the Democratic Carter Administration], many of the original financing and supply arrangements for the Mujahideen…
In late 1984, according to Afghanistan: A Modern History, the U.S. Congress, “in a rare show of bi-partisanship, and prompted by friends of the Afghan resistance such as Charles Wilson, Gordon Humphrey, Orin Hatch and Bill Bradley, also took the lead in voting more money for the Mujahideen than the Reagan administration requested, sometimes by diverting funds from the defense budget to the CIA.” And CIA Director Casey personally visited three secret training camps in October 1984 to watch some of the Mujahideen guerrillas being trained in Pakistan to wage war in Afghanistan.
The CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986-1989 who was apparently responsible for arming the Mujahideen was Milton Bearden, according to James Lucas, in an article entitled “America ’s Nation-Destroying Mission In Afghanistan.” In Bearden’s view, “the U.S. was fighting the Soviets to the last Afghan,” during the 1980s. And around 1.5 million to 2 million Afghans would be killed during the CIA-sponsored Afghan war, before all Soviet troops were eventually withdrawn by the Gorbachev regime in the late 1980s.
Thousands of Afghan civilians were apparently killed, for example, as a result of the Soviet military’s bombing of apparently 12,000 rural villages in Afghanistan (as part of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan [PDPA] government’s “counterinsurgency” campaign) during the 1980s.
As Afghanistan: A Modern History observed, “all pretenses that the United States was not directly involved in the Afghan war were dissipated at a stroke late 1984,” when Republican President Reagan then publicly authorized “the delivery of Stinger surface-to-air missiles to the Mujahideen.” The delivery of Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to the Mujahideen by the CIA “would begin to turn the tide of the” Afghan “war in 1985” against the Soviet military forces and Afghan armed forces that supported the PDPA regime in Afghanistan, according to Unholy Wars. As James Lucas noted in his “ America ’s Nation-Destroying Mission In Afghanistan” article:
“Between 1986 and 1989, the U.S. provided the Mujahideen with more than 1,000 of these state-of-the-art, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile launchers which by some accounts prevented a Soviet victory. Stinger missiles were able to destroy low-flying Soviet planes which forced them to fly at higher altitudes, thereby curtailing the damage they could cause.”
By 1987, the U.S. government was giving the anti-feminist Afghan guerrillas nearly $700 million in military assistance per year; and were it not for the involvement of the CIA and the Pakistani government’s ISI in the 1980s war in Afghanistan, the Mujahideen might not have eventually succeeded in violently overthrowing the PDPA regime by the early 1990s. As Afghanistan: A Modern History noted,
…the greatest advantage that the Mujahideen as a guerrilla force had were the safe havens in Pakistan to which they could withdraw from time to time to rest and refit, gather the supplies that they needed, receive training in the use of the increasingly sophisticated weapons that the United States was delivering, and be briefed on the superior intelligence… that the CIA was providing through the ISI.
The same book revealed some details of how the CIA and ISI organized their military units of Afghan refugees to attack Afghanistan —in violation of international law—during the late 1970s and 1980s:
Within the ISI, the Afghan Bureau was the command post for the war in Afghanistan and operated in the greatest secrecy, with its military staff wearing civilian clothes. Its head reported to [then-ISI Director General] Akhtar [Abdur Rahman], who also devoted some 50 percent of his time to the affairs of the Bureau and reported directly to [Pakistani President] Zia.
The respective roles of the CIA and the ISI’s Afghan Bureau are best summed up by the army officer personally selected by Akhtar in October 1983 to head the Bureau, Brigadier Mohammad Yousaf:
“To sum up: The CIA’s tasks in Afghanistan were to purchase arms and equipment and their transportation to Pakistan; provide funds for the purpose of vehicles and transportation inside Pakistan and Afghanistan; train Pakistani instructors on new weapons or equipment; provide photographs and maps for our operational planning; provide radio equipment and training, and advise on technical matters when requested. The entire planning of the war, all types of training for the Mujahideen, and the allocation and distribution of arms and supplies were the…responsibility of the ISI, and my office in particular.”
Around 80,000 Mujahideen Afghan guerrillas were trained, for example, in camps in Pakistan between 1984 and 1987. At the ISI Afghan Bureau’s 70 to 80 acre Ojhri Camp in Rawalpindi — not too far from Pakistan’s capital city of Islamabad — were barracks, training areas, mess halls, and a warehouse from which 70 percent of the weapons used by the Afghan Mujahadeen were distributed, according to Afghanistan: A Modern History. The anti-feminist Afghan combatants were mostly recruited by the ISI and CIA from the over 3.2 million Afghan refugees who settled in Pakistan and the over 2.9 million Afghan refugees who settled in Iran between 1980 and 1990.
Yet despite the opposition of the anti-feminist Mujahideen, the PDPA government refused to scrap its program for female equality and female emancipation in Afghanistan during the 1980s. As Gilles Dorronsoro wrote in his 2005 book Revolution Unending: Afghanistan: 1979 to the Present:
The regime maintained the proportion of women members of the party at around 15 percent… In addition, there were women members of the party militias, especially in Kabul and in some of the northern towns. The most marked changes were in public education… In Kabul half of the holders of the public teaching posts were women, as were the majority of the staff of the Ministries of Education and Health. Similarly, 55 percent of the students were girls… Dress codes showed the beginnings of a break with traditional practices, although these innovations were mostly restricted to the modern areas of the capital and to a lesser extent of Jalalabad and Mazar-I Sharif…
In the Afghan countryside, however, “the Mujahideen imposed an order that was much more conservative or even fundamentalist,” the “prohibition of women’s participation in public activities became stricter,” and “opposition from fundamentalists… restricted the educational opportunities for girls,” according to the same book.
Next: “A People’s History of Afghanistan—12: 1987-1992″
[Bob Feldman is an East Coast-based writer-activist and a former member of the Columbia SDS Steering Committee of the late 1960s.]
By Kate Braun / The Rag Blog / June 21, 2010
“Summer breeze makes me feel fine,
blowin’ thru the jasmine of my mind.”
Monday, June 21, 2010, marks the Summer Solstice, the longest day and shortest night of the year. This season is a time for contemplating the balancing act Mother Earth performs year-round: light brings activity, growth, expansion; dark is for withdrawal, to rest and renew. This year the Summer Solstice comes at the beginning of a week that culminates on Saturday, June 26, 2010, with a Full Mead Moon and a lunar eclipse. Magick will be afoot for the entire week.
This is a fire festival that prohibits sharing fire, so candles would not be good party favors. It is also taboo on this day to sleep away from home (out-of-town guests have a temporary “home” wherever they are staying) and to neglect animals.
Decorate the celebratory area using the colors white, red, golden yellow, green, blue, and tan. Use light blue, green, and yellow candles on your table and altar. Yellow is the color for prosperity, so use lots of this color in all its hues. Sunflowers, seashells, sun wheels, summer fruits and potpourri may be used as you choose to enhance the decor.
Any herbs gathered or harvested on this day are said to be exceptionally potent. You may consider sharing your herbal harvest with your guests: small bunches of herbs tied with a yellow ribbon make lovely party favors. Herbs favored for this celebration include: chamomile, fennel, hemp, lavender, pine, roses, St. John’s Wort, wisteria, verbena.
Create a menu featuring yellow or orange food, fresh fruits (especially lemons and oranges), veggies (especially summer squash), and pumpernickel bread. Flaming foods are also appropriate. Traditionally, ale, mead, and fresh fruit juice, in addition to plenty of water, are the appropriate drinks to provide or ask your guests to bring.
The Goddess is now matron, ripe with pregnancy. This is a time to celebrate vitality, creativity, health, abundance. It is a festival of Light, of energy, of fertility for crops and animals as well as humans, a time to celebrate both work and play.
If you are able to build a fire outdoors, do your best to use some fir and/or oak as they are traditional woods for this season. Throw some herbs onto the fire and, using a feather, waft the smoke about yourself, your guests, and whatever pets may be present. You may use whatever herbs are readily available, but preferred herbs are: mistletoe, vervain, St. John’s Wort, pansy, lavender, mugwort, hemp, thyme, pine.
Pluto is retrograde until mid-September and a Pluto retrograde is a good time to catch up unfinished business; therefore, amulets which have lost their usefulness should be destroyed on this day by casting them into the ceremonial fire. When cool, these ashes should be scattered, an activity which brings blessings to the land.
Field and Forest elves, sprites, and fairies are more present at this time, so be sure to include them in your plans and set out a bit of food and herbs for them.
[Kate Braun’s website is www.tarotbykatebraun.com. She can be reached at kate_braun2000@yahoo.com.]
By Marc Estrin / The Rag Blog / June 20, 2010
Many voices on the left complain about our “one-party” system, the Replutocrats, the entrenched and ubiquitous party of the rich. And indeed, for the media, the word “bipartisan” comes haloed in angelic light, while with the selfish and ragged “partisan” comes the stink of sulfur.
“Bipartisan” — that is, both-parties-as-one — is the way of virtue in contemporary America. Yet — as if we still had two parties — we continually witness a gaudy display of accusers vs. defenders, of hand-sitters vs. applauders, of gloaters vs. clobberds, and the nation seems relieved that power was balanced, that “democracy” triumphed, that the system worked. What’s going on? Do we have one party or two?
The answer is not as simple as the question, and for a subtle analysis we might best turn to Jean Baudrillard, the fabulously inventive and therefore despised postmodern French philosopher, best known for his analysis of false realities. The word “democracy” is a language-sign to be interpreted, and as with all signs, there are four Baudrillardian functions it can serve:
So then we have the word “democracy.” What of democracy, the great Enlightenment goal? Is there now only a democratic simulacrum, combining elements 2, 3, and 4 of Baudrillard’s list?
The Two Towers
As might be expected, Baudrillard takes a unique approach to this question. Democracy, finally, is a system of choice-making in which a supposedly informed electorate chooses its representatives from among a menu of ideological options.
Most critics focus on the dumbing down of the electorate, the false consciousness purveyed by the media, etc. Baudrillard, however, focuses intently on the menu. He asks a strange and pregnant question: “Why were there two towers at New York’s World Trade Center?”
All of Manhattan’s great buildings, he says, were once happy enough to affront each other in competitive verticality, the result of which was an architectural panorama in the image of the old capitalist system — all buildings attacking one other.
But this image has changed completely in the last few decades. Buildings now rise compatibly, no longer suspicious each other. The new architecture speaks of a system in which competition has been traded in for the benefits of collegiality. The fact that there were two World Trade Center buildings symbolized the end of old-style competition, the end of all original reference.
Paradoxically, if there were only one building, or competing forms, actual monopoly would not be incarnated; we see how it stabilizes on a dual form. For the sign to be pure, it has to duplicate itself…. (see Simulations, pp. 135-6)
No more competition. Can this be true? Is this Capitalism as we know it? And how can democracy function without choices?
The Obama phenomenon bears out, and best illustrates, Baudrillard’s predictions from the Eighties. Is Mr. Hope and Change a Republican or a Democrat? Will his possible passing in the next election change anything? Short of small symbolic gestures, would a President Palin serve a different master? Clearly not. The government may change, but the State allows no such changes: Power is not Power for nothing.
But a buck-naked monopoly of power will never do. Wrong symbol. Not palatable to the masses. Instead, the state is run by a system which gives an illusion of choice.
“Advanced democratic” systems are stabilized on the formula of bipartisan alternation. The monopoly in fact remains that of a homogeneous political class, but it must not be exercised as such. Because a one-party totalitarian regime is an unstable form, our “democracy” is accomplished in the back-and-forth movement of the two terms which activates their equivalence, but allows — because of their minute differences — a public consensus to be formed and the cycle of representation to be closed.
The “free choice” of individuals which is the credo of democracy, leads, according to Baudrillard, to precisely the opposite: the vote becomes a functional toss-up, resembling Brownian movement of particles. “It is as if everyone voted by chance, or monkeys voted.” (Simulations, p. 132)
There are “polls,” there is occasional alternation of power “at the top,” a simulation of opposition between two parties — never mind the equivalence of their objectives, and the reversibility of their language. The Dems can bail out the bankers, the Repubs can claim to represent “the people.” It could and should be the other way round, but…
Marx predicted that open competition would lead to the large devouring the small, up to the end result — monopoly. Baudrillard counters that it is not monopoly which is the end stage, but duopoly, the twin towers, the “tactical doubling of monopoly.”
Power is absolute only if it is capable of diffraction into various equivalents, if it knows how to take off so as to put more on. The same money finances Democrats as Republicans. Whoever wins the vote, Power wins with the winner. As Jay Gould once asserted, “I don’t care who people vote for, as long as I get to pick the candidates.”
Baudrillard’s notions of duopoly seem to me to be indisputable, and a related comment of his seems both hopeful and ominous: “You need two superpowers to keep the universe under control: a single empire would crumble of itself.”
[Marc Estrin is a writer and activist, living in Burlington, Vermont. His novels, Insect Dreams, The Half Life of Gregor Samsa, The Education of Arnold Hitler, Golem Song, and The Lamentations of Julius Marantz have won critical acclaim. His memoir, Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater (with Ron Simon, photographer) won a 2004 theater book of the year award. He is currently working on a novel about the dead Tchaikovsky.]
By William Michael Hanks / The Rag Blog / June 20, 2010
It is interesting how we each, in the progressive community, have different takes on the same issues — social justice, civil liberties and others.
How much more difficult may it be to come to agreement with others of more widely divergent views? Yet, that is what will be required to achieve substantial remedies to the very serious difficulties that stand in the way of realizing our hopes for a free society.
Are we, and our political opposites, really seeing and pursuing different goals or are we seeing and pursuing the same goals in different ways? The answer will determine our ability to achieve the power in numbers to effect change.
It’s like a group of companions who are hiking in the wilderness and suddenly see a mountain in the distance. It’s an awesome sight and everyone has something to say about it. The geologist comments on the clearly defined folded strata, the forester is taken with the different varieties of trees ascending from the base to the tree line, and the skier instinctively looks for that perfect line of descent on the slopes.
I believe there is an internal landscape, like that mountain, which exists within each of us and indeed within all human beings going back to our humble beginnings. At first the imperatives of survival took precedence over all other concerns. But, as civilization formed cooperative communities, mankind began to express and codify this internal landscape into the domains of culture and law.
We see traces of these attempts to describe our common internal sense of truth in the laws of Moses, Hammurabi, and Salon in Greece, Roman law, the Magna Carta, and the U.S. Constitution, among many others. The most successful examples are those that resonate with the greatest fidelity to each individual’s view of their own internal landscape.
That is why the ideas of Gandhi and Martin Luther King have such currency. They are not inventions or discoveries but expressions of truths that exists independently and within all individuals — truths that each of us can recognize within ourselves.
So then, with all this truth in us, how is it, as a people, we find it so hard to describe it, agree on it, and act together? The answer, I believe, is twofold. Our experiences influence how we view the truth, like the geologist who sees the rocks, and the forester who sees the trees. And, our self-interests influence our interpretation of it — it’s meaning in our lives.
During the period of the civil war, the traditional churches condemned slavery and, in contrast, the fundamentalist churches justified it. Why? It wasn’t so much because one was better than the other. Surely principles influenced these positions, but a far more powerful influence was that the constituencies, and therefore the financial support of the churches in the South, were overwhelmingly fundamentalist.
It was in the self-interest of the economic powers to favor slavery. Those who had no “dog in the fight” were free to act on principle.
Likewise the corruption and the infidelity to our sense of internal truth in our present day can be seen in the economic influences acting upon our legislative, administrative and judicial systems. Examples abound. BP’s sacrifices of human life and of the environment for self-interested financial gain are being exposed in the Congressional hearings today.
It seems that our greatest challenge is not so much in defining what is right or wrong — we all carry a more or less clear idea of that within us — but in designing social and political systems that remove as far as possible the influence of individual self-interest from the process of deciding public policy.
If we continue to merely react in outrage to pork barrel deals, corrupt influence, and cavalier military excursions we have accomplished nothing. The perpetrators are duly corrected and admonished and, rubbing their hands together, chuckle gleefully to the bank. Instead, let’s design a system that works for citizens, not just politicians and financial interests. We have a good start but it is the responsibility of each generation to move closer to that goal.
For the solution to the problem of adverse influence on public policy I believe we must proceed from the following premise: that the people are the foundation and the guardians of democracy (not a new idea). And, that for the people to effectively exercise that responsibility, certain things are conditional. There are four major obstacles to good government today. When we overcome these, I’m sure there will be others.
The first is that people must have the time to focus on the issues. Therefore a revisiting of labor laws is in order. If people are being worked to death and entertained silly there won’t be much left for the more important task of guarding democracy. Corporations have found ways around the 40-hour week by promoting workers to “executive” or “supervisory” positions that are exempt from labor laws that limit the required workweek.
In their few hours of spare time people naturally fall prey to the seduction of mass media and constant sales messages. Corporations must be prevented from working people to the point of not being able to discharge their civic duties. A real and effective limitation on required working hours would go a long way towards reducing unemployment as well.
Second, we must insist upon making available quality education through the baccalaureate level for any who desire it and are willing to do the work. It does little good to have a vote if one hasn’t a clue as to how to exercise it — or is not well informed.
In fact an ignorant and uninformed electorate insures the fact that people will not and cannot have a positive influence on their government. If this is done, military adventurism will take care of itself — we simply can’t afford to both educate our people and support foreign military adventures at the same time.
Third, we must have universal health care. If people are too sick to be concerned with good government we will suffer from a weakening of one of the pillars of good government — a healthy electorate. If people are financially ruined or mentally and physically destroyed by health problems they won’t have the ability to exert a positive influence on our democracy. The people’s numbers — our greatest strength — are diminished.
Then we must remove the immunity of power and return to a true representation of the idea, which exists within each of us, that no one is above the law. Politicians, powerful government appointees, and corporate executives get away with “taking responsibility” without taking consequences. We need to insure true accountability. We send people to jail who do far less damage to our society than corrupt politicians, inept appointees, and greedy executives.
A healthy, well-educated public with the time and ability to exercise their civic responsibilities and hold their representatives accountable is fundamentally necessary to advance “the great experiment.” We’re a long way from that today.
These are strategic measures that will go far towards realizing the ideals that, for the most part, we all carry within us. The tactical ways to achieve these goals will require compromises.
To secure real change we must have a substantial majority of the people focused on these four strategic goals. No single political party can secure these alone. We must find practical ways of working together — even with those with whom we may profoundly disagree — or find distasteful. We don’t have to find a way to achieve the lofty destiny of loving one another, just how to work together towards achieving the goal of good government.
To do that we must begin to identify common cause with all those who are stakeholders in our democracy — or at least as many as possible. Then, having identified common ground, create understanding with others who see things through the lens of different culture, experiences, and self-interests.
The point is that the left wing-right wing, Democrat-Republican battles are playing in to the hands of those who benefit from the status quo. The ongoing battles are fun for some and profitable for others but as long as we are pitted against one another we cannot move forward towards curing the ills of our times. I know this is counterintuitive, but when the enemy of good government is not our political opponents but the status quo, it is nevertheless true.
Does that mean we shouldn’t debate with others — just agree? Absolutely not! The constructive exchange of ideas is the soil from which good decisions emerge. Well-informed and good-natured debate sheds light on the issues of our times. We would be derelict in our duties and in our intellectual integrity not to pursue these issues vigorously.
I guess what I’m saying, regarding the tactical measures to achieve the strategic goal of removing the current major obstacles to good government — time, education, health care, and accountability — is to extend the kind of discourse we have among progressives to others of even more divergent viewpoints and create a force that cannot be ignored. Take a Tea Party follower to dinner tonight. We can’t win this alone.
[William Michael Hanks is a writer and documentary filmmaker who lives in Nacogdoches, Texas.]
Yippie veteran turned law professor Raskin notes the attempt by Apple to censor a new comic book version of Joyce’s “Ulysses” for use on its iPad app, and sees it as part of a continuing and futile puritanical fear of sexuality. He sees it on campuses, where the students unabashedly embrace their sexuality, and the administrators and teachers fear it and work to stifle any manifestations of it.
By Jim Hightower / June 18, 2010
Gosh, how quickly things turn. One day, you’re a strutting peacock — the next day, you’re just another gasping, oil-covered bird.
In early April, BP was strutting about in full corporate splendor, showing off the $9 billion in profits that it had soaked up in just the first three months of this year. It was also basking in a corporate re-imaging campaign, depicting itself as a clean-energy pioneer and declaring that BP now stood for “Beyond Petroleum.”
Since its Gulf of Mexico well blew out on April 20, however, BP has proven to be beyond belief. The wider and deeper that this catastrophe spreads, the more we discover just how oily this giant is.
From the time it was known as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company [later renamed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company] and set out to grab and control the rich petroleum reserves owned by what is now Iran, BP has been a recidivist global criminal. In the past three decades, it grew huge by swallowing such competitors as Standard Oil of Ohio, Amoco, and Arco. Along the way, it has been implicated in bribery, overthrowing governments, plunder and money laundering, plus having established one of the worst safety and environmental records in an industry that is notoriously reckless on both counts.
And now, its rap sheet grows almost daily. In fact, the Center for Public Integrity has revealed that the oil giant’s current catastrophic mess should come as no surprise, for it has a long and sorry record of causing calamities.
In the last three years, the center says, an astonishing “97 percent of all flagrant violations found in the refining industry by government safety inspectors” came at BP facilities. These included 760 violations rated as “egregious” and “willful.” In contrast, the oil company with the second-worst record had only eight such citations.
While its CEO, Tony Hayward, claims that its gulf blowout was simply a tragic accident that no one could’ve foreseen, internal corporate documents reveal that BP itself had been struggling for nearly a year with its inability to get this well under control. Also, it had been willfully violating its own safety policies and had flat out lied to regulators about its ability to cope with what’s delicately called a major “petroleum release” in the Gulf of Mexico.
“What the hell did we do to deserve this?” Hayward asked shortly after his faulty well exploded. Excuse us, Tony, but you’re not the victim here — and this disaster is not the work of fate. Rather, the deadly gusher in the gulf is a direct product of BP’s reckless pursuit of profits. You waltzed around environmental protections, deliberately avoided installing relatively cheap safety equipment, and cavalierly lied about the likelihood of disaster and your ability to cope with it.
“It wasn’t our accident,” the CEO later declared, as oil was spreading. Wow, Tony, in one four-word sentence, you told two lies. First, BP owns the well, and it is your mess. Second, the mess was not an “accident,” but the inevitable result of hubris and greed flowing straight from BP’s executive suite.
“The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean,” Hayward told the media, trying to sidestep the fact that BP’s mess was fast becoming America’s worst oil calamity. Indeed, Tony coolly explained that the amount of oil spewing from the well “is tiny in relation to the total water volume.” This flabbergasting comment came only two weeks before it was revealed that the amount of gushing oil was 19 times more than BP had been claiming.
Eleven oil workers are dead, thousands of Gulf Coast people have had their livelihoods devastated and unfathomable damage is being done to the gulf ecology. Imagine how the authorities would be treating the offender if BP were a person. It would’ve been put behind bars long ago — if not on death row.
[National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, former Texas Agriculture Commissioner, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be — consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.]
Copyright 2010 Creators.com
Source / Truthout
Maybe the great body of Tea Baggers cannot be reached, but we must answer their charges in hopes of contributing to an eventual paradigm shift for some of them. Only disconcerting facts or personal experiences lead people to change mindsets.
Many of us are tired of reading and writing about the Tea Baggers, but a few facts will help us to understand why we need to keep studying them.
Half of the unaffiliated voters in the United States say they are closer to the Tea Bag movement than to anyone else. This movement has the potential to recreate the situation after 9/11, when the political middle shrank dramatically. This time, there is the possibility that the near disappearance of the middle will greatly benefit the right. Third, Noam Chomsky, one of our brightest progressive scholars, warns that the present level of anger in politics arouses legitimate fear that fascism could emerge here
When the Tea Baggers appeared, they very briefly seemed a little like real economic populists as they were raising hell about what the Wall Street speculators did to our economy and financial system. But they soon forgot about the bankers and focused on punishing those who voted for the TARP and upon “taking back our country.”
A Republican pundit tried to paint the Tea Baggers as playing a role similar to that of the hippie counterculture radicals of the 1960s. But the young rebels of that time read some good journalism and often had a serious theoretical critique of the system. And they had ethical grounding that came from their roots in the civil rights movement. The Tea Baggers might be like Wall Mart hippies in that they do not see through the establishment’s propaganda machine; rather they soaked up much of what it had to say.
Pitchfork Populism
Time used the term “pitchfork populism” to describe the Tea Party movement. That is a reference to the Southern Populists of the late 19th Century, one of whose leaders was called “Pitchfork Ben.” That movement, starting out as the Farmers or Southern Alliance, had genuine economic grievances against the banks and railroads. There was a brief moment when some of those deeply frustrated white farmers allied with African-American share-croppers. After all they were all in the same boat. The Southern establishment eventually co-opted the white farmers by getting them excited about preventing blacks from voting and enacting Jim Crow legislation.
Some of these people were not nice, God-fearing farmers who were somehow misled. More than a few spent years in paramilitary anti-black movements and were deeply hostile to Catholics and Jews. There is a parallel here with some of the extreme right militia groups that constitute one of the two nuclei of the Tea Baggers. (The other nucleus is libertarianism, which is far less important in Teabaggism than some suppose.)
What the Southern Bourbons accomplished over some time in the 1890s occurred among the Tea Baggers in a matter of months. People who started out as would-be populists soon became spear carriers for the Southern Establishment, and some of them fought strenuously to uphold every aspect of the southern conservative canon. They became political fundamentalists.
Similarly, the Tea Baggers briefly showed a flash of economic populism when they complained about Wall Street, the insurance companies, and the pharmaceutical companies. In less than a few months, they were denouncing efforts to regulate business or the banks, and were running cover for people like Mitch McConnell, who on behalf of the banks and speculators, watered down financial reform. Like the Southern Populists, these people became preoccupied with race.
Their talk about “taking back government” seems to be about race and resenting the poor. They oppose big government but cannot define what that means other than being against taxes and programs that assist “people who don’t want to work.”
These are hard times, and people whose incomes and security are threatened sometimes grasp at straws. Most Tea Baggers appear to have jobs and some savings, but they seem to be worried about their 401ks, mortgages under water, whether their pensions will be cut, and whether their Medicaid benefits will be cut to provide medical coverage for over 30 million more people.
For more than three decades the income of the middle class has been shrinking. Few reasonable people can deny this or argue that this will change soon. Even the slightest knowledge of what happened in 2007 and 2008 would prompt the expectation that things are likely to get a lot worse for the middle class. Some people — perhaps even a majority — just cannot live with that kind of knowledge. Their solution is to resort to hysterics, anger, threatening behavior, and simplistic thinking.
Eliminationism
This writer and others have worked within the framework that classifies Teabaggism as the most extreme form of right-wing populism. Some, following Daniel J. Goldhagen, call it “ Eliminationism” because these extremists react so harshly against pluralism and people who are culturally and racially different from them. Granted, what we observe here is what might be a relatively mild form of eliminationism. None of them are talking about camps or Nuremberg laws.
Tea Baggism = Political fundamentalism
On the other hand, this model may be flawed. For one thing, the Republicans have had over three decades to ramp up right-wing populism. One can doubt that there were that many more conservative religious and rural folk out there to enlist in these ranks. What is happening now is that large numbers who were formerly not affiliated have flooded into Tea Bagger ranks. They are not, for the most part, people who think mainly about such hot button issues as abortion and stem cell research. Perhaps something else is going on.
It is very difficult to draw a clear line between the two phenomena, and they sometimes merge. Many of the Tea Baggers clearly have roots in right-wing populism and the Christian Right. Today, the Tea Baggers share characteristics with right-wing populists, and there are elements of overlap. Sometimes we find in the Tea Baggers an admixture of conventional religious thought. The political fundamentalist tends toward dogmatic attitudes, violence — at least verbally, and a refusal to accept challenges to the conservative elements of the conventional wisdom. The inclination toward dogmatic attitudes does not include carefully stated policies.
When one studies the European right-wing authoritarian movements of the 1930s, right-wing populism was there, but over time it diminished and became political fundamentalism with an inclination toward accepting authoritarianism. Political fundamentalism was at the core of those movements. It was larger and more fanatical and dangerous. Tea Baggism is essentially a version of “political fundamentalism. ” There is a strong urge to shut down one’s critical processes and hang on desperately to some elements of conservative conventional wisdom. They offer ready-made answers and are embedded in our culture and sold to us daily by mainstream media and culture. What is happening is that frightened people are simply reverting to “default” positions and clinging to them for dear life. They try very hard to convince others perhaps because they want to be convinced themselves.
A blinkered view of reality is reassuring and comforting. Political fundamentalism thrives on simplicities and simplifications. There is such a thing as “protective stupidity” which more than a few need in order to be comfortable with their lives and it is likely that conservative strategists know how to feed it. The only antidote is continual reality therapy, and it may not work quickly.
Right-wing populists are mainly concerned with cultural and values questions. Aside from the matter of race, these hot button values are often of secondary importance to political fundamentalists. People in both movements seem to have problems with race, but it is a much more central to the American political fundamentalist.
Most American populists — right or left — believe in the democratic process. No matter what the Tea Baggers say, their actions show that they are perfectly willing to do permanent harm to that process by disrupting rallies, displaying weapons to intimidate people, threatening opponents, and demanding that their elected officials do all they can to shut down the legislative process. Some even spat on Congressmen and called them vile names.
Populists differ from political fundamentalists in another important way. Back in the 1930s, the followers of Huey Long and Father Charles Caughlin embraced some very unorthodox monetary theories. It is difficult to imagine the political fundamentalists flirting with fiscal heterodoxy for very long. We have already seen how they have taken up arms to defend big business and the Wall Street bankers sand speculators from government regulation.
Political fundamentalism is a barometer of crisis
The more people who are in turmoil and crisis, the more political fundamentalism there will be.
Even before 2001, there were conditions present that encouraged political fundamentalism. Many people could not deal with a diverse, urban society and the anomie that went with it. Truth seemed harder to establish, and many simply could not deal with the relativity of truth. They hankered for absolute certainties, and were unable to compartmentalize things in their own minds. People were less connected to others than before, and people were so absorbed multitasking that they had little opportunity to develop rich inner lives, without which there can be nothing but selfishness, fear of others, and a lack of empathy.
Then came the terrible events of 9/11, creating a siege atmosphere that began to move many Americans toward political fundamentalism, and the George W. Bush administration did all it could to produce this result — recklessly insinuating that anyone who disagreed with it was an ally of Al Qaeda. Thus, Max Cleland, a U.S. Senator from Georgia who lost three limbs in service to his country, was turned out of office because he was said to be insufficiently patriotic. He was replaced by someone who had not worn the uniform. The onset of a near depression and the near destruction of our financial system in 2008 greatly exacerbated the crisis atmosphere.
Why some are more prone to political fundamentalism
Recently, Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weller noted that many Americans have a great need for order and certainty and cannot deal with ambiguities. People who find reality difficult to tolerate have a deep need to find simple and certain explanations. They develop an aversion to unbiased information. They also need scapegoats, such as blacks, Hispanics, Moslems, liberals, and homosexuals. These are authoritarian tendencies, so using the imagery of the Boston Tea Party and griping about government in general terms does not make one anti-authoritarian.
Sixty years ago, Konrad Lorenz, a brilliant scientist whose politics we rightly deplore, knew that there were many people who were naturally fearful and given to simple solutions. These people had problems facing unpleasant realities and reverted to the sunny promises offered by conventional wisdom. In a crisis, these people become politically activated and embrace political fundamentalism. This is why people in Europe moved to the right when struck with inflation and the great depression. To go the other way would require the ability to accept reality, question accepted wisdom, eschew simple answers, and abandon core beliefs of a lifetime.
When confronted with a crisis, it is so much easier to accept a simple framework that explains “everything” quickly; it is much like a religious conversion. Tea Bag ideas transform some of these people from feeling helpless and victimized to feeling empowered. Attending Tea Bagger meetings for them can be cathartic and deeply therapeutic. Many of their converts are political neophytes for whom this is not so much a political rebirth as a political birth.
Political fundamentalism is a somewhat new ideology and a metaphor for dogmatic solutions that are like panaceas. It offers black-and-white, simple answers that do not require careful thought, weighing of evidence, or compartmentalizing things.
Teabagging became a sort of hysteria that seems to be easily moved from target to target by those who have subtly directed it. At first these people thought they were victims of the banks and Big Pharma. In no time flat, they were fierce defenders of those in Congress who do the most for the banks and Big Pharma. Tea Baggers even denounced Senator Scott Brown when he did not back Republican efforts to defend Wall Street by blocking financial reform.
This transformation would be amusing if it were not such a tragedy. But in all these cases, they moved naturally from brief complaints about banks, speculators, or Big Pharma to dogmatic adherence to what they think are American “givens” — opposing meddling government and regulations that could harm banks and business. They are back to the old idea that so-called free markets solve all problems. It was this outlook that nearly brought on a depression and the destruction of the financial system.
It is astonishing to watch the growing number of Americans who share this sentiment as hostility to regulation and the health care legislation continue to grow. Apparently, Americans are so stressed now that many naturally revert to some degree or other to the verities that we have long been fed by our culture, the mass media, and the Republican information machine.
Certainty resides to the right
Tea Bag sentiment, of necessity, tends to the right and to authoritarian positions. Perhaps they are first aroused by the misbehavior of the banks, but in the long run their quest for certainty and simple answers leads them to what they think are American fundamentals. In 2004, some of these people were deeply offended that anyone could suggest that Americans were actually torturing detainees. Once it became clear that this was the case, political fundamentalists quickly moved toward approving the torture. It was a matter of Americans versus “Others.” Some mistakenly think the Tea Baggers are essentially libertarians. A few are, like Rand Paul, but most are not libertarians. Most of them do not complain about the surveillance state and agree with Texas Senator John Cornyn, who ridicules people who worry about civil liberties: “None of your civil liberties matter after you are dead.”
Probably not one Tea Bagger in a thousand will see the inconsistency in Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s and Sarah Palin’s conduct. For a long time, Jindal said the federal government should stay out of our lives, but now it must build sand barriers and compensate fishermen. Sarah Palin sang the same song about less government and is now all over President Barack Obama because he has not figured out how to shut down the well in the Gulf or found a way to scoop up millions of gallons of oil heading toward marshes and beaches.
Paul has talked about a planned 10-lane highway — coupled with a pipeline and rail line — that will soon link Mexico. the U.S. and Canada — as part of NAFTA. He says there might also be a common currency. Wild stuff!
Now Rand Paul, perhaps the nation’s leading Tea Bagger, denounced Obama for criticizing BP; Paul says criticizing business is “un-American.” Maybe he forgot that the original Tea Baggers — those angry folks in Boston back in 1773 — were reacting against a monopoly given to a business, the East India Company. In Colorado, Dan Maes, a Tea Bagger-backed candidate for Governor, is saying Coloradans should “beg forgiveness from the energy industry that Bill Ritter chased out of this state.”
Sharron Angle, the Tea Bagger nominated to oppose Harry Reid, calls for abolition of Social Security, and the 16th Amendment. Will senior citizen Tea Baggers in Nevada become rational enough to realize she wants to stop their monthly checks? Time will tell.
One truly zany Tea Bagger, Tim D’ Annunzio, was not nominated for a North Carolina congressional seat. According to his estranged wife, he thinks he is the Messiah and tried to raise his father-in-law from the dead. He wants to abolish 11 cabinet departments.
We may be certain that the folks at FAUX News and the big conservative think tanks, as well as Richard Armey, Mrs. Clarence Thomas, and the small army of cable and radio shock jocks are pleased with their work and laughing about how these little people are so easily manipulated. Hysteria is one of the characteristics of such movements, and it is easy for skilled propagandists to use it to political advantage.
Interviews with ordinary Tea Baggers have been published in several places. One of the most interesting phenomena that recur is that so many of these people say that the economy went bad after Barack Obama took office. They have the chronology of events completely wrong and they refuse to acknowledge that Obama had a role in preventing another depression. Some — though a smaller number — insist that Obama and the Democrats initiated TARP.
Chip Berlet, an expert on right-wing populism, says this movement has the force of a tornado, but he adds, “Its unpredictable. It can blow away in 10 seconds, or it can blow society up.” This applies even more to political fundamentalism. Right-wing populism these days has greater staying power because it has been so well cultivated and has deep roots in culture and religion. Political populism will develop staying power if progressives delay taking it on with civility and reason. It is dangerous to let these ideas take root and fester because the false historical memory the movement promotes will become part of the collective memory and be reinforced by intense emotion.
[Sherman DeBrosse is a regular contributor to The Rag Blog. A retired history professor, he also blogs at Sherm Says and on DailyKos.]
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