Interview with the Neo-Con

Sometime during the 90's...........

Back in the days when race was debated around the OJ trial, when feminism portrayed as a match between Naomi Wolf and Camille Paglia, and when the prospect of "another Vietnam" was written of as the paranoia of a few leftists. When Timothy McVeigh was the big name in terrorism on US soil. Back when most Americans were very secure in their belief that "it could never happen here" whether *it* was a number of things from a botched election, a serious economic meltdown, a major internal natural disaster, or a the threat of losing our Civil Liberties.

At that time, I was not particularly complacent. While not aware of what the future would bring, I was quite concerned about the environment and afraid that someday there would be "another Vietnam", but at the time had little to go on but a series of eerie hunches.

But back then in my pre-WTO protest adulthood, I did run into a series of college professors whose ideas I never realized would gain such power. Indeed, I was more worried at the time about the sociobiologists with their zeal to prove women not fit for full citizenship. But yet, they were a bunch you could not ignore or forget.

Only years would I come to know the significance of what I saw when dealing with a pack of neocon professors and neocon students.
Of course, part of that came from the fact that they were less than honest about selling their ideas to undergraduates and used a good deal of manipulation in the process. In retrospect that should surprise nobody. Often what they would do if you disagreed with their ideas was suggest that you were simply too "limited" or "provincial" or caught up in closed minded middle class morality to understand. It reminded me of certain Freudians who tried to paint everyone who disagreed with them as prudes who didn't want to hear about sex.
Among the students many of those who bought into the neo-con thinking were also great fans of Frank Herbert's "Dune" series (which has been posthumously increased by his son since). In both cases, I felt portrayed as a schmuck for suggesting that for all the problems of modern democracies, that replacing it with a bunch of scheming feudal elites wouldn't be a great trade. Such ideas according to this bunch were just corn-fed naivete. Of course, politics was all about deceiving the masses. Even as a first year biology student, I was able to point out several biological impossibilities in the stories. But that was also dismissed as closed mindedness. This crowd deemed such "mere details" as rather beneath them and best left to the "techies types" who would of course never grasp their master plans or have a real say in their grandiose master plans.

One consistent theme with the neo-cons was the idea that the ordinary person needs to be deceived. That people will behave irresponsibly if not kept in line somehow. One neo-con professor of political philosophy told me that to let people make their own decisions was tantamount to forcing them to have bad habits and watch TV 40 hours a week. In his mind the idea that people could control themselves was simply that they don't, and that to try and argue for anything different was childish and irresponsible.

In fact, both Sayyid Qutb the founder of the radical Islamist movment and Leo Strauss founder of neo-conservative political thought, believed that any people in a supposedly free society were in fact slaves to their own animal nature. And both believed that such persons are universally capable of committing extreme acts of brutality such as those committed by Gestapo, the Chinese Red Guard, or the My Lai masacre because having grown up in a democratic society left them with absolutely no internal moral compass and no ability to understand the difference between right and wrong. However, people with this "sickness" didn't know they were sick and are not capable of knowing how easily they could commit atrocities until they had done so.

Of course the irony of this is extreme seeing how both groups were so concerned about such brutality but advocated violence themselves. In fact, neo-cons see war as another necessity designed to keep the ovine gullible masses from going crazy.

"Are we at war with Eurasia or Eastasia, at the moment?"

Or something like that.

But perhaps the most important lesson in dealing with the neocons is that ideas matter and political ideas can often gain power faster than anyone ever dreamed.

Now as was in the case during the 90's, there is a bit of chaos in terms of idea. People will throw terms like "Socialist", "Communist", "Nazi", "death panel" and such. Of course, the neocons blamed this on liberalism and the dangerous chaos of democracy.

But nowadays I put most of the blame on a culture of manipulative political arguments which is fostered more by the political right if anything. However, it is of utmost importance to make sure the political ideas are taken seriously by progressives rather than basing everything on broad coalitions or attempts to poke holes in what the right is doing.

To accept anything less is to risk getting caught unaware of what might be coming down the pipe next.

Say Goodnight Readers!

Water Saving Tip 6: Skip the "Ethos" and Donate The Money

Lately, I've seen more and more people carrying around water bottles bearing the name "Ethos". I found this quite ironic. Indeed there is in my view, a certain Ethos surrounding bottled water. Namely an Ethos of unbridled consumerism, corporate control of natural resources, and unchecked exploitation of nature. But surprisingly, this claimed Ethos of this brand was ostensibly one of providing sanitary water to those who do not have it.

But I seriously question whether or not it is worth it. Bottled water is by its very nature endorses the idea that water is a corporate commodity rather than a human right.

Do people really buy bottled water because they sincerely believe that they are helping the poor of the world? If so they are grossly misinformed and mistaken.

One important question they need to ask themselves is how much of the money they spend on "Ethos" water is actually going to go to solving the world water crisis. According to their website every bottle of Ethos purchased will result in $0.05 going to provide water to those in need. This figure doesn't surprise me given the basic realities of running any business or large venture. But all the same, when I looked at a bottle of "Ethos" next to a bottle of "Dasani" in a local store, I found that the prices were $1.85 and $0.95 respectively.

But many people are sure to protest. Isn't it better to give more money to an NGO like the one sponsors by Ethos, than to the Coca Cola company? Maaaybeee!

But I have a better idea.

1. Drink tap water.
2. Or if you are truly and honestly uncomfortable with that buy both a home and a pocket water filter, along with some bisphenol free water bottles to carry.
3. Make a conservative estimate of how much money you've saved.
4. Donate 25%, 50%, or 100% of it to one of the many NGOs in this world that deal with the global water crisis and/or other problems. Or maybe to an environmental group that deals with environmental issues.

Why are people so eager to embrace a product like Ethos? What's next? Will somebody market a Hummer with the promise that some percentage of the proceeds will go to some organization finding solutions for global warming?

But for those of you desperate to buy a product that will help save the earth, you likely will have an interesting new option in the near future. It turns out that some companies trying to make algae fuel commercially viable, are diversifying into food products.

That's right food products made out of algae. With a recession and difficulty getting bank credit they have to start selling something made from their algae in order to build the facilities they need to commercialize algae fuel.

Of course, those of us who grew up on 70's and 80's portraits of ecocide perhaps had the expectation that we'd always have to filter and bottle our water-or perhaps even recycle it from our sweat and urine. That drinking from the taps would be a luxury rather than a form of thrift.

Well, plenty of predictions made in the 70's and 80's turned out to be wrong. So don't worry about mysterious foodstuff marketed as coming from algae (it isn't just a cover for something else!!). Bon appettite!

Say Goodnight Readers!!

The Dolchstosslegende Returns Home

In Ursula LeGuin's 1974 science fiction classic "The Dispossessed" the fictional philosopher, revolutionary, and founder of a planetary syndicate Laia Aseio Odo once said that "True Journey is Return". Of course, you could more simply attribute this quote directly to LeGuin, but the concept nevertheless is one that has been understood throughout the ages by religious, pilgrims, archaeologists, sailors, and tellers of tales from Homer to Tolkien. Or for that matter, anyone who has in their life time ventured not just "there and back again" as Bilbo Baggins described his adventures but moved between locations more than once.

A romantic idea indeed. But sometimes "amazing journeys" back home again, involve matters that are anything but romantic. Indeed what is arguably among the ugliest and most destructive forms of collective and politically motivated slander has found its way home back to its native land.

Like a less than penitent prodigal son gone back for succor, the Dolchstosslegende has through an unlikely journey that piles layer upon heaping lay if irony, returned home again. And those who know it's destructive history, can only look upon this development with a great deal of trepidation. Because the results were not good last time the Dolchstosslegende took hold in the Germany.

For those who haven't read my previous posts or any other sources about the Dolchstosslegende, the word literally means "dagger-stab legend" in German, but is often translated as The Stab in the Back stories. Basically it refers to the belief that the "fatherland" didn't loose the war because the a victory couldn't be procured against the other side militarily or politically because of internal factors. Which is to say that the war was lost both because the population at large failed to rally behind the war effort sufficiently (ei "Support the Troops") and because certain suspect elements of society actively sabotaged the war effort. In Weimar Germany these suspect elements were communist, socialists, labor unions, but above all the Jews. But in other well known social contexts the scapegoats were the hippies, the liberals, the draft dodgers, the protesters, and Jane Fonda.
In recent years there has been some growing recognition about the extent to which stories such as WWI Veterans getting spat on by Jews and Communists (sound familiar anyone?) fueled the rise of Nationalist Socialism in Germany during the 1920's and early 1930's.

In an age when an honest accounting of history, is becoming an ever more precious thing, I was shocked to see Jerry Lembcke (as much a scholar of the Dolchstosslegende as there has ever been), has pointed out that the these stories have taken this disturbing homeward journey. My first thought on reading the article "No Parade for Hans", was to hope that this was just a veiled warning to anti-war Americans and that the Germans themselves aren't actually going to buy into such rhetoric, as it has such a sinister and -dare I say it-evil history in their country. But upon reflection I couldn't help but wonder a series of other things.

1) How far exactly is this depoliticization of the issue going to go?

2) Did this article talk about the German reaction to WWII as "opposition to most war" in such pathological terms to convey that idea that all such opposition is pathological?

3) Does even the Holocaust counts for almost nothing in the conviction of that the most important thing is always to "support the troops" and say little else?

4) Why can't the German reaction to their own history been seen as a rational response to a terrible thing?

5) Are people losing their sense of that history or are some pundits of our day truly trying to convince people to suspend all moral scruples in favor of wanting a guaranteed compliant population during wartime?

6) Wasn't and aren't that perversion/suspension of basic morality a major part of what Nazism, neconservatism, and the Dolchstosslegende all ask(ed) of the citizen?

7) Why is so little room in this story given to the variety of opinions that different veterans may hold? And why does it occur to so few that many anti-war veterans in particular may not even want some victory parade?

8) How many people even notice the running assumption that ordinary people have no say in whether or not their government initiates a war under the new rules? Indeed, people are always told that the war is being waged in their name, and that the soldiers are fighting for their sake, and yet public opinion on the war is increasingly seen as irrelevant. Or even a potential source of disobedience if enough ordinary people aren't so sure that the war is really for their benefit or the nation's. Why have so many Americans forgotten their high school civics class?

It's been said that Hollywood movies often put historical periods through a contemporary lense. I can't help but thinking of how towards the end of the Bush era Tom Cruise playing a dissident Nazi officer said "North Africa is lost. You can serve the Fuhrer or you can serve Germany. Not both." And this from the actor who has played both a Top Gun pilot and Ron Kovic. Can it be that Americans who were once horrified and mystified so much by Nazi Germany can now more easily understand a nation that was led to horrific, unspeakable things by stories of a war effort stabbed in the back and troops spat upon?

Ultimately, this begs the question of exactly how low those who promote the Dolchstosslegende (American, German, or otherwise) are truly willing to go. If they are willing to low-ball the Holocaust and the forces that helped bring it about to support their own version of history, what else are they willing to distort, minimize, or even lie about?

Say Goodnight Readers!