The sky is a little brighter today. It has been so dark, getting ever darker all the time, that we have almost forgotten what light looks like. We have even become accustomed to think of ourselves as moles, hopelessly and helplessly burrowing ever deeper into the dark abyss, hoping that turning away from reality would save us from the knowledge – the dark awareness – of the engulfing gloom.
Blinded by the darkness that has been, in a way, of our own making, we have failed to perceive the constellations and patterns of the positive side-effects of Bush’s complete reduction of politics to the art of lying and crime. We have been so busy grieving over Bush’s lies and crimes that we have almost forgotten our older grief, the one over the mendacity and criminality that are the essence of the system.
Lo and behold, the fog is lifting, in more than one place and in more than one way.
We have always thought of politics as a dirty game. We have thought of politicians as amoral individuals whose mendacity was only restrained by their sense of the expedient, whose amorality was controlled by their pragmatism. Even so, an all-encompassing world of lies and crime presupposed that truth and morality existed – if not here, at least somewhere, if not now, at least sometime.
The Bush Administration’s quite open abandonment of truth and morality has awakened people to the systemic nature of mendacity and crime. It has awakened a new thoroughgoing critical attitude towards the socioeconomic system of capitalism and the political system of imperialism. People have begun to realize that the system is false through and through.
Many recent events have helped reveal the actual nature of many phenomena hitherto obscured by ideological fogs of imperialism and capitalism. People have become more willing to call a spade a spade, and to see a lie for what it is, without resorting to euphemisms such as “misrepresentation” or “mistaken judgement.”
Just to concentrate on the Middle East:
Zionism has been revealed as an integral part of the battle against Moslem peoples, rather than just a local nuisance for Palestinians. It is becoming ever clearer that the Holocaust was used as an excuse to establish the Zionist state. Had there been no Holocaust or Jewish persecution, some other entity, by this name or some other name, would in any case have been installed in the region to facilitate imperialist destabilization and domination of the region.
It has become clear that Israel has no intention of ever leaving the occupied territories, a fact that has led to Hamas’ election. Hamas is the Palestinian equivalent and counterpart of the absolute intransigence on the part of Israel.
It is becoming ever more obvious that the Iraqi “government” is not a bunch of “democrats” trying to make the best of a bad situation, but rather collaborators with the occupying power, pure and simple. Their project is merely to facilitate the occupier’s plans.
Had the American project in the Middle East had anything to do with spreading democracy, it would not have been such a steadfast enemy of the only two democratically-elected Moslem governments in the region - Iran and the Palestinian Authority. The puppet Iraqi government is not democratic. The war on Iraq was merely a manifestation of the long-term neo-colonial project of destabilization and control of the region. In that sense, it has been a great success.
Writers such as Salman Rushdie and Irshad Manji have been exposed as enemies of Moslem peoples, rather than as advocates of freedom of expression and “progressive Islam.”
Most importantly, the Islamic resurgence of the last few decades has been revealed as a political movement against imperialism, rather than an atavistic pathology.
• My other posts on related topics:
Myth and Myth-take (with Update)
The Poodle's UNcle
Wiped out...
"Democracy in Action"
Boundless Arrogance II
What do you care?
Unity, progress, and purpose
New Age Zionists
Intolerance masquerades as tolerance
Truth as a higher degree of deception
McCain's License to Torture?
Commandress in Chief
Opportunism, thy name is Dubya!
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