Capitulation is no cure for division

The Left (or the liberals, to use the US term) has been greatly concerned about the long-term effects of political division in society. The political division has, of course, been greatly exacerbated by the alienating policies of the current US administration. The liberals, being liberals, see division as unfavourable, that is, as something that one should try to reduce, even at the cost of compromising one's own principles. The hope is that attempts at dialogue with the Right may help bring them to one's own side. The experience of the last four years has demonstrated the exact opposite. Attempts at dialogue with the Right are interpreted as weakness, and leave them even more confirmed in their beliefs. It is clearly impossible to convert the extreme segments of the Right, although the less extreme segments may be open to seeing the light. However, the latter will see the light only if we remain steadfast in our praxis, and refuse to make unprincipled concessions.

Another aspect of this issue that has worried the Left is that each camp seems to talk only amongst themselves. There does not seem to be much of any kind of communication between the Right and the Left. I would again suggest that this is not necessarily the end of the world. The more we are confronted by invective and irrationality from the Right, the more convinced should we become that we are on the side of truth and justice. The fact that they hate us so much is proof positive that we have been effective, and confirms that we should continue and intensify our activities. And talking amongst ourselves is the best way to build coalitions and reinforce each other's efforts. Just consider the fact that, four years ago, there was a clear distinction between "left" and "liberal" in American political discourse. Today, that distinction has, for all practical purposes, disappeared.

Bush Blackout

I have put together a list of the primary referrers (to BushBlackout.com) from around the world who dedicated their Websites to this campaign today.

Conflict of Values within Social Democracy

In a well-intentioned post on the "Bad Attitudes" blog, Moe Blue points out what he sees as a "collective amnesia" in the Democratic Party as far as its basic values are concerned. As a reminder, he then goes on to list what the Party has stood for during the last century. I felt something was lacking while I was reading through his list. Although, as I said, he is well-intentioned in that he wants the Party to halt its right-ward drift, he in fact demonstrates exactly why Social Democracy has continued to drift right-ward in the last hundred years. Humanism nourished SD's original vision, and humanism calls for an absolute and unconditional value system. Stressing the values that Moe lists is not the remedy for SD's ailment, because those are not even values. They are the program that SD has developed for itself over the said period. They are, therefore, conditional and instrumental. The "collective amnesia" should instead refer to the fact that Social Democrats have forgotten that their original stance consisted of a set of items with intrinsic, unconditional, and non-instrumental value. The Right has no problem thinking of what it stands for as having intrinsic value, so why not the Left? The following is Moe's list (the text within quotation marks), together with my parenthetical indications of the intrinsic values that have been abandoned along the way:

1-"Give the poor and impoverished a hand up to lift them out of poverty because more people with more money makes our economy grow." (And not because doing so is a primary responsibility of a just society)

2-"Guarantee that all citizens are equal before the law because justice is the only path to social stability." (And not because justice is a good in itself)

3-"Promote science and education because they are the foundations of prosperity." (And not because having an educated and cultured citizenry has intrinsic value)

4-"Maintain strong alliances around the world because true security comes from being surrounded by friends, not enemies." (And not because peace is an indivisible aspect of human happiness)

5-"Create, enforce, and protect the rights of workers because America is not about enriching the few while crushing the many." (And not because there is nothing that should take precedence over the rights of producers of wealth, that is, the workers)

6-"Protect the environment because our children will have to live in the world we leave them." (And not because the environment has intrinsic value independently of whether there are human beings around or not)

7-"Keep the government out of the lives of citizens because the most fundamental right we have is the right to be left alone." (And not because the government's job description does not include a right to interfere in the lives of the citizens)

Of course, perhaps a more fundamental decision for the Democratic Party is whether it wants to be a Social Democratic party in the first place, or whether it wants to languish in its New Deal legacy. The New Deal, to those who know what it was really about, was fundamentally anti-worker and anti-progressive.

Rite of Manhood

Been out hunting
Bagged their first kill.
Commander had told them: Don't shoot
Till you see the whites of their eyes.

Been shooting women with babies
Been shooting women holding babies
Just in case the babies
were shielding weapons.

They are real men now.
Just to be on the safe side
They shoot women holding babies
Just in case.

They see
The whites of their eyes:
The large eyes
And the little ones.

Iraqi women carrying babies in their arms are more likely to be shot by American soldiers than are other women. Such women are suspected of hiding weapons behind the babies.

Apples and Oranges

Bush apologists love to go on about the beheadings in Iraq as soon as you bring up the subject of the responsibility of US soldiers for Abu Ghraib and, much more seriously, the civilian casualties in Fallujah. But are the same standards to be applied to professional soldiers as to individuals who are, after all, "terrorists" and "insurgents"? There is no logical equivalence between the killings by US soldiers and the killings by the "insurgents." This is not just for the basic reason given above, but also because of the deeper reason that the US has been massacring members of a completely legitimate resistance movement. There is no ethical equivalence between the actions of a member of a resistance movement and those of a soldier of an occupying army. Even the Nazis in France didn't use the excuse of the presence of members of the French Resistance in French cities to destroy those cities and massacre their populations. A parallel case to the above situation has been going on in the Middle East in the American proxy state of Israel, where the Israeli government has for years used the attacks by members of the Palestinian resistance movement against Israeli targets to rationalize its own attacks against innocent Palestinian civilians.

Yet another "Inauguration"

This blog will participate in the planned worldwide protests around the inauguration of "President" George W Bush on January 20.

Wear Orange

Beginning today, this blog's orange template signifies solidarity with those who reject the results of the fraudulent US Presidential Election.

"What, me worry?"

We are the Neo-N...-lovers

It's curious how US history keeps repeating itself, without anyone learning anything from these repetitions. Used to be anyone who defended African-Americans against those who persecuted, tortured, and lynched them was called a N... lover. Those doing the name-calling did not feel the least remorse for any of the atrocities committed against black people. They hated the people who defended the blacks, though, because they were afraid that talking about the atrocities may, God forbid, stir someone's conscience. The same thing is going on with Iraq. The right wants as many Iraqis (or Moslems in general) to be killed as possible, and they don't care how or why. All they ask is that no-one talk about it. And whoever does talk about it faces the right's full arsenal of invective and worse... And yet the right gets indignant when it is labelled Nazi or Fascist! I could name any number of "conservative" icons who have called, either explicitly or implicitly (they are very clever that way), for the eradication of all Moslems (all 1.2 billion of them), but I won't bother. Their filth is already all over the Internet and the newsmedia for anyone who wants to look the hideous face of American "conservatism" in the eye. And one doesn't even need to look at the "icons" anyway, as any American can testify on this issue on the basis of what he/she hears at work from co-workers, or hears coming out of his/her own mouth.

Might does not make right: "It's the jingoism, stupid!"

Although I know very little about football, I have come to the sad conclusion that the generality of Americans think of life and the world on the model of a game of football. This is probably more clearly true of those on the right portion of the political spectrum, but it may be true of most American liberals as well. To me, the main feature of a football game, on the rare occasions when I accidentally catch a couple of minutes of one, seems to be that the players try to tackle the player who is carrying the ball, or, in other words, who is trying to make a point (literally, in this case). Issues of right or wrong don't enter into it, but issues of good and evil do. One defines oneself as categorically and unconditionally good, and therefore everything and everyone that stands in one's way is evil. No reasoning and argumentation. No finding out the facts of the case. Just bullying one's way through life, without any regard for facts or logic.

The usual Christmas story...

The "Merry Christmas" versus "Happy Holidays" debate cropped up again this year, seemingly with greater vigour than in previous years. The crusaders against decency and good manners, who prefer to be thought of as warriors against political correctness, occasionally helped by their liberal fellow travellers, kept up their annual lament about the supposed demise of Christmas. Their basic argument is that since Christmas is a tradition in these countries, everyone should embrace it. They avow distress at hearing "Happy Holidays" supplanting "Merry Christmas." Simultaneously, the religious right makes the celebration more and more exclusive. The Christmas celebration used to be a season of joy and good will on the occasion of the anniversary of the founder of Christianity's birth, with the emphasis on joy and good will. Now the religious right and their deluded allies want it be about Christ, and only about Christ. If they want everyone to embrace it, they should, by definition, make it more inclusive. Non-believers and followers of other religions would be glad to say "Merry Christmas" if it doesn't imply negating their own beliefs.

Neo-Mongols

An essential element of the war-fighting strategy of the Mongols was to terrorize the conquered populations. It was an essential element because without it, the Mongols faced the risk of uprisings by subject peoples. The strategy consisted of extreme over-reaction to trivial acts of defiance, or "making an example of" them. For instance, if one inhabitant of a large city swore at a Mongol soldier, the entire population of the city would be put to the sword, and the city would be razed to the ground. The terror that this over-reaction generated in the populations of other cities tended to "chill" all rebellious activity. In the case of the Mongol Empire, the tactic seems to have been successful, at least in the short term, as the empire lasted for quite a while. An important result of the above tactic was that civilizations of the countries conquered by the Mongols suffer from the effects of that humiliation to this day, seven hundred years later and centuries after the Mongols became little more than a name in history books. It is clear that the United States has adopted this strategy in Iraq. Fallujah is an example to the rest of Iraq that if they don't obey the new masters, they will face massacres of their populations and ruin of their cities.

Americans desecrating a mosque in Fallujah. Pictures of the bodies of the tens of thousands of victims of this mentality are available on other websites. I picked this particular image because, like the Abu Ghraib pictures, it shows the mentality that makes the massacres possible.

Neo-Atheists

From a letter I submitted to a local newspaper:

Dear Editor,

Re: "Twilight of the godless" (book review)

In reviewing the book The Twilight Of Atheism, the reviewer accepts the book's main thesis without further analysis. The book's author believes that belief in God, or theism, is on the rise. The author and reviewer both take it for granted that this means atheism is in decline.

It is conceivable, though, that theism and atheism are on the rise simultaneously.

According to an opinion piece by Michael McAteer that appeared the same day (U.S. Christians await president's payback), theism in the US today means "opposition to gay and abortion rights, to tolerance of non-Christian beliefs, and to international cooperation." "It means an unfettered right to bear arms, unbridled free enterprise, and military might to settle disputes. There's lots of talk of faith, flag and country, but no talk of poverty, social justice, love of neighbour, peace on earth, and the protection of a fragile planet from further degradation."

If this is what rising theism amounts to, doubtless many believers will be driven to embrace atheism.

Aunt Condi's Cabinet

Condi Rice quotes her parents as telling her "you may not be able to have a hamburger at Woolworth's but you can be president of the United States." Well, with all due respect to the parents of the inventor of pre-emptive mayhem, I beg to differ. Even after suffering all their lives from the effects of racism, they obviously didn't understand the racist nature of the country, as evidenced by the fact that they failed to raise a child who pursues social justice. The United States will let black people serve whitey in any capacity, but it is not going to let them be the boss.

The Prince and the Dumbbell

British newspapers have been busy sensationalizing the story of Prince Charles telling one of his underlings that there are too many unqualified individuals aspiring to jobs they are not capable of performing to a high standard. Although what he actually said was simple common sense, the media have raised the spectre of a return to pre-Victorian notions of social class and "place." I beg to differ, especially because his actual words had nothing to do with social class. I think the episode had more to do with the fact that although the British royalty, like everyone else, have political opinions, they are not allowed to express them, which must be very frustrating for them as public figures. They often try to find roundabout ways to express these opinions. In a period when the person that a local columnist calls "the President of the World" is a certified idiot, and the British Prime Minister is a delusional sycophant (if not psychopath), it is not difficult to guess who the Prince may have been talking about.

Lose-Lose Situation

Both the Democrats and the Republicans lost the recent Presidential Elections in the US. Everyone knows the Democrats lost, but that does not mean the Republicans won. Bush voters saddled their own country and the world with a President that no-one respects, and who will thereby be unable to implement any kind of agenda, whether positive or negative. Not to speak of the fact that he has his own personal agenda that has nothing to do with what is good for the US or the world: "I'm the kind of fellow who does what I think is right and will continue to do what I think is right." Needless to say, what he thinks is right is not necessarily what is good for either the US or for the world. But try to explain that to a Republican voter...

You can't have one without the other

In a certain sense, American liberals have only themselves to blame for the Bush catastrophe. On one hand, they criticize Republicans for their parochialism and unilateralism. On the other hand, the mainstream American liberal intellectuals, and even those on the left, have always acted and talked as if they believed the rest of the world does not exist, or that in any case its concerns are strictly secondary to those of the United States. For too many years, far from simply tolerating the unique brand of American jingoism, they surpassed their conservative compatriots in championing it. Their advocacy of the pursuit of American interests at any cost was cloaked in homilies on "human rights" and "peace," meanwhile repressing the struggles of poor nations to achieve dignity and equality. Jimmy Carter called for respect for human rights while supporting the vilest military dictatorships in Central America. And he forced the "peace" of abnegation and degradation on the people of Egypt at the expense of Palestinians. Well, what is good for the goose. . . The Bushites are now pursuing the same objectives, only a little more openly and "honestly," and the Democrats have deprived themselves of the moral authority to condemn them. American liberals may not have created the Frankenstein's monster of Bushism, but they did little to keep it from coming to life. Any version of "America's manifest destiny" involves the risk of the eventual predominance of its more extreme manifestations. Meanwhile, the liberals show themselves as a bunch of hypocrites. An instance of their hypocrisy is their lamentations about the American dead in Iraq. Are they whining about the loss of life, or about Americans getting killed? If they are really liberal, if they are really "bleeding hearts," their hearts should bleed for the 100,000 Iraqi dead too. And they should reject the arguments for war in Iraq that are based on "manifest destiny."

Armageddon

There are "signs" the lunatic right may be right, no matter how distasteful the idea may be to rational people. There are signs these may be the "last days." I, as an agnostic, would be the last one to discount any idea out of hand, even something as preposterous as this one.

"It is written" that everything is turned upside down in the "last days." Everything that was nonsense becomes sense. Everything that was unthinkable becomes the norm.

Not long ago the word Armageddon signified the worst possible thing that could be imagined, namely, the end of human civilization through nuclear holocaust. Today, it signifies, at least to the lunatic right, the best possible thing that can be imagined, namely, yes, the end of human civilization, but with this difference: After everyone else has perished, the lunatics would be lifted up unto heaven. It is a consummation devoutly desired.

There are corollaries to this new worldview. War is good, because peace and progress can never lead to the volcanic catharsis that would necessitate divine intervention. It is best to have insane leaders, because sane ones are not likely to make the "correct" decisions that will bring on the end and the new beginning.

This has been achieved. Bush wants war to bring on the Second Coming. Cheney wants it so his former company will profit by it, no matter how many hundreds of thousands of people get killed in the process. And the rest of the gang have simply sold their souls to the devil.

So maybe I should redefine the nature of the "last days." Maybe the last days do not have anything to do with divine intervention or lack thereof. Rather, maybe the last days have to do with a human race that has become so corrupt and selfish that it looks away from the misery of its fellows, consciously and knowingly. These may be the last days. But only because we have made them so.

not a laughing matter

Who said conservatives don't have a sense of humour. They have twice voted for a President the whole world is laughing at.

Fictitious state visit

The fictitious President of the United States is about to visit Canada. And I am not talking about Martin Sheen. Sure, it is possible that this time Dubya did win the popular vote, despite the very serious signs of voting fraud, and he may even legitimately win the electoral college vote. But, like Michael Moore and many others, I often have the feeling that Dubya is the fictitious President of the US, and one of these days the real President will stand up. . . . Surely this can't be the best that America can offer!

His doubly-fictitious (not yet confirmed by Congress) Secretary of State will be in tow, the one who ended up on Bush's team because of the fact that she couldn't find a real (non-fictitious) job. She had been granted the fictitious job of Provost at Stanford, as her doctorate was, you guessed it, fictitious; it had been given to her despite the execrable quality of her academic work.

Now the two of them play at being powerful politicians of the most powerful country on earth. Except that real people, in their tens of thousands, are getting killed. And hundreds of thousands of others are getting maimed for life.

Like Moore, I often have the feeling the last four years have been a dream--have been fictitious. Recently, while watching a documentary on younger Dubya, I realized who that dream/nightmare's protagonist reminds me of. Dubya is James Dean, he of "Rebel Without a Cause" fame, sort of gone to college by the grace of having a very rich father, and become President of the United States, again for the same reason.

Body snatchers

These days quite a few Democrats talk as if they experienced an invasion of body snatchers on November 2. They keep saying things like "Who are these people who voted for Bush?" They frequently use the "F" word for them--"fascist," that is. You would think Republicans had just materialized out of thin air. Well, they didn't materialize out of thin air.

Were you conscious when it was drilled into your head that America is the best and the greatest? America uber alles? Were you awake in civics and history classes, when they told you America's system of politics and government is what the rest of the world should, and also will, try to emulate?

The propaganda system was so successful that the brainwashing took hold quite unconsciously. Now the November 2 election, like the hypnotist's snap of his fingers, has shocked some of the sleepers out of their deep slumber. They feel like they are in a foreign country. And they are right. The Republicans are the "real" Americans. The Republicans are the ones who believe that they must follow their President/Fuehrer, right or wrong, even when he is criminally insane.

The Republicans are the ones who understand "moral values." And what are moral values? They are the rules that society imposes on individuals when it has no faith in their own ethical inner light. The commandment "Thou shalt not kill" is a good illustration of this point. It was never meant as an absolute maxim of conduct emanating from an individual's understanding of the nature of his/her humanity. It simply meant "Thou shalt not kill members of your own tribe." Killing outsiders was condoned, and even encouraged. The "commandment" was just a contingent guideline.

Moral values or commandments are the exact opposite of ethical values. A moral person does what he is told. An ethical person does what his sense of what it means to be human tells him to do. Moral values are society's means of controlling individuals. Ethical values are the individual's means of influencing society's development.

If American Democrats are unwilling to examine the "values" they have been brought up with, they might as well run a garage sale with the Democratic Party's assets, and get used to a one-party system.

Boundless Arrogance

Dubya spokesperson Scott McClellan, upon hearing that Thomas Walkom, a columnist with The Toronto Star newspaper, has suggested that Bush should be arrested for war crimes when later this month he defiles this country with his presence, quipped that Walkom "had spent too much time on the campaign of candidate Ralph Nader." This is the type of thing only an American is capable of thinking or saying. Any non-American can see the absurdity of the statement. Why would he think that a Canadian columnist has spent any time, let alone "too much time," on Nader's campaign? Americans imagine everyone and everything in the world is an extension or appendage of something in the United States. The reality is just the opposite of this picture. The nature of the relationship of non-Americans to things American is not that of a bond. Rather, it is that of a negation. For instance, the reason millions of non-Americans supported Kerry's candidacy was not that they liked Kerry or admired him in any way. The reason they supported him was simply the fact that he was running against Bush, who is seen as a far greater evil.

Caligula's Reincarnation

What if it is mostly about Bush's taste for blood and killing? Caligula's greatest fantasy comes to mind: "Would that the Roman people had a single neck [to cut off their head]." Bush "cut off" quite a few heads while Governor of Texas. Earlier, his sadism had manifested itself at Yale when he invented the practice of branding pledges, and on many other occasions. In a 1999 interview, he mocked Karla Faye Tucker, the first woman to be executed in Texas in 100 years: "Please," he whimpered, pursing his lips, "don't kill me." Now the world is his oyster. He is not limited to victims available to him in the US anymore, who may come back to haunt him later anyway. He is now free to kill, bomb, maim, and destroy to his heart's content, without having to answer for any of it. Bush can achieve what Caligula could only dream of.

Ecce Homo

A great man has died, a man who would not even compromise with the limitations of his own mortality. For more than two years, Zionist murderers kept him imprisoned in two dark and damp rooms, and yet he would not surrender. There will never be another Yasser Arafat.

A letter to Michael Moore

Dear Michael,

As someone who was deeply impressed by your early work, and therefore a well-wisher, I would like to offer you my thoughts on your recent work.

The way I see it, the motif of your early work was promotion of social change through raising consciousness of the conflict between capital and labor. In those days you had to struggle to be heard. And, I think, you saw yourself primarily as a social activist.

More recently, though, your work has fit a lot more securely into what Chomsky calls "the spectrum of accepted opinion," though of course near the left end of that spectrum. Simultaneously, the establishment has been showering you with awards and encouragement. I would guess they have been celebrating what they see as the success of their efforts to co-opt you.

I am no Naderite, but I would like to urge you to reflect on whether there really is any difference between the two parties as far as social change is concerned. It could not have been more obvious that both Bush and Kerry had much more in common with each other than with you and me. Yes, the election of Bush is a disaster for the world. But what is to be done now? In my opinion, the thing to do now is (to continue) to try to change the social consciousness that made it possible for Bush to be where he is. A good physician treats the causes of an illness, not its symptoms. And, I think, a good social activist tries to "treat" people's misguided conception of their relationship to power.

Hicks and City Slickers

It is wrong, both ethically and scientifically, to blame all Americans for the "re-election" of George W. Bush. A brief look at the following maps can tell us a lot about what happened on November 2, why it happened, and who is to blame for it.

The first one is a map of US population density.

The second one is a county-by-county map that colours Democratic and Republican counties in the usual way.

And this map, which is again a population density map, but made to look like a nighttime satellite picture

The similarity, nay the correspondence, between election results and population density maps is unmistakable. It is fairly clear that one factor that played in the election was that, generally speaking, most people living in densely populated areas voted Democratic, and most of the ones living in sparsely populated areas voted Republican.

What brought this up was that I have heard people say that they could forgive Americans for getting Dubya into office the first time, but not twice. Americans could be forgiven the first time, the argument goes, because they didn't know any better. Now that they have seen the Dubya gang in action for nearly four years, they can't plead ignorance. Therefore, the argument continues, the "American people" deliberately and consciously elected this gang of thugs and criminals to high public office. This argument ignores the fact that millions of Americans both times voted against Dubya, and hence cannot be called to account for his election. More importantly, the above argument ignores the fact that the social groupings who voted him in the second time were the same social groupings who voted for him the first time. The "hicks" love him, and the "city slickers" hate him. Is it then reasonable to blame all Americans for his rise to the most powerful political office in the world?

But now that we suspect the city vs country divide is the driving engine of politics in the US, we have to ask for the reason. How is it that the mere fact of where one lives tends to determine one's political outlook? It is undeniable that people who live in rural regions and small towns live in smaller worlds than do those who live in cities and bigger towns. What is probably less obvious is that this "rural idiocy," to borrow Lenin's phrase, affects every aspect of their worldview or Weltanschauung. The phrase "Love thy neighbour" means something completely different to one group than it does to the other one. To the rural person, who lives far from his/her neighbour, and sees them only when he/she wants to, it probably means things like helping out during harvest, and keeping one's livestock from trampling adjoining properties. To the city dweller, who lives right next door to his/her neighbour, and sees them on a regular basis, and has little choice but to see them regularly, loving one's neighbour means consciousness of the common interests that bind them together. To put it a bit simplistically, the fence around a property defines the rural person's sphere of interest, while the whole of society is the city person's sphere of interest.