Dumb and Dumber
The pundits exclaim. See the pundits exclaim. Exclaim, exclaim, exclaim.
The Commander-in-Chief pronounces. See the Commander-in-Chief pronounce. Pronounce, pronounce, pronounce.
(Just don’t pronounce “nuclear.”)
I must be living in a parallel universe where why everything that is deemed most significant by the New York Times, CNN, and Harvard professors, is hidden from me. I watch the television news; and, to crib a phrase, I see dead people. But the dead people have no signficance to the pundits or the Commander-in-Chief… to the New York Times, CNN, or the Harvard professors. They show the dead people, and the people crying over the dead, and even the little rivulets of blood pouring into the gutters… but what is significant, as it turns out, is that the President and the Generals are disagreeing again. What they say and don’t say, what they think and don’t thing, how they agree and disagree… is more important than the dead people and the crying people. Because they get to decide, and all the other people get to do is die and cry. The pundits and politicians are powerful; and they are alive and sleek as seals with expensive food; and they have the power to decide, so everything that goes on is theirs; and the dying and crying is interspersed with ads for virility enhancers and cars and chemically-enhanced foods, all advertised with models who smile and smile and smile.
The news models smile, too.
I remember a short film sequence of Charles Manson, the racist mass murderer who once captivated California with his counter-culture posturing. As he was being hauled off by police, he looked into the camera — still inventing his mystique — and made a series of faces, like character masks changing on fast forward, consternation, grief, mirth, fear, confusion, happiness… the expressions swept across his face like cloud shadows over the ocean on a windy day. Playing for the effect as sociopaths are wont to do.
That’s the news models. Mechanically reflecting the appropriate facial expressions for each story, shifting from consternation to amusement with just a beat between them, like they are moving from the pumpkin pie to the cranberry sauce. They neither die nor cry; they just make faces and read aloud.
Now they are reading aloud about George W. Bush wanting to send more troops to Iraq and his Generals assuring him that this will not win his lost war back. They know he is dumb, dumb as a rock. They also know that they obey, because they are obedient, obedient as sheep, and the most they can muster on behalf of their own strong feelings is an elliptical contradiction. Big, strong macho men in scary uniforms, talking throw-weights and combat power, and their idea of rebellion is to kiss this venal blueblood’s ass a bit less enthusiastically. Later on, they will exclaim — as pundits — Bush was dumber than we were.
Then there is Congress, now dominated by the Party of Perennial Identity Crisis. Will they step forward and stop these distractions? Will they at last ascribe significance to the dead and dying and crying, and say enough is enough, this war must end, and end now, even if it means a blow to the prestige of Imperial Power? Will they say the lives of these people and the will of not just the American people who are now opposed to the war, but the will of the occupied Iraqis who overwhelmingly want the US troops out NOW… will they say that these lives and these wills are more important than the risks to their political careers? Will they say, we followed a dumb man and a dumb plan to do an evil thing, and we now have to reverse this evil stupidity?
No.
What they seem ot be doing is joining their voices with the pundits and exclaiming that we not only absolutely must dither longer in Iraq, but what we really need at home is to increase the size of the US military.
We have spent hundreds of billions to build the military we have while we let the Gulf Coast drown and children become malnourished and medically neglected and permitted exponential reliance on fossil energy and profit to bankrupt the futures of our children… and this militarism for which we have mortgaged so much has… what? Left a bunch of people dying and crying, made a handful of people richer when they aready had more than they needed, and fixed not one goddamn thing.
So since this empahsis on military means to achieve questionable goals has failed so miserably, here is what we propose to do:
Leave the questionable goals unquestioned, and expand the military. Militarism so far has proven dumb; and we now propose to fix it by being dumber.
howard:
Turn off the sound on the TV news and then watch the newscasters. Now try to imitate their serial grimacing and put yourself in a place where you could imagine the feelings and thoughts that you might be having as your own face goes through these evolutions.
Watch the odd rhythmic ducking and bobbing of the head, punctuated by the periodic ingratiating and forcedly tender look that roughly corresponds with the end of each sentence (this look will be either a species of smile or a slight firm but reassuring frown, depending on the topic), and above all, note the painfully careful mouthing of each word as it comes out of the mouth with soothing forcefulness - like trying to suck water through a straw that has something blocking the flow in it.
One might begin to imagine in the newscaster the feeling of a sort of condescension, as some people seem to have when speaking to a small child, mixed with a kind of fear of rousing something dangerous and only just under control, something that at any moment might, if provoked, leap up and begin devouring the hapless speaker.
Also, try listening to Bush or other public figures talking, but with the sound distorted so you can’t understand the words. Then close your eyes, try to imitate those sounds with your own voice, and see where that takes you.
21 December 2006, 2:19 pmlapetrov:
“The news models smile, too.”
Oh yes, as if to say, “all is well with the world, so long as there are pretty women to look at.”
What a crazy world man has made, for himself and the few (females and subordinate men) he allows in to serve/service him!
And, “dumb as a rock”
I like that. Made me smile. A new level of dumbness I hadn’t reached before.
“even if it means a blow to the prestige of Imperial Power”
This is extremely interesting to me. As a student of Spanish Imperialism, I wonder from whom does the prestige come in this, or any, case of imperialism?
Ourselves, I believe.
And that is at the core of Imperialism, it is a national self-importance that becomes international when arrogance is injected into/or released from the national psyche.
“Militarism so far has proven dumb; and we now propose to fix it by being dumber.”
Patriarchal man is hugely invested in militarism, dumb or not. To turn away from it would be almost like turning away from man himself, or man’s self.
Not to essencialize or anything -I certainly don’t mean to say all men. Structural man.
21 December 2006, 2:58 pmElki:
One of my most common mutterings these days is, “human beings are so stupid…” “It astounds me how stupid human beings can be.”
21 December 2006, 4:14 pmLegume Sam:
explaining Bush and his sycophants in the “other” party, hmmmm….
Are you sure that “dumb and dumber” doesn’t mean you’re stumped?
I can only figure that the ascendant fraction of capital wants it this way… they’ve put in SO MUCH EFFORT covering for Bush’s two rigged elections, numerous personality defects, and nasty policies — why they should stop now is beyond me, since after the first few dozen coverups you’d think there was a plan…
This whole “failed policy in Iraq” thing looks mighty false to me — after all, the current “quagmire” is the intentional result of policy, they got what they wanted…
The idea is to keep spending those dollars until dollar hegemony stops happening, and what better excuse to spend than more war?
Eh?
21 December 2006, 6:25 pmDeAnander:
My light [not] cheerful [definitely not] holiday reading is D Jensen’s 2 part tome, Endgame. Highly recommended. Relevant as hell. And while we’re on the subject of the Pabulum Providers (the mass media), there’s always McKibben’s The Age of Missing Information, which dissects and discusses one (just one) 24 hour period of cable broadcasting. I haven’t watched broadcast TV in 30 years, and from the few unwilling glimpses I get in airports and other people’s homes, I don’t think I’m missing a whole lot…
21 December 2006, 8:56 pmpeggy:
People in general are not dumb. Even the American people in general are not dumb, given that the last elections as well as however many polls say that the majority of the American people do not agree with Bush, and do not like what he is doing. The majority of people in the whole world do not like what Bush is doing. When we look at the American newscasters, we are not looking at the American people in general, let alone at all people in general.
Why are the TV newscasters acting so dumb? I think it is because they fear they will lose their jobs if they don’t. They get paid a lot, I imagine, and the higher you go the further you have to fall, is all. It also looks like the Dems in Congress consider that they, too, will have a lot to lose if they oppose Bush. The man has a lot of power, more than just the mere office of president allows. Or perhaps I should say, the puppeteers have a lot of power, way lots of power. We might as well just assume that most of the American TV stations are goverment-owned, and leave it at that.
I am inclined to agree with Legume Sam that the ascendant fraction of capital, consisting of only a very small number of people, want to keep the war going, because they profit from it, and expect to continue to do so. No puzzle there. Or am I just also dumb?
22 December 2006, 12:17 amxenia:
i tend to be quite cynical about the us-americans’ lack of enthusiasm for iraq. most people would not have any problems with it…if only they were winning. it’s only because they are losing that there is any reflection at all. look at mickey moore and his last movie, so eagerly watched by all the kerryites. it was all about “our troops”, iraqis were reduced to cameo appearances.
almost whenever i mention i am an american citizen, i notice a slight shift in people’s reaction, they relax (ah, she is one of us after all). i cannot stand it. As if I had transformed into something more evolved merely because of a paper…
it has very little to do with my loyalties, my priorities and my culture.
Finding oneself, realizing that one does not like war is not a good reason for killing and invading other people.
22 December 2006, 8:44 ami don’t care if millions of americans eventually were to become better people because of this war; it is not worth a finger, let alone the life, of an iraqi child.
xenia:
tv newscasters…with their plasticky faces and their nasal twang, their unnatural stress in speech. when i did not speak any english, i sometimes wondered if they were quite human.
and that’s another mistake they make with their indoctrination efforts overseas. they assume everyone who watches cnn etc. can follow their peculiar expressions and their idiomatic speech. not so, even after 10 years of studying english it can be hard to understand them.
but the images of suffering people are easy to understand.
in this sense, the result can be wonderful; most people outside of the us who catch a sight of their programs will remember the images of a destroyed country and a rummy’s and bush’s nasty faces, but they won’t understand the propaganda. in that sense at least, their murderous, self-referential media is working against them.
btw, i hate the term quagmire to refer to iraq (or vietnam), it implies people who live there are some kind of filthy amphibians.
22 December 2006, 8:51 amxenia:
ps when i went to a doctor in the us once and she asked me about my high blood pressure, i said, well, my father has it too, and i’ve had it since the age of 17, but it is not hereditory. it’s because we have been in a war, and that tends to raise your pressure a bit, especially if members of your family die.
her face did not register any changes. her fake smile was still there, as was her hairstyle, and her costume. no empathy.
she said after a pause: you know, if you have high blood pressure, we cannot give you birth control, we are a little conservative here.
i felt like pulling her hillary-like helmet, or slapping her, but i just said: thank you for your understanding.
she was like a news broadcaster, a little puzzled, not sure if she should blame me, but indoctrinated enough not to show me any of her emotions, better yet, hardened enough to barely feel.
22 December 2006, 8:59 amJB:
As I came home Wednesday evening I saw a picture of GW and his bumbling lips and thought “what insane remark has come from his programmed brain today” More Troops? More Troops? I have 4 children sleeping at the time and I storm out of the office and awake my wife and say what in the hell is our country doing right now but sitting on our asses and allowing this crack brained idiot to continue to make remarks which are completely incomprehesible.
I am just as guilty as anyone else, what can I do.. What can I do… we are so god damn fucking arrogant it makes me nausesous… who in the fuck are we to tell people how they must run their country. YES there are atrocities which are unforgiveable, but we are perpetuating this insanity. My language is inexecusable and for this I apologize, however I want our world to improve. WHAT ARE WE DOING????????????????????????????? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HOW CAN WE MAKE A DIFFERENCE????
I have 4 wonderful children under 7 years old? what am I to teach them of this embarrasing pomposity we are attempting to impose upon others? THINGS THINGS THINGS let us all acquire things.. Yes this is what make eternal happiness. WTF?????
I just want to say that this page has opened my eyes to the unbelievable injustices that are continuing to happen all across this world and it is absolutely sickening and EVERYONE CONTINUES TO SLEEPWALK!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you Stan for your truth.. This world I was borne into, the U-N-I-T-E-D S-T-A-T-E-S is an absolute joke. we have been stuffed and stuffed and stuffed with bullshit our entire lives.
I am going to make a change in this wacked out world that we call FREE, in some way shape or form.. and it is not going to be by violence, agression, or anger
Thank you for enlightening me to injustices I have been blinded by my entire life
22 December 2006, 11:51 pmfalloch:
Today we had a table out in Helensburgh (w. coast of Scotland), selling second-hand books and peace badges and just wishing everyone a peaceful Christmas. Britain’s ‘independent’ nuclear deterrent is 4 miles up the road in the guise of 4 Trident submarines. The warheads are British, the missiles are leased from the US, the guidance system is controlled by the US, so an independent nuclear deterrent it is not. It’s also up for ‘renewal’ or ‘replacement’ at the cost of at least 30 billion pounds, and Tony Blair says he’s keen to do so. There’s been an ongoing anti-nuclear presence here for more than 20 years; this year the Faslane 365 campaign has been going on (google ‘Faslane 365′) - an attempt to blockade the entrance to the Faslane Submarine base for 365 days. Locals are not pleased - the traffic snarl-ups mean kids don’t get to school in time, or people to work, and there’s been lots of letters in the local paper about this. But today, we were astonished. We expected people to come and upbraid us about the traffic problems, and instead we had people coming up to buy books and give donations, and saying ‘why should we be talking about renewing Trident, when the [UK] lads in Iraq don’t even have proper body armour, or decent boots?’ ‘Why are we putting sanctions on Iran when we’re making new nukes for ourselves?’ I think people (by this I mean people who’ve never thought of themselves as political, or activist) are starting to make connections, despite the efforts of the MSM to keep us distracted with Strictly Come Dancing, Big Brother, and how much money you spend on a handbag. But like the previous poster, once people have the awareness that things are horribly out of kilter, there’s so few arenas where people can voice their dismay. The mainstream media’s job is to keep us separated from each other in the areas where our unity would really count, and cluster us around the distractions that will keep us powerless. Maybe, eventually, folks will switch on the ‘news’, and realise these ‘news’ presenters are a bunch of hollow, posturing figureheads, and that connecting the dots is a creative, cohesive act.
23 December 2006, 1:55 pmSmarter:
American network news is a Jihad on the facts. I got so tired of saying ‘that’s bullshit!’ that I simply stopped watching. I do get some television news on link tv (satelite only). It is a sad reminder to me of how news used to be here. News from the Middle-East and Germany, broadcast in English, is laden with facts. The near complete absence of fluff or spin takes me back to the days of Walter Cronkite. There is no ‘be afraid’ message that is sensationalized into your conciousness for weeks. No spin cycle … just news.
24 December 2006, 1:11 pmThe only drawbacks are that they are on satelite and the “network” is viewer supported. Let me dispel the myth that satelite tv has service problems compared to cabletv. You can check the consumer surveys (facts). Satelite tv has higher customer satisfaction ratings. My dish sits precariously on a flimsy ten foot mast and I have no reception problem even in 50 to 60 mph winds. As for viewer supported tv, the beg-a-thons seem like such a pain … until I remember that except for a few times a year this programming is commercial free. Perhaps it is a pang of guilt that I find uncomfortable. I guess it is time for me to support link tv so I can urge you to do the same. Really, ask friends or check it out for yourself and see what the rest of the world sees.
Sandy:
Au contraire. “People in general” are most certainly dumb, for the simple reason that “general” represents the mediocre and average. And there is nothing “wrong” with that, it’s just the way it is. Americans have a tough time facing things the way they are. They like positive thinking, optimism,”nice people,” grins, “I’m ok, you’re ok.” It goes against our profound egalitarianism to consider the evident inequalities in humans: taller, shorter, dumber, smarter, prettier, uglier, and so on and on. Fortunately, talents are distributed everywhere and at every degree. At any rate, the “average” man is not in a position to evaluate complex issues, and there is no reason why he should be. It is a perfect illusion to be able to have an intelligent opinion on everything, and if you are faced with someone who has one on everything, you can be pretty sure you are faced with a fool. In this sense, democracy is a farce, and basically a sop for the crowd.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: I guess that means we should put you in charge.
24 December 2006, 8:41 pmBeacon:
PLEASE HOW CAN WE MAKE A DIFFERENCE????
Education. A proper, radical education. (One that I had to acquire on my own).
24 December 2006, 11:00 pmSandy:
“I guess that means we should put you in charge.” No, it doesn’t mean that. Why would you conclude that? You don’t agree with my thoughts, fine. But they don’t have to elicit an unwarranted and simplistic sarcasm.
25 December 2006, 10:19 amJorge:
The Revolt of the Masses
La Rebelion de las Masas, 1930, by Jose Ortega Y Gasset
1
There is one fact which, whether for good or ill, is of utmost importance in the public life of Europe at the present moment. This fact is the accession of the masses to complete social power….
In order to understand this formidable fact, it is important from the start to avoid bringing to the words “rebellion,” “masses,” and “social power” a meaning exclusively or primarily political. Public life is not solely political, but equally, and even primarily, intellectual, moral, economic, religious; it comprises all our collective habits, including our fashions both of dress and of amusement….
The select man is not the petulant person who thinks himself superior to the rest, but the man who demands more of himself than the rest, even though he may not fulfil in his person those higher exigencies. For there is no doubt that the most radical division that is possible to make of humanity is that which splits it into two classes of creatures: those who make great demands on themselves, piling up difficulties and duties; and those who demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live is to be every moment what they already are, without imposing on themselves any effort towards perfection…
I believe that the political innovations of recent times signify nothing less than the political domination of the masses. The old democracy was tempered by a generous dose of liberalism and enthusiasm for law…. Today we are witnessing the triumphs of a hyperdemocracy in which the mass acts directly, outside the law, imposing its aspirations and its desires by means of material pressure….
The present-day writer… has to bear in mind that the average reader, if he reads does so with the view not of learning something from the writer, but rather of pronouncing judgment on him…. The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.
4
It is precisely because man’s vital time is limited, precisely because he is mortal, that he needs to triumph over distance and delay. For an immortal being, the motor-car would have no meaning.
We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but he does not know what to create. Lord of all things, he is not lord of himself…. Hence the strange combination of a sense of power and a sense of insecurity….
The mass-man is he whose life lacks any purpose, and simply goes drifting along. Consequently, though his possibilities and his powers be enormous, he constructs nothing. And it is this type of man who decides in our time….
In the schools, which were such a source of pride to the last century, it has been impossible to do more than instruct the masses in the technique of modern life; it has been found impossible to educate them…..
5
The whole of history stands out as a gigantic laboratory in which all possible experiments have been made to obtain a formula of public life most favorable to the plant “man.” And beyond all possible explaining away, we find ourselves face to face with the fact that, by submitting the seed of humanity to the treatment of two principles, liberal democracy and technical knowledge, in a single century the species in Europe has been triplicated. Such an overwhelming fact forces us, unless we prefer not to use our reason, to draw these conclusions: first, that liberal democracy based on technical knowledge is the highest type of public life hitherto known; secondly, that that type may not be the best imaginable, but the one we imagine as superior to it must preserve the essence of those two principles; and thirdly, that to return to any forms of existence inferior to that of the 19th century is suicidal.
6
Now it turns out–and this is most important–that this world of the 19th and early 20th centuries not only has the perfections and the completeness which it actually possesses, but furthermore suggests to those who dwell in it the radical assurance that tomorrow it will be still richer, ampler, more perfect, as if it enjoyed a spontaneous, inexhaustible power of increase…. This leads us to note down in our psychological chart of the mass-man of today two fundamental traits: the free expansion of his vital desires, and therefore, of his personality; and his radical ingratitude towards all that has made possible the ease of his existence. These traits together make up the well-known psychology of the spoilt child….
They are only concerned with their well-being, and at the same time the remain alien to the cause of that well-being. As they do not see, behind the benefits of civilization, marvels of invention and construction which can only be maintained by great effort and foresight, they imagine that their role is limited to demanding these benefits peremptorily, as if they were natural rights.
7
Contrary to what is usually thought, it is the man of excellence, and not the common man who lives in essential servitude. Life has no savour for him unless he makes it consist in service to something transcendental. Hence he does not look upon the necessity of serving as an oppression. When, by chance, such necessity is lacking, he grows restless and invents some new standard, more difficult, more exigent, with which to coerce himself. This is life lived as a discipline–the noble life. Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us–by obligations, not by rights. Noblesse oblige. “To live as one likes is plebeian; the noble man aspires to order and law.” (Goethe)…
The world as organized by the 19th century, when automatically producing a new man, has infused into him formidable appetites and powerful means of every kind for satisfying them…. After having supplied him with all these powers, the 19th century has abandoned him to himself, and the average man, following his natural disposition, has withdrawn into himself…. The masses are incapable of submitting to direction of any kind…. It is illusory to imagine that the mass-man of today, however superior his vital level may be compared with that of other times, will be able to control, by himself, the process of civilization. I say process, and not progress. The simple process of preserving our present civilization is supremely complex, and demands incalculably subtle powers.
8
It is not a question of the mass-man being a fool. On the contrary, today he is more clever, has more capacity of understanding than his fellow of any previous period…. This is what in my first chapter i laid down as the characteristic of our time; not that the vulgar believes itself super-excellent and not vulgar, but that the vulgar proclaims and imposes the rights of vulgarity, or vulgarity as a right.
9
The type of man dominant today is a primitive one… he does not see the civilization of the world around him, but he uses it as if it were a natural force. The new man wants his motor-car, and enjoys it, but he believes that it is the spontaneous fruit of an Edenic tree. In the depths of his soul he is unaware of the artificial, almost incredible, character of civilization, and does not extend his enthusiasm for the instruments to the principles which make them possible.
25 December 2006, 5:07 pmJB:
Thank you for the sincere truths that each of you posted. Beacon, a heartfelt gratitude to you for reinforcing my beliefs. No blame on my own parents as they were only perpetuating the madness instilled to them at an early age, I was nurtured as a child to respect the establishment with no questions to be posed. The disoriented looks upon faces as I describe homeschooling my children never cease to astound me. My favorite question to receive–”Why, how are your children going to have social skills?”–
26 December 2006, 6:06 amRandy Morris:
â€Why, how are your children going to have social skills?â€
I get the same stupid comment about homeschooling my kids. I point out that deprogramming my kids’ “social skills” is half the point.
Randy
27 December 2006, 11:11 amJim:
MODERATOR’S NOTE: I guess that means we should put you in charge.
Hey Stan, what’s with the sarcasm? I thought people had a right to give their opinion so long as they kept the language respectful. Sandy just makes the point that the average man is average–”dumb” in that sense. What’s wrong with that? You yourself have used a lot stronger language depicting the average American. Sandy is saying the average man probably isn’t in a position to have a really intelligent opinion on complex issues today–I think that is obvious, the average American watches an average of 10 hours a day of tv, according to one piece I recently read. That surely is a recipe for dumbing down.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: What you and Sandy are saying is qualitatively different. Sandy’s sugestion is far more soically darwinian, and ends by saying innate inequality is the reason democracy cannot work.
27 December 2006, 5:49 pmDick Reilly:
Well, it looks like spring is promising to bring a ’surge’ in mass antiwar activity as more and more grassroots groups mobilize to demand action and accountability from their newly elected reps. Whether anything comes of this remains to be seen.
One positive example of this is the direct action campaign being launched in February by Voices for Creative Nonviolence and Vets for Peace. Another is UFPJ’s national mobilization on Capitol Hill on January 27. Still another is ANSWER’s call for a march on the Pentagon on March 17 - the fourth anniversary of the war.
Helping to set the tone for this spring offensive is a new e-petition circulating across antiwar listserves and the blogosphere. Entitled “Why we stand for immediate withdrawal of all U.S troops from Iraq” this statement has been signed by major antiwar activists and prominent authors and has already collected thousands of signatures in a few short days, — despite the holiday break.
Text: “Why we stand for immediate withdrawal of all U.S troops from Iraq”
THE U.S. occupation of Iraq has not liberated the Iraqi people, but has made life worse for most Iraqis.
Tens of thousands of U.S. service people have been killed or maimed, and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis have lost their lives as a result of the U.S. invasion in 2003, the ongoing occupation, and the violence unleashed by them.
Iraq’s infrastructure has been destroyed, and U.S. plans for reconstruction abandoned. There is less electricity, less clean drinking water, and more unemployment today than before the U.S. invasion.
All of the justifications initially provided by the U.S. for waging war on Iraq have been exposed as lies; the real reasons for the invasion — to control Iraq’s oil reserves and to increase U.S. strategic influence in the region — now stand revealed.
The Bush administration has insisted again and again that stability, democracy, and prosperity are around the next bend in the road. But with each day that the U.S. stays, the violence and lack of security facing Iraqis worsen. The U.S. says that it cannot withdraw its military because Iraq will collapse into civil war if it does. But the U.S. has deliberately stoked sectarian divisions in its ongoing attempt to install a U.S.-friendly regime, thus driving Iraq towards civil war.
The November elections in the United States sent a clear message that voters reject the Iraq war, and opinion polls show that seven in 10 Iraqis want the U.S. to leave sooner rather than later. Even most U.S. military and political leaders agree that staying the course in Iraq is a policy that is bound to fail.
Yet all the various alternative plans for Iraq now being discussed in Washington, including those proposed by House and Senate Democrats, aren’t about withdrawing the U.S. military from Iraq. Rather, these strategies are about continuing the pursuit of U.S. goals in Iraq and the larger Middle East using different means.
Even the proposal to redeploy U.S. troops outside of Iraq, a plan favored by many Democratic Party leaders, envisions continued U.S. intervention inside Iraq.
With former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger insisting that a military victory in Iraq is no longer possible and (Ret.) Lt. Gen. William Odom calling for “complete withdrawal” of all U.S. troops, the antiwar movement should demand no less than the immediate withdrawal of the U.S. military — as well as reparations to the Iraqi people, so they can rebuild their own society and genuinely determine their own future.
We call on the U.S. to get out of Iraq — not in six months, not in a year, but now.
- Initial Signatories -
- Ali Abunimah, ElectronicIraq.net
- Gilbert Achcar, Author, Clash of Barbarisms
- Michael Albert, Znet
- Tariq Ali, Author, Bush in Babylon
- Anthony Arnove, Author Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal
- Noam Chomsky, Author, Hegemony or Survival
- Kelly Dougherty, Executive Director, Iraq Veterans Against the War*
- Eve Ensler, Playwright, The Vagina Monologues
- Eduardo Galeano, Author, The Open Veins of Latin America
- Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies, Columbia University
- Camilo MejÃa, First Iraq War resister
- Arundhati Roy, Author, God of Small Things
- Cindy Sheehan,Gold Star Families for Peace, mother of Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, killed in Iraq
- Howard Zinn, Author, A People’s History of the United States
- If you agree with this, please sign on here: [ http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/OutNow/ ]
It may not be much, but it’s something you can do right now when you finish reading this thread…
28 December 2006, 3:55 amJim:
Re:
MODERATOR’S NOTE: What you and Sandy are saying is qualitatively different. Sandy’s sugestion is far more soically darwinian, and ends by saying innate inequality is the reason democracy cannot work.
Stan, I can’t agree with you on this. There are inequalities which are innate in the sense that inheritance or genetics surely plays a part, and modes of intelligence and aptitudes of all kinds certainly pertain to that category. No one will convince me that just a little more work and study would enable me to compete with mathematical geniuses, or just a bit harder practice when young, and I could have challented ssomeone with world class athletic ability, or that more time at the piano would have made me comparable to a Mozart…and so on. Degrees of aptitude of every sort exist, and we are born with them. The issue of potential is different. No doubt I failed to exploit my full athletic potential, for example, but I would maintain that there are innate limitations to my athletic potential and that the athletic potentialities of a Michael Jordan are greater than mine–innately so. Societies deal with this reality in different ways, to be sure. Sandy makes the evident point that “fortunately” abilities of all kinds enjoy a wide distribution. That is absolutely true. I may have more talent in this or that, and my neighbor, fortunately, has talents that I do not. We each benefit. But Sandy also makes the evident point that if we consider a collectivity, then we necessarily consider the average. The “average” man is just that. And he says that in this sense democracy is a farce. This is hardly an original thought. The Founding Fathers were vehemently against democracy, they wanted a republic. That point has often been made. Egalitarianism does not equal justice. It can actually be tyrannical and unjust in its turn, as has also been pointed out often. Besides, a democracy at the level of a small town is one thing, democracy at the level of societies numbering millions, is quite another. I suspect the former is a real possibilty, and that the latter is exactly what Sandy says it is, and history and current reality certainly tends to back that up.
In any case, why would a social darwinistic reply–assuming it is that–merit a personal attack?
MODERATOR’S NOTE: You are changing premises faster than I can change diapers on the baby. As you note, however the MEN who were the founding FATHERS wanted anything but a democracy… they were mostly big landowners (courtesy of genocide) with slaves. Democracy is not about who can write concertos of dunk basketballs. It is about direct participation in the decisions about one’s life and community. For the record, the founding fucking fathers can shit in their hats! May they rot in hell. May the idols to them be torn down, and may they be burned each year in effigy as a celebration of freedom.
29 December 2006, 3:17 pmStan:
If it weren’t for the founding fathers, we’d all be speaking English and living under an inbred aristocratic dynasty… uh… oops.
29 December 2006, 3:51 pmJim:
There it is again. What you think of the Founding Father is irrelevant to the discussion. You resort to crudities and violent language every time you are contradicted. I wasn’t changing any premises. You changed the premises to a rant on the term “Fathers.” I used the term simply to show that a particular thought wasn’t original, and gave an example that dated back centuries. You hear the word “father” and reach for your gun.
As for democracy, it is indeed about participation. But to work, it entails using our intelligence to select the ablest and and noblest amongst us to help us in our decisions, rather as we go to someone wiser, nobler or more experienced when we need advice. This is certainly possible in small societies: the Amish, small towns, etc. It is less clear how to realize this in complex societies numbering over 100 million. You are an impassioned and idealistic moralist, and that certainly is an honorable function, but it is not one that can resolve just any problem.
STAN REPLIES: I didn’t bring up the founding fathers. You did. I admit I was crude. How often do you think old George Washington had his slaves whipped, anyway? How many did he rape? I mean that was violent, don’t you think? More violent than my making a scatological reference to these sweaty old slave-capitalists?
Jim, when you use the term “man” to refer to the whole uhuman race, which is majority female, you are being sexist. Gender as a system is hierarchical. it is justified with exactly the same kinds of biological determinism you are appealing to in your so called meritocracy. And when people do that on this site, they get called on it. It’s called taking responsibility. Now you should take responsibility and quit doing that. It pertains to exactly the kind of nonsense you are purporting about “wiser, nobler, and more experienced.” That’s not how this system works, and you know it. We live in a system where money brings slime to the top. If you’d like we can do a roll call from Washington; or even start with CEOs, Skilling for starters then work back.
The bureaucratization that inevitably occurs when that much power is centralized is preciselyone reason we need democratic organization to nip it in the bud, in quality and quantity. The US is not one society, but many, and there are colonizers and colonized wihtin it. We take sides, inevitably. I take sides with the colonized. You don’t.
As to premise shifting, you clearly say you disagree that Sandy made a social darwinist argument, then you went on to make the SAME social darwinist argument.
Here is Sandy’s exact praseology, just ot save people the trouble of scrolling:
“People in general†are most certainly dumb, for the simple reason that “general†represents the mediocre and average. And there is nothing “wrong†with that, it’s just the way it is. Americans have a tough time facing things the way they are. They like positive thinking, optimism,â€nice people,†grins, “I’m ok, you’re ok.†It goes against our profound egalitarianism to consider the evident inequalities in humans: taller, shorter, dumber, smarter, prettier, uglier, and so on and on. Fortunately, talents are distributed everywhere and at every degree. At any rate, the “average†man is not in a position to evaluate complex issues, and there is no reason why he should be. It is a perfect illusion to be able to have an intelligent opinion on everything, and if you are faced with someone who has one on everything, you can be pretty sure you are faced with a fool. In this sense, democracy is a farce, and basically a sop for the crowd.
I mean he says “smarter, dumber, prettier, uglier” as if these are not social outcomes and constructs, but innate characeristics. It’s very straightforward. Then he talks about the average MAN, betraying his own unexamined sexism, suggesting that he, but not Mr Average, is capable of tackling these complexities (ergo, he is far far above average). Conclusion, “democracy is a farce.”
You then reply to my sarcasm at this arrogance, by saying, “Sandy is saying the average man probably isn’t in a position to have a really intelligent opinion on complex issues today.”
Actually, no, that’s not what Sandy said at all. You switched his premise to make your social darwinism more PC; and you did it on purpose. Sandy didn’t say “position” at all. Sandy described “intelligence” (which he cleverly refuses to define) by comparing it directly with innate characteristics like height.
So don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s fucking raining. It’s not. Y’all are just pissing on our legs.
This site has a peculiar name for a reason. The moderators believe that today’s society dumbs people down; but we think it’s reversible through engagment in the political process, and that those “average” folk out there, once they get hold of some essential interpretive tools, are capable of seeing through the chicanery of our modern-day nobility, be they politicians, CEOs, professionals, or academics.
To paraphrase the feminists, “The people need technocrats and professionals like a fish needs a bicycle.”
29 December 2006, 5:20 pmpeggy:
Jim - A couple of comments.
First, “the average man” does not exist as an actual human being, or collection of human beings. If newscasters or politicians speak to “the average man”, they really are not speaking to anybody real, whether alive or dead. They are speaking to a fiction, a construction.
Second, whatever qualities you have that may be called “innate” and different from those of your neighbor are not a matter of genetic inheritance. The specific organization of your central nervous system is not inherited, except insofar as there are certain basics common to the whole species. Dentritic connections in the fetal brain happen randomly, and not by predetermined design.
Yes we inherit from our parents such things as skin color. But the CNS is a whole different ball game. And athletic as well as mathematical ability are entirely a matter of CNS organization, which is malleable throughout life, and which develops in utero, infancy, and early childhood in ways that are not genetically determined.
29 December 2006, 5:44 pmJorge:
Re: For the record, the founding fucking fathers can shit in their hats! May they rot in hell. May the idols to them be torn down, and may they be burned each year in effigy as a celebration of freedom.
You know, Stan, I think you lack gratitude. This society, like every other that has existed, is imperfect, just as people are imperfect, morally speaking. But it is one thing to critique constructively, and another to want to destroy out of a “zeal that leads to hell.” This is the achilles heel of the revolutionary mentality that has sowed so much terrible misery in the world. Remember the adage: “don’t throw the baby out with the bath water!”
STAN REPLIES:
Yes, I am so ungrateful. We should just kiss the boss’ asses and obey and be glad we have MTV and McDonalds.
29 December 2006, 5:53 pmJorge:
Very intelligent and respectful answer.
29 December 2006, 10:04 pmAudrey:
As someone who is well aware that the founding fathers didn’t do a damn thing to advance my rights, I’m puzzling over why I’m expected to show any gratitude toward them at all – or is it only the men that are supposed to be grateful? They created a government based on the idea that rich white male landowners were all created equal and had certain inalienable rights (including the right to all natural resources on the planet and to all nonwhitemale nonlandowning potential sources of labor), and the rest of us had none of those rights. The rest of us are still trying to recover from the damage that attitude caused and continues to cause.
I guess if I were a rich white male landowner and the only people I cared about or identified with were other rich white male landowners, and I didn’t feel any sort of solidarity with everyone else in the world who has the misfortune of being the wrong color or wrong gender or wrong nationality or wrong class, maybe I would have an appropriate amount of gratitude for everything they did for me. As it is, though, I’m seeing a whole lot of dirty bath water, and in all that muck I can’t seem to find a baby, just a buncha rich guys wearing bibs so they don’t get dirty while they eat up the resources the rest of the world needs – and doing a hell of a lot of spitting up in the process.
29 December 2006, 11:57 pmpeggy:
Stan, see the post from Jorge above, quoting Ortega y Gasset. I do think there is something to be learned from this.
30 December 2006, 4:01 amVeronica:
In “Welcome to the Monkey House,” Kurt Vonnegut imagined a world in which this ideal was achieved:
“The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.”
STAN REPLIES: I’ve seen this IP before, under a different name.
Shifting the premises to “equality” is a red herring. I am on record again and again — as are plenty others — saying “equality” is liberal mumbo-jumbo. By claiming this is my argument or that of radical feminists or of socialists is a deception.
We are not talking about “equality,” a non-operationizable term in any case, but about assigning heirarchy to difference, about the heritability of power through systemic oppression and socialization within systems of power. Equality is a bullshit concept. So is meritocracy… which is the bullshit that people are trying to troll onto this site after they build the straw-man of equlaity and call that our argument. The people in power, whether that is white nationalist, male, or class power, are NOT where they are because they are better, but because of rape, murder, enclosure (property), extortion, fraud, and mass indoctrination.
BTW, IQ tests are about as discredited as any “diagnostic” tool around. What they measure is the ability to take an IQ test.
30 December 2006, 3:55 pmCharles:
The slogan of a society in which the process is “from each according to ability; to each according to need” recognizes the inevitable vastness of humanity diversity.
We might take the rational kernel from the American motto “e pluribus unum”, stripped of the profound shortcomings of the Old Boys’ Network
Charles
1 January 2007, 6:14 pmxenia:
with jorge i wonder the same as i do with all those racists leaving their comments on the angryarab blog — if they do not agree with the basic premise which is shared by most people reading stan, why the hell does he bother reading? aren’t there enough neo-liberal rah-rah-US sites out there?
he should also keep his starchy collar to himself, as i am sure reading the economist is the height of culture. but exchanging devious, smarmy comments has always been a favorite of “cultured” WASPs and wanna-bes. Muy estimado Jorge, vete a freir esparragas o a leer the pilgrim’s progress, just leave the rest of us alone.
i’m very grateful for spending time in a project, which is everything the us government has given me.
1 January 2007, 9:36 pmSteve:
I liked Stan`s description of the newsmodels, I think many people are so frustrated with the discourse from all quarters just tune it out, put on thier ipods and go about making meaning in thier lives as best they can. I for one am more frustrated by the lack of imagination and creativity in the so-called anti-war movement. Shrill repetition of the litany of crimes seems to be the dominant response to the ebb in activism since the start of the occupation.Instead of linking struggles here against neo-liberalism and connecting with the everyday lived realities of most of us, the major mobilizing outfits continue to narrowly focus on the war, missing the disasters in our own communities. To me it is exactly those local and specific scales where agency is created. As I write this, yet another UFPJ circus is comming to my city to prance around the Capitol in a shameless display of white privilege with the instrumental objective of having warm bodies as a backdrop for CNN coverage of endless speakers. It the end-these promanades are disrespectful to the people who endure hours on buses to make themselves heard in the streets of DC. The Washington Metropolitian area is home to five million people, many of whom oppose the war, and who elected anti-war democrats in November. Connecting with us, mobilizing us around the constellation of concerns including the war, might be powerful-yet national groupings in thier opportunism and narrow reformism overlook the local in favor of the big picture-this feels like a patriarchical style to me, authoritarian, alieniating, and ageist to boot. In a city that is majority African American, majority women, dealing with national outfits feels like another manifestation of white privilege, when our knowlege and insights are disrespected and we are patronized.The corruption penetrates everywhere, even into the practices of movements committed to social change. I think ending the war has to begin with opening up to multiple voices, instead of clutching hard onto the echoes of the last great wave of rebellion in the 1960s. Jerry Garcia is dead and so is the world of 1968.
2 January 2007, 10:21 pm