Going Postal

 

Going Postal

Peter Schultz

 

                  The following is from the book, Going Postal, from its chapter entitled “The Banality of Slavery.” The book ‘s author is Mark Ames, and the book is well worth a read.

 

                  “…why is it that in the roughly twenty years of Soviet gulags we know of only one serious uprising … in spite of the millions who perished? Why did so many Russians ‘willingly’ go the camps and ‘let themselves’ be brutalized without a fight? Varlan Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales is perhaps the greatest, most wrenching account of how men adapt to the most degrading conditions. It describes how they adjust to the new ‘normal’ life as brutalized slaves, how the word ‘normal’ has no fixed meaning, and how every one of us is hard wired to be a slave, given the right conditions. It is not something we want to think about too much, which is why Solzhenitsyn’s version of the gulags, with its focus on evil Communist oppressors and the few heroes who resisted, is infinitely more popular in America than Shalamov’s version, which avoids facile divisions between good guys and bad guys, heroes and oppressors, and digs into our inner slave.

 

                  “We don’t hear much about this inner slave … though it is far more common, and manifests itself far more regularly, than the allegedly dangerous ‘heart of darkness’ of which are warned. The slave psychology is too familiar. It appears in the most banal settings: in the workplace, in relationships, at home or at school. Alternatively, the primitive aspect is fantastic, alien, and exciting. While Joseph Conrad is to be applauded … his Heart of Darkness pitch, compared to Shalamov, is an exotic getaway vacation designed to make the reader feel a more profound sense of self. No one wants to travel up the other African river, the one that reveals man’s heart of submissiveness.” [p. 34]

 

                  It strikes me that Ames’s argument might help illuminate Aristotle’s concept of “regime,” whereby he argued that all political orders, democratic, polity, oligarchic, aristocratic, monarchic, and tyrannic, are regimes or “ways of life.” That is, that political life is composed of regimes as ways of life points to man’s “inner slave” or his submissiveness. In other words, the regime indicates that when Aristotle argued that humans are political animals, he meant that humanity’s default setting, so to speak, is submissiveness. And it also illuminates why Aristotle argued the slavery is a permanent feature of political life and why it is almost never true that the good citizen is also a good person.  At the very least, this is something worth thinking about.

Beware the Best and the Brightest

 

Beware the Best and the Brightest

Peter Schultz

 

                  “Affirming the political” is the way of making one’s narcissism socially acceptable or legitimate. Affirming the political cloaks narcissism, the conviction of superiority, as a political choice, as the best political choice. Hence, to acknowledge that your politics, your political choices aren’t choice worthy or are failures means acknowledging your “superiority” is unreal, means acknowledging your inferiority, as it were. As a result, those convinced of their superiority, those convinced that they are elite refuse to acknowledge that their political choices are failures and refuse to abandon them.

 

                  They are in fact trapped, as if in a vicious circle with no way out. To preserve their “credibility,” their legitimacy, their power and positions, they must “go forward,” e.g., by doubling down on their chosen but failing policies. If bombing isn’t working, then increase its level. If violence isn’t working, then increase the violence. For only in that way can elites maintain their power and positions, their “superiority.” Hence, failure must be denied and disguised, covered up. Failure may even be unthinkable; it is definitely unacceptable.

Understanding America's Politics of Failure

 

Understanding America’s Politics of Failure

Peter Schultz

 

                  The following is from David Halberstam’s book, The Best and the Brightest, his account of America’s failure in Vietnam.

 

                  “[McGeorge Bundy] was a man with a great instinct for power, and he loved it, he responded to where power was moving, trying at the same time to get people to do intelligent, restrained things in an intelligent, restrained manner.

 

                  “Besides, the idea and the meaning of failure to him and many of the men around him was an almost alien thing. He was so confident in himself, in his tradition and what he represented, that he had no concept about what failure might really mean, the full extent of it. It never entered the calculations. He and others had, in fact, achieved success; they had won awards, climbed in business and academe, each position had brought them higher. They had of course paid the price along the way. Fragmentation had again and again confronted morality, and morality had from time to time been sliced, but it had always been for the greater good of the career. It was the American way, ever upward; success justified the price, longer and longer hours invested, the long day became a badge of honor, and the long day brought the greater title. Success was worth it, and after all, success in the American way was to do well. But the price was ultimately quite terrible. Washington was a company town in the company country where success mattered, and in the end they could not give up those positions and those titles, not for anything. These were the only things they had left that set them apart; they had no other values, no other identity than their success and their titles. The new American modern man was no longer a whole man; it was John McNaughton able to argue against his interior beliefs on Vietnam in order to hold power, McNamara able to escalate in Vietnam knowing that he was holding the JCS back on nuclear weapons, men able to excise Vietnam from their moral framework. So they could not resign; no one decision, not even a war, could make them give up their positions.” [526]

 

                  Or as I will put it: Their positions and titles offered them social approval for their narcissism and so, of course, they could not, they would not give them up even in the face of abysmal failures. Without their positions and their titles, their lives would be meaningless. And, so, they, the best and the brightest, were trapped in their failures.

 

More From the Living and the Dead

More From The Living and the Dead

Peter Schultz

 

 

Last page of “The Living and the Dead”: “In the midst of such emotion for a war that never went away were those of another point of view….What I think Anne Morrison Welsh [widow of Norman Morrison] was telling me is that vengeance should be left to the vengeful….that suffering and redemption…are not incompatible ideas….On the contrary, each can give the other meaning, even comfort. Otherwise we’re all locked in the triggering and embittering past.” (p. 380) Or trapped in the triggering and embittering political. 

My take: Suffering is best borne silently, contemplatively, poetically, or prayerfully. If treated politically, it turns into vengeance and we remain trapped, with no way out and more violence on the way. McNamara sought redemption and treated his suffering politically and, sure enough, more violence was on the way. As one reader of Time magazine put it: “He should have been man enough to carry his guilt in silence.” Or as might be said: would that he had been wise enough to suffer silently. 

A poem by Auden: 
“About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
It’s human position: how it takes place 
While someone else is eating or opening a window or 
          just walking dully along.”
(p. 380) 

 

[Citations from The Living and the Dead, by Paul Hendrickson]

McNamara and Morrison: Lives of a Lost War

 

McNamara and Morrison: Lives of a Lost War

Peter Schultz

 

                  Robert Strange McNamara and Norman Morrison shared a common fate because both affirmed the political as it appeared in the war in Vietnam. McNamara, of course, was the Secretary of Defense in the Kennedy and the Johnson administrations. He had concluded, toward the end of 1965 but certainly by 1966 that the war could not be won militarily. Nonetheless, for the next two years he pursued the war: “He would grow more darkly pessimistic, and he would stay. He would serve up the hard truth on the inside, sometimes, and he would nonetheless go on, agreeing to and designing further escalations, sending more platoons of the low-echelon into the high elephant grass.” [The Living and the Dead, p. 231] “’McNamara was still providing the president with an enormous amount of detailed, optimistic information … that the thing was working.’” [ibid] As George Ball put it: “He couldn’t face the implications of his own logic.” [ibid] That is, he was committed to affirming the political and his affirmations led him into a futile savagery.

 

                  Norman Morrison, on November 2, 1965, set himself on fire at the Pentagon, close to McNamara’s office, where he was, for a while, holding his baby daughter, Emily. Emily survived while Norman did not, dying amid kerosene induced flames as his way of protesting the war in Vietnam. Morrison was a Quaker and a pacifist, and left behind a wife, another daughter and a son. It is thought he brought his daughter with him to let Americans see what it looked like when children are incinerated, as was happening in Vietnam. He, too, was affirming the political, thinking that his actions would bring an end to Vietnam war.

 

                  Both men couldn’t let go of the Vietnam war and, I believe, they couldn’t because they both were affirming the political, seeking to win or end the war politically. Even though he knew the war couldn’t be won militarily, McNamara persisted in waging it. McNamara could not just walk away from the war. He was compelled to wage it and that compulsion was a reflection of his affirmation of the political. And Morrison, who knew the war was obscene, inhuman, and futile could not let it go. He too could not walk away from it and, in fact, he was prepared to sacrifice his baby daughter on the altar of that war. Like McNamara, he could not walk away from it, thereby affirming it.

 

                  If this is what comes from affirming the political, then it is fair to say that affirming the political leads to a willingness to incinerate children, as illustrated by the policies of McNamara and the actions of Norman Morrison. And the Pentagon, the five-sided monstrosity called the Department of Defense, visibly represents our affirmation of the political as do the actions that are authorized in it and actions like Morrison’s outside it. The Pentagon is modernity’s disguise for savagery.

 

[The citations are from The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War, by Paul Hendrickson, 1996]

The Ethical Problem

 

The Ethical Problem

Peter Schultz

 

The argument is conventionally made that the problem is “the inadequacy of our American system of ethics….” So, conventionally understood, the problem is ethical, viz., this particular ethical system or that particular ethical system, capitalism or communism. However, while this is close to correct, the problem isn’t this or that ethical system. Rather, it is, fundamentally, the ethical itself. 

 

As has been noticed, “the modern high-power dealer of woe … wears immaculate linen, carries a silk hat…,” has a “gentlemanly presence.” “The chiefest sinners are now enrolled men who are pure and kindhearted, loving [of] their families, faithful…, and generous.” In other words, the chiefest sinners are ethical, that is, pure, kindhearted, loving, faithful, and generous. The problematic phenomenon is the ethical itself. 

 

Contemplating the consequences of the ethical, of virtuous political orders, is deeply disturbing. Allen Dulles, et. al., never contemplated the consequences of the ethical, the political. Dulles. et. al., were not contemplative beings; they were active beings, beings who took for granted that great and decisive actions were the key to ameliorating or redeeming the human condition. They saw themselves as creators, not as caretakers. In that sense, they were and are ethical beings, beings who seize hold of the ethical, as they understand it, for the sake of dominance, victory, and glory. For them, the love of fame lies at the heart of the noblest minds. 

 

So, their problem isn’t being unethical; they are emphatically ethical beings, killing and dying for what’s right, even willingly embracing inhuman cruelty for the sake of what’s noble. Their problem, and ours, is that they aren’t contemplative. “The chiefest sinners” aren't unethical; rather, they aren’t contemplative. Were they to be contemplative, they would see the ironic character of the ethical, of the political. They would see the irony in the fact that “war is the health of the state.” They would see the irony in the fact that slavery is an indispensable feature of even healthy political orders. They would see the irony in the fact that the best political leaders are little more than stentorian baboons who are indispensable to national security, but for little else. 

 

What is the alternative to the ethical? How about the erotic? Victor Frankenstein craved the fame and greatness of being the creator of life scientifically. He lusted after such god-like fame. And yet he had the power to create life, as do most human beings, naturally or erotically. Of course, such a creation would not, could not have satisfied his craving for the kind of god-like immortality he sought. Ironically, he could not love or care for his creation, despite its promise. Just like the irony of nuclear power. 

 

Those who embrace the ethical, the political do so at the expense, the loss of the erotic. And that loss “desouls” humans. It is through eros that our souls are revealed and redeemed, that we “make our souls the best possible.”  

 

The Supreme Political Duplicity

Peter Schultz 

 

Stalin said “The production of souls is more important than the production of tanks.” (Page 330, “The Devil’s Chessboard.”) 

C. Wright Mills referred to the production of “cheerful robots” by CIA cultural programs as part of its Cold War strategy. (Page 331, Devil’s Chessboard) 

So, a question arises: Does the political ensoul humans or desoul them, enhance their souls or degrade them? Conventional wisdom holds it’s the former. But if it’s the latter then this would constitute what might be labeled the supreme political duplicity, because claims of ensouling humans are duplicitous insofar as what is really going on is the degradation of souls. And “making your soul the best possible,” ala’ Socrates would require treating politics ironically, that is, as with Pascal, not seriously. Even Machiavelli wrote comedies! 

Another, similar question: Does war enhance the souls of humans or degrade them? Conventionally understood, war enhances the souls of humans; hence, the glorification of war heroes. But with only limited experience with war, one could easily be led to question the conventional wisdom. “Achilles in Vietnam.” 

Insofar as the political doesn’t enhance humans’ souls, the consequences of affirming the political are deeply troubling.