The Political Problem in a Nutshell: Rule

 

The Political Problem In A Nutshell: Rule

Peter Schultz

 

            All politics, every political order, involves, requires rule. Someone, some group, or several groups must rule (governed, we say). All such arrangements necessarily involve some kind of hierarchy. But all hierarchies are illusionary, the illusion being that human beings aren’t essentially alike, that some are “more equal than others.” Socrates’s “noble lie” in the Republic that some humans are, say, the gold standard, while others are made of lead or other less valuable matter. Because hierarchies, all of them, are constructed, are human artifacts, aren’t natural, all forms of rule are essentially built on and maintained by force or fraud (think of “propaganda” as fraud). The most dangerous political people are, perhaps, those who are self-righteous, those who come to believe that they are in fact superior beings who are entitled to impose their superiority on their inferiors, either by force or fraud.

 

            Are there forms of human life, which are not solitary, where rule is unnecessary, where it is irrational, where it undermines or corrupts the value of the forms? Friendship comes to mind. Genuine love comes to mind. Teaching comes to mind when the teaching isn’t reduced to “schooling,” that is, to “socialization” or “indoctrination.”

What's It All About, Alphie?

 

What’s Is It All About, Alfie?

Peter Schultz

 

            I have been feeling dead for some time now, several years at least. It comes and goes. And I have wondered why, before realizing that I have been feeling this way because, at some level of consciousness, I sensed that along with the death of my older brother, Charlie, who was killed in action in Vietnam in 1967, the American republic was also dead.

 

            And then I realized that this has been agenda since the end of WW II, viz., to kill what was left of the American republic. This is what Hiroshima and Nagasaki and nukes were about; this is what the Cold War was about; this is what the Korean War was about; this is what the Vietnam War was about; this is what JFK’s assassination was about; this is what Watergate was about; this is what LBJ’s Great Society was about; this is what J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI’s COINTROPOL was about; this is what the assassinations of Malcolm X, MLK, Jr., Fred Hampton, and RFK were about; this is what 9/11 was about; this is what 1/6 was about; this is what the Trump presidency was about; this is what the pandemic was about; this is what the Ukraine war and the Biden presidency is about.

 

 

G-Men and American Brutality

 

G-Men and American Brutality

Peter Schultz

 

            I have been reading a book, G-Men: J. Edgar Hoover and the American Century by Barbara Gage, a Yale historian. It is chocked full of detail, overwhelming and boring detail at  times, but is quite good nonetheless and quite comprehensive historically. Gage makes one mistake, however, in that she is committed, as most are these days, to psychologizing Hoover and his politics, tracing his actions to his childhood and his personality. So, she writes of “Hooverism” and distinguishes that from “McCarthyism,” for example, pointing out that while being anti-Communist, Hoover, unlike McCarthy, “disciplined” his anti-Communism by bureaucratizing it. The problem here is that Hoover’s politics, like McCarthy’s, reflected fundamental American values and, so, their politics should be described as “Americanisms.” That is, instead of psychologizing Hoover, Gage should have politicized him, thereby seeing in him and his politics the character of what might be called “the American political order.”

 

            If she had done so, she might have realized that one word that may be used to describe the American political order is brutal. That is, it turns out that the American political order and, therefore, its elites rely on and even honor brutality or the overwhelming use of power, social, economic, political, and military power in order to maintain what is claimed to be “a republic,” or a “democracy.” While Hoover liked to describe himself as rational, as a professional and not a partisan bureaucrat, he was never very far away from engaging in brutality. He did so during the Palmer raids in the early 20^th century; he did so when he refused to confront the lynchings in the South after World War II; and he especially did so when he confronted Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 60s when he tried to drive King to commit suicide after invading King’s privacy and revealing his private sexual affairs – and he did reveal those affairs to persons in the Congress, not one of whom blew the whistle on Hoover. Hoover wasn’t the only one capable of brutality, obviously.

 

            So, the American Century Gage writes about may be described as a brutal century, because that is the character of American politics and the elites that possess and use that political power. As it was at its outset, relying on and embracing slavery and the dispossession of the indigenous, so was the American political order during what is called “the American Century.” It’s rather interesting then, to say the least, that this century is looked upon, commented upon as being a century of “progress.” Of course, the century could be both, brutal and progressive, and we fail to see the brutality because we don’t fully understand that progress requires brutality to succeed.

 

            But failing to see the brutality as endemic to the American political order, interwoven into fundamental American values, is nothing to sneeze at. I have a feeling that many Americans actually do sense this brutality but turn away or try to turn away from that recognition, in this way and that. Gage’s wonderfully complete history of Hoover is one way of accomplishing this, of disguising the fact that brutality lies at the very core of “Americanism,” thereby transforming it magically into “Hooverism” or “McCarthyism.” Another way of accomplishing this is to turn away from those who see and talk about this brutality, to refuse to engage with them, exiling them as it were, thereby silencing them and, perhaps, doing to them what Hoover was trying to do to MLK, Jr., viz., drive them to distraction or worse. As the denouement of King’s life illustrates, when measures such as these prove insufficient, then there are other measures that may be taken in order to silence those who call out the brutality and its practitioners, which of course King was doing in the year preceding his assassination.

 

Was Hoover guilty of King’s murder? Of course not, at least not in any legal or bureaucratic sense. Bureaucrats are all about procedures and so cannot be easily linked to outcomes, something Hoover understood quite well. In that way, their brutalities are disguised, even made to disappear. But although “disappeared,” the brutalities are real and the subsequent brutalizations, of both the bureaucrats and the non-bureaucrats, are also real. Welcome to “the American Century.”

A Few Unrelated Thoughts

 

A Few Unrelated Thoughts

Peter Schultz

 

I am reading this book, G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century, by Beverly Gage, who teaches history at Yale University. Two things: (1) The book reads like Gage is trying to liberate herself from American myths but just can’t “get there.” Hoover’s racism and anti-Communism, e.g., aren’t “American” but “Hooverian.” (2) Gage psychologizes Hoover based on his upbringing by a dysfunctional father, failing to see that Hoover’s politics stem from fundamental American political values. By psychologizing Hoover, Gage maintains her belief in the fundamental goodness of America and its political values.

 

What if racism isn’t the problem? What if hate is the problem? That is, the hate was there first and it then attached itself to race. If so, we don’t need “Critical Race Theory” so much as we “Critical Hate Theory.” Question: if hate is the basic phenomenon of American life, where did it come from? Possibility: it accompanies the alienation that is part and parcel of the philosophy underlying the Enlightenment. We have become “strangers in the universe,” we have no real home there, which angers us and leads to hate of those who remind us of our own alienness.

 

“The owl of Minerva flies at dusk.” “Dusk” has often been interpreted to refer to the demise of social or political orders. Why is wisdom, “the owl of Minerva,” likely to appear then? Because that’s when it becomes clear that all political orders are built on illusions. Per example: the current controversy over Prince Harry’s revelations about the “royal family,” which he called “a death cult.” That the Windsors aren’t “royal,” are perfectly ordinary in their dysfunctions is now perfectly clear and the monarchy is exposed as a grand illusion or a series of grand illusions.

Harry and Sally And An Earlier Generation

 

Harry and Sally And An Earlier Generation

Peter Schultz

 

.”When Harry Met Sally”, they met love and didn’t know what to do. An earlier generation knew what to do, and did it, “for better or worse.” 

 

12 years and 3 months later, Harry and Sally knew what to do, “for better or worse.” 

 

Question: why didn’t Harry and Sally know what to do? The answer involves “Casablanca,” the White House, or America’s politics (and the U. of Chicago). We are erotically as we are politically. If we think and act as if the political world is a battlefield, then we’ll think and act like the erotic world is a battlefield (a world where women fake orgasms with unavailable men who equate passion with having great sex. Some, ala’ Helen and Joe, try to fake love, unsuccessfully, because love, unlike great sex, can’t be faked). 

 

(Think of Still Life with Woodpecker, where a bomber, Woodpecker, finds love and embraces it and “the still life,” a peaceful life. Think of Pyle and his “erotic project” in The Quiet American, which reflects his political project for Vietnam. Think of Good Morning Vietnam, where Adrian K’s erotic project cannot succeed, just as America’s political project cannot succeed.) 

 

Fletcher Prouty and Our Situation, Part Two

 

Fletcher Prouty and Our Situation, Part Two

Peter Schultz

 

            Having tried to delineate what might be called “the perfected-war regime” in part one of this offering, it is worthwhile to ask: What is required domestically in this regime of “perfected” or “limited” war, in this regime that seeks “full spectrum dominance” throughout the world?

 

            Most importantly, this regime requires that dissent be delegitimized, “pathologized” as C J Hopkins puts it. “Full spectrum dominance” applies at home as well as abroad, meaning that a consensus is required that overpowers dissent, whether the dissent be “liberal” or “conservative,” or “nationalistic” or “socialistic.” Why is this? Because dissent threatens to reveal how savagery, widespread death and destruction, define this regime. As an alternative to nuclear war, that savagery, if exposed, would undermine the regime’s legitimacy. Perfected war is best seen as “surgical,” “clean,” “technologically sophisticated,” and capable of great precision. It should be seen as almost bloodless, where enemies and threats are made to disappear either through renditions or via assassinations.

 

            But of course, there will be dissent, so the best kind of dissent is that which reasserts the need for full-throated, good “old-time” war making, that which seeks victories by way of the annihilation of enemies. Such dissent is tolerable, even beneficial, insofar as it hides the savagery of the perfected-war regime. In fact, such dissent can make the perfected-war regime look weak, vacillating, anti-American, and even cowardly. And those dissenters who assert the savagery of the new regime may be easily dismissed as “conspiracy theorists” or as anti-American. In one way or another, these dissenters are characterized as irrational and deserving of being “pathologized.” (Check out the James Webb story.) And those who recommend the savagery of the good, old-time variety, e.g., Michael Scheuer, are in fact bolstering the bona fides of that which they claim to oppose. “Making America Great Again” thus serves to fortify those policies which are, allegedly, undermining America’s greatness.

 

            Moreover, to achieve such a consensus, propaganda, what is now called “public diplomacy,” is requisite and, hence, perfectly legitimate. Propaganda becomes one of the supports for the perfected-war regime. And it is indispensable.

 

            Given the need for propaganda, “democracy” in any genuine sense isn’t possible in the perfected-war regime. Arguments, conflicts will arise over the legitimacy of the outcomes of particular elections, which may be and most often are fanciful. But that elections are “rigged,” controlled to assure the victories of the partisans of the perfected-war regime is impossible to deny insofar as any such dissenters are marginalized, ala’ Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich. And disenfranchisement is practiced in different ways to lessen the threat of a “popular rebellion” arising via the ballot box. Contra Malcolm X, this disenfranchisement which makes ballots disappear, as it were, ensures that ballots won’t be alternatives to bullets.

 

            So, the perfected-war regime has far-reaching consequences, both at home and abroad, as all regimes do. It would be interesting to take note of what happened or happens to those politicians who have managed to get elected but then, for a variety of reasons, take on this regime. Whether he did or he didn’t say it, the fact that JFK was said to have promised to break up the CIA into “a thousand pieces,” made him seem like an enemy of the perfected-war regime, as did his opposition to sending US ground forces into Vietnam, to say nothing of his plans to pull out of Vietnam after he was re-elected in 1964. And Richard Nixon, by seeking détente with the USSR and by going to Communist China, sought to defuse what were considered major threats to the US, thereby undermining the arguments on behalf of maintaining the military-industrial complex for the sake of defending the nation’s national security. Those officials who seek to redefine or restructure threats to national security as “non-threats” are working at cross purposes with the perfected-war regime, which needs such threats to justify its policies, to justify its embrace of full spectrum dominance or American hegemony.

Fletcher Prouty and Our Situation

 

Fletcher Prouty and Our Situation

Peter Schultz

 

            In his book on JFK, the CIA, and Vietnam, Fletcher Prouty wrote: “By September 2, 1945, this power elite had learned of its monstrous oversight….Unwittingly, they had encouraged their scientists and engineers to design and produce nuclear weapons….War, their most essential and valuable tool….had been taken from them.” [p.42] Oh, if only it had been so. But it wasn’t.

 

            In fact, instead of a kind of disarmament, there was more, not less, armament and more, not less, war. Why? Because the power elites developed new ways of making war, with new organizations, new weapons, and new tactics – which were hailed as “surgical” or “clean.” With these developments, wars multiplied as they became “limited,” or they, like the US Constitution which promised “a more perfect union,” promised “more perfect” wars, e.g., Rumsfeld’s RMA, Revolution in Military Affairs or counterinsurgency wars.

 

            Needing to justify this embrace of war-making multiplied, a switch was made from making war for victories to providing for the defense of the nation. So, the Department of War was replaced by the Department of Defense. Why? Because, among other reasons, defense requires, justifies confronting threats, whereas war justifies confronting enemies, that is, distinct, identifiable people. Moreover, defense privileges bureaucrats, civilians like McNamara’s Whiz Kids, whereas war privileges generals, admirals, and soldiers. The Whiz Kids want to demonstrate their “wizardry” and they don’t know war like warriors do. It’s abstract to them, even virtual or unreal, as in “signature killings” by which those killed are not even known or actually seen. Moreover, defense is perpetual as its requirements never end, while wars begin and end. Defense budgets keep growing. And while “exit strategies” are needed in wars, there’s no need for or even the possibility of exit strategies for defense. There is “No Way Out” of defending the nation. “Peace dividends” never appear. Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex” is permanent and perpetual.

 

            And, lastly, this defense is undertaken in the name of “national security,” not in the name of protecting the United States itself, that is, the country as a physical place. Many are the threats to national security that don’t and can’t threaten the “homeland” itself, e.g., communism in Vietnam, or the USSR in Afghanistan, or even Castro and communism in Cuba. But these threats must be “dealt with,” plans approved for dealing with them, and covert operations – terrorist attacks, like downing Cuban airliners, included – undertaken, all for the sake of national security.

 

            And, so, the goal of US policies has shifted. The goal is no longer the physical safety, the invincibility of the homeland – America First – but has become what is now called “full spectrum dominance,” because that’s what national security requires: Total dominance. Ipso facto, the US embraces a kind of totalitarianism, a world-wide hegemony including even outer space. And, by the by, the nukes make these policies seem prudent, reasonable, or rational. So, those who oppose this totalitarianism are made to seem imprudent, unreasonable, even irrational. And this while “Dr. Strangelove,” or “loving the bomb,” is seen as rational, along with a “failsafe” system, game theory, and MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction.  

 

            We have arrived in la la land, a land where no one needs or sees the point of philosophy, of contemplation, or even salvation. The students of philosophers, even some philosophers themselves, become political partisans, ala’ Heidegger, Strauss and their students; that is, they become spokesmen for political agendas. These agendas consume everything, politics consumes everything, even or especially philosophy and revelation. The unending debate  between Athens and Jerusalem disappears, replaced by conflicts between, say, Zionists and fascists, between communists and capitalists, or between GloboCap and something else, something that’s vague and hard to define, espoused by “Trump-like” figures who sound like clowns – because they are.

 

            After all, we are in la la land, “No Country for Old Men,” where those with principles but no sense of humor are the most powerful. A place where the thumotic – the spirited often posing as bureaucrats – trump the erotic – those lost in a wasteland that never ends, seeking “soulmates” when most don’t have souls worth speaking about any longer. It’s a most interesting situation.