Letters to the Editor
-
@ AI
Odd character sets in the pasted text, perhaps? Most shouldn't cause preview to choke, although they might look a little weird. These days, with partial unicode support in many browsers, this isn't as easy to diagnose as it used to be, but it's a thought.
-
Violent Authoritarianism
@William Timberman:
"The subject line of my comment was intended -- somewhat cryptically, I admit -- as a rhetorical question: if Mr. Silber, or you for that matter, think we who work for political parties, no matter what our reasons, are part of the problem rather than part of the solution, who should replace us? Revolutionaries? If so, why would that be an improvement?"
I would argue that the problem is not necessarily political parties, per se, (although I'm open-minded on the question) but the violently authoritarian world-view and cultural narcissism shared in varying degrees by the vast majority of supporters of both major political parties in the US.
And I see quite clearly, as do Silber and many others, the catastrophically self-destructive potential of the psychological impulses informing this violently authoritarian
and narcissistic world-view.
But before the problem can begin to be effectively dealt with, it has to be recognized for what it is.
There are one hell of a lot of "good Americans" in the sense that there were one hell of a lot of "good Germans" in Germany in the 1930's. It behooves us to recall that they also had a constitution that was abrogated when they succumbed to their own "exceptionalist" tendencies grounded in their violently authoritarian world-view.
The current candidacies of Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul, and the support they both enjoy, offer one glimmer of hope that the American body politic can draw back from the abyss of the fate of the Germans, as does the rejection altogether by an ever-growing number of Americans of the Tweedledee-Tweedledum electoral charade.
The salient difference between the 1930's and now, of course, is that we now possess the technology to destroy ourselves to the last person, and we will unless sufficient numbers of us world-wide can overcome in our own hearts and minds our violently authoritarian impulses that inform and animate our current political institutions.
As citizens of the nation that Martin Luther King, Jr. described accurately as the greatest threat to peace on the planet earth, it behooves us to first focus our efforts to overcome that way of being-in-the-world here at home, as Americans and as individuals.
KR
-
Associative Individualist
Re: Tuesday, January 8, 2008 06:47 PM
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/01/07/media_coverage/permalink/5514e224b1d163bd0a710e3383930646.html
That was eloquent. And inarguable.
-
@ AI
True enough, but what you describe has evolved out of only one tendency in the American body politic, one which was present from the beginning, but hasn't always been in the ascendancy. Think Jefferson, or Emerson; hell, think FDR or MLK Jr.
Yes, nuclear weapons could end the dispute prematurely, but then so could global warming, or peak oil. The isms are no longer the intellectual threat that they were in the Thirties; the forces which drove them are still a political threat, but the victory of those forces is nothing like inevitable. Look around you here.
-
Associative Individualist
I would argue that the problem is . . . the violently authoritarian world-view and cultural narcissism shared in varying degrees by the vast majority of supporters of both major political parties in the US.
I submit to you that this world-view of authoritarianism and narcissism is carefully cultivated by the military-industrial complex (MIC), which has undue influence over both parties, and derives its revenues from illegal wars, profiteering, bloated military budgets, and enormous sums of 'accidentally misplaced' Pentagon funding - enormous meaning trillions. These guys have profit motives at scales where political responsibility is obsoleted and any human becomes disposable.
But if you try to rein in the MIC you get smeared as 'weak on defense'. How do you get past that, when the MIC itself has indirect ownership control over the spin on last week's injustices and atrocities, and has had years to brainwash the average American?
That's the conundrum you have to solve.
Once you've solved that one, you'll then be able to solve the impending Financial and Ecological problems, which can't be solved until you've fixed the Political problem which enables them.
Having solved the Political problem, solving the Financial and Ecological problems will be even less easy. The US is so deeply in debt it has to reach up to touch bottom, and will keep falling until it finds the bottom and gets weird ugly; the global population has crowded out all exploitable regions of the earth, overgrown its planetary petri dish, and is due for a die-off. You're probably going to have to write off a few hundred million lives right off the bat.
The good news is that if you can solve even a quarter of any one of these problems, you can get Nobel Peace. Even if you do have global catastrophes on your hands.
-
adolescent, coddled narcissists
Do you really consider our political reporters to be "adolescent, coddled narcissists", Mr. Greenwald? ...Seriously?!? Because if you do, I'd like to read a column detailing your reasons for thinking so. I figure the more dirt available, the deeper we can bury them.
-
The MIC as the Diseased Heart of American Fascism
walter_map
"I submit to you that this world-view of authoritarianism and narcissism is carefully cultivated by the military-industrial complex (MIC), which has undue influence over both parties, and derives its revenues from illegal wars, profiteering, bloated military budgets, and enormous sums of 'accidentally misplaced' Pentagon funding - enormous meaning trillions."
And jobs in producing what Buckminster Fuller called "killingry", throughout the nation.
I'll go so far as to say that the Military-Industrial Complex is the black heart of the American body politic, pumping its poisonous death-blood into every vein and artery of the American polity.
Perhaps Sybil Edmond's allegations regarding the nuclear technology profiteering of highly-placed US officials will
open enough sleepy eyes and shake awake enough torpid brains to see that USA, Inc. has some cripplingly serious heart disease.
And I experience a hope that dispels any flickering fear when I remember and think about the fact that sooner or later evil deeds and their perpetrators will come to light and justice will be done by them in God's good time.