04/21/2002 Archived Entry: "End of the War Bump, The Republican power of will; creation as our rebellion."

As if right on cue, 30 weeks ended in mid-April, the War Bump for Bush began to decline, and whatever coattails he had, are gone. Bush had the chance, the rare opportunity to forge a centrist agenda, one which he campaigned upon, but did not use his opportunity, and now it's gone.

Bush, basically blew his wad of political capital in pushing through nearly $50 Billion in military expenditures, but he didn't get much else of his agenda through Congress. Led by Daschle, the Democrats defeated, from a minority position of power, the corporate stimulus package of excessive tax cuts, and the Dixiecon judicial nomination of Pickering. Ashcroft rammed through the Patriot Act, with it's unconstitutional ramifications, but some of it has sunset clauses, which we can only hope are eventually enacted. Ashcroft attempted to outlaw the twice-supported suicide rights law in Oregon, and was then over-ruled by the courts. Bush abandoned the free-trade mantra, with attempting to turn tariffs into votes, which looks sure to cost him a trade battle with the EU. And most recently, Bush has been rebuffed by Sharon of his word being the final say in everything global, and the Senate denied him even a symbolic victory with ANWAR. What Bush has been good at is raising money for the GOP candidates, and they are pretty much banking on getting back their trifecta, without much of a backup plan, i.e., bipartisanship (what Bush campaigned upon delivering), if the Democrats retake the House.

I want to vote for the Party of Lincoln one day, the one envisioned in the Oak groves of Jackson, Michigan. Today's GOP is not that party of tolerance and equality. The modern Republican platform is a formed by a combination of a religious fundamentalist worldview, a gun & might-is-right mentality, and the corporate capitalist consumption model. They jell, because all three groups are inclined toward imposing hegemonic policies which they cannot achieve via democratic principles.

This GOP trifecta has as it's base, a morality worldview which sanctions whatever-it-takes as means, to achieve their goal. A Party with God that is above the law. They believe that they are right in a higher sense, which justifies questionable actions, in spite of the law, or others persons concerns. The question of legality and humanity plays only a secondary role to their moral clarity. With this as their moral security, the Republican party has morphed into a weird regime-like mentality that desires to convert, militarize, and market the entire world. The zealots with their religion and God, the military with their might and suppression, and the corporations with their products and sales, impose their will upon the world's majority. Post-Sept 11th, under the guise of morality, security, and patriotism, they've taken every opportunity to advance the agenda.

Morality, when it is formal, devours. Camus, The Rebel.

The zealots confront the heathens, the warriors confront the terrorists, and the corporations confront the individuals. The opposites attract, transmute in battle, and blur into one. Each, becoming the other in their confrontation as good against evil. In a battle of worldviews, having power is equated with existence, defeat as death. Together, two sides out to win over the world, or annihilate it while trying.

In revealing irony, Homeland Security is a direct translation of Hitler's social prescription for Germany. Now Bush is no Hitler, and America will not become Germany. And yet, even though their moralities are in seemingly direct opposition, atheism vs fundamentalism, the GOP's moral prophecy of Armageddon, "Peace through superior fire power," culminates in a world death which even the annihilist Hitler would admire.

Hitler, in any case, invented the perpetual motion of conquest, without which he would have been nothing at all. But the perpetual enemy is perpetual terror, this time on the level of the State. The State is identified with the "apparatus"; that is to say, with the sum total of mechanisms of conquest and repression. Conquest directed toward the interior of the country is called repression or propaganda. Directed toward the exterior, it creates the army. All problems are thus militarized and posed in terms of power and efficiency.

And so now, we see this as it is in the middle stages of becoming, with incursions of liberty, such as The Patriot Act, becoming law. It can very rather depressing, if you wallow in it enough. I know plenty who have turned away, ignoring, rather than confronting this debacle. I think you have to choose a level of confrontation that strengthens your individuality, limiting the level of propaganda that you intake. Having mental space that provides opportunity for authenticity. More, from Camus:

Revolution, in order to be creative, cannot do without either a moral or metaphysical rule to balance the insanity of history. Undoubtedly, it has nothing but scorn for the formal and mystifying morality to be found in bourgeois society. But its folly has been to extend this scorn to every moral demand. At the very source of its inspiration and its most profound transports is to be found a rule that is not formal but that nevertheless can serve as a guide. rebellion, in fact, says--and will say more and more explicitly-- that revolution must try to act, not in order to come into existence at some future date in the eyes of a world reduced to acquiescence, but in terms of the obscure existence that is already made manifest in the act of insurrection. This rule is neither formal nor subject to history, it is what can be best described by examining it in its pure state--in artistic creation. Before doing so, let us only note that to the "I rebel, therefore we exist" and the "We are alone" of metaphysical rebellion, rebellion at grips with history adds that instead of killing and dying in order to produce the being that we are not, we have to live and let live in order to create what we are.

There is hope of rebellion, but there has to first be the will to create and live the alternative.

Replies: 1 Comment

A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This -- although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense -- is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: WAR IS PEACE.

"1984," George Orwell

Posted by myDD @ 04/21/2002 09:30 PM PST