Political Views,

Or

Pointing the Finger and Remaining Blind

Shortly after WWII, Karl Jaspers gave a lecture at Yale and subsequently published a book entitled A Question of German Guilt. In today's world, exchanging "German" for "American" would elicit no differences in sentiment despite 50 years and a different country. Dr. Jaspers had it right: the guilt for the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich resided with the people of Germany, just as, today, guilt for the rise of Bush and The Republicans resides with the American people. Yes. The governments are at fault. But the problem is how the government got to be the big fault-maker: by hook and by crook, yes. But, more to the point, by placid, cynical, comfortable, do-nothing, think-nothing citizens at large.

Sound like a great generalization? In a manner of speaking, it is; however, Stanley Milgram showed, in the 1960's, how all it takes to create a concensus, a massive generalization for a country's behavior is 70% of the populace (Cf. Obedience to Authority). They will do what they are told, even unto causing pain to others. In Germany and America this has resulted in death and destruction.

Americans, like Hobbits, are addicted to comfort and not doing anything. Americans prefer tending their gardens, watching their TVs, leering and drooling over sex and otherwise amusing themselves to death (Cf. Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death). Even more, Americans don't wish to do anything to disturb the status quo, to rock the proverbial boat. Americans like conforming, believing this is harmonious and socially right while at the same time crying out "Individualism!" It's not good to draw notice to yourself, making yourself stick out from the crowd--as if they were raised on Eastern wisdom: the nail that sticks out gets pounded down. Complaining is okay as long as you don't do anything about it, for to do something   upsets others and requires energy; it draws attention and gets the powers that be angry. How fearful! Better to stuff it and do what you're told.

So, the couch potatoes of America follow the crowd, believing what they're told and doing what they're bid and so they have the government they've got: a rabid, racist, terrorist nation state that doesn't give a damn about even its own people, only caring for the perpetuation of itself (known as autopoiesis).

Having no opinion of their own, Americans do what they are told after they've been told what to think via rhetorical razzle dazzle and slogans: Americans respond well to authority, though they would like to believe they do not, that they are individuals exercising their individual rights. And, yes, they do have the right to do nothing; at the same time, as they do nothing they do not have the right to silence or otherwise piss on those who do decide to do something, what is known as exercising their (these doers) inalienable right: protesting, openly expessing their dissatisfaction. But, of course, these people who are complaining and doing something about it are a blight as they are implicating the couch potatoes, in guilt; for it is these people, these comfortable Hobbits, who are most to blame for the kind of America that exists today: a racist, xenophobic, mindless horde that prefers to be hoodwinked and led around. There is no innocence in, "I didn't do anything!"

The everyday 70% are not alone to blame. Obedience to authority goes deeper. It affects the Left--a rather ambiguous term, though less so than the pejorative label of Liberal--who are so easily manipulated. That is, they are doing what they are told, albeit in a round-about way. These dissenters are so easily roused in the name of freedom, any and all freedoms, that they are set running from one manufactured crisis to another helter skelter, like ants in a bottle that is turned first upside down then right side up over and over again: there is a loss of direction, a loss of purpose. Orientation dissolves and the ants crawl to the bottom in an attempt to escape.

And so these Leftists are neutralized. Neutralized to the real issues because these crises are dogs wagging, they are smoke screens; and so the Left becomes useless. They miss the point. Rushing from one crisis to other--as they ae supposed to--the Left loses sight of the big picture, of which the crises--all too real--are merely symptoms of a deeper disease. When winter comes, these frantic, noisesome squirrels will have forgotten where they buried their nuts. They are the laughing stock of the power brokers and the rest of cessile, couch potato America, to whom they are a thorn in the side.

The reason for this has a good deal to do with Americans' love of authority, of being told what to do. Americans Left and Right believe firmly in the Civics lessons of High School that taught that all good things come from above. The government does the good things for the people; it has the people's care to heart. And so government, authority, should be obeyed. It is good for you. This is what is believed despite the fact that the good of society, the good things that were once in this society, came first from the people demanding and then the government doing. As it's supposed to be. That the government is good is believed in the face of the horror, the crassness and racism and rapaciousness of Katrina. People accept the rhetoric (do/think what they are told) no matter how contrary to behavior. Even the Left clamors for more "accountability," the knee-jerk word that amounts to nothing with the government-- but it sounds good, so let's shout about it.

Americans want, more than anything, for the government to do for them, which means they don't have to do for themselves. Better to be dependent. In the name of individualism, in the face of the government's lack of interest in their well-being, the people still want the government to be interested in their well-being and do for them. This is worse than blindness; this is neurotic behavior. It is induced neurotic behavior, behavior that is self-destructive yet forever engaged in because it was taught as being rewarding even though it's not any more. But it's good for government.

This attitude--which includes Environmentalists, Communists, Socialists, Marxists and those demanding Democracy--is typified by the political stance taken by The Nation, that anti-institutional institutionalized upper middle class priveleged elitist rag that maintains, with John Nichols' carefully modulated fury the most noteworthy, that government should be made over to the good guys. That is, putting good guys in so that government can once again (though it never has) do for the people, hand down beneficence. Obedience to authority: take care of us, tell us what to do, what is good for us, show us the way--you choose the phrase.

Any government that hands down all to the people is a dictatorship, no matter what name you put to it, no matter how much perfume you lavish onto the turd pile. Tell us what to do! Tell us what is good! Halleluia we've been saved! Saved? In the name of Nationalism? In the name of Dictatorship? In the name of what Russia and China and North Korea and Pakistan and Indonesia and Cuba have?

I ask: is anybody thinking?

Get up off your asses and do something. Get rid of the air in your heads and start thinking. The government is rotten. The system stinks: get rid of the system. Putting good guys into the cesspool will not clean it up; indeed, the cesspool will pollute them. Hell--it already has, for the good guys are part of the system, part of the problem. It's all based on authority, whether it's good guys or bad guys telling you what to do.

People writing, people writing blogs, are good but they are taking the easy way out. They are not activists, though they like to see themselves as such. They are spinning their wheels and thereby helping the government, the system to perpetuate itself and its crooked, elitist, destructive behavior. Why? The Internet only reaches a few people, even fewer read alternative or leftist writings. The cowed, authority- driven couch potatoes who have computers have learned that such writing, such thinking is faulty and ridiculous. So they (the Left) are, in effect, writing for themselves and are satisfied: they are speaking out and therefore believe they are doing something. They're not coming close to reaching the people who need to hear their message. Most of those people are poor and cannot afford to buy computers. Some don't even have telephones.

Paul Goodman, 40 years ago, elucidated this kind of "doing" in his Compulsory Education and the Community of Scholars. We are taught, early on, that engaging in futile exercises is doing something. We've been told it is for years and years by authorities (education). It is not. And so it seems we've learned our lesson (via schooling) well and are as blameworthy as the couch potatoes. People blasting away from an acceptable distance, from an acceptable difference are not rebellious or questioning of the status quo--or, at least no more than the foot-stomping three year old who, when sent to her room until she can learn to behave properly, says horrible things about her parents--until she's let out again. That these people are writing and not paying for it is a sign of how brave and successful they are: even a watched freedom of the press is freedom of the press. A real activist has something to lose: reputation, job, liberty. Under extreme situations, life. Truly doing something is not altogether comfortable or safe.

Patrick Henry did far more than write broadsides and pamphlets. So, too, Thoreau and Whitman, Geronimo, Dashiell Hammett, Martin Luther King, Jr. Todays rebels fear to step out of line: writing about things is safe and easy and acceptable. Toeing the line. Buckling under to authority, for authority sets the bounds for what's allowed, even when "unstated." None of these people are subversives. These people want the power and the influence that they haven't got now, no matter what name they put to their ranting. Mao, many a modern Communist's hero, was a normal school student with a limited, closed future who snatched at the opportunity of gaining what his "betters" had. He sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives to get it--and then abused it, as his "betters" had before him. As long as you've got betters, you're a slave and you make other slaves to be better than to you feel you're not a slave. So, what's changed? Washington Irving, in Rip Van Winkle, noted that the difference was only in the color of the coat.

Where is the new thinking? The new paradigm? The same old same old is perpetuation of the problem. Subversion is needed because the system in its entirity needs replacing. Well, at least these writers aren't sleeping through it all like the great 70% but they'll take the notice and comfort that comes at the end and tell their grandchildren, as Robert Frost:

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Even the expats, as Karl Jaspers was--and so carefully pointed out--are not without blame though they have more freedom and a much more broad view (from outside). Expats are beyond the grip of the manacled fist of State. Expats are beyond the walls of the castle and so they see more, have a better perspective than those who remain at home, within the castle walls. Empirical experience is far and away more enlightening than the second hand knowledge of reading about things. We didn't learn that pot on the stove was hot just because mama said it was.

Expats are guilty because they have basically run away, saved their own skin, refused to put up with the shit. All that can be said in their favor is that they are less obedient to authority and, therefore, less manipulable than those who remain within the faulty Nation state. Fawlty Towers is crumbling down, tumbling down. Ee-ai, ee-ai oh.

In the end, although the government, the system is rotten to the core and all we're seeing, all we're experiencing, each and every crisis--all is symptomatic of a deeper disease. We Americans are the cause of that disease. We did nothing, even when we saw the wrongs and perversions early on. We need to change. We change, the system changes. The system changes and perhaps we will see, as Katherine Anne Porter did, that there is no such thing as a good government and we will quit seeking a government and instead become our own governors. But we have a long way to go before we begin to take responsibility for our actions (and inaction), before we throw off the yoke of slavery, the manacle of obedience to authority. Obedience to authority is fear. Fear drives the guilty. The guilty are acquiescent to abuse because it gets rid of those others who point the finger at their incompetence: they're only doing what they're told (is okay).

But, in the end, we're all guilty. We're all American citizens who let this hell happen instead of doing something about it before it became a problem.

======================

Jimsecor is a freelance writer who has travelled extensively overseas, especially Japan and China. He has published in all genre and produced several plays over the years and has taught theatre, writing and literature.

Recommend this article...

Did you enjoy this article? Please bookmark it onto:

Be first to comment this article

Write Comment

Please keep the topic of messages relevant to the subject of the article. Personal verbal attacks will be deleted. Please don't use comments to plug your web site. Such material will be removed. Just ensure to *Refresh* your browser for a new security code to be displayed prior to clicking on the 'Send' button. Keep in mind that the above process only applies if you simply entered the wrong security code.
Name:
E-mail
Homepage
Title:
BBCode:
Comment:
Code:*
	I wish to be contacted by email regarding additional comments

Powered by AkoComment Tweaked Special Edition v.1.4.4