The Mindlessness of a Manifesto
July
12, 2014 "ICH"
-
This sentence
from Kagan’s Neo-Conservative Manifesto reads like
so much flotsam in a cesspool of scattered feces. It
emanates from a mindless, bloated root chakra that
has abandoned all except instinctive self-survival.
It is deficient in understanding and wisdom, a mind
surviving in an isolated tribe, a being guided only
by fear of everlasting victimhood. How does one read
this flotsam?
We don’t
need to read it, we are witnessing its last throes
today in Gaza as the consequences of
neo-conservative “superior power” unfurls before the
world once again and the desperation of
neo-conservative idiocy splashes over the screen for
the world to witness.
What is it
that we witness? Israel garbed in the armor of the
American flag, fielding America’s weapons of mass
destruction, protected by the investment of the
American taxpayer in the “iron dome,” and marching
with the impunity that comes from America’s veto of
censure, reveals to the world two nations that
willingly impose their “superior power” on a
defenseless people displaying in the enormity of
their invasion unleashed evil without compassion,
without mercy, without sense, a mindless act of
uncivil barbarity no different than that displayed
by the Mongols or Visigoths of ancient days.
Kagan’s is
a simple sentence, “A world order is imposed by
superior power.” It does not advance by justice, it
mocks justice; it does not consider morality, it
laughs at morality; it does not reflect rights of
people anywhere, just its rights; it is the rule of
those who can and who do not care to care for any
but self; it is ruled by a pathological fear
engendered by victimhood because they know their own
power rests on the destruction of others and hence
on the fear that they will infect their victims with
the same loathsome mentality that guides them. What
is a “liberal” world order if its actions abandon
all human capacity to seek justice in favor of
“power,” to rule without inclusiveness of those
ruled, to slaughter without civilized due process?
What is it but barbarianism. Why consider “superior
virtue” when it only obstructs conquest? Besides,
whose “superior virtue” are we to follow? Why get
embroiled in arguments; power alone is the
determiner of virtue. It’s all so easy, so sensible
at least to the few who impose their will.
Today’s
invasion of Gaza is but a repetition of Israel’s
savagery under Sharon and Olmert; I’ve written about
this before. How horrible that we must revisit such
horror! All I can do is to reassert what was true in
Rafah, Jenin, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine again
and again and again since 1947 and ’48.
“Evil knows no
morality; it savors no regard for the weak or
oppressed; it admits no rights but those it imposes;
it condemns those who dissent without regard for
evidence or truth; it denies all wrongdoing since
its actions alone determine right; it feels no
shame; it accepts no blame; it pleads innocence,
seeks to cloak itself in the victim’s stripes, and
curses those who condemn its crimes.
Franz Kafka presented a vicious portrayal of such a
country in “The Penal Colony.”
Considered as a metaphor for Israel today,
ironically since Kafka wrote from the vantage point
of being a Jew, the “Officer” and executioner
delighted in describing the virtues of his state’s
torture machine as it inscribed on the victim’s skin
his crime, and in the duration of its agonizing
process the victim learned what he was guilty of,
though, until that moment of recognition as the
steel spikes carved his sentence on his back, he had
never been charged with a crime. Kafka knew the
consequences of being a Jew in a world without
compassion (even before the state of Israel declared
its “independence.” )
Thus it is in today’s Israel; the
state, in the figure of its Prime Ministers,
determines what is right, what is a crime, and who
is guilty; there is no need for due rights whether
of an individual or a state like (Lebanon) or the
people of Palestine. Israel alone determines what
terrorism is, it alone defies international law and
the UN resolutions with impunity, it alone chooses
the words that will describe its actions determining
for the world community how it is to understand
Israel’s actions. And so it is in the Penal Colony.
All live in fear of the executioner, both the
colonists and the occupied. So long as that fear can
be maintained, so long can the Colony survive under
its brutal regime. But time catches up with the
Penal Colony. An outsider is brought in to witness
how it operates and how it executes its “civilized”
approach to management of the colony. The witness
listens to the detailed explanation of the Officer
as he justifies the policies and procedures of the
Penal Colony, but he marks the Medieval and barbaric
reality of the colony and its treatment of its
citizens and those it condemns to execution. (Today
we are the outsider who witnesses the executioner at
work).
Kafka notes
with remarkable insight and wisdom that the state
will not change until it accepts its own guilt,
until it comprehends that its behavior rests on
principles that are corrosive to human kind, blind
to the reality of human equality, and
self-destructive because built on superstition and
fear. Once that recognition comes, the Officer and
executioner mounts the torture machine and straps
himself in its bed. And as the machine begins to
run, the witness watches the spikes inscribe the
sentence on his back, “Be Just.”
Evil exists
in the delusion that grows from ignorance and
alienation, necessary ingredients in a state of “demonocracy.”
Peace is possible when openness proliferates and
people remove the barriers that isolate and separate
them from each other” (Cook, “Desire, Fulfillment
and Regret, 2006.” Decade of Deceit).
Will we
ever learn from the past? Will Kagan ever grasp that
he speaks only to his own, the exclusive fraternity
that can for a time impose what it will as it
destroys families across the mid-east in the
Neo-Conservative design to redraw the ground on
which they walk and live? Will they ever understand
the intensity of grief that comes from such a
mindset devoid of human sympathy for those who
huddle behind walls as the missiles fall? Perhaps
Conrad’s unembellished prose tells it simply without
gloss, just straight forward truth:
Today it is the Neo-Cons as conquerors, mostly
Ashkenazi Jews from the ancient Khazar empire whose
nobility converted to Judaism in the 800s, who find
solace in survival at the expense of others,
a motivation nourished in the root chakra that
thrives on instinct embedded in possessiveness,
devoid of the chakras that seek communion with the
whole being and accommodation of all in a shared
universe. It is but a matter of time before their
strength diminishes and the strength of others
conquerors them.
Where is the
proffered peace promised 65 years ago when the state
of Israel declared its independence? Where is the
touted democracy, the only true democracy in the
mid-east that resorts to “superior power” to control
the people of Palestine whose land they have stolen?
Where is the obligation to abide by international
law signed before the world in its acceptance of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the
conventions of the Unite Nations?
What then does
the word “liberal” mean?
William A.
Cook, Ph.D., is a professor of English at the
University of La Verne.
July
12, 2014 "ICH"
-
This sentence
from Kagan’s Neo-Conservative Manifesto reads like
so much flotsam in a cesspool of scattered feces. It
emanates from a mindless, bloated root chakra that
has abandoned all except instinctive self-survival.
It is deficient in understanding and wisdom, a mind
surviving in an isolated tribe, a being guided only
by fear of everlasting victimhood. How does one read
this flotsam?
We don’t
need to read it, we are witnessing its last throes
today in Gaza as the consequences of
neo-conservative “superior power” unfurls before the
world once again and the desperation of
neo-conservative idiocy splashes over the screen for
the world to witness.
What is it
that we witness? Israel garbed in the armor of the
American flag, fielding America’s weapons of mass
destruction, protected by the investment of the
American taxpayer in the “iron dome,” and marching
with the impunity that comes from America’s veto of
censure, reveals to the world two nations that
willingly impose their “superior power” on a
defenseless people displaying in the enormity of
their invasion unleashed evil without compassion,
without mercy, without sense, a mindless act of
uncivil barbarity no different than that displayed
by the Mongols or Visigoths of ancient days.
Kagan’s is
a simple sentence, “A world order is imposed by
superior power.” It does not advance by justice, it
mocks justice; it does not consider morality, it
laughs at morality; it does not reflect rights of
people anywhere, just its rights; it is the rule of
those who can and who do not care to care for any
but self; it is ruled by a pathological fear
engendered by victimhood because they know their own
power rests on the destruction of others and hence
on the fear that they will infect their victims with
the same loathsome mentality that guides them. What
is a “liberal” world order if its actions abandon
all human capacity to seek justice in favor of
“power,” to rule without inclusiveness of those
ruled, to slaughter without civilized due process?
What is it but barbarianism. Why consider “superior
virtue” when it only obstructs conquest? Besides,
whose “superior virtue” are we to follow? Why get
embroiled in arguments; power alone is the
determiner of virtue. It’s all so easy, so sensible
at least to the few who impose their will.
Today’s
invasion of Gaza is but a repetition of Israel’s
savagery under Sharon and Olmert; I’ve written about
this before. How horrible that we must revisit such
horror! All I can do is to reassert what was true in
Rafah, Jenin, Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine again
and again and again since 1947 and ’48.
“Evil knows no
morality; it savors no regard for the weak or
oppressed; it admits no rights but those it imposes;
it condemns those who dissent without regard for
evidence or truth; it denies all wrongdoing since
its actions alone determine right; it feels no
shame; it accepts no blame; it pleads innocence,
seeks to cloak itself in the victim’s stripes, and
curses those who condemn its crimes.
Franz Kafka presented a vicious portrayal of such a
country in “The Penal Colony.”
Considered as a metaphor for Israel today,
ironically since Kafka wrote from the vantage point
of being a Jew, the “Officer” and executioner
delighted in describing the virtues of his state’s
torture machine as it inscribed on the victim’s skin
his crime, and in the duration of its agonizing
process the victim learned what he was guilty of,
though, until that moment of recognition as the
steel spikes carved his sentence on his back, he had
never been charged with a crime. Kafka knew the
consequences of being a Jew in a world without
compassion (even before the state of Israel declared
its “independence.” )
Thus it is in today’s Israel; the
state, in the figure of its Prime Ministers,
determines what is right, what is a crime, and who
is guilty; there is no need for due rights whether
of an individual or a state like (Lebanon) or the
people of Palestine. Israel alone determines what
terrorism is, it alone defies international law and
the UN resolutions with impunity, it alone chooses
the words that will describe its actions determining
for the world community how it is to understand
Israel’s actions. And so it is in the Penal Colony.
All live in fear of the executioner, both the
colonists and the occupied. So long as that fear can
be maintained, so long can the Colony survive under
its brutal regime. But time catches up with the
Penal Colony. An outsider is brought in to witness
how it operates and how it executes its “civilized”
approach to management of the colony. The witness
listens to the detailed explanation of the Officer
as he justifies the policies and procedures of the
Penal Colony, but he marks the Medieval and barbaric
reality of the colony and its treatment of its
citizens and those it condemns to execution. (Today
we are the outsider who witnesses the executioner at
work).
Kafka notes
with remarkable insight and wisdom that the state
will not change until it accepts its own guilt,
until it comprehends that its behavior rests on
principles that are corrosive to human kind, blind
to the reality of human equality, and
self-destructive because built on superstition and
fear. Once that recognition comes, the Officer and
executioner mounts the torture machine and straps
himself in its bed. And as the machine begins to
run, the witness watches the spikes inscribe the
sentence on his back, “Be Just.”
Evil exists
in the delusion that grows from ignorance and
alienation, necessary ingredients in a state of “demonocracy.”
Peace is possible when openness proliferates and
people remove the barriers that isolate and separate
them from each other” (Cook, “Desire, Fulfillment
and Regret, 2006.” Decade of Deceit).
Will we
ever learn from the past? Will Kagan ever grasp that
he speaks only to his own, the exclusive fraternity
that can for a time impose what it will as it
destroys families across the mid-east in the
Neo-Conservative design to redraw the ground on
which they walk and live? Will they ever understand
the intensity of grief that comes from such a
mindset devoid of human sympathy for those who
huddle behind walls as the missiles fall? Perhaps
Conrad’s unembellished prose tells it simply without
gloss, just straight forward truth:
“They were
conquerors, and for that you want only brute
force nothing to boast of, when you have it,
since your strength is just an accident arising
from the weakness of others. They grabbed what
they could get for the sake of what was to be
got. It was just robbery with violence,
aggravated murder on a great scale, and men
going at it blind as it is very proper for those
who tackle the darkness. The conquest of the
earth, which mostly means taking it away from
those who have a different complexion or
slightly flatter noses than ourselves (or hide
in a self declared grouping ‘we in the West’),
is not a pretty thing when you look at it too
much…”
Today it is the Neo-Cons as conquerors, mostly
Ashkenazi Jews from the ancient Khazar empire whose
nobility converted to Judaism in the 800s, who find
solace in survival at the expense of others,
a motivation nourished in the root chakra that
thrives on instinct embedded in possessiveness,
devoid of the chakras that seek communion with the
whole being and accommodation of all in a shared
universe. It is but a matter of time before their
strength diminishes and the strength of others
conquerors them.
Where is the
proffered peace promised 65 years ago when the state
of Israel declared its independence? Where is the
touted democracy, the only true democracy in the
mid-east that resorts to “superior power” to control
the people of Palestine whose land they have stolen?
Where is the obligation to abide by international
law signed before the world in its acceptance of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the
conventions of the Unite Nations?
What then does
the word “liberal” mean?
William A.
Cook, Ph.D., is a professor of English at the
University of La Verne.
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