World, Beware!: American Triumphalism in an Age of Terror 1897071027, 9781897071021

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WORLD, BEWARE! Theodore Roszak is one of the nation’s boldest and most eloquent social critics. This book is an alarm bell intended to

awaken present

us to the long-term dangers of our

We must

course.

Roszak’s message

if

we

all

listen

to

are to survive as a

decent society at one with the world.

— Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

Big

issues,

small packages, cutting-edge

thinkers ...P

R O V O C AT IONS.

WORLD. BEWARE!'

IN AN AGE OF TERROR

Theodore Roszak

Between the Lines Toronto

World, Beware!

©

2006 by Theodore Roszak

First

published in Canada in 2006 by

Between the Lines 720 Bathurst Street,

Suite

#404

Toronto, Ontario

M5S 2R4 1-800-718-7201

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may

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All rights reserved.

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the written permission of

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1E5.

Every reasonable effort has been made to identify copyright holders. Between the Lines would be pleased to have any errors or omissions

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its

attention.

Canada Cataloguing

Library and Archives

in Publication

Roszak, Theodore, 1933American triumphalism World, beware! Theodore Roszak. :

in

an age of

terror

/

Includes index.

ISBN 1-897071-02-7 2. World politics United States - Foreign economic relations. 4. United States 3. Imperialism. 2 1 st century - Forecasting. Foreign relations - 200 1-. 5. United States - Politics and government 1.

- 2001-.

I.

Title.

E895.R68 2006 Interior

327.73’oo9’o5ii

C2005-904203-6

and cover design by Jennifer Tiberio

Page preparation by Steve Izma Printed in

Canada

Between the Lines gratefully acknowledges assistance for its publishing activities from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program and through the Ontario Book Initiative, and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program.

Contents

Introduction: All the President’s Lies

i

1

The Unexpected Empire

13

2

America’s Worldwide Attack Matrix

31

3

The Corporados

58

4

The Triumphalists

106

5

The Fundamentalists

155

6

The Tiberal

7

The Devolution of American Democracy

204

8

America’s Global Constituency

245

Failure of

Index

About

Nerve

178

289 the

Author

297

“All free nations are vainglorious, but national pride

is

not displayed in the same manner. The Americans in their intercourse with strangers appear impatient of the smallcensure and insatiable of praise. The most slender eulogium is acceptable to them; the most exalted seldom

est

contents them; they unceasingly harass you to extort praise, and if you resist their entreaties, they fall to praising themselves.

It

would seem

as

if,

doubting their

own

constantly exhibited before

merit, they wished to have

it

their eyes. Their vanity

not only greedy, but restless

and

jealous;

it

will

is

grant nothing, whilst

it

demands the same

ready to beg and to quarrel at time. ... It is impossible to conceive a more troublesome or more garrulous patriotism; it wearies even those who everything, but

is

are disposed to respect

it.”

Alexis de Tocqueville,

Democracy

in

America 1835 ,

INTRODUCTION All the President’s Lies

T

his

soon

book has an unusual history. after the Iraq

war began,

it

Written

was part

of an

astonishing barrage of angry criticism aimed at

Bush administration. Not since the right-wing Liberty League of the 1930s set out to vilify Franklin D. Roosevelt as the devil incarnate has any president faced the

such virulent denunciation. But unlike other liberal tiques intended to discredit the president, this

not find a U.S. publisher. Instead,

abroad as,

And

even

or,

in

now

edition via a

under such

titles

La Menace Americaine (The American Germany, Alarmstufe Rot (Red Alert).

in France,

Menace)

book did

was published

it

in several foreign translations

cri-

it

appears in

its

first

English-language

Canadian publisher.

To some degree in the English

this circuitous route to publication

language

is

appropriate. World, Beware!

warning to an audience beyond the borders of the United States. It is meant to reach America’s global directs

its

constituency, the billions of people

who

are being treated

by our unilateralist policy-makers as junior partners or

mere spectators. That

is

why

it

contains a certain

amount

of rather basic information about American politics and history. Its thesis,

however,

readers as anybody

else.

is

And

intended as I

suspect

it

much is

for U.S.

that thesis,

which has been warmly welcomed abroad, that has kept it from finding publication in the United States.

WORLD, BEWARE! major books and films that castigated George W. Bush emphasized sensational revelations, many of them brought to light by former high-level policy-makers. Other works, mainly

Through

2004

the

election season, the

by journalists, targeted the president personally for his lack of candour, competence, and intellect. With the exception of a few left-liberal voices and periodicals, those the

out to savage the president zeroed in on that carried us into the Iraq war. Even the most

who

lies

set

inflammatory of these efforts, Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/1 1, sought primarily to portray the presi-

away

dent as a dolt, stripping

the deceptions

meant

to

hide his blundering.

Muckraking of

this

kind

is

shatters the air of infallibility in

and

to cloak themselves,

undeniably valuable.

which men of power

forces

it

all

we can

like

of us to face the

unpleasant facts of failure and dishonesty. the truth-telling

It

We

need

get, especially in dealing

all

with an

administration as secretive as the Bush White House.

Whistle-blowing by insiders seems the only way we have in the United States to achieve transparency in government. But there get

beyond

is

a

problem with

nitty-gritty,

any larger patterns

criticism that does not

piecemeal attacks.

We

never see

in the events of the day. Rather, the

comes down to a pack of lies that make him seem no better (but no worse) than many another politician. After all, in politics, lying comes with

case against the president

the territory.

But in George W. Bush’s case,

we have

a different

random, off-the-wall improvisations like the lies that Lyndon Johnson told about the war he was losing in Vietnam or the lies that Bill Clinton told about his sexual escapades in the White House. In kind of lying. His

Bush’s case, the

lies

lies

are not

are deliberate

2

and co-ordinated, part

All the President’s Lies

of an ideological pattern that

out to transform both

is

domestic and foreign policy. They precede policy and prepare the

way

for

it.

Their main purpose

obscure while something

much

that neo-conservatives

lies

tell

to distract or

is

bigger rolls forward.

The

are not hasty efforts to

avoid embarrassment by covering up stupid or criminal

misdeeds in the past. Rather, they look to the future as part of a well-orchestrated campaign that seeks to shape the history of the twenty-first century.

administration

embedded

are

in

a

The

lies

long

of the Bush

sequence

of

remarkably lucid statements by leading neo-conservatives about what they want to do with power once they have In this sense, there

about

their designs.

political

it.

nothing hidden or conspiratorial

is

They

are the clear objectives of a

movement - triumphalism

,

as

I

call

it

in these

pages - that has been preparing to take over the federal

government

for a quarter-century. Indeed, these lies

have a

certain puzzling transparency that suggests they have not

been formulated to hide something that the

ashamed of. They seem that at some point there country will have been poses behind those

way

lies.

are

liars

to be told in the full expectation will be

no need

to

lie

because the

won over to the values and purWhat else could explain the casual

which the Bush administration dropped its claim that the war was fought to eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction? “Alright,” said the war-makers, “if that won’t do as a reason, how about this? The world is better off

in

without Saddam Hussein.

We

are fighting to

Iraqi people happy.

No? Not good enough

many dead? Okay,

let’s

try:

can

satellite,

the

to justify so

The war was launched

spread freedom. That has a nice idealistic ring to

And when,

make

to

it.”

eventually, Iraq turns out to be an Ameri-

so what?

By that time the U.S. public

have accepted the idea that

it

3

is

will

our nation’s destiny to

WORLD, BEWARE! societies in

remake other

much

pretty

like that idea already.

be seen as

lies will

our image. Most Americans

justified,

At that point

all

the

even noble, for they will have

served a higher purpose. In short, these are the sort of lies that Dostoevsky’s

Grand Inquisitor told: lies that are good for you, whether you know it or not; lies that are told with an oily condescension as

if

they were acts of noblesse oblige.

This book

is

not by an

nor does

insider,

seek to

it

expose closely guarded state secrets. It is not based on who said what to whom; it does not ask what the president knew and when he knew it. It wastes no time ridiculing George to

W. Bush, an easy

do something that

my

purpose

as important for intelligent

is

zenship as muckraking.

target. Rather,

And

that

is

is

citi-

to trace the ideologi-

cal pattern that explains the overall thrust of policy. This is

why

believe World,

I

side the United States.

and

intellectuals, are

Beware! had to come to Americans, even

light out-

many academics

uncomfortable with ideology. They

has no place in our pragmatic society. They do not take it seriously even when conservatives boast that

think

it

their strength lies precisely in their ideological purity.

once tion

we -

take the neo-conservatives at their

as those

“end to

whom

evalua-

destiny has anointed to bring an

evil” (the title of

form the world into

own

But

one of

their

books) and to trans-

a free-market utopia

- we

arrive at

alarming conclusions about the state of our society. That

what few want to take is

and

U.S. publishers or political

on. Indeed, focusing

foibles of the president

-

commentators

on the personal

for example,

failures

snooping into

1970s or showing how he took seven minutes to respond to the September 11 attack - might almost be a comforting digression, a

his record of military service in the

form of denial that

lets

us avoid facing up to the fact that

4

All the P resident’s Lies

American politics is an ugly spectacle. It is a picture that combines a saddening amount of ignorance, intolerance, and authoritarianism at the grassroots with even more shocking ruthlessness on the commanding the big picture of

heights.

Thanks tuals and to

to the resourcefulness of triumphalist intelleca corporate largesse that has financed

dozens

of conservative think-tanks and electoral campaigns, the

United States has, over the into the

last quarter-century,

hands of right-wing elements

who

drifted

have attacked

with the same venomous hostility once reserved

liberals

Kremlin during the Cold War, as

for the

the difference.

And

that

may

if

they cannot see

actually be true. In the neo-

conservative ideological perspective, the weather bureau

and Environmental Protection Agency are the equivalent of the Gestapo. They are “big government.” Thus, in the

name

of

“freedom,”

the

neo-conservative

goal

is

to

uproot every institution that seeks to protect the public

from corporate exploitation, every program that strives to secure greater social equality, every law that seeks to share the national wealth more equitably. As if interest

they do not understand that the historical role of liberal-

ism has been to save capitalism from

its

own

worst

vices,

the neo-conservatives have cast their liberal foes as the

deadly enemies of freedom. Unable to imagine that corporate wealth

is

capable of abusing

take the protection of government

its

power, they would

away from

the public

most and place it in the hands of those who already dominate our money-corrupted political system.

that needs

it

The key to the triumphalists’ project is war: war that demands patriotic acquiescence from the press and the public, that wastes enough money to bankrupt the public sector, that gives

major corporations and private military

contractors access to limitless profits, that

5

makes

all

WORLD, BEWARE! home

opposition at

war

or abroad look soft, effete, and disthat never ends, that never ceases to

loyal.

Above

make

the public afraid, that never fails to call for

all,

leadership, that guarantees the

macho

worldwide superpower from here to eternity.

supremacy of the United States Nothing could fulfil all these criteria more perfectly than the war on terror. It is what George Orwell once characterized as the state of permanent war. It is no great secret that a war of this kind has been

on the neo-conservative agenda since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The neocons have been scrambling to find empire.

evil to replace the evil

another great

We now

Middle East (starting with Iraq) was being brainstormed from the inconclusive end of the first Gulf War and was sched-

know

that a massive military intervention in the

2002 congressional elections. Could the Bush administration have managed to win the country over to that war without the September 11, uled to be rolled out for the

2001, terrorist attack? Certainly, implicating Saddam Hussein in that attack made the task all the easier. September 11 was what some neo-conservatives were seeking as the equivalent of Pearl Harbor.

It

offered the

opportunity of declaring war on the Muslim world from North Africa to the Philippines and on an al-Qaeda net-

work

that hides in every

How different the have been

if

nook and cranny

of the planet.

history of the past few years might

the fbi and cia and the National Security

Advisor had not laid back

in

2001 and waited

for

some-

thing to happen.

An finds

understanding of

itself

in

a

state

how and why

of permanent

the United States

war under

a

tri-

umphalist leadership cannot be achieved by focusing on the journalistic moment. It requires historical back-

ground and sociological analysis - and indeed more of 6

All the President's Lies

both than

we

are

offer in this short book.

I

now

that

building in the Middle East grows out of the

conservative

backlash that began during the Reagan

One needs

presidency.

how

The imperium

that broad context to understand

conservative shibboleths like “free market,” “family

and “ownership

values,” “spreading democracy,”

came

ety”

words

to be code

soci-

for a determined effort to

place the world at large under corporate hegemony. social criticism

cannot think on that large

it

will

and audacity of the triumphalist

to grasp the scope

fail

a scale,

If

vision. Liberals will continue fighting a rearguard action

on

them more votes than they gain -

issues that lose

civil

same-sex marriage, racial equality, environmental preservation - as more and more abortion

liberties,

rights,

of the public succumbs to pious posturing and patriotic

schwarmerei.

My of

my

political life has

been spent on the dissenting edge

always

society, but

in the

hope that

this rich

powerful nation would one day be a force for

and

and of us thought the end of the Vietnam justice

compassion.

Many

War would

usher in that bright prospect. But liberals

Vietnam poorly, and now that better day seems further off than ever - and not least of all because so many members of the American public have

played the end

game

proven willing to

who lence

invoke

and

to

bow

God and

religiosity.

to the

country.

It is

Our

society

Watching Gulf War

aftermath unfold on television infuriating.

moral authority of leaders

is

awash in vioand its bloody

is

II

as heartbreaking as

also an instructive insight into the

state of the union.

it is

moral

Hardly a day goes by but we learn that

more young Americans have been Iraqi cities. Like drops of

casualties stain the

killed in the streets of

blood from an open wound, the

news of the

day.

One

today, three or four yesterday, twenty or

7

two dead

or

more

a

few days

WORLD, BEWARE! down

ago when the insurgents brought

doubt somewhere

in the depths of the

No

a helicopter.

Pentagon, generals

and strategists are comforting themselves that we are well below the casualty levels of Vietnam, and so they believe that they are still at a safe distance from public protest. Yet each death - whether American or Iraqi - is a total loss for the

man

take, but harder

families of the

or

woman

still

newly

killed.

The deaths

are hard to

are the inevitable interviews with the fallen: tearful

mothers, fathers, wives

holding flag-wrapped photos, insisting that their loved

ones died doing what they wanted to do. “He wanted to go. She wanted to be there. He was proud to be defending his country.

She joined up to fight for freedom.”

With each passing day such displays of grief become more surrealistic. At times I wonder if these people are perhaps actors reading from a script. Can they really believe what they are saying? Are they unaware that their pathetic sentiments are exactly what the cynical decisionmakers in Washington - the people who gave us this war - want to hear? After learning how we were deceived about the reasons for invading Iraq, can these mothers, fathers, wives still naively believe that this war has any relationship whatever to national security, to democracy, to

any defensible cause? Having read again and again

about the war profits filling the pockets of the administration’s favoured corporations, are they never troubled that these deaths are making others rich? I think back to the election of 2000.

candidate

who

Would any

of

them have voted

for a

and husbands and wives, and spend hunof dollars to do a really nice thing for

said he intended to sacrifice their sons

daughters, their

dreds of billions

the people of Iraq?

Perhaps the worst of these

reports

it is

the trivializing

way

in

which

reach us on television, wedged between 8

All the President’s Lies

inane commercials for cellphones and erectile dysfunction medications, narrated by news readers eager to get on to

more work

cheerful material, bannered by artfully designed netgraphics: “Conflict Iraq,” “Crisis Iraq,” “America at

War.” There

invariably film showing explosions, dead

is

bodies, soldiers dodging through the debris of battle, kick-

ing if

down

doors, patrolling the war-torn streets of Iraq as

was

it

And

their country.

finally

a quick shot of a

square-jawed colonel or steely-eyed general assuring view-

making steady

ers that we’re

progress, that the insurgency

72 percent under control in 55 percent of the country. Three minutes, five minutes of superficial coverage from our far-off conquered province - then on to weather, is

and the latest hit Who’s Your Father?

sports, .

.

.

And

all

and

dreds

show. Extreme Makeover

reality .

.

.

Trading Spouses.

the while Americans are dying by the hunIraqis

are

dying

by the thousands.

Who

The cunning few at the top or the millions down below who

deserves the greater blame?

who

exploit our trust,

seem so eager

to believe all the president’s lies?

doubt that historians looking back from a few generations in the future will see Gulf War II as one of the most daring power grabs in modern history. I

have

The war American

little

in

Iraq

is

the centrepiece of a revolution in

politics that will

shape the

every corner of the world. twenty-first century.

small

number

swiftly

It is

One can almost

will

ripple through the

the brain child of a remarkably

of ideologues

and boldly than

It

lives of billions in

who

have moved

their critics could

far

more

have predicted.

congratulate them on the

skill

with

which they have employed a revivified military-industrial complex to impose their vision on a trusting society. Far from pursuing their goal by a coup, the triumphalists can claim to have achieved a democratic, even a populist

9

WORLD, BEWARE! sanction for their policies. In that sense, they have once again demonstrated one of the bleak truths of modern times: that in the absence of searching

and

debate, democracies can be as corrupted by

any

intelligent

power

as can

dictator.

am

drawing a formidable picture of triumphalist power. Some will find that view In these pages

exaggerated.

I

don’t.

I

I

deliberately

believe the triumphalists

may

very

well be able to redesign the world to their specifications.

They

new

are a

breed of ultra-conservative, fuelled by an

irrational hostility for liberalism

and the welfare

state.

They have assembled a robust political coalition; they have found ways of winning elections; they have shown a willingness to make ruthless use of the power they gam But there are a few soft spots in their armour, weaknesses that may offer an opportunity to deconstruct their political coalition. I review those

from those

elections.

weaknesses

in the last section of this

book; each of them

represents an opportunity for liberals to clear the air and achieve an honest debate about the uses of U.S.

power. In addressing myself at least partially to a non- Amer-

ican audience, tive

from

my

purpose

is

to offer a critical perspec-

inside the United States that

may

help others

understand the ominous direction of U.S. policy. Above all, I want to clarify the intimate connection that exists

between

my

country’s domestic and foreign affairs - a

connection that not even tered.

many Americans have

The American imperium stems from an

regis-

ideological

transformation that has captured the political culture of

my

country. That culture

is

now

diverging

more and

from the mainstream of the industrial world. America is fast becoming an aberration among

more

radically

modern

nations.

To some

degree, this

io

is

the result of the

All the President's Lies

avaricious style that has overtaken our business

But

nity.

it

goes beyond that. The avarice of the well-to-

do has been given might almost say a of

tion

fanatics.

commu-

a powerful

ideological thrust, one

by a new genera-

religious impetus,

and fundamentalist These are people drunk on the strong wine of triumphalist

intellectuals

extremism; they are out for blood. Yet nothing gives the

international

me more hope

perspective

that

in this

debate than

book seeks

this

to

develop. American liberals are not alone in the struggle

humane

They have That is why this book was cast in to the non-American public. If we for a

politics.

a global constituency.

the

form of an appeal

are not to be the sort

of imperial brute that other nations have become,

need to see ourselves as others see

us.

we

Within that per-

spective, readers

might be able to find the

critical objec-

how

divergent our society has

become under

tivity to see its

triumphalist leadership. That appeal also corresponds

to the

way

in the

world; for eventually nations everywhere will find

in

which U.S.

politics implicates every nation

themselves under pressure to adapt to the triumphalist

agenda. As part of a global constituency, an informed

and thoughtful international community needs to join forces with embattled American liberals to resist an ideological assault that has at its disposal the most powerful military establishment - and one of the most militarized publics - in the world. At

this

point

how

it

may

be

still

difficult for

most people

and brutal the triumphalist takeover is. It is as if one team in a football game suddenly began using guns and knives. The shocked response might well be, “Can this really be happening?” Yes, it can - and it is happening with astonishing speed. Hence this to

grasp

audacious

warning to the world.

When '

“democracy”

ii

is

presented as

WORLD, BEWARE! the private property of one society that dentially anointed, beware\

When

deems

itself

provi-

politicians of very

little

brain and less conscience purport to be the agents of God,

beware When the word “freedom” becomes a mindless drumbeat meant to rally millions to the cross and the flag, !

beware\

12

ONE The Unexpected Empire

“You will

more with a kind word and kind word alone.”

will get

with a

a

gun than you

A1 Capone, noted American gangster, 1926

“You will

more with a kind word and kind word alone.”

will get

with a

a

gun than you

Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, 2003

WORLD, BEWARE! AM TEMPTED TO OPEN line.

I

“A

spectre

is

THIS CHAPTER with a famous

haunting Europe.” That was the

dark prophecy with which Karl Marx began his Communist Manifesto in 1848. Then, a troubled Europe, '

still

in the turbulent

dawn

of industrialization, seemed to

be balancing on the brink of social revolution. Today, with social revolution placed on indefinite hold, the spec-

looms over mankind is the exact opposite. It is the prospect that Europe - and most of the rest of the world — may soon fall under the control of a nation that

tre that

is

becoming increasingly conservative not only

domestic policies but also in the influence

it

in

exerts

its

upon

the global economy. I

take no joy in issuing this warning, nor in holding

country to account for the moral, economic, and physical harm it is doing itself and other people in the

my

view international terrorism as the most serious threat that the modern world has ever faced. It is an attack upon all the best that mod-

name

of defending high ideals.

ernism has to

offer, as

well as

I

much

of the worst.

The

danger of that attack is all the greater because it has found a way to use our strength against us. Think back to September 11, 2001. Consider the structure of the calamity that struck that day.

A couple

of

big planes crashed into a big building in the heart of a big its

city.

Can we even imagine

the

modern world

lacking

big planes, big buildings, big cities? Ponder the

com-

mercial necessities and cultural imperatives that underlie the rapid transport, the colossal architecture, the urban lifestyle that

was targeted

tragedy of that event

is

for attack that day.

fully parallelled

The human

by the symbolism

embodied. And then think of how the act was carried out. No advanced technology, no weapons of mass destruction. All that was needed were nineteen men

it

14

The Unexpected Empire dispatched from the barren wilderness of Afghanistan

and armed with box-cutters hidden in their shoes. It was as if the King Kong that once assailed the Empire State Building, that fanciful epitome of the primitive rising up against civilized mankind, had returned in the flesh, this time armed with a God-intoxicated ideology. Nineteen men, but behind them, driving them to the deed, was a

was

outmanoeuvre all our means of self-defence, as well as our complacent certainty that the industrial world has left enemies like this fanatical hatred that

able to

in its dust.

How

can any modern nation defend

from an

itself

endless succession of similar tragedies unless

it

finds a

moral leadership that deals with the root causes of that hatred and regains an idealism that can match the fanaticism?

My ship

thesis

is

simple but controversial. The leader-

we need cannot come from

a nation

whose

politics

more and more based on a social Darwinist ethic that places wealth and power above compassion and justice, a nation whose political spectrum stops at dead centre is

with a fainthearted liberalism that seems uncertain that with health care or a pension,

it

can provide

a

nation in which the conservative party that has domi-

its

citizens

nated the political scene for twenty years eagerly anticipates

auctioning

off

country’s

the

parks, water, and power, even

its

schools,

armed

highest private bidder, a nation that

now

national

forces to the

counts

its

mil-

and billionaires in the hundreds, but where record numbers of the working poor can now be found sleeping in their cars in Wal-Mart parking lots. In short, a nation that is rapidly travelling backward towards the lionaires

darkest days of free-market anarchy.

The

vices

and

failures

I

list

15

here are blemishes in our

WORLD, BEWARE! But they offer a significant insight into our country’s state of soul as the one remaining superpower. That is what makes the United States’ social condomestic

affairs.

dition relevant to our role in the international

For there are those

nity.

in positions of

commu-

policy-making

power who would have the world become what we are. They control a major political party, and through it they hold a

commanding

the Pentagon, the

position in the Congress, the courts,

Washington bureaucracy.

election in the years to

come

No

single

will erase that power.

With each passing year, right-wing elements in the United States grow more determined to impress their vision of a corporate-dominated, market economy on the world

at large. If they

should succeed in achieving that

goal, then the United States

may

very well be able to use

overwhelming military force to prevent any other superpower from coming into existence to challenge its its

authority.

I

would not be surprised

already pre-emptive plans under

to learn that there are

way

to block China, the

one industrial nation that may one day be able to match America’s military and economic might, from achieving superpower status. How long would the domination of the United States then last? Conceivably for generations.

We may

be seeing the birth of a

new

imperial order

widespread and more enduring than any empire past.

The

stakes are that high.

oughly discredited

in the

more

in the

Imperialism, so thor-

aftermath of World

War

II,

is

being unexpectedly reborn in the policies of a nation that

has long claimed that

world

its

historic role

is

to

make

the

safe for democracy.

do not believe this drive towards global hegemony arises from the American public. Americans have waged wars to resist imperial aggressors. As a child growing up during World War II, I learned that only wicked dictators I

The Unexpected Empire seek to conquer and rule other people. That the

first

is

why, when

President Bush announced in the early 1990s

that the goal of the United States

“new world

'order,”

I

was

the creation of a

was shocked - not only by

the

phrase but also by the arrogant and implacable tone in

which

who

it

was

uttered.

believed they

Had we

had the

make people everywhere

not once fought enemies

do exactly that, to and think and believe like

right to

act

themselves?

Ask ordinary American

citizens

if

they have any

and they will surely reject the idea. But ordinary American citizens have less and less awareness of the things that are being done in their name in far-off places, and they have less and less interest in dictating to other nations,

control over great decisions about the national purpose.

Overwhelmed by

and complexity of everyday life, scrambling to keep their jobs and provide for their children, too many Americans seem to have fallen asleep in front of their television sets. They fill the quiet desperation of their daily lives with trivia and distraction. They the pace

pay more attention to the

latest celebrity

scandal than to

Too many voting (and non-voting) Americans are falling far short of what the citizens of a superpower are called upon to become. paramount

issues of

war and

Meanwhile, there are others corporate community

in

peace.

our government and our

who grow more

obsessed each day

with the imperial destiny of the United States. They

openly declare that over those

who

it

is

America’s right to exert power

lack the will, the resources, and the real-

ism to qualify as world leaders. This

is

distinctly new.

We

did not hear such boastful claims made, even when, dur-

World War II and the Cold War, the United States had the power to dominate and subjugate. In this book I call those who promote these imperial ing

17

8

WORLD, BEWARE! Although they think of themselves as arch-conservatives, they might be seen as hyper-radicals, in the sense that they are out to foment “the

designs

triumphalists.”

more change more

rapidly than are

many

revolutionaries.

These are men of daring, dynamism, and high ambition, filled with a zeal to rebuild the world. They see themselves as the saviours of a confused and weak-willed humanity. Like

fanatics,

all

they have a crystal-clear,

rock-solid view of their objective.

They

are out to create

market economy dominated by a small number of multinational, mainly U.S. -controlled, corporations. They may not be the first policy-makers to harbour such a global

goals;

some form

of

corporate

U.S.

supremacy was

Cold War. But they are the first to have unquestioned military supremacy at their command. One would have to reach back to the days of the ancient river-valley empires to find examples of a people achieving the unchallenged dominance that the implicit in the assumptions of the

United States It

chills

now enjoys in my blood to

(Donald Rumsfeld)

wealth and arms. hear a secretary of defense

justify U.S. foreign policy

by quoting

A1 Capone, the most villainous gangster in American history: “You will get more with a kind word and a gun

than you will with a kind word alone.” Such tough-guy

moral urgency you will find in these pages. I believe the chauvinistic bravado one hears in right-wing circles these days is more than talk; the lan-

talk accounts for the

guage reveals an uninhibited Machiavellian willingness to use raw power in order to have one’s way with both allies

and enemies.

I

am

convinced that the triumphalists

what they seek than many political By chance and by design, history has hands, and they have been quick to cap-

are closer to gaining

analysts realize.

played into their italize

on

their advantage.

1

The Unexpected Empire One

point

I

want

to establish at the outset.

There are

and they include a good many of my disgruntled fellow liberals, whose operative political principle has become “blame America first” - for anything and every-

those,

wrong

thing that goes

world, including the attacks

in the

am

among them. To blame

of September 11, 2001.

I

the victim - even

the victim

when

not

a rich

is

and powerful

nation - betrays a twisted morality, especially

who

are

suffer

innocent civilians.

always the case where terrorism

make

should also

clear that, as

is

Muslim

my

By

I

that

those

almost

is

concerned. Perhaps

much

historical contributions of Islam,

social system.

And

when

as

I

appreciate the

I

am no

admirer of

its

admittedly ethnocentric standards,

society represents too

much

that the Western

Enlightenment called into question three centuries ago autocracy, cruel

theocracy,

and patriarchy.

and unusual punishment,

tanism,

its

its

penchant for

Its

misogynistic

use of vengeful self-immolation

puri-

make my blood

run cold. Every chapter of the Koran begins by naming Allah as “all-merciful,” but

I

have seen

little

of that mercy

on the part of His fundamentalist worshippers. fanatics

cans” or eager to

who

proclaim that

it is

their goal to “kill

Ameri-

Jews” frighten me. The people they are so might be members of my family. They might

“kill kill

include me. Whatever their grievance,

such

Suicidal

right.

There

is

no more

I

grant them no

justice in the violence they

do

than in the civilian deaths caused by U.S. troops in Iraq. take terrorism to be the

symptom

I

of a fatal disease within

the international community, a disease that can annihilate all

civilized

norms.

We

must

certainly understand the rea-

sons that underlie the anger of terrorists, but whatever the reasons, they cannot justify massacring the innocent.

ble.

With that much said, let me be as emphatic as possiThe imperial course on which the United States has 19

WORLD, BEWARE! immoral as it is misconceived. This is not a popular or prominent position to advocate not even among Democratic voters who reject everything else the Bush administration and the triumphalists stand for. There are a great many Americans who voted against George W. Bush who turned out in the 2004 election to

embarked

is

as

support his war on

terror.

The

grieving parents

who

gathered outside the president’s ranch in Texas during the

summer

of

2005

to

demand an end

clear sign of serious discontent. But polls have

war,

is

it

to the

if

war

are a

public opinion

some reservations about not because increasing numbers reject

begun to

reflect

the the

design behind the war, but because that design has not

been achieved as quickly as promised. The United States is a very frightened nation. Even in a time of economic recession,

it

is

willing to spend billions of dollars to

build a “National Security State” (as

it

has

come

to be

Washington) to defend itself from terrorism, a threat that we have been told will never go away. I believe this course has been charted by narrow and

called in

unworthy as

interests

whose

vision of the future

is

as bleak

anything anticipated in the most pessimistic anti-

utopian literature.

There were thousands of us who spoke out against the invasion of Iraq, but there were millions more who cheered our troops into battle. Despite the war,

my

I

cannot help but

feel

my

opposition to

conscience-stricken to see

country become a bully on the international stage,

dedicated to imposing the will of a small, covetous minority

of corporate profiteers and militarists on the rest of the

world.

I

and coercion will until it undermines all

believe that their arrogance

continue and grow even more fierce international

structures,

all

shared responsibility, every

form of international law and economic co-operation. At

20

The Unexpected Empire which point history interests,

become captive

will

to one nation’s

one nation’s values - or rather to those

who

determine those interests and values.

Those responsible national

character

the

for

increasingly

United

of the

States

divergent

pursue their

course with invincible conviction. They relish seeing the

United States stand as a people apart. To stand apart so they believe, the privilege of those superior. America’s history

is

who

are morally

haunted by such

exceptionalism. Since the time

when white

is,

a sense of

settlers

came

to these shores seeking to escape the corruption of the

“old world,” deep religious wellsprings have underlain the United States’ grandiose self-image. In the

1980s Ronald Reagan

won

the hearts of the

American people by playing expertly on that theme as only a professional actor could. Again and again, with a throb in his voice and a tear in his eye, our movie-star president referred to the United States as “a city on a hill,” the world’s “last, best hope.” The triumphalists are the ideological heirs of the Reagan presidency. They believe in Reagan’s bombastic rhetoric and want to transform it into a worldwide policy. Over the past two decades American politics has slipped more and more under the control of people a providential nation

who

see the United States as

and themselves

as a messianic van-

guard assigned the task of leading the way into the

That task may not stop with military intervention and economic exploitation; it may include forms of cultural aggression aimed at Christianizing the “heathen” peoples of the Middle East and elsewhere. When George W. Bush first declared war on terrorism in 2001, he future.

announced

it

public opinion the that

may

Out of respect for Muslim word was quickly withdrawn. But

as a “crusade.”

not have been a

slip

21

of the tongue at

all.

There

WORLD, BEWARE! is

war on terrorism become it may have been no mere

willing to see the cross. Similarly,

when on

would be war for the

a sizeable public in the United States that a

fit

of temper

the evangelical superstar Pat Robertson appeared

television to issue a fatwa calling for the assassination

of Venezuelan president

gunning down a

eyes,

Hugo

Chavez. In Robertson’s

legally

elected

leader

socialist

serves God’s agenda.

Claiming the right to lead

is

what

politics

is

all

about. However, America’s triumphalists not only claim the right to lead, but also claim the right to specify a des-

from the goal that people in industrialized nations have long sought. That is why nothing that Washington says about U.S. foreign policy can be taken at face value. One must understand

tination that

is

radically different

the ideological motivation that drives that policy.

2003 the Bush administration carried the day on Gulf War II. It won public approval for a war that it was already committed to fighting. The triumphalists targeted In

Iraq not because

it

was

a serious threat to U.S. security,

wake of January-February 1991, Iraq was a

Gulf War,

but quite the opposite. In the

the

of

depleted nation, a

third-rate

power,

poverty.

was

It

poorly

governed

ripe for conquest.

first

and sinking into

We now know

that the

march into Baghdad George W. Bush took power in

triumphalists were determined to

from the moment that Washington after the disputed election of November 2000.

2005 we had only scant evidence of that pre-existing design. One had to glean rumours and hearsay from the memoirs of Bush administration Until the spring of

insiders like former treasury secretary Paul O’Neill or

Richard Clarke,

who

served as Bush’s counter-terrorist

co-ordinator until his resignation in 2001. For example,

22

The Unexpected Empire in

Ron

O’Neill,

2004 book The Price of Loyalty one-time ceo of Alcoa Aluminum and a man of Susskind’s

impeccable Republican credentials, recalled early meethe was astonished to

invasion of Iraq. Clarke, in his All Enemies

had similar

,

2001

which hear intense discussions about the

ings of the National Security Council in

plans for a pre-emptive

2004

tales to tell.

war on

in

Against

best-seller

He

reported that

Iraq were under discus-

sion well before al-Qaeda’s September 11 attack

World Trade

pm

Center.

He remembered

the blame for that attack

days of the event.

When

on the

being pressured to

on Saddam Hussein within

he protested that a retaliatory

aimed at al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed the idea, cutely informing him that “there aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.” By the summer of 2005 we no longer had to rely on strike

should

be

scraps of insider gossip to trace the ideological origins of

was when memos of British cabinet meetings dating from March 2002 found their way into print. They record frank and worried discussions of America’s determination to go to war months before any sort of legal case had been made against Saddam Hussein. The memos make it clear beyond all doubt that the trithe war. That

umphalists were using selected intelligence and outright lies

to build a case for invading Iraq even before

sible plans

guerrilla

had been developed

war

that

would follow

any sen-

for the occupation

and

the invasion. All the evi-

dence one could wish to find for deception and manipulation

is

there.

Indeed, Bush himself has confirmed the obsession

with Iraq that dominated his closest advisers. In views with Bob

Bush

Woodward

for

inter-

Woodward’s 2002 book

at War, the president told of having to reign in those

23

WORLD, BEWARE! war with Iraq. There was apparently a period of a month or so in late 2001 when Bush may have been the least belligerent figure in the White

who wanted

to rush into

House. This was, experience

after

all,

a

man

of limited international

who had campaigned on

a platform that called

an end to “nation-building.” But there he was,

for

sur-

rounded by a team of triumphalist advisers for whom Iraq was the gateway to the domination of the Middle East and the foundation of the American imperium. The hawks won out in the debate, prevailing upon Bush to cast himself as a

“war president”

in a far larger theatre of

operations.

months following September 11, the administration managed to convince millions of Americans that Iraq was a serious threat to the country’s national security. The media, taking Bush and Tony Blair at their word, carried stories that warned of Saddam Hussein’s vast arsenal of chemical and biological weapons. United Nations inspectors (who were usually portrayed in the news as bumbling, naive foreigners) declared that these claims were unproven and probably false, but Bush administration spokespeople insisted that Iraq was on the brink of having nuclear weapons. The words “weapons of mass destruction” echoed like a hypnotic drumbeat in the public mind for months. Others were persuaded by hints and rumours from the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein had personally ordered the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center and was plotting more assaults with al-Qaeda. Still others approved of the war because of their concern for the survival of Israel, a continuing theme in American politics. And millions more - perhaps the largest number of In the

all

-

and

rallied

behind the administration

in their

confusion

fear with the sort of knee-jerk patriotism that

24

is

The Unexpected Empire inevitable in

Out

any society

time of national emergency.

of this loosely defined public, the Bush adminis-

an overwhelming majority solidly

tration cobbled together in

in a

favour of going to war with Iraq.

hard evidence that the nation was

and the

force of the presidency

It

claimed to have

at risk;

put the

it

full

behind

joint chiefs of staff

and exaggerations and then worked the obsequious media tenaciously through every outlet of news and opinion. At the same time, the a collection of speculations, lies,

administration brushed aside

abroad as misguided or

What we have deception

cratic

William Pulitzer

disloyal.

here of

home and

protest at

all

is

most pernicious and auto-

the

public

U.S.

the

President

since

McKinley and newspaper publishers Joseph and William Randolph Hearst stampeded the

nation into the Spanish-American

War

in

1898.

Like the leaders of every imperial regime in history,

America’s triumphalists seek to their

of

own

make

the world over in

image. They wish to purge the modern world

all collectivist

and welfare-state tendencies,

tendencies were the very

work

as

if

those

of the devil. Indeed, they

any form of economics that deviates from market orthodoxy as a heresy that must be hounded into the

see

ground. Theirs ple

have done

is

a crusade against everything that peo-

in the

modern

an instrument of the public

dom” If

interest.

requires in their worldview. the triumphalists have their way, the

government

will be placed

who occupy

the

economy. They

wholly

commanding

policies

powers of

at the disposal of those

heights of the corporate

see the rich as uniquely the “wealth cre-

ators” of the world. Therefore, all

government into That is what “free-

era to turn

must bend

all

laws,

to their interests.

remainder of the population 25

is

all

The

to live out

institutions, fate of the

its life

as the

WORLD, BEWARE! obedient employees and uncomplaining servants of the

ruggedly individualistic few, silently suffering whatever fluctuations the global marketplace may undergo, keeping or losing their jobs, their homes, their social status as

economy dictates. Ideas like these amount to a sharp reversal of modern history. For more than a century, modern societies have been fitfully crafting a social contract whose purpose is to share the wealth of nations equitably among all

the world’s corporate

those

who

have contributed their labour, their

capital, their service.

been to those

stabilize

who

fall

objectives of that contract have

The

economies, to place a safety net beneath

upon hard

times, to guard the public

health, to provide a decent education for

the natural

skills, their

beauties

all,

to safeguard

and resources of our planet, to

increase the amenities of everyday

life.

The once-revolu-

tionary words that hover over these goals should be as

precious to conservatives as to liberals. Liberte fraternite

- “The right to

life, liberty,

happiness.” Instead, America’s

new

,

egalite ,

and the pursuit of

triumphalist leader-

out to replace that social contract with policies

ship

is

that

would return us

to the dog-eat-dog social

ism of the 1890s. Gone

Darwin-

any meaningful form of egalitarianism, gone any hint of fair shares or social democracy. The triumphalists would impose a new kind of high-industrial feudalism upon us in which we must defer is

to the interests of vast, baronial corporations.

do not mean the United States alone. The project that the triumphalist leaders have assumed reaches beyond the shores of the United States. As ser-

And by

“us”

I

vants of the major U.S. corporations that have built the global economy, they seek to eliminate social ideals.

Through

their influence

tional bodies such as the

all

competing

on key interna-

World Trade Organization, 26

The Unexpected Empire International

Monetary Fund, and World Bank, they

are

determined to replace those alternatives with market orthodoxy. In their view, that things, a

movement

is

the natural order of

of history that transcends the inter-

ests of nations. U.S. access to global

markets means the

eventual elimination of every institution, every restriction created to defend the public interest.

If

the freedom

of the marketplace results in child labour, sweat shops,

and an unrestricted right to pollute and deplete, so be it. That is what the victory of markets means to the American business community and its right-wing political servants: the abolition of wage and labour laws, the subversion of all environmental protection, an end to the regulation of profits, the unimpeded expansion of monopoly control in every area of trade, finance, communications, and manufacturing. It means the privatization and commercialization of everything - until we find ourselves living in a world in which there is no countervailing power to hold against the privileges of corporate property. Intoxicated with a quasi-religious fervour, the

triumphalists are out to create a world order based not

on consultation and dialogue but on

unilateral force

and

hierarchical subjugation. If

the United States

had nothing but its economic achieving the imperium it seeks,

power to draw upon in that would be threatening enough. But with Gulf War II, we have crossed a line. The triumphalists now stand prepared to enlist brute military power in the service of their

expansionist objectives. Their open contempt for the country’s former allies should serve as a warning about

how

far they are willing to

Those who

go to press

their advantage.

believe that America’s military

reserved for minor Third

North Korea, that

it

power

World nations such

will be

as Iraq or

will never be used to intimidate

27

WORLD, BEWARE! Europeans, the Japanese, the Chinese, are granting the triumphalists far too much diplomatic restraint. These are impetuous

mined

to seize

men driven by an ideological fury, deterthe moment that history has given them.

by other countries, the United States threatens to become a rogue nation. Some would say it already has. That tendency In the absence of intelligent restraint

even though administrations in Washington change. Over the course of the next decade, the Republican Party - now the main locus of triumphal-

may remain

in

force

an election or two; the velocity of America’s imperial advance may from time to time slow. The triumphalists are certain to confront roadblocks and ist

influence

- may

lose

unforeseen detours along their path. But the forces that produced Gulf War II will continue to exert pressure on U.S. politics.

The money and

the voting

power they com-

not soon desert them. These factors will remain in play even if the White House changes hands or the Democratic party gains a majority in Congress.

mand

will

The presidency of George W.

Bush

should

be

regarded as a distant early warning sign of powerful forces that are fermenting in the depths of the American

among

corporate community and

strategically

placed

who more and more dominate the media. In Gulf War II we have glimpsed a frightening prospect. Like storm clouds on the horizon, we are seeing opinion-makers

runaway American power. We may soon be living in a world in which decisions taken unilaterally in Washington behind locked doors will result in regime change by pre-emptive war and the threatening prospect of

long-term U.S. military occupation in every part of the world; and that

mocks

all

of this done in an unabashed

macho

style

the intelligent restraint of other nations as

cowardice.

28

The Unexpected Empire Regime change, when sion or by espionage,

nothing

War

new

pursued by armed aggresnever easy to justify - and it is

is

it is

American foreign

in

policy.

During the Cold

the United States resorted to covert action aimed at

overthrowing non-compliant governments of the world.

Middle East,

Most in

significantly for

in

many

our future

parts

in

the

1953 the cia engineered the coup that

dislodged a democratically elected government in Iran,

thereby seeding the

from which

soil

fundamentalism would

arise.

a vengeful Islamic

In times past

some have

excused the ruthlessness of such policies on the grounds that America’s Cold

War

rival

was every bit as secretive was fighting fire with fire.

and brutal. The United States Even if one endorsed that view, with the collapse of the Soviet Union the rationale for subversion and covert aggression lost its moral force. Yet even while political leaders in the United States preach the gospel of freedom

with a Biblical fervour, forces on the right wing of U.S. politics

are

supporting militaristic policies and

interests that

pose a threat to the freedom of people

everywhere. The United States

own

selfish

is

worst enemy, a nation that

reserves of trust

pretensions? For reasons

in the I

is

its

destroying whatever

may still have. way of America’s imperial

and admiration

Can anything stand

rapidly becoming

it

discuss below,

that the people of the United States,

I

do not

much

believe

less

their

do more than pose meagre resistance to the triumphalist agenda. There has been a dispirited liberal leaders, can

failure of nerve, a failure of intellect in the

United States and

triumphalist advance

is

among

among

liberal forces

the public at large.

If

the

to be stopped, people in other

lands will have to help with ideas, with examples, with

and perhaps with outright defiance in the diplomatic, economic, and cultural arenas. They must come to criticism,

29

WORLD, BEWARE! see themselves as America’s global constituency, as concerned about decisions made in Washington as in their

own

capitals.

It is

in their

own

interest for other nations

to help create that wider constituency

serve their

freedom and

if

they want to pre-

their national dignity.

As much

any devastating natural disaster - flood, famine, earthquake - American triumphalism needs to be met by a as

critical international

response.

We

need a dialogue on the future of global industrialism that presents a humane alternative to the narrow, free-market idolatry of America’s corporate elite and its triumphalist brains trust.

Beyond

that,

we must

find con-

ways of controlling decisions about the use of force so that the enormous power that now belongs uniquely to the United States cannot fall into the hands of any erratic ideological faction that manages to take over the White House. My hope is that this book will

sensual

provide some of the insight that people of other lands will

need to launch that dialogue.

30

TWO America’s Worldwide Attack Matrix

“Saddam’s removal provides a new opportunity for a different kind of Middle East. But if that different future for the Middle East is to be realized, we and our allies must

make

a generational

commitment

to helping the people

of the Middle East transform their region. That security challenge

the

is

- and moral mission - of our time.”

Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor to George W. Bush, speaking in Houston, Aug. 8, 2003

“We

are a uniquely benign imperium. This

self-congratulations; ers

it

is

is

a fact manifest in the

not mere

way

oth-

welcome our power.” Charles Krauthammer, neo-conservative journalist,

The Weekly Standard June ,

4,

2001

WORLD, BEWARE!

THE WARS was born

IN

MY

LIFE

in 1933, the year that

saw both Franklin come to power. At

D. Roosevelt and Adolph Hitler the time my father was one of America’s “forgotten men,” one of the millions left unemployed, impoverished,

I

and despairing by the Great Depression. For my family the Roosevelt New Deal had a clear, restorative meaning. would produce It was a boldly democratic program that the

most sweeping domestic reforms

in the nation’s his-

the while the Roosevelt administration struggled to overcome the economic stagnation of the country, another crisis was unfolding in Europe that would, at the

But

tory.

all

expense of

much blood and

treasure,

do a

far

more

effec-

job of putting an end to the Great Depression. Nazism was marching towards a war that would do tive

more

change the United States than did

to

of the

all

the reforms

New Deal.

By the time

I

was old enough

to

give

serious

thought to the history unfolding around me, the steady drift towards war had already begun. Everything I

childhood about the world was profoundly shaped by the experience of war - impending war and then actual war. Like all children, I grew up fiercely patriotic - and with good reason. During World learned in

War

II, I

lization. late

my

came to see my country as the defender of civiBy the time the United States entered the war in

1941, our

allies

were

either defeated or

dependent

nations that had to be rescued from fascist and imperialist aggressors who represented what I still regard as

Cold War that folworld as vulnerable and help-

intolerable evil. Then, during the

viewed the entire less. I accepted my government’s policies at face value, namely, that the Cold War was wholly the fault of the

lowed,

I

32.

America's Worldwide Attack Matrix Union,

Soviet

that

nations

everywhere

needed

the

United States to defend them from communist subversion and Soviet aggression.

Moral absolutism comes easily to the young - and all the more so when objective conditions seem to make one’s choices clear. If America had not become the policeman of the world, could there be any doubt that millions more would be overrun and held subject, as the people of Eastern Europe had been? Through my youth, without realizing it, I was carrying forward the perceptions of an earlier generation of

was the attitude my parents had inherited First World War, when the nations of Europe

Americans.

It

from the were seen by Americans

as morally

bankrupt

societies

lacking the will, the strength, and the virtue to solve their

own

problems. As the

hit

song of 1917 proclaimed, “The

Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming, and we won’t be back till it’s over over there.” And when would it be “over”? Not until the Yanks had made the world safe for democracy and set Europe on the right course. At which point, they would come marching home as quickly as possible. It

was not

until

I

was

in

my

college years that

I

grew

aware of the deeper issues of the Cold War, and especially of the arms race that threatened human survival. Step by step I became steadily more sceptical and critical. And then, at last, the Vietnam War transformed me into a social critic willing to question all that my government told me.

We

refer to that period

bled as the United States all

still

as “the sixties.”

was during

As trou-

that time, suffering

the generational turmoil that unsettled other coun-

tries,

When

there

was

a spirit of healthy

change

in

the

air.

agony of Vietnam ended, many of us looked forward to a better future governed by a new the long

33

WORLD, BEWARE! agenda of postindustrial values. We hoped to see an America that would fight free of the avarice of the corporations and the violence of the Pentagon warlords. One need only turn back and listen to the music of that period to sense the glad, creative anticipations of the young. For all its naivete, the countercultural rebellion of that period

was driven by authentic

idealism.

Its

goal

abundance and technological power of high-industrial society to abolish poverty and free our lives from the compulsions of corporate greed and

was

to use the

could never have predicted- that, after Vietnam, there would come a time when a benighted militarism would rise again to take control of my coun-

power

politics.

I

government as part of another all-consuming cause: the war on terrorism. Why has this happened? That is the question this book addresses. At this

try’s

point,

me

let

only say, in

brief, that the

life-affirming

hopes of the 1960 s were thwarted by forces whose cunning and power were grossly underestimated by the anti-

war movement. Utopia was never as close as many of us thought. Even before the smoke had cleared from the of

battlefields

Vietnam,

social

elements

that

totally

were at work seeking to reinvigorate the military-industrial complex of Cold War days. The corporate community, the warlords, and a younger generation of right-wing intellectuals had begun

rejected countercultural values

to lay the foundations for a resurgent conservatism that

more effectively persuasive than anything Americans had seen in the twentieth century. The counterculture, which had never numbered more than a creative minority of its generation, changed

would be

America

far

in

many enduring ways.

It

helped transform the

United States into a multicultural society.

34

It

helped create

America's Worldwide Attack Matrix the atmosphere in

which human

cause and not merely a phrase.

woman’s

It

become a launched movements rights could

gay liberation, environmentalism -

liberation,

that remain active today. But by the 1980s conservatives

were winning the allegiance of more and more Americans who had lost faith in liberal social values. The Republican Party was picking up the votes of working-class, blue-collar,

mainly middle-aged male voters - “Reagan

Democrats,” as they were attracting a

new and

called.

Republicans were also

troubling kind of electorate: the sin-

who go

on the basis of one, overriding issue, no matter what else might be at stake. Opposition to abortion, opposition to gun

gle-issue voter, people

to the polls to vote

control, opposition to gay rights, opposition to taxes of

any kind, opposition to banning prayers

in the schools,

opposition to teaching Darwinian evolution: while als registered

amazement

at the

number

of people

liber-

who

cared deeply about such issues, Republicans provided a

home

narrow-gauged voters, amplifying their wrath and endorsing their values as pious and patriotic. It was a strategy with which liberals have not yet

for these disgruntled,

found

a

way

to compete.

In the course of the twentieth century, three generations

war as a curse visited upon them came to believe that only the United

of Americans, viewing

by other countries,

had the purity, the power, and the moral authority to rescue mankind. America’s historic mission was a chivalric undertaking, the strong coming to the aid of the States

weak. I

recall

images from the Second World

War

that cap-

tured this sense of shining American goodness. Photos of

35

WORLD, BEWARE! battle-weary U.S. soldiers resting amid the ruins of war, passing out candy bars to ragged kids or offering a dis-

mother a helmet so she might bathe her baby. The soldiers, young and handsome, always had a kind of dishevelled, unpretentious nobility about them. They were ordinary guys who might have been the boy next

tressed

door - a high-school football hero, an auto mechanic, a teacher. They were citizen soldiers who had risked their lives defending the defenceless. There was nothing about conqueror,

the

empire builder. They had no wish but to mind their

own

them of

the

professional

soldier,

the

and experience the simple pleasures of life. At war’s end we cheered to see them coming home, modest heros wearily disembarking from troop ships to embrace their waiting wives and babies. Wherever they were returning from - Europe, Korea, Vietnam - they were greeted with the conviction that this would

business, raise a family,

be the

last time, this

would be

the

war

to

end

all

wars.

Americans love a human touch in the midst of horror. In the background of pictures showing our soldiers befriending some war-torn population we sometimes saw

and tanks had pounded into rubble. Perhaps thousands of civilians had been killed by violence rained down from the skies. But that was not America’s fault; we did it to kill off the bad guys. a city that U.S. planes

Nobody would think of blaming Americans for such destruction. And now that we had defeated the aggressor, we would pick up the pieces, heal the wounds, and head for

home.

COME BACK SHANE! The 1952 movie Shane

is

a classic

embodiment

of our

national myth. Shane, the blond hero dressed in buckskin,

36

America's Worldwide Attack Matrix rides into

town, places himself

at the service of the

gered farmers and their families, and finally guns the

wounded, he

all

faraway mountains without

rides into the

waiting for thanks. The

courageous stranger darkening plain,

Shane

down

one big shootout. Then, though badly

in

villains

endan-

his

boy who has made this hero calls after him across the

“Come

little

back, Shane!

Come

back!” But

rides on.

Now,

more basking

are once

They

as the twenty-first century begins,

see

vast

a

in a sense of

new horizon

Americans

power and

virtue.

of conflict opening out

which America must again play the role of the righteous gunfighter. The conflict is called “the war on terrorism,” and the bad guys are now worse than ever. As American armies are sent off to liberate oppressed nations and punish villainous characters, patriotic citizens listen for that same forlorn call from out of the past. before

them

“Come

in

back, Shane!”

Once

again, great political issues

The presisummons us to war in a

are being personified in simple-minded ways.

dent (our gunfighter-in-chief) folksy Texas drawl. “Bring

it

on,” he

tells

Saddam Hus-

The bad guys are regarded as little better than homicidal maniacs whose hostility has no cause and whose violence makes no sense. Bearded, swarthy terrorists have become the new Nazis, the new communists. Osama bin Laden and Sadsein

dam

from

a

good,

safe

distance.

Hussein take their place alongside the German

Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin. The American man and woman

Kaiser,

in the street naively

believe that the job of eliminating the terrorist

enemy can

be finished quickly. U.S. presidents and generals always

promise short wars. Even Vietnam was supposed to be a

same promise in Iraq. The against terrorism, we were warned, may go on

short war. struggle

They made

the

37

WORLD, BEWARE! armed engagement - in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran - will be over in a jiffy. In contrast to what happened in Vietnam, the president and his military advisers insisted that the United States would have the firmness of will and the modern weapons of war indefinitely,

to

any

but

win quickly and

single

efficiently.

Infantry shipped off for Iraq in the front gate of their

home

When

the U.S.

March 2003,

Third

the sign at

base read, “Kick butt and

hurry home.”

So the troops get moved and rotated; camps are relocated; weapons are upgraded. It all occurs casually, subdued developments that happen in remote places. Eventually the public forgets that the United States has hundreds of thousands of troops on permanent duty in well

over one hundred camps and bases around the globe. Until the government of

North Korea

confrontational about

nuclear ambitions,

its

recently

became

how many

Americans were aware that there are over thirty thousand U.S. troops stationed in South Korea - and that they have been there for more than fifty years? (And how

many were aware

that South Koreans

those troops go home?)

I

would

suspect that not

prefer to see

many Ameri-

know we still have sixty thousand troops in Germany and twenty thousand Marines on Okinawa. The

cans

public seems to have only a vague, dreamlike awareness that their nation has gradually

grown

into the

most

far-

power since the days of the British Empire. The American public may continue to hope it can eliminate the bad guys in one big shoot-out, but in the wake of World War II, U.S. military might has grown into a fixed and prevailing fact of life in international relations. No knowledgeable commentator expects that

flung military

to

change

tary

is

in the

not what

near future. But the role of the U.S. miliit

once was, a force that participated

38

in

America's Worldwide Attack Matrix alliances or served

becoming

under international

treaties. Its use

unilaterally determined with respect to

is

weapons

technology and strategic locations. Already the master plan

for

what

the

cia

calls

“the

worldwide attack

matrix” involves moving troops out of uncooperative

European countries and unstable Middle Eastern states and into “forward operating locations” and “hub bases,” where long-term agreements with small and needy governments can be purchased. This includes Middle Eastern states

such as Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Uzbekistan, Tajik-

and Kyrgyzstan. Former Soviet republics are proving especially attractive places for basing rights and there istan,

many to choose from. When Uzbekistan asked the U.S. in summer 2005 to give up its airbase, the Pentagon simply moved next door to Turkmenistan. The U.S. miliare

tary

is

now

running “train and equip” operations

Republic of Georgia, where stabilize

the

it

in the

hopes to see the Georgians

Caucasus. Small poor countries such as

Leone and Djibouti are sought out to provide “marshalling yards” from which the Pentagon can “surge” troops into trouble spots. The Philippines and

Sierra

some

Australia are also being developed as bases. In

cases the military will settle for a bare-bones establish-

A

mere landing strip may do, from which highspeed catamarans might ferry thousands of troops over hundreds of miles across the open sea in a day’s time. Beyond that, there will be troop emplacements in Bulgaria, Poland, and Rumania - the “new Europe,” as

ment.

Donald Rumsfeld once called them, meaning nations willing to rent territory and make no Secretary of Defense

trouble. In

many

cases these bases will be

left

with a

skeleton force on hand, but they will be available as staging areas for the

movement

of heavy equipment.

declared assumption behind U.S.

39

basing policy

is

The the

WORLD, BEWARE! need for rapid response to unpredictable terrorist attacks. But the mere existence of such preponderant military

bound to play an ever larger part in international negotiations on all matters. The United States is develop-

force

is

ing “interests” in every last corner of the world. Early in 2004 reports surfaced in the press of extensive training

and counter-terrorist activities by U.S. special forces throughout North Africa - in Algeria, Mali, Chad, Niger, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. This region, mainly consisting of the desolate Sahel, has been identified as a

prime recruitment hub for al-Qaeda. Across the continent, Djibouti, a country that most Americans could not find on the map, is now home to a task force of 1,600 troops monitoring the

And

Horn

of Africa.

then, least visible of

all,

“war on drugs” that the United

there

is

the protracted

States has been pursuing,

largely with privately contracted

forces,

in

Colombia.

More ominous still in Latin America was the U.S. proposal made at the 2005 meeting of the Organization of permanent committee to monitor “troubled democracies” in the Western hemisphere. The proposal was clearly aimed at intimidating any future

American

States for a

government that might try to follow the populist path of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. As one Latin American minister put it, the United States seemed bent on set-

up “some sort of democratic police force.” The State Department preferred to describe its goal as “a process” that would “address threats to democracy in a timely fashion.” But against the background of pre-emptive war in the Middle East, what Latin American government

ting

would

trust the

intentions of the United States? This

global expansion of America’s military

power -

all

of

it

within the context of a pre-emptive security strategy (‘shoot

first,

ask questions later”) - has happened so

40

America’s Worldwide Attack Matrix rapidly that analysts at the Center for Strategic and Inter-

national Studies in Washington, D.C., have referred to

it

“as a sort of military big bang.”

confess to being astonished by

I

States has initiated since the

Within a few years’ time,

what

the United

September 11, 2001, attacks.

name

in the

of defending

itself

against a huge but nebulous danger called “terrorism,” the U.S. military has, with maniacal speed, unilaterally cre-

ated a vast and expensive network of alliances, bases, contracts, investments,

and

installations in every part of the

world. In a demonic way,

But

if

terrorism

in

which

all

a remarkable achievement.

a threat to every nation,

is

effort not seen as

it is

why

this

is

an international endeavour, something

people have an interest and for which

ple will bear collective responsibility?

And why

all

peo-

does

this

do with addressing the root causes of terrorism? The Osama bin Ladens of the world may never be willing to bargain with Western nations, but others in the Arab world, including “the Arab street,” as it has come to be called, are surely not beyond communicaeffort

have so

tion. Is

it

too

little

to

much

to ask

why

Of

they are so hostile?

course, there are those in Washington

who

believe they

have no need to ask. They believe they already possess the best medicine for the world’s discontents. “Markets,” they insist.

Or “democracy,” by which

they

mean opening

economies to unrestricted corporate access. But what that very prescription tent?

one

How

is

among

if

the causes of the discon-

can they be so sure that their ideology

is

the

size that fits all?

Weapons, bases, and troops are among America’s largest and most politically consequential exports, the nation’s main way of asserting its interests. At the end of World War II, the act of stationing troops abroad could be presented to the public as generous and idealistic - a 4i

WORLD, BEWARE! gift

to

nations in need of protection.

But as of the

twenty-first century, something has shifted.

The

picture

is

taking on confused and ominous overtones. Vaguely, Americans sense that the war on terrorism is not producing the cheers

we once

expected. Instead, people around

They from the

the world are often deeply critical, even hostile.

sometimes behave as if they had more to fear United States than from anybody else. Such criticism baf-

and angers the American people, who sincerely believe that they are making great sacrifices for the benefit of others. Why, then, are we not still the most admired and best beloved of nations? How infuriating it must then be when the television news shows Iraqi crowds in

fles

Americans to go home. In the face of such ingratitude, the public can become petulant. Just below the surface, Americans hide strong

the street shouting for the

xenophobic dents in

my

that, at the

instincts that

can bubble over quickly. Stu-

history courses always find

outbreak of World

War

I,

it

amusing to learn

as the United States set

about

renaming everything German. Under orders from

Presi-

prepared to fight “the Hun,” our government

dent

Woodrow

Wilson, the frankfurter was renamed the

pup” and sauerkraut became “liberty cabbage.” I wonder if my students found it just as silly to see the same thing happening in their time during the run-up to Gulf War II. This time, patriotic politicians and media pundits “liberty

targeted France for vocabulary reform. French

proposed, should become “freedom

fries,”

fries, it

was

and French

become “freedom toast.” Others called for a boycott of French imports, and some ultra-patriots were filmed on television pouring bottles of Dom Perignon down the toilet. At a White House picnic, hot dogs were served, but Dijon mustard was forbidden even if it was

toast should

made by

a U.S.

company.

A 42

television

commercial for a

America's Worldwide Attack Matrix fast-food chain that

no longer served French

number of French Prussian war, World War

fried potatoes

defeats: Waterloo, the Franco-

listed a

Vietnam.

II,

“We

don’t serve

loser food!” the advertisement proclaimed.

What had

done to merit such punitive treatment in 2003? Why, they had dared to assert their right to pursue their own foreign policy. They had blocked the Bush administration’s efforts to rally the United Nations behind its war on Iraq. They remained unconvinced that Iraq posed any serious threat to other the French

countries. In the eyes of politicians as highly placed as

impudent independence reason to launch a wave of ridicule and

the U.S. secretary of state, such

was

sufficient

hostility against the country’s oldest ally.

French government was not alone

war

effort;

it

was simply

the sympathies of

its

course, the

in resisting the U.S.

most outspoken

the

people.

Of

And

is

in voicing

not speaking out for

one’s people a defensible interpretation of democratic

government?

If

the heads of state of

all

the nations that

gave token support to the United States in Gulf

had expressed the true

will of their people

ing alone.

It

United States would have found

would not have had even

II

(who were

demonstrating by the hundreds of thousands streets), the

War

itself

the

in

stand-

the support of the

few governments that reluctantly offered words of encouragement to Bush’s war. The only way in which the war on Iraq could be called a “coalition” was by way of deception and exaggeration. Even the British and the Spanish, where popular resistance to the large

it

war was

so

might have toppled governments, could not have

been counted on Washington’s

That would have made no

Bush administration was in dealing

with Iraq as

it

side.

difference, of course.

just as

was 43

The

stubbornly unilateralist

in other areas of foreign

WORLD, BEWARE! policy;

it

had no

interest in the

approval or consultation

As Bush bluntly put it, “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Speaking in the National Cathedral in Washington a few days after the of other nations.

September 11 attack, Bush declared that America’s goal had attained mythic proportions; it was no less than “to

world of evil.” The only reason the president went before the United Nations was at the desperate urging of British prime minister Tony Blair, who was under severe pressure from his own political party not to support preemptive action by the United States. At some point it

rid the

must have occurred to the Bush advisers that going to the un was well worth doing - not because they cared about securing the approval of other nations, but because going

before the Security Council gave

them

the chance to offer

the rest of the world an arrogant take

it

or leave

it

choice.

was not only Saddam Hussein who was being given a “last chance” to do as Washington wanted; it was It

the rest of the world.

A

On

BENEVOLENT GLOBAL HEGEMONY LIKE IT OR NOT

-

the surface, such diplomatic bravado by the United

States

might seem

like a display of

emotional pique, a

fit

shown towards the un was coldly deliberate. There are new forces at work in Washington, policy-makers who welcome the chance to thumb their noses at the Security Council. For the hawks of the American Defense Department and the Penof hurt feelings. But in fact the spleen

tagon, the UN’s intractability offered the opportunity for a

showdown with an

institution they detest. Here, then,

44

America's Worldwide Attack Matrix was a chance to kill two birds with one stone. Not only would the war against Saddam Hussein give George W. Bush the chance to play Lone Ranger on the world stage, but it would also give him a reason to repudiate the United Nations for being weak and incompetent, a barrier to America’s clear intention to extend its power across the planet. States

A

year

was back before

the

un

tinue the Iraqi occupation. In

ington would win either way. that

would be seen

had been prove

as

right. If the

how

of course, the United

later,

asking for

making If

the

money

to con-

that appeal,

money was

Wash-

offered,

an admission that the United States

money was

withheld, that would

stubborn and worthless the un

is.

That was the deeper purpose behind Gulf War II. The road to Baghdad was the road to American global supremacy. As early as 1996, right-wing elements

in the

United States were talking about imposing a “benevolent

hegemony” on the world. The phrase is that of Robert Kagan and William Kristol, writing in Foreign Affairs. Iraq offered just that opportunity. By resisting what the Bush administration wanted, the United Nations simply hastened the moment when Washington felt free to dismiss it - along with nato and the European Union - as irrelevant. The new American century had dawned, and the sooner the world at large recogglobal

nized that fact, the better. Nevertheless, in the face of unprecedented diplo-

matic bullying, most of the world

still

held out against

Bush and company - not because they supported Saddam Hussein. Public opinion everywhere condemned the Iraqi tyrant, so unanimously that one was left wondering how so odious a man could ever have come to power in the first

place.

For indeed Saddam was a creature of the

Western world’s

own making. He had 45

been elevated to

WORLD, BEWARE! leadership and strengthened in his position by the very nations - including the United States - that finally pur-

ported to find him morally repulsive. We have photos of Saddam Hussein being warmly welcomed at the White House by Ronald Reagan. Donald Rumsfeld courted his

him as our stalwart ally in the Middle East. But all this went unmentioned by the Bush administration as it swept towards war. In every briefing and support, praising

up to the war, one sensed an air of exhilaration. “Going it alone” can be a heady experience, almost like that of coming of age and feeling one’s

press conference leading

full

adult power.

During the next several years the triumphalists may continue to equivocate about their true intentions, offering different stories actions.

on

different occasions to explain their

The Bush administration has shown how

political leaders

can go

in contradicting themselves.

far

Why

W. Bush go to war with Iraq? Supposedly to eliminate Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. When no such weapons were found, other reasons were produced. To drive an evil man from power ... or better did George

democracy to the Middle East. In the advertising world this approach is called “bait and switch.” Advertise one thing, but when the customer shows up, still,

to bring

him 2000

trick

into buying something else that costs more.

If,

in

George W. Bush had proposed that the country go to war to bring democracy to Iraq, he surely would have been decisively defeated. For what did the

the

elections,

American people think they owed to Iraq? In any case, I doubt that behind closed doors in Washington, policymakers waste much time mapping out a democratic future for Iraq. Any regime that provides an open market for U.S. investment will pass muster with them as “democratic.” Yes, there

was an

election in Iraq in January 2005,

America's Worldwide Attack Matrix a

courageous display of democratic sentiment on the part

who

of the Iraqi people,

defied the threats of

insurgents and risked their lives to cast their

murderous votes. The

eager congratulations with which the media surrounded the heroism of the election easily distract us

from remem-

bering that elections are the most fragile aspect of democracy. In themselves

tructure, they

and without

may

achieve

sufficient political infras-

little,

especially

if

the insur-

gency cannot be brought to an end and the country’s basic services restored.

The January 2005

election in Iraq

was

held as part of a deliberately protracted political process

devised by the United States and requiring approval from

As Washington policy-makers would have it, democracy in Iraq must wait upon still more elections to come, as well as upon the writing of an acceptable constitution that will not allow Iraq to become

Washington

at every step.

an Iranian-style Islamic Republic. Most importantly, Iraqi independence

is

of co-operation will

hold

this

dependent on achieving some stable form

among

most

Shiites,

artificial

W. Bush may once have run

Sunnis, and Kurds that

of nations together. George

for office promising an

end to

experiments in nation-building, but nation-building on the

what he has committed our country to. Whatever else is uncertain about that project,

grand scale

much

is

is

clear:

the

longer

it

takes to

build

this

anything

remotely resembling “democracy” in Iraq, the longer the troops stay where they are and the longer the Iraqi econ-

omy

stays under U.S. control.

what triumphalist policy tion, the

Which

calls for.

of course

is

exactly

For public consump-

war-makers assure us that they have no

interest

permanent occupation, but all the while military contractors like Halliburton and KRB continue to build in a

expensive “enduring bases” across Iraq. Critics of the

war

press the

Bush administration

47

for a date

when

the

WORLD, BEWARE! come home, as if they cannot believe that Iraq is a conquest, meant to be held indefinitely. So they receive mixed messages. For example, as of June 2005, Vice-President Dick Cheney insisted that the insurgency

U.S. forces will

was

in

its

“last

throes,”

while Secretary of Defense

Rumsfeld predicted that Iraq may have U.S. troops on soil for

another ten to twelve years. Secretary of State

may have come

Condoleezza Rice

when,

closer to the truth

in a foreign-policy address in

defined the role of the United States in a

its

August 2003, she the Middle East as

“moral mission” that would require a “generational

commitment.” Washington has promised to restore Afghanistan to the Afghan people and Iraq to the Iraqi people, but it will never set up governments that it cannot control. Instead it indulges in exactly the sort of double-speak for which

we once condemned cloaking

its

the Soviet

Union

in

its

practice of

domination of Eastern Europe. Just as the

deceit of the Soviets

Washington’s

lies.

proved to be

tissue-thin, so too are

The triumphalists may turn themselves

blue in the face loudly denying that the United States colonial power, but there

is

only

word

is

a

that describes an

act of conquest that places a victorious nation in charge

of a defeated nation’s people, resources, and governance.

That word is “colonial.” As has always been the case with colonial powers, the benefits of imperial domination are not shared throughout the victorious nation at large. The American public has not yet registered

how

costly policies of con-

become and how much power place in the hands of corporate and

quest and domination can those policies will

military leaders. For the time being,

and

it is

all

patriotic celebration, with endless talk

much good

the United States

48

is

flag-waving

about

how

doing for people

in

America's Worldwide Attack Matrix distant lands. In the teeth of the evidence, the official line is

that people everywhere

ship and that

all

want

the benefits of our leader-

our conquests are temporary.

do not run smoothly,

well, there

is

bound

If

to be

things

some

“untidiness,” as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld put

when

became

it

clear that Iraq

was rapidly turning

it

into a

protracted insurgency. will not be possible to

It

Who

initely.

maintain

this

charade indef-

can doubt that there will be opposition

in

every land taken over by the United States? That opposition will have to be suppressed by the military

power of governments beholden There

is

and police

to the United States.

a great deal of “untidiness” in our future. But

then, imperial policies politics of the

may

be so deeply

embedded

by

in the

United States that uprooting the world-

wide attack matrix

more than

will be

a confused public

can achieve.

THE STRANGE CASE OF TONY BLAIR The high-handedness and bare-faced deception of the Bush administration during the run-up to Gulf War II

may have been

a breathtaking display of political hubris,

but even more jarring was Prime Minister Tony Blair’s eagerness to back the invasion. In whose view “jarring”? I

suspect in the view of every liberal in the United States,

myself included,

momentum Blair

is

who hoped

before

it

came

to halt the administration’s to the brink of war. True,

not the gutsy, crusading left-winger

who made

Labour Party Old Style an ethical beacon, but these days one must take what satisfaction one can from small gains. Like Bill Clinton in the United States coming in the wake of the Reagan presidency, Blair did find a way to win back power in post-Thatcher Britain. And for that the

49

WORLD, BEWARE! and resourcefulness; they could never have imagined someone as smart as Blair and as left-of-centre (at least by Ameri-

many American

admired

liberals

his

intelligence

can standards) climbing into bed with a reactionary

like

Bush - unless, that is, the crisis at hand was as severe as Washington insisted. And that was what Blair did. At exactly the right moment, he lent the great Republican war scare of 2003

no U.S.

a credibility that

politician could

have conferred

on so questionable a policy. Indeed, it was Blair who made the single most consequential contribution to Bush’s war policy. Not only did he support the war, but he also supported the phony reason for the war; his was the clinching argument in the debate over weapons of mass destruction. Through early 2003 it was still possible for those

who

resisted the

war

to cite the United Nations

inspectors in arguing that Iraq posed threat.

Tony

But then,

like a bolt

no serious military

from the

blue, there

was

Blair at the president’s side, looking as earnest as

an

boy and telling us, in words more crisp and urgent than Bush could have managed, that the world had more to fear than anybody realized. I confess that as dubious altar

as

was about wmd,

I

it

made a was so

great difference to learn

on British sources. I was brought up short and made to wonder: could the war-makers be right after all? Was our national security truly at stake? When Blair produced his dire warning about Iraqi missiles that could be readied and

that Bush’s intelligence

launched

dam

in less

solidly based

than forty-five minutes, not only at Sad-

Hussein’s Middle Eastern foes but also at targets as

Europe, one could palpably feel American pubopinion - especially the media - shifting in Bush’s

far off as lic

favour. Suddenly, a handful of hypothetical Iraqi missiles

were made to seem more menacing than the 50

entire Soviet

America’s Worldwide Attack Matrix arsenal of icbms

we had

lived

with - and deterred -

throughout the Cold War. Blair’s

were

attack, dling.

fabulous missiles, poised for instantaneous

It

was

like a lighted all

match thrown

but impossible for

many

into dry kin-

of us to feel that

he could be gullible or devious enough to

dramatic declaration unless he

knew

make such

was

it

true.

a

With

Blair steadfastly at his side in pre-war press conferences,

Bush had exactly what he needed to cripple the anti-war movement. He had an ally, an important and trusted ally who agreed with him one hundred percent in identifying Saddam Hussein as an immanent threat to world peace. In Bush’s mouth allegations about weapons of mass destruction were a lie, but in Blair’s mouth they became one of those big lies that flatten all scepticism. Because who could believe that somebody as honourable as Tony Blair

would

lie

Ah, but he

on such did.

a scale?

And

it

gets worse.

When

his

warning

was shown to be a deliberate false alarm, he resorted to the same witless defence that Bush was using. To paraphrase: “Yes, that was quite a mistake about the wmd, but you have to understand, somebody unloaded all this rotten intelligence on me. No, I don’t know who. And no, I’m not going to try to find out now, because to put

all this

behind

us.

Why

didn’t

I

it’s

time

double-check?

I

never thought of doing that. But then, with those terrible, hair-trigger

was the moving

weapons pointed

at us

-

as

case - there really wasn’t time. right along

-

aren’t

we

I

truly thought

And

besides -

better off with

Saddam

Hussein out of power and democracy on the march?”

And

so

we have

a

new

definition of democracy. Pres-

and prime ministers are allowed to escape judgment by claiming ignorance or incompetence. They bear no responsibility for making very big, bad mistakes as idents

5i

WORLD, BEWARE! long as they can find a

fall

guy. “I’m in charge, but don’t

now Americans

blame me.” By

ing double-talk like this

from

are accustomed to hear-

than

their less

brilliant

and

from candid president; he has lived out his entire political career laying blame on others for his blunders. But it was little short of surrealistic to watch Blair acting as if he could deceive the British public with such chop

far

- to the point of bludgeoning the BBC news for daring to suggest that he had bent the truth in order to sex up Bush’s Iraq policy. At least in my eyes, Blair’s conduct logic

is II

more egregious than that of Bush. After all, Gulf War was not his policy; he was not under the thumb of neodid

future

political

conservative

ideologues;

depend upon

a large-scale military diversion; he

his

not

had no

need to move his country back into the hands of a military-industrial complex. So why did he lie at the risk of making himself look like Bush’s lackey? What did he expect to gain from serving the interests of Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Paul Wolfowitz, and a collection of evangeli-

What

cal fanatics?

more than

own

could he possibly gain that was worth

colleagues? That

frequently

American picked up

and many of

the trust of British voters

discussed critics

is

the question

I

have heard more

among

any other

than

Some

of the war.

at social gatherings

his

puzzled

of the reasons I’ve

have been purely splenetic,

expressions of bitter disappointment that are too mean-

and purely personal to take seriously. Blair, I’ve heard from some, was mesmerized by Bush’s macho, gunslinger manner and hoped some of that might rub off spirited

on him. Or, so others have

said,

that the linguistically challenged

he enjoys the admiration

Bush has

to speak the English language so well.

there are those to

privatize

who wonder

everything

if

2

More

seriously,

the neo-conservative drive

might

5

for his ability

not

appeal

to

Blair’s

America’s Worldwide Attack Matrix penchant for shrinking the public

sector. Still others sus-

pect that Blair believes he has something to learn from

Bush’s blunt and pious approach to “moral values,” as

2004 election. This may give him a new card to play. In 2004 Blair delivered a speech on public morality in which he blamed the incivility and antisocial behaviour of the young on the bad influence of the 1960s. “People have had enough of this part of the 1960s consensus,” he declared. “They want a community where a decent, law-abiding majority are in charge.” Blair’s solution was to support the wider use of

named

such issues were

Antisocial

Behaviour Ordinances. This has a decided

Bush-conservative ring to

On

in the

it.

the other hand, perhaps this line of questioning

simply misses the point. Perhaps Blair needed no special reason to throw in with Bush; his decision was simply a

matter of

inertia.

Like prime ministers before him, his

relations with the United States travel in a deep, self-serv-

mg

and he had no inclination to change direction. Gulf War II was another chance to preserve the old “spe-

cial

rut

relationship”

assumed most of

with

nation

the

that

has

in

Britain’s once-imperial status. Like

effect

Mar-

good opinion of Ronald Reathe knees when he was offered

garet Thatcher courting the

gan, Blair went

weak

in

the chance of being uniquely favoured by Washington.

What might

those favours be?

Some

struction contracts that have been

Halliburton

Company and

share of the recon-

worth

billions to the

Bechtel Corporation? Conces-

sions in the oil fields of Iraq,

if

those fields ever begin pro-

ducing again? Access to the market economy that the

United States

is

imposing on Iraq? Or maybe simply the in the

Mid-

honour of

shar-

gratification of

throwing one’s weight around

dle East? After

all,

Britain

was given

the

ing control of the no-fly zones over Iraq with the United

53

WORLD, BEWARE! States;

power alongside during the Kosovo campaign in 1999.

was allowed

it

the United States

to deploy

Here was an even bigger

its

air

that involved

role

standing

shoulder to shoulder with the world’s only superpower. As more becomes known about British support for

grows more and more questionable. Documents disclosed in 2005 by the British journalist Michael Smith reveal that there was significant dissension within the cabinet about the coming war as early as March 2002. Cabinet ministers, diplomats, and senior military officials raised all the doubts that one heard

War

Gulf

Blair’s role

II,

from anti-war protestors States.

there

Was a

well-conceived plan

Was

ently Blair

the invasion?

Iraq likely to

was prepared

is

quoted as saying,

close to America.

If

we

for

to dismiss

“I

the

Was

occupation that

Did the war have any legal become a quagmire? Appar-

reservations in order to stay

He

the streets of the United

there a real threat to national security?

would follow status?

in

all

these well-founded

on George Bush’s good tell you that we must

don’t,

we

side.

steer

lose our influence to

shape what they do.”

Now we

can see that portraying Blair as Bush’s lapdog misses the point. Blair’s position was more complicated and

more

pathetic.

He assumed

the position that a

frightened wife might take with an abusive and erratic

husband. Please him, appease him, and hope you can keep him under control. But just as that strategy rarely

works in domestic life, it did not work for Blair in the world of high diplomacy. Like the timid wife, he gained no influence. He simply became an enabler. He convinced Bush that his conduct was acceptable and that he could go even

further.

Blair’s service to the triumphalists

liberalism

dearly.

If

you sense 54

a

has cost American

good deal of anger

America's Worldwide Attack Matrix behind these words, that

The triumphalists

the reason.

is

might have been willing to go

it

alone in Iraq, but having

made

the boots-on-the-ground support of the Brits

war up

the easier to dress the In doing that, Blair

vatism that his

is

threw

an international

as

stakes.

the

more reactionary and more triumphalists

Not only has

Blair

effort.

with a brand of conser-

in

are

aggressive than

More

party ever faced under Thatcher.

because

it all

playing

for

aggressive

higher

far

embarrassed himself by play-

ing second fiddle to a president of very

little

brain, but he

has also strengthened the hand of ideological forces that

democracy everywhere as they drive the global economy towards American corporate control. And for these services I doubt that a sin-

will continue to

undermine

gle neo-conservative in the

to offer so

much

as a

social

United States has

felt

inclined

“thank you.” As proof of

his diplo-

may

shown he

matic dexterity, Blair

believe that he has

can accommodate Republican extemists as well as any

Tory can, but what

is

that worth? Probably precisely

nothing to Bush and company. After Labourite as Blair the

American

may

liberals

be,

all,

as

moderate

he stands well to the

whom

left

a

of

neo-conservatives despise

and seek to destroy. He may have gained a few favours from the Bush administration, but why should he be given more than crumbs off America’s plate? After the triumphalists have gotten all they can from Blair’s New Labourites, they will not hesitate a

when

moment

to cheer

he and his party are replaced by conservatives

are less

encumbered by any concern

the welfare state.

55

for social justice

who and

WORLD, BEWARE!

THE MONEY, THE BRAINS, AND THE MUSCLE Three convergent social forces are driving the United States towards global hegemony. We might refer to them as the money the brains and the electoral muscle behind ,

,

the conservative resurgence that began with the

Reagan

presidency.

The money

derives

from

a

new

rapacious corporate

leadership that has taken control of the U.S. economy. That money and class privilege should play a part in the politics of ity

and

any society

is

hardly surprising. But the audac-

limitless avarice that drive the

corporados as ,

we

them, have no precedent in modern times. The brains derive from a rising generation of highly

will call

militarized, right-wing ideologues

who now dominate

country’s think-tanks and exert significant influence

the

upon

and political journalism. I call them the triumph alists. At first sight the term “triumphalism” may seem to relate mainly to foreign policy.

the media, universities,

But the hyperconservative elements to lord

it

who

are determined

over other nations are just as obsessed with

crushing their domestic liberal opposition. The triumph they seek

is

total: electoral

supremacy

at

home, military

supremacy abroad. Finally, the fundamentalists provide the

electoral

dependable

muscle that has put triumphalism in power. The

and evangelical religious congreAmerican society is by far the strangest ele-

role of fundamentalist

gations in

ment

in the

new

hyperconservative mix. The best orga-

nized and most politically active sationalist or

Dominion

among them

Christians,

are Dispen-

whose gaze

is

fixed

not on the next election but on the apocalypse that they believe may arrive any day now. When they go to the polls they are casting their votes for the

56

second coming of

America's Worldwide Attack Matrix which they expect good Christian leaders like George W. Bush to hasten. Bizarre as this may seem, evangelicals of this stripe may be the most formidable as well as the most erratic force in American politics. Each of these groups has its own peculiar agenda, but they have smoothly coalesced in pursuing policies Christ,

that seek to radically transform the role of government, shift the distribution of

wealth, reshape the global econ-

omy, and redefine the meaning of democracy.

57

.

THREE The Corporados

“We have

seen the speeches and metaphors of conservative

politicians,

bankers, and journalists hailing markets as

economic voting machines and corporations as the demoSuch choruses cratic selectees of the marketplace. swelled during the 1990s like an economic version of Handel’s Messiah The market and the people are one and the same. Hallelujah. Buying, selling, and consuming is .

true

democracy.

Hallelujah.

.

.

Popular will

is

expressed

through the law of supply and demand. Hallelujah. Populism is market economics. Hallelujah. Opposition to the verdict of the market is elitism. Hallelujah. The Nations

and the Peoples

.” shall rejoice. Hallelujah. Hallelujah

Kevin

Phillips,

former consultant to

and Democracy: American Rich 2002

President Richard Nixon, in Wealth

A

Political History

of the

,

The Corporados

GREED INCORPORATED merica

Deadline for United NAtions.” “America Gives Saddam One Last

“A find

I

be

Sets

Chance.” “America Begins Rebuilding Iraq.” it

remarkable

by

misled

how

headlines

even thoughtful people can

like

these.

congressional

In

debate, in the media, and even in the non-American press,

we

constantly see and hear the

word “America”

means something obvious and unambiguous. But what does “America” mean? Which used as

if,

by

itself,

it

“America”? Whose “America”?

A

little

In

the

semantic clarity

is

in order.

context of high-level decision-making, the

word “America” does not

refer to the public at large as

if

As with the names of

that public speaks with one voice.

other countries that regard themselves as democracies,

“America”

sense

in this

means those who control the

government and can use that control to gain their goals. That America - the triumphalist America I am concerned with here - surely does not speak for me, nor does it speak for millions of other Americans. Needless to

say, all politicians, presidents,

and mem-

bers of Congress like to pretend they are the voice of “the

people.”

on the

They

will insist that they

basis of a free

and

were elected to

fair election.

popular facade that politicians

in

If

But despite the

Washington so eagerly

display to the world, American politics

functional system.

office

the definition of

is

a seriously dys-

democracy

is

“gov-

ernment with the informed consent of the governed,” then the U.S. political system can hardly be called democratic. Decisions must still be made to appear as though they represented the will of the people. But do “the people”

-

in

sufficient

numbers - any longer know what 59

WORLD, BEWARE! their will

Can enough

is?

of

them

tell

the difference

and fiction? For reasons we will discuss United States is later, there is good reason to fear that the the rapidly slipping into a post-democratic era where

between

fact

consent of the governed can be bought and sold, engineered and fabricated. All that remains of democracy is a tattered pretense

made up

of symbols

and

gestures.

The techniques developed for engineering consent are numerous enough to fill entire books. But in the United finally States all the ways and means of manipulation come down to money. And in exerting that kind of power, nobody compares with the corporados, the heads of the great corporations that hold a position in American society rather like that of the barons of the

Middle Ages.

movement meant when it raised the cry “No blood for oil!” The war, we said, was being promoted by a small number of moneyed interests who

That

is

what

the anti-war

had bought the Congress and the White House. U.S. political and military leaders were insistent that oil had nothing to do with the war, but that was, of course, a fatuous deception.

What

interest

would the United

States

and pomegranates rather than oil fields? If the protestors were wrong, it may only have been because they were too narhave in Iraq

if

the country’s major resources were figs

row in identifying oil as the only concealed reason for making war on Iraq. As we have learned in the wake of the military occupation,

many

sources of profit are to be

had in this defeated land, some of them potentially worth more than oil. It may take years for the oil to flow again from Iraq, but long before that happens, U.S. corporations will be making billions of dollars repairing the damage done by the war effort and snapping up other assets and resources of a nation that may soon be regarded by business interests as America’s

60

fifty-first state.

The Corp orados The power of corporate money has become that

so great

has turned candidates and politicians into mere

it

commodities. This elections play

no

is

not to say that public opinion and

role in U.S. politics.

But that role has

become so vulnerable to the pressures of money that it has very nearly no independent status. If the word ‘‘America” means anything when it comes to the use of power, it means the will of major campaign contributors and those who can afford to send full-time lobbyists to Washington.

The dominance of dollars - and, in the republic’s early days, the dominance of landed wealth - is business as usual in American politics. Since the days of the great captains of industry in the nineteenth century, the corpo-

rados have ruled the Congress and the presidency. There

have been only two historical exceptions to that condi-

During the Progressive era at the beginning of the twentieth century - the period that saw the presidencies tion.

Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson - the trustbusters managed to mount an effective, if only temporary, resistance to the worst excesses of corporate domination. That was the period when the power of the trusts was so overbearing that even the least educated Ameriof

can voter could recognize their

role. Intoxicated

by the

laissez-faire ethos of the day, big business rashly over-

stepped

all

prudent boundaries, using

its

control of

rail-

roads to exploit millions of farmers, placing protective tariffs

on manufactured goods that allowed U.S. manu-

facturers to charge arbitrarily high prices, enlisting state

and federal military power to break strikes, and blithely selling the public contaminated meat and toxic drugs. As a result, a spate of reforms curbed the worst abuses. Then, during the Great Depression some later,

Franklin

Roosevelt,

himself the

61

thirty

scion

of

years great

WORLD, BEWARE! wealth, derided business leaders as “economic royalists” and “privileged princes.” The New Dealers waged open political it

warfare against the business community, holding

responsible for the Depression.

During these two periods the power of money

in

American politics was temporarily blunted; the business community, cursing Franklin Roosevelt as a “traitor to his class,” was forced to pay high taxes, submit to rigorous regulation, and tolerate social programs aimed at sharing the wealth

more

equitably. This

was

the period in

which an important and still hotly disputed line was crossed in American politics. Before the New Deal, taxa-

was principally used to defray the cost of government and pay for national defence. During the 1930s taxation was significantly diverted towards redistributing income from the rich to the poor. In the United States that transition was never fully accepted by corporate

tion

interests,

with the result that

fifty

years after the

New

determined anti-tax movement would take up the goal of ending redistributive social programs. The New Deal ushered in a generation of liberal reform that reached its culmination in the 1960s under

Deal a

fiercely

Lyndon Johnson. Johnson, a disciple of Franklin Roosevelt, launched a wave of costly social programs (the

President

Great Society, as Johnson called

it)

aimed

at

ending

poverty and healing race relations, but his efforts ran afoul of public discontent with his war in Vietnam. Johnson’s

war

policy ruptured the Democratic Party in

that have not yet been fully repaired

the beginning of troubled times for

ways

and can be taken as American liberalism.

Vietnam, followed by the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s, left many Americans so distrustful of

The

their

fiasco of

government that conservatives had no

difficulty

their liberal foes. Since the

1980s the

stealing a

march on

62

The Corp orados corporados have stormed back into power, no doubt considering themselves the natural leaders of the nation.

Not

only have they returned to power, but they have also

brought with' them an unparalleled rapacity, together with a determination to carry out institutional

American society

will be part of

The rapid

rise

of this

changes that

for generations to

new and

come.

rapacious corporate

has radically redefined the American political sys-

elite

tem, placing more power in the hands of fewer people

than at any point since the age of the robber barons in the nineteenth century. In effect, the United States

returning to the unbridled plutocracy that

1890s.

it

was

anything, the plutocrats are richer

If

is

fast

in the

now

than

ever before. Today, in the United States, 40 percent of the

wealth of the nation the population. That

percent of

boom

all

all

richest

percent of

percent receives 13

1

percent took in 42

- and were the people most

market before the bubble

major industrial nations

is

likely to

Nowhere

burst.

wealth so polarized as

it

United States.

in the

As

1

1

yearly income; during the stock-market

profits

pull out of the

is

same

the richest

of the 1990s, that same top

percent of

in the

owned by

is

on the American domestic scene, such great wealth obviously results in enormous political influence. But now the swiftly unfolding course of economic a factor

globalization has amplified the elite,

making

it

power of

the plutocratic

reckoned with

a force to be

in

every cor-

ner of the globe. Meanwhile, changes in the basic institutions of

American democracy - the

political party system, control of the

made

it

all

electoral

process,

mass media - have

but impossible to stage a significant debate

about national policy that would hold the goals of the corporados up for

critical attention. All

have brought about

a

of these factors

powerful corporate assault on ^3

WORLD, BEWARE! Washington that has quite simply stymied the nation’s liberal opposition.

THE SUPERceoS Who,

and what are they

then, are the corporados

During the 1980s

a

new breed

after?

of entrepreneur

appeared in the U.S. marketplace, especially in brokerwere highly age, banking, and financial services. These high predatory business types who were willing to run risks

and to bend the law

corporations.

in order to take

over existing

The new entrepreneurs might take

the

form of “corporate raiders,” a fierce managerial species who were determined to replace an older business elite who, so the raiders charged, had failed to wring the

maximum

companies. In

profits out of their

many

cases

new managers knew nothing about the companies a they wanted to take over. Some had never marketed

the

product or met a payroll. What, then, were they doing not building. in business? Often they were destroying, They viewed companies as a sort of fat prey waiting to be carved up and eaten. Once in charge of the compaelimnies they had hijacked, corporate raiders set about looting inating jobs, cutting benefits, slashing wages,

pension funds. Just as car thieves know they can make more money by disassembling automobiles and selling the parts than by selling the killed the

whole

companies they owned

car, the raiders often

in

order to

sell

off

their assets.

The

result

was an unprecedented

level of

short-term

value of the company’s value on the stock market. In short order the price of stock became the key factor in business decisions. Forced to defend themselves from looking fat and slow

profitability

that

raised

the

64

The Corp orados and backward - or in some cases simply to protect themselves from being taken over - other business leaders began to imitate the corporate raiders in order to stay out of their clutches. for a

company

The important thing now was

to look fabulously profitable, willing to

do anything no matter how reckless to raise its earnings. Not only did companies have to make high profits, but they had to make them quickly - as quickly as the raiders might make money by exploiting the speed with which new computer networks can move investments around the world. In this new business climate, the chief executive officers of major companies - especially the multinational corporations - came to be valued for above all restructure companies, and their toughness,

The ceo culture.

is

There

their ability to cut payrolls, raise profits rapidly.

the principal figure in the are, of course,

many

new corporate

thousands of ceos

in

com-

them reasonably honest people who play by the rules. The ceos I deal with here are the heads of major, usually multinational companies. They have become a class unto themselves, gifted with power over tens of thousands of workers around the world and often part of an oligopoly that dominates panies large and small,

an

entire

industry.

of

Perhaps

they

should

be

called

“superCEOs.” Sociologists would no doubt argue that so small a group cannot constitute a social class. But if not, they deserve to be treated as a distinct subculture

among

from the rest of the business community as royalty once was from the lesser nobility. Steadily over the past two decades, these once the well-to-do, as distant

anonymous figures have stepped out of the shadows to become celebrities. In running their firms, they are ordinarily given near absolute power. They are the voice and the public face of their companies. They are nearly

h5

WORLD, BEWARE! the impresarios

who

“roll

out”

new products and

often

give a global identity to their sprawling multinational

fiefdoms.

Among

the

first

was Lee

of these celebrity ceos

Motor Company through the 1960s and later (from 1978) of the Chrysler Motor Company. Iacocca was the first CEO to perform in his com-

Iacocca, head of the Ford

pany’s television commercials. Posing as a hard-headed,

who

no-nonsense boss

could look the American public

and

straight in the eye

talk sense, he

made

himself the

During the 1980s he became a media personality as well as a corporate executive. At one point, there was serious talk of running him for pres-

embodiment of

Chrysler.

main achievement was his rescue of the failing Chrysler automobile company. Ironically enough for someone who talked the case for free enterprise so

ident. Iacocca’s

authoritatively, Iacocca saved Chrysler

ernment

subsidy

Iacocca called

to

upon

bail

the

industrial policy that

the

by securing a gov-

company

Indeed,

out.

government to frame a national

would make

U.S. business

more

competitive. His rescue of Chrysler turned out to be a

short-term achievement. Eventually, failed to prosper,

it

when

the

was bought up by Daimler

company in a deal

that has not proven to be a success. In the early 1990s Iacocca wrote his memoirs, calling the

book

career,

At one point, in reviewing his he complained about how the American corporate Straight Talk.

community was changing. production and looking to

It

was

losing

make money

its

interest in

in other

ways -

through finance and speculation. Younger executives, Iacocca said, no longer cared about making cars. They

would rather

talk

about

real estate. Iacocca

was

register-

had come over the U.S. business community during the Reagan presidency. As

ing the astonishing change that

66

The Corp orados vicious as businessmen were in the past,

had

at least left

Morgan and Carnegie

in

McCormick

the

deep family roots

Rockefellers

Pittsburgh, in

of them

behind major companies that produced

Many had

hard goods.

many

New

in

Henry Ford

Some even

Chicago.

in their city: J.P.

Andrew

York,

in

Detroit, Cyrus

retired into philan-

thropy after piling up vast personal fortunes. Iacocca realized that

watching the end of an

all

this

was

passing; he

was

Manufacturing was begin-

era.

ning to leave the United States, exported to cheap-labour

soon to be followed by high-tech service

areas,

jobs.

Paper profits based upon esoteric financial transactions

way

enormous earnings. The big corporations were abandoning factories and assembly lines, with results that nobody could

were proving to be a

faster

have imagined a generation

automobile giant, was

home

ating

light

General Motors, the

now making more money

negoti-

Thanks to the comcould now be made by moving money

loans than selling cars.

puter, vast profits

around the

earlier.

of posting

financial

markets of the world

at the

speed of

twenty-four hours of every day. Arbitrage, the most

sterile

form of

enterprise,

had become more profitable

than production. Globalization made

move

it

possible not only

around the world but to off-shore every aspect of production and marketing. The supercEOs were assuming life and death power over entire economies. Nothing but profit determined their loyalty and alleto

capital

giance.

As assembly-line manufacturing began to wither away in the United States, the key industrial cities that had made the United States an economic colossus in the days of Carnegie and Ford went into steep decline. Industrial centres throughout the Northeast and Midwest were declining into what would come to be called the “rust 67

WORLD, BEWARE! ceos, with

belt.”

little

interest in the heritage they

were

became less connected with a company, a product, or a place. Thus their management strategy might seek to downsize or even eliminate whole sectors

leaving behind,

company they manage. At the extreme, they might decide to move the entire company to another part of the country or beyond its shores. If the company finally died, of the

they were free to quit and take jobs elsewhere.

was to widen the gap between industrial management and its workforce, as well as between superCEOs and the companies they head. The

result of

changes

like these

That gap, in turn, translated into power, transforming the superCEOs into a new political class that has no loyalty to the nation, its

In the 1980s the elite as

workforce, or

its

people.

media celebrated

proof of America’s

the hard-charging bosses

ability to

who had

this

new

business

compete. These were

the

machismo

to take

over companies and reorganize them, often stripping

away jobs and low-profit operations. The polite name for them was “turn-around managers.” They were also called “killer ceos.” Their assignment was to squeeze as

much

profit

from

companies as possible. One legrewarded CEO of the period - A1 Duntheir

endary and richly lop - was called “Chainsaw.” His specialty was hacking a

company selling off

This

is

to pieces, firing people in all directions, then

anything that was not making enough

profit.

and mean.” Dunlop eventually problems after ruining a major by the stockholders and became

called being “lean

ran into serious legal

company; he was fired one of the few ceos ever to be fined by the government. Meanwhile, Jack Welch, the most admired ceo of the

1990s, took over General Electric, the nation’s largest

producer of quickly set

equipment and appliances, and to work downsizing his workforce. At the electrical

68

The Corp orados expense of

many

back on

jobs, he cut

things electrical

all

and expanded ge into entertainment and financial services, forms of business that the company had never done before but that were of goods.

When

he

now more lucrative stepped down from

than the old the

line

company

in

2000, Welch put together the richest retirement package in history.

It

included lifetime use of the

company

jet

and

limousine and season tickets to various sporting events.

Welch’s luxurious retirement became the talk of the business world, the sure sign of a great man. For the

ceos, the only measure of success they respect

money

they

make under

is

new the

lucrative contracts that guaran-

them a prosperous retirement even if they have ruined the company. In April of 2003 Fortune the leading business magatee

,

zine in the United States,

ing corporate

ceos

produced

a front cover depict-

as well-dressed pigs.

It is

surely a sign

of the times that a magazine of such conservative charac-

condemnation of the corporate community. The cover article detailed the myriad ways in which ceos enrich themselves at the expense of stockholders, employees, and the public. A few statistics tell the story. In 1988 the best-paid ceo in America made $40 million. By 2000 a mere $40 million in compensater

should be so frank in

tion

its

would not have placed

that

ceo among

the top ten.

In that year the richest executive officer in the United

States (the

head of Citigroup) earned $290 million; the

next in line (another Citigroup executive) earned $225

on the list earned $164 million. Between 1990 and 1998 the average compensation of top ceos at the ten largest corporations rose by 480 percent.

million;

Yet

the

in

third

an era when the corporados are proving to be

more rapacious and more disregarding interest than ever before, they

69

have seen

of the fit

public

to designate

WORLD, BEWARE! who

themselves as uniquely those nations.

If so,

they are also the country’s greatest wealth

A

generation ago, in the 1960s, the ceos of

consumers. the

create the wealth of

country’s

largest

corporations

earned

twenty-five

2001 they were paid over four hundred times more. It was only

times

more than shop-floor workers. As

of

after the recent spate of corporate scandals that share-

holders

made

a serious effort to rein in executive

com-

pensation. Still,

a prosperous

greatest asset.

they

take

ceo

ceos negotiate when corporation guarantee them huge

The contracts

over

a

regarded as a company’s

is

that

salaries, spectacular perquisites,

rich retirement plan (as of

2004

bonuses, tax breaks, a the average severance

package for ceos of major companies was $16.5 million) - and all this even if the company fails. If the company’s earnings

fall

rewards

may

now

and employees must be

laid off, the ceo’s

actually increase. In hard times companies

“ceo retention” - a scheme launched by ceos themselves, based on the assumption that only a well-paid ceo will be able to save a troubled company. For example, in my state of California, the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, one of nation’s largest energy companies, was so poorly managed that in 2002 it had to declare bankruptcy, pg&e had committed itself to a poorly conceived (and in many ways deceptive) deregulation scheme that proved disastrous both for the company and the public. Nevertheless, after bankrupting the firm, pg&e executives paid themselves a bonus of $80 million. The ceo awarded himself $17 million, presumably to keep himself from leaving the company. The logic is marvellous. If the corporation prospers, pay the ceo more; if it goes broke, pay him still more. The ceo is the captain of the ship; if it begins to flounder, practice

70

The Corporados only he can keep

it

from sinking.

In the presence of a

predatory ceo, shareholders, employees, and boards of directors can find themselves mercilessly cheated.

If

a

Marx were to appear, he might try to inspire revolution among shareholders rather than among the new

Karl

proletariat.

At

this point,

question.

What

it

might be good to pause and ask a

motivates the superCEOs?

I

have been

attributing their behaviour to greed. But does greed ade-

why a man will drive himself to earn when he already has billions? Perhaps we

quately explain

more

millions

are dealing with something

chotic need to eat

more

like gluttony,

more even when one has no

suspect that the corporados are motivated by a

a psy-

appetite.

I

mad com-

pulsion, a competitive fever that only a psychiatrist could

understand. After of

sort

money

behaviour

is

all,

nobody could possibly spend

the

that the superCEOs are earning. Their

like the players in a hotly contested

game,

each struggling desperately to score more points than the

becomes a matter of pride to outclass your rivals by making a few million dollars more. Greed can be gratified, but wanting more points than your competitors never ends. For ceos who view their careers as a sport, it is impossible ever to have enough because there is always somebody ahead of you in the race whom you must overtake, or somebody coming along behind you. others.

We

It

tolerate behaviour like that in adolescent boys

are out to prove their little

manhood, but among

adults

who it

is

short of insane.

THE GREAT CORPORATE CRIME WAVE Whatever

ceos does what the law allows. Over the past two

their true motivation, the avidity of

not stop short at

7i

WORLD, BEWARE! decades the United States, along with other nations, has been living through the worst corporate crime wave in history. In the financial

pages of any U.S. newspaper,

most of the stories are about criminal misconduct either proven or under investigation, and the firms involved are

among

the largest in the land.

The new climate

of corporate financial permissiveness

can be traced back to the early 1980s. Following tion to the presidency in 1980,

of his

first official

ings-and-loan

his elec-

Ronald Reagan made one

acts the deregulation of the nation’s sav-

institutions,

the

country’s

second-largest

banking system. These were home-loan banks created during the Roosevelt New Deal in the 1930s for the single purpose of lending money to buy or build homes. In total these banks held trillions of dollars in assets. Reagan’s deregulation allowed the s&ls to do anything they wanted

with their money; there would be no government oversight. It was as if a signal had been given: the policeman has been taken off the job;

feel free to steal all

you can.

what happened, s&l funds were appropriated for every wild and fraudulent scheme imaginable. The savings-and-loan system was rapidly and efficiently pillaged by crooked financiers (some of them linked to organized crime) in what has been called “the greatest

That

is

exactly

swindle in the history of the world.”

Some

arrests

were

made, but only a handful of culprits were punished. So many embezzlers were accused and indicted that the courts could not bring

them

all

to

trial.

Since savings-and-loan institutions were insured by the federal government, the general public

with the figure

full

that

was saddled

cost of paying off the debts left behind, a

amounted

to

several

thousand dollars for

every taxpayer in the country. That should have served as a

wake-up

call

for

the

public,

72

which should have

The Corp orados registered with considerable alarm that the business

munity had

com-

hands of bandits. I remain mystified by the complacency with which this monumenfallen into the

was greeted by

American people. In any case, the savings-and-loan debacle was only the beginning. Over the next two decades the United States found itself drowning in the most damning accumulation of business fraud and financial misconduct in the nation’s

tal act

of larceny

history.

Some

the

of these events, like the scandal surround-

power company whose main execufriends of George W. Bush and Dick

ing Enron, the Texas tives

were close

Cheney, made international news. in

2000, Enron’s leaders

supporters

summoned

to

Upon Bush’s election were among the first campaign Washington. They came to map

out a new, more lucrative energy policy for the entire

United States. The meetings, presided over by Vice-President Cheney, were held in secret. These were private ceo meetings, with no consumer groups or environmentalists invited.

The Enron scandal of 2001 and 2002 instructive.

It

is

particularly

represents corporate criminality at

its

zenith.

Enron, a natural gas company founded no further back than 1985, rapidly manoeuvred

itself

into the nation’s

power grid in a way that would allow it to make enormous profits, especially in a deregulated market. Its first effort at middle-manning electrical power was underelectrical

taken in Britain in 1988 following the Thatcher government’s privatization of the power industry. In 1994 Enron positioned

itself to

well-financed

do the same

movement

in the

United States as a

for deregulating the

power indus-

up speed. Deregulation was sold to the public with the usual argument that competition in the free market would guarantee lower prices. So far that has haptry picked

pened nowhere

in

the country.

73

What

deregulation did

WORLD, BEWARE! produce was an opportunity for companies like Enron to “game” the market - meaning to manipulate supplies to secure the highest price.

thing like this

happen

in

was

full

It is

a sign of the times that any-

possible at

all, let

alone that

it

could

public view and not be seriously ques-

tioned.

Enron had become the conduit for much of the nation’s energy supply. The company was in the business of channelling electricity from one market to another by a simple flick of a switch. What was the switching all about? Profit. There was no need for Enron In short order

to exist at

all. It

was

there simply to track energy markets

across the United States, instantaneously redirecting electricity to the

ing

most

more than

women

lucrative areas.

a building in

Enron

Texas

itself

filled

was noth-

with

men and

computer monitors, looking for the most profitable way of diverting electricity from one place to another. As highly questionable as this practice was, it was a legal activity made possible by deregulation. It also displayed how computer power can be abused for the purposes of profiteering. Telephone tapes and internal memos recovered from Enron after the comstaring at

pany collapsed

into bankruptcy reveal

profiteering could be.

The

recordings,

how

filled

brutal that

with laughter

and obscenity, disclose the sadistic glee that Enron energy traders took in bilking the public, especially the “grandmothers” of California, by which they seemed to mean all the easy marks in the state. On its legal operations alone, Enron made billions of dollars.

But that was not enough. Not content with

wringing the highest possible prices out of the U.S. energy market, Enron created hundreds of shore businesses in order to disguise

up

its

profits.

The company went 74

its

fictitious off-

debts and to run

further: in

what

is

The Corp orados surely the worst of plicity of

its

many

crimes,

major accounting firms

it

enlisted the

in these frauds.

comLong

held to be the foremost guarantee of business honesty, the bookkeepers

became part of the corruption. Enron’s

accountants and auditors adjusted their records to report

enormous profits, conceal debts, and hide criminal dealings. By way of bribes, Enron prevailed upon one of the nation’s most respected accounting firms, the Arthur Andersen company, to cover up its dubious activities. Andersen, destined to be dragged down and destroyed by Enron (though not before it had shredded thousands of records), became the first major firm to reveal how ethically questionable the accounting industry had become. were given a special place in the U.S. economy as the trusted watchdogs of the marketplace. But once it became known that In times past, big accounting firms

Anderson had helped Enron undermine the investments of its own employees and drain the company pension fund, it was clear that nobody could trust anything any corporation stated about this

has

left

its

financial condition. In effect,

the general public with

no way of believing

anything corporations report about their earnings, their indebtedness, their most basic economic

statistics.

Book-

keeping, the most elementary aspect of the capitalist sys-

tem, has become utterly untrustworthy.

Because corporate lobbyists have diluted every effort

and accounting practices, U.S. busifantasyland of crooked numbers, mass

to reform financial

become a deception, and secret ness has

been called.

No

deals:

“crony capitalism,” as

significant reforms

it

has

have been imposed,

only a few minor corporate leaders have been convicted

and punished. The corporados have weathered the

The game goes

on.

75

crisis.

WORLD, BEWARE!

THE MARIE ANTOINETTES OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMY When

Franklin Roosevelt lashed out at the “economic

royalists” of the 1930s, he could never

much worse tions.

things might

The major ceos

become

in

have guessed

how

another few genera-

of the United States today have

been called the Marie Antoinettes of the modern world.

They have become a separate, self-selected, self-governing caste. They appoint the highest corporate officers in their companies, and they staff their boards of directors with friends. They do not balk at exploiting their shareholders as savagely as they do the general public. They pursue their jobs with a “public be damned” air that matches the contempt of old Commodore Vanderbilt, the great railroad tycoon of America’s Gilded Age. For all practical purposes, they are above the law. for crimes, they

know

that

later,

If

they are ever indicted

as part of endlessly pro-

tracted legal manoeuvring, their lawyers will find a

way

them out of the accusation and leaving them as rich as Croesus. Throughout the 1990s numerous ceos violated every rule and regulation on the books; some high-profile arrests took place, but few of the major executives suffered any punishment at all. Most of them arranged settlements that permitted them to keep the money they had looted from their companies or stolen from their employees; many even gave themselves extravagant rewards - usually in the form of bonuses and pension plans worth millions of dollars - as they left their of bargaining

companies. These, then, are the people

who dominate

U.S. poli-

Through their control of parties and politicians, they exert power on a worldwide scale and yet are essentially

tics.

responsible to nobody. In the course of the last twenty

76

The Corp orados years they have lost

mal

interest in maintaining even mini-

all

respectability. If anything, they

flagrant as they have

most privileged

become more

have become more invulnerable.

They

walk the face of the Earth since the aristos of the ancien regime and as of this date there are no guillotines in sight. Can anybody “prove” that these ceos are the force behind the new American imperium? The question is absurd - not are the

class of people to

,

because the corporados are so expert at hiding their

They have no need

tracks.

place.

to leave tracks in the

These are not people

who

They have no need

to

first

conspire to achieve their

exchange whispered messages or clandestine documents. They comprise a comgoals.

munity of

and so integrated with desires are communicated spon-

interest so tightly knit

power that their taneously. They are like so many bodies linked to a single bram that thinks profit profit profit. All they need do is political

,

to eliminate whatever

the marketplace,

by

,

government regulation remains

and the void

in

will be filled automatically

their interests.

One might

expect, as a matter of principle, the cor-

porados to be solid conservatives, ited

government, the

free

property rights. But there

strict

market, basic is

adherents of limcivil liberties,

and

not a single aspect of conser-

vative philosophy that they have not

has been in their interest to do so.

abandoned when

Which

is

it

only to say

As a matter of historical record, the U.S. business community has never really wanted a diminished role for government. What it wants is a big, powerful government that will serve its interests. It wants a Defense Department that passes out fat contracts; it wants armed forces that will protect its overseas investments - and perhaps pick up a few spoils of war, such as the Iraqi oil fields. It wants an Interior that business people are not philosophers.

77

WORLD, BEWARE! Department that

will license oil-drilling,

deforestation,

and strip-mining. It wants access to tax-funded government debt. It wants the support of the Federal Reserve Board in stabilizing the economy and perhaps manipulating it for maximum profits. It has no problem with the dangers posed to civil liberties by an increasingly intrusive Homeland Security Department or an expanded FedBureau of Investigation, because it has never valued any freedom except the freedom to make money. It has

eral

no

real objection to high taxes, as long as

have to pay them. After ing-class

all,

and middle-class

loan guarantees, bailouts,

it

does not

taxes - collected from work-

- are what pays for subsidies, and miscellaneous

citizens

forms of what has come to be called “corporate welfare,” programs that allow corporations to siphon off govern-

ment money on its way to some authorized purpose. Taxes - yours and mine - are also what will be used to pay

off the lawsuits that are

brought against corpora-

damages and legal defence is written off as deductions. Doing business with the government has always been the fastest way of making a fortune in capitalist societies. There is no investment on Wall Street that beats buying legislators and legislation, and no better business strategy than hiring Washington insiders.

tions, as the cost of

As

for the free market,

one cannot name a single cor-

poration that ever voluntarily sacrificed monopoly power in

order

to

keep

Microsoft in our

the

own

marketplace competitive. day, every

Like

major U.S. company

and Andrew Carnegie has made the elimination of rivals and control of the largest possible market share its highest priority. Ironically, it is only government intervention during peri-

since

the

days of John D.

Rockefeller

ods of liberal political leadership that has kept the cartels,

trusts,

and conglomerates from devouring the economy. 78

The Corp orados World War II, no interest group in the land has worked harder to keep government big and costly than has corporate America. But the corporados want the bigness on their side, and they want the costs paid by those Since

who

cannot afford to finance off-shore tax dodges. What corporate America means by “shrinking” the government is

eliminating social programs that benefit middle-class

and working-class families or, where possible, privatizing government programs and converting them into forprofit businesses.

There

more

another,

is

troubling,

influence

that

ceos of the current generation have in U.S. political life. Their money has bought them adulation. Their values have come to permeate American culture as never before. As their stature and glamour have grown, ceos have tapped into the American infatuation with fame and fortune. They have set the standard for leadership in our society. Tough, decisive, practical, they are celebrity

the

men who know how

to get things done,

men who

expect unquestioning loyalty from their underlings. They are under at all

no obligation

to explain themselves to

anyone

- not shareholders, not employees, not the public

at

They claim the right to wield power with absolute authority and total secrecy. Even their arrogance and large.

their frequent acts of clear dishonesty

models of “sucnobody expects those who run companies

ished the public’s admiration for cess.”

It is

as

if

them

have not dimin-

as

worth billions to be kind, honourable, or democratic. In early 2004 one of the major TV networks screened a new “reality” show starring the New York property developer Donald Trump as a hard-nosed but glamorous boss in search of a new employee. The contestants who took part in the show were expected to become beasts of prey willing to

do anything

to eliminate their rivals

79

and gain

WORLD, BEWARE! the boss’s favour. That, the

show

told

youthful audi-

its

how you become as rich as Donald Trump. These are the men to whom politicians must look

ence,

is

the funds they need to

values were to

them

bound

win

for support.

And

At some point ceo

elections.

to rub off

on the

for

who

politicians

at last this

is

look

the style of gov-

ernment that was brought to Washington by George W. Bush and his vice-president, Dick Cheney. Gulf War II is a perfect

Bush

example of policy made

felt justified in

in the

ceo

spirit.

If

undertaking war against Iraq in a

high-handed, secretive, manipulative way, he was simply

running bis government in the

way

that a

ceo runs

bis

company.

DARWINISM REDUX Many

mention here are not unique to the American corporate community. As the global economy solidifies, corporations headquartered in of the characteristics that

I

every nation have taken on similarly ruthless characteristics.

The corporate

elite

are well

on

their

way

to

becom-

- an encapsulated entrepreneurial fraternity that grows more disconnected from any national identity as it grows more integrated. As a public virtue, “patriotism” is something now expected of those who pay taxes or shed blood to ing an international society in their

own

right

defend the nation, but not of the ceos. Their allegiance pledged elsewhere: to the international republic of

is

profit.

For example, at a corporate conference in January

2004, Carly Fiorina, a former ceo of Hewlett-Packard (and one of the very few women to reach the heights of

announced that there was “no job that is America’s God-given right anymore.” She was defending the growing practice of outsourcing high-tech

the corporate world)

80

1

The Corp or ados jobs to China. Indeed, the very purpose of the conference she

was addressing was

make

it

to

demand

even easier for companies to

Her warning was willing to

government

that the

move

jobs offshore.

American workers are accept the same low wages paid to Chinese clear:

unless

workers, they will lose their jobs. She did not mention that well over half of the “Chinese” companies that she

claims to be competing with are U.S. -owned. The jobs

What can we

leave the United States, the profits stay.

expect from business leaders

who

breakfast

flying the flag of the tax-free

head

in

New

Tokyo? One the world may be

York, lunch in Brussels, and have dinner

day every multinational corporation

in

Cayman

in

Islands over

its

office.

Searching for cheap labour

is

common enough

in the

global economy; but American corporados have diverged

from the capitalism of other nations. They have become fanatically infused with a religious commitment to Darwinian self-interest. This has happened because radically

they have fallen under the spell of triumphalist ideologues

who

take pride in the harshness of their social

and whose goal is to repeal everything that has been done over the past century to tame the rapaciousness of early industrial capitalism. Given the enormous ethics

industrial productivity of the world’s developed nations,

some way of making life less and less secure and to keep working people scrambling to keep their jobs. But that is what the corporados have managed to do. it

takes a certain genius to find

In reviving the social Darwinist ethic, the corpora-

dos draw heavily on a body of folklore that

is

ingrained in the American soul. Americans

honour

frontier

worldview

in

which

it is

every

man

In the early pioneering days, self-reliance

8

still

deeply a

for himself.

was

a necessity

WORLD, BEWARE! of

life

-

as

in all

it is

newly

settled societies.

But as every

knows, those who struggled to settle the American frontier were desperate to replace it with a more benign social order, and they did so as rapidly as they could. Once the land had been settled, the cities that followed were built by government. The basic amenities of life were laid on, taxes were levied to pay for schools and public services, a federal marshal was brought in to

historian

drive off the gunslingers.

That was

won. The harshness of the

new

replaced by a

the west

was

was spontaneously

social contract that anticipated a

secure and civilized order of ing in frontier

frontier

how

life.

And what was happen-

America was happening across the urban-

industrial world.

A

small history lesson the

In

later

years

is

of

in order.

the

Victorian

period,

the

English statesman Joseph Chamberlain raised a pregnant question. Chamberlain

was

the rising star of William

was then championing an agenda of advanced social reforms. The program was called “municipal socialism.” Chamberlain, who wanted to push that agenda even further, asked, “What ransom will property pay for the security it enjoys?” He was phrasing the issue bluntly, but his words nicely dramatize a major transition in Western society. Throughout Western Europe, the late nineteenth century saw the beginning of a historical movement towards compassionate reforms that would spread the wealth of nations at least a bit more equitably. Yet as much as business Gladstone’s Liberal Party, which

ChamWhat we

leaders of that period might have been shocked, berlain

was announcing

call the

“public sector”

hope of

a

new

social

the

wave of

the future.

was being born, and with it system that was neither of the

or the right.

82

the left

The Corp or ad os Through

its first

two

centuries, industrial society

was

tormented by dreams of ideological perfection. Conservaelaborated the free market into a comprehensive sys-

tives

tem of

and economics. Radicals invented grand designs for collective ownership under a paternalistic state. If we have learned anything, it is that ideological purity

ethics, politics,

is

unattainable;

more ominous

still,

the effort to

achieve such purity leads to fanaticism and coercion.

Despite the ideological fevers of blazed so hotly in

modern

left

and

right that have

politics, the general trend of

.Western and Japanese capitalist societies over the past

century has been towards mixed economies in which

planning and the public sector play an ever larger role

in

keeping the economy stable and relieving the severest kinds of poverty. In return for the freedom to do business

and frequently disruptive ways, everywhere have agreed to have buffers and

in innovative, risky,

capi-

talists

safe-

guards built into the economy to prevent the worst forms

The arrangement makes business community from

of instability and suffering. fect

sense.

It

spares the

responsibility of guaranteeing a floor under the

and

it

allows

it

more freedom

best: invent, innovate,

do what

to

and run

it

per-

the

economy,

claims to do

risks for the sake of

mak-

ing money.

Accordingly, most of these societies have generated a substantial welfare state. In every industrial society, there are

still

rich people; the entrepreneurial spirit continues

market continues to have its ups and downs. But there is also a central commitment on the part of politicians left, right, and centre, to to be generously rewarded; the

maintaining a shared, high standard of

living.

No more

Great Depressions, no more starvation wages.

commitment has not eliminated poor,

it

If

the extremes of rich

that

and

has at least narrowed the division between the

83

WORLD, BEWARE! how generous the retirement system can afford to be, how much money can be spent on schools and health care, how long paid vaca-

two. There

tions

may

still

be debates over

and leaves of absence should

be.

But there

is

nificant disagreement that these amenities should

no

sig-

have a

permanent claim upon the wealth of the nation. Out of a long history of welfare-state reforms, we have inherited a vision of what industrialism might become: the basis of a stable, healthy society that places a higher value on fair shares than on competitive acquisition.

There have been two exceptions to this trend: Great Britain since the Thatcher government and the United

Reagan presidency. With these two societies the later twentieth century saw a recrudescence of ruggedly individualistic capitalist ideology, a throwback to the primitive economic style of the nineteenth century. In both societies social programs have been systematically starved while economic policy has reverted to freemarket orthodoxy. Margaret Thatcher once said that her goal was “to kill socialism.” Ronald Reagan said his goal was “to get the government off our backs.” In both nations the bargaining power of organized labour was severely weakened, and substantial amounts of public property and public programs were privatized. At the same time, dismal forms of social Darwinism long defunct in the rest of the industrial world came roaring States since the

back into fashion.

As a result, in the United States the children of what the government quaintly calls the “working poor” go to bed hungry, sweatshops have reappeared streets of

our

cities,

in

the

back

over forty million people have no

unemployed are allowed to drop precipitously into poverty, and single mothers are deprived of welfare support and forced to take poorly access to health insurance, the

84

The Corp orados paid jobs. In

across the United

cities

libraries, public

schools,

parks, health clinics, and hospitals are

being cut back or closed unaffordable.

are

States,

down on

the grounds that they

Ordinary working-class

citizens

are

expected to bear the brunt of economic fluctuations in distant

corners

of the

world.

They

are

expected

to

approve of having jobs moved to cheap-labour markets and to let their standard of living fall. Simply to cite one

Reagan presidency of the 1980s, the reported number of homeless and derelict people who have been allowed to die of exposure, hunger, and disease in U.S. cities has risen steadily. The totals are now well above a hundred a year in most major cities. Not long ago, lethal neglect of this kind would have been intoleratelling statistic: since the

ble

even to conservatives in the United States. Like every

other developed society, America had

left

when people

Now, thanks

perished in the streets.

behind the days to the

Darwinian recrudescence, things have changed.

The corporados

way

see hardship like this as a legitimate

of disciplining the labour force of the nation and of

punishing the poor. They

call

it

“freeing”

people of

dependency. In their eyes, subjecting the population

good soul of the nation. Making workers compete for large to the insecurity of the marketplace

is

at

for the jobs,

if

not their very survival, supposedly encourages initiative

and resourcefulness -

Above to be social

all,

qualities that

made America

fighting for one’s daily bread forces

more

like

them:

alert, self-reliant,

great.

everybody

tough. Like

all

Darwinists of the past, the corporados regard

themselves as the very flowers of civilization.

By a convenient coincidence, the Darwinian management style of the killer ceos has turned out to be ideal training for the global economy that got underway in the 1990s. Thanks to the great trade and tariff treaties 85

WORLD, BEWARE! negotiated in that era, the ceos of the United States have

been free to discard narrow nationalistic considerations. In negotiating

nafta and gatt, President

Bill

Clinton, a

Democrat, gave the corporados the greatest gift they have received from any president since Calvin Coolidge beat back the trade unions in the 1920s. U.S. corporations

can

now

export goods, factories, capital, and entire

industries across the globe.

As they do

so, jobs are trans-

ferred to cheap-labour areas, leaving millions of Ameri-

can workers, some of them highly trained professionals, to

go unemployed or take any job they can

programmer who earns $65,000

puter

United States can

now

be replaced by one

find.

A

com-

a year in the

who

earns only

$10,000 in India or Pakistan. In effect, major U.S. companies under the direction of killer ceos are undermining their

own economy. But

they see such disloyalty as a

healthy development, a return to the old to the

work

ethic

and

natural order of things in which only the

fit

deserve to survive.

THE IDOLATRY OF MARKETS Among

the corporados, the infatuation with markets has

reached a cult-like status. The word - usually undefined

and without

historical specificity

modern

-

is

taken to summarize

won

Cold War. “Markets” are the world’s guarantee of freedom and prosperity. “Markets” are the panacea for all social ills. Like the Christian missionaries who went out to convert heathen peoples to the one true faith, the American corporate community now brings the gospel of markets the course of

history.

“Markets”

the

to a benighted humanity.

From there

is

no

the viewpoint of triumphalist conservatives, limit to the role of

86

markets

in

our time. The

The Corporados extremes to which

nebulous concept can be extended

this

have become ludicrous. For example, consider the Policy Analysis Market proudly proposed by the Pentagon in

2003

July

as a

new weapon

in the

war on

terrorism.

Developed by the highly prestigious Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, this project sought to create an Internet futures for the idea

market

for terrorist incidents.

was based on

The model

futures trading in currencies

and commodities, but in this case investors would be betting on bombings, assassinations, hijackings, and the overthrow of governments. The justification offered for the program was the value of an economic model called the Efficient Market Hypothesis as a means of collecting reliable information. The assumption was that knowledgeable people around the world would draw upon their

estimates

of future

terrorist

say,

an attack on the

month were booming, ity

and

their

could develop leads for investigation. for,

activities

money accordingly. By watching which way smart money was pointing, U.S. intelligence agencies

wager the

best

that

Eiffel

If terrorist

Tower within

must indicate

futures

the next

a high probabil-

of such an attack occurring.

some news media reported it as if it were a joke or a hoax. The program was quashed the next day, but it was a serious proposition; the Defense Department had already spent nearly a million dollars on it and wanted three million more. What was instructive was how much the proposal overlooked. As critics were quick to point out, terrorist acts are hardly like wheat or oats, products that often fluctuate beyond human control. What a gift such a program would be for al-Qaeda; it would be perfectly free to take out futures either to make money on its own attacks or, more likely, to manipulate the probabilities in ways

The proposal was so outlandish

87

that

WORLD, BEWARE! would distract and confuse. Indeed, that so obvious flaw was overlooked indicates how blinded people can

that a

be by anything that wears the label “markets.”

“Markets” has become the God-word of the American right wing. If the corporados have their way, there will be a market solution for every problem. Education?

Disband the public school system

in

favour of providing

vouchers that parents can “spend” on any school of their choice. Health care? Let private

companies compete to

medical insurance policies. Pensions? Let retirement

sell

savings be diverted into the stock market to find the best earnings. Environmental protection?

Any number

of mar-

ket incentives have been suggested to replace regulatory legislation: for

example,

up pollution

set

credits that

can

be sold by clean companies to dirty companies; convert public land into private property so that it will be

guarded by the

self-interest of the

owners. Incredible as

it

some hyperconservative environmental groups favour selling off the oceans of the world and all the seems,

resources in them. These organizations have published

papers on

how

to brand schools of fish to identify

them

as private property.

Market

enthusiasts have even found a solution for

money

the corrupting influence of

Simply stop worrying about tics.

The marketplace

is,

it.

in

American

politics.

Let markets replace poli-

so they believe, the most

demo-

mechanisms. Think of people as consumers rather than citizens. To spend is to vote - to vote with dollars. What people buy is what they want. If they

cratic of all social

freely

then

spend more on basketball than on grand opera,

it is elitist

for the

subsidize the opera.

If

government to use tax dollars to they would rather have a home

entertainment centre than public schools, so be all

it.

Once

public programs and institutions have been translated

88

The Corp orados into

market terms, what

will there be for politicians to

do? The invisible hand of the free market will

settle all

issues.

why should elections not be as open money as the marketplace? Just as con-

For that matter, to the free use of

sumers buy products,

who

buy

politicians

let

votes.

Those

have the money to pay for votes should be allowed

do so. The freedom to buy votes is no different from freedom of speech. Money is the eloquence of the rich.

to

Let those

whom

the market has favoured have the right

- and not

to use their wealth to purchase political office in

some

guilty, surreptitious

In the course of the last

way, but openly and proudly.

two decades more and more

lionaires have used their

own money

mil-

to finance election

campaigns. In 1996, a candidate for the U.S. Senate from California spent over $40 million of his his

campaign. (He

lost.)

A

own money on

candidate for mayor of

York City spent over $70 million. (He won.) Americans are coming to see millionaire politicians

New

Many as the

solution to the hopelessly corrupt condition of the existing electoral system. Millionaires are seen as honest can-

didates because they use their

own money;

they do not

have to make deals with anybody.

In

2002

a

television

series

titled

The Commanding

Heights premiered on the Public Broadcasting System the

United States, where

many

times.

It

was

it

in

was subsequently shown

a well-funded, highly touted produc-

tion scripted by the economist Daniel Yergin. Given the

money and

brains behind the series,

it

may

record for the most perniciously erroneous broadcast. Yet by virtue of

89

its

hold the

work

ever

very misconception,

it

WORLD, BEWARE! reveals

much about

the infatuation of triumphalist con-

servatives with markets.

It

also offers in

one convenient

main assumptions underlying what American foreign policy may soon become under the control of the corporados and their intellectual henchmen. At the outset of the series, a dichotomy is set up. The

package

all

history of

the

modern economic thought, we

between a

left

wing and a

“market economics”

have

Hayek and

right wing.

are told, oscillates

On

represented

as

Much

the Chicago school.

the right,

we

by Friedrich

of the series

is

a

paean to the genius of Hayek based on the assumption that he

the greatest economist since

is

Adam

years he has spent lacking appreciation are length; his triumphant

The many bemoaned at

Smith.

emergence from the wilderness pro-

vides the dramatic structure of the production.

Now

Hayek is the right wing of modern economics, what do we have on the left? One might have expected some reference to a socialistic or even communistic source. Karl Marx, perhaps? Mao Tse Tung? The British Fabians? The social democrats? But no. For if

Daniel Yergin, the far

represented by the British

left is

economist John Maynard Keynes and the welfare

There

is

of Keynes in ist

a consensus

among

historians that the role

modern economics was

system during

its

to save the capital-

darkest hour - which

way

state.

is

indeed the

which Keynes wanted to see his theories applied. To identify him as the supposedly discredited left-wing extreme amounts to an Orwellian revision of the historical record. Suddenly the utterly non-revolutionary

first

dreary century of industrial history, with

ery, strife, it,

in

and

the radical

injustice, vanishes

and

socialist

mis-

completely - and with

wing of modern economic

thought. The collapse of the Soviet is

all its

cited as a refutation of the entire

90

command economy argument

for social

The Corp orados justice

under capitalism. That leaves economic centrism

as the far-left

This its

is

enemy.

a revealing

way

of rewriting history.

practitioners to target liberalism as the

market.

free

significant

It

wipes out

all

much

as

means of produc-

None

tion, the regulation of the market.

so

main foe of the

issues of property rights,

unjust enrichment, the control of the

is

allows

the issues that once animated

economic debate -

moral questions

It

mentioned

of these great in the series.

Hardship and exploitation never happened; industrialism simply leaped into existence as a great good thing for concerned. Those

who

dared to

criticize

it

all

were ideologi-

cal malcontents.

This

foster in his

ans

in

,

society.

Hayek himself sought to 1954 anthology Capitalism and the Histori-

the viewpoint that

is

which he

No

offers a bizarre

account of industrial

sooner do the steam engines begin to roar in

working class is catapulted to a higher standard of living. There are statistics to prove the point. The price of tea and sugar dropped; underwear and funerals got cheaper. Why, then, the

Midlands of England than the

entire

do so many historians tell us that the Iindustrial Revolution was filled with hardship? Because the story has been systematically distorted by left-wing critics. Thus, left

Keynes came along,

to believe that before

we all

are

was

well with the industrial societies. There were no prob-

lems

that

required

whose lopsided the

government

theories are

left

intervention.

to stand unquestioned as

one correct way of viewing economic

declared to be right and Keynes

is

policy,

is

curtly dismissed as

no mention made of how Hayek’s notion market was the prevailing orthodoxy in eco-

wrong. There of the free

Hayek,

is

nomic thought until the Great Depression, when it became indisputably clear that an unregulated market 9i

WORLD, BEWARE! by an ethic of self-interest had chance of producing recovery within a fuelled

time

frame.

It

economists that

made

politically realistic

their theories.

Nor

in this series to the role that

nomics played Depression.

and had no

was not the prejudice of his fellow sent Hayek and the Chicago school of the wilderness after 1930; it was the

economics into obvious inadequacy of ence

failed

during the troubled

any

refer-

Keynesian eco-

worst damage done by the

in repairing the

Had Hayek

is

been called on to make policy

thirties, the

world might

still

be wait-

ing for the Great Depression to end.

But with the dismal 1930s

now

far

behind

us,

can

we assume that Hayek’s day has at last arrived? Only if we are prepared to join the triumphalists in their wishful Bear

thinking.

mind

in

Keynes and Hayek

is

that

the

difference

between

the difference between fact

and

pure theory. Keynes’s ideas bear the scars that come with historical application; Hayek’s ideas are framed in terms of an ideal market system that has never existed. Con-

main disagreement with Keynes. Hayek believed that any line of economic policy that did not rely totally on the market for its pricing mechanism would, of necessity, become dictatorial. As the producers of The Comsider his

by the end of the twentileaders everywhere had conceded

manding Heights would have eth century political that there

is

it,

no pricing mechanism superior to the com-

petitive market.

But that

is

sheer nonsense. For one thing, this view-

point allows only two choices: unregulated markets or dictatorial socialism. The economy must be one thing or the other.

We

are asked to ignore the plain fact that the

mixed economies, all of which have some combination of a public and a private sector. Among these economies we would find some, like those

world

is

made up

of

92

The Corp orados in

Germany, Holland, or the Scandinavian countries, that

have a large welfare-state

Have

sector.

the citizens of

these countries lost their freedom because they enjoy

decent health care and long paid vacations? States “freer” because

it

Is

the United

has forty million citizens

cannot afford health insurance? Moreover,

if

we

who

take the

United States as the world’s main capitalist economy, do

we

market in operation there? Hardly. By way of mergers and takeovers, major U.S. corporaactually find a free

tions have rapidly evolved into a congeries of oligopolies

that dictate prices.

One would

be hard-pressed to find a

single industry in the United States in

for that matter, wages, interest rates,

which prices - or, and the quality of

products - are any longer determined by market forces.

spokesman for the Ford Motor Company once put it when he was asked why Ford was raising the prices on its cars, “We’re doing it to keep up with our competi-

As

a

tion.”

With each passing year there are fewer and fewer companies in the United States competing for a share of the market for any major product or service. Some monopolies,

like

Microsoft, are so entrenched that the

government has given up on trying to control them. Almost by a law of nature, competition in the United States gravitates towards a chummy kind of oligopoly. If anything, the U.S. economy is an example of how the corporate system can vitiate the free market. If he were alive today,

would Hayek be honest enough

to recognize

that the private sector, in the absence of regulation, can

become socialist

as

much

a

command economy

as

any

state

system?

The predictions made by manding Heights are presented fest destiny of the

human

producers of

as

they were the mani-

race.

93

Com-

the if

The steady advance

of

WORLD, BEWARE! market economies

is

viewed as the

result of natural

law

triumphing over misconceived efforts to tamper with the

mechanisms of economic science. Left to itself so we are to believe - the global economy gravitates towards markets in the same way that the rain falls from the skies and the tides ebb and flow in the oceans. But, in fact, it is the relentless pressure and leverage of corporate delicate

interests that are

now

determining everything about the

economic future of the world. Globalization is the result of constant and frenzied efforts by entrepreneurs and financiers to make the world over in their image. Every meeting of the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, or World Bank is fraught with deals and manoeuvres whose purpose is to make the big banks and corporations of major nations richer and to quash every

more localized alternative. And where the power of money is not enough to produce that result, then blunt military force may be called in. That is what we see happening in the wake of Gulf War II. In effect, Iraq is a test smaller,

case for the grand global design of America’s corporate

community.

It

is

the proving

ground where the vision

presented with such scholarly restraint in

Commanding

Heights ceases to be a television program and becomes a blueprint for domination.

GULF WAR Gulf

War

II

II:

THE WAY WE DO BUSINESS TODAY

was supposedly fought with

the promise of

transforming Iraq into a democratic society. All through the 1990s, Washington triumphalists

view since the days of the

word

first

who had

this

war

in

president Bush were busily

Middle East were “dysfunctional.” These backward Arab societies needed to be dragged out of their medieval past into the spreading the

that the nations of the

94

The Corporados modern world. Supposedly Gulf War all

the blessings

would bring Iraq of freedom and prosperity. It would be II

benign, efficient, constructive.

But no sooner had victory been declared

in

Iraq

(remember “mission accomplished”?) than the promise of restoring Iraq to its people was crudely swept aside and covered over with obfuscation. It had never been more than propaganda. Long before even the most tentative form of democracy had appeared in Iraq, the American imperial pattern was emerging. With an American army of occupation

still

struggling to bring peace and safety to

the streets of Iraq’s major cities,

and long before basic

had been restored to a decent standard, the chief U.S. administrator in Baghdad was unilaterally turning Iraq into the nation that the corporados wanted it to be. Without offering the Iraqi population even token consultation, the Bush administration issued orders to eliminate all state-owned industries and replace them public

utilities

with privatized companies. Nothing

had ever been mentioned by the Bush administration in any forum - the United States Congress or the United Nations before the war. At the same time, all Iraqi import duties were scrapped

like this

at a stroke of the pen. Like

it

or not, the

people of Iraq, so Washington decided, were to have a

market economy open to global competition. That has

meant the destruction of nearly

all

businesses, since few of these can

existing Iraqi-owned

compete with cheaper

from more developed economies. Is this what the Iraqi people want? Does anybody in Washington care about what they want? By the time Iraq has a democratic government - if goods brought

in

comes - the country’s new economic order will have been established and its industrial assets will have been franchised to foreign interests. Water supplies, that day ever

95

WORLD, BEWARE! power - all will have been privatized, with many of them brought under foreign ownership. Policies like these, which come close to being plunder, would seem to violate international law, but Washinggas and

oil, electric

ton’s response to that

simply to

is

rattle its sabre.

And

who can take issue with the world’s only superpower? One might almost suspect that the protracted disorganization of postwar Iraq and the insecurity of daily

life

part of a deliberate effort to keep the defeated nation the brink of chaos while

appropriated by

its

its

riches

conquerors and

its

are

on

are systematically

economic future

is

locked into place. The American military occupation may end some day, but the American economic occupation will continue indefinitely. This

is

what makes

all

discus-

sion of an exit strategy in Iraq so painfully naive.

Com-

who must know better persist American military like so many boy scouts

mentators and politicians in

viewing the

who

will hasten

home

after they

have done their good

deed for the day. Oust Saddam, give the Iraqi people a

few lessons in civics, accept their thanks, and leave. Whether one wants to regard this scenario as an outright lie or a wishful fantasy, the truth is that the United States invaded Iraq to conquer and to occupy. The triumphalists may have set their sights on a quick victory that

would

leave troops available for swift redeployment to

other places. (Iran? Syria? North Korea?) But even

war bogs down, we

are there to stay. This

is

if

the

far too valu-

given up.

and economic real estate to be a quagmire can be an efficient

way

of social programs, provided

able a piece of military

to

And besides, suck money out

it

can be surrounded with patriotic rhetoric.

The occupation is already paying handsome diplomatic and economic dividends. By currying Washington’s favour, foreign leaders can hope to share the spoils of

96

The Corp orados war. At one point Canada, which did not support the

war,

was on

the no-contracts

list;

a bit later,

when

it

looked diplomatically advantageous, the Bush adminis-

Canadian firms to enter bids for or construction. Whether Republican or Demo-

tration decided to allow services

cratic, presidents in the future will find

it

difficult to give

up patronage like that. In effect, Iraq - or any other terrorist hotbed that the U.S. army occupies in the years to come - will become a slush fund used to bribe and reward. Whenever

we

hear U.S. policy-makers

tell

us that

the United States cannot simply pull out of Iraq or that

we have there,

tation

move

to

suspect the

I

is

cautiously towards true democracy

more compelling reason

reluctance to break off

all

for such hesi-

the lucrative deals

that have been financed out of the conquest.

With Gulf War

new

entered a

stockpile the

America’s superpower status

II,

Once content

phase.

weapons

to produce

of war, the Pentagon

now

and asks,

weapons go to waste? Why not use them - at least for such minor military operations as conquering lesser nations?” Once that has been

“Why

let

efficiently

these marvellous

accomplished (with deaths

in battle held to a

level that the public considers acceptable

- two hun-

dred, five hundred, six hundred), then the conquered

province

lies

open

economic exploitation by the

to full

corporados. Some firms,

like Bechtel

Corporation, will

be ready at hand to repair the damage to infrastructure.

Deals for that service are particularly sweet, because

who

ever inspects to see

done? And

if

The Congress

if

the

work has been adequately

the rebuilding has been shoddy, so what? will simply appropriate

more funds

to

do

Even before Gulf War II began in March 2003, Bechtel had been awarded contracts worth $680 million for construction work. By the job over again - and again.

97

WORLD, BEWARE! August of that year, Bechtel had decided that this would not be enough; accordingly, the U.S. administrators in Baghdad recommended giving Bechtel an additional

By then it had been revealed that the Halliburton Company had been awarded hitherto unpublicized contracts by the Army Corps of Engineers that would earn the company $1.7 billion. Other firms will

$350

in

million.

time doubtless receive no-bid contracts to develop the

economy

of the occupied nation.

what we see happening with Iraqi oil, already being promised away to major companies by the U.S. administrators on the scene. The firms that are rehabiliThis

is

tating the Iraqi oil fields have

open-ended arrangements.

money, they can simply return to ask for more if the cost of the project rises which, of course, it inevitably does. This is a variation on

Whatever the

original allocation of

the well-established cost overrun that has always been a feature of U.S. military contracting. to

produce a weapon.

good - mere

nickels

It

may

A

firm

makes

a bid

bid anything that sounds

and dimes. The

initial figure

does

not matter, because in another year the firm will be back

more on the grounds that the project has become more expensive. Think how profitable contracts for rebuilding whole countries can be on that basis. In the months preceding Gulf War II, spokesmen for the Bush administration stepped forward to ridicule protestors who charged that the war was about oil. The spokesmen suavely observed that if oil were the main

to ask for

reason for the war, the United States might simply follow the example of other nations (especially a few of our

European allies) and do business with Saddam Hussein. The implication was that U.S. companies were too highly principled to make deals with a bloody tyrant. This was untrue. Halliburton, the company once run by Vice-

98

The Corp orados Cheney and now receiving fat contracts to repair the Iraqi oil fields, was deeply involved throughout the 1990s with Saddam Hussein. Through subsidiaries in the Near East, it signed contracts with the same Baghdad regime that it would later insist on destroying. Cheney, as ceo of Halliburton, lobbied to have U.S. trade sanctions President

against Iraq lifted. Still,

sound.

the

Why

argument had not

settle for

superficially

reasonable

doing business with Saddam

War

Hussein? Because Gulf

a

II

achieved what no mere

business deal could. Deals require contracts that specify rules, limits, obligations.

Why

not sweep

all

that aside

and put the full force of America’s military power to work? A war fought at public expense allows the United States to conquer the oil reserves of Iraq and do with them as the president and his advisers see fit. And what

To

did they decide to do? the

form of

liberal

administrators and lic

franchise Iraqi oil reserves in

arrangements worked out by U.S.

oil

company

executives without pub-

scrutiny. Is this not a far better

arrangement than hav-

ing to negotiate with an erratic dictator under the eye of the United Nations?

As

what could was more advanta-

for the terms of that arrangement,

Saddam Hussein have

given that

geous than the deal the Bush administration had to

May 2003

White House issued an Executive Order governing contracts for U.S. oil companies in Iraq. Issuing an Executive Order is the most covert offer? In

the

action a president can take; such orders are a unilateral

by the president requiring no approval or consultation; they rarely attract much attention. But in this case act

Washington watch-dog group spotted Executive Order 13303, which bears the title “Protecting the Development Fund and Certain Other Property in Which Iraq a

99

WORLD, BEWARE! Has an

Interest.”

By the terms of eo 13303, U.S.

companies operating

in

Iraq

cannot be held legally

They

responsible for anything they do.

human-rights violations and

all

oil

are

immune from

forms of environmental

damage. They are exempt from lawsuits and criminal prosecution relating to contractual disputes, discrimination suits, labour law violations, international treaties,

and environmental disasters. The order grants total immunity from Iraqi, U.S., and international law to all individuals and corporations involved in producing, selling, and marketing Iraqi oil. As one public interest lawyer put

it,.

“It is a

blank check for corporate anar-

ceo politics at its purest: an unabashed effort to raise the American corporate community above the law, in much the same way that the monarchs of old were excused from all legal culpability. chy.”

Here

Nor

is

are these convenient arrangements limited to

With Iraq under U.S. control for the the country’s entire economy is open oil.

indefinite future,

to exploitation.

Bleeding Iraq for profit has already begun. country’s

most

lucrative possessions

that could give those

who

is

Among

the

water, a resource

run Iraq tremendous leverage

throughout the Middle East.

It

is

already clear

how

Washington intends to deal with water. The Bechtel Corporation has been awarded a no-bid contract to restore the entire water system of the nation - after which the system

is

likely to be

taken under private management in

same way that Western entrepreneurs have monopolized water systems in many African and Asian countries. The result has generally been to price clean water beyond what the poorest residents can afford. There seems to be no limit to how crass the corporathe

dos are willing to become, often without the least effort to cover

up

their greed.

Given the chance, they

ioo

will pick

The Corporados the carcass of defeated Iraq

down

May

to the bone. In

2003, with Operation Iraqi Freedom barely completed, Joe Allbaugh, an old Texas friend of George W. Bush and

2000 elections, quit the job he held in the administration and went into the war-profiteering business. He and others closely tied to Bush set up a consulting firm called New Bridge Strategies. The objective of its “consulting” was to give its clients an his

campaign manager

in the

On

inside track for gaining contracts in Iraq.

company announced, “The

the

its

website,

opportunities

Iraq

in

today are of such an unprecedented nature and scope

no other

and experience to be effective both in Washington D.C. and on the ground in Iraq.” The company, which includes no Iraqis, referred to its purpose as “cross-pollination.” Oththat

ers

would

call

existing firm has the necessary skills

it

influence-peddling.

would not be suralso do business in

I

prised to learn that people like this stolen wheelchairs.

So here science.

is

While

the state of the

our

troops

American

are

dying

political conin

Iraq

and

Afghanistan, close friends of our pious president scram-

from the nation’s imperial adventures. The president says nothing about the matter, and conservative pundits continue to celeble to

skim

all

the profits they can

brate his “leadership qualities.” If

the

corporados get what they want

in

Iraq -

namely, an endless supply of million-dollar contracts plus

an unfettered opportunity to take over the resources and the economic planning of a conquered nation - it may not be long before the American imperium becomes a private, for-profit,

off-the-shelf,

will be firms standing

regime-change

industry.

There

ready to fight the wars, organize

the occupation that follows, rebuild the ruined infrastructure that results

from the wars, IOI

recruit

new governments,

WORLD, BEWARE! and manage the postwar economy. There may even be private educational services hired to train the conquered population in the rudiments of high-consumption democ-

and hoards of evangelical true believers eager to save heathen souls from damnation. Most of this will be paid for by the taxpaying public, but there are other sources of revenue. During congresracy,

sional hearings before the Iraq war, there

who were

were

politicians

frank enough to admit that the United States

pay for the war and for whatever it might cost to rebuild the country to America’s specifications. The rebuilding would, of course, be done by U.S. companies. There was never any concern

would use

for

Iraq’s oil resources to

who would monitor

the bookkeeping for such a ven-

ture or ensure the quality of the work.

Would an

Iraqi

parliament or the U.S. Congress have any role to play in supervising this left

enormous undertaking? Or would

to the Pentagon, the Defense Department, the

it

be

Army

Corps of Engineers, and various favoured corporations? In the

summer

of 2003, the Halliburton

proposed a plan that would guarantee

it

Company

unrestricted

government funding for whatever it cared to do - or purported to be doing - in Iraq. Halliburton, which was caught

in early

2004 overcharging and taking kickbacks

on its Iraqi projects, proposed that it should be given a permanent claim to an off-the-top percentage of Iraq’s oil revenues. And in the event a future Iraqi government reneged on this arrangement, Halliburton proposed that the debt be transferred to U.S. taxpayers in the form of a special budgetary allocation.

Whatever happens in Iraq will surely become the model for future military occupations by the United States. There are always riches and resources of some kind that can be taken over, marketed, and merchandized

102

The Corporados by the side that wins - and the corporados stand ready to carry out the job. lage.

Once

this

would have been

American leaders prefer

to call

it

called pil-

“building democ-

racy.”

This penchant for an all-powerful, highly militarized state

under tight corporate control leads some

(like

myself) to perceive fascist tendencies in the American

business community.

It

may

be that few ceos give the

matter any thought as they scramble to accumulate profit

and

may

influence; they

simply see themselves as astute

entrepreneurs maximizing they can.

all

But deals made by people of such power

inevitably take the

form of

sidy,

criticism.

They become be protected from scrutiny

political policy.

sources of profit that have to

and

the business opportunities

Thus, contract by contract, subsidy by sub-

they are laying the foundations for exactly the sort

of corporate state that the fascist dictators of the twentieth century aspired to. fate,

it

will be despite

change our

If

what

the corporados have

done

to

society.

Sometimes the impersonal arrive at a

the United States avoids that

moment

social forces that

that gives

them

Such an emblematic moment for the

shape history

name and a face. new militarized cona

was the appointment of Paul Wolfowitz as head of the World Bank in March 2005. Why should the former Deputy Defense Secretary emerge as the best choice servatism

to

head the

largest,

international

banking institution?

Because as a leading architect of Gulf

War

II,

Wolfowitz

was foremost among those arranging for the elimination of Iraq’s public sector. Under his supervision the country’s state-owned enterprises were sold to private companies,

103

WORLD, BEWARE! and new investment laws were imposed that facilitated the creation of a market economy. In doing so, he was advancing the interests of what

Naomi

Klein (writing in

The Nation) has

called “disaster capitalism,” a rich,

new

opportunity

combine ideology, public

and

profit.

War,

redesign

to like

whole

policy,

natural disaster, offers the chance to societies

by

way

of

“reconstruction.”

Transforming Iraq into a market economy might be seen as Wolfowitz’s apprenticeship for heading up the World Bank. Along with the International Monetary Fund, has been reconstructing the

same

its

it

impoverished client nations by

principles for decades. In effect, disaster capital-

ism holds devastated societies up for ransom. Desperate

governments

in

war-torn or storm-damaged areas are told

that, in order to receive foreign aid, they

publicly

owned companies

must

retire their

in favor of private investors

and allow construction companies like Bechtel to rebuild their infrastructure on whatever terms and to whatever specifications the company cares to honour. No doubt triumphalists believe they are making good use of the disaster;

they are infusing a failed

economy with dynamic

entrepreneurial energy. Accordingly, as in Afghanistan,

or not and with no vote taken, the nation’s water,

like

it

oil,

gas,

mining, telecommunications, electrical power,

and health care has been opened to private business on favorable terms. Or, as in the countries devastated by the 2004 tsunami, land may be transferred from small owners - farming and fishing villages - to the international tourist industry.

August 2004, the interests of disaster capitalism were institutionalized under the Bush administration in the Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization, a signifiIn

cant but largely invisible victory for triumphalist policy-

makers. The

office

has drawn up plans for the rebuilding

104

The Corp orados some two dozen countries where the United States may be called upon to wage war against terrorists. The plans mandate that everything in the “post-conflict” sociof

ety should be privatized. “Pre-completed contracts” with

private

companies have been drawn up

Should the United States find

itself

drawn

in

advance.

into another

theater of the war, rapid-response teams will be able to

move

in fast to

improvise a market economy. The teams

will include private-sector consultants

and “democracy

and will, of course, enjoy the services of the United States Marine Corps in carrying out their liberatbuilders,”

ing mission.

105

FOUR The Triumphalists

“And this I said, ‘It seems likely that our rulers will have to make considerable use of falsehood and deception for the benefit of their subjects.

We

agreed,

was in the category was right,’ he said.”

‘And that

believe, that the

of medicine.’

use of such things “

I

Plato,

The Republic

“Hence, philosophy or science must remain the preserve of a small minority, and philosophers or scientists must respect the opinions

opinions

them

is

on which

To respect from accepting

society rests.

something entirely different

as true. Philosophers or scientists

who

hold

this

view about the relation of philosophy or science and

employ a peculiar manner of writing which would enable them to reveal what they regard as society are driven to

the truth to the few, without endangering the unqualified

commitment of the many to the opinions on which society rests. They will distinguish between the true teaching as the esoteric teaching and the socially useful teaching as the exoteric teaching.”

Leo

Strauss,

What

Is Political

Philosophy?, 1959

The Triumph alists

THE HYPERCONSERVATIVE ASCENDANCY n the United States, ists”

the people

I

call

“triumphal-

(and sometimes “hyperconservatives”) are more

I commonly known conservatives.”

as “neo-conservatives” or

“Reagan

prefer the term “triumphalist” because

I

it

better expresses the aggressive, winner-take-all intentions

of the

movement. The important point

umphalist brand of conservatism

is

is

not that the

“new,” but that

triit

is

most ruthless political faction to command the resources of a major political party in the ruthless. This

by

is

far the

nation’s history.

The people policy-makers

have

I

who

in

mind comprise

a small circle of

have both a foreign and domestic

agenda. They are few in number but strategically placed

With the exception of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who became a and

relentless in their determination.

Since the

names and

bound

change

to

affiliations of the

in the

years ahead,

ongoing policy orientation rather than

I

hyperconservatives are

refer to

them here

as an

as personalities. But in the

bound to show up again and again in American politics. The more prominent hyperconservatives in and around the George W. Bush administration include Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, formerly Undersecretary of Defense and now head of the World Bank, Douglas Feith,

years ahead a few leading figures are

Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, William Luti, Undersecretary of Defense,

James Woolsey, former head of the

Libby, Chief of Staff to the Vice-President,

of

Special

Defense,

Plans,

Robert Bolton,

now ambassador

to

the

Abram

cia,

I.

Lewis

Shulsky, Office

former Undersecretary United

Nations,

for

Richard

Armitage, Undersecretary of State, Richard Haas, Director State

Department of Policy Planning, Abram Shulsky, Director of Special

Plans,

Stephen Cambone, Undersecretary of Defense for

Michael Ledeen and Richard Perle of the American Enterprise Institute, Robert Kagan, David Frum, and William Intelligence,

Kristol, editor of

The American Standard.

107

WORLD, BEWARE! War

none of the

lead-

ing triumphalists holds a major cabinet position;

none

fleeting

media

star during

has been elected to crats

office.

who work on

Gulf

Most

II,

are second-level bureau-

top-secret committees, jockeying for

advantage as they make private alliances to favour some

and undermine others. Others are positioned outside government in think-tanks or on various conservative journals; they are the sort of pundits

who

are apt to

appear on news and talk shows to provide “expert opinion.”

As deeply buried

Washington, they have become quite better-informed public.

may be in official well known to the

as these figures

Few

administrators and policy

experts have ever received as

much comment

in

the

media. With each passing month, the American public if

it

is

member

paying attention - learns the name of another of the circle

who

has influenced the deliberations

of the Defense Department, the cia, the State Depart-

ment, or the Pentagon. Some appear on television

view shows pontificating about their

policies.

inter-

Triumphal-

do not shun the limelight. One senses that they believe they will one day be able to take their true intentions out of the shadows and win the rousing approval of the American public - and perhaps of the world at large. They may expect that one day people everywhere will cheer for the American imperium and offer thanks for the protection and prosperity it has brought them. Meanwhile, of course, they will have to bribe, dissemble, and coerce to get the modern world in shape. The triumphalists, the most intellectual of all Ameriists

can conservatives, are the

Reagan, one of the

political

progeny of Ronald

American presidents. In this odd coupling of the movie star and the policy-makers, all the brains were on one side and all the charm on the other. What the triumphalists found in least intellectual of

108

The Triumph alists Reagan was a persuasive anti-communist spokesman who had the charisma (at least on television) to appeal to a wide variety of voters. He could win over blue-collar workers and middle-class suburbanites; he could also attract Southern voters who had until the 1980s been a Democratic constituency. Out of these elements, Reagan created a powerful electoral coalition - the “new Republican majority,” as it came to be called. But in one important respect Reagan was not very Republican at all. He was a spendthrift. Though he called himself a “fiscal conservative,” he was willing to run up the highest deficits in U.S. history. Once he was installed in the White House, Reagan gave no further thought to balancing the budget or holding down government spending. Instead, he spent money, a great deal of money. Not on social programs, but on the military. Reagan’s anti-communism demanded a

military establishment second to none.

umphalists this suggested a marvellous militarized conservatism, free of

new

For the

possibility: a

all fiscal restraint,

to connect with state-of-the-art technology

tri-

able

and offering

a

message of hope and patriotic pride. In effect,

were opening

Reagan and a

new

hyperconservative advisers

his

chapter in the history of America’s

military-industrial complex.

The main

determination to win the Cold

War

II.

War

thrust behind their

dates back to

World

With the advent of that war, the Roosevelt

administration fashioned an alliance between the govern-

ment and

the country’s major corporations that

all

but

erased the distinction between civilian and military. Since

World War II, it has been the practice for highlevel military commanders to retire from duty and then assume executive positions in the very corporations that

the end of

service the Pentagon. This

is

called “the revolving-door”

system: out of the public sector into private enterprise.

109

It

WORLD, BEWARE! pays to invest in old soldiers. They can use their contacts to

negotiate lucrative contracts with the government.

and admirals are

Generals

essentially

corporados

in

training.

The term “military-industrial complex” was coined in 1960 by President Dwight Eisenhower, who employed it in the

context of a warning issued in his farewell address

to the nation. “In the councils of government,” he said,

“we must guard against influence,

the acquisition of unwarranted

whether sought or unsought, by the military-

industrial complex.

The

potential for the disastrous rise

power exists and will persist.” This was the only memorable remark that Eisenhower ever made, and it was certainly a surprising sentiment for an old general of misplaced

to express.

Eisenhower had,

after

all,

seen the military-

complex rise into existence during his war years. Until he was assigned command of the D-Day invasion, he had always been more an executive officer than a battlefield leader. During his presidency he made a point industrial

of entrusting his cabinet offices to the heads of big corporations.

He

called this

“dynamic conservatism.” As an

outspoken admirer of the corporate community and efficient

managerial techniques, he was the

last

one might have expected to speak out against

its

person his col-

leagues in the Pentagon. In any case, his warning

came

By the time he left the presidency, the militaryindustrial complex had become the American way of life. It was the anchor of the nation’s prosperity, pouring out huge profits and handsome paycheques. The ongoing alliance of the generals and the corporados made the

too

late.

United States an affluent

By 1960 basis

of a

Through

the military-industrial

new

the

society.

first

social

complex was the

contract in the United States.

forty years of the arrangement, the

no

The Triumph a lists corporate community was willing to pass through high

wages and guaranteed benefits to a prospering workforce. Never before in American history had the working class shared so generously in the profits of big business as it

did during the period 1940 to 1980. But this generosity

on the part of corporate America was not to last. Under Ronald Reagan the military-industrial complex would be given a very different orientation. link

It

would become

between the domestic and foreign

the

policies of the tri-

umphalists.

THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: PHASE

TWO

As the spokesman for a growing conservative backlash, Reagan assumed office with a fierce determination to dimmish all government programs that liberals had initiated under the Roosevelt New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. His attack on liberalism took the form of a novel strategy. In the past the main way in which conservatives had resisted liberals had been to call for fiscal responsibility: lower taxes, less spending. This

was prudent but colourless. Now the Reagan Republicans hit on a new idea. They would use the militaryindustrial complex as a way of curtailing social programs intended to transfer wealth to the middle and working 'class.

They would run

the military budget through the

roof. Let there be deficits,

that they

the

money

would

huge

deficits, deficits

so large

scare even spendthrift liberals. But

let

be spent on defence. That would give the pres-

ident a patriotic argument for eliminating social pro-

grams and government regulation. the country,

Therefore,

“We cannot

let

In effect,

it

warned

afford both guns and butter.

us choose guns for the sake of national

hi

WORLD, BEWARE! security.”

With dazzling speed, Republicans went from

being a party of penny-pinching

fiscal

conservatives to

being a gang of record-breaking big spenders.

As his opening gambit in pursuing this new strategy, Reagan began his presidency by vilifying the Soviet Union as never before. He called it “the evil empire” and vowed to oppose the Soviets more adamantly than any president before him. He at once announced a colossal increase in military spending. At the same time Reagan would live up to his reputation as a tax reformer by cutting

upper-income taxes substantially. Year after year

through the 1980s, as tax receipts diminished, Reagan

money

Pentagon on a scale that seemed to assume the imminence of all-out war. There were reports at the time that the generals could not find shovelled

into

the

ways of absorbing the enormous allocations they were receiving. They were forced to make up wish lists that included all the most expensive and exotic weaponry they could imagine.

But Reagan had a problem. His crushingly expensive

arms buildup became less and less sensible as the Soviet Union began stumbling towards its unexpected demise. The Soviet war in Afghanistan was clearly failing; the Kremlin’s grip on Eastern Europe was slipping; the Soviet

economy was sagging under

the weight of corruption,

bad planning, and a bloated military budget. Yet even as the Cold War was fading out, Reagan insisted that the Soviets were a greater threat than ever. By the time Mikhail Gorbachev launched his policy of glasnost and began offering sweeping disarmament treaties, the Reagan hard line made no sense at all. Nevertheless, Reagan continued to spend lavishly on armaments; he proposed his trillion-dollar Strategic

Soviet

Defense

power was crumbling

Initiative

even though

visibly, sdi, advertised as a

112

The Triumph alists weapons system

that

would protect

Soviet ballistic missiles by destroying

was an absurd

the country

them

from

in mid-flight,

idea; all the evidence clearly indicated that

the system could not work. But

it

really did not matter to

Reagan’s hyperconservative advisors whether the system

worked or not; the true objective of Reagan fiscal policy was to burn as much money as possible in order to keep it

out of the hands of

liberals.

Reagan’s presidency was the policy that

was

essentially

first

example of foreign

an adjunct of

a triumphalist

domestic program. His military policies had with the Cold War. deficits icy,

He was more

have an ironic

liberals

result.

It

to

do

interested in producing

than in producing weapons. But

which caught

little

this line of pol-

completely by surprise, was to

may

very well have been the

straw that broke the Soviet camel’s back.

It

is

entirely

was terminally insolvent by the late 1980s. The Reagan arms buildup, however, may have contributed one last push, and so the Soviet Union came tumbling down - leaving Reagan and his successor, possible that the USSR

the

first

George Bush, without an excuse

such a high

new

level of military

for continuing

spending. At that point a

phrase entered the American political vocabulary:

“the peace dividend.” Liberal political leaders began to talk

about diverting substantial amounts of the defence

budget to social programs. Nothing could have been

more unnerving

for the military-industrial

the prospect that peace might break out.

complex than If

that should

happen, what would keep the nation from beating

its

swords into ploughshares?

That could have happened - were

it

not for one

bit

of lucky timing for the military industrialists. In 1991

Saddam Hussein provided

the

first

George Bush with

convincing reason for making war. With Gulf

113

War

I,

a

the

WORLD, BEWARE! triumphalists perceived a grand opportunity to resume the policies of the

Reagan

years.

The

oil-rich societies of

Middle East, many living under unstable dictatorial regimes, might be turned into a new field for military adventures. When the first George Bush failed to press the

War

Gulf

ists in his

I

to the point of occupying Iraq, the triumphal-

administration were furious. They saw that as

a lost opportunity to lay the foundation for another

wave

of big military spending, something to take over from the

No

doubt some triumphalists also saw Bush’s decision to stop the war as a lost opportunity to impose a

Cold War.

durable peace in the Near East.

The Clinton presidency showed little interest in the triumphalists’ view on foreign affairs. Right-wing policymakers approached Clinton to propose ambitious designs for

overthrowing Saddam Hussein, but the president

would not commit sive than bombing

and more expenraids over Baghdad. He had other domestic priorities in mind, such as an expensive health insurance program that was being stoutly resisted by the insurance industry.

to anything riskier

Still,

the triumphalists did not give

up

on their goal. Instead, in 1997 they formed a new, wellfunded lobby called the Project for a New American Century and in March 1998 sent a position paper to Clinton, openly advocating an expansionist policy in the Middle East.

The paper

ognized that

it

also carried an

ominous prophecy.

It

rec-

might take a long while to bring the

United States around to such an ambitious, long-term foreign policy - unless there should be “a catastrophic

and catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor.” That event was to come on September 11, 2001. Here was a more traumatic and costly attack upon the continental United States than anything that the Soviet

Union had

inflicted

through

all

the years of the

Cold

The Triumph alists War. Suddenly, a

on terrorism,

new

national mission

was born:

the

war

would presumably continue for as long as there was an enemy anywhere capable of setting off a bomb. Finding such culprits would be an immense project; it would involve a vast military establishment, every variety of expensive armament, and bases of operation everywhere. Prospectively this was larger than the Cold War - and more psychologically effective as a

way

a struggle that

of mustering public support.

Once, during the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s, Americans had been prepared to believe that com-

munists might be lurking in every dark corner of the country. That fear had long since lost

its

cogency. But

ter-

were another matter. September 11 proved they had already infiltrated the country and might be hiding anywhere armed with hideously potent weapons. Terrorrorists

ists

even looked more frightening than communists. You

only had to see their swarthy, bearded, and scowling

on television for a shiver to run down your spine. Here was the perfect enemy: mysterious, cunning, merciless, and maniacal. They were far more alien than any communist; they bore exotic Arabic names and believed in a heretical religion. Most fearful of all, they were faces

fanatics

who

delighted in sacrificing their lives for their

cause. For purposes of national propaganda, the terrorist

had

all

the qualities that George Orwell

ined for his fictitious character generic

enemy

Emmanuel

Goldstein, the

would Osama bin Laden had now

of the state in 1984, the face that

inspire instantaneous hatred.

become

had once imag-

that face.

Overnight, terrorist experts appeared on every side.

A

body of literature on terrorism dating back twenty years was hauled before the public. Grim scenarios that involved attacks on major targets - the water supply,

WORLD, BEWARE! food, electricity, the very air

we

breathe -

filled

the

media. Warnings went up, including a colour-coded

ter-

rorist alert.

What more

could the triumphalists ask for?

no question but that the war on terrorism will extend the life of the military-industrial complex into the indefinite future and probably make it even richer. For unlike the Cold War, which focused on the activities of nations - primarily the USSR and China - the war on terrorism is a murky affair that can go on forever. What are There

is

the terrorists doing?

How many

are there?

Where

are

they operating? Only the government can say. At any

moment, on

the basis of clandestine information, the

government can announce that there is a national crisis, that terrorist communications have been intercepted, that there is the threat of an immediate attack. In

league with the corporados,

the

triumphalists

have transformed war into a banquet of business opportunities

where anything that can be turned into

a prof-

itable contract will be sold off. In Iraq, the billion-dollar

contracts that were granted to major firms like Hallibur-

ton and Bechtel were awarded without competitive bids.

The Defense Department

has, in fact, established a

category of business deal called

new

“non-bid contracts.”

Bush Republicans, who never cease to lecture the nation about the virtues of competition in the marketplace,

would take too long to solicit bids from other sources. And besides it was wholly predictable that the same big, well-connected firms would get the contracts anyway. They alone have the size and the experience to do the job. It is almost as if these firms, along claim that

it

with the major U.S.

oil

companies, have become an hon-

orary branch of government.

During the 1970s Ronald Reagan positioned himself as the voice of the “taxpayer revolt,” an effort that has

116

The Triumph alists since spread to state,

and

House

in

all

federal.

levels

He

of government:

county,

city,

escorted that revolt into the White

1980. George W. Bush, in turn, placed the

Republican Party under even more extreme right-wing influence. His massive tax-cutting bills,

which

total over

a trillion dollars, have shifted the weight of taxation

from the very rich to middle-class and working-poor citizens. In 1950 corporations were paying a quarter of federal taxes. As of 2000, though they were richer than ever, they were paying only a tenth. In large measure this change came about because an increasing number of corporations pay no taxes at all. They have found numerous ways of avoiding taxation, including moving their official location to various tax havens.

ton Company, with

The notorious Hallibur-

connections to fraud and greed,

its

(much of it from its contracts in Iraq) in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Trinidad and Tobago, Panama, Liechtenstein, and Vanuatu in the South Pacific. In all these places it has offices in which nobody does anything except maintain an address. As a shelters

vast profits

its

result, the

company pays hardly any

taxes.

2002 Bush

Yet, despite these massive tax cuts, in

revived Reagan’s proposal for a multi-billion-dollar antiballistic missile

defence system.

He was

even bolder than

Reagan; he demanded that the system be funded immeeven without meeting the standard Pentagon

diately

requirement that the weapon be tested before into production.

As with Reagan,

breathtaking measures will all but

to

programs.

put

the purpose of such

produce

deficits that it

reductions in public services and

Little

2003 Bush’s demand Iraq for

clearly to

is

bankrupt the federal government, forcing

make Draconian

social

is

it

wonder, then, that

in

September

$87 billion to pursue the war in the next year was followed by rumours that for

WORLD, BEWARE! domestic spending would have to be cut back sharply. This

is

telling

most perfect form, a co-ordination of foreign and

triumphalist politics in

example of the close

its

domestic policy.

THE NATIONAL SECURITY STATE Gulf

War

II

answered a question that has hovered over

the world since the

the place of the

fall

What

of the Berlin Wall.

Cold War

will take

in international affairs? In gen-

eral terms, the triumphalists

have had their answer ready

since the 1980s. Sharing a distrust of international insti-

wing of the the yawning power vacuum

tutions that has long characterized the right

Republican Party, they see left

behind by the collapse of the Soviet system as an

opportunity to create the only world order they can

dominance. That

respect, a unilateral U.S.

implication that they see

the clear

America’s status as the

in

world’s only superpower. Their intention

moment and

is

is

to impose their political vision

to seize the

on the world

for the indefinite future.

Though

the triumphalists claim that they

want

to

shrink the size of the federal government to a crippling

minimum,

want to create is exactly the opposite. No political movement in the history of the United States has ever been so enamoured of the National Security State they

power, so convinced of

its

to flatten all opposition to ists

own its

rectitude, so determined

intentions.

The triumphal-

are determined to create a federal colossus capable of

overcoming

all

posed by the basic under the

Bill

That includes the resistance

resistance.

civil liberties

of Rights.

No

guaranteed to Americans

Justice

Department

since the

Second World War has pressed for more authority than has Bush’s attorney general to imprison, to arrest without

118

The Triumph alists trial,

to

eavesdrop

by the most advanced electronic

means, to collect personal and private information, to use coercion and perhaps torture in questioning sus-

pected terrorists.

Soon after September 11, 2001, the Bush Justice Department instituted a Total Information Awareness program that allows the government to collect and coordinate every kind of personal data: medical, psychiatric, legal,

even library records.

employees

(like the letter carriers

It

also encourages public

who

deliver mail for

the post office) to report suspicious behaviour.

gram was later renamed gram in order to sound changes made

law to

itself.

The pro-

the Terrorist Information Pro-

threatening, but with

less

no

in the provisions or the operation of the

The ominously

titled Patriot

Act allows the fbi

perform surveillance and “sneak-and-peek” searches

without permission from any court. In

empowered

its

original

form

it

federal agents to carry out investigations of

book-buying and Web-surfing. The intention of the act supposedly to

crack

down on

terrorists,

but

is

has

it

already been used for other purposes, such as prosecuting

pornographers. Even Republicans, members of Bush’s

own

party,

have raised objections to the law. But the

Congress has already adopted a second Patriot Act, one that

makes

it

even easier for the government to collect

personal records by issuing even broader “administrative

subpoenas” that require no court oversight. Some umphalists

are

calling

for

still

more

tri-

state-of-the-art

surveillance, such as a national identity card bearing bio-

metric data (fingerprints, retinal scans, dna).

If

these

American people, with marvellous Orwellian irony, will soon be the most monitored and documented population on Earth - all in the name of forces have their way, the

defending freedom. 1

19

WORLD, BEWARE! The

goals of the triumphalists are not simply a matter

of domestic concern.

What

has emerged from the conser-

vative insurgency in the United States is

is

a grand plan that

intended to take effect in the world at large. The rising

generation of American triumphalists that

may

policy

gives

House with Ronald Reagan, but

their

greater urgency.

the post-Cold sibility

drives U.S.

be dominated by the same ideological zeal that

entered the White factor

now

efforts

The

War

far

a

new

and With the coming of

greater consequence

stakes have risen.

era, the triumphalists see the real pos-

of placing the global

economy under

nent control of a U.S. -dominated business

the perma-

elite

that will

spread the gospel of free markets to every corner of the planet. Caesar’s legions carried the

Roman law

across the

world; Britain brought Christianity and free trade to the

heathen peoples. So the triumphalists and corporados will bring the blessings of “democracy,” meaning the unrestricted

movement

nations.

What

is

of capital, to timid

and backward

the triumphalists’ vision of the future?

A

worldwide market economy run by entrepreneur statesmen and military proconsuls, decisive men of affairs who

know

you care to put think Dick Cheney and his cronies.

the proper uses of power.

on that

future,

If

a face

In carrying out this bold mission, the United States

may have

to use

nate competitors.

its

formidable military might to elimi-

The general

outline of this

new world

order was formulated during the Reagan presidency by

Defense Department analyst Paul Wolfowitz, care at the time to state that the U.S. sufficiently

who

took

hegemony “must

account for the interests of the advanced

industrial nations to discourage

them from challenging

our leadership.”

That was the triumphalist view as of the mid-1980s. One wonders now if the interests of other industrial

120

The Triumph alists nations are any longer of concern. There

is

reason to

and diplomatic planners now include a faction that is quite willing to go it alone. Under the Bush administration, the Pentagon revealed plans to spend heavily on extending, varying, and upgrading the U.S. nuclear arsenal in ways that will leave believe that our military

other nations far behind.

all

with the Soviet Union

to

ited

States’

arms race

be ended, but the country

is

The goal equip itself with “usable” nuclear weapons for limwar. But at whom can such measures be aimed

racing to outdistance the rest of the world.

still is

may

The United

except the existing nuclear club, with a view to intimidating will

all

resistance? Is

it

unthinkable that the triumphalists

undertake the nuclear disarming of former

1992 the triumphalist

allies?

As

had hardened. In a policy paper circulated among Washington triumphalists in that year, the Pentagon was given a new and more ominous assignment. It was to be the job of the military “to establish and protect a new order,” following which “the United States must be sure of deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” Those who believe France, Germany, Russia, and at some point China might band together to offset U.S. power should bear in mind: the triumphalists have decided that such a union must never happen. early as

If

line

on

allies

an excuse for strong-arming our former

needed,

it

will not be

hard to

find.

allies is

Even before Gulf War

Washington made it clear to the Iranians that if they cannot do a better job of hunting down and capturing terrorists, the United States may have to intervene to do the job for them. The war on terrorism has redefined U.S. II,

national security to include the entire world.

have guessed that nineteen

men

Who

could

using box-cutters to take

over four airplanes on September 11, 2001, could have

121

WORLD, BEWARE! provided the justification for American military action

anywhere on Earth? Imagine what vigilance to prevent another such act of terrorism.

other nations

to

fail

show

will take

it

And what

if

the vigilance that the United

There have already been complaints from Washington that airport security in other countries is not up to the U.S. standard. Perhaps the United States will States expects?

have to intervene to teach those countries job.

the

how

to

do the

As Bush put it (and quite belligerently) in his State of Union address in January 2004, “America will not

seek a permission slip to defend the security of our coun-

Nothing the president said that day drew more applause from the assembled lawmakers.

try.”

CORPORATE WARRIORS: THE RETURNOF THE MERCENARIES Overwhelming military power lies at the core of the American imperium. The willingness to exploit that advantage to umphalist

fullest is the distinctive feature of tri-

politics.

stands in the

and

its

way

precisely. It

basic element of

is

But there

is

of using that

a serious obstacle that

power

rapidly, flexibly,

the tradition of the citizen soldier, a

American democracy. The new Ameri-

can imperium requires another kind of military force: readily available, highly trained, ent.

and dependably obedi-

Creating that kind of military has been

among

the

highest of priorities for the triumphalists.

the

“A democratic people,” de Tocqueville observed of United States when it was still a frontier society, “must

despair of ever obtaining from soldiers that blind, minute,

submissive, and invariable obedience which an aristocratic

people

may impose on them without

queville’s

words have proven

difficulty.”

De

Toc-

to be prophetic. In a time of

122

The Triumph alists and pre-emptive warfare, citizen soldiers are a For one thing, recruiting them is becoming very

unilateral liability.

expensive. to those

The army now

who

volunteer, plus as

No

lege tuition.

offers a

$20,000 signing bonus

much

as

$70,000 for

doubt these inducements

col-

will increase as

part of “sky’s the limit” military budgets. But even so, that

money buys

is

a single tour of duty, often involving

poorly educated youth or those

mind. Nor

is

all

who

have other careers

in

When,

at

conscription a viable alternative.

the beginning of Gulf

War

II,

a

member

of Congress sug-

gested that there ought to be military draft to raise the

Bush administration was quick to bury the proposal. (For that matter, so too was the Congress. There was only one congressman with a son serving in the war. The rest were happy to have their children spared.) Draftees, the Pentagon insisted, take too long to train and are not good fighters. The Vietnam War proved how crippling it can be to rely on a conscript army. Conscription fills the ranks with the poor, the meagrely educated, and troops, the

the badly trained.

If

the draft brings in middle-class col-

lege students, the result

tance.

way

is

The troops make

reluctance,

As

in

not outright

their discontent

or another; discipline breaks

sets in.

if

known

resis-

in

one

down, demoralization

Vietnam, the troops turn to dope. Or worse,

they “frag” their officers, meaning they gun them

down

or

blow them up rather than follow them into battle. Back home draft dodging becomes so rife that there is no hope of punishing all the offenders. Moreover - and I suspect this is the main concern - conscription provides dissenting youth and their families with a target for protest. It brings the war home in ways that the triumphalists would prefer to avoid.

The new American military has a very acter from yesterday’s citizen soldiers. 123

different charIn

American

WORLD, BEWARE! popular culture, the lovable grunts of yesteryear have been upgraded into a career-military corps. They are elite and professional: tough, cold-blooded Delta Force and

Navy

Seals types

who

much James Bond

are as

secret

agents as soldiers. Trained as sharp special-forces units,

they fight with complex, usually computerized weapons.

For the most part they are recruited not from the poorest classes, as was the case in Vietnam, but from the ranks of

men

America’s blue-collar workforce. They are young

and women who once would have found assembly-line employment before those jobs were lost to globalization. What we have here is the beginning of an imperial military, on call to serve anywhere in the world on a

moment’s

The goal

notice.

is

to

move

in fast, clean

up the

problem, and suffer practically no casualties.

More than

professionalizing the military, the

umphalists are out to privatize their ideological tor.

commitment

it.

This

is

in line

tri-

with

to diminish the public sec-

For the triumphalists, the panacea for

all

social

government to entrepreneurs who will - so the argument runs - find a way of covering costs, adding a profit, and yet making services cheaper. How can this be done? Supposedly by needs

is

to entrust the responsibilities of

the greater efficiency of the private sector. Triumphalist

conservatives

would

privatize

all

aspects of social policy,

substituting corporations for government. In

all

cases,

would replace public service as a driving force. They would turn all education over to private firms, they would turn the weather bureau into a private business, they would sell all national parks and wilderness areas to private companies. They have already begun to privatize the prisons of the nation, where an incarcerated workforce is now employed at the cheapest wages in the country. Exploiting convict labour was

the profit motive

124

The Triumph alists once

crime in the United States;

a

Now,

like the child

lands,

it

called peonage. in foreign

emerges as sound business practice. For, after

the

if

was

labour used by U.S. firms

goods produced market justified the means? all,

it

sell

Privatizing the military

is

at a profit,

the boldest and the least

visible innovation that the triumphalists

American

has not the

have introduced

Mercenary soldiering is a growth industry in the global economy. Worldwide, more than $100 billion is being spent on private military contracinto

politics.

tors,

with the United States by far the largest

War

II

is

client.

Gulf

the test case for this line of policy. Private

troops are a basic element in Washington’s effort to cre-

supposedly autonomous, self-governing Iraq. While

ate a

the

U.S.

diminish, Iraqi military

under U.S. control - as ing

number If

Baghdad may eventually forces will remain in place and

administration

in

in all satellite nations.

An

increas-

of those forces will be privately contracted.

the triumphalists succeed in their goal,

ominous implications ing America’s armed

for the

world

services

into

at large.

it

will

have

Transform-

for-profit,

contract

labour will place military forces at the disposal of the nation’s commander-in-chief, with the Congress

and the

public having less and less control. Contract warriors

tend to drop out of sight; the public

may

they are being used. In both Gulf Wars, as

not even

know

we now know,

on the ground in Iraq weeks before the shooting started. They were laying the groundwork for the attack that would follow. A clever tactic, perhaps, but it leaves one to wonder if, in the future, the United States may be at war in ways that the public will know nothing about. That is all the more there were U.S.

likely

when

special

forces

the troops involved are responsible to private

employers rather than to any elected authority.

125

WORLD, BEWARE! In small, surreptitious ways, military outsourcing has

been growing over the years. the

Vinnell Corporation,

army

as far

A

Virginia-based company,

was contracted by

the U.S.

back as 1975 to organize the training of the

Saudi National Guard. The arrangement has

made

company’s buildings the target of more than one

terrorist

Then, under President Clinton, privately salaried

attack.

were dispatched to Colombia to pursue America’s

forces

largely clandestine effort

the

“war on drugs”

was small - only

in that country.

The

a handful of contract troops hired

by Military Professional Resources Incorporated - but it was an instructive example of how effectively military

The triumphalists

action can be hidden from view. clearly a

are

determined to outsource their military policies on

much more ambitious

to turn the nation’s

scale.

armed

They

working

are

forces into a lucrative collec-

tion of private, for-profit services

-

as

if

they cannot tol-

erate seeing a federally controlled military play in their designs.

steadily

Once again they have

any

role

hired the Vinnell

Corporation, this time to train a peacekeeping force that will take over in Iraq

if

army

the U.S.

ever departs. Until

then, for as long as occupying forces remain under guerrilla elements, private security firms

fire

by

have been con-

tracted to provide U.S. troops with protection. Other firms holding military contracts are the Virginia-based

Blackwater usa, and urs, a California engineering firm.

A

subsidiary of the Halliburton

Company

has taken over

the basic service of provisioning the military, a task once

performed by the quartermaster corps. Other companies contracted by the

Army Corps

of Engineers construct

camps, provide transport, and build the roads, bridges,

combat or for occuothers have been hired to do reconnaissance

and docks that the military needs pation.

Still

and gather

intelligence. It

is

126

for

difficult to

name

a single

)

The Triumph alists aspect of military operations that has not been taken

under some degree of private control.

who

After the Pentagon,

has contributed the largest

number of 'military personnel to the coalition forces in Iraq? The British? No. The answer is: private American contractors. Fully fifteen thousand police, security guards,

and support workers are the hired employees of private companies. They are flown from drivers,

trainers,

assignment to assignment

in giant

cargo planes, usually of

Russian manufacture. They can parachute into combat.

They

are armed, they fight, they

kill,

they die - but conve-

niently enough, their deaths need not be reported, which,

of course, creates the impression that bloodless.

Of

2004, $30

billion

much

as

the

$87 went

billion

war

is

becoming

allocated for the

to private contractors,

war

who pay

in

as

$1,000 a day for security guards. Over the past

decade the Pentagon has awarded over three thousand contracts to the private sector.

The United

States

is

not alone in transforming war

into an entrepreneurial investment.

The

British

have also

turned to hired guns to train and deploy troops. Global Risk Strategies, Erinys International, and Genric Securities

now

Consultants Worldwide are

among

the firms that

provide the soldiers of the Queen. Erinys, which

is

dangerous highways of Iraq,

moving troops along the had gross earnings of $150

million in 2004. Since

a violation of international

the principal “taxi service” for

it

is

law for nations to use mercenaries, contract forces are not placed in that category - but they are licensed to kill.

They carry arms and have been involved

in

firefights.

One

military analyst (Peter Singer at the Brookings Insti-

tute,

author of Corporate Warriors

dozen contract personnel have been Iraq, but they are not

believes that several killed or

numbered among I2 7

wounded

in

the casualties of

WORLD, BEWARE! war.

Many

of the contracted military are former police

officers or special forces;

other countries.

One

some

are trained soldiers

from

contingent of security guards hired

by Kellogg, Brown, and Root, a subsidiary of the Halliburton Company, is made up of Nepalese Gurkhas. The

Pentagon has recruited other forces from Nepal, Chile, Ukraine, Israel, South Africa, and Fiji. Moving kbr into

was Dick Cheney’s major

lucrative military contracting

achievement at Halliburton after he tary of defense under the

first

left his

job as secre-

George Bush. In Iraq alone

kbr now holds contracts worth $12 billion. As part of the imperium, mercenary soldiering is apt to become a growth industry. War is, after all, dirty work, the sort of menial labour that Americans prefer not to do.

The triumphalists may have lic

prefers.

How

long,

hit

then,

upon something

the pub-

before the U.S.

military

becomes an all-mercenary corps maintained by private firms on long-term contracts ready to go to war on a moment’s notice, perhaps without the need of congressional approval or financing - rather like the British East

Company before it was taken under crown control? And when combat ends, these sturdy professionals will India

ideally

have the

political skills for

long-term occupation

and administration. This is so new a that some analysts have begun to

role for the military refer

troops as “enforcers” rather than soldiers. enforcing?

“Norms

that magnitude

is

forces will have to

to

American

What

of international behaviour.”

are they

A

task of

obviously beyond mere gis. American

become -

as

one

field

commander

sees

- “diplomats, international negotiators, and guardians of economic security.” Rudyard Kipling once referred to Britain’s millions of dependent people as “half devil and half child.” It was the “white man’s burden” to civilize them. The United

it

128

The Triumph alists new proconsular enforcers seem to see things the same way. And once they have taught the world’s people States’

how ists

to

behave properly, the next

step, so the triumphal-

believe; will be nation-building, the only long-term

solution to terrorism.

LEARNING FROM EUROPE There

is

a peculiar connection

between Europe and the

To an extraordinary degree, American conof the post- World War II generation have

triumphalists. servatives fallen

under the influence of emigre

who

intellectuals

brought the horrendous lessons they had learned about

European fascism to the new world. Figures of significant academic status - Friedrich Hayek, Leo Strauss, Hans Morgenthau, Eric Voegelm, Ludwig von Mises, Karl Popper, Hannah Arendt, and Richard Pipes - arrived in the United States during the 1930s and 1940s like missionaries whose goal was to awaken naive Americans to the ugly facts of contemporary life. Later, a younger Henry Kissinger would have the same tale of flight to tell and adopt the same conservative philosophy. Ayn Rand, whose experience was drawn from Soviet Russia, might also be counted among their number. Rand, whose outreach was enhanced through fiction and film, became the head of a small and particularly vitriolic philosophical movement called “Objectivism,” whose purpose was to promote a rigid capitalist orthodoxy as the only sure guarantee of freedom.

The warnings may have been

sincere, but

trating their critique of totalitarianism

by concen-

on the

state

and

disregarding the role played by private wealth in bankrolling fascism, the emigres granted the corporate

nity a convenient

pardon from searching

129

commu-

criticism.

They

WORLD, BEWARE! either did not foresee or simply ignored the possibility

that corporations were fast outgrowing national aries

and evolving

own

bound-

into self-governing state systems

some

in

and richer than the governments of smaller countries. They were even willing their

right, in

cases larger

to turn a blind eye to the U.S. corporations, such as the

Ford Motor Company, that did lucrative business with

As focused as they were on the abuse of power, the European emigres paid practically no attention to the way vast sums of money in private hands can corrupt the political process. Perhaps because they were fixated on the brute force of guns and clubs, they ignored what cold cash can do to win influence and abuse power. Above all, once they were on American soil, the danger that many of these Europeans intellectuals targeted most persistently was liberal social policy, which they saw as dangerously statist. Some of them saw in American liberalism the same weakness that had brought down the Weimar Republic; others believed liberals were too soft on communism. As brilliant as many of the emigres the Nazi regime.

were, they failed to grasp the wholly different social structure of the United States: the absence of aristocratic tradition, the lesser status of the military, the

dition of the

American

left

anemic con-

wing, the generally non-ideo-

logical nature of the labour

movement, and the robust

condition of constitutional safeguards. Yet, as misguided as they often ily

imagine

were about American

how

gratifying

it

intellectuals to bring a timely

country.

No

was

politics,

one can eas-

for these displaced

warning to

their

adopted

doubt they believed they were performing

a

valuable service.

From

European exiles, a generation of young conservatives inherited a monstrous image of state power that bears no relationship to their country’s own history. these

130

The Triumph alists Indeed, they were equipped with a worldview that dramatically embraced the whole of Western civilization. In the eyes of Strauss, Voegelin,

reached back to the earliest phy.

It

possessed a

and Popper, totalitarianism days of European philoso-

terrific historical

momentum

against

which they believed modern liberalism was a feeble defence. Liberals, they charged, lacked the moral fibre to stand up to evil. Being pluralistic and morally relativistic, liberals lacked an appreciation of the absolute. Under the influence of charismatic teachers such as Strauss, suscep-

students were apparently willing to agree that a

tible

value

is

absolute because their teacher told them so.

how

am who

I

from the Hitler youth believed that the Fuhrer’s words were absolute - or from the Taliban who believe that every word of the Koran is divine. All of us - even liberals like myself - hold values not sure

that

this

differs

we wish everybody

I

do

have the right to force anybody to do

so.

not assume

I

And

suspect,

that,

I

is

accepted as absolute. But

the difference that convinces con-

servatives that liberals lack conviction.

With unabashed exaggeration, Hayek, destined to become the patron saint of market economics, titled his most widely read work The Road to Serfdom choosing a reference - serfdom - that has no equivalent in American history. Even as an ill-fitting metaphor, the term “serfdom” might better describe the conditions under which workers lived in nineteenth-century America before trade unions provided them with a somewhat countervailing power in the political arena. Long before there was a social safety net or a single regulatory commission there were trusts and monopolies, strikebreakers and state militias against which workers could muster no significant resistance. Only someone blinded by ideological conviction could overlook the form of near-serfdom that ,

131

WORLD, BEWARE! when laissezfaire reigned supreme. This was an era when labour and management fought pitched battles, when the captains of did exist in the United States in the years

industry hired the Pinkertons or brought in state troopers to crush industrial action.

towns

It

was

which workers served

in

company

also the era of

as indentured servants

constantly in debt to employers for their food and shelter. so committed to the anti-statist views that

Were he not

he had brought with him from middle Europe, Hayek

might have displayed

at least

minimal concern for the

domineering role that monopolistic wealth has played the United States. Like his fellow

made no allowance ment has played interests of

European

in the

United States in defending the

embattled farmers, supporting the collective

gationist institutions that

were

left

down

the segre-

over from slavery.

time to time the baronial status of America’s

big corporations rises to the surface again, often in ing ways. In

many

he

exiles,

for the role that the federal govern-

bargaining rights of labour, and striking

From

in

2002

amaz-

financial journalists discovered that

U.S. companies were taking advantage of

what

are

“dead peasant laws.” These laws allow a corporation to purchase life-insurance policies on their employees called

without notifying them. The policies serve as the basis for favourable financial arrangements between the

certain

company and - even

if

this is

before - the if

the

the insurance firm.

an employee

company

who

When

the employee dies

lost his job or quit years

collects his life insurance,

worker were indeed

a peasant

owned by

almost as the

com-

pany.

No

one

who knows

the history of the twentieth cen-

tury questions the dangers of totalitarianism. There course,

good reason

Brother potentiality

to

is,

of

be on guard against the Big

of the

132

modern

state.

But when

The Triumph alists triumphalist conservatives project fears of Hitlerian dic-

New

tatorship onto

programs or

Deal reforms or Great Society social

civil rights legislation,

away with them. They

ological excess to run

way

they are allowing ide-

on

are

their

to a political stance that sees the post office, the

weather bureau, the Social Security Administration, and the National Park Service as fascist precursors, but over-

looks the obvious possibility that the overconcentration

money and institutional power in the hands of a corporate elite may be a far greater danger to democracy. of

But then,

it

is

not at

want democracy. At

all

clear that the triumphalists

certain points their fear of the vulgar,

non-philosophical masses leads them to the conclusion

some form

that

of authoritarian control

to safeguard property

and guarantee

may

be necessary

intelligent political

Leo Strauss, for example, believed that there might be good reason for telling the sort of “noble lies” leadership.

that Plato trol.

He

recommended

as a

way

of exerting social con-

Strauss believed that the best of

agreed with

Marx

that

it

all lies

was an

was

opiate, but he

nothing wrong with feeding people opiates -

them acquiescent. The triumphalists ffed elitism in their politics, as

credentials. In their

if

religion.

if

it

saw kept

relish a certain Tari-

to assert their intellectual

ongoing debate with

liberals,

they

emphasize that the United States was never intended to be a democracy at all, but a “republic” - which entrusts

power

to responsible representatives, not to the public

directly.

That distinction

gral part of the

is

American

and

valid

is,

in fact,

political system.

an

inte-

There are few

provisions in the United States at any level of government for

direct

democracy.

whelmingly the

rule.

Elected

Some

representation

states

is

allow laws to be

overiniti-

ated and passed by an electoral vote; others allow political leaders or judges to be recalled.

133

These are

relatively

WORLD, BEWARE! marginal political phenomena. But the triumphalists keep harping on

how

way

which the democracy is unin

American makes one suspicious of their true intentions. The destructive fury with which the triumphalists have turned upon

how

liberals in the

United States reveals

sense of proportion and historical depth they

little

Their opposition to liberalism

have.

extreme, as

if

they can think of no reason

agencies or welfare-state programs

absolute

is

came

why

and

regulatory

into existence in

Those who deviate from their principles by so much as an iota are no better than their worst Marxist foes. The spirit that dominated George W. Bush’s foreign policy from the day he entered the White House - “Either you are for me or against me” - arose from the intolerance and sweeping extremism with which the

first

place.

his triumphalist advisers

pursue their goals at

home

as

well as abroad. All the rancour that conservatives once directed at the

whom

als,

America’s

communist

threat

is

now

focused on

the triumphalists regard as the source of ills.

These are people

who must

enemy, and that enemy must be seen as wholly

What

liber-

are the unpardonable sins of

Believing that wealth should be

all

have an

evil.

American

liberals?

more equitably shared,

that graduated taxation should be used for that purpose, that the

ing

life

power of government should be devoted to makmore secure through welfare-state programs, that

the market should be regulated in the public interest.

These are modest objectives; they could almost be called dull.

Liberalism

is

neither exciting nor dramatic.

the passion of a fully

blown

ideology.

It

It

lacks

has no great

patchwork of well-intentioned fixes designed to correct injustices and imbalances as they arise. Speaking as a liberal, I would be the first to agree that these fixes sometimes do not work. They can philosophical elegance.

It

is

a

134

The Triumph alists be expensive and inefficient - and be corrected or abandoned.

grams,

I

if

they are, they should

recognize that liberal pro-

anything done on a large scale, tend to gener-

like

ate bloated

and

porations.

certainly grant that others

all is

I

So do big cor-

insensitive bureaucracies.

may

reject

some or

what we have in the liberal agenda an open and honest declaration of intentions back across two centuries of reform politics.

of these goals. But at least

that dates

Liberalism

nothing strange, nothing new;

is

is

it

indeed

part of the political mainstream of American culture,

making no pretense of being grounded

in transcendent

values or divine truth. Yet, at

its

extreme, the triumphalist war against

lib-

eralism takes on a grand inquisitor’s zeal to destroy

heresy root and branch.

Grover Norquist, has eral groups.

“We

A

leading right-wing organizer,

on “defundmg” libhe vows, “hunt them down one

set his sights

will,”

by one and extinguish their funding sources.” Anne Coulter, a popular right-wing journalist, has gone so far as to accuse liberals

who opposed

son.” In the 1950s Senator Joseph

Gulf

War

II

McCarthy

of “trea-

raised the

same charge, accusing liberals of treason because they were supposedly soft on communism. Coulter, in her unseemly rage, has sought to rehabilitate McCarthy’s reputation. In her eyes, the sins of liberalism date back to

from power fifty years ago. And like Senator McCarthy before her and many another triumphalist today, Coulter’s goal is not simply to win elections, McCarthy’s

fall

but to obliterate the opposition.

Name me

a better

mea-

sure of totalitarian tendencies than the desire to create a

one-party political system.

As the triumphalists see it, liberal disrespect for markets, competition, and good, solid middle-class morality amounts to a war on “values.” Values have become the 135

WORLD, BEWARE! wing in the United States. Values - their values - are to be honoured and kept absolute. Nothing seems to grate on the triumphalist sensibility more than the alliance between liberals and the arts. In the name of freedom of expression, they believe liberals are out to undermine the moral absolutism to which special preserve of the right

they aspire. Since the days of the Federal Arts Project

launched under Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s, liberals - so conservatives have long believed - have allied themwith

selves

artists.

And what

are

layabouts, libertines, atheists. After the 1960s found the National

artists?

all,

Bohemian

did not liberals in

Endowment

for the Arts,

which has insisted on funding distasteful and obscene work? Away with all this, the triumphalists insist - and with it the entire liberal wing of American politics.

CONSERVATISM AND THE INTELLECTUALS While conservatives been

anti-statist,

tics as

much

in

the United States have always

they have never before given their poli-

intellectual elaboration as in recent years.

happened to Through the early

Since the 1980s, something surprising has

conservatism.

It

has grown a brain.

and middle years of the twentieth century, intellect was a liberal monopoly. The Progressive movement of Teddy Roosevelt’s day was a movement of books and magazines, academic research and heady conversation. Progressives were eager to introduce intellect into politics; they recruited academic specialists to serve on the new regulatory commissions that were then being established at the state and federal level. From that point forward, developed strong connections with the universities, while conservatives - and especially the business community - came to distrust intellectuals as the main liberals

136

The Triumph alists voices for reform, the

enemy

if

not outright revolution. Intellect was

of wealth.

As

a result, conservatives

quently characterized as philistmes in

The

ideas.

right

who

were

took no interest

wing of American

politics

depicted in the literature of the period as a class

with social types

had

was filled

Lewis

like those the novelist Sinclair

satirized in his novel Babbitt.

fre-

Those who followed

were called the “boobocracy.” During the 1930s, mainly through its programs in the and literature, the New Deal enlisted still more intel-

their lead

arts

lectuals for liberal causes; Roosevelt

took pride

in sur-

rounding himself with a “brains trust” largely made up of

As of the mid-twentieth century, the reigning minds in the universities (even the Ivy League schools), in the media, and in the intellectual world generally were well left of centre. Liberals published most of the weighty journals of opinion and took the initiative in setting up study centres and think-tanks in which new ideas and social programs might be brainstormed. At the university professors.

far left, liberalism

or another; even

shaded off into Marxism of one

among

those

who

eventually

stripe

condemned

Union and developed serious reservations about communist methods, few would ever have undertaken to write on politics or economics without including a respectful nod in Marx’s direction. Knowing the convoSoviet

the

luted history of radical left-wing thought, tions

and

its

infighting,

was

its

various fac-

the sign of being politically

sophisticated.

Then, from the 1970s onward, the corporate nity too

began to invest heavily

in brainpower.

journals of opinion, subsidized books, and set

It

commulaunched

up foundations. Above all, it recruited among students on university campuses through well-endowed political clubs and organizations like Young Americans for Freedom. The United

137

WORLD, BEWARE! States

today abounds

in conservative think-tanks largely

funded by corporate money. There one finds conservative analysts issuing papers and books that quote - usually

- from Edmund Burke or The Federalist Papers to justify their policy recommendations. The pompous literary style initiated by conservative journalists William F. Buckley and George Will - big words, convoluted sentences, a smug tone - has spread among rightquite sententiously

wing writers as a way of advertising intellectual credentials. The number of conservative journals has increased markedly, even as

has become more and more

it

magazine of any kind.

to sustain a

No

difficult

serious political

publication can survive these days without foundation

money

or private patronage.

It is all

to the

good that conservatives should want

to

join into intellectual debate. But, as liberals learned long

ago, big ideas - ideas that seem to explain the supreme

- can be intoxicating. One cites the ideas, and at once one assumes the authority of the minds - Plato, Locke, Hegel - that created the ideas. values and purposes of

The

result

life

can be a suffocating arrogance. As one reads

from conservative sources, one senses that ideas have taken on a domineering reality of their own, displacing common sense and simple truths. At that point ideas harden into ideology, a self-contained system of unassailable principles and the literature that flows these days

more than experibeing beyond compromise or

irrefutable deductions that counts for

ence and that takes pride in

even open debate.

Perhaps

all

of this

create an intellectual

is

part of an effort by the right to

pantheon that matches the

left-lib-

eral cultural establishment that reigned during the

of such notable political journals as Partisan

Commentary

,

New

Masses and Dissent ,

138

all

days

Review of which ,

The Triumph alists frequently

also

Hayek (whom

from

suffered

conservatives

pretentious

now

erudition.

prominently tout not

simply as an economist, but as the greatest philosopher

Dewey; Leo Strauss George Will becomes the Walter

of our time) takes the place of John replaces Lionel Trilling;

Lippmann But

of the right.

how

absurd

this ideological

confabulation seems

when one realizes that conservative intellectuality, even when it is decked out with footnotes and bibliography, is finally all about money and privilege - the money and privilege of an already powerful corporate elite. And here we do have a difference between left and right. Liberal and left-wing writers have never collected fat paycheques from labour unions or the unemployed. Nobody ever got rich pouring their hearts out for the sake of the poor and disadvantaged. On the other hand, the right wing of American politics has more than enough wealth to buy the politicians, media, and lawyers it needs to defend its interests.

Of

the right-wing intellectuals

all

found a following

more

credit for

in the

who

have

United States, none deserves

candour than does Ayn Rand. Believing

that the wealth of capitalists

was

the only sure defence

against Bolshevism, she frankly advocated the worship of the dollar sign. For her, politics

lowed by nothing

at

was money

first

.

fol-

of the to real

- such as providing day care for working-

poor mothers or paying medical

Then what do we

see?

bills

Programs

for senior citizens.

like these,

which are

intended to help hard-pressed citizens through savagely

.

all.

And how much more absurd the pretensions triumphalists become when they are finally applied political issues

.

condemned by conservative

are

thinkers as a threat

to the nation’s freedom.

At which point the

sophical rhetoric that has

become so dear 139

life,

lofty philo-

to conservatives

WORLD, BEWARE! sounds no better than a growling tirade by Ebenezer Scrooge. Even worse, the intellectual pretensions of the triumphalists look plain

phony given

that their entire

agenda depends on the largesse of the country’s major corporations. Without the benefit of corporate millions, conservative candidates could not be elected to office

and

right-wing policies could not be implemented. What, then,

do the eternal

verities of Plato or

Spinoza

mean

to the cor-

porados? Precisely nothing. For the ceo of the nation, the only “literature” that matters

on the currency they use conservative intellectuals

is

the denomination printed

buy influence. The talent that need most is the ability to sup-

to

must surely feel ideas of the greatest minds at the

press the embarrassment they

as they lay

the greatest

feet of cor-

porate money-grubbers.

As Straussian

chaos

disciples, the triumphalists are a

of contradictions. Secretly, they aspire to the privileges of intellectual superiority, but publicly they claim to

have a

populist appeal. Secretly, they believe they have the right to use

any

trumpet

dirty trick to gain power, but publicly they

most basic assumptions of the American founding fathers - and indeed the entire Enlightenment worldview from which the United States emerges - as a radical deviation from the absolute truth about man and nature, but publicly their love of virtue. Secretly, they regard the

they present themselves as patriots. Secretly, they reject egalitarianism, but publicly they claim to speak for the

people. Secretly, they view religion as

weak-minded and

superstitious, but publicly they associate themselves with biblical fundamentalists

How

and apocalyptic

evangelicals.

does one account for such confusion on the

part of reasonably well-educated

men? Perhaps

it

all

comes down to hypocrisy practised for social advancement. These are people whose appetite for power makes

140

The Triumph alists a

mockery of

their high principles.

Given the chance,

they are willing to hire on as speech writers and advisers

some of the most dim-witted politicians ever to appear on the American scene, among them Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. They make individual character a to

higher priority than social programs and institutions, but

work

they

for a political party that

sleaziest corporate criminals

willing

to

religion

see

masses, but in order to

in U.S.

is

beholden to the

history.

What,

at last,

are

function as the opiate of the

gam

the votes of the evangelical

electorate they hide their disdain for those opiate.

They

who

need that

has any of this to do with Plato,

with philosophy, with esoteric teachings, or the eternal verities?

When

did any politician need Plato to justify

deception, cheating, obfuscation, or striking an expedient

As the triumphalists understand Leo Strauss, every crooked party boss in American history has been a natudeal?

ral-born Straussian.

The most curious aspect ity is its

fascination with esoteric teachings, a puzzling

from

feature acquired

dents to

of triumphalist intellectual-

whom

Strauss. If

believe the stu-

he entrusted his most intimate convic-

tions, Strauss believed that there in the classic texts to

some

we can

were hidden meanings

whose study he dedicated

his

life.

In

cases he apparently detected teachings concealed in

intricate

numerical codes that only the gifted few could

properly understand. These subtexts were supposedly too explosive to be revealed to the unenlightened. At costs, then,

one must never

Plato really said! There

is

let

the rabble

all

know what

something almost comic about

the fear that Straussians have of revealing the hidden

teachings of their mentor. There are few writers

esoteric

are

from popularity as is Strauss. If there messages in his work, they are safely

as well protected

are

who

141

WORLD, BEWARE! sequestered from the public. His scholarship

pedantic

extreme - dense, subtle, complex - as indeed are

in the all

is

works he spent

the

his

lifetime

elucidating:

Plato,

Even as acaamong the most demanding

Lucretius, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Spinoza.

demic

literature, Strauss

is

(and fatiguing) of writers.

to question his

depth and insight.

Which is not Like many another

great mind, he

requires hard work.

When

Strauss says that philosophers

driven to employ a peculiar

“are

which would enable them to reveal

manner of writing what they regard as

the truth to the few,” he can surely be given credit for

having mastered that “peculiar manner.”

On teric

the other hand, Strauss’s penchant for the eso-

can take on an ominous quality when one imagines

the influence

it

might have had upon those of

who went into crats who work in ples

was

there

politics, especially the

who

is

busy bureau-

the shadows. Strauss believed that

a role for the Nietzschean

the leader

his disci-

prepared to dirty

superman in society, his hands making a

world for the benighted masses. Ideas like this are dangerous when they are taken up by politically ambibetter

tious types

who

tional morality.

essay after

“On

are

all

Take

too willing to trample on conven-

a teaching like this (from Strauss’s

Tyranny,” 1963): “The rule of the tyrant who,

having come to power by means of force and fraud,

or having committed any

number of

suggestions of reasonable men,

is

crimes, listens to the

essentially

more

legiti-

mate than the rule of the elected magistrates.” That seems to mean a vicious and corrupt tyrant may make an acceptable leader provided he

is

willing to take advice

from his intellectual superiors. In the essay, Strauss’s meaning is ambiguous. He may simply be playing with an intriguing idea that he found in the Greek historian Xenophon. But when I read the passage, my blood runs

142

The Triumph all st s Behind the Nietzschean posturing that Strauss encouraged in his students, I see triumphalist policy-makcold.

work, inventing the lies they will use to lead the nation into war - and telling themselves they have the licence to do so. If only the would-be Straussian superers at

men who

are piloting

American foreign policy could be

written off as purely ludicrous. Unfortunately, they are in a position to

do the world too much harm.

THE FURTHER RIGHT WING By the standards of other

industrial societies, America’s

triumphalists represent an ideological extreme. In Europe,

only groups openly committed to racist policies, especially

with respect to immigration, would qualify as

standing further to the right. That orientation does exist in the

United States;

ica-first”

it

takes the form of a crude, “Amer-

populism whose most prominent voice would be

Ronald Reagan’s former communications director, Patrick Buchanan. Buchanan, whose policy orientation is isolationist and protectionist, speaks for a strain of Old Guard conservatism that dates back to the Barry Goldwater Republicans of the 1960s. Buchanan still contests presidential elections, but his following has been effectively

marginalized by the triumphalists. There are other

ments of the American

right wing, however, with

the triumphalists continue to have an relationship.

ele-

which

odd and awkward

Indeed, one unforeseen result of the

tri-

umphalist ascendancy in national politics has been to

encourage and to some degree legitimize more fanatical right-wing types

whose goal

is

to abolish

government

*

entirely.

For

all

their rhetorical hostility to big

the triumphalists

mean

to govern.

143

They

government,

are out to hold

WORLD, BEWARE! and make policy. Although they verbalize an antigovernment line, their goals are those of realp olitik. office

Their objective take

it

not to destroy federal power but to over and then use it to achieve global hegemony.

That goal

is

in itself

commits them

to creating a strong,

indeed a domineering, government. They need to wield the taxing authority of the Congress and the executive

power of the presidency, and to maintain a formidable military and intelligence establishment. Indeed, the first decisive

move made by

W. own,

the triumphalists after George

Bush entered the White House was to create

their

top-secret intelligence unit: the Office of Special Plans,

which was headed by Abram Shulsky, a disciple of Strauss. Convinced that they could not trust the cia to do the job they wanted done, the triumphalists, with a cold, almost

Kremlinesque premeditation, found a way

of selecting their

on terrorism intelligence

own

confirming information for the war

a practice called “cherry-picking” in the

community. They used

Plans to assemble the case for

their Office of Special

war on

Iraq, turning out a

hasty fabrication of exaggerations and outright

lies.

The

foremost source for that case was the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi, a

shadowy figure who had been haunting Washington for years. The triumphalists also chose Chalabi to be the key player in a

new

government. In a comically inept manoeuvre, they smuggled him and his own private mercenary force into Iraq just after the invasion had begun, Iraqi

expecting him to rally a resistance

movement

make him

effort failed dismally,

president of Iraq.

The

that

would

and, not long after that, the triumphalists dropped Chalabi, seeing him as a loose cannon.

This obsession with absolute control old-line conservatives

is

exactly

why

do not regard the triumphalists

144

as

The Triumph alists

ism, in

its

who

There are some

their allies.

believe that triumphal-

upon

foreign policy position at least, draws

a

Woodrow Wilson, the proDemocratic president who sought to make the

tradition that dates back to gressive

United States the moral arbiter of international relations in the

They

wake

of

World War

I.

Others take a darker view.

see the triumphalists as a distant reflection of the

authoritarianism that

many

Troskyites brought with

went over

era as they

political spectrum.

servative

It is

movement

disenchanted Stalinists and

them

in the post- World

a

good

thing.

a striking fact that the neo-con-

United States includes a great

in the

When

immediately picked a

II

to the conservative side of the

many embittered ex-leftists among who might once have believed that is

War

its

founders, people

iron party discipline left,

they

liberals,

who

they deserted the far

fight

they insisted were soft on

with American

communism:

a bizarre accusa-

had been gullible enough to swallow the Stalinist line and liberals had not. Whatever the origin of triumphalists’ secretive and cliquish style, their brand of power politics is anathema to conservatives who stand to their right, but whose support is still courted by the Republican party. The most important of these are the libertarians and the paramilitarists. tion, given that the old lefties

The

libertarians are organized into a political party

that enters candidates in elections across the country.

Although they run for office, they reject almost all aspects of government beyond police protection and military defence.

If

they had their way, the United States

would once again become

the social jungle of our early

industrial period. In their view, anything that

mises such a state of capitalist anarchy

become social

a

totalitarian

state.

Darwinist maximalists

145

In

brief,

who

is

compro-

bound

libertarians

believe that

it

is

to

are

the

WORLD, BEWARE! duty of every citizen

in a free society to fight for his or

her survival. Libertarians argue a spirited case for tearing down welfare programs and federal regulation, but it is difficult to

take their claims to heroic self-reliance

seri-

of them are academics or professionals

who

Most

ously.

simply are not convincing in the role of rugged individu-

One wonders how many

alists.

greater oppression at

them have suffered any the hands of the government than of

having to stand in a long line at the post office. Libertarians tend to be highly discursive, offering ornate justifications for limited government, yet they have

trouble allying themselves with an anti-tax

whose goal thing

.

.

.

On

except, well,

the

surface

maybe it

little

movement

no taxes

brutally simple-minded:

is

had

for any-

for the national defence.

might seem that .

an

alliance

between power-seeking triumphaiists and power-fearing libertarians

impossible.

is

If

libertarian ideology

were

would all but cripple the triumphaiists’ grand design for worldwide hegemony. Still, triumphaiists and libertarians are bound together by one major fact. Some enforced,

it

of the key figures in the triumphalist intellectual pantheon, among them Friedrich Hayek and his leading disciple, the

Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman, are

very close to being libertarians. Hayek’s critique of eral economics is of such crucial importance to the

umphaiists that they cannot

even though

it

is

not at

drum him out all

clear that

militaristic apparatus.

Nor

Hayek would

no

larger,

more

spendthrift,

more

all

the

has Friedman

been a prominent supporter of their views. There all,

tri-

of their corps,

endorse the triumphaiists’ imperialistic vision and

accompanying

lib-

is,

after

self-serving bureau-

cracy in Washington than the Defense Department. Its budget and administrative superstructure dwarf every other agency in the federal government, and

146

its

waste

is

The Triumph alists legendary. secretive

The Pentagon

is

the very essence of big, costly,

government. Similarly, no aspect of U.S. govern-

ment endangers personal liberty more than do the cia, fbi, and various military intelligence agencies, all of which are essential to the triumphalists who work within these structures. These conditions alliance with the libertarians. Yet

it

make is

for

an uneasy

the rise of the

tri-

umphalists that has done most to publicize and popularize libertarian ideas.

Even more remarkable is the fitful relationship that has developed between the triumphalists and the paramilitary right, the most extreme and delusionary conservative element in the United States. Paramilitary conservatives subscribe to an exaggerated interpretation of the

Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, which forbids the Congress to make laws that infringe

on the

right to bear arms.

That

right as

it

appears

in the

Constitution clearly relates to the role of state militias in the eighteenth century. But as the “gun nuts” understand the constitution, they have the right to carry automatic

hand grenades, anti-tank artillery, and even missiles. As absurd as this may be, protecting that extreme interpretation of the Second Amendment has become the special interest of one of the most effective lobbying rifles,

groups

in the country: the

The nra

is

National Rifle Association.

the very essence of “single-issue politics,”

and value to one overarching goal. It has collected enough money and developed enough political cunning to exert significant influence in elections - and for that reason the the willingness to submerge every other problem

organization has become a precious electoral property for the

block

Republican Party. The nra’s single goal

any attempt to

firearms, even

weapons

147

to

on the possession of designed for use on the

legislate

clearly

is

WORLD, BEWARE! field

of battle.

No

group

in the

United States, not even

organized crime, has done more to flood our

automatic

rifles

and armour-piercing

nra. The support eral politicians it

it

musters

is

bullets

than has the

so fanatical that

have given up opposing

its

with

cities

many

lib-

power. Indeed,

has become almost mandatory for presidential candi-

dates - alas! even Democratic candidates - to be pho-

tographed hunting or taking target practice to prove they have nothing against guns.

Where does the maniacal loyalty of nra members come from? There is a zany nostalgia among Americans, especially in the less-urban

Western

states, that clings to

images of cowboy and frontiersman

self-reliance,

the

gunfighter mystique on which American children have

been raised for generations. In the guise of militias or people’s armies, small contingents of paramilitarists can

be found on any weekend of the year training for guerrilla

warfare in the woods and

that only an alistic as

fields.

Their conviction

armed population can remain

these fantasies

may

free.

is

As unre-

be, they influence people to

denounce

government programs as demeaning and treacherous handouts intended to oppress the citizenry. The nra speaks for millions of Americans who believe that even the slightest

the prelude to a dictatorial

measure of gun control is takeover by Washington. And

since liberals are in the forefront of

gun control, the nra

and programs. For that matter, paramilitary conservatives have armed themselves against the fbi, the atf (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms), and other law-enforcement agencies, all of which they see as little better than the Gestapo. In some rejects all liberal values

and Jews are seen as the driving force behind Washington’s effort to disarm and enslave the scenarios, blacks

nation; others regard the United Nations as the

148

main

The Triumph alists culprit.

Some claim

un

that the

clock surveillance of their

on round-the-

carries

homes from

a secret fleet of

black helicopters. Ironically, for all their patriotic

conservatives

may

bravado, paramilitary

pose as great a terrorist threat as

al-

Qaeda. The most destructive act of terrorism committed in the

United States before September 11, 2001, was the

Oklahoma City 168 people. The man who

bombing

of the federal office building in

in April

1995, which killed

was a disgruntled right-wing militia member whose purpose was to retaliate for an attack by the fbi and atf on an armed evangelical church in Waco, Texas, in 1993. The fbi was pursuing the Waco evangelicals - the Branch Davidians, as they called themselves carried out the attack

because they possessed

illegal firearms. In the

compound

course of

which the group had taken refuge was set afire - the fbi claims accidentally - and seventy-six men, women, and children died in the conflagration. There is no question but that this was an unforthe attack, the

in

givably incompetent episode that deserves the severest censure. Yet not a single federal agent

manded. Bad mistakes

like that

(if

was

fired or repri-

indeed this was a mis-

take) can only feed the paranoia that haunts

American

society.

Paramilitary conservatives do not see their stance as

“anti-government”; they refer to themselves as “pro-constitutional.” is

But their interpretation of the Constitution

wholly negative.

It

would grant

the

government no

authority to collect taxes or to deal with social issues.

Some

paramilitary groups have gone as far as creating an

which only the “common law” would be enforced. Their definition of common law seems to amount to vigilante justice and kangaroo courts dominated by local gunslingers. In some backwoods alterative court system in

149

WORLD, BEWARE! areas,

paramilitary units have claimed a special legal

managed agents. The

authority called the “posse comitatus” and have to intimidate local magistrates

and federal

overall effect of fantasies like these

is

to permeate Ameri-

can society with a mistrust of government that neatly serves the interests of the triumphalists.

PARANOIA GALORE Anti-government scenarios

promoted by the

like those

paramilitary right are not limited to fringe elements in the United States. Since the assassination of President

John F. Kennedy in 1963, the United States has become a hotbed of conspiratorial rumours, the sure sign of a society that

is

losing confidence in

itself.

Next

to pornogra-

phy and gambling, the most prominent features of the World Wide Web are websites and chat rooms dedicated to anxious reports of plots and skullduggery. As Americans have grown more aware of how often the government has resorted to clandestine activities over the past generation, paranoia has become a standard category of political analysis.

There mainly

in

no denying that the level of official secrecy, the form of covert operations, that has come to is

surround U.S.

politics since the

extreme suspicion.

Who

Cold War very nearly

jus-

John Kennedy - and his brother, and Martin Luther King, and Marilyn Monroe? Convoluted interpretations of events like these have become part of the folklore of our time. There are tifies

now

self-styled “conspiracy theorists” for

baroque scenarios of art form.

distrust

speculation.

whom

spinning

and betrayal has become an

They can braid together every

and scandal of the zied

really killed

last forty years into

political

networks of

death fren-

September 11 and the triumphalists

150

The Triumph alists have not been excused from such attention. Search the Internet

Were .

.

and you

will find a

wealth of worried conjecture.

the twin towers perhaps brought

or Israeli intelligence ... or George

.

In these thickets of conjecture,

sometimes come to

tions

light

down by

the cia

W. Bush himself?

intriguing connec-

- obscure relations involv-

somebody who knew somebody who knew somebody. The triumphalists easily fall into this mould. Many of the advisers who have made basic policy during the Reagan years and the two Bush administrations trace to ing

a

common

background. For example, their paths crossed

key triumphalist organization: the Project for the

in a

New

American Century, which openly advocated an advanced policy of military assertiveness in the Middle East targeted on Iraq. These are the people, after all, who believed it would take “a new Pearl Harbor” to produce

the radical

new

policy orientation they sought.

In hindsight, these are frightening words.

One Euro-

pean newspaper referred to the organization’s 1998 position paper as “a secret blueprint for U.S. global tion.”

A

secret,

pnac was

blueprint

it

may have

been, but

was published

for

was hardly

a well-publicized organization;

were high-profile Washington

bers

it

all

to read. This

figures, is

domina-

and

its

mem-

its

paper

hardly the behaviour

of a conspiratorial group. In fact, suspicion hangs so thick in the air these

room

days in the United States that there

for secrets:

all

list

of interconnecting possibili-

But for that matter does one have to invent something

as sensational as conspiracy to account for

happening great

in U.S. politics

many

what we

today? True, there are

see

now

a

triumphalists scattered throughout the Bush

administration. These people to

no

the blackest deeds one can imagine

have been placed on the ties.

is

know

each other;

many went

school together; some had the same teachers; they

151

WORLD, BEWARE! belong to the same organizations and mittees. Doubtless they frequently

These are

They help one another

go to lunch together.

since the

and out of

in

on the same com-

many have been

political scavengers;

around positions of power

sit

Reagan

hovering

presidency.

jobs, author the occa-

sional policy paper, look for opportunities to curry favour

They are doubtless uous bureaucratic manoeuvring -

in the right places.

all

involved in stren-

retaliating

old

for

grudges, cultivating alliances, toadying up to superiors. Isn’t petty

nonsense

like this exactly

what preoccupies peo-

whether public or private?

ple in big bureaucratic systems,

any case, much of what goes on among the

In

umphalists and Washington policy-makers chronicled in the press. all

the players,

we do not know

If

we can

take

every eminence grise there

who

also in the

is

game

it

is still

for

is

routinely

the

names of

for granted that behind

another eminence

money

or glory.

And

grise,

we

if

could document the motives of the triumphalists,

much worse could

tri-

how

they be than those that have already

been attributed to them? As part of the anti-war

effort,

thousands of us accused the Bush administration and

minions of serving the

oil interests.

We know

its

from the

media that many of the Bush henchmen are beholden to private companies and foreign governments for jobs and

power is written across the front book in the conviction that the tri-

payoffs. Their lust for

pages.

write this

I

umphalists are obsessed with the project of redrawing the

map

of the Middle East,

that,

if

not the rest of the world, and

should they succeed, they will be richly rewarded.

Simple sociology - the study of shared interests -

enough

to account for the influence wielded

by the

is

tri-

umphalists.

The eager

to

intellectual credentials that triumphalists are so

display

are

little

152

more than an

effort

to

The Triumph alists bamboozle the

much

how

of

Worried left-wing

public.

number

a

of

Strauss’s

Chicago students are to be found

critics

University

in politics

of

- especially

during the George W. Bush administration.

(who died

make

Is

Strauss

1973) perhaps the posthumous centre of a

in

triumphalist conspiracy?

The

closer

convincing this seems.

may

well be that Strauss’s per-

sonal tastes in

It

one looks, the

were conservative, but there

life

his

academic work that has obvious

He

is

said to have

less

is little

in

political relevance.

admired a society governed by a rural

aristocracy - of

which there are not many left. Strauss’s reputation rests on erudite interpretations of major philosophers, mainly Plato, Nietzsche, and Spinoza.

Some

praise his scholarship for the insights

it

offers into

found an esoteric sub-

Plato; others find his claim to have

text in Plato to be bizarre. Strauss’s intellectual mission

was

to salvage the

into a

damning

wisdom

critique of “modernity.”

succeeded with students

on the printed page fessorial

dust.

scholarship

of the ancients and shape

his

who knew him words wear

Where does any

it

He may have personally, but

a thick coat of pro-

of his finely nuanced

connect sensibly with the

politics

of

an

urban-industrial society rapidly falling under the control of multinational corporations?

The triumphalists lives serving the

are people

who

needs of the well-to-do. They are the

children of socially ambitious families that

money

validates

all

things.

They

are the legitimate rulers of society. ples, they despise the

no proper claim

have spent their

who were

taught

believe that the rich

On

Darwinist princi-

lower orders as proven failures with

to political power.

None

ever experienced economic insecurity;

I

them has suspect none of of

them has spent a single day in the company of the country’s poor or non-white population. After all, the poor do 153

WORLD, BEWARE! not serve the best Scotch.

man would

consider

it

It

is

enough

to

know

an intolerable hardship

if

that a

he could

not dine in the best restaurants and drink the finest wine.

you need to know about his politics. And if people like this meet to share their grievances and lay plans to improve their fortunes, simple vanity will explain what they are up to. “Birds of a feather flock together.” One need have no recourse to conspiracy. Does that make matters better or worse for the future of American politics? Worse, I think. If the triumphalists were a handful of fanatics operating in deep secrecy, they might be all the easier to expose and disThat

tells

credit.

you

all

But that their designs are so well

known

to the

and the public makes one fear for the moral vigilance of the American people. There are still brave voices of dissent in the United States - columnists, political car-

press

commentators who express their disapproval of the war in Iraq. There have been major documentaries - many by the pbs Frontline series - detailing how the triumphalists moved into few

toonists,

even

power

Washington. But none of

in

a

television

this

has registered

strongly with the public at large as the basis for signifi-

cant protest.

One can

only conclude that a great

many

Americans sympathize with what the triumphalists want, or - even worse - that they are simply too lethargic to

Approval or complacency at the grassroots provides more cause for worry than do conspiracies in high

care. far

places.

154

FIVE

The Fundamentalists

“We have

seen that current events are fitting together simul-

taneously into the precise pattern of predicted events. Israel

has returned to Palestine and revived the nation. Jerusalem is

under

Israeli

control.

Russia has emerged as a great

northern power, the avowed enemy of revived

Israel.

The

Arabs are joining in a concerted effort to liberate Palestine under Egyptian leadership. The black African nations are beginning to move from sympathy toward the Arabs to an open Alliance in their ‘liberation’ cause. “It’s happening. God is putting it all together. God

may have

his

meaning

‘now generation’ which on mankind than anything since

for the

have a greater effect Genesis 1. Will you be ready

will

if

we

are to be part of the

prophetic ‘now generation’?”

Hal Lindsay, The Late, Great Planet Earth 1970 ,

“We, the People of the United States recognizing the being and attributes of Almighty God, the Divine Authority of the Holy Scriptures, the law of God as the paramount rule, and Jesus, the Messiah, the Savior and Lord of all, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the general wel-

and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for fare,

the United States of America.”

Revised Christian Preamble to the U.S. Constitution

WORLD, BEWARE!

THE

RISE OF

OLITICS, IT HAS

P

THE SUNBELT

LONG BEEN RECOGNIZED, makes

strange bedfellows.

But there have never been

stranger bedfellows than

we now

find

on the

right

where avaricious and cynical corporate leaders snuggle up to fire-and-brimstone preachers who believe that the world was created in six days and Jonah really was swallowed by the whale. It would seem that the mismatch could not be greater. While the corporados remain sunk in the sordid commercial affairs

wing of U.S.

politics,

of the world, seeking opportunities for long-term invest-

ments and swinishly huge

profits,

an increasing number

of austere and prudish evangelicals are girding them-

Armageddon - which they expect to happen any day now. How can two such divergent views of life come together in a political alliance? The selves for the battle of

answer to that question can Sunbelt.

From

lies in

the history of the Ameri-

the viewpoint of electoral politics in the United

most significant development of the late twentieth century was the emergence of the Sunbelt as a new base of power. The Sunbelt is made up of two somewhat dissimilar areas. Looking east from Texas, it encompasses what was once known as the Deep South. Looking west, it is made up of Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and Southern California. Throughout most of States, the single

the twentieth century, the southern portion of the Sunbelt

was underpopulated, underdeveloped, and mainly nonurban. This is the Old South of the Confederacy “Dixie,” as it was called in Abraham Lincoln’s day - that fought to preserve slavery and, by

was allowed Civil

way

of punishment,

to sink ever deeper into poverty after the

War. For three generations after 1865 the majority

156

The Fundamentalists of the population in the

Deep South

(largely sharecrop-

pers often referred to as “white trash”)

worked

the land

under conditions that resembled those of a Third World country.

Meanwhile,

western edge of the Sunbelt,

at the far

retirement communities and resort areas predominated,

more conservative population. For reasons of geography and climate, this was also an underpopulated part of the country. Until great dams tending to attract an older,

and water projects were

built in the 1930s, the aridity of

on the size of cities and the growth of industry. Once water became available, however, great metropolises bloomed in the desert: Tucson, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, and above all the sprawling Los Angeles - San Diego conurbation, which was a major centre of wartime ship- and aircraft-building. Throughout the Western Sunbelt, remnants of the lighter, more playful, less industrial past linger on in the casinos of Las Vegas and the film and television production of Hollywood. There has been one important addition to the Western Sunbelt: it has grown an extension in the Rocky Mountains that connects it with the evangelical South. Throughout several Western states (Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and parts of Idaho and Oregon) the Mormons (Church of Latterthe Western United States placed a strict limit

day Saints) have become sading for

much

the

a significant political force cru-

same

set of

“family values” as the

fundamentalists. This has resulted in adding a strip of “solid

mountain”

states to

support for the Republican

Party.

Soon

after

World War

II,

thanks mainly to

new

investment connected with the military-industrial com-

whole began to prosper. Sunbelt with Lyndon Johnson and including

plex, the Sunbelt as a

presidents (starting

157

WORLD, BEWARE! every president since then except for Gerald Ford) fun-

government money into the area. Virginia, Georgia, Florida, and Texas enjoyed heavy doses of aerospace and defence spending; the area became deeply embedded in military programs and bases, including the political values that accompanied the Cold War period. In time, nelled

non-defence industries relocated to prospering Southern

mainly to escape the power of trade unions in northern cities. War production and anti-union manufac-

cities

turing gave the area a cultural bias that

conservative.

Northern

That

orientation

was

increased

distinctly

as

big-city,

Democratic Party took up the imposing sweeping legal and elec-

liberals in the

cause of racial justice,

on Southern states that had for generations been committed to a policy of racial segregation. In reac-

toral reforms

Southerners deserted the Democratic Party,

tion

first

becoming Dixiecrats and then converting to Republicans.

Few Republicans may have

realized

it

at the time,

with the Sunbelt was destined to

but

them to a new demographic. The party of Abraham Lincoln was about to become the party of the solid white, born-again their alliance

tie

Christian South.

Dwight Eisenhower, who

left office in

1960, was the

moderate Republican president. In the very next election - in 1964 - the Republicans nominated Barry Goldlast

water, a far-right Arizona senator. Goldwater’s for the

nomination was a

eral East

bitter fight against the

Coast Republican establishment.

It

campaign

more

pitted

lib-

him

against Nelson Rockefeller, the Republican governor of

New

York.

One might have expected

that a Rockefeller,

American name synonymous with money, would have little trouble winning the nomination of the Republican Party. But Goldwater managed to portray his millionaire opponent as a liberal interloper the holder of a legendary

158

The Fundamentalists And he was right. Rockefeller Republican who would have endorsed the

with no place in the party.

was

the sort of

welfare state, accepting

it

omy.

He

tion

and cosmopolitan

also

embodied

market econ-

as the ballast of a

big-city, big-business sophistica-

Resistance

values.

Republican ranks was a significant indicator:

America that rejected the cultural world, preferring traditional family for

style life,

of

him in there was an the modern to

a subordinate role

women, piety, and bourgeois respectability. That was a decisive moment. The Sunbelt had taken

over a Republican Party that had formerly belonged to the cities,

banks, and Ivy League alumni of the East

Coast. In elections to come, Republican presidential candidates

would be

belt strongholds,

Even the

first

selected almost exclusively

mainly Texas and Southern California.

George Bush, an East Coast, Yale Univer-

sity patrician if there

connection for

Texan. The

The

last

all

shift

it

was

was one, used

ever

was worth felt in

his oil-industry

to pretend he

from outside

te

was

a

the Democratic Party as well.

Democratic president to be elected

eth century

from Sun-

in the twenti-

Sunbelt was John Kennedy in

1960 - and only by a tissue-thin majority. As for the Old South, it was rapidly changing. Its population was growing, and its wealth accumulating. The region had managed to preserve its culture and even

make

example grass

it

attractive to the rest of the country, for

in the

form of country-and-western or blue-

music. The popularity of Elvis Presley in the

1950s and 1960s was one small sign of the emerging Sunbelt. Presley offered a white version of Southern black music. As the culture of the South once more asserted

itself,

so too did

its

religion.

From

Virginia to

Texas^ the Southern Sunbelt has proudly and pugnaciously

remained the

“Bible

159

belt,”

the

most pious

WORLD, BEWARE! portion of the country,

with evangelical and fun-

filled

damentalist congregations that remain faithful to the old-time religion. Here were millions of people

war with Darwin’s theory of evolution and ways of big-city liberals.

the

still

at

immoral

Evangelical Christianity has long been one of the

main else

forces opposing

Sunbelt churches

contemporary values. Yet whatever

may

reject

have eagerly appropriated the

about modern times, they

latest

means of communica-

and organization. They have built powerful massmedia networks on radio and television. Their methods of proselytizing have become as sophisticated as those of any merchandising business. Churches - many of them “megachurches” that rival the size of stadiums and convention halls - have adopted the latest marketing techniques; tion

some have become small broadcasting empires. They have built theme parks and opened resorts for their members. And as their numbers multiply and as they become more aware of their voting power, evangelical churches have grown steadily more politicized. They participate eagerly in election campaigns and fight for issues that mean the most to them. In the process they have become a dependable voting bloc, willing to give their support to candi-

dates

who

speak out against abortion, women’s

rights,

and homosexuality.

The

increasingly pious character of Southern politics

has set the region squarely at odds with liberals and therefore with the Democratic Party. In times past, the

South was the most dependable part of Franklin Roosevelt’s

won

New

Deal

alliance.

But in 1980 Ronald Reagan

very nearly the entire South for his brand of conser-

vatism. His victory

was

he was running against

the

more remarkable because

Jimmy

Carter, the former gover-

all

nor of Georgia, a true son of the South and a devoutly

160

The Fundamentalists born-again Christian. As moderate as he was, Carter

proved to be too

liberal for

compatriots. Carter

was

many

of his

own

Southern

a staunch advocate of racial jus-

and had even toyed with the idea of legalizing marijuana. What Sunbelt voters wanted was a sweeping rejectice

tion of the loose morality that they associated with liberalism, especially

president

who

its

sexual permissiveness.

They wanted

a

talked religion and promised to impose

good, Christian morals on the nation. That was what

Reagan offered in his campaign, even though his Hollywood background displayed none of these characteristics. As president he did little to deliver on the cultural and moral values that he had advocated. Nevertheless, his sweep of the South was a stunning political transformation. The Sunbelt, especially the southern wing of the area, had turned solidly Republican and become the anchor of conservatism

in the

United States.

Ever since the Reagan presidency, the Republican Party has been assiduously cultivating the votes of the evangelical community. Evangelical churches and sects,

Mountain States, have become the political base of the party. They contribute enormous amounts of money and manpower during elections. They including those in the

get out the vote. This base has profoundly influenced the

triumphalist agenda.

One cannot spend

years currying

favour with a resolutely religious community and not

wind up with a binding commitment to its worldview. At some point the moral absolutism and simpleminded piety of that constituency rubs off. The result is a brand of conservatism that sounds more and more like a profession of religious faith. Thanks to the Sunbelt, American politics is growing steadily more pious and more fanatical. It is important for the world at large to know that finally

161

WORLD, BEWARE! American imperium is indebted to a militant religious constituency. The America that is leading the war on terrorism is not the America that led the grand alliance of World War II and the Cold War. Liberals with a broad, international outlook are no longer in charge of the the

country’s politics. For the foreseeable future, every conservative politician in the United States, especially at the

presidential level, will be to

one degree or another under

the influence of a religious belief system that sees the

world as a Manichaean

and absolute

battle

between absolute good

American fundamentalists had their way, Christian prayers would be compulsory in our schools, the Ten Commandments would be displayed in every public building, and the courts of the land would work from biblical principles. The teaching of Darwinian biology would be outlawed in the schools, and so too would most of modern astronomy, since it posits that the universe

is

evil. If

a great deal older than the six

chronicled in the different,

but,

Book

thousand years

The doctrines may be uniting church and state is

of Genesis.

ironically,

what the shariah requires in the eyes of fundamentalist Muslims - and for that matter what the Torah requires in the eyes of orthodox Jews, whose influence exactly

has never been greater in Christian, Jewish,

images of one another.

Israel.

and Muslim

We

fanatics are mirror

are living in an era in

which

angry factions that subscribe to fundamentalist dogmas are sinking the world in ever greater sectarian violence.

The broad and tolerant secular humanism that we inherited from the eighteenth-century Enlightenment is in danger of losing ground everywhere - and most significantly in the

United States. At a time

principles

are

needed

when

pluralistic political

more urgently than

ever,

the

world’s one remaining superpower has fallen under the

162

The Fundamentalists influence of the least tolerant, least pluralistic elements in

our

society.

APOCALYPSE NOW! The

first

munity

significant

in politics

movement

involvement of the evangelical com-

was

as part of the great

temperance

of the nineteenth century. Conservative Protes-

tant churches were the great crusade,

main organizational base

which achieved success

for that

in the years follow-

World War I by imposing Prohibition on the United States. Hard as it is to believe now, for fourteen years it was illegal to make, sell, or transport beer, wine, or whisky in the United States. Prohibition did not happen because most Americans agreed to give up booze, but because a puritanical and militant minority achieved sufficient power to impose its moral code on the country at large. Eventually, when it was recognized that Prohibition was doing more harm than good - it was in effect capitalizing an illegal bootlegging industry - the law was repealed. By then organized crime had become a permaing

nent part of the U.S. economy. After that, evangelical elements remained politically active at the local level

struggling to keep

and campaigning

and mainly

in the

Southern

states,

Darwinian evolution out of the schools

for puritanical values in the areas of sex,

marriage, and domestic

life.

influence of the churches

Following World

War

the

II,

seemed to be waning rapidly

as

became more urban and cosmopolitan. War generally takes its toll of public morality, and the United States was no exception. The countercultural the United States

rebellion of the

many tight

1960s with

its

hedonistic style looked to

of us like the end of the old-time religion and

moral code. Movements

like

163

women’s

liberation

its

and

WORLD, BEWARE! gay rights were rapidly transforming social mores. By the

was becoming commonplace for couples to live together out of wedlock, teenage sex was widespread, and movies were filled with nudity and profanity. The forces of change seemed ready to sweep all but the most liberal forms of religion from the scene. But that was a serious miscalculation. In reality, another form of evangelicalism was gaining strength beneath the surface of American life. It goes by two late

1970s

it

names: Premillennialist Christianity, or Dispensational Christianity. Starting as a small and marginal form of

fundamentalism

in the late nineteenth century,

tionalism

was based upon what seemed

doctrine

even

period.

As

it

to

many

the English preacher

like

a bizarre

of

Christians

believing

was announced

Dispensa-

to the Christian

John Nelson Darby

that

world by

in the mid-nine-

teenth century, Dispensationalism believed that the Bible

contained a precise prophetical countdown leading to the

The countdown chronicled the fate of the Jews in the modern world. Before Christ could fulfil his promise to come again, the Jews had to be restored to their ancient homeland. It was this precondition that

End

of Days.

made Darby’s message

premillennial. Before the

Day

of

Judgment, there was history that still had to be lived through, an enormous loose end that God was working to tie up.

Darby’s teachings were picked up by the dynamic

and lay preacher William E. Blackstone, who dedicated his life and his fortune to Zionism. His fol-

U.S. businessman

lowing was small but impassioned;

it

was convinced

once the Jews had regained their homeland, the phase of the apocalypse as described

in

164

final

the books of

The Jews Temple Mount

Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation could begin.

could then rebuild the third temple on the

that

The Fundamentalists in

Jerusalem - approximately where the Muslim

the

Rock now

for

all this,

stands.

Soon

after that (there

is

Dome

of

a timetable

but even evangelicals disagree on the details)

the Antichrist

would appear

to

make

mischief and mislead

Armageddon would descend upon

the gullible. After that the great battle of

would ensue, and at last Jesus Jerusalem to announce the Day of Judgment. At which

who

point those

away to mankind -

merit salvation will be whisked

moment and the rest of including all Jews who refuse to convert and accept Jesus as the true Messiah - will be damned for eternity. That moment is called “the Rapture.” heaven

a single

in

In accordance with these teachings, Dispensationalist

Christians in England and the United States began contributing their labour, prayers,

Jews

promising a

They became Christian Zionists. From the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917, “national home” for the Jews, Dispensation-

evangelicals have been convinced that their reading

of scripture

prophecy

is

correct.

fulfilled in the

They believe they are seeing news of the day. They were to

become even more convinced of this after the Israel was founded in 1949 and after the Israeli in

resettling

in Palestine.

the day that

alist

and money to

subsequent wars

The

neighbours. Ezekiel

is

(1956,

Israelis

1967) with

won

the

war;

state of

victories

Israel’s

the

Arab

prophet

vindicated! In the Dispensationalist view,

all

these developments -

and indeed everything that happens in the Near East day by day - are fulfilments of God’s word. At any time now the End of Days may come. That event

may

require the destruction of the

Dome

of the

Rock and a war of enormous bloodshed throughout Muslim world - but so be it!

One might tory of the

the

well ask why, at this late stage in the his-

modern world, 165

at

a

time

when

societies

WORLD, BEWARE! everywhere are enveloped by

scientific technology,

any-

moment’s attention to absurd beliefs of this kind. The answer is: 47 percent - nearly half of the people who live in the world’s major industrial and military power - now identify themselves in public opin-

body should

give a

ion polls as “born-again Christians.” the world

was created by God

Darwinian evolution that Jesus will

They

believe that

in six days; they regard

as a Satanic falsehood; they believe

come again

to judge the saved

and the

damned.

Not

born-again Christians are

all

tionalists,

strict

Dispensa-

but Dispensationalists are the most politically

organized religious force in the country; and they are

making more and more converts each year precisely because people believe they offer the most accurate reading of God’s word. Accordingly, books based on premillennialist teachings have become astonishing bestsellers. Hal Lindsey’s 1970 exposition of Dispensational doctrine The Late Great Planet Earth was the biggest seller of its

A

1990s Dispensationalist fiction series called Left Behind - the story of humans who failed to qualify for the Rapture - has sold eighty-five million copies. decade.

When

Dispensationalist preachers seek out politicians,

they claim to

command

the votes of between forty

seventy million biblical people. Ronald Reagan first

Republican leader to bid for those votes.

by affirming

his

own

belief that the

End

of

was

He

and the

did so

Days was

at

hand.

Oddly enough, Reagan’s Bush, did Despite

little

successor,

George H.W.

to ingratiate himself to the evangelicals.

all his efforts

to disguise himself as a boots-and-

saddle Texan, he smacked of Atlantic-seaboard manners

and morals. He was not comfortable with the Biblethumpers, and they were not comfortable with him. His 1

66

The Funda?nentalists George W. Bush displayed none of his father’s qualms. As a lifelong Texas businessman, he made himson

home with

self at

the

good

ol’

step with their sub-intellectual,

boys.

He

macho

fell

style.

right into

Moreover,

he threw in unreservedly with Sunbelt evangelicals. In the

White House he instituted weekly prayer breakfasts, and he banned swearing. Upon awakening, he would spend an hour or so in the West Wing reading evangelical sermons - mainly the work of Oswald Chambers. Chambers, a

World War

tine to

preach the Dispensational message to the Aus-

I

Baptist minister, travelled to Pales-

who had

tralian troops

occupied the former Ottoman

ter-

and taken Jerusalem. Here is a sample of what Bush learned from the homilies of Reverend Chambers: “If you debate for even one second when God has sporitories

ken,

it

totally

is

Be reckless immediately,

over for you. ...

unrestrained and willing to risk everything by

casting your

all

upon him.

.

.

.

You

will only recognize

His voice more clearly through recklessly being willing to risk

your

all.”

ness with the

Combine that kind of religious impulsivemilitary power of the Pentagon, and we all

worry about. It should come as no surprise, then, that Bush promised his evangelical followers that he would divert surely have something to

as

many

federal

tax dollars as possible into

“faith-

based” programs. Faith-based programs are social

ser-

down-and-out run by churches (usually evangelical churches) and inevitably vices

for

the

distressed

used to proselytize for

and

new

converts. This

is

a jarring

violation of the separation of church and state, a basic

constitutional

principle.

But then, evangelicals

reject

and would remove it from the Constitution. They have sponsored a “Christian Nation” amendment that begins, “The United States is a Christian that principle

167

WORLD, BEWARE! nation. Congress shall exercise of

all

make no law

abridging the free

Christian religions.”

Dispensational evangelicalism has an agressive leg-

agenda.

islative

It

opposes gay marriage, cohabitation

our of wedlock, stem-cell research, and traception that

may

all

risk causing abortion.

forms of conalso the

It is

form of Christianity to take an interest in foreign affairs. It has an intense concern about the United States’

first

population policy in the world.

blocked support of any

relief

has,

It

Saddam Hussein,

services

example,

and family-planning pro-

grams that might permit abortion. In of

for

Iraq, after the fall

doctors sent in to rebuild medical

had to be anti-abortion. The Dispensationalists

are also the

first

religious

movement

to establish a lobby

promotion of foreign policy: the National Christian Leadership Conference on Israel. The for

the

aggressive

is

simple: support hardline parties, such as Likud,

in Israel.

Send them money, send them armaments, make

policy

sure they win,

no matter what the

cost. In the nineteenth

century Christians, especially evangelicals, were

among

most anti-Semitic Americans. They would have said that the Jews had been offered their chance to accept Jesus as the Messiah two thousand years ago and had missed the boat. Today the Jews are at the very centre of the

Dispensationalist theology.

Millions of evangelicals have issue voters in support of the

ments

in Israel;

and

mentalist card,” and

when

Israeli

it

It is

single-

most uncompromising

in turn those

vated evangelical support.

now become elements have

ele-

culti-

called “playing the funda-

has been played boldly. In 1998,

prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited

Washington looking for support for his hardline policies, he all but snubbed President Clinton in favour of addressing an evangelical rally, where he was cheered

168

The Fundamentalists long and hard. The event was sponsored by Rev. Jerry

group that claims to number two hundred thousand ministers who can turn their members

Falwell, leader of a

out to vote. Falwell has publicly warned politicians that evangelical voters will punish any candidate

who

votes in

support of compromise with the Palestinians.

The

among them who hap-

triumphalists, even those

pen to be Jewish, are not

a religious group.

But there are

some triumphalists who seek to resolve the instability in the Near East by backing the hardline Israeli parties, and that is where they connect with the fundamentalists. Their hope is that a powerful U.S. military presence in Iraq can be used to intimidate Iran and the Arab countries into making peace with Israel, and so to cut off the support that Palestinian militants have received from those governments. When George W. Bush sought the votes of evangelical Christians,

may have

it

been because

he accepts their theology; but his triumphalist advisers see the evangelicals as their

backing extreme policy East.

And

main

initiatives

electoral support for

throughout the Middle

of course that orientation

ties in nicely

the prospect of taking control of the oil fields in Iraq

elsewhere.

One

left

is

to

wonder which party

in

with

and this

implausible alliance of true believers and hardened political operatives

is

the

more

opportunistic.

George W. Bush’s personal story is particularly illuminating as an example of how a politician becomes so deeply entangled in

religiosity. In his

of Christian temperance reclaimed

As

a

result

believe

youth, a strong dose

him from alcoholism.

of this therapeutic benefit, he decided to

whatever evangelical Christianity has to teach,

including

its

conviction that the end of the world

hand and that the

state of Israel

for the return of Jesus.

needs to be

Nobody can 169

say

if

is

at

made ready

this

provided

WORLD, BEWARE! the

major force behind Bush’s foreign

policy; the press

we can

has been too timid to raise the question. But what say

is

that once

we have accounted

for

all

the other ques-

tionable elements that stand behind that policy - the drive to control the world’s oil markets, the need to find a

new post-Cold War

justification for

tary budget, the sheer

macho

an enhanced

mili-

fascination with throwing

around in the world - we have this crowning inanity to add to the mix. Bush has bequeathed the one’s weight

United States a foreign policy that

Armageddon. He was

willing to give favourable attention

to fanatical religious types in the

preparing us for

is

who

are tracking

pages of scripture. Incredible as

it

world

affairs

seems, there are

Christian congregations that meet every Sunday to decide

American foreign policy is approved by God and cated by quotations from the Book of Ezekiel. if

vindi-

THE RED HEIFER Whatever setbacks the future may hold politics,

we can

for evangelical

be sure that the Republican right wing

produce a long, steady stream of leaders like George W. Bush. There is an America - a large, assertive America - that wants people like him in the White House. Bush is will

destined to hold his place in our history as a sobering

example of the leadership produced by piety. If

this

new

political

anything should serve to put the world on

its

guard about the international goals of the United States, it is that a man of this kind could become - by hook or by crook - president.

One

day, looking back to Gulf

War

II,

historians will

marvel that one of the greatest transformations of world affairs

could have been carried out by a

painfully limited abilities

man

of such

and dubious moral character.

170

The Fundamentalists Bush may well rank among the shallowest and most narrow-minded presidents to hold office since Warren Harding in the 1920s. Before entering the White House, he had done

little

travelling

and

little

reading.

He was

edu-

cated in business administration, an academically sub-

which he performed with no distinction. His greatest accomplishments as a university student were as a “party animal” and football cheerleader. Beyond that, his career was that of a minor business figure who once owned a baseball team. As an executive of a Texas oil company, he cut corners to make a bit more profit. Questioned about his business record, he found no standard

better

field in

way

of justifying his conduct than to say that

what

main reading material has long consisted of sermons and simpleminded religious tracts. During his years as governor of Texas, these provided his main connection with thought. Drawing on sources like these, he quickly convinced himself that he was God’s chosen agent in the struggle against cosmic evil. Where else does a simple man find he did was not technically

illegal.

Bush’s

megalomaniacal self-confidence? Of course - by associating himself with God. What we have in Bush is an example of hubris elevated to the highest political level

equipped with the mightiest military arsenal

The growing power of

and

in history.

sternly intolerant evangelicals

within the Republican Party has driven American politics

anyone could have imagined through most of the twentieth century. Under pressure from religious conservatives, the Republican Party now unabashedly enunciates policies that fly in the face of common sense and sound science. On global warming further to the right than

and other urgent ecological with evangelicals

who

issues,

Republicans

now

side

End

Days

will

believe that the

come long before any environmental 171

of

crisis

requires

WORLD, BEWARE! attention. For apocalyptic Christians

it

makes no sense

to

worry about the fate of a planet that will soon be swallowed up in the Rapture. Similarly, the Republican position on stem-cell research is based on the evangelical insistence that biotechnology

may

to God’s law. There

is

unnatural and contrary

be grounds for ethical concern

about some forms of genetic research; but introducing a narrow, literal reading of the Bible into the discussion hardly helps to clarify the issue. In

ways

that are nearly too bizarre to take seriously,

religious extremists tie into the foreign as well as the

domestic program of the triumphalists. In droves bornagain Americans journey to Jerusalem on Bible tours that

show them

exactly where Jesus will stand as the heavens

and the damned are judged. The only question they find worth debating is whether those who are swept away in the Rapture will arrive in heaven fully clothed or naked. With the support of political allies in Washington, fall

evangelical congregations are sending missionaries into

Muslims from what they consider to be a false, if not a demonic, religion. At certain points, evangelical politics can become surrealistic. Iraq to convert

Take, for example, the story of the red

heifer.

According to the Book of Numbers, before one can approach the temple, one must be purified with a pinch of ashes derived from the ritual slaughter and burning of a perfect red heifer, a

body of any other

cow

colour.

that has not one hair

The

on

its

sanctifying remnants of

when the second by the Romans in AD

the last red heifer vanished into history

temple in Jerusalem was destroyed

Even now, when modern Jews have returned to the Holy Land and reclaimed it as their home, the third tem70.

ple remains

where

it

unbuilt.

In part, that

must be raised

is

now 172

is

because the

occupied by the

site

Dome

of

The Fundamentalists most sacred places. But there are those in Israel who would tear down the Dome at a moment’s notice - if they were pure enough to enter the site and build the new temple. That purity depends upon discovering another red heifer and reducing it to sacred the Rock, one of Islam’s

ashes.

There are pious

who

Israelis

are keeping a sharp

some

eye out for that heifer. But in the United States

hope to speed things along. According to

evangelicals

Rod Dreher

National Review,

writing in the

devout

Texas cattlemen are carrying out breeding experiments with a view to producing a perfect red heifer at the

earli-

est possible date. Israeli settlements in the

the second

West Bank

coming of Jesus

.

.

.

.

.

.

Iraqi oil

the Rapture:

.

what

.

.

a

nightmarish mixture of realpolitik and sheer superstition

American foreign policy has become!

THE WAR AGAINST PLURALISM The year was 1972. The young woman seated across from me in my study was the first “Jesus freak” I’d ever met. She was in her early twenties, bright-eyed and assertive, dressed in the thrift-shop motley that was the hippie fashion of the 1960s. She had asked to interview me for a new Berkeley-based magazine called Right On, but she came as much to talk as to listen. She wanted to tell me about the Christian commune that she had helped organize. Though I heard her out politely, it was with a kind of smug dismissiveness. That was, after all, the period

when people with any

taste

for

religion

were

- towards Zen or Hinduism or Sufism - rather than back to the old rugged cross. I soon discovered that she had come with a purpose inclined to journey east

in

mind. Would

I

be willing to

173

let

her quote

me

to the

WORLD, BEWARE! and her barefoot apostles were the true counterculture of the day? I had recently coined the term to suggest that youthful protest had to do with issues that went beyond standard politics. I had to admit that the Christian populism she was advocating - “Give all effect that she

you have to the poor and follow me” - was decidedly “counter” with respect to mainstream American materialism. But there was a vexing theme that kept popping up in our conversation. “One” - that word echoed through all

she said. That

was

the emblematic Jesus-freak gesture:

a single finger pointing skyward.

one way, one ity

truth,

was exactly

One

finger up,

meaning

one road to salvation. Such exclusiv-

the opposite of

what

I

found most

attrac-

tive in the youthful dissent of the time: its spirit of

ness

and adventure,

ment,

its

its

willingness to sample

fascination with the exotic

contrast,

my

interviewer’s

open-

and experi-

and forbidden. In

Judaeo-Christian

religiosity

smacked of a crying need for strict orthodoxy. And of that I had had enough in my own pre-Vatican-II Catholic school days. At St. Veronica’s in Polish Chicago where I grew up, religion meant the Baltimore catechism learned by rote under threat of a sound knuckle-rapping. What chance was there that something as retrogressive as my visitor’s old-time religion would be around long enough to merit comment? How wrong can one be? Some two months after my interview appeared in Right On, Time magazine ran a cover story on “the Jesus people” as the biggest new thing happening on campuses around the country. We were in the early dawn of a potent political development in the

United States: the

rise

of evangelical power.

Fast-forward another decade or so, and the religious

movement role in

Moral Majority would play a major putting Reagan in the White House. Skip forward called the

174

The Fundamentalists another twenty years to the opening of the twenty-first

and we have George W. Bush, the most overtly religious president in American history, a born-again Texan who opens cabinet meetings with a prayer, holds century,

the record for his frequency in using the

press conferences,

out asking

God

and who never

to bless America.

Bush with giving

word

“evil” at

finishes a speech with-

We

can not only credit

his conservative political base every-

thing they have long

wanted by way of domestic policy

(faith-based social programs, curtailing abortion rights,

defending prayers and the teaching of creationism in the schools), but also with

imbuing our foreign

affairs

with a

providential sense of national destiny.

we might

But,

does not freedom of religion

ask,

apply to the president’s evangelical Christianity as as to

any other

does. But

cussions

citizen’s religious beliefs?

Of

much

course

it

we can still have reservations about the reperof so much high-level bibliolatry. I’m haunted

by the argument that right wingers once raised about

communism

during the McCarthy years. Communists,

they contended, use

civil

liberties in

order to overturn

them once they take power - if they ever do. I wonder how long religious freedom would last if militant fundamentalists took over our government. These are people

who

speak of having “a biblical duty” (the words of Ran-

dall

Robertson, leader of the anti-abortion movement

Operation Rescue) “to conquer But there

is

something that

this nation.” I

find even

more

unsettling

about the growing influence of the religious right over

American

my

political

life. It

goes back to that encounter with

Jesus-freak student in 1972. Pleasant and courteous as

she was,

when

bulletproof.

it

came

Why?

to hearing divergent ideas, she

Because as a humanist and

qualified in her eyes as a

damned 175

soul.

was

liberal,

I

While we talked,

WORLD, BEWARE! she kept her guard up, lest

Was

I

was doing.

annoyed? Not In

my

exactly that way.

my

secularism contaminate her.

really.

recognized what she

I

Catholic boyhood

From

I

related to people in

the vantage point of

my

sinless

most of the people I met were surely damned. I remember weeping into my pillow at night, fearing that my parents were going to hell for missing Mass or eating meat on Friday. Being among God’s chosen gave me a purity,

certain

smug comfort

in dealing

or disagreed with. After

all, I

with anybody

was

a

member

I

disliked

of the most

exclusive club in the universe - the club of the elect.

Nothing

distorts

our relations with others more than

am bound

and you are condemned to eternal perdition. And the more literal the belief, the greater the distortion. Those who harbour that belief may find ways of being tactful, but believing that the difference between you and me is all the difference between heaven and hell fixes the greatest possible gulf between us. At the extreme - and bear in mind that we the conviction that I

for glory

are talking about an increasingly popular

gious extremism - worshipping the

form of

One Great God

reli-

easily

an all-out war on pluralism. That is what worries me most - not only from a civil libertarian perspective, but with respect to the quality of our culcarries over into

tural

life.

By “pluralism,” ciple.

I

mean

I

do not mean an abstract

that spontaneous joy

variety, the delightful surprise

we

we

legal prin-

human when we

take in the

experience

meet someone who has taken another road in life, perhaps a road we will want to follow. Exuberant variety is what Walt Whitman had in mind when he defined

democracy as singing the song of ourselves. He saw America as a massive jazz improvisation on a million themes that we inherit from the past. “I hear America

176

The Fundamentalists The San Francisco poet Robert Duncan expressed Whitman’s singing,” he wrote, “the varied carols

democratic ideal nicely a

Symposium

when

I

hear.”

we are when “all

he said that

of the Whole, a time

living in

the old,

excluded orders must be included, the female, the proletariat, the foreign, the

animal and vegetable, the uncon-

and the unknown, the criminal and failure - all that has been outcast and vagabond.” A true Whitmanesque democracy does not simply scious

grant us the right to sing our to

do

so.

own

song;

True democracy longs for

it

encourages us

diversity, originality,

experimentation. In that sense, democracy not an end.

It is

the

theme that

all

a

is

means

,

of us vary and pass

good jazz combo playing its music. Can jazz and Jesus go together? That is something for individual Christians to decide. Every religion is what its believers make of it. But I do know that those who regard pluralism as the work of the devil undermine democracy and impoverish our culture. That is the greatalong, like a

est

price

we

are paying for the political success of a

growingly religious right wing

America.

in

We

are losing

And countrymen who

touch with the existential roots of democracy. there are millions of

praising

God

my

fellow

yet are

to see that happen.

The result is not simply a blight upon our own culture. The war against pluralism carries over into foreign affairs. Bad enough for the United States to embark on an imperial course of policy; but much worse empire should

thumpers tion of

fall

who

damned

if

that

under the control of bigots and Bible-

see the rest of the souls.

1

77

human

race as a collec-

S

I

X

The Liberal Failure ofNerve

“It’s

time liberals had some compassion for parents

are trying to raise their kids in the liberal policies

them

make

moral vacuum that

have created. Liberals ask that

money we

who

we

trust

government is spent properly. Well, people are tired of that con game. Conservatives today want to give people value for their tax dollars and open up real opportunities for poor people to better themselves. That’s real to

.

.

sure the

give

.

compassion, not the fake kind liberals peddle when they throw money at problems so they can add to the power they have over other people.”

Rush Limbaugh, leading conservative radio commentator, 1992

“I’m not out to eliminate government. bring it

it

down

into the

to a size that will

bathroom and drown

make it

it

I

just

want

to

possible to drag

in the tub.”

Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform, leading conservative organizer

The Liberal Failure of Nerve

ARCHIE BUNKERS OF THE WORLD, ARISE! he main opposition that faces

T

ists in

Democratic

Party.

the liberal

But over the

Ronald Reagan wrote

that

is

last

wing of the

twenty years

have fallen upon hard times. Some even believe

liberals

As we have ism

the United States

the triumphal-

are, to

changes in

their obituary in the 1980s.

American liberala significant degree, the result of demographic voting patterns. The Sunbelt has swung Amerseen, the misadventures of

ican society sharply to the right. Moreover, the United

now more

States

is

than

was

it

labour

of a suburban middle-class society

in the post- World

in the big cities

the Democrats.

As big

was

War

II

era,

when organized

main voting bloc behind business has grown bigger, big the

which for decades after the days of the Roosevelt New Deal was the strongest single constituency that liberals could rely upon, has been shrinking. But more than that, the values and psychology of the American working class have changed in ways that have left liberals in a quandary. In effect, the working-class voter has become more and more illiberal. Nothing has done more to demoralize the American left-wing than the emergence of Reagan blue-collar voters. There is a lesson to be learned here from popular culture. For almost a decade during the 1970s the most popular television show in the United States was the situation comedy All in the Family. The show (based on a British labour,

TV

series,

hero:

Till

Death Us

Do

Part) featured

an unlikely

an ignorant, loud-mouthed, reactionary loading-

dock worker named Archie Bunker. Archie espoused the right-wing views

all

and values of the period. He was

anti-black, anti-Hispanic, anti-trade-union, anti-gay, anti-

woman,

anti-government. Every week, his bigotry was

179

WORLD, BEWARE! comically contrasted with the views of his daughter and

who

son-in-law,

represented the generation of the rebel-

lious sixties. Archie

was everything

read, college-educated, middle-class

the intelligent, well-

American despised -

the perfect target for liberal ridicule.

What liberal America never suspected was how many Archie Bunkers there were out there in the real world, viewers who sympathized with Archie’s views and resented the knocks he took from his sassy, dren. Archie’s constant complaint that the

was

smug

chil-

government

victimizing hard-working white guys like himself

echoed sympathetically

in

many American homes. But

it

Ronald Reagan became the spokesman for the embattled Archie Bunkers of America that the truth came home. There really are working-class voters who will vote for a far-right-wing candidate, someone who bashes the government, spurns racial minorities, waves the flag, cuts taxes, and sticks up for troubled white guys - especially if that candidate looks like a cowboy. Reagan could pummel trade unions and still enjoy the support of Archie Bunker voters. One of his first acts as president was to order the replacement of striking air-traffic controllers with non-union workers. And this was a union that had supported him in the campaign. His popularity

was not

until

did not suffer at

all

for this act of political treachery.

The flesh-and-blood a

shock to the nation’s

gan

won

He

Archie Bunker came as

liberal leadership.

How

had Rea-

many traditionally Democratic voters Now, decades later, I sense that many

so

his side? still

reality of

over to liberals

refuse to look for a frank answer to that question.

did

it

by playing upon a backlog of discontent and

insecurity that

was bubbling beneath the

surface of our

Never mentioning the domineering role of big corporations in American life, Reagan portrayed liberal society.

180

The Liberal Failure of Nerve programs

as “big

government,” a remote, bullying force

dominated by elite intellectuals and academics. His position on the role of government and the universities merged nicely with his reputation as the defender of middle-class virtues. Since his days as

governor of California

during the turbulent 1960s, he had established himself as a stalwart critic of the nation’s dissenting

whom

young,

he mockingly portrayed as bearded beatniks and campus layabouts

not communist drug-pushers) bent on defy-

(if

ing law enforcement

and undermining mainstream Amer-

ican values. In his role as the avuncular hippies,

Reagan played

a

key role

in

hammer

of the

burdening the word

“liberal” with implications of perversion, disloyalty,

and

immorality.

Reagan

also capitalized

on the

efforts that liberals

had made to reform the criminal justice system. Through the 1960s and 1970s, a liberal Supreme Court and liberal lawyers significantly expanded the legal rights of those accused of crimes, especially racial minorities. never to occur to those that

a

great

who

It

seemed

cheered for these reforms

many non-mmority,

middle-class

whites

might not be cheering with them. As Richard Nixon once

summed

the matter

up

in explaining his successful

cam-

“Most Americans are not young, not poor, not black.” Reagan went further; he soundly condemned liberals in the judicial system for taking the side of criminals. They were “soft” on crime, Reagan argued. Since African-Americans made up a disproportionately large part of all convicted criminals, it was easy to make paign strategy,

reform of the criminal

justice

system look

like liberals

siding with blacks against whites. Reagan, in contrast,

spoke out for “victim’s rights.” enforcement policies aimed in the streets of

American

He

growing fear of crime He - and especially his

at the

cities.

181

enunciated tough law-

WORLD, BEWARE! Nancy - were

wife

responsible for the severe

laws that have since

U.S. prisons to overflowing

filled

with inmates whose only offence

amount

a small

new drug

of marijuana.

may

be that of carrying

The drug laws were

the

beginning of the “family values” motif in Republican

campaigning. Liberals

made one more

Ronald man of meagre intel-

great mistake about

Reagan. While the president was a he was a seasoned actor

lect,

knew how

to face the

who knew

camera and

his craft.

deliver his lines.

He He

could cock his head at just the right angle, wink charm-

whenever the script actor, Reagan had specialized in playin the movies: the handsome, ingratiatyoung man who could easily be hurt.

and assume demanded it. As an

ingly,

ing roles like this ing,

but sensitive

He had

a bashful smile

spent years perfecting that image, with the result

was hard for people not glib and intellectually

that

to think

it

Americans. So give the

vulnerable that

hard questions.

was

of him.

If

he was

agile, well, neither are

man

to expect the president to

about. Reagan

ill

a break

-

as

know what

if it

most

were unfair

he was talking

good at looking sympathetically it seemed cruel to embarrass him with That was the sense in which he was “the so

great communicator”: he

knew how

to fake

it

for the

cameras. Liberals were slow to appreciate Reagan’s mastery of the media, but Republicans quickly learned the impor-

tance of looking good on television - even

nothing behind the look.

More than any

if

there

was

president before

him, Reagan was granted an important concession by the public.

He

convinced people that

dent’s function to policy.

The

know

details

president’s job

was

it

was not

and argue

fine points of

to unfurl a

broad vision,

to surround that vision with catch phrases

182

the presi-

and glowing

The Liberal Failure of Nerve rhetoric, to cheer or to

condemn

in lofty terms,

make

sweeping announcements, smile, frown, and wave goodbye. In short, the president should not be required to do

more than read

from the teleprompter and look sincere in staged television events. Reagan, who remained popular to the end of his term, gave the public a licence his lines

for electing presidents

In

who

simply looked presidential.

one pathetic but highly revealing episode that few years after he had left the presidency, Reagan

came a was called back before the Congress to answer questions about what came to be called the Iran-Contra scandal. Some people (myself included) believe Iran-Contra was the most blatant and serious blow to constitutional government in American history. It involved a secret government working out of the White House basement. This shadowy operation had raised illicit funds by selling armaments to Iran; they then used the money to finance a surreptitious war against a left-wing government in Nicaragua - even though the Congress had expressly

banned such aid. It was also soliciting large contributions of money from wealthy Republican supporters to arm and supply the Nicaraguan Contras, a guerrilla force opposing the ruling Sandinistas. In effect, Reagan’s agents were using the presidency to raise money without going to the Congress - an egregious violation of the Constitution. When Reagan was called upon to give fur-

wagged his head, looked befuddled, and claimed that he had never really understood the matter - or what was illegal about it. And he seemed to be telling the truth. In any event, there was

ther details about the effort, he

never any indication that Reagan’s supporters held Iran-

Contra against him.

“America is essentially a conservative country,” Reagan conservatives proclaimed. And astonishingly, as 183

WORLD, BEWARE! Reagan’s popularity grew, liberals of that period were

They began to retreat even before the most inane Reagan policies, convinced that conservatives had now found a

willing to

accept that assertion at face value.

winning political formula. Conservatives purported to have all the hot new that ideas the country needed: supply-side economics, family values, an uncompromising position on law enforcement, privatized social services,

deregulation, an expanded market economy.

one, on issue after issue, the right wing

One by

was

able to

argue that liberal social solutions were not working, despite

all

the

money

that

had been spent on them: not

in race relations, poverty, social security, health care, or

education. Conservatives presented liberals as emperors

and too many liberals agreed. The rise of the triumphalists had everything to do with the retreat of liberals on all fronts. The gestation stage for triumphalist dominance reaches back to the early years of the Reagan presidency. As Reaganites and triumphalists won ever more ground on domestic policy, they opened up a frontier for

who wore no

clothes,

militarized foreign-policy initiatives.

Somewhere

in the

mid-1980s, position papers began to circulate through

Reagan administration advocating an aggressive new phase in foreign affairs, starting with a more threatening the

posture towards the failing Soviet Union. These papers

documents for the triumphalist that came to fruition under George W. Bush. are the founding

policies

STANDING UP FOR THE WHITE MAN The triumphalists clarity.”

But

more than

like to praise

in truth

Reagan

for his

“moral

Reagan’s morality was often

little

a petulant appeal to self-interest. His thinly

184

The Liberal Failure of Nerve disguised racism

is

a

again Reagan played

prowling the for strict

dramatic case in point. Again and

upon white

streets of

America’s

fears of black criminals cities.

When

he called

law enforcement, he was endorsing the Archie

Bunker conviction among whites that they were being pushed around by blacks and haughty white politicians

who

sided with blacks. His successor, the

George Bush, used a similar tactic in his 1988 presidential campaign. His most effective television commercials featured the scowling face of a black convict

who had

first

named Willy Horton

been pardoned, as the law mandated, by Bush’s

Democratic

rival,

the

very

liberal

governor of Mas-

Soon after his release, Horton raped a white woman. The message was a typical Reagan-Republican exercise in hate and fear-mongering. Their message was: “Liberals care more about black rapists than about us good white folks. Liberals would take our guns away and then turn black criminals loose to rob and kill us.” The Reagan Republicans skilfully found ways of blaming the black victims of racism and standing up for the white man. Reagan’s special target was the many liberal measures aimed at racial justice, a central concern of youthful protest during the 1960s. He came out firmly against affirmative action programs that offered racial minorities advantages in education and employment, characterizing these as anti-white. He also opposed programs for the “forced busing” of white children to distant schools in black neighbourhoods, programs aimed at achieving racial balance in the classroom. Reagan gave voice to the feeling that programs like these had gone too far, that they were working against the interests of white Americans. He used them as prime examples of his contention that “government is the problem, not the solusachusetts.

tion.”

185

WORLD, BEWARE! Liberals badly miscalculated the effectiveness of Rea-

on racial issues with both working-class and middle-class suburban voters. By the time Reagan left the White House, conservatives were casting liberals as villains for even attempting to achieve racial justice in America. To do that was to abandon the majority of white citizens who believed that the government had already done more than enough to help African-Americans. Perhaps gan’s appeal

there

is

est in

such a thing as ethical fatigue: people losing

an

by the 1980s

was

seems to ask too

issue that

racial justice, as a

clearly beginning to lose

the public

was simply

again and again, as

make up

much

of them.

moral cause appeal.

its

A

in

interIf so,

America,

large part of

same grievances not enough could ever be done to

tired of hearing the

if

for the great sin of slavery.

If

anything, “reverse

racism” - policies that favoured African-Americans over whites - was the urgent issue for

by then a black middle

who seemed

many

class of

to be living proof

-

if

tive

was

educated professionals

one looked no further

back - that racism was a thing of the licans

whites. There

past. Indeed,

Repub-

have made a point of showcasing solidly conserva-

African-Americans in the party as examples of black

support.

The

first

George Bush even managed to saddle

Supreme Court justice (Clarence Thomas) who is possibly the most reactionary judge ever to serve on the high court. Meanwhile, liberals failed to the country with a black

clarify the

many forms

the country

males into

many

of covert racism that

still

existed in

and that were often driving young black

lives

of crime in search of quick riches. That

black neighbourhoods throughout the country were

on which petty drug wars took the lives of thousands of young men each year came to be seen as a matter of personal failure on the part of the victims, still

killing fields

rather than as a social issue.

186

The Liberal Failure of Nerve an

In targeting race as liberal sore spot.

the end of

issue,

Reagan touched upon

For most of the twentieth century -

World War

II

parties could pretend to

- neither of the major

a

until

political

have a creditable record on race.

Indeed, the Republicans simply ignored the issue, even

though they were originally the party of Abraham Lincoln,

born out of a movement to abolish

after the Civil

War

the Republicans

slavery.

But soon

became the party of

on the industrial cities of the North and with only minor organization in the Deep big business, wholly focused

South.

In

state

after

state

throughout the South, the

Democratic Party became the party of white supremacy. remained that way

New

all

It

through the years of the Roosevelt

Deal, which, for

all

its

daring innovation, never

addressed issues of segregation, lynching, or

civil rights.

Roosevelt was too dependent on Southern Democrats in

Congress to challenge their social system.

The two movements that have had the most to do with shaping American liberalism are the Populist and Progressive movements of the late nineteenth century, both of which have dubious histories on race relations. Progressives

may have been courageous

they could also be bigoted and white,

Anglo-Saxon,

Many came from

elitist.

protestant,

reformers, but

They tended

to be

and highly educated.

They saw racial and ethnic minorities as part of the “shame of the cities” - places of debauchery, corruption, and crime. Even great Progressive heros like Woodrow Wilson were capable of making slurring remarks about immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe; and it was Wilson, a Virginian, who imposed Jim Crow segregation on the city of Washington, D.C. small towns.

Progressivism carried with

As

it

a dark heritage of racism.

for the Populists, these

ers of the late nineteenth

were the embattled farm-

century

187

who saw

their political

WORLD, BEWARE! power fading away before the advance of industrial interests. Their angry campaign to “soak the rich” failed badly; the power of the trusts and the voting power of the big cities were too great for them to overthrow. While the Populists can be cast in the role of heroic underdogs, the

movement was

severely inhospitable to non-whites in the

South. Indeed,

many Southern

farmers finally refused to

from the North and West because they would not make common cause with black farmers. The New Deal, to its shame, never took up the issue of race for fear of alienating the “solid South” on which its politijoin with Populists

cal

power

significantly rested.

That

left

race as a festering

sore in the Democratic Party until the post-World period,

when

War

II

democrats were willing to gamble on

liberal

losing their political base in the South in order to carry rights

civil

and voting

lose the South.

It

rights legislation.

And

Republican

steadily drifted into the

camp, where concern for

racial justice has

they did

been

all

but

totally absent.

where race is concerned, the difference between the major political parties could not be greater. Thanks to its liberal wing, the Democratic Party has maintained a strong commitment to the country’s racial minorities. Democrats come as close to being a multicultural party of the poor and working-class population as any major party in the country’s history. Because too few blacks and Hispanics turn out to vote, Democrats suffer Today,

for that orientation.

On

- and the triumphalists

the other hand, the Republicans

who

run the Republican Party -

have been eager to exploit race as a “wedge issue” that divides people against one another. So far this tactic has

worked very well their

own

for the conservatives.

interests,

Though

poor Southern whites

it

hurts

(especially

males) simply refuse to join with black voters in asserting

188

The Liberal Failure of Nerve their needs. Instead, they side

with the party of the cor-

porados and triumphalists. The anti-government stance of the Republicans appeals to these resentful whites

know

Democrats will use taxation as a way of transferring income to blacks. Hence, from Ronald Reagan forward, Republicans have railed against taxation and against all the programs that taxes support. because they

that

In the United States, conservatives have succeeded in

making

the phrase “class warfare”

seem unpardonably

Marxism

that has been swept

impolite, a vestige of the

from the ners,

if

political landscape.

It

considered bad man-

is

not downright un-American, to suggest that the

and the poor have divergent interests. For this reason, one would not expect American politics to be highly divisive. Yet it has become embittered in a largely senseless way! Conservatives insist that a yawning gulf divides them from liberals; they like to portray the choice between themselves and liberals as a struggle between what they define as “freedom” and some dark and terrible alternative. The names for that alternative sound quite dramatic: “slavery serfdom dictatorship Big Brother government.” But what this great threat to freedom finally amounts to is often nothing more than raising enough tax dollars to finance the retirement of the rich

.

elderly, to

.

.

.

.

.

.

provide decent health care for the nation’s

dren, to build

some badly needed

mail delivery.

How

.

.

chil-

schools, or to improve

threatening are programs like this?

them as being too expensive or inefficient, they hardly amount to a totalitarian onslaught. Yet as modest and as moderate as liberalism has become, Even

if

you

reject

conservatives cation that

What

still

it is

is it,

refer to

it

as “the left,” with the impli-

radical, disloyal, subversive.

then, that accounts for the emotional heat

that parts liberals

from conservatives?

189

I

think

it

is

the

WORLD, BEWARE! submerged issue of race that is being played out again and again behind every debate that touches upon fairness, the redistribution of wealth, and the role of the government.

THE THIRD PHASE OF RACISM Institutionalized racial injustice

heart

of the

is

the dirty secret at the

triumphalist ascendancy.

Thanks

course that conservatism has taken over the years, the United States

is

now

in the third

last

ships arrived

from Africa four centuries ago.

was

Then

there

was Jim Crow

America’s version of apartheid. presidency of the 1980s,

Now,

we have

the

twenty

phase of the

racism that has plagued this country since the

slavery.

to

first

slave

First there

segregation,

since the

Reagan

entered a phase that

manages to be mystifying and vicious at the same time. The mystification has to do with the existence of a number of high-earning African-American athletes and media stars; the viciousness has to do with African-Americans who fall short of being superstars. That includes nearly 70 percent of black children who still live below the poverty line. This is a peculiarly American solution to a serious social issue. That a small percentage of AfricanAmericans have had the talent and drive to achieve high success means that those left behind have only themselves to blame. And being left behind is a matter of life and death. In a nation in which whites enjoy a life expectancy that reaches the high seventies, the average black male cannot expect to live beyond fifty-nine. This might be called racial

Darwinism.

In the days before the Civil War, white Southerners

were pleased to believe that blacks were a childish and primitive people who were intended by nature to be

190

The Liberal Failure of Nerve days of Jim Crow, whites enjoyed

slaves. Later, in the

shows that depicted blacks

minstrel

minded

folk

players have

who

as happy, simple-

liked to be laughed at.

come

to

Now,

as black

dominate many professional sports

(whites are a distinct minority in basketball, football,

and

and Hispanics) and as more and more black performers appear in movies and on television, Americans are free to believe that racism no longer exists. Indeed, the glowing success of a Tiger Woods or Denzel Washington probably fuels the resentment of many poor and struggling whites who believe baseball, well behind blacks

that the system unfairly favours African-Americans.

What

remains hidden beneath the surface of American

life

is

underway by the right wing to disenfranchise African-Americans, and in so doing to cripple liberal programs that serve the interests of the poor and

the aggressive effort

disadvantaged. At the heart of this effort

is

the prison

system.

The United

States has the second-largest prison pop-

ulation in the world:

people behind bars.

made up 35 make up 65

women jail

A

million.

Only Russia has more

half-century ago, in 1950, blacks

now they black men and

percent of the prison population; percent - with over a million

in prison.

than

two

There are indeed more black males

in college.

This

is

the direct result of the law-

enforcement campaign that Ronald Reagan launched the 1980s, with especially

its

purpose of cracking

drug possession.

in

down on

From 1985

to

in

crime,

1991

the

African-American prison population rose by over 450 percent as judges imposed ever harsher sentences, espe-

on young black men. Many of those sentenced to long terms were guilty of minor, drug-related offences. With some equivocation, President Clinton finally went along with the Republicans. Seeking to improve his cially

191

WORLD, BEWARE! call for

“tough-on-crime” image, Clinton joined the

more

severe sentencing. In the United States, going to political

has far-reaching

jail

consequences. In forty-eight states, incarcerated

criminals cannot vote; in thirty-seven states, those released

on parole

still

office.

A

in fourteen states, ex-con-

permanently barred from voting or holding

are

victs

cannot vote; and

total of 4.4 million

Americans, most of them

blacks, have been disenfranchised in this way. In states (mainly in the South)

some

30 to 40 percent of African-

American men have been denied the

right to vote because

they have a prison record. In Florida, one of every four

black

men

has lost the right to vote.

If

that were not the

Democratic candidate A1 Gore would certainly have carried the state of Florida in 2000 and become presi-

case,

dent. Florida

is

among

the states that have introduced a

computerized “felony-disenfranchisement” voting system.

When

voters present themselves at polls,

database checks to see

if

a

computer

they have prison records any-

where in the country. If so, they are not permitted to vote; and that is what happened to thousands of AfricanAmericans in the 2000 presidential election. The program, primarily used to check on black voters, is, perhaps deliberately, highly error-prone. nificant

numbers of voters

as

It

misidentifies sig-

former criminals and so

provides grounds for the officials at the voting station to

Overwhelmingly these rejected voters are blacks who would have voted Democratic. The felony-disenfranchisement voting program is becoming

deny them a

ballot.

more popular with each passing are considering adopting

There

is

election. Several states

it.

a great deal of

money

to be

made from

mass incarceration of black criminals. The United has been experiencing a “prison

192

boom”

the

States

over the past

The Liberal Failure of Nerve twenty years. As the prison population grows, more need to be

built.

An

increasing

number

of these

jails

jails

are

government and run on a for-profit basis. Prisoners are, after all, an excellent source of cheap labour. Whole communities can prosper by agreeing to provide a home for a state or federal prison. Prisoners, who cannot vote, are nevertheless private businesses subsidized by the

counted as part of the local population for purposes of

which increases the community’s share of fedmoney for roads, parks, water projects, and other

the census, eral

amenities that the prisoners never have the chance to use.

Moreover, jailhouse communities receive special govern-

ment

subsidies to run the prison

and employ personnel.

Prison-guard unions across the United States are a powerful

lobby that invests heavily

They

are

among

in the nation.

the

The

in

political

most highly paid public employees

U.S. criminal justice system has been

called the “prison-industrial complex,”

tary-industrial

campaigns.

complex

it is

and

like the mili-

the focus of vested interests.

In this case there are people

who

profit

from having

a

and growing number of prisoners behind bars. It is also a welcome bonus for conservatives that so many of large

the convicts are African-Americans fice their

who

are apt to sacri-

voting rights as part of their punishment.

The United

States

is

a nation of frightened people,

and nothing frightens them more than crime in the streets. I confess to sharing that fear. There are neighbourhoods in my area where I would never go walking.

The town next door to me, Oakland, California, is the “murder capital” of the United States. Every year hundreds of people are gunned down on the streets of Oakland. The deaths are mainly among young, black men

who

are involved in “turf wars” for the control of local

drug-trafficking. But, as violent as the United States

193

may

WORLD, BEWARE! be,

have come to

I

many

feel

no

safer because

we have

built so

prisons, for eventually the criminals finish their

same

sentences and return to the streets to find the

squalor and demoralization.

Conservatives like to argue that nobody has to be a criminal; those

who

are convicted

and imprisoned have

only themselves to blame. But the racial bias of our incarcerated population raises serious doubts. There

is

clearly

a social issue here that relates to poverty, prejudice,

more people that issue? Does

injustice. Is putting

we can

find for

and

in jail the best solution

the disenfranchising of

way of strengthening The money that goes into

millions of those people provide a their

sense of citizenship?

building prisons and warehousing convicts usually comes

out of programs for drug education and treatment, social rehabilitation,

or

job-training.

These are exactly the

kinds of “big government” programs that conservatives despise and refuse to support with their taxes.

would rather use

the

money

to punish.

They

The crowning

irony of that position shows up in the true cost of the prison-industrial complex. Keeping people in

jail

costs

anywhere from $25,000 to $40,000 per prisoner per year. If

we

simply offered that

people as a yearly income,

we might

of dealing with poverty and

Many

much money

its

to distressed

be doing a better job

repercussions.

factors have shifted the United States further

and further

to the right.

I

have mentioned the influence

European academics and intellectuals of the World War II era had on the younger generation of trithat exiled

umphalists. But there

is

conservatives to steal a

something more that has allowed

march on

their liberal opposition.

The buried issue of race still smoulders in the depths of the American soul. Nothing calls the honesty and general intelligence of conservative voters more into question 194

The Liberal Failure of Nerve than their unwillingness to admit the veiled racism of the party they support.

THE MORAL ASYMMETRY OF AMERICAN POLITICS Future historians will surely regard the deluge of Bush-

bashing books and films that appeared

in

2004

remarkable cultural phenomenon, a tribute to the

as

a

vitality

of U.S. publishing and the surviving political literacy of

may

the public. But they

why

find themselves puzzling over

on Bush ultimately had so little effect on his political base. They may conclude that 2004 was the year in which partisan polarization spun out of control, the point at which persuasion and dialogue - always in short supply - became things of the past. this assault

Behind

all

the

Bush-bashing of the election year

stands the same idealistic assumption that once inspired the muckrakers of old: the public will rise

up

in

if

only

we can

get the truth out,

wrath and drive the “lying

liars”

from power. For that matter, Bush’s handlers make the same assumption. That is why they labour so strenuously to exploit sent.

the latest techniques for manufacturing con-

all

But what

if

both sides are wrong about

how much

can be achieved by shocking revelations on film or print?

What

if

to be lied to?

George Bush’s

What

if

his

political base never

in

needed

people have recognized the

lies

and cover stories for what they are all along? That might explain why, despite Fahrenheit 9/1 1 and all the other enraged documentaries (the best of which, incidentally,

is

Hijacking Catastrophe by the Media Education Fund), the polls never stopped reflecting unswerving strong popular support for Bush’s “leadership,”

and why he contin-

ues to find cheering crowds, especially at military bases

195

WORLD, BEWARE! where troops destined give their

commander

to be delivered to the terrorists in chief the big “hu-ah.”

people are not deceived. They

know

exactly

These

what Bush

is

- and they approve. And here we have the root cause of polarization, the difference that has set political left and right in the United States at one another’s throats. There is a fundamental moral asymmetry between left and right in the

up

to

United States. Vietnam-era liberals

through the anguish of losing turning against

Chicago

in

it.

The crowds

like

myself suffered

faith in their party

and

that took to the streets of

1968, demonstrating outside the Democratic

Party convention, were not irate conservatives; they were conscience-stricken liberals

who were

prepared to

sacri-

an election victory - and with it Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society agenda - on an issue of principle. Looking

fice

back, Republicans might want to thank people like the

young John Kerry and the Vietnam Veterans for Peace. Their opposition, primarily on the anti-war side in 1972, cost the Democratic Party dearly and launched the country

towards the great conservative backlash of the Rea-

gan presidency. For that matter,

liberals

were doing electoral favours

Grand Old Party (gop) long before Vietnam. One of my earliest political memories is the Democratic convention of 1948. With my ear glued to the radio, I recall how Hubert Humphrey galvanized the party liberals to push through a strong civil-rights platform against powfor the

erful recall

Southern opposition.

my

How thrilling,

I

thought. But

I

Roosevelt-Democrat father fuming, “They’re

throwing away the election!” Following the adoption of

wing of the party walked out on the convention. It looked as if my father might be right. (Incidentally, the Dixiecrat candidate in 1948 was that platform, the Dixiecrat

1 96

The Liberal Failure of Nerve Strom Thurmond, destined to become a Republican stalwart.) Harry Truman won that election, but in the end principled liberal support for civil rights led to Barry

Goldwater’s

Sunbelt

“Southern strategy,” the of

disgruntled

and Richard Nixon’s steps towards a new South

coalition

white

first

When Lyndon Johnson

voters.

signed the 1964 Voting Rights Act, he remarked “I think

we

just delivered the

time to come.”

South to the Republicans for

Few would

a long

think of LBJ as a moral hero,

and the gop was on its way to becoming the most monoracial party since Reconstrucbut he did sign the

bill,

tion.

Here

is

what

I

think most infuriates liberals. They

up against a Republican opposition that has shown no comparable willingness to risk party unity on a matter of conscience - nothing that compares to the sacrifice are

that liberals were willing to

make over

Vietnam. Republicans have had no

and swallowing

civil rights

difficulty

McCarthyism and Watergate. Indeed, the relentless effort to impeach Bill Clinton was largely retaliation for what conservatives still see as the “persecuepisodes like

tion” of Richard Nixon. Others (like

now

Ann

Coulter) are

McCarthy, including his charge that liberals are “traitors.” Ronald Reagan went to his grave all but officially pardoned by Republitoiling to rehabilitate Senator Joe

cans for Iran-Contra.

We

group of Republicans

who

blemish,

let

have yet to see any sizeable will

admit to

a single

moral

alone display a willingness to defect.

Hardly surprising, then, that few Republicans play the least discomfort over a

an obvious hoax. Bush’s

that liberals see as

political base has

ologically entrenched that

it is

become so

During the Cold War,

wingers purported to be horrified by the

197

ide-

willing to offer his admin-

istration a blank ethical check.

right

war

dis-

way

WORLD, BEWARE! Communists bowed

How

to the iron discipline of the party.

could people abase themselves so abjectly? Well,

their

own conduct would seem

And

the loyal moderates

to answer that question.

among them would do purged first by Communist

well to

remember who got zealots once the dust had cleared. The moderates, of course. Which is exactly what we see happening now as Republican ultra-conservatives declare open season on “rhinos” (as

they

moderates) in their

call

own

party. After

all,

to

Cheney savaged Jim Jeffords back in 2001 after the Vermont senator made a minor show of disobedience on an educational allocation. The wrath of liberals, their all but desperate willingness in 2004 to vote for any Democratic candidate who might defeat George W. Bush, arises because the Republicans have shown no sign of bona fides no willingness to stand up to malefactors and fanatics in their party’s leadtake just one example, Bush and

,

ership. Right wingers liberal

have registered the spleen of their

opponents, but have they recognized our honest

me

The Republican Party scares the living daylights out of me, and that has nothing to do with differing interpretations of The Federalist Papers. It has to do with the willingness of the Republican rank and file to pay any price for the sake of holding power. There is much talk of God and values on fear? Let

be the

to admit

first

it.

the right, but the ferocity of right-wing politics belies the sincerity of those professions for

As

a case in point, let

me

me.

offer the

Republican house

Tom

DeLay. There could be no better example of a “stupid white man” (to borrow Michael majority leader,

Moore’s Party)

label for those

the Republican

- provided that one recognizes that

of stupidity After

who dominate

all,

is

a certain kind

compatible with a certain kind of cunning.

politicians

like

DeLay helped capture

198

the

The Liberal Failure of Nerve Sunbelt for the Reagan

Republicans, along with the

DeLay

Archie-Bunker, working-class vote. strategist, no-

so high in

doubt about

American

on the part of

that.

But a yahoo

is

a

crafty

like this rises

only by criminal negligence

politics

his political party.

How could

any honest conservative fail to find DeLay an embarrassment to the country - in the same way that liberals

once found Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo a

national disgrace? There are

more

ever in the United States; there

is

college graduates than

world of information

a

media - and yet here we have a major political leader whose worldview is a bizarre stew of evangelical religion and social Darwinist business valavailable through the

ues. Balance,

moderation, and discriminating intelligence

play no role in his politics. This that the Environmental Protection lent of the als,

DeTay

is

a

man who

Agency

is

believes

the equiva-

Gestapo. Far from limiting his spleen to insisted that even

Newt

liber-

Gingrich, the ultra-

right-wing speaker of the House, did not qualify as a true conservative. After

all,

Gingrich called off the great gov-

ernment shutdown of 1995, which DeLay would have continued until hell froze over. In DeLay’s eyes, Gingrich

was

a “think-tank pontificator

and

a flake”

who

never

read the Bible. By the late 1990s, DeLay’s take-no-prison-

was well along towards giving the Republicans permanent control of Congress. Today in Washington, DeLay and his colleagues gov-

ers

political

style

ern with a winner-take-all ferocity, as

if

the Democratic

Party simply does not exist. They invite lobbyists to write

and give Democrats no chance to debate or amend. The secret of their success? Covertly, they draw upon the racist fears of rednecks and blue collars; but, overtly, they attribute their triumph to unswerving evangelical faith. This is the point at which the right wing legislation

199

WORLD, BEWARE! away

melts

who

into the lunatic fringe. DeLay,

attends Bible classes,

is

an

ally of the

Hagee’s Cornerstone Church in

Scfn

faithfully

Reverend John

Antonio, Texas. In

he fancies himself the Congressional voice

this capacity

of “God’s foreign policy,” which

demands

unstinting eco-

nomic and military support for Israeli hardliners from here to the Second Coming. The right wing of American politics today is a crazy quilt of single-issue voters, many of them gathered from

among nist,

disaffected Democrats.

anti-gay,

anti-tax,

anti-affirmative-action,

It is

the party of anti-femi-

anti-gun-control,

anti-Darwin,

anti-environment,

pro-prayers-

in-the-school, pro-faith-based-social-services electorates.

Maybe

this

but there

No

of winning elections,

was created in Amendment must be read rifles.

spectrum of

this

great Republican leader ever taught that

the world

assault

way

no philosophy that unites

is

discontent.

a deucedly clever

is

Raw

political

six

days or that the Second

as approval for the sale of

opportunism

is

the only glue

holding together this bundle of impassioned causes. As for Republican foreign policy, the neo-conservatives

engineered the Iraq war have not been

have

less

and

less

that secret

all

about their grandiose designs. As time goes

who

by, they

may

need for secrecy. The colonial pipe

dreams they are spinning

in

the Defense

Department

these days read like realpolitik

from the era of Cecil

Rhodes and Count von

When was

Biilow.

ever a Republican priority?

Why,

then, has

colonialism it

become

acceptable to moderates in the party to see the United States resurrect the discredited imperialism of the past

and, worse, to turn our nation’s military defence over to battalions

of privately

contracted troops?

If

the

tri-

umphalists manage to replace citizen soldiers with mercenaries

from many nations who are off-budget and whose

200

The Liberal Failure of Nerve casualties need not be reported, they will have

gone well

beyond Iran-Contra in removing control of our foreign policy, including war-making, from Congress and the people.

How

ple of limited

does that jibe with the conservative princi-

government?

Given the gravity of the constitutional these policies raise, one tives willing to join

would expect

issues that

to find conserva-

with liberals in declaring that the

Bush administration has gone too far. But given the unshakable loyalty of the Republican base, I cannot imagine that happening. Suppose, then, that Bush were to drop all pretences and simply declare, “Okay, you wanna know my domestic agenda? Here is it. Dick Cheney, Tom DeLay, and I aren’t just gonna defeat the liberals; we’re gonna obliterate them, along with every Progressive reform since the days of Teddy Roosevelt, every New Deal program, every Great Society entitle-

Why

do you think we’re running these skyhigh deficits? We’re handing as much dough as we can to the people who know how to run this country - namely the super-rich. Sure, that’s gonna cost the rest of you jobs and social services, but isn’t it worth it to give the poor, the non-white, the welfare queens, the gays, and the femment.

else

inazis a swift kick in the teeth?

“What’s

yank that because

oil

my

gonna out from under those dysfunctional Arabs

we need

foreign policy? Listen up. We’re

it

to preserve our gas-guzzling

and I’m not asking anybody

way

of

life

for a permission slip to

do

We’re God’s chosen people and we intend to make

that.

most of it. And if anybody gets in our way, we’ve got what it takes to clobber them. So start wavin’ those flags and singin’ those hymns, because isn’t it about time we stuck it to all them smug, Brie-eating, oh-so-sensitive, libthe

eral

wimps?” 201

WORLD, BEWARE! If

the Republican leadership took that line,

would

I

wonder

do not already have. And how many swing-voters might be won over by such decisive, non-flip-flopping leadership? As for the single-minded evangelicals who have become the key to any winning political strategy, the Republicans have them so locked in that even if Bush were discovered havif it

it

cost a single vote that they

ing lunch with the devil, they as long as he treated

them

would

still

vote for

him -

to an occasional kick at the

gays and the feminists.

By any defensible historical standard, we are living under the most ideologically aggressive regime since the Republican dominance of the 1920s. Its style comes straight out of the ceo’s how-to handbook. The compulsive boardroom secrecy and iron corporate discipline of this

administration break

all

records. So too does the

entrepreneurial back-scratching of the last four years,

beginning with Dick Cheney’s clandestine meetings with

moguls before Bush had been sworn into office. At those gatherings Cheney almost certainly guaranteed his cronies a free hand at bilking the public for billions - especially the ratepayers of California. And the country’s energy

how oil

can one not be curious about the maps of the Iraqi fields that were on the table at those meetings? Were

those perhaps investment brochures? In a very real sense, the health of our

may

democracy

hinge on the conscience of Republican moderates.

Only they can keep their party from being hijacked by crony capitalists and gay-and-feminist-bashing evangelicals. If they stand by and let the free market be recast as playground for greedy corporados who need not worry about competitive bidding or honest accounting, if they a

let

the fiscal conservatism that

their party be

drowned

was once

the hallmark of

in red ink, if they stand

202

by and

The Liberal Failure of Nerve watch the Patriot Act be used to squelch dissent, if they let neo-conservative advisers hand our foreign policy over to a militarized corporate elite, there will be no stopping the continued descent of American politics into the slough of megalomania. When polarization becomes as severe as it is in our country today, politics becomes pathological. Unprincipled campaign managers (and they exist in both parties)

and

slick spin doctors

become the

arbiters of elections.

honed to a high art, moderation becomes cowardice, war becomes the touchstone of patriotism. Worst of all, people lose sight not only of the common good but also of their own obvious interests, which Obfuscation

is

ought surely to include having retirement,

and health

care.

a steady job, a decent

At a minimum,

mean not sending their kids to get unknown in the streets of Baghdad.

203

killed

it

should

for reasons

SEVEN The Devolution of

American Democrat)

necessary to be a great pretender and dissembler;

“It is

and men are so simple and so subject to present that he

ties,

one

who

who

necessi-

seeks to deceive will always find some-

will allow himself to be deceived.”

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Trince

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we .

.

.

have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of

human

beings must cooperate in this

manner

if

they

are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.

.

.

.

In almost every act of our daily lives,

whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” .

.

.

Edward C. Bernays, founding

father of public relations,

Propaganda 1928 ,

The Devolution of American

D emocracy

FANTASY POLITICS

A

of-The twenty-first century, the American people are more highly educated than at any time s

in the nation’s history.

the country’s voters in

1960 was

less

now

More than 50

percent of

hold a college degree. (The figure

than 25 percent.) American universities

are overflowing with students preparing for professional

Every high-industrial economy requires such a

careers. skilled

workforce, but in the United States even white-col-

lar jobs

once held by high-school graduates - bank

insurance adjusters, junior executives versity degree.

new

the

The United

States

is

now

tellers,

require a uni-

also the heartland of

high-tech economic frontier, which

would be

unthinkable without an educated workforce.

One might have expected yield the

social facts like these to

most astute voting public

in the nation’s history.

Elections should have long since been characterized by serious intellectual debate, articulate

men and women

thirty years ago, as the

came flooding

into the

hands and

their

and those who win should be

social idealism,

Some

younger generation of that day

world with university degrees

at least

many

of high intelligence.

in

a passing acquaintance with

of us thought

we were on our way

which the brute deception and crass dishonesty of the past would rapidly fade from

to

an enlightened society

in

the political scene. Instead,

devolution,

and

we have seen democracy go into a steep a downward spiral that has allowed knaves

fools to continue exploiting the populace. Elections

in the

United States are becoming intellectually shoddier

with each passing year. They seem designed to bring out all

the worst in the voting public.

Campaigns have been

swallowed up by the media and placed

205

in the

hands of

WORLD, BEWARE! the

same commercial

interests that

market

all

other prod-

Meanwhile, the highly educated Americans who emerged from the 1960s grew up to become - by and large - an overworked, overbusy, menucts in the United States.

and physically fatigued population of workaholics

tally

struggling to build careers,

manage

their investment port-

take advantage of the real estate market, and plan

folios,

a comfortable retirement.

As

for their children, the so-

called Generation X, they have

become something

still

- again, by and large -

sadder: a bewildered, job-worried

collection of resentful cynics

who seem

human

all

culture

is

bounded on

to believe that

four sides by the World

Wide Web. For them, the graphic design of a clever website is worth more time and attention than any of a hundred great books. As a tinction

between

been

always endangered

politics, advertising,

has finally vanished. higher

result, the

We

dis-

and entertainment

have entered the realm of the

form of electronic philistinism that has commercialized and made politically ser-

illiteracy, a

efficiently

viceable.

This

began

the culmination of an

is

in the

ominous trend

that

United States in the early twentieth century.

Warren G. Harding, a bland, undistinguished senator from Ohio, became the first pres-

In the election of 1920,

idential candidate to hire his

an advertising agency to handle

campaign. The firm was noted for having made a suc-

Harding brought

cess of a toothpaste called Pepsodent.

only one quality to the campaign: he looked presidential.

Handsome,

and square-jawed, he might have been supplied for the role by central casting in Hollywood. But behind his imposing face, he was one of the stupidest

silver-haired,

men

ever to hold public office.

By

his

own

understood almost nothing about the

admission,

he

paramount

issues of the day.

He was

206

a

heavy drinker, a

The

D evolution

of American

D emocracy

womanizer, and a compulsive poker player. His closest political friends - the “Ohio gang,” as they came to be called

- were, crooks

who would

various acts of corruption,

later be

some of those

imprisoned for acts

committed

White House under the president’s nose. But thanks to clever packaging and promotion, Harding won the election and in so doing pointed the way forward. in

the

His victory inspired the next president-to-be, Coolidge,

who was among

dates ever to reside in

Calvin

most colourless candithe White House, to take the same the

approach. Coolidge, indeed, hired the best to run his

campaign: Edward Bernays.

The Austrian-born Bernays

is

often regarded as the

founder of the public relations industry; he

is

certainly

one of the greatest advertising talents of the twentieth

more important, he was among the first to recognize that what advertising was to economics, propaganda was to politics. He not only foresaw that convercentury. But

gence of public relations and public policy, but also wel-

comed it as the best hope for making democracy work. He was convinced that the future of democratic societies depended upon “the engineering of consent” by political leaders. Therefore,

men

like himself, experts in fine-tun-

and choices, would become a new elite, using sophisticated psychological methods to manufacture consensus. As he put it, “If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now posing people’s tastes

sible to control

will

and regiment the masses according

without their knowing It is

it.”

when Bernays government during World War

to Franklin Roosevelt’s credit that

offered his services to the II,

to our

the public relations master

may have understood than Thomas Jefferson

to say, Bernays

racy better

was turned away.

207

But, sad

democor James Madison.

the future of

WORLD, BEWARE! From

1920s onward, more and more candidates

the

manage

campaigns and produce their television and radio materials. By the close of the twentieth century, political campaigning had become in every respect a marketing exercise in which everything depends on imagery and subliminal enlisted advertising talent to

their

persuasion.

Democracy has always demanded more of its citizens than liberal political philosophers have wanted to admit. While

it

may

not require vast erudition or expert knowl-

edge to cast an intelligent vote,

amount

of

common

it

does require a certain

sense and basic education.

requires fundamental character traits,

firm sense of one’s

own

identity

and

It

among which

also is

a

a clear understand-

ing of one’s authentic needs. “Identity,” as

I

speak of

it

means knowing what you share with others on the basis of class, race, gender, and ethnicity, as well as your peculiar and autonomous qualities as an individual. It means having a firm idea of your rights and your responsibilities in the commonwealth. These are not things that here,

need to be learned

in school; they

enough upon immediate identities

reflection.

should be apparent

And when

people’s

have been violated and their needs have gone

unmet, the pain that results should be as

hunger we

real

as the

when we have been deprived of food. But what happens when society spawns an entire feel

whose purpose it is to manipulate people’s identity and fill their minds with false needs? That is, of course, the role of advertising. Advertising, which seems inseparable from a highly developed consumer economy, industry

uses every psychological tool at identity.

It

its

disposal to reshape

presents people with alluring images, with

men and women like, live like. It

they

feel

they ought to look

like, act

conjures up needs for the commodities

208

it

The Devolution of American is

out to

searches for

sell. It

human

D emocracy

weaknesses;

ways of exploiting the reflexes that lead people and purchase. Advertising is expert deception sake of profit. But

commodities

its

in the

same techniques themselves. For

it

finds

to crave for the

techniques need not be limited to Politicians can use the

marketplace.

to sell their programs, their policies, is

not voting a great deal

like

and

shopping?

Today in the United States, candidates are programmed and scripted from first to last. They have to look good on television, they have to choose exactly the right words and phrases. A clever (meaning well-rehearsed) retort or sound-bite in a debate counts for more than substance. Political speeches are tested word by word on focus groups - small groups of supposedly average voters

who

respond to what the candidate says by pressing but-

tons to indicate their approval or disapproval of words or

phrases they like or dislike. George W. Bush, for example,

words “moms and dads” for “parents” in his speeches because it had a better sound to focus groups. Policies and military campaigns are named

was advised

to substitute the

with an eye to

how

Storm

Freedom.” There are marketing

who

.

.

.

Iraqi

they will play in the media. “Desert

specialize in syllables

convey the right

mood

the

history

letters.

Which sounds

or feeling for a product or an idea?

“K” sounds crisp and and relaxing. In

and even

specialists

“m” sounds soothing

businesslike,

thought,

of political

expected to see democracy come

down

nobody ever

to such profes-

sional trickery. But “selling” a policy has always borne an

uncomfortable similarity to cars.

It

merged

was only

selling

a matter of time before the

into a single profession.

us into the

soap or clothes or

And who

wonderland of fantasy

communicator himself? 209

politics

two were

better to usher

than the great

WORLD, BEWARE! Ronald Reagan’s fantasy

politics

culminated

in

his

election to the presidency in 1980. In that election there

were three important candidates: a Republican, a Democrat,

and an Independent.

gamed

In the final tabulation,

Reagan

the votes of only 28 percent of the country’s eligi-

more than half of the country’s eligible voters turned out to vote. The number of votes he drew was lower than the number of the non-voting near-majority. That was a turning point in American history. From the 1980 election onward, nonvoting became, as one analyst put it, “the largest mass movement of our time.” But in 1980 that made no great difference to Reagan or to the Republican Party. Actor that he was, Reagan pretended that he had been elected by a landslide. He interpreted the election as a mandate ble voters in

an election

in

which only

a bit

to repeal every piece of social legislation passed since the

Roosevelt

New

Deal. His speech writers even quoted

Roosevelt in support of Reagan’s plans. Such obvious

seemed to overshadow Reagan’s immense popularity. The media generally regarded him as above criticism, too dear to the hearts of most Americans to be faulted for his often inane and ignorant fraudulence

never

remarks. Reagan’s presidency marked the beginning of an

ominous trend

in

American

politics: the

of sheer fantasy into politics - as politics

to

unfold

like

a

if

movie.

brazen intrusion

people wanted their

At times

Reagan’s

behaviour bordered on delusion. For example, he claimed

World War II hero. When he led the nation in commemorating the fortieth anniversary of DDay, he did so as if he had himself been there for the invasion. Of course this was not true. Reagan had played the role of a soldier in some of his movies, but he had to have been a

never served

overseas.

Bewilderingly,

210

the

mainstream

The Devolution of American

D emocracy

media never called his claims into doubt - as if that might be too unkind. In the mid-1980s Reagan threw his full support behind the astronomically expensive Strategic Defense

At the time there was a clear consensus among scientists and technicians (at least those who were not on the payroll of the military-industrial complex) that no such weapon could be built. Nevertheless, Reagan presented the public with computer simulations showing a Initiative.

system that was

much

infallible.

The simulations looked very

like the special effects

then being featured in

sci-

ence fiction movies - hence the nickname “Star Wars,” originally coined by the press to emphasize the flashy,

Once again

futuristic character of the system.

proved willing to accept a fantasy,

the public

in this case a fantasy

would have cost over $1 trillion. Had the Soviet Union not collapsed during Reagan’s term, the United States would very likely have undertaken to build the that

SDI.

1984 Reagan launched an attack upon the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada, claiming that Cuban troops on the island were holding U.S. students captive. That was untrue, but Reagan pretended that it was a fact. For this role, he was given a marvellous new movie set: a state-of-the-art war room in the White House cluttered with television screens, maps, and the very best communications equipment. It might have been a movie In

set.

Here, as

commander

in chief,

he was shown suppos-

edly co-ordinating manoeuvres as the marines to

moved

in

defend America from the godless communist foe.

When

had cleared, it was revealed that there were no Cuban troops on Grenada. There had been some Cuban workers on the island helping to build an airport runway, but no danger greater than that. Grenada was a the dust

211

WORLD, BEWARE! fantasy war, but the American public accepted

it

as a

little

wars

great victory.

There have been other examples of neat

The elder George Bush staged such a war in Panama, swooping in overnight to capture the disagreeable dictator Manuel Noriega. President Clinton staged bombing raids in Somalia and in the Balkans that were like this.

carried out without U.S. casualties. Then, in April 2003,

only days after Baghdad had been occupied, George W.

Bush sought to out-Reagan Reagan by staging ular military photo-op.

He

a spectac-

flew to an aircraft carrier sup-

posedly well out at sea to announce victory in Iraq. Bush,

who had

never seen military action, purported to have

been at the controls of the plane that landed him on the

deck of the

carrier.

below

a

troops

who

He

alighted in a flight suit and helmet

banner that read “Mission Accomplished.” The the ship sent

filled

commander

played; the

up

in chief

declaring that “major fighting” in

a wild cheer; the

band

gave a rousing speech Iraq was over - words

he would later regret. It

was

a pure fantasy

had simply was he somewhere far out the plane; he

offshore. His press corps

moment. Bush had not

piloted

sat in the co-pilot’s seat. at sea;

Nor

he was only a few miles

had arranged

for the carrier to

be turned around so that the television cameras on board

would not show the city of San Diego in the background. Can fraudulent nonsense like this win elections and determine policy? The answer is yes. The hucksters who run campaigns have even perfected the fine art of driving voters away. to

draw

as

no sense

many

to

is

own

it is

there a

in

the object

voters as possible,

do anything that

nent’s vote. If

turnout,

of your

If

will increase

it

is

makes

your oppo-

your interest to produce a low voter

way

of discouraging voting?

212

Of

course

D emocracy

The Devolution of American there

is.

Simply make voting seem too disgusting, too

demeaning, above

all

ative.” In negative

too

futile.

This

is

called “going neg-

campaigning, issues are never raised

or debated. Instead, a candidate simply spreads a thick layer of scandal or criminality over the

opponent with

a

view to driving away the opponent’s supporters. Obvican be self-defeating. If both candidates take course - as is now invariably the case - the result is

ously, this this

to drive

away more and more

voters.

And

that

is

exactly

what has been happening as non-voting increases. To be sure, there are countless well-read, thoughtful, and discerning Americans - but not enough of them to carry decisive weight in the country’s political election

provides

where the

power waves

party in

who)

those

the

who

In

the flag

any

and

scapegoat (communists, terrorists, welfare

a

mothers, immigrants, gays, feminists ... ter

life.

yahoo element

will

it

does not mat-

almost always outvote

have actually read the Constitution of the

United States,

know enough

history to

name

four presi-

and can locate China on a map of the world. The depth of volatile ignorance under which most of the American electorate functions is a matter of record. There are fewer serious magazines and newspapers with each passing year; those that survive must make do with dwindling readerships. Meanwhile, trashy publications wholly devoted to .trivia, celebrity, and personal vanity dominate whatever is left of the reading market. Television now provides Americans with most of what they know about the world, but most of what passes for dents,

crowded with local scandals, sensational crimes, frivolity, and endless commercials. A typical news program - and very few people below the age of thirty-five watch any kind of news in the United States - spends most of its time on stories that can be captured “news” on the screen

is

213

WORLD, BEWARE! on videotape, preferably

exciting, salacious, or violent

There are car chases, shootouts, drug busts, fires, robberies, and rapes, each given several minutes of detailed reporting and interviews from eyewitnesses. “Talking heads” - meaning analysis and opinion - is events.

anathema.

The major networks handled the war in Iraq as a big production number. Ace reporters accepted the invitation of the military to be “embedded” in units that went to war. The result was a tight, exciting focus on action, but with very little perspective and next to no critical coverage of the politics behind the war. And that was as good as it got. As it turned out, most Americans watched the war transpire, not on the major networks, where there is still

a marginal willingness to raise a

few

critical

ques-

on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox television network. Fox was designed to appeal to “the young demographic,” meaning audiences (mainly male) between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. Most of its programs are little tions, but

better than trash.

ber 11, the Gulf

When

big stories

War - Fox

come along - Septem-

switches over to twenty-four-

hour, saturation coverage, but the coverage action,

human

interest,

and patriotism. Fox

flag-waving and battle scenes.

It

is

geared to

likes lots of

uses the current style of

crowding the screen with a confusing mix of images: two or three pictures, a crawl at the bottom of the screen, headlines and lists, all competing with one another to

The result is an assault on the attention span that makes complex analysis or even minimal continuity impossible. Such commentary as there may be is brash, abrasive, and solidly jingoistic. How do people survive from day to day when offered such a feeble grip on reality? It may be that they balance catch the eye.

one delusion against another, offsetting confusion with

214

D emocracy

The Devolution of American consolation. for

And by

Americans

the

is

most consoling delusion of

far the

hope of getting

all

lucky. In the nine-

teenth century- the author Horatio Alger wrote over three

hundred books

same

for children. All of his

books told the

how a starving street urchin rose from rags to his own efforts. Alger stamped an identity on the

story:

riches

by

United States that

holds sway: America, the land of

still

opportunity, America, the place where self-improvement

pays if

For generations Americans have been taught that

off.

they

work hard and remain

covered and rewarded.

A

delusionary thinking, are

patient, they too will be dis-

great still

many Americans,

telling

beset by

themselves that same

seem to believe that they are already rich. In 2001 a major news magazine ran a public opinion poll asking the question, “Are you among the richest 1 percent of the population?” Almost 20 percent believed story. Indeed, they

they were; another 20 percent said they expected to be in the top

1

percent sometime in the near future. This poll

on the order of 40 percent of the public - which would amount to well over one hundred million people - place themselves in that exalted rank. Perhaps that finding explains why so many Americans approved the sweeping tax cuts carried out by the Bush administration. They even approved of repealing suggests that something

the inheritance tax,

Any number ily

which

of critics have

favour the top

1

paid only by millionaires.

is

warned

that these cuts heav-

percent of the population. But appar-

number of Americans believe they are percent. They have even approved of abol-

ently a substantial

part of that

1

ishing the estate tax, an inheritance tax that falls

on only

the very wealthiest citizens.

Today

in those states

pay higher taxes,

means of

where people have refused

state lotteries

have been introduced as a

raising revenues for schools

2I

5

to

and other

social

WORLD, BEWARE! needs.

Many

Americans play the

money

laying out a great deal of

lottery compulsively,

to

buy

tickets.

who

play regularly wind up paying out far

they

would otherwise pay

growing

in popularity,

in taxes.

But

Those

more than

lotteries

keep

because they hold out the promise

win millions of dollars. The big winners - those who win over a hundred million dollars - are invariably shown on the television news smiling and cheering. Their stories join those of the successful movie actors or rock stars or athletes who fought their way to the top and now make millions. There are now highly popular television shows that feature amateur performers out to win the applause and approval of the that

some one person

will

watching audience. People are invited to vote for favourite

singer,

musician,

or comedian.

their

The winner

becomes an “icon” and is awarded contracts, tours, television appearances. The shows serve to instil the ethos of success. They proclaim that opportunity is still there, waiting for every American who has the drive and the talent to go after it. The implication is clear: only losers need social programs. If you are not a success, that must be your fault. I would not be surprised to learn that those who phone in to vote for the performer of their choice regard that act as a significant democratic exercise.

an With each passing

year, politicians

and

political parties in

up in elections whose costs mount steadily. Races for major governorships and Senate seats can cost a hundred million dollars. Presidential campaigns run into many hundreds of milthe United States find themselves caught

lions.

What

is

the

money used 216

for? Primarily to

pay for

D emocracy

The Devolution of American coverage in the media, which

from

political

campaigns,

now

earn enormous profits candidates

forcing

pay

to

must compete with commercial advertising. Though the issue receives practically no attention, this is prices that

in fact

an outrageous practice. Technically, the broadcast

airwaves belong to the people and must be used to serve the public interest. During elections the airwaves ought to he available to candidates free of charge, but that possibility

time

has long since been forgotten.

rolls

When campaign

around, the media expect to be paid hand-

somely for running announcements and commercials for the candidates. a

They

bridle at

few presidential debates for

making time available which they are not - as

for

yet

- paid.

The high cost of the media makes candidates ever more indebted to those who have money, and that is the corporations, many of which now routinely give to both political parties (though more to Republicans than Democrats) to make sure they

will

ence in the next administration.

have access and It

also

influ-

makes them

beholden to the image and fantasy-making talents that have mastered the media. Since the days of Ronald Reagan, campaign commercials have

become

steadily slicker:

camera angles, the right sound-bites, the right editing. As with all merchandising, the major goal of a political campaign is to gam push-button control over the attention and the responses of the consuming public. That includes finding ways of finessing the pubjust the right

lic’s

scepticism.

Like

all

advertising, political advertising

now

begins

with the assumption that people are on their guard, that they recognize phoniness a mile away, that they

know

they are being lied to and manipulated. The pitch, therefore, begins

from

there.

By

a strange tacit agreement, the

217

WORLD, BEWARE! audience for such material seems to acquiesce in paying attention

and even being persuaded - provided we

by agreeing that we are participating

start

in a

all

mutually

demeaning exercise that has no relationship to truth or decency. Who’s fooling whom? It is hard to say. But one thing is certain: cynicism has become the coin of the political realm. The result is that, with each election, the public - battered by deception and obfuscation - agrees to

dumb down A

still

more.

NATION LOST

IN

THE FICTIVE ZONE

In a viable democracy, there

is

no

gence. But in our time intelligence

substitute for intelli-

up against a monster of its own making. For the sake of fun and profit, people in the high industrial societies - and none more so than the people of the United States - have ensconced themselves in a Active zone, a

is

worldwide electronic environ-

ment in which everything can be simulated, enhanced, cut and edited, adjusted, tweaked, upgraded, improved. One can no longer assume that any photograph, any television or film footage,

may

all

a picture of the real thing.

have been redesigned

room. But lated,

is

how

if

in the

camera or the cutting

everything including real

can you

tell

possible that simulation

life

when something is

better

,

It

more

can be simuisn't}

Or

exciting,

is

it

more

immediately gratifying?

As

a writer

I

have occasion to appear on radio and

television for interviews.

The people

I

meet working

in

media are almost invariably smarter than they let themselves seem to their audience. On screen or on the page, they talk down, lest they overload us. The demographics tell them that we prefer to wallow in the Active zone. As far back as the mid-1970s, Paddy Chayefsky the

218

The Devolution of American Network

D emocracy

media would soon become a madcap carnival in which the news would be invented and re-enacted, scripted and hyped. Journalists would be replaced by mimics and actors. The audience predicted in his film

would be given what

it

that the

wanted.

News would

be whatever

draws the highest ratings. Another film, David Mamet’s Wag the Dog, is a mordant commentary on how Chayevsky’s

Mamet

prediction

has

played

out.

In

the

film,

imagines that an embattled president distracts the

public’s attention

from

his sexual

misconduct by hiring a

Hollywood producer to stage a war on television. The ruse works. The public accepts the war as a real event. As the key adviser in the movie keeps repeating: “It must be true. They saw it on television.” At the time the film was released, President Clinton was ordering bombing raids in the Balkans, perhaps

hoping to distract the pub-

from the sex scandal that was just then brewing in the White House. Life imitating art. Are the media masters right in assuming the public prefers fluff and sound-bites, simulations and celebrities? I often wonder if there is something about electronic media that embalms the mind. Once when I appeared for a brief interview on the Today show, a major network production, I found myself looking out on a plaza just behind the cameras where a few hundred people show up every morning to cheer, wear wacky hats, and hold up funny banners. Doing their best to act zany, they hope to lic

camera for that split second before the commercial break. They want so fiercely to share a few crumbs of celebrity exposure. “Take me deeper,” they seem to be saying, “deeper into get their faces in front of the roving

the fictive zone.”

At the extreme, such sensational coverage merges with “reality television,” the most popular and successful

219

WORLD, BEWARE! programming

in the

United States

filled

The

shows came from Europe:

original inspiration for reality

programs

in recent years.

with amateurs recruited for their looks or

on whose unrehearsed antics the audience can eavesdrop. The programs promise their audiences a chance to spy on people’s most intimate or idiotic activities. The great appeal of the shows seems to

their general zaniness

the

be the possibility that

audience will be able to

observe beautiful young people fornicating. This

enough

are in fact highly edited is

fraudulent,

and

their

enough, the audience knows

Most

of the

it

shows

carefully cast. Their spon-

candour contrived. Oddly all this,

but

with the deception. Again, one wonders

whom.

bad

as a substitute for decent entertainment; worse,

has blurred the meaning of “reality.”

taneity

is

it

plays along

who

is

fooling

In a recent poll, younger viewers admitted that

they watch television to escape the problems of the day.

And where do

they turn for escape? To reality television.

Inevitably, politics has picked

up the character of

programming. Political candidates are now filmed round the clock by reporters with mini-cams, often very intrusively. Some have complained that they must now assume they are being filmed during every waking hour and that the least mistake or foolish remark or awkward expression may wind up on television. That is exactly the

reality

style of reality television.

What can

the result of this be

but that eventually political success will require the ability to

alert,

to

endure 24/7 video coverage and to look smart,

charming? Either

demand

that, or the candidates will

have

the right to edit the footage.

from the pressures of daily life, the Internet has proven to be a godsend - especially for the most desperate among them. There have been any number of reports about the addictive spell that Internet For those seeking

relief

220

The Devolution of American activities

D emocracy

such as chat rooms and auctions

now

exert over

an audience of millions. Role-playing games have become particularly enticing. These games - often filled with fabulous creatures and fantastic situations - can go on indef-

absorbing hours of time each day. Though most

initely,

of these

drawn

games were developed

a substantial

number

for adolescents, they have

of adult players. Those

who

pursue the games assert that they provide a chance to “get out of themselves,” to live another

ous

life.

dence

Of

course,

all

they are doing

in the fictive zone. It

American troops

kill

and

is

is

more adventurtaking up

a jarring thought.

resi-

While

die in distant lands in obedi-

ence to policies that cry out for intense debate, millions

home

and masked villains through chimerical landscapes, hoping to find hidden treasure, magic implements, and cosmic glory in a of citizens back

galaxy

far, far

are chasing dragons

away.

Sometimes the fantasies carry over into real life in ways that are of great consequence. Consider the fascination that Americans have developed for the suv - the sport utility vehicle, the worst gas-guzzling cars ever produced. The Bush administration came to office promising to free the nation

Hence,

its

from

its

dependence on foreign

plans for developing

oil

fields in

oil.

wilderness

same time, U.S. automakers have been promoting suvs, which rarely get more than ten miles to a gallon of gas. They are heavy, four-wheeldrive cars mounted on the frame of a truck. They were areas and offshore. At the

developed for rugged, off-the-road travel rain: deserts,

in

rough

ter-

mountains, swamps. Very few drivers use

their

suvs for such driving. Most suv drivers are women,

who

use the cars to drive to the mall or to deliver their

children to school. These vehicles are as expensive to run as they are to buy, but

Americans,

221

in the early years of

WORLD, BEWARE! Bush administration, turned them into the most popular cars on the market. What is the appeal of the suv to these drivers? The answer is: the car provides the illusion of power and

the

invulnerability.

It

has the

feel

of a military vehicle.

One

marketing expert has recommended building the cars even larger and mounting a

The

mock gun

turret

on

top.

And

and heaviest of the line, the Hummer, was patterned on the HumVee, which is now being used in Iraq by U.S. forces, suvs are not safe that has happened.

they tend to

roll

largest

over in accidents - but no matter. The

what counts. On freeways or even on city streets, American drivers delight in the illusion of intimidating size and weight. That is exactly what commercials for suvs emphasize: images of drivers racing across open fields, across rivers, over rocky mountain passes, shooting past other smaller cars, forcing them to the side of the road. It would be no exaggeration to say that the fantasy

is

price for these fantasies

Middle

is

being paid in blood in the

East.

McLuhan once

media “the extensions of man.” But extensions of what? Folly, greed, vanMarshall

ity,

called

desperation? It is

one of the great and troubling paradoxes of the

modern world. As the experience of the world’s urban billions is more and more filtered through media that can manipulate their materials with ever greater cunning, people have

less

contact with the reality outside their

minds. Yet where the defence of one’s basic interests

concerned - earning a

living, staying healthy, raising chil-

and sanity - there is no substimaking discriminating judgments about real

dren, preserving dignity tute

for

is

problems.

222

The Devolution of American

D emocracy

ENTER THE TERMINATOR Once, not long ago,

I

would have

Reagan

said that the

presidency was as extreme as delusionary thinking could

become

United States. The whimsy and wishful-

in the

ness that surrounded this sadly incompetent

man

still

ranks as an alarming testimony to the gullibility of the

worse was yet to come, and it came California. There in the fall of 2003 a recall election

American in

was held

public. But

that

made Arnold Schwarzenegger governor

of

most educated, and most demographically varied of all the states. It was an event that embodies everything that has gone wrong with the democratic the largest, richest,

process in the United States. Recall elections were a major reform of the early

twentieth century, an effort to achieve what the leaders of the Progressive

Movement

democracy.”

lot-box

Recalls

of that period called “bal-

allow

the

replace elected officials before their term

2003 the

is

electorate

to

finished. Until

had never been used to remove a governor in California. But in that year a combination of factors led to a financial crisis that overwhelmed the Democratic governor, who had been elected only one year before.

recall

The main ingredient of

that crisis

was

the col-

dot-com boom that had vastly enriched California through the 1990s. With the collapse of hundreds lapse of the

of Internet companies, California lost

much

of

its

tax

base and began to run short of funds. This was not a

unique misfortune; other states suffered a similar

loss of

tax revenue. But the high-tech recession hurt California,

home of Silicon Valley, worst of all. Nor was the dot-com bust the only nia’s financial

cause of Califor-

woes. Quite as important was the energy

crisis that hit the

state in the year

223

2001. As

we have

WORLD, BEWARE! noted, that crisis

was engineered by

a small

number

of

companies that had campaigned to deregulate the California energy market and then deliberately created shortages that drove the price of electricity and natural gas sky high. California’s governor,

tion

was taking

aware that price manipula-

place, appealed strenuously to federal

regulators in Washington to intervene and stabilize the

market. Meanwhile, the state assumed responsibility for

and buying electricity at the best price available. The new Bush administration refused to help California, insisting that such aid would be a violation of the free market. All the while, Vice-President Cheney was among those working with the energy companies to exploit Califinding

fornia.

The was

result of the

dot-com bust and the energy

The budget taxes, but Repub-

a state deficit of alarming proportions.

gap might have been closed by a

rise in

licans in the California state legislature,

the try,

crisis

most adamantly conservative

who

are

among

politicians in the coun-

refused to allow a tax increase. Instead, they

went

blame for California’s fiscal debacle on him. A Republican millionaire provided the money to launch a state-wide recall campaign. Less than a million signatures were required to place the recall on the ballot; even so, the recall petition might not have after the governor,

heaping the

full

Arnold Schwarzenegger had not signalled that he would be willing to run in the election. Schwarzenegger, a body-builder and action-hero

carried

if

movie star, might seem like an unlikely candidate by any intelligent set of standards. He had no previous political experience and had never publicly addressed a significant issue. Still he had been hinting at running for office - either for governor or senator - for several years.

Once he entered

the recall election, the popular

224

The Devolution of American

D emocracy

among Democrats and Republicans alike was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Though his campaign was

response

about giving power back

a tissue-thin -fabric of cliches

to the people, he

one end of the

was cheered by excited throngs from

state to the other.

He

affected a populist

stance, accusing the politicians of creating a “mess,” but

never once did he indicate

On

mess.

most other

how

to say he

He

lem.

was vague and non-coma demand for more clarity

issues he

mittal. His usual response to

was

he would clean up that

would appoint people

to study the prob-

refused to debate with other candidates and

carefully avoided press conferences. Instead, Schwarzenegger found

ing the public.

He appeared on

new ways

of reach-

television talk shows,

where he was eagerly welcomed as a celebrity. That was where he announced his candidacy and where he worked to build his public image, political outsider. In these

away from light

appearances he veered sharply

serious political matters

and stayed

close to

and movie gossip. He also camshopping malls, where he staged large rallies

humour, small

paigned in

which was that of an angry

talk,

drew people who would never attend a more conventional political gathering and many of whom had given up on voting. He was especially popular among young voters who were fans of his movies. Perhaps there that

is

this

much one can

result of his

unusual campaign

draw members

None tactics

give Schwarzenegger credit for: the

may

indeed have been to

of the non-voting public into the election.

of Schwarzenegger’s evasive and obfuscating

counted against him. Voters did not seem to care

what he knew or did not know about any

He

clearly

relevant issue.

understood almost nothing about finance or

legislation, but that

longed to stand

in his

made no

difference. People simply

presence and share his celebrity. At

225

WORLD, BEWARE! one point questions were raised about

women sets.

his

treatment of

during his body-building days and later on movie

women came

Several

forward to accuse him of grop-

and abusing them. Schwarzenegger admitted that he had. But his supporters - including his female supporters ing

- brushed the issue aside, as if that kind of behaviour was what one must expect from a movie star. Indeed, his womanizing and his admission of group sex were seen as part of his macho image, which was his main appeal to the electorate. After an abbreviated campaign, he won a decisive victory in the election.

What

accounts for Schwarzenegger’s meteoric suc-

cess in his first political exercise?

The answer

is

“star

power.” Schwarzenegger’s handlers cloaked their candidate in the persona that he brought with

him from

film roles. “Arnold,” as he prefers to be called,

He

Terminator.”

He

“Conan

is

“Hercules” and “The

is

his

‘The

Commando.”

and “The Last Action Hero.” He has tried to soften this image by making a few comedies, but his political image is that of the superhuman brute. Throughout his campaign he referred conis

the Barbarian”

stantly to the action roles, often quoting lines

from

his

movies. His stance was that of an invincible tough guy, the outsider

who makes

his

own

rules

opposition. Did his supporters expect

and annihilates

him

all

go to the

to

Sacramento and beat the politicians into submission? Submission to what? Even that did not seem state capital in

to matter, for Schwarzenegger never indicated

what he

planned to do as governor except “clean up the mess.” Star

power was

And

it

is

all

star

he needed.

power

that Schwarzenegger continues

to use as a threat to his political opponents. to accept his leadership

and defer to

If

they refuse

his priorities,

he will

“go to the people.” Meaning he will use the ballot

226

The Devolution of American Democracy which,

initiative,

like

the

recall

election,

is

another

reform of the Progressive Movement. The electorate votes

directly

becomes

a

on

a

ballot

initiative.

law that overrides

all

approved,

If

it

other legislation. “Going

means participating in local campaigns to use star power to defeat opposing politicians and replace them with members of the governor’s party. to the people”

On

the surface, tactics like this

democratic. first

also

When

the recall

invented, they were

and the

meant

may

look admirably

ballot initiative

were

to be forms of “direct

democracy” that would recapture American politics from party bosses and their big business supporters. They were intended to break the control of

But

in

money over government.

we have a very different use instruments. Combined with star power

Schwarzenegger’s case

of these political

and the contributions of wealthy supporters, they have become a way of corrupting what remains of the democratic process. For, as it turns out, Schwarzenegger is little

most moneyed interests in the country. Though he promised he would use his own

more than

money

the facade for the

to run his campaign, he immediately accepted con-

tributions

from the business and

whose goals he seeks

real

estate

interests

to promote. His so-called solution to

the California budget crisis

was

to

make

severe cuts in

health and education, in programs for the elderly and the

same time refusing to raise taxes on the wealthy. This is little more than standard right-wing politics, but star power clouds that reality. Like Ronald Reagan before him, Schwarzenegger invited voters to associate him with his movie roles. They had seen him flatten his enemies on the big screen and so they expected him to do the same in real life. How excitgoing to the ing that would be! Why, it would be like disabled, while at the

.

movies!

And who

can say

how 227

.

.

far he will be able to ride

WORLD, BEWARE! on the delusionary thinking that seems so dominant among the American public? No sooner did he win the recall election than Republicans in the Congress began to about repealing the constitutional provision that excludes foreign-born citizens from holding the presi-

talk

Ronald Reagan could leap from being governor of California to the presidency, why not Arnold dency. After

all, if

the action hero?

As Schwarzenegger’s success makes

clear, the

obses-

sion with celebrities has reached a pathological extreme in the

United States. Celebrities -

as people

who

are in such

are well

demand by

known the

who

have been defined for being well known -

media that

it

seems there are

no longer enough of them to go around. Television shows and magazines now compete fiercely to get “AList” names and faces before the public, paying ever higher fees. The same may be true of other countries in which the media play a larger and larger role in daily life. But the disease is more serious in the United States, where celebrities now threaten to invade politics and turn government into a form of entertainment. In the years ahead it may well be the case that, as politics and show business grow ever more intertwined, actors will crowd out politicians. Washington has been called “Hollywood for ugly people.” Well, what if beautiful people from Hollywood get interested in replacing those ugly people in Washington en masse? Constant rumours now circulate about movie stars

who

are preparing to run for various political offices

around the country. No doubt they would follow the lead of Reagan and Schwarzenegger. The whole purpose of their campaigns would be to submerge themselves in their movie personas. They would use the mesmerizing power of the big screen to overwhelm their opposition.

228

D evolution

The After

all, if

of American

Schwarzenegger, an actor

D emocracy who

specializes in

playing inarticulate thugs and robots, can win public

how much more

approval,

who have been There is now serious

so those

as wise, charming, or fatherly?

cast talk

among Republicans about running the talk-show hostess Oprah Winfrey for the Senate or even the presidency. She most popular entertainer in the land especially with women. Her persona is that of a friendly, compassionate millionaire - a winning combination. Others believe that the actor Martin Sheen should run is,

after

all,

the

for president because he has played the part of a presi-

show The West Wing. He certainly looks presidential - and isn’t that what matters most? Perhaps we are seeing a new third party born in the United States: the movie star party. I have no doubt that it would sweep dent on the hit

the country.

With each passing year, American television presents more and more “awards shows,” modelled on the motion picture Academy Awards. It does not seem to matter what the awards are for; people simply enjoy the vicarious thrill of seeing famous people win prizes. The shows are little more than a glitzy and mindless parade of celebrities

shows

is

dressed in expensive clothes.

One

of these

an annual popularity contest called the People’s

done by phone or on-line by the audience. The winner can be any celebrity who is well-liked by enough people. Clint Eastwood has won the prize. So have Tom Hanks and Bill Choice Award. In

this case, the voting

Cosby and

Roberts.

once.

Julia

Maybe

this

is

is

Oprah has won more than

the future of democracy:

no

issues,

no debates, no thinking. Simply let the people choose their favourite celebrities and let the celebrities become our political leaders.

Welcome

to

life

in the Active zone.

229

WORLD, BEWARE! The public can be quite fickle about its likes and dislikes. As rapidly as it can make celebrities, it can tire of them and There

is

spurn them.

of course one

A

drawback

to star power.

facade with nothing behind

it

is

easily

overturned. In the blink of an eye, the hero can become a

bum.

A

COMMUNITY OF RAGE

This book - seemingly - offers a harsh evaluation of the

American public, of which, I must remind myself, I am a member. But beyond the ignorance and cynicism I target here for criticism,

I

believe there lies a deeper explanation

for the political incompetence that dominates try. It

my

coun-

has to do with anger - with justifiable anger.

we can

anger that

understand and

all

in

which we

all

An par-

ticipate.

some

from popular culture. Since the early 1970s, the U.S. movie industry has produced a steady stream of Dirty Harry Death Wish Die Hard movies grounded in “damn-’em-all” distrust of the system - any system. It is a central feature of such vigilante movies that the brutal and dim-witted heroes Start with

lessons

,

have

little

justification to offer for their usually massively

contempt

destructive behaviour except

makes no as

it

,

for authority.

difference: the public applauds

does any irate voice

it

It

them anyway,

hears on the broadcast band.

Generic in-your-face rage has become the staple of talk

and phone-in radio. Pit-bull commentators fill the air waves with vituperation, goading their listeners to ever higher levels of outrage. Being serious means getting mad and talking tough.

Where

is all

coming from? Some of it might account for. The gangsta rap that

the rage

seem easy enough

to

230

The Devolution of American comes pounding out of

my

radio as

I

D emocracy

sweep the

dial cata-

logues familiar objects of black rage: police, landlords,

employers, crack-dealers. The flagging progress of racial

America gives more than enough reason

justice in

content in that quarter. Sadly enough, black

come

good deal of male abuse

in for a

for dis-

women

also

in these lyrics,

which suggests that at its extreme the anger transcends politics. Beyond the indignation of the rapsters, we have the angry white guys, “Wiggers” like the rapper

Eminem.

But experts do not agree on where their ugly

comes from. Could

mood

have to do with jobs and income? There are pollsters who say “no” - not primarily. They it

report that whatever white males it

has

that,

to

little

as

may

be incensed about,

do with the economy. The

pollsters believe

with the evangelical Christians and National

Rifle Association, the source of

white male fury has more

do with emotionally explosive issues of gays, guns, and God. I would not so lightly dismiss the economic origins of public discontent. But I would agree that there may be other, less rational forces at work, igniting the wrath that fills the air around us. Much of the anger resonates with what historian Richard Hofstadter once called “the paranoid style” in American politics, a bottom-dog sense of being victimized by privileged elites that dates back at to

least to the

days of the Populist

movement

in the nine-

teenth century. Different victims target different

though there culprits.

The

for example,

and

is

a

fbi

elites,

growing consensus about some of the

and the International Monetary Fund,

rank high among the grievances of both

left

right.

But

it

begs the question to write

noia.” There are

elites;

all this

off as “para-

they really exist - and they strive

to further their interests. Scandals like Watergate

23

and

WORLD, BEWARE! Iran-Contra have produced ample evidence of efforts to a

create

secret

government

Washington. Even the

in

lumpen-intellectual militia groups, in their indiscriminate suspicion,

may

And

be justified in some of their fears.

then there has been the wave of financial scandals that has erupted on Wall Street, in every case proving that

when men

in expensive suits gather in secret, they are

very likely up to no good. All this

is

reason enough for

anger.

There may, however, be lated forces at

work

in the

anxieties that connect us

still

other, less easily articu-

depths of the public mind,

all in

a

growing community of

rage,

and which go well beyond anything that

fixed

by finding somebody to blame. One factor

sure

there: intellectual

is

There

Harpo

is

a scene in a

will be I

am

embarrassment.

Marx

Brothers

picks up a book, stares into

it,

comedy

in

becomes

which

furious,

and begins tearing the thing to shreds. An astonished onlooker says to Chico, “Say! He must really hate what he read there.”

Chico answers: “No.

He

just

mad

gets

at

books

itself in

some-

because he can’t read.” I

suspect the American public finds

thing very like Harpo’s position.

We

are

all

staring into a

book we cannot understand and experiencing a bewildered fury. It is called An Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. That was the title that Buckminster Fuller, the visionary technician, used for a slender volume published in 1969 that made him one of the prophets of the ebullient sixties and seventies. Though he was a great bamboozler, Fuller radiated

an infectious confidence that sent

people away feeling at least momentarily hopeful. “Spaceship Earth,” the phrase he coined,

was

a marvellously

catchy figure of speech, offering a simple mechanical

232

The Devolution of American model Fuller

D emocracy

worldwide industrial system. The Earth, u announced, is a mechanical vehicle just like an for the

automobile.” All this

celestial

bmw

required of us

is

that

do that? Simple. We need “a design and invention revolution.” And where will that come from? From “powerful thought tools.” Such it

be “serviced in total.”

And how

to

as? “Topology, geodesics, synergetics, general systems the-

That was

making the world a more efficient mechanism. All we needed to do was to put our “thought tools” to work on the banking and finance ory.”

Fuller’s solution to

networks, the great technological systems, the natural

environment. Fuller

sound so easy. But those who were operating manual were destined to dis-

made

it all

studying his

left

human understand human

beings can create systems

cover a sobering truth:

do not

that

beings and will not serve

their needs.

That was where the

ment began.

We

a Frankenstein’s

Why

realized that Spaceship Earth

way.

does intellectual embarrassment

It

was

really

monster that was running out of control.

angry? Because ignorance hurts. sible

embarrass-

intellectual

It

make

us so

hurts in the worst pos-

disempowers and humiliates.

It

undermines

the basic biological urge of adulthood: the need to be a

responsible parent. In times past,

asking

how

when

children

came

had reasonably

the world worked, parents

They knew basic, pragmatic things about the seasons and the migration of herds and the planting of crops. They had durable skills to teach. Makfunctional answers.

ing

fire,

river.

tracking animals, raiding the tribe just across the

Grown-ups knew how

to

manage

these things. Peo-

ple can take great pride in that simple parental act of

passing the as

now,

life

skills

of their culture along.

was precarious; but when

Of

233

went wrong, forces beyond

things

people could attribute their bad luck to

course, then

WORLD, BEWARE! human

control.

At which point they resorted to prayer

and expiation, hoped for the best, and waited for the crisis to pass. The result might be calamitous, but then no one assumed that human beings had built the world and were supposed to know how to fix it when it malfunctioned.

A

proper humility in the face of great trouble can

go a long way towards assuaging frustration.

Today our children come to us with very different questions. They ask about inscrutable technologies that were not repair.

Or

built

non-technicians to

for

understand or

they ask about news of the day that often tran-

okay to eat genetically modified foods? What should we do about the balance of trade? Why is gatt a good thing? What is acid rain, what is ozone depletion? Is the globe warming scends the competence of experts. “Is

Why

or cooling? Israel?

Why

are

did those

Trade Center?

Why

it

all

these people being killed in

men

crash airplanes into the World

did you lose your job, daddy?”

A

lot

come up with adequate answers to questhese. Or worse still, maybe we sometimes

of us cannot tions like

sense that there

is

no point

in asking questions

because

we nor our children will understand the answers when we hear them. I suspect so many people are desperately trying to neither

master the Internet these days because they hope there

is

magic machine somewhere that will tell them all they need to know about this big confusing world. But what a

they find along the information superhighway

is

more

technological dependency: computer protocols, networking complexities, faulty connections,

and constantly

shift-

ing interfaces that are even harder to master than their

vcr line,

even

controls.

And

what they

much

if

they do finally succeed in getting on-

find there

reliable

is

not truth and

information,

234

wisdom

or

but a great deal of

The empty

D evolution

chat,

many

of American

trivial

D emocracy

pursuits, lots of angry folks

flaming away.

High tech both symbolizes and anchors the spreading sense of helplessness that bedevils people - which is not the same as saying that it causes the problem. The computer is the signature technology of our era in the same way that the steam engine was the centrepiece of the Industrial Revolution. We know from everyday observation that computers are important. We see them everywhere around us. In the workplace, people are required to be proficient in their use and to keep upgrading that

skill.

Otherwise, one might be fired for not hav-

Windows. But

ing learned the latest version of

as a solu-

tion to our intellectual embarrassment, high tech

makes

matters worse by confronting us with ever-increasing levels

of complexity.

One

brings a computer

home

only to

discover within a few months’ time that nothing works as advertised.

The

parts are incompatible; the error mes-

sages that flash across the screen are as inscrutable as

pronouncements by the oracle of Delphi. So people buy books with titles like The Internet for Dummies or The Complete Idiot's Guide to Windows. Purchasing books like these is an open confession of powerlessness

we

in the face of the

simply have to master.

I

technology

suspect the

we

are told

books only

meant to relieve, because even books written for “dummies” are hard to understand, or follow. What sort of “help” do they offer? increase the anxiety they are

Redraw your desktop. Purge all the your machine. Update your spam filter. Fine-

Revise your pif viruses in

file.

machine lock up or slow pace. Simple enough for hackers, per-

tune your memory,

down

to a snail’s

lest

the

haps, but are the rest of us expected to have the time or skill

to

do

all this?

235

WORLD, BEWARE! The alienating and stupefying relationship between people and high tech is unique in the history of industrial technology. The steam engine, the locomotive, the automobile, the airplane, the assembly

powerful, were not they revealed

that difficult to understand. Often

all

moving

all their

while big and

line,

parts in the open; or, as in

the case of household appliances, their uses were singular

and simple. You plugged them in, turned them on, and forgot about them. Nobody had to be “refrigerator-literdocumentation to run What one needed to know about

ate,” or study encyclopaedia-sized

their

vacuum

cleaner.

these machines could be set

down

in a small

explained by a few diagrams. Even

more than

technicians

knew

the rest of us did about mysterious gadgets

and

no one thought of such people soaring geniuses; nobody had to envy or fear their

like radios

as

if

booklet and

television,

expertise.

How

does one deal with a general, all-pervading

sense of powerlessness, especially one’s ignorance

advantage? ing

is

going wrong.

of staving off humiliation

blame

to

suspects that

being exploited by others to their

One way

someone

when one

for everything that

Any convenient scapegoat

is

by

find-

seems to be

will do: illegal

immigrants, homosexuals, welfare cheats.

If all else fails,

there are always the know-it-all politicians

who

keep

promising to make us happier and more secure, but whose programs always fall short. When it comes to attacking politicians, cians,

we have

a zealous ally: other politi-

always eager to indulge in partisan

vilification.

There are more than enough scapegoats available, but none of them can dispel the spreading sense of infuriating ignorance because that ignorance industrial society.

Washington

is

One

that

is

built into high

of the cliches of current debate in

the

Democrats are the party of

236

The Devolution of American

D emocracy

“dependency.” Dependency can be a mortifying condition for

grown-up

lives.

who want to tearing down

citizens

But short of

bound

feel in

charge of their

the global industrial

on vast systems of investment, communication, production, and distribution. Making government “smaller,” especially if that means indiscriminate decimation of public services order, our lives are

to be dependent

do no good, because inherently big. Take away big

and regulatory protection, urban-industrial society

is

government, and we will be

will

face to face with the

raw

corporate power that fostered big government in the

first

left

place and with even less control over those interests than

we had I

before.

am

impressed by

how we

use the

word “smart”

Smart machines, smart systems, smart weapons. But what a high industrial society needs most is smart people. Indeed, the smarter the machines become, the smarter the people must be to keep the machines under control. But in a society where intelligence is what we need, there is clearly a growing sense that too many of us are coming up short. I am speaking of technological dependency and intellectual embarrassment as I see them around me in the United States. But the community of rage may be a worldthese

days.

wide condition. Industrial society may have reached

boundary condition:

who

it

is

a

outdistancing the intelligence

and the forbearance of those who look to it for all good things. At that point, ignorance and anger begin to amplify; competence vanishes at the top and compliance seeps away at the bottom until the system becomes unmanageable and ungovernable. What do we find just below the sleek surface of the information society? Bedlam, Babel, Pandemonium. Terrorism is now supposed to be the one dominating of those

invented

it

237

WORLD, BEWARE!

We

thought on the mind of the American people.

are

and anger because of what Osama bin Laden and his henchmen, hidden away in some mountain wilderness beyond the supposed to be

Hindu Kush,

living in a vigilant state of fear

are plotting to do. But

Americans most fear

terror

our door lurking

side

in the

is

it

may

nearer home.

be that the

It is

just out-

mechanisms of everyday

life.

THE PERFECT AUTHORITARIAN STORM “They hate us and they hate freedom and they hate people who embrace freedom.”

W. Bush, interviewed on A1 Arabiya television, May 6, 2004

President George

If

the

war

in Iraq

policy, that

with

was

all

stood by

itself as

would be enough

an issue of foreign

to fire

American

the moral heat of another Vietnam. But

politics

Vietnam

a shared liberal-conservative responsibility, as

much

John Foster Dulles, Republican secretary of state (1953-59), as Robert McNamara, the Democratic secretary of defense (1961-68). Iraq is a far more troubling story. In marked contrast to the way in which the Democrats imploded over Vietnam, this war is being led the fault of

by a

political party that

cipline

associated

in

has achieved the sort of iron

times past with

dis-

Bolsheviks and

Maoists. As the unilateral and pre-emptive policy of a rigidly ideological party,

Gulf

War

II

was powered by

a

perfect storm of highly conservative social forces that are

bound

to shape our culture as well as our politics for

years to come.

That

is

terly ironic.

tion”

of

what makes

We

Iraq

the party line

bit-

and again that the “libera“freedom on the march.”

are told again

symbolizes

on the war so

238

D emocracy

The Devolution of American Democracy -

like

it

or not -

is

the Christian God’s gift to

Middle East. The terrorindeed, what President Bush

the dysfunctional nations of the ist

hatred of 'freedom

war

thinks his

world

in Iraq

is all

infested with

is

is,

The

about. Just that.

who want

bad guys

to

Islamic free

kill

people - a rationale that elicited a witty rebuttal from the

Muslim for a

terrorist in chief.

man

make

as

I

good word

hesitate to say a

bloody-minded as Osama

bm

Laden, but he

October 30, 2004, preelection address to the American people: “Contrary to did

a telling point in his

Bush’s claim that did

not

we

Sweden.”

attack

seems to be

bm

hate freedom,

(That

hollowing World psychologists led by called

him

tell

remark,

us

why we

incidentally,

Laden’s only clear statement that he was

responsible for the attack on the

type

let

War

II,

a

Center.)

group of Lrankfurt

Theodor Adorno created

“authoritarian

the

World Trade

personality”

social

a character

that

they

hoped would explain the appeal of totalitarian movements like Naziism. In later years their work was seen as too polemically Marxist to qualify as objective psychology. (Conservatives especially bridled at being assigned a

high “fascist receptivity” quotient.) But

now

that

we

find

ourselves in the hands of a triumphalist regime that has

achieved so impressive a consensus

among

U.S. voters,

I

wonder if it might be time to revisit the issues raised by Adorno and company. Even when polls reflect doubts about the war,

it

is

the absence of speedy success that

troubles people, not the underlying policy.

Look behind what you find is

the catch-phrases of official policy

and

a cross-section of the anti-democratic

forces that have turned the

gop

into the

most monolithic

party in American history. Begin with America’s new,

all-

volunteer military, the triumphalists’ sacred cow. “Support our troops”

is

the teary-eyed mantra that resonates

239

WORLD, BEWARE! from the West Wing through every lunch counter, bowling alley, saloon, and church in middle America. Lost in the ceaseless flag-waving is the knowledge that America is becoming the most militarized nation on Earth. What supposedly freedom-loving conservatives so eagerly adu-

who

men and women

young, often poorly educated

late are

have opted to

live a

barracks

march

to

life,

in step,

snap to attention, salute, and obey every order they are

They may be volunteers, but what have they volunteered for? To lead the most regimented life available in the United States. This is a far cry from the ornery, unruly homo democritus that has been the American ideal from frontier days down to the citizen soldiers of past wars. Yet images of a samurai military - special given.

and contract security forces which read “hired guns”) - fill our popular culture,

forces, top guns, elite units, (for

including the video games so popular with adolescent

males. With each passing year, as conservatives diminish

funding for education, working poor and middle-class

youth must turn to military service leges they

Add power of like a

in order to attend col-

cannot otherwise afford. to

this

ethos

of militarization

the corporate mandarins

conquered province. Like the

who

the

growing

are treating Iraq

military, the corpora-

dos are a closed community that operates within top-

down,

hierarchical structures of

dominance and submis-

These are the very types that Franklin Roosevelt once called “economic royalists.” Still, the Bush adminission.

tration takes pride in importing their

government. Indeed, corporate leaders

market

is

the

most democratic of

needs elections

when we have

all

elitist

insist

style into

that the

institutions.

Who

the law of supply and

demand? But think again. The “free” market supposedly works by natural laws as inexorable as the law of

240

The Devolution of American

D emocracy

Those laws can only function properly, so the classical economists argued, if the lower orders do not get out of hand and seek to defend their interests by collective action. There are still libertarian conservatives gravity.

who

believe that legislating a

working conditions

is

minimum wage

or decent

not only folly but also sacrilege.

Today, as the global economy congeals, the corporados,

having

fled their industrial

homelands, are once again

championing the iron laws of the marketplace, this time in Third World economies, where they seek to outlaw unions, exploit the cheap labour of children and convicts, and elude environmental restrictions. The most distinctive element in this thickening authoritarian ethos is the growing influence of evangelical Christianity.

The

evangelicals see themselves as God’s

troops pitted against Islamic infidels in a holy war. But in fact they are the mirror

image of Muslim extremists

like

power to impose their reading they must settle for beating their

the Taliban. Lacking the

of God’s will by force,

“pagan” opposition into submission But their program

at the voting booth.

no less patriarchal and theocratic than any Wahabi imam. They would base our laws on the Bible; they would have the United States declared a Christian nation; they would have the schools teach the literal truth of scripture and the unique validity of the Christian revelation; they would have families founded on paternal supremacy; they would legislate “normal” is

sexual behaviour; they

would outlaw abortion, pre-mari-

and extra-marital sex, all forms of sexual deviancy, profanity, and pornography both hard-core and softtal

core.

when

Reagan administration was ushering in the great conservative backlash, Margaret Atwood wrote a prescient piece of fiction called The Handmaid's In 1986,

the

241

WORLD, BEWARE! The novel envisions what would result if religious fundamentalists won the culture war they insist on wagTale.

She pictures a God-fearing dystopia run by fire-and-

ing.

brimstone preachers and male-chauvinist husbands. As

may once have

exaggerated as this

seemed,

it

has become

the social ideal of America’s biblical people, a goal

no

now dare to question for fear of voters. And the evangelicals are not

right-wing politician will

offending evangelical

alone in seeking to erase the separation of church and

An

state.

increasingly politicized

Catholic church has

them in the struggle against gay marriage, aborand women’s rights. For many Catholic priests and

joined tion,

bishops, unquestioning submission plays a key role in social ethics: strict obedience to age-old

up

religious superiors Finally,

who

dogmas and

to

to the pope.

we have

the neo-conservative intelligentsia

provide the ideological rationale for triumphalist

policy.

One cannot

object to the intellectual elaboration

that neo-conservatives offer for their purposes. But, as

we have

seen, the

troubling

conservative brains trust has

characteristics.

intellectuals

values, as

new

For

some

one thing, conservative

pride themselves on defending “absolute”

opposed to the wishy-washy,

nihilistic “rela-

tivism” supposedly preferred by liberals. “Relativism,”

according to Allan Bloom, “has extinguished the real

motive of education, the search for the good

life.”

In

practice, the conservative hostility to cultural relativism

means

resisting

any educational

initiative that challenges

supremacy of the Great Books - all written by white, European males. Include Sylvia Plath or James Baldwin in the curriculum and you insult Aristotle and

the absolute

Cicero.

What we have

here

social forces at just the

is

a convergence of authoritarian

moment when 242

the U.S. military

is

The Devolution of American capable of throwing

its

weight around

D emocracy world

in the

like

no ruling power since the days of ancient Rome. Clearly, a lot of Americans are looking for a very macho Big Daddy to teach them right from wrong. The result is an emerging

on dominance-and-submission relationships. Good soldiers obey their commander in chief. Good employees obey their boss. Good Christians obey scripture. Good wives obey their husbands. Good children obey their parents. Good neo-conservative thinkers defer to whatever their mentors have taught them are absolute values. political culture

Where

is

this

based at every

level

craving for structure and certainty

coming from? Authoritarianism, as the Frankfurt School understood the term, was largely a response to the anxi-

Weimar Republic. But the United only superpower that we are apt to see

eties that bedevilled the

the

States,

between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the China,

is

tress. Is

it

possible that the psychological roots of author-

Was Franz Kafka

we have

so far realized?

closer to the truth in believing that

childlike submission to a punishing father

is

the

normal

condition?

In their effort to recast themselves as the ulists,

of

hardly in such an advanced state of social dis-

itarianism reach far deeper than

human

rise

the

champions of blue-collar and

rural America,

conservatives often chide liberals for being labic intellectuals

and the

who

new pop-

elitists,

polysyl-

supposedly dominate the media

universities but are woefully out of touch with

nascar and gun-club America. There

is

some

truth to the

do tend to favour solving problems through big government programs run by experts. The result can be the sort of social engineering that leads to an intrusive and domineering “nanny state. ” For example, liberals tend to favour the sort of health and safety charge.

Tiberals

-

243

WORLD, BEWARE! regulations

- campaigns

mandatory use of

against

second-hand

seat belts for drivers

smoke,

and helmets

for

example - that rugged individuals abhor. But there is a larger political framework that

motorcyclists,

for

should be taken into account. In actual day-to-day politics,

liberals

have worked with labour unions, women’s

rights organizations, the civil rights

movement, environ-

and numerous citizens’ groups that are anything but docile. The same conservatives who accuse liberal Democrats of being elitist have gone on to mock them for being unable to discipline their rank and file. mentalists,

And

that has sometimes been the case, especially during

the primary season is

and

at presidential conventions.

There

nothing in the liberal political world that shares the top-

down

regimentation of the corporate hierarchy or the

authoritarian control of evangelical ministers over their

congregations.

Kant once defined the Enlightenment as mankind’s coming of age. He was surely right in believing that the fall of the ancien regime imposed an adult sense of responsibility on the common man. But what if the era of democratic revolution has been an aberrant and ephemeral stage

in

human

history?

What

if

that stage

is

coming to an end in the country that is bound to have the most influence over the future? That may be the real victory of the jihadists even

if

the United States suc-

ceeds in stamping them out of existence. They have

whetted an underlying appetite for authority and

recti-

tude that the turbulent modern world has never been able to gratify.

244

EIGHT America’s Global Constituency

“It is

time to stop pretending that Europeans and Ameri-

common

view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world. On major strategic and international questions today, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus: they agree on little and understand one another less and less. And this state of affairs is not transitory - the product of one American election or one catastrophic event. The reasons for the transatlantic divide are deep, long in development, and cans share a

.

likely to endure.

When

it

.

comes

.

to setting national priori-

determining threats, defining challenges, and fash-

ties,

ioning and implementing foreign and defence policies, the United States

and Europe have parted ways.” Robert Kagan, “Power and Weakness,” Policy

“The president

said he didn’t

ing terms or conditions for

some left.

Review

We

June/July,

2003

want other countries dictatthe war on terrorism. ‘At

point,’ the president said, ‘we

That’s okay with me.

,

may

be the only ones

are America.’

George W. Bush, quoted

”

Bob Woodward, Bush at War 2003

in

,

WORLD, BEWARE!

TRIUMPHALISM UNLIMITED

F

rom the time the occupation down

in Iraq bogged

more and more voices

in guerrilla warfare,

media and the Congress have raised reservations about the long-term sustainability of the American imperium. Given the calculated patriotic pretensions that have been laid on so thickly over this vicious and cynical policy, the only surprise is that there are any dissenting voices left to be heard in the land. The doubts that critics in the

of the imperium raise are valid - but often they do not go

deep enough. Their main point even that of a superpower, has

is

that

its limits.

much

that brute force can do. But

lie? I

suspect

we

are

all

military policy,

There

is

only so

where do those

limits

nowhere near discovering how

new

the triumphalists are prepared to go in building their

world If

far

order.

the foreign policy of the United States were

pragmatic and rational,

if it

were based on

a defensible

estimate of the requirements of national security,

we

might have expected to see no commitment of U.S. troops beyond the international effort undertaken in Afghanistan, a rugged, loosely governed tribal area being exploited by al-Qaeda as a base of operations. In the Taliban al-Qaeda had found a government eager to shield its activities. Transforming Afghanistan into a unified,

prosperous,

(very likely the

work

credible line of policy

reasonably

democratic country

many years) could have been a in the wake of September 11 and

of

a clear benefit to the international

community.

But that was exactly what did not happen. For the triumphalists,

who

apparently see

much

trouble and

little

value in the country, Afghanistan turned into a painful distraction. Afghanistan

would be nearly impossible

246

to

America's Global Constituency occupy and

few economic or strategic assets except, perhaps, opium, which would be a risky business. Instead, the United States cut back sharply on its contribution to the United Nations effort to rebuild Afghanistan and turned its attention to Iraq. Later, especially as the

offers

occupation of Iraq became a quagmire, the

overcommitment became a reality - though I suspect not from the triumphalists’ viewpoint. They are getting exactly the result they want. For remember: the triumphalists are driven by ideology, and ideology is the pursuit of the absolute. It respects no limits. That is both its strength and weakness. possibility of

Here, for example,

is

how

may

triumphalists

deal with the obstacles that are

most

seek to

likely to

block their

power overextended?

In a sense,

advance. 1.

yes,

Is

and

U.S. military

for all their zeal the triumphalists

pace themselves carefully. They

may

may have

to

even have to pause

and make readjustments. At any given moment, U.S. forces may be spread too thin. For example, would the United States have the human resources to open up another front in the war on terrorism if that in their designs

became necessary within the next few years? Very likely not. The goals of the triumphalists may already have been temporarily thwarted

in that respect. Until the resis-

tance in Afghanistan and Iraq took hold, they

may have

had plans to invade Syria, Iran, or North Korea. The Defense Department has issued threats of that kind. Through 2002 there were rumours in the press that if student protestors in Iran reached the point of violent rebellion, U.S. forces tate

might be sent

in

from Iraq to

facili-

regime change.

These ambitions have clearly been placed on hold.

At the same time, during and

after the

247

2004

election year,

WORLD, BEWARE! Washington signalled more friendly and peaceful intentions, a greater willingness to exert its influence through diplomacy and the United Nations. We are apt to see strategic fluctuations of this kind on the part of the triumphalists, intervals

when

vention or pre-emption

is

the threat of military inter-

played

down and

co-operation become prominent. That

is

gestures of

especially likely

happen at election time. Bear in mind, the American imperium is in its early days; for the American public it still represents an unfamiliar role. The triumphalists are testing and probing as they seek the most effective way of winning public approval. If existing U.S. forces prove unable to move on to other operations from Iraq and Afghanistan, the triumphalists may have to find ways of expanding the nation’s military power. The country will have to have more men and women under arms, more advanced bases, more firepower, more highly trained special forces. It to

takes time to achieve those goals.

It

also takes time to lay

propaganda groundwork required by pre-emptive action. The public has to be made fearful enough, and

the

acquiescent enough.

ahead

In the years

rhythm develop quiescence tion,

when

I

believe that

we

will see a certain

in triumphalist geopolitics:

there

is

periods of

talk of international collabora-

followed by periods of superheated belligerence,

supposedly

in

response to an elevated security

alert.

Americans are already being trained to respond to

this

rhythm. Announcements go out by the week from the

Department of Homeland Security that “chatter” has been picked up from al-Qaeda sources indicating an imminent threat. Accordingly, the president announces that the nation is on yellow, orange, or red alert. Police surveillance is increased; cities and states are required to

248

America's Global Constituency

money

appropriate

on more

lines lay

sizes that the

for

more

security procedures; the air-

war on

terror continues right

The danger never diminishes. Once such a psychology of cated,

all

the triumphalists will

and risk is inculever need do to demand a fear

army and more firepower is incident: an embassy bombed, an larger

terrorist

ring

emphahere at home.

restrictions. All of this activity

to wait for a credible airliner shot

uncovered within our

down,

borders.

a

Mere

rumours of hostile intentions by a nation said to have weapons of mass destruction may be enough to begin moving troops and ordering air strikes. It worked in Iraq, why not elsewhere? North Korea, after all, has openly advertised its nuclear arsenal. That probably places the Koreans somewhere near the top of the list of triumphalist

targets.

At any given moment the military force that

the United States can exert will have

once the American public

is

its

limitations.

But

trained to accept the basic

assumptions of triumphalist policy - that the United States

is

under attack, that we have a right to defend our-

by pre-emption, that our goal is to bring democracy and free markets to the world - no limit will be perselves

manent. All that need be done of events and act official face

on

fast.

An

television, a

is

to increase the pressure

urgent news bulletin, a grim

dramatic revelation based on

supposedly reliable information - that

is

all it

will take.

The media will applaud the president for taking immediate and decisive action. The president may even be a Democrat. No matter. In the future no president of any party can dare to be

W. Bush was 2.

who

Can

less

in his first

rapidly responsive than George

term of

office.

the United States afford

its

imperium? Those

believe that the United States cannot afford

its

pre-

emptive foreign policy are both right and wrong. The

249

WORLD, BEWARE! country cannot continue to spend

money on

military

adventures on the scale undertaken by the Bush adminis-

- unless the American people agree to sacrifice every domestic priority to the war on terrorism. But once tration

the public crosses a certain line in that willingness to sacrifice,

be possible to multiply the costs of the

will

it

imperium many times is

a very rich country.

over.

The

For indeed the United States

Afghanistan have so far been

War II. Nor are losses on we take World War II as

and than the cost of World

cost of the wars in Iraq less

the battlefield nearly as great.

the criterion of all-out war, the

United States can afford a very great deal more; and

may come

If

to that. Indeed, that

is

exactly

what

the

it

tri-

umphalists want. Recall that triumphalism tic

agenda

of

America’s

is

a reflection of the

domes-

The

hyperconservatives.

tri-

umphalists are out to destroy every remnant of the welfare state

and

to root out all social programs.

They have

launched a scorched-earth campaign against liberalism;

purpose

is

to reduce the public sector to a bare

Their primary deficit,

From

if

sible to

fiscal train

that

campaign

is

budgetary

if

deficits

climb so high that they

wreck, good! That will

make

it

pos-

argue that liberal social policies are obstructing defence.

national

Medicare

war on

in

minimum.

necessary pushed to the point of bankruptcy.

their viewpoint,

produce a the

weapon

its

is

Supporting

unpatriotic.

Social

They must be

and

Security

sacrificed to the

terror.

Day by day we can

see this subliminal line of policy

being tested in the United States. Throughout 2002,

critics

accused George W. Bush of hiding the true cost of the war in Iraq. Finally, in

lenge.

He

2003, Bush boldly answered that chal-

asked the Congress to appropriate $87 billion

for the war.

It

was

a staggering request,

250

coming

as

it

did

America's Global Constituency on top of tens of billions already spent. But the money was almost unanimously approved by the Congress. There was no- significant dissent in the Congress or in the public opinion polls. Even Democrats who were critical of the

war agreed

that the country could not leave U.S.

When more

troops without funds.

supplementary appro-

war they were granted without delay. As

priations were called for, pushing the cost of the

towards $300

billion,

-

for rebuilding Iraq

how

could America leave that task

incomplete?

The request by Bush came on the heels of huge tax cuts, which had already depleted the treasury, and during a serious recession. levels of

At the time funds were needed

government

public health.

No

at all

for schools, police, infrastructure,

matter. Both the tax cuts

and the war

appropriations were approved. The following year, the

announced that, in view of the deficit, several social programs would have to be cut back or eliminated, and the Congress agreed. If this is what the American people believe they can afford in hard economic times, think what they will be willing to spend when the economy is booming. The years ahead will see similar budgetary manoeuvres. And doubtless there will be fiscal train wrecks by president

regretfully

the score as one social

program

after

another

is

buried

under an avalanche of public debt. By 2004 even archconservative organizations, such as the American Conservative

Union and

the

Heritage

Foundation, were

howling with displeasure at the runaway spending of the Bush administration. Republicans in Congress banded together to petition the White deficit.

House

to control

the

Perhaps they were being disingenuous for the

sake of their public image. Surely they know that crushing deficits are exactly what the triumphalists want.

251

WORLD, BEWARE! They

are conditioning the

American people

like Pavlov’s

dogs to learn the right response: everything for the war on terrorism, nothing for domestic programs. The conbeing carried out by the best market and advertising expertise that money can buy - the same ditioning

is

expertise that effort

is

is

used for political campaigning.

successful, then step

If

the

by step the public will

agree that social programs should be abandoned (or better still privatized) so that the government can use all of its

resources for priority 3.

number

one.

Will the morale of U.S. troops remain high enough

to sustain multiple

of discontent

war

among

efforts?

There have been reports

high, but unspecified level of suicide.

On

network news report allowed several their

minds.

One

soldier even

Secretary of Defense

- including

the troops in Iraq

made

a

one occasion a

soldiers to speak

nasty remarks about

Rumsfeld. Afterwards the army

took sanctions against those

soldiers,

extending their

tour of duty. Soldiers called in from the

army

reserve

have been especially outspoken about the length of time they are expected to serve. The two hundred thousand

men and women

in the reserves are

the United States has ever

come

now

the closest that

to having a citizen army.

modest stipend for taking basic training one weekend each month. Few of these volunteers expected that they would ever see combat. Now, however, as part of the war on terror, some sixty-five thousand reservists are on active duty, and some of them have been called upon repeatedly for lengthy tours of up to a

They

receive a

year - and then

many

are called back for a second tour

and the national guard are functioning as the equivalent of conscripted troops. They have every good reason for seeing this as a raw deal, for why should they shoulder the full weight of a war that is of duty.

The

reserves

252

America’s Global Constituency supposedly defending the nation? Their service requires them to give up their jobs, with the result that some famof reserve troops face the real prospect of slipping

ilies

News

into poverty. stories in

reports have featured human-interest

which the

families of reserve troops express

Meanwhile, the government is seeking new ways of excusing the well-to-do from taxes and is negotiating ever more lucrative contracts with its their sense of injustice.

business cronies. If

these tendencies continue, they will surely erode

war effort and civilian morale back home - especially when the television news focuses closely, as it frequently the

does,

on the

grief suffered

by the families of fallen and

wounded troops. But there is a solution: the privatization of our modern military, with more and more of the training, fighting,

and dying being done by contract forces

hired by military services corporations that operate with

minimal congressional oversight and out of public view. These companies are under no obligation to hire Amerithey recruit their soldiers of fortune on a world-

cans.

If

wide

basis, as the

generations,

French Foreign Legion has done for

would anybody

in the

United States

know

care that the nation’s wars were being outsourced?

or

Who Who

would care about the morale of mere mercenaries? would keep track of the casualties? “The Iraqi dream” - that is what the slum dwellers of San Salvador call military service for private American contractors. as security

They

up by the thousands to take jobs Iraq. Many are former soldiers and

line

guards in

police trained by the United States during the civil

that raged in El Salvador for twelve years

down

war

to 1992.

San Salvadorans can earn as much as $3,600 per month from private firms, such as Triple Canopy, for guarding oil

fields,

business offices, and diplomatic installations.

253

WORLD, BEWARE! This

an extravagant wage by the standards of

is

their

country and far more than U.S. troops are paid. Unless

Congress protests, ists

would

refrain

other Third all,

the cost

Even

it is

why

difficult to see

from extending such

the triumphal-

a poverty draft to

World countries. Expensive, yes. But after of the war goes on the national credit card.

if

the

U.S.

military

remains predominantly

American, boosting morale simply means that the Pentagon must find more forces so that

more

frequently. All

it

takes to

it

can rotate troops

expand the

size of the

money, and, as we have seen, the Congress and the public seem quite willing to pay the price. Indeed, a major new recruitment effort might solve a

military

is

serious social problem.

The United

the global economy, not only by

States

way

is

losing jobs to

of “offshoring” but

also because of the increased productivity of

modern

technology. Even in a time of high productivity and

growing earnings, secure, well-paid jobs are vanishing. They could be replaced by jobs in health care and education, but that risks raising taxes

and expanding the pub-

sector - exactly

what conservative Republicans stand against. Job erosion has not yet become explosive in the United States, but it is real and frequently mentioned in the news. An expanded military is one obvious solution to this problem - especially for younger workers. Volunlic

teering for military service for thousands of

is

already a prominent choice

young Americans

for

of military service provide their only college education.

that the

whom

hope

a

few years

for affording a

The triumphalists may even

imperium provides exactly the

the next generation.

It

believe

right future for

teaches discipline, patriotism, and

a proper respect for superiors. 4.

Will the American public

limit to the patience of the

tire

of war? There

American people when

254

it

is

a

comes

America’s Global Constituency The wars

Korea (1950 to 1952) and Vietnam (1950s to 1975) lasted too long and were finally rejected. These were wars that after a time seemed unwinnable and to war.

in

produced a great number of casualties - over fifty thousand killed in the case of Vietnam. Americans prefer wars

and

that are short, bloodless,

won, as perhaps all worldwide imperium that

easily

people do. Expecting to build a

never requires bloodshed would be the height of delusionary thinking. Yet there are several ways in which the

tri-

umphalists can try to avoid the sort of debacles that the

United States experienced

the

in

Korea and Vietnam.

To begin with they can find ways of holding down casualties - and boasting about it. That is being done

assiduously in Iraq. There have been complaints about the availability of

body armour, but even

so, U.S. soldiers in

the Gulf are the best-protected fighting force in history.

Their encampments are practically impregnable by any

power and long-range artillery. The flak jackets that U.S. forces wear are ingeniously designed to be nearly bulletproof. The wounded now receive immediate battlefield care, or they are whisked away by air to foe without air

hospitals throughout the immediate region.

Without such

defences and rapid care the casualty levels in Iraq would

be

many

times higher.

It is

getting harder to injure Ameri-

can soldiers - a small mercy

in the history of warfare.

Beyond these measures, there is a great deal that can be done by clever public relations and deception. Reporting losses can be slow and obscure. In Iraq, soldiers who do not

die

at

once of their wounds are almost never

accounted for after they are removed from the

Once

field.

they are reported as “wounded,” they are not mentioned again.

If

they die

killed

in

battle.

States, the

later,

they are not counted

When body

news media

among

those

bags arrive in the United

are not permitted to film them.

2-55

WORLD, BEWARE! on the war the government can find ways of sounding upbeat and positive. During Gulf War I, the first George Bush made a point of controlling images of gore and suffering. The press was not permitBesides, in reporting

show

ted to

pictures of either the military or the civilian

Dead

victims of the war.

Iraqi

soldiers

were quickly

ploughed into mass graves and forgotten. Short of a total collapse before the enemy - an unlikely prospect for the wars that the United States will fight in the future - who is

to say

whether the war

going well or not? In Iraq the

is

public hears constantly of the constructive things that

American forces are doing. Once again, the damage done to civilians is kept off camera. Public figures never sound than exuberant about the progress of the occupation. Indeed, the occupation is not referred to as an “occupaless

nor

tion,”

is

the guerrilla

The insurgents

war.”

war

referred to as a “guerrilla

are always characterized as a

fraction of the population, an embittered

and

minor

fanatical

collection of “dead-enders.” 5.

Can

the triumphalists be defeated at the polls?

There is one last reason - and this the sleaziest reason of all - why the triumphalists may prove difficult to dislodge from power, even

if

their policies

run into serious

The Republican party is now in the hands of campaign managers who may have discovered a fooltrouble.

proof formula for winning public opinion polls

all

future elections, even

show widespread

if

discontent and dis-

approval of any future Republican administration. This

formula begins by recognizing that, between elections, popularity counts for nothing. On the other hand, winning

when

the election rolls around licenses a free

with federal power. After

all,

of the people? It

works

like this:

256

who

hand

can question the will

America' s Global Constituency •

Going

any election to come, the triumphalists know they have an unbreakable grip on the Southern and Mountain states, which can amount to nearly two into

hundred need do

Republican candidate throw these voters some red meat - a good

electoral votes. All the is

gay or feminist-bashing issue - and he or she

will lock

up nearly enough electoral votes to win. That will leave the party only a few key districts in a few swing states to contest.

come

•

For those key

•

up with an explosive last-minute issue like Willy Horton or Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and use its clear advantage in campaign contributions to saturate media markets with sensational revelations. The party might also persuade its loyal contributors to

districts, all the

party need do

is

help fund a Nader-type rival for left-liberal votes.

The

wing has nothing to fear along those lines, but the Democrats are always vulnerable to significant right

electoral defection. •

Wherever necessary, black voters should be turned

away

at the polls,

if

not denied the right to vote alto-

gether through the felony-disenfranchisement voting

program. Most of these •

It

is

Democratic votes.

not necessary to win a decisive victory by these

means.

rowly the

will be

If

the vote can be

can be

lost election

Supreme Court,

made

close enough, a nar-

litigated all the

a la Florida in

Republican majority of

2000.

A

on the court

five

count for more than a majority of millions •

Finally,

if

none of

this

do.

incident, real,

A bomb

disaster,

a

week before

rumored, or wholly

attack in a major

threat

from

al

2 57

city,

Qaeda

to

dependable will

always

at the polls.

seems to be working

resort to a terrorist scare one

Any

way up

reliably,

the election.

fictitious, will

a suspicious airline .

.

.

Assuming the

WORLD, BEWARE! White House

is

in

Republican hands

at the time, the

him time of national emergency. By

president can then appeal to voters to rally around

or his successor in a

the time the dust clears, the votes will have been cast

and

it

put the election behind

will be time to

Admittedly,

I

am

us.

exaggerating the power and the

no difficulty in imagining all the tactics I mention here coming into play. Remember, these are people who were prepared to take the nation into war on the basis of lies they knew would not hold up under the least scrutiny. And what then - after the lies have been found out? Provided America’s wars in the Middle East and elsewhere are kept at a certain low level of public visibility, and as long as people have enough diversions to occupy their attenresources of the triumphalists, though

I

find

tion, the overall intentions of the triumphalists will con-

tinue unimpeded. In the end, then, there are

umphalist policies will

fall

few ways

of their

own

in

which

weight.

tri-

And

from the American public when it comes to changing those policies. There may be millions who speak out against pre-emptive wars and

there

is little

that one can expect

colonial occupation, but millions critics,

with some of them -

by ideological fevers every

more

will outvote the

like the evangelicals

bit as

- driven

powerful as the motives

behind the triumphalists. Theirs will always seem the patriotic option.

And

as the re-energized military-indus-

complex takes shape, the war on terror will become as important a source of profits and jobs as it was in the days of the Cold War.

trial

If

triumphalism

is

to be defeated, the effort will need

support from outside the United States. America must

have an

effective global constituency.

258

America's Global Constituency

SOFT SPOTS The triumphalists

are a formidable force, but they are not

movements, they have their weaknesses, points at which the coalition may

invincible. Like all political

internal

soon reveal cracks. Liberals need to take advantage of these chinks in the right wing’s armour. For example, the

between the triumphalists

relationship

and remaining

Republican moderates shows an increasing

The

strain.

Republican leadership has done a good job of muzzling

moderates and keeping them

moves

and further

further

find themselves

will

may

may

to the right, moderates

odds with the traditions of the

fiscal

party.

conservatives agree to imperialist

adventures and sky-high

wars and

in the fold, but as the party

unable to continue supporting extreme

policies that are at

Fiow long

its

deficits?

Similarly the

culture

agenda so dear to evangelical militants drive moderates from the party - especially if extreme social

right wingers continue to run candidates against them. is

It

not unthinkable that some centrist Republicans will turn

independent, or even throw in with the Democrats. American politics

There

is

is

long overdue for such a realignment.

also the possibility that corporados will at

some point begin

to see their alliance with evangelical

Christians as a double-edged sword.

By anybody’s

stan-

dards, corporate America’s egregiously materialistic values are sharply at odds with Christian virtues, ceos are

cosmopolitan, often sophisticated, globe-trotting, highliving

types;

they are the

world. They eat well, drink well, in the lap of luxury.

attend

They

modern and make their homes

aristocracy

of the

are patrons of the arts

swanky openings. These

are not people

who

and see

profanity or obscenity or homosexuality or abortion as significant issues, except

perhaps as ways of tying up

259

WORLD, BEWARE! energy.

liberal

many

Indeed,

have been

corporations

quick to adapt to domestic partnership arrangements

among

employees. Decisions like that have already

their

led evangelical pressure

groups to undertake boycotts

against major corporations like ibm, Microsoft,

At times the anger of the religious right

ney.

and unpredictably, zany, exactly the

and Disis

totally,

sort of public rela-

tions nightmare that the corporados hate.

Not long

ago,

there were evangelical churches that believed that the

corporate logo used by Proctor and

Gamble

for over a

- was a Satanic sign. Other watchful fundamentalists have targeted Sesame Street's purple dinosaur Barney as a surrogate for the great beast century - a

himself.

moon and

Still

stars

others believe the Teletubbies are surrepti-

homosexuals. Corporate America has lumbered

tious

with an embarrassingly quirky political

itself

Look

ally.

below the surface of its public relations, and the corporate world has a great deal to answer for. Those who own the banks and brokerage houses of the nation are deeply invested in very sleazy forms of usury; those

just

who own

the media are similarly invested in both

and hard-core pornography. Most of the rest are committed to business practices that break every ethical rule in the Bible. Evangelicals tend to blame the moral soft-core

degeneration they see on their television screens as the fault of liberals.

and

But the smut they see

in

commercials

and

is

produced by

in the content of film

television

the very corporations that bankroll the Republican Party.

Corporate America knows that sex tians,

ues,

sells.

with their concern for clean living

Devout Chrisand family val-

have already served notice that they will not stand

for anything that deviates

from G-rated

culture; indeed,

they probably prefer broadcasting that transmits sermons

and homilies around the clock.

260

America's Global Constituency

What would happen

some point, evangelical draw a bead on the manners, morals, of the corporate rich, reminding them

watchdogs were to and business ethics

how much

about

easier

it is

the eye of a needle’s than

What

heaven?

who

camel to pass through

for a

it

for

is

any of them to enter

born-again Christians, especially those

if

believe the

at

if,

End

of

Days

is

hand, demanded that

at

America’s billionaires start living godly This

may seem

unthinkable, but

lives?

it is

worth remem-

bering that in times past the most radically egalitarian social

movements

in

Western history were driven by

just

such religious convictions. The prophets of Israel were, after

all,

the original voices of social justice, defending

the rights of the

widow and

castigating the rich.

the orphan and constantly

Long before

Adam

ideology, the biblical image of

simple, God-fearing piety

implications - as

was

modern

the advent of

and Eve

living in

was fraught with revolutionary

the idea that the Christian gospel

preached to the meek and poor. In the

Mid-

was

first

dle

Ages peasant revolts hoisted banners that asked,

“When Adam gentleman?” great wealth

late

who was then the Fundamentalist ministers who now enjoy and status may have forgotten it, but many delved and Eve span,

evangelical Christian congregations began their practice

among

the

downtrodden and

the persecuted.

At

least a

few evangelical groups have translated those beginnings

programs of radical social change, arguing that the rich and powerful fail to respect “biblical values.” Jim Wallis’s Washington-based Sojourners is one example. into

Since the 1970s Sojourners has been seeking to heed “the Biblical call to integrate spiritual renewal tice.” If the influence of

grow,

it

groups

like this

would not be good news

They might

find

themselves

261

and

social jus-

should begin to

for the corporados.

pressed

to

present

their

WORLD, BEWARE! Christian credentials.

Can we imagine

the directors of the

Fortune 500 hosting prayer breakfasts, holding Bible classes, or

washing one another’s

imagine them agreeing to give

feet?

all

Worse

still,

can

we

they have to the poor

and follow Jesus? Politically speaking, evangelicals are mavericks.

people start by asking,

no

“What would

When

Jesus do?” there

is

where they might end up. Yes, the biblical peocan be used to rag liberals on late-term abortion and

telling

ple

X-rated movies, marvellously useful distractions for the conservative agenda. But reports

that

leading

what

one to make of recent

is

evangelical

involved with “creation care”?

A

figures

have

become

February 2005 story in

The Washington Post by Blaine Harden reports that pollsters find a growing concern among born-again Christians for the environment, which they see as “God’s body.” Accordingly, Rev. Ted Haggard has declared that “the environment

is

a values issue.”

that the environmental cause should not be ists,

is

who

Haggard,

left

believes

to secular-

president of the thirty-million-member National

Association of Evangelicals. “There are,” he says, “signifi-

cant and compelling theological reasons

why

[the environ-

ment] should be a banner issue for the Christian right.”

His “Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility” (available

on the World Wide Web) represents the

first

time that an

evangelical leader has identified environmental protection

and insisted that it is the role of business and the government to safeguard a sustainable

as every Christian’s duty

environment. In league with the highly influential James

Dobson

of Focus on the Family,

stand on global the

warming

Haggard

is

encouraging a

that clashes with the policies of

Bush administration.

Newly green

evangelicals

do not primarily pay

attention to the scientific evidence; they see a

262

more

America's Global Constituency abstemious,

One group,

godly.

way

environmentally friendly

of

life

as

the Evangelical Environmental Net-

work, has launched an

initiative against gas-guzzling cars

“What Would Jesus Drive?” If sentiments like harden into a more pious and militant form of envi-

that asks, this

ronmentalism, will business leaders approve? If it is difficult

to believe that the link

porate America and the evangelicals

even greater weakness exists

in

is

all

between corthat solid, an

the coalition that has

sprung up among fundamentalists and Catholics. Evangelical Protestants are

not alone in seeking to return the

United States to more godly ways. Since the pontificate of

Church has been reverting to an ever more ascetic and authoritarian orthodoxy, a trend that will surely be accelerated under Pope Benedict. Indeed, the Catholics are even more extreme in their puritanism. Not only do they reject homosexuality and

John-Paul

II,

the Catholic

abortion, but they also regard contraception, masturbation,

and any sexual

activity that goes

tected genital stimulation as mortal sins.

beyond unpro-

A

rising genera-

tion of militant priests (“John-Paul’s Warriors,” as they call

themselves) believes that being more-repressive-than-

thou will give them an edge ful

in the struggle to

win youth-

converts from the evangelicals. Competitive proselyfaiths creates

an underlying division

who would

erase the separation of

tizing

between the

in the

ranks of those

church and

state. Liberals

should use that division to

concerned - including the most fanatic Catholics and Protestants - of the debt they owe to the secular humanists who safeguard our pluralistic social

remind

order.

all

At

best, that

may encourage some

fundamentalists

to think again before they begin battling to see

whose

Christianity should be written into the Constitution. At a

minimum,

it

may weaken

the uneasy unity that Catholics

263

WORLD, BEWARE! and evangelicals have achieved against abortion and gay rights. These are not,

two groups

there

right hostility.

shared campaign

Between the long history of suspicion and out-

after all, natural allies.

is

On

in their

a

three occasions in the twentieth cen-

Democratic Party was willing to do what Republicans will never do: nominate a Catholic for presithe

tury,

When John

Kennedy ran for the presidency in 1960 (and A1 Smith before him in 1928), the staunchest resistance to having a Catholic in the White House arose dent.

in

F.

conservative Protestant churches. In the eyes of funda-

mentalists, the

Pope

is

the Great Beast, the

Babylon. For that matter, evangelical bigotry

Whore of may have

had more to do with John Kerry’s defeat in 2004 than anybody wants to admit. Even when Protestant and Catholic pro-lifers co-operate on the issue of abortion, underlying divisions may at some point come to the surface. The Catholic hierarchy sees banning abortion and same-sex marriage as part of a larger campaign against divorce, contraception, and even masturbation. Do the evangelicals who picket Planned Parenthood clinics with Catholics share those goals? If evangelicals were challenged to declare their position on contraception, would Catholics still team up with them? Perhaps it is time for liberals to raise those questions. Wedge politics someprovides

times

the

best

way

of revealing

important

truths.

That same kind of wedge might be driven between

and neo-conservative intellectuals. After all, neo-conservatives - especially the followers of Teo Strauss evangelicals

- are hardly a pious bunch. They have been able to an

alliance with the religious right only

their

own

must be

strike

by soft-pedalling

arrogant secularism. But what intellectual hell

for triumphalist policy-makers to

264

know

it

that their

America's Global Constituency grand design tic

fanatics

must

in the

who

Middle East

are expecting the

be like for them to

it

is

sit

in

Second Coming. What

on strategy meetings with

who

evangelical power-brokers

beholden to apocalyp-

expect the president to

hold prayer breakfasts and want to discuss what Jesus would do about the national debt? How do they keep a dealing

face

straight

with

a

political

following

that

was created in six days and that sun stand still upon Gibeon? Do they

believes the universe

Joshua made the

want

really

nation?

to see the United States declared a Christian

Would

neo-conservative think-tanks and publica-

tions be willing to take the creationist side against Dar-

Commandments

winian biology? Or identify the Ten the

word

who

of

God? Or

as

enlighten us as to whether those

depart this world at the time of the Rapture will

leave their

wade

underwear behind? Would they be willing to

into the slough of biblical literalism in order to stay

church-friendly?

The triumphahsts have one more chink in their armour - and it is a big one. As the sworn enemies of big government, they are out to bury the nation’s two largest welfare-state

programs - Social Security and Medicare.

But these programs are the safety net of the nation’s older population. As baby boomers go into retirement, they will

most dependable voting bloc in the country. Once boomers awaken to recognize that their hippie days are long behind them and swell the ranks of senior voters, already the

that they have

be

all

become America’s older population,

but impossible to scale back,

entitlements.

Which

is

precisely

let

why

it

will

alone eliminate

neo-conservatives

have been working so feverishly to undermine these programs. They want to reform senior entitlements out of existence before the

dow

boomers

of opportunity closes.

get to

It is

265

them and

their

win-

a risky strategy that has

WORLD, BEWARE! The various cock-eyed Republicans have come up with for entitle-

already begun to reveal

“reforms” that

its

flaws.

ments are transparently deceptive, poorly veiled attempts to privatize the programs by turning them into brokered accounts.

scheme

Worse

still,

George W. Bush’s prescription-drug

clearly subordinated the

interests of the big

public interest to the

pharmaceutical companies that con-

and them, seniors have a canny

tribute to Republican candidates. Because health care

retirement income matter to

eye for such skulduggery; they are not the doddering

them to be. making political

imbeciles that the Bush administration takes

most persuasive factor in decisions, and nobody feels the necessity of having a decent retirement and good medical care more than the country’s seniors - unless it is their children, who would

Necessity

is

the

have to pay their parents’

bills if

entitlements were abol-

ished.

At some point even the most dedicated

voters

now

safely lodged in the

Republican camp will not

be willing to vote their entitlements tion of having a Congress

and

single-issue

away

for the satisfac-

a president

who

will

bash

gays and feminists.

Given

move

its

widespread, current appeal, the smartest

the Republican Party could

make would

be to

embrace Social Security and Medicare honestly and go to work shoring up their funding and even expanding their benefits.

Other

Republican

Nixon, Reagan - have done

presidents

-

Eisenhower,

By siding with the longevity revolution that is shifting voting power into senior hands, the gop might establish a lock on power that would last for the next century. All it would take is the courage to face down a few major campaign contributors - the pharmaceutical houses, the brokerage and just that.

financial services industry, the insurance industry.

But the

Republicans have fallen under the control of extremists,

266

America's Global Constituency and big government programs are exactly what those extremists deplore. Social Security and Medicare are at the heart of the welfare state that they intend to destroy.

Thanks to their ideological rigidity, neo-conservatives are on the wrong side of a massive demographic transition that will

empower

older voters as never before.

have

Neo-conservatives

discovered

that

they

can

more popular support than they lose by siding with resentful white males on issues of race and gender. They

gain

are

now

trying to cast themselves as defenders of the

young against the

old.

But seniors are a different kind of

and permanent social category. Young people get older and eventually become seniors. By the time people reach the age of forty in an insecure job market, they begin to worry about retirement and health care. Moreover, both young and old belong to families whose loyalty and responsibility cross generational boundaries. We have learned from history that nobody suffers more from old-age indigence than public; they are not a fixed

working young who must support their impoverished parents. That is why the conservative effort to inspire the

generational warfare pens, they are

bound

Finally, there

is

is

apt to backfire.

to see their

And

as that hap-

power erode.

the one factor that has proved to be

the nemesis of even the

most

ogy, whether of the

or right: the intrusion of objec-

left

fanatically defended ideol-

That intrusion may take years to register its impact, as it did in the case of the Vietnam war, a war the American public finally saw as unwinnable at any tive reality.

cost

it

was

willing to pay.

Or

it

may make

itself

known

with the suddenness of a natural catastrophe that strikes down all pretense and obfuscation. Hurricane Katrina in

September 2005 was that kind of jarring encounter with the facts of life for the Bush administration. In the wake

267

WORLD, BEWARE! of the disaster, as in the

wake

on the World Trade Center,

of the September it

1 1

attack

was obvious beyond

dis-

pute that only swift, wide-ranging federal action could

cope with such a many-sided calamity. Despite ample advance warning, the task that followed the hurricane

was badly botched by an administration that was committed from the day it was elected to starving public services and skimping on programs like flood control. Undermining the ability of government to protect the health and safety of the nation may have been high on the triumphalist agenda, but with the distress of the Gulf

Coast dramatically displayed on television screens across the world, all talk of the evils of big government was stilled.

Not

a single neoconservative dared to propose a

free-market solution to the dilemma - though, as one

might have expected, private construction firms with strong Washington connections were quick to negotiate lucrative contracts to repair the

damage.

Everything that will be happening for years to come

government in action - city, state, and federal workers doing what we expect them to do: care for the victims, pick up the pieces, find the money, muster the forces. Not that government does all these things well; we simply have no other way to do the

to rebuild the Gulf Coast

is

Even hard-working volunteers, whose indomitable compassion is neither liberal nor conservative, and least of all market-based, must wait for government to orgajob.

nize their efforts.

How

sad that

it

takes tragedies like this to reveal

the shallowness of radical right ideologues

who

have

come close to claiming that we need no government at all. The net result of their influence over the past two decades has been to gut social programs, undermine regulatory agencies, and drive talented people out of public

268

America’s Global Constituency But when the sky

service.

even the

fiercest anti-tax,

look for

shelter. In

starts falling, notice

where

anti-government conservatives

hard times, there

is

no way around

the simple truth: well-prepared and properly

public servants are our

line of

first

empowered defence. Complex

good government and lots of it, i.e., people with imagination and conscience who are well-trained and well-paid for doing all the things our survival demands. industrial societies need

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS There

a

is

bumper

United States, a

around the cautionary statement that is meant to sticker frequently seen

save lives on the road: “Friends don’t

let

friends drink

and drive.” If I had to summarize the lesson that the world needs to teach the United States, it would read something like that. “Friends don’t let friends build empires.” In an ica’s allies

awkward way,

that

have been trying to say

what I think Amerthe wake of Septem-

is

in

They see the United States responding to the very real threat from al-Qaeda by generating a new, worldwide imperium. They have every right to be suspicious ber

1 1.

about the true motives that

lie

That resistance ought

resist

it.

when

the occasion presents

for triumphalist policies

behind that effort and to

to be taken into the streets

itself.

U.S. leaders

who

speak

ought to expect to be greeted

with mass demonstrations of disapproval wherever they travel abroad.

But more

is

needed, because the ideologi-

and religious forces that undergird the American imperium will not be easily deterred. What follows are the three best ways I can imagine

cal

for thoughtful people to exert a

American

politics.

269

healthy influence on

WORLD, BEWARE! Therapy

1.

As

critical as

I

for the dysfunctional family of nations.

have been of the new American imperium,

few well-developed international instruments to which the United States - or any other threatened nation - can turn to find security. CritI

also recognize that there are

ics

of the Bush administration have again and again

demanded

that

Washington work through the United

Nations. But, in truth, the

un

is

a faulty instrument, the

which have

feeble creature of the world’s great powers,

never wanted toils

to be a strong, independent institution.

It

under a cumbersome bureaucracy and often bogs

down

in petty bickering or

had too

when

it

it

little

windy moralizing.

money and human

resources of

It

its

has long

own. And

has been entrusted with a large-scale expensive

- for example, the $100-billion-a-year Iraqi Oil for Food program - the effort has been cloaked in

responsibility

rumours of waste, corruption, and questionable judgment. Little wonder that triumphalsecrecy and attended by

ists

have mocked the

how

un

mercilessly. Ffere, for

example,

Richard Perle and David Frum, two leading

is

tri-

umphalists, sardonically characterize the United Nations

book An End to Evil: Strategies for Victory in the War on Terror: “The un is not an entirely useless organization. ... It creates employment for the less employable in their

relatives of presidents for

life. It

feeling that their views count.

gives smaller countries a

And when

the

chamber

is

empty and touring schoolchildren walk the halls, the extravagant building can for a quiet moment seem to give substance to the age-old dream of a world without war.” When people call upon the United Nations to act, a great deal of wishful thinking is involved. The call is often little more than an idealistic gesture, an expressed need for something other and better than unilateral action. If

we

think of the

un

as the family of nations,

270

we

America’s Global Constituency need to acknowledge that tional.

It

this

family

needs fixing. Triumphalists

may

Nations with open contempt

is

seriously dysfunc-

who

treat the

United

not be right in

reject-

good reason

ing collective security, but they have

impatient with an institution whose structure

is

to be

such a

distorted reflection of the real political world.

With that much

we should

said,

United Nations displayed remarkable

recognize that the initiative in dealing

was commendably persistent in its arms inspection duties and its application of sanctions.

with the Iraq

crisis. It

These were impressive peacekeeping

one of the

mam

initiatives.

Indeed,

reasons that the Bush administration

grew so impatient with the un is that the organization’s weapons inspectors were doing too good a job. They were calling into question Bush’s insistence that Iraq was a threat to American security. As for the sanctions, there is no question but that they were imperfect in their operation.

The

civilian

of their weight.

population of Iraq bore far too

Still,

they set a valuable precedent for

determined intervention Iraq, the

in

the future. In dealing with

United Nations was willing to go further

tailing the sovereignty of a

had

in the past.

much

member

nation than

That might have been

promising precedent for a new era

a

in curit

ever

powerful and

in international policy.

Along the lines laid down by the un, other rogue nations might have been disarmed without military intervention — though possibly not without the threat of the

same kind of intervention that occurred in Afghanistan. Through the un, other peacekeeping initiatives could have been taken short of

full-scale war.

whole of Iraq been declared

Saddam Hussein

Why

couldn’t the

a no-fly zone, thus denying

his air force?

Why

couldn’t the United

Nations have mandated that Iraqi airfields and missilelaunching pads be placed under international supervision 27 I

WORLD, BEWARE! or even dismantled? Airfields and launching pads, as

we

war began, are easily monitored from the air and easily marked out for destruction with minimum collateral damage. If weapons of mass destruc-

discovered once the

were a valid reason for concern, why wouldn’t it have been sufficient to deny Saddam Hussein possession of the delivery systems without which chemical and bio-

tion

logical

weapons

are useless?

would have been enough to satisfy the Bush administration, of course. It was determined to place an intimidating American military presence in the Middle East and an obedient puppet government in Baghdad. And all of this was a mere prelude to even

None

of this

greater designs for domination throughout the region.

Rather than making a major effort to reorganize the United Nations as an effective deterrent to terrorism, the triumphalists prefer to rely upon the unilateral, world-

wide projection of U.S. military power. They should not be given any excuse for doing that, least of all that there is

no other option. Here is an area

constituency could

in

which the United

make

States’ global

a solid contribution to thwart-

ing the triumphalists. In the face of triumphalist unilateralism,

American

liberals

need to

United Nations central to their

know

making the foreign policy is more that

than a symbolic gesture and a naive hope. There could be

no

better

way

of blunting the designs of the triumphalists

than for the major powers to undertake a crash program for reforming and modernizing the United Nations especially the Security Council - so that there can be no excuse for ignoring or defying

have to do

this

in the

it.

Other nations might

teeth of resistance by the

would effort and

many Americans

umphalists, but they

find

to second their

to pressure

272

tri-

willing

Washington

into

America's Global Constituency helping to create efficient international instruments for

keeping the peace. 2. Pulling the financial chain.

realize

it,

people in

many

Although they may not

countries already hold a deci-

form of influence over U.S. affairs, an economic lever that their governments might use at any time. That lever is the power they hold as creditors to the most indebted sive

nation in history.

As

far as the general public

kept secret in the world U.S. economy.

is

is

concerned, the best-

the deteriorating state of the

The only thing

that disguises the nation’s

deep economic trouble (especially from Americans themselves)

is

the universal assumption that the United States

simply must be the richest society there ever was. Americans keep saying so, and people around the world believe

them. To be sure, the wealth

is

there, but

its

increasing

maldistribution and precariousness have been the object of a desperate cover-up for the last twenty years.

many Americans know

that

until

the

mid-1980s the

United States was a creditor nation - and that deficit

was zero?

How

its

trade

Just as everybody everywhere has to

agree to believe that gold

is

valuable, so everybody every-

where has to believe that America is the rock-solid foundation of the global economic order. Doubting the stability

of the U.S.

power and

economy

the equivalent of doubting the

is

sanctity of the

papacy on the brink of the Ref-

ormation. Moreover, admitting the failing state of the U.S.

economy would

call into

question the entire project

of building a global economy, something no government

wants to do with

its

“customer of

last resort.”

economic policy grows more deluGovernments both Democratic and Republican

All the while, U.S.

sionary.

insist that “the

fundamentals” of the economy are strong

and that globalization

will

make them even 273

stronger. But

WORLD, BEWARE! we

money

are borrowing the

to

buy the world’s goods.

Meanwhile, the working-class standard of living declines as jobs pay less and grow more insecure, and as the number of Americans living in poverty (especially children) increases.

The middle

debt ($2

trillion as of

gages,

class saves less

and goes deeper

2004, not including

into

home mort-

or about $19,000 per household), the nation’s

and

infrastructure erodes, public services are cut back,

entrepreneurs

move

their capital to other lands.

For twenty years the United States has been running ever higher trade deficits.

It is

now

government investors for $3

and measure

in debt to private

trillion.

In large

made

it

possible for the United States to

invest as heavily as

it

has in armaments. Foreign debt

that debt has

undergirds our military budget, which means our status as

a

superpower

is

heavily mortgaged.

As U.S. debt

increases abroad, the domestic budget gap has steadily

widened - and it has done so under Republican presidents (Reagan and the two Bushes) who advertised them-

Now,

selves to the electorate as “fiscal conservatives.”

even that pretense has crumbled; Republican leaders have

openly acknowledged that they are running

how

deficits

-

for

could they hide the fact any longer? But they are

quick to

insist that deficits

do not matter. During

his

presidency George W. Bush has never vetoed a single pork-barrel project presented to

words of one drunken sailor.”

the

him by

the Congress. In

analyst, he has spent

money

“like a

Calculating the cumulative effects of the recent recession, tax cuts,

Budget Office

and higher spending, the Congressional (a

highly reliable source) predicts that the

U.S. budget deficit will reach $2.4 trillion over the

com-

Even the U.S. -dominated and stoutly conservative International Monetary Fund (which has been ing decade.

274

America’s Global Constituency called America’s

speak out on the

“largest shareholder”) has seen issue. In

fit

January 2004 the imf issued

to a

warning that U.S. indebtedness was now endangering the stability of the global economy. It estimated that Amer-

would economy - “an

net financial obligation to other countries

ica’s

soon amount to 40 percent of its total unprecedented level of external debt for a large industrial country.” Other nations, among them Japan, Germany, and France, are also running serious deficits, but they are not pumping their debt into

And

any

sterile military

adventures.

do not bear the responsibility for anchoring the world economy. When the imf warning was sounded, the Bush in

case, they

administration shrugged

month, President Bush,

it

as

off as “alarmist.” In that if all

too eager to tempt

same fate,

and Space Administration to announce a costly new program to colonize the Moon and place a man on Mars. The price tag? Some $12 billion to start with, followed by $500 billion over the next decade. Where would this money come from? The question went unanswered; the program was not

came before

monitored

the National Aeronautics

after that.

Those who hold

a nation’s debt are in the position to

pull the financial chain that they hold in their hands.

not a nice thing to do; major economic players hesitate to do so, though the United States itself has done

That

is

exactly that to express

within

its

power. For

America propped up

its

much

War

that

II,

of the twentieth century,

a sagging British empire, preferring

to let Great Britain act as

When

disapproval of debtor nations

its

surrogate in world affairs.

became an untenable arrangement

after

World

the United States did not hesitate to use the finan-

power of the imf to thwart the 1956 British (and French and Israeli) invasion of Egypt. It may be difficult cial

275

WORLD, BEWARE! happening with a

to imagine that kind of intervention

country as powerful as the United States, especially for purely ethical reasons. Certainly nobody in Washington,

whether Republican or Democrat, fears that prospect. But in 2002 investors in Saudi Arabia dared to tweak Washington’s nose by withdrawing $200 billion from U.S. financial markets, mainly due to dissatisfaction with

U.S. economic policy and to continued criticism

Bush administration

from the

Saudi royal family’s sus-

for the

pected support of terrorists. It

is

worth remembering that European and Asian

governments that have it

lent the

United States the

money

more power The European

requires to remain a superpower have far

than the Saudis to influence U.S. policy.

Union, with

its

strengthening euro,

is

especially well

- and not only in an American accent. As the economist William Greider puts it, “As the euro establishes its durability and comes into wider usage, the dollar will no longer be the only option. At that point, it will be easier for Europe or placed to prod the United States.

Money

talks

others to exercise their financial leverage against the

United States without damaging themselves or the global financial system as a whole. Europe is not quite there yet, but the euro

is

rising

and so

is

European anger.”

America’s increasingly precarious position in world trade offers a telling example of

how

reckless U.S. policy-

makers have become. One would have thought that this shaky position would encourage Washington to behave with a certain courtesy and gratitude towards its creditors.

But what are

George W. Bush and

we

to

make

of the arrogance that

his advisers decided to display

they took over the White House?

when

They revealed an

underlying right-wing willingness to be insultingly unilateral

about major policy decisions. Their approach proves

276

America’s Global Constituency that there are policy-makers in the United States

who

reserve the right to handle the nation’s fiscal affairs with

how

near disregard for

budget

America’s ballooning trade and

might jeopardize the position of foreign investors, almost as if they were daring the world to deficits

abandon

the dollar.

How

far

can the United States travel

in that direction before its investors decide to teach

it

good manners? Since the end of

World War

II

the dollar has, of

course, been a privileged currency in international trade,

form of the petrodollars that undergird market. Other currencies, like the euro, are

especially in the

the world oil

now more

stable than the dollar, but

United States were using tinue bolstering

its

it

almost as

if

the

supremacy to concurrency. Some might say the United

States has every right to

dens

it is

its

do

military

that, given the military bur-

has shouldered for several decades, defending

nations that could not provide for themselves. But with

Cold War, America’s military has assumed another and more menacing aspect. Washington is using its military supremacy as a means of intimidating even its allies into submission on all issues of trade and finance the end of the

and especially on the future of the global oil market. That is the goal of its supposedly “benign imperium.” Indeed, as the United States takes over the conquered Iraqi oil fields,

as a

way

it

may

seek to use these rich

new

reserves

of beating back any effort by the Organization

of Petroleum Exporting Countries (opec) to substitute

euros for dollars.

Armed might Thus,

it

creates the illusion of omnipotence.

has always been the vice of imperial powers to

subordinate sound economics to military power. In the long run this approach is bound to be self-defeating.

Empires have gone broke financing

277

their arsenals,

paying

WORLD, BEWARE! the costs of military occupation, defending their

bound-

and administering their domains while their economies faltered. Basically, the United States is an industrial powerhouse blessed with real wealth and great skill, but its economy is badly out of balance. The inanity aries,

of the recent dot-com

boom

clear evidence of

is

how

delusionary thinking can infiltrate even the hard-headed

board rooms of major corporations. And the wave of financial scandals that has swept over Wall Street - especially the crooked bookkeeping - may mean that the masters of the universe no longer have any idea of what the true state of the

economy

is.

Its

creditors might

do

the United States a great favour by pulling that financial chain. Indeed, that might be the only

corporados and cal right 3.

way

that

politicians, especially those

American

on the

politi-

wing, can be brought to their senses.

Re-educating America.

that U.S. creditors

It

might seem unthinkable

would ever use

their financial leverage

to counter Washington’s imperial policies. But

if

the

tri-

umphalists continue to use military force to intimidate the rest of the world, the rest of the world

may have no

The triumphalists are ideological to and it is the essence of ideology to be

choice but to act. their very core,

uncompromising, and aggressive. Ideologues cannot tolerate opposition; they cannot even tolerate diversity of opinion and value. The triumphalists are out absolute,

market economics on the world; that is their saving mankind from the sin of collectivism.

to impress

plan for

Add

to that ideology the unswerving religious conviction

of the fundamentalists, and the result

AmerAs long

a fanatical

no alternatives. the American people view the world through

ican nationalism that will permit as

is

umphalist designs.

filter,

a

tri-

there will be a voting public for such

At some point, other nations may have to make

America's Global Constituency

common

cause with embattled liberals in an effort to

re-

educate the American public.

We

need an all-out

intellectual assault

on triumphal-

ism, an ongoing public debate that calls into question the

assumptions and values of the American right wing.

It is

not enough for this attack to be carried out by American critics;

imperium

the

to counter best

it is

is

a

worldwide

what we need

an international effort undertaken by the

minds around the world.

and debate

issue;

circuit that

We

should create a lecture

keeps a steady stream of Euro-

pean, Asian, and Latin American intellectuals before the

American public so that Americans can perceive that other nations have a stake in our political life. The most suitable forum for this debate would be U.S. universities. Indeed, drawing the universities into this great encounter would energize higher education, lending it some of the seriousness and social relevance that enlivened the campuses during the Vietnam era. The spirit of the teach-ins has been sadly missing from university life. It is time to restore that spirit, is

and the

issue

we need

for that purpose

before us.

What might

the response be to such an intellectual

invasion from around the world?

No

doubt sparks would

xenophobic reflex would occur throughout conservative circles. But that very response would make the issue clear. It would reveal the narrowness and ideologifly;

a

cal rigidity of the triumphalists.

tion of

non-Americans would,

The prominent

participa-

make

clear the

in itself,

true dimensions of the crisis.

another important reason for internationalizing the debate on the American imperium. Because triumphalism draws upon the influence of European emigres

There

is

of the 1930s and 1940s, spective

on

this

we need

body of thought 279

a

non-American

per-

a re-evaluation of the

WORLD, BEWARE! experience that stands behind the exiles brought with

it

them

and the conclusions that

to the United States. Tri-

umphalism is a backward-looking worldview; it stems from a time that no longer exists. The Europe of violent ideological strife and totalitarian movements has been swept away in favour of benign and pluralistic social systems. The same is true of the social Darwinism that gives triumphalism

its

harsh edge. This too

the dusty past. Outside of the

is

a philosophy of

American corporate com-

munity one would be hard pressed to find people who still believe that the world must be the sort of jungle it was in the early industrial period. Nasty and brutish nonsense of this kind has burned itself out in other countries. But in the United States, a society in

which right-wing think-

tanks dominate political discussion, this historical context is

easily ignored.

Beyond the universities, there are at least a few media outlets that might help to present the debate. And there is also the Internet, which has become an alternative broadcast medium. The Howard Dean presidential campaign in 2004 is one example of how the Internet can be used for mainstream political purposes. Dean raised an unprecedented amount of money and support from all corners of the country. The Internet does not reach everybody, but it draws together an educated, politically active audience, which can use the experience of non- Americans to offset the triumphalist insistence that all social prob-

lems must be

left

to market-based solutions.

Under commercial pressure, public affairs coverage in both the print and broadcast media has become ever more insular. Moreover, the Bush administration has sought to use the fcc as a way of censoring liberal and international criticism. Information about the rest of the

world rarely makes

its

way through 280

the

news media, even

America's Global Constituency Might that be remedied by lively, well-edited “packages'” of foreign opinion to which newspapers, -along with television and radio networks, could subscribe? The package might be only five minutes in length, but it would be a reminder that there is a world beyond our shores that cares about what America does and comments on our ways. Although they are building a worldwide imperium, Americans are not great travellers. Only 18 percent of the population holds passports. And when they do travel, what do they go to see except the obvious tourist attracso significant dissent.

less

tions? But suppose other countries created social tours, a

chance to observe

and

how

they deal with crime, health, child

elder-care, education, retirement, culture?

fect as these institutions

at least alternatives that

Americans have and

might be

in

As imper-

other lands, they are

would broaden

offset the various

the choices that

schemes that

tri-

umphalists have developed for privatizing social services.

The more Americans trial societies, 9

learn about daily

life

in other indus-

the less hold triumphalist orthodoxy will

have over them. There

is

another arena

need help. The time

is

at

in

hand

which American

liberals

to confront the teachings of

the fundamentalist churches with a firm critical response.

This

is

more liberal would help to

primarily the responsibility of the

Christian congregations, but here again

it

include an international perspective. Even though evangelical

Christians are aggressive proselytizers, criticizing their

religious beliefs

is

often seen to be bad manners in the

United States. That might be appropriately polite

if

those

were not being intruded into the country’s politics, often in ways that are fiercely intolerant - and especially beliefs

given that the apocalyptic expectations of these churches are

now

a significant influence

281

on U.S. foreign

policy.

WORLD, BEWARE! never expected to see the day

I

Age of Reason to be put

back

when Tom

that classic of village atheism

in circulation.

nation in which the Bible

Yet here

I

am

being read as the

is

Paine’s

- needed

living in a literal

truth

many

fundamentalist zealots

would not expect to see won away from their faith

by the

intellectual challenge

am

by more and more people.

Bible-thumpers see their

I

I

proposing. After as

critics

they should

know

impinge on

political decisions, will

in

light

Above

how

of the use they

all,

Satan’s pawns.

that their views, especially

They should be challenged

all,

the

But

where they

be stoutly resisted.

make sense of make of modern to

their beliefs

technology.

they should be held responsible for explaining

the theocratic authoritarianism they are promoting

can be made compatible with democratic values.

POWER CORRUPTS walk among my fellow citizens on the streets and in shops and parks, I find myself wondering how many of them grasp the peril in which we are living.

These days, as

I

Not the threat of terrorist attack: that threat is being hammered into us by the hour by the government and media. I mean the ethical and political peril into which our country

is

rapidly drifting as the three forces - the

corporados, the triumphalists, and the fundamentalists tighten their grip

own

on our

society.

Each of them

for their

reasons exerts a steady, convergent pressure driving

the United

States

towards an imperial role that our

nation has neither the right nor the competence to wield. In that direction lies the endless

war and growing

repres-

sion of the National Security State.

around me know how close we are to losing control of the instruments of democracy? Do

Do

the people

I

see

America's Global Constituency they care? Sometimes

I

suspect that they have deliberately

blinded themselves to the

seriousness

of the

moment

because they sense that the task of thwarting such powerful forces is

too demanding, the responsibility too great.

It

and deny and evade - to immerse oneself in media make-believe and illusions of well-being. I am again and again appalled by the escapism and denial is

easier

that

by

far to ignore

Americans have become so expert

at

practising.

Worse still is their willingness to permit obvious crimes and deceptions to be covered over by patriotic self-congratulations.

many Americans who

Like so

through the

lived

ordeal of Vietnam and the ensuing Watergate scandal,

have become wary of patriotism. used to deceive the public;

I

have seen noble words

I

have seen

used to hide atrocities. Even so, as

have become to patriotic

sured high expectations for what able to

offer

my

country’s flag

immune

as

is

because

my

More than

the world.

power and material wealth,

I

believe

I

not been an

bluster, this has

easy book to write. Perhaps that

I

I

once trea-

country might be its

technological

the United States has always

possessed a brash and brawling egalitarianism, a fascination with innovation, a tolerance for eccentricity that

I

hoped might humanize the postindustrial world. Now I am not at all sure my children will see that America survive. Instead,

ologues

who

my

country has fallen into the hands of ideare bent on establishing a worldwide corpo-

imperium, and authoritarian true believers who believe it is America’s role to prepare the world for the

rate

Second Coming of Jesus. Although I have a decent appreciation of my country’s virtues, I cringe at such overweening nationalistic bravado.

When

I

I

know

look at

too

my

much

history to join in the cheering.

nation’s historical record,

283

what

I

see

WORLD, BEWARE! there

is

a mixture of

perfection.

I

long, bloody

good and bad

that falls far short of

which only a the lynchings and vari-

see the dismal fact of slavery,

war could

end.

I

see

ous forms of de jure and de facto racial apartheid that followed that war for the next three generations.

I

see the

near-extermination of the native American population

and the shameless rape of our once-magnificent natural environment. I see the vicious class warfare of our early industrial cities.

see the violence of the Prohibition era

I

and the organized crime that arose from it to permeate our lives. We are hardly a society of angels. Yet in the face of these moral blemishes, Americans are marvellously quick to forgive themselves.

comes

to unpleasant truths,

we

When

it

are always eager to “put

things behind us” or even to turn our misdeeds into virtues.

Our

remembered

devastation as

of the

American Indians

is

“winning the west”; our worst gangsters

have been transformed into folk heros;

many once even

subscribed to the belief that black Americans were a

and

jovial

who

childlike people gifted with natural

never cared

enslavement. light as a

We

that

much about

their centuries of

prefer to view ourselves in a sentimental

kind and generous people.

Needless to

Many

all

rhythm

say, there

is

truth to that benign image.

of America’s failures can be balanced by

able achievements. as benevolent

commend-

Taken one by one, Americans can be

and decent

as the people of other lands.

Along with our crime bosses and robber barons, our gunslingers and Indian fighters, our red-neck bigots and corporate swindlers, we have also had our champions of reform and our great humanitarian spirits. But Americans, for all their virtues, have no claim to moral superiority over other societies whose fundamental decency, simply as measured by how they share their wealth, puts our

284

America's Global Constituency pretensions to fairness and generosity to shame.

If

Ameri-

cans were brave enough to review their history with an honest and critical eye, their delusions of moral grandeur

would soon evaporate, and they would be having seen the truth. For ourselves that

we

are

all

we

better off for

it is

because

the

more dangerous

think so well of today.

We

tions.

who cannot doubt the purity of our intenLeaders who tell us a flattering story about our-

selves

win our

are a people

ists

who

tell

votes.

Hence

the success of the triumphal-

we deserve to inherit economy that is now

us that

The global

the Earth.

taking shape so

rapidly under the guidance of the world’s richest nations

and corporations has already made clear that the national boundaries we inherit from the past are losing their importance in the realm of commerce. Environmentalists have been at great pains to teach us the same lesson about the planetary ecology. boundaries

restrict

We

let

national

our understanding of the great geo-

biological systems that envelop our

we have

cannot

human

habitat. But

not yet matched our environmental science and

our economic ambitions with cultural integration. The United States in the era of Gulf

example of what

results

when

War

II is

a frightening

a powerful nation rejects

dialogue with other people. Then

we have

a

smug and

heavy-handed imperialism that blunders across the world creating havoc, inviting hatred, making enemies where it might have made friends. The triumphalists believe in a militant democracy, willing to take on the world if necessary to defend their warped, class-ridden version of

"‘free-

dom. ” With the intoxication that power brings, they believe in pre-emptive and unilateral action. They have yet to register the idea that

freedom understood

as a

worldwide market economy under corporate control can only become a

new

chapter in the history of colonialism.

285

WORLD, BEWARE! But then, as British historian Niall Ferguson puts

it,

America has been “an empire in denial” ever since it began seeking to rebuild the fallen Pax Britannica as a Pax Americana at the end of World War II. One thing can be said to the credit of the triumphalists: they seem almost eager to

call a

spade a spade. They

their true goals, but they

make no

may

lie

to hide

effort to disguise their

determination to use power in the national interest. They take pride in being tough and assertive in ways that they believe liberals lack the guts to match.

am

I

struck by

how

the United States

is

alone in the

no experience of the downmight have learned that from los-

twenty-first century in having side to imperialism.

ing the

war

in

We

Vietnam, but

we

did not. In 1991,

he had gained what he was prepared to

Gulf

War

I,

the

first

when

call victory in

George Bush proudly announced

syndrome” was now a thing of the past by which he meant the widespread fear that all future wars would lead to a similar failure. To the triumphalists

that “Vietnam

announcement cleared the way for resuming the pursuit of hegemony. That was the point at which the United States began to diverge from the international consensus that saw policies of imperial expansion as a thing of the past. Every other major nation and many a minor one the British, French, Germans, Russians, Italians, Spanish,

that

Portuguese, Japanese, Dutch, Belgians - have suffered the tribulations of failed colonialism.

They have conquered

and they have lost, and in losing have learned that only a privileged few - the business elite, military commanders, colonial administrators - enjoy the fruits of the Great

Game

of imperialism.

For

all

of these nations that lesson

is

written in

blood and moral embarrassment. The people of imperial

powers may once have cheered

286

their troops into battle;

America's Global Constituency they

may have

thrilled to see their flag raised over distant

lands; but they ultimately paid a heavy price for subju-

gating populations that hated them. Nations that have

been through that ordeal have earned cious

wisdom

that

still

learn that despite our

eludes Americans.

armed strength and

cannot remake the world that

we

can, to

recklessly, will

in

our

own

employ that strength

do very

a bitter

little

We

but pre-

have yet to

vast riches,

image. To

we

insist

unilaterally

and

except to spread chaos.

“Power tends to corrupt.” We all know Lord Acton’s famous warning. But how many know there was a second part to his familiar aphorism? “Power tends to corrupt,” he said, “and absolute power corrupts absolutely A The second part may be less well known because there have been few nations to which it could be applied. There have been great powers in the past, but never a great power that stood alone without rivals that could discipline its ambitions. As of the beginning of the twenty-first century, the United States

tion of being as close to absolute

is

in the risky posi-

power

as

any nation

has ever come. Perhaps, given the pious temperament of the times in the United States, biblical terms.

it

would help

“What

whole world and

shall

it

lose his soul?”

287

to translate that risk into profit a

man

to

gam

the

.

'

Index

Acton, Lord John 287

Bush, George W. 101, 104, 107,

Adorno, Theodor 239

113, 116, 119, 128, 141, 144,

Afghanistan 48, 112, 250, 271;

159, 262; and Bush bashing

and triumphalist policy 23, 246-249; triumphalist reconstruction of 104, 246 Al-Qaeda 6, 24, 40, 87, 149, 246, 248, 257, 269

and United Nations 20-25, 270-272; as distant early warning sign 28; and Gulf War II 43M6, 114-115; and Iraq elections of 2005, 47; and Tony Blair 49-55; and Enron scandal 73; and corporate style 80; and reconstruction contracts in Iraq 94-99; and tax policy 117; and use of military force 121-123; and September 11, 151-153; and evangelical Christianity 56-57, 166-171, 175; and use of Reagan campaign techniques 184-186, summary of foreign and domestic policy 201-202; and use of media 209; and suvs 221-222; and energy policy 224; and “democracy,” 238-240; and terrorism 245; and future of U.S. imperium 249-251, 286; and deficit spending 274-276; and entitlements policy 266-267

All in the Family 179

Allbaugh, Joe 101 Arendt, Hanna 129

Atwood, Margaret 241 authoritarian personality 239

authoritarianism 5, 145, 243, 282 Bechtel

Company

53, 97, 98, 100,

104, 116 Bernays, Ed\yard 204, 207 Bilbo,

Theodore 199

bin Laden,

Osama

37, 115, 238

Blackstone, William 164 Blair,

Tony 24, 44, 49-55

Branch Davidians 149 British East India

Company 128

Buchanan, Pat 143 Buckley, William F. 138 Bunker, Archie 179, 180, 185, 199 Bush, George Herbert Walker 256,

286; and Gulf War I 113-114; and Sunbelt 159; and evangelicalism 166; and campaign of 1988, 185; and Clarence

Thomas 186; and Panama 212

attack on

1-4, 195-196;

Carter,

Jimmy

160, 161, 164

Catholics 174, 176, 242, 263, 264

ceos (Chief Executive

new

Officers),

65-71; ceos,” 68, 85-86; as

role in U.S. business

as “killer

WORLD, BEWARE! government 73, 80, 100; as “Marie Antoinettes,” 76; and global economy 86; and fascism 103; and evangelicalism style of

259-260 Chamberlain, Joseph 82 Chambers, Oswald 167 Chavez, Hugo 22, 40 Cheney, Dick,, and Gulf 52, 80; and

War

II

48,

Enron scandal 73;

and Halliburton Company 98-99, 128; as face of the future 120; and energy policy 224 chief executive officers. See ceos Christian Zionists 165 civil rights 133, 187, 188, 197, 244 Clarke, Richard 22, 23 Clinton, Bill, and nafta and gatt 86; disinterest in triumphalists

Dispensational Christianity 164

Dobson, James 262

Dome

of the

Rock 165,

1

73

Duncan, Robert 177 Dunlop, A1 “Chainsaw” 68 economic royalists 62, 76, 240 efficient market hypothesis 87 Eisenhower, Dwight 110, 158, 266 End of Days 164-166, 171, 261 Enron Company 73-75 Erinys International 127 evangelical Christians 22, 52, 102,

199, 202, 231, 281; as electoral muscle 56-57; and triumphalists

140-141; and Branch Davidians 149; and rise of Sunbelt 156-157; and conservative backlash 160-164; and End of Days 165-171; and the Rapture 172-175; and war against pluralism 173-177; and authoritarianism 241-244; and Catholics

and war on drugs in Columbia 126; and evangelicalism 168; and law enforcement 191-192; Republican persecution of 197; and Somalia 212; and sexual escapades 219 Cold War 32, 33, 158, 162, 197, 258, 277; Ronald Reagan and end of Cold War 112-116, triumphalists’ use of 118, 120; and paranoia 150

Evangelical Environmental Net-

Commanding Heights

felony disenfranchisement 192,

1

14;

television

264; as possible right-wing soft spot

258-265

work 263 empire 6, 112 Executive Order 13303, 100

evil

Falwell, Jerry 169

257

Ferguson, Niall 286 Fiorino, Carly 80

92 conspiracy theorists 150 Coolidge, Calvin 86, 207 Coulter, Ann 135, 197 counter culture 34, 163, 174 series 5, 25, 89,

274 market 132, 202, 224; as form

fiscal

free

conservatives 112, 259,

of capitalist idolatry 30, 280;

Darby, John Nelson 164

Darwinian evolution 35, 162-163, 166, 265 Dean, Howard 280 DeLay, Tom 198-201, 251 deregulation 70, 72-74, 184 Dewey, John 139 disaster capitalism 104

290

and deregulation 73; and corporados 77-78, and mixed economies 83; as model of “democracy,” 89; ideology 91, 93

in triumphalist

Frum, David 107, 270 Fuller, Buckminster 232, 233 Gingrich,

Newt 199

Index global constituency

1,

1

1,

30, 258,

272

Jeffords, Jim 198

John-Paul

II

263

Global Risk Strategies 127 Goldwater, Barry 143, 158 Gorbachev, Mikhail 1 12

Kant, Immanuel 244

great depression 32, 61, 83, 91, 92

Kerry,

Great Society 62, 111, 133, 196,

Kellogg, Brown, and

Kagan, Robert 45, 107, 245

201 Greider, William

Gulf Gulf

War War

I

276

22, 113, 114, 256, 286 in triumphalist policy

II,

27-28, 108; and British cabinet memos 23-24; and U.S. allies 42-45; and Tony Blair 52-54; and Halliburton Company 97-99; and Paul Wolfowitz 103-104; and U.S. unilateralism 7, 9,

121-125 Hagee, John 200 Haggard, Ted 262 Halliburton

Company

John 196, 264

Root Com-

pany (kbr) 128 Kennedy, John 150, 159, 264 Keynes, John Maynard 90-92 “killer ceos”. See ceos Kipling, Rudyard 128 Kissinger, Henry 129 Klein, Naomi 104 Krauthammer, Charles 31 Kristol, William 45, 107 Left Behind fiction series 67, 72, 85, 118, 166, 190 Lewis, Sinclair 137

47, 98, 99,

102, 117, 126, 128 Harding, Warren G. 171, 206, 207 Hayek, Friedrich 90-93, 129, 131, 132, 139, 146 Heritage Foundation 251 Hijacking Catastrophe 195 Hofstadter, Richard 23 Horton, Willy 185, 257 Humphrey, Hubert 196 hurricane Katrina 267 1

liberalism,

and Bush-bashing 1-2;

extreme

hostility of neo-conser-

toward 5, 10, 1 1, 133-139; and single-issue voters 35; and New Deal 62-63; and corporate power 78; and John Maynard Keynes 91; and military-industrial complex 1 13; and libertarians 145-146; and paramilitary right wing 148; and evangelical Christians 160-163; and conservative backlash of 1980s 178-189; and loss of the Sunbelt 158, 184-195; and internal dissension 196-199; and absolute values 242-244; and neo-conservative soft spots 259-264; and American global vatives

'

Hussein,

Saddam

3, 6, 23, 24, 37,

44-46, 50, 51, 98, 99, 113, 114, 168, 271 Iacocca, Lee 66, 67

imperialism 16, 200, 285, 286 Iran-contra scandal 183, 197, 201,

232 and Gulf War II 24; and Near East policy 114; and evangelical Christians 162-170; and red heifer 170-173; and Temple Mount 173; and “God’s foreign policy,” 200

Israel,

291

constituency 279-281

Limbaugh, Rush 178 Lindsay, Hal 155 Lippmann, Walter 139 McCarthy, Joseph 115, 135, 175, 197 Marx, Karl 14, 71, 90

WORLD, BEWARE! mercenaries in Iraq 122, 127, 200,

253

Populists 187, 188, 243 Premillennialist Christianity 164

Military Professional Resources

Presley, Elvis

Incorporated 126 Military Contractors. See merce-

progressive

159

movement 136, 187,

223, 227 prohibition 163, 284

naries in Iraq

Murdoch, Rupert 214

nascar (National Stock Car Racing Association) 243 National Christian Leadership Conference on Israel 168 National Rifle Association (nra) 147, 231 national security state 20, 118, 282 neoconservatives 3-6, 52, 55, 200,

203, 264-268. See also triumphalists Netanyahu, Benjamin 168

New Deal

32, 62, 72, 111, 133,

137, 160, 179, 187, 188, 201,

210 Nixon, Richard 29, 58, 181, 197,

266 noble

lies

133

Noriega, Manual 212 Norquist, Grover 135, 178 Office of Reconstruction

and

Stabi-

lization 104. See also disaster

capitalism O’Neill, Paul 22

opec 277 Orwell, George Paine,

6, 90,

115, 119

Thomas 282

Patriot Act 119,

203

peace dividend 113 Pearl Harbor 6, 114, 151 Perle, Richard 107, 270 Phillips,

Kevin 58

Plato 106, 133, 138, 140-142, 153

pluralism 173-177 Project for a

New

American Cen-

tury (pnac) 114, 151

Popper, Karl 129, 131

Rand, Ayn 129, 139 Rapture 165, 166, 172, 173, 265 Reagan, Ronald 49, 66, 85; and conservative backlash 7, 56, 84, 109, 111, 113, 181, 184, 196;

and providential view of U.S. 21; and triumphalists 21, 107-109, 114, 120; and bluecollar Democrats 35, 179-180; and Saddam Hussein 46; and Margaret Thatcher 55, 84; and Savings and Loan debacle 72; and ideological use of deficit spending 109, 111, 113, 274; and “evil empire,” 112; and end

Cold War 113,

and tax“star and payer revolt 116, 189; wars,” 112, 211; and religion 141, 161, 166, 174, 241; and racism 160-161, 184-186, 190; and liberals 180-181, 186; and law enforcement 181-182; and use of media 182-183, 217; and Iran-contra 183, 197; and drugs 191; and fantasy politics 210-211; and star power 223, 227-228; and entitlements 266 red heifer 170, 172, 173 to

21.1;

Republican Party 171, 182, 217, 260; and blue-collar voters 35, 179-180; new role as party of record-breaking deficits 111-112; and taxpayer revolt

116-118; and Patriot Act 119; and libertarians 145-147; and Sunbelt 156, 159-160; and evangelical Christians 160-162; as the white-man’s

champion

185-187; dilemma of moderates

Index in

party 197-198, 202-203,

and 198-iron party discipline 199; and Tom DeLay 203; California Republican Party 224; and deficit spending 25 1-252, 254; and nasty campaign tactics 236; and single-

and Catholics 264; growing extremism of 266; and fiscal conservatism 274-275 Rice, Condoleezza 31, 48 Robertson, Randall 175 Rockefeller, John D. 67, 78 Rockefeller, Nelson 158-159 issue voters 266;

Roosevelt, Franklin D. 32,61, 62,

179, 187, 196, 207, 210; and

Great Depression 72; and World War II 109-1 1 1; and artists and intellectuals

136-137; and

solid

south 160; and economic royal-

240 Roosevelt, Theodore 61, 136, 201 Rove, Karl 52 Rumsfeld, Donald 13, 18, 23, 39, 46, 48, 49, 107, 252 76,

ists

Leo 106, 129, 131, 133, 141-144, 153, 264 139, Sunbelt 156-161, 167, 179, 197, 199 superCEOs. See CEOs Susskind, Ron 23 Strauss,

259; 197- and Joseph McCarthy 197;

San Salvador 2A3 Saudi Arabia 29, 276 Schwarzenegger, Arnold 223-229 Singer, Peter 127

taxpayer revolt 116 Temple Mount 164 terrorism, and September 11,

2001

attack 6, 14, 19, 115; as cultural threat to modernity 14; moral

obscenity of 19; and scare tactics 20, 115-116, 249, 257; propa-

ganda imagery of 37, 1 15; and U.S. world-wide attack matrix 40, 104-105, 121; paramilitary right wing and domestic terror (Oklahoma City) 149; and purported hatred of freedom 239 Thatcher, Margaret 49, 53, 55, 73, 84 Thomas, Clarence 186 Tocqueville, Alexis de 122 Total Information Awareness Pro09- 119 gram Trilling, Lionel 139 Triple Canopy Company 253 triumphalism, or neo-conservatives 3;

opposition to “big govern-

Smith, A1 264

ment,” 5-7; imperial designs 6-7, 20-24, 200; as hyper-radi-

Smith, Michael 54

cals 18; ruthlessness of 11, 12,

Darwinism 85, 199, 280

social

110-

25, 28, 256-258; alliance with

15, 26, 81, 84,

Social Security 133, 184, 250,

265-267 Sojourners evangelical

movement

261-262 Soviet

Union

112-114,

184,211,243 power 226, 227, 230

121-,

star

6, 29, 33, 48,

137,

star wars. See Strategic

Defense

corporados 25; inadequate liberal response 28-30; true intentions in Iraq 46-48; role in Bush administration 107-108; and Friedrich Hayek 90-96, 130-131; and Ronald Reagan 1 14, 184; and new mili1 tary-industrial

complex

114; and National Security

Ini-

118-122; use of unilateralism 120-122; and European emigres 129-134; and State

tiative

Strategic Defense Initiative (sdi)

112, 211

293

WORLD, BEWARE! disenchanted Stalinists 145; and

Leo Strauss 131, 140-143, 153; as

new

conservative

gentsia 136;

intelli-

and esotericism

141-142; critique of liberalism 134-136, 184, 189; as conspiratorial group 150-154; and Israel 169; and race 188-189; and authoritarianism 242; future use of

power 246-251;

and John Kerry 196; and “Vietnam syndrome,” 123, 286; and patriotism 283 Vinnelle Corporation 126 Voegelin, Eric 129, 131 Von Mises, Ludwig 129

electoral

techniques 256-258; possible friction

French 43; and implosion of Democratic Party 62, 196-197, 238; and conscription 123-124;

Jim 261 Watergate scandal 62, 197, 231, 283 Welch, Jack 68, 69 Wallis,

with evangelical Chris-

264-265; and senior entitlements 265-267; and United Nations 269-271; need for more tians

effective liberal critique

278-280. See also neoconserva-

welfare state 90, 159, 265, 267; triumphalist hostility toward 10, 25, 55, 134, 250, 265; place in

and freedom 92-93; and entitlements 267 Whitman, Walt 176 Will, George 138, 139 history 83-84, 134;

tives

Trump, Donald 79, 80 United Nations, and Bush administration 43-45, 247; UN inspectors in Iraq 50; object of right-

wing paranoia 48-149; rejected by triumphalists 269-271; need for reform 279-270; role in prewar Iraq 271-272

Wilson,

Woodrow

42, 61, 145,

187 Wolfowitz, Paul 52, 103, 107, 120

Woodward, Bob 23, 245 World Bank 27, 94, 103, 104 Yergin, Daniel 89, 90

Vietnam war 2, 7-8, 33-34, 37-38, 279; public rejection of war 36, 2 55, 267; and the

294

Zionism 164

About

Theodore Roszak

renowned

ing of a

professor emeritus of history at

social critic.

His influential The Mak-

Counter Culture helped define the youthful

He

a leading “neo-Luddite”

and

founder of the ecopsychology movement. Roszak’s

six-

rebellion of the sixties. a

Author

University, East Bay, and an interna-

California State tionally

is

the

teen published

been translated

works of into

Berkeley, California.

is

fiction

fourteen

and

non-fiction

languages.

He

have

lives

in

POLITICS, HISTORY, SOCIAL ISSUES

WORLD, BEWARE!

T

HIS

FAR MORE than just another Bush-bashing

IS

book.

World, Beware!

provides the historical background

and sociological depth we need to understand the full scope of American triumphalism. Theodore Roszak lays bare the forces dominating U.S. politics: the

corporate

elite,

the

neo conservative

intelli-

and the fundamentalist churches. Fearing the emergence of the U.S. as a "rogue nation,” he issues an affirmative and pragmatic call for global accountability and restraint. gentsia,

America has proven unable rest

to alter

of the world must play a greater

its

own

destructive course.

The

role in reining in the superpower's

excesses.

Roszak shows us why and how.

— Mel

Hurtig, founder, Council of Canadians, author

of Rushing

to

Armageddon

Combines a searing-hot indictment of the imperial

society

we have

become, with a cool-headed, concise, and highly enlightening account

of how we came

to this.

Roszak

sees

our countiy plain and warns the

world, of which, he reminds Americans,

— Daniel the

Ellsberg, author of

we are

Secrets:

a part.

A Memoir of Vietnam

and

Pentagon Papers

RO VQC P

A T

I

onC

ISBN 1-897071-02-7