Atomic War

It's more than political bedfellows smirking at the suckers and making off with the booty. It's more than partisan bullies lining up to give the weaklings a paddling. It's more than good-natured agreements to disagree, business-as-usual-that's-the-beauty-of-democracy-and-aren't-we- lucky-to-live-in-a-country-like-this.

It's deeper and it's sticky. It's at the core of all that's been happening and all that's been telling any person with open eyes and a simple ability to chart a trajectory what's going to happen. What has to happen.

It's a reversion back to what the human animal does best: tribalize. Do like the cells they are composed of: divide.

Almost without thought and yet with complete and utter conviction, two worlds have formed from one, each with its own natural laws, each with its own perception of history, its own storehouse of references and facts and with its own morality. It is an atomic war to be sure, but the mushroom clouds are blossoming across the landscape of the most elemental particle of human consciousness and its fallout is shown in the incessant, maddening rift between human beings who should be united in pursuit of the idea of productive peace and harmonious coexistence. Instead, relentlessly opposing forces wage a war of ideologies that perpetuates a roiling chaos which in turn feeds an endless succession of profiteering ticks, swelling off the decay and the confusion wrought from a persistent lack of co-operation.

To watch our congressional representatives duke it out in forums described as hallowed, respectable institutions but which are really no different from Astroturfed sports arenas is an exercise inducing utter incredulity. While the players are unable and unlikely to convince their opposition of their arguments, the audience in the bleachers is left to choose sides based not on facts (since what was once considered to be cold and hard is now agreed by all to be fungible) but on gut feelings, not on science and reason but on which side makes you feel safer. It's down to that, down to backing the hairier leader with the most gnarled club. Back to primal instincts.

Watching the ongoing activities of our government is like watching chimps in suits hurling feces instead of facts, as if truth was the least important and credible element in the affairs of state. And while there may be a nugget of sense within a few of the participants that something somewhere is wrong, there are too few like-minded mutants in the gallery of observers to complete the connection and the brief spark of enlightenment is snuffed out under the weight of factions resolved only to perpetually feud. It shows how accidental the forming of the United States was, how rare and irregular its coming into being, how unnatural its dream of freedom. Because even though right and wrong exist they can only be distinguished clearly from each other if efforts are made to merge dissonant points of view, to wrest ourselves from the superstitions in which we seek safety from the beasts that keep us confined within our tribal bunkers. Armed with reason and humility, all people will gain the ability to perceive right and wrong, fact and fiction, good and evil and become united in the process, raising us above our basest desires to estrange, and instead rousing the more evolved desire that lays within: to embrace.

Comments

[jeskiley]

Speaking of stealing it away from them and pretending the theft didn't occur...we might be cursed.

[jeskiley]

I don't think it's such a hopeless case, though if only I could get people to see MY point of view, we could all wade out of the muckous. I swear it all begins in how we're educated. Apathy sets in by first grade, then we're sunk. Freedom must be taught as a core value, you can't steal it away from them, pretend the theft didn't occur, and expect them to come out unscathed. We are bred to distrust.

Calling all artists, let's birth a movement.

[brantl]

The problem here is that many are reasoning under the old adage of "it takes two to make a fight", this is not true, nor has it ever been true. To make a fight, it takes one side that wants to fight and another side (at least) that can't afford to forfeit the issue that's being fought about, or can't get out of the way fast enough or has been backed into a corner.

It only takes one side that wants to fight and another that can't or won't get out of it. The responsibility for this behavior belongs on the aggressor. That's the Republicans. They started this behavior, and THEY WON'T STOP.

They have reduced the level of discourse to grade school. Early grade school. It's awfully difficult for the best guy on the high school debate team to win a debate while being mobbed by 3 year olds with mud pies.

[TomR]

----
Armed with reason and humility, all people will gain the ability to perceive right and wrong, fact and fiction, good and evil and become united in the process, raising us above our basest desires to estrange, and instead rousing the more evolved desire that lays within: to embrace.
----

I wish it was that simple. We can slice and dice this problem from other angles: EQ vs. IQ as well as recognizing we each possess different levels of conscience. Who's biology is wired without an ethics subroutine programmed into their brain?

My point is we are all different and so a single solution like arming everyone with reason and humility with won't work for all. Emotion trumps logic and the emotionally retarded amongst us won't allow themselves to submit to reason and humility, even if they have the capacity and know it's the right thing to do.

- Tom

[wisechild]

Thanks for the latest great post, Steven. Depressing as it all seems, the truth is that both 'sides' are caught up in their roles.

It seems to me that we have gone as far as we can go in this and now things have to change. The GOP is self-destructing daily. The center cannot hold, as they say.

The Dems are clueless, weak and fearful. For the sake of arguments they agree to disagree but the passion behind it seems missing.

I don't believe the stands are well defined anymore. It is wearying to be against everything without a plan to change it.

That is where we are. It's a cheap variety show of the worst kind. And the entertainment value is null.

I still have faith that people will 'get it' and demand change. If it doesn't come from the government it will come via grass roots. It's just a matter of time...

In the meantime, fools will be fools while America slowly fades away.

[DemandTruth]

My father visited Jamestown, where my retired CoastGuard uncle was working.

He said they had a map there that would light up with little dots to show everywhere the Native Americans had settled originally on this continent. There were little red dots everywhere! Everywhere there was sustainable, fertile land, Native Americans were living there.

Our first great act as a "nation" when we "discovered" this already-discovered and already-inhabited continent was to slaughter all the people already here and claim their land/homes as ours.

Then came the slaves. The slaves who did ALL the work and built the foundations for everything. And made a lot of white people rich. Many of those rich peoples' decendants are still here today. And they're still rich. And they're still treating people they believe to be inferior to them (this includes me as I am a lowly woman who shouldn't have the right to vote) as worthless slaves.

This country has huge potential for greatness, that is true. But we are not GREAT. We are, all of us, just animals after all.

Well, scratch that. I've never met an animal that tortured or killed anyone or anything for shits & giggles.

What can I say? I guess I'm just more depressed than usual today.

[Beaux510]

Ever seen a couple of Orcas (sorry, killer whales) play toss-the-injured-seal just for fun?

Animal Planet.

[PhantomAviator]

Wasn't the Constitution was supposed to prevent these kinds of things from happening? Not the chimps, of course, but the other stuff.

[babylonandon]

You all assume that somehow now is different from any of the rest of the history of this country.

I'd love to hear what folks here and now would think if they'd been sitting in the Congress in the past before TV. Say January of 1861, 1913, November 1929, December 1st 1941, or 1948 (before Korea).

From what I read, Congress is pretty tame and the crisis are mild compared to what has happened before (having the camera on you subdues a lot of the antics of the past).

Nothing in our culture, our media, our core beliefs, or ourselves has changed significantly from the past.

[jsarets]

"Nothing in our culture, our media, our core beliefs, or ourselves has changed significantly from the past."

Traditional media was dramatically altered for the worse in the summer of 1994. The images of that white Bronco rolling slowly down the highway changed the news media in a very profound way. The 24-hour cable news networks changed the nature of our political discourse. You can't ignore the striking difference between the TV news of Murrow or Cronkite and that of Cooper or Cavuto.

[babylonandon]

You might want to read up on the Hearst family, yellow journalism, the USS Maine, and the Spanish American War.

[oldpotsmuggler]

The last time we had a Nixon, we won. This time it's winning.

[SparXaFire]

Sparxafire!

Another eloquent post, Steven! I often wonder how it all will break apart as the stress and deaths and suffering inexorably rise. I'd love it if the rapidly disappearing middle class would rise up, but I'm afraid we are too beaten down... Perhaps, in keeping with your metaphor, it will be cancer -- rapid, out-of-control cellular madness -- that kills it off. Euw.

[Dap]

Dear Steven,

A wonderful sentiment indeed.

Yet, it is *far* from my sense of what's going on or what shall take place.

Hope you are correct, and I'm mistaken. Agape.

[jesusquintana]

Billy Joel said it a while ago: we didn't start the fire.

We certainly aren't evolving very quickly, are we?

Depressing.

[BuckarooBanzai]

If this were Germany in 1931 and I was a socialist, would you tell me to:
a) embrace and work with the Nazi party as in your post? Or
b) would you tell me to join with the communists to drive out the Nazi's from the political arena.

History has shown that b) was the correct answer. Why?

Because we know now that Nazi-ism was a poisonous political movement whose goal was not to participate in the Weimar system but to exploit it and destroy it.

Modern Republicanism is a poisonous political movement whose goal is not to preserve and protect our constitutional system but to exploit it and ultimately destroy it. From the Clinton impeachment, Tom Delay's pay to play legislation through the Patriot Act, Executive Order 52, Signing statements, secret detentions, warrantless wire-tapping, corruption at levels that boggle the mind, all these show a movement that is profoundly anti-democratic and anti-American.

You can't compromise with or embrace poison, you have to draw it from the body politic. Everyone who has trusted and compromised with these people has been destroyed; Tony Blair, Colin Powell, Alan Greenspan, Tom Daschle, the list goes on and on.

We need to fight them and root them out. We need to learn to call them what they have been calling us since the late 80's.....The Enemy.

[oldpotsmuggler]

Because only one side was fighting it, I'm afraid that too many people didn't believe in The Culture War.

[joebaggadonuts]

C'mon you guys! Read A Crowd of One. (Clippinger).

I can feel it already changing. The House voted to require a plan to leave Iraq in two months. I was watching the so-called Energy Secretary getting pummeled by some MSM financial reporter over the Administration's energy policy. There IS hope. The one thing you have to learn from the fool in charge is that if you don't give up it's very very hard for someone else to win.

I see people coming together. The deeply authoritarian personalities who have gravitated to sites where only their kind can post opinions are still out there, but their opinions are fossilized and without any intellectual power behind them anymore. Even they are beginning to sense it. The hypocrisy has become so blatant that their idols are failing to survive under the whithering attack of reasoning citizenry. Yes, Move-on lost the battle with their Betray US ad, but they are winning the war for the hearts and minds of citizens. Why else would TIME question Limbaugh on its cover... "Is Limbaugh good for America?" they ask.

The tide IS turning. Feel its pull. The pendulum has swung to its furthermost in the direction of tribalism, and it is stationary now, ready to swing back.

Heave ho good fellows! Cast us off from the docks at the land of Hell and get us ready for the swelling tide.

[oldpotsmuggler]

Actually, we're a capitalist society, so even MoveOn won. They turned a profit off of their ad.

[itmaybetoolate]

A prophet - crying in the wilderness.

[TakeNoNeoConPrisoners]

The rightwing is motivated by insatiable greed, materialistic values, unholy allegiance to their leaders, fundamentalist religious beliefs requiring only faith without science and reason as well as a superiority complex that separates them from the rest of mankind that they subdivide into groups based on their prejudices, class, religious and economic status. If these groups don't fit, they must be hit - hit with their condemnation, scorn, ridicule, demonization and even attack as enemies of their fascist plutocratic state.
Wealth is their god, capitalism their means to get it, fascism their tool that implements their goals and fundamentalist religious ferver their crutch for a conscience.