Notes on the State of Things

Recommended Reading:

"Shine, Perishing Republic," by Robinson Jeffers. Jeffers was responding to the U. S.'s involvement in the "Great War" (WWI). I date the end of our republic and the beginning of the Empire to the poet's salient observations.

Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman. Whitman was the great visionary of an America that might have been but, alas, is not. His poems remind us of the road not taken. Read them and weep.

Annals, by Cornelius Tacitus. Tacitus is often considered to be the greatest historian that ancient Rome produced, and the Annals are his masterpiece. He is particularly important today because of his understanding of the social role of the historian: "to pass political and moral judgments on the past and thereby affect the future" (Ronald Mellor, The Historians of Ancient Rome, p. 393). Mellor adds: "In these books Tacitus creates a psychological portrait of the tyrant and his flatterers. The historian has no interest in sociological or economic explanations; he is concerned with political life, the loss of liberty, and the pathology of power" (pp. 393-394). The relevance of Tacitus increases when one considers the ways in which he would contrast Roman life and character under Empire with life and character during the Republic. More reading and weeping, I'm afraid.

John Hersey, Hiroshima. I first read this book in Middle School. It was a riveting read--especially so for me because my father, a nuclear chemist, had worked on the Manhattan Project (the secret government program that produced the atomic bomb). It chronicles the day America turned a moral corner that can never be un-turned; the day on which the military-industrial-complex took its "first communion" with Satan.

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism. Even more reading and weeping.

James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. This book is suggestive of how those of us who live here in the heart of Leviathan can engage in effective political action. Entering a voting booth under duopolistic monoparty rule is no more harmful nor helpful than entering one of Wilhelm Reich's "orgone accumulators." Personally, I think I would take my chances with Reich... In any event, in a pseudemocracy such as we have in these Benighted States today, voting is an exercise in futility. Nevertheless, I recommend that people continue to do it so that we do not lose the habit. When the Empire falls, we may be able to re-invent a democratic republic.

What might cause the Empire to fall? Any number of things, but those of us on the inside may hasten the day by subverting it from within. Scott's book shows "the manifold strategies by which subordinate groups manage to insinuate their resistance, in disguised forms, into the public transcript" (p. 136). In other words, they "booby-trap" the Narrative.

In my view, an important aspect of any resistance to the Neo-Fascist/Christo-Fascist Leviathan is to reclaim the religious imagination. Left-leaning people have made the mistake of ignoring religion, thinking, I suppose, that if they did so, religion would just go away. Let's just get this out of the way up front: RELIGION IS NOT GOING AWAY ANYTIME SOON. And since the left abandoned religion--rather than cultivating the many ways in which religious thinking and literature may bolster a leftist agenda--it has been twisted into a potent source of totalitarian motivation by the plutocratic enemies of republican (i.e., meritocratic) governance.

Religious fundamentalism represents a failure of the religious imagination. Rationality can (and should) be used as a means of curbing credulity and wishful thinking, but it will never replace religious creativity. The latter must be harnessed for worthwhile ends.

Another reason to read Tacitus was his biting wit. Perhaps the closest thing we have to a Tacitus today is Al Franken. Tacitean shaming, scolding, and ridicule all contribute to the subversive program by means of which we must drive the neo-Fascists from power. Franken understands this and is leading the charge. And since the religious right in this country is so utterly rife with hypocrites, it can seem like shooting fish in a barrel. But these aren't gold-fish we're aiming at --they're piranhas. Therefore, fire at will.

Let me be clear that the subversive activity that I am advocating is only the sort that is protected by the Bill of Rights. I do not recommend violence in any form. Violence is, in fact, anti-political. I advocate the politics of continual "nuisancery," ridicule, and non-cooperation. It is the sort of political platform that can be carried out by all of us individually and daily.

Bill O'Reilly is a swine; Ann Coulter a word I have the decency not to print. Fox News is a tele-tabloid: if you actually watch that channel for information about the world, you are a dupe. These people and the organization that pays them emit a very bad odor in civilized society. We should take every opportunity to show them the door.

Bush and his co-conspirators are criminals. There will be no justice in this land until they are arrested and brought to trial by an international tribunal. I don't give a damn that they have refused to allow the United States to submit to the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. That fact is just a further indication that they are well aware of their guilt. We must condemn them and their criminality at every opportunity.

And we must lament the end of the American Republic and the rise of the American Empire, the engine of which is the military-industrial-complex.

Our task is long and grim. Traitors (like the Republicrat-Democan duopoly, the 4th estate, and compliant religious communities) surround us on every side. But as Mao said: "A revolution is not a dinner-party." Nevertheless, if we work at it every day, we can make it approximate a Rabelasian carnival.