Did you notice these gems from my recent kitchen-sink email ?
"Capitol Crimes Chapter: Furor of the Reich [uncapitulated redux] "
the identical Santa Claus metaphor which in NOV2006 become the cornerstone of my Prognosis and Paradigm for the infantility of Americanist denial-ism QED Cowtowne 2MAR2007 /////////
"Why the Stories We Tell Matter So Much ," our national mythology sees the United States as uniquely successful in world history. We see our success, and our power on the world stage, as inherently tied to superior moral virtue. We are so successful because we are uniquely virtuous, and our national power confirms our morality, in relation to which all other peoples and all other countries can only suffer in comparison. One of the many dangerous and inevitable consequences of this view is an often virulent racism that has been reflected in our treatment of many very numerous groups of people: the Native Americans, the slaves who were brought here and were an integral part of the new country's economy, Germans in World War I (German-Americans were the "scum of the melting pot," who now needed to be gotten "rid of"), the Japanese in World War II (the "yellow Japs," who were "regularly compared" to "monkeys, baboons, and gorillas"), and a number of other foreigners and immigrants. Very recently, we witnessed the sickening spectacle of this atavistic racism unleashed in the
wake of Hurricane Katrina.
I expressed the relevant part of this national mythology as follows:
In the most extreme (and, one could argue, most consistent) version of this tale, non-Western parts of the world are less than human -- and they are subhuman by choice. They are immoral, and sometimes even evil. Since we represent the good and they represent the evil, we are surely entitled to improve them, by invasion and bombing if necessary. If they do not threaten us today, they might at some indeterminate time in the future. And while we might kill many innocent civilians in our campaign of civilization, those who survive will be infinitely better off than they would have been otherwise. Besides, how "innocent" can any of them be -- since they are members of inferior, less than fully human civilizations, and since they are so by choice?http://powerofnarrative
One point is crucial: a critical part of our national mythology is the insistence on viewing our nation and ourselves as Americans in comparative terms. When we insist that we are uniquely "good" and "virtuous," this logically necessitates a further conclusion: we are better than everyone else. We are "the Good Guys." The emphasis is not only on "Good," but on "the" : we are the Good Guys in a way that no one else is, or can ever be .../...
This kind of perspective arises in large part out of what [ a CHRISTIAN with Harvard Divinity Masters degree] in Chris Hedges **check out his recent book:
calls "mythic war," a subject I discussed in the third part of my Iran series. Note how Hedges describes this phenomenon (from his book, War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning), ...The potency of myth is that it allows us to make sense of mayhem and violent death. ... By turning history into myth we transform random events into a chain of events directed by a will greater than our own, one that is determined and preordained. We are elevated above the multitude. We march toward nobility. And no society is immune.
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http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2007/03/nation-of-stupid-children-who-refuse-to.html
nation-of-stupid-children-who-refuse-to .March 01, 2007
A Nation of Children, Who Refuse to Give Up the [MYTHICAL] Lies
By the age of eight or nine, most children realize that Santa Claus isn't a real person, just as they know the Easter Bunny and similar pleasantries are only make-believe, tales of imagination offered to add a bit of fun to the holidays. The great majority of children give up these fantasies without experiencing emotional upheaval that remotely approaches serious trauma. Those very rare children fortunate enough to be raised by adults who accord them the seriousness and respect they deserve know such stories to be ones of invention from the beginning.Unfortunately, the great majority of Americans -- led by a relentlessly trivial and mendacious political class and a comparably anti-intellectual media -- never approach again the psychological achievement of children who undergo this transition. Still more unfortunately, most of these same children, while able to recognize fabrications of the Santa Claus variety, become prisoners of the American mythology that I recently discussed . Their pathetic plight is understandable in one sense, since almost no one will disabuse them of the lies with which they comfort themselves. Nonetheless, one can legitimately hope and expect that upon attaining adulthood, more individuals would be prepared to exercise even limited independent powers of assessment. But if you have such expectations, you will almost always be disappointed.
Thus it is that we have repellently idiotic episodes of the following kind: .../...
.../... And so we debate whether these lives were "wasted." With the blind ferocity of religious maniacs, we enforce our new Puritan code, which demands that certain prohibited thoughts may never be uttered. Violation of this code means banishment from public life and from further "serious" consideration. Every matter of importance is reduced to the intellectual level of a remarkably backward house pet.
Meanwhile, no one will stop this criminal war and occupation. And no one will do a goddamned thing to stop the next war, which could alter all our lives forever.
How in the world do most Americans face themselves each morning? Someone needs to explain that to me. I truly would like to know. posted by Arthur Silber we gotta pull the plug on this COMATOSE NATION sometime soon... more antidote here: http://www.chris-floyd.com
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PS: how cute, the 2nd google hit for search of " uncapitaulated " is this