Theos-Talk Archives (July 2003 Message tt00094)

While political issues are not normally the agenda on theosophical forums, 
here is a thoughtful commentary that all theosophists who identify with the 
"Founding Fathers" as the "agents of the Adepts" (according to HPB) -- should take 
very, very seriously. Perhaps it might even spur some of us to take some 
action to counter the imminent threat to our freedom of thought before a repeat 
of Nazi Germany, as the reflection of the Holy Roman Empire and the antithesis 
of a Universal Brotherhood of ALL humanity, rears its ugly head in America -- 
and chews up all of us theosophists and other "free thinkers" in its voracious 
maw. Maybe it's time for the "companions" to wake up, join together, and 
come to the aid of their fellow beings -- before it becomes too late to relate. 
With best hopes for the future, Leonardo

==================================

What Is Happening In America?

By Eliot Weinberger

6-18-03

Eliot Weinberger was born in 1949 in New York City, where he still lives. He 
is the primary translator of Octavio Paz into English. His anthology American 
Poetry Since 1950: Innovators and Outsiders (1993) was a bestseller in Mexico, 
and his edition of Jorge Luis Borges's Selected Non-Fictions (1999) received 
the National Book Critics Circle prize for criticism. In 1992, he was given 
PEN's first Gregory Kolovakos Award for his work in promoting Hispanic 
literature in the United States, and in 2000 he was the first American literary writer 
to be awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle by the government of Mexico. Eliot 
Weinberger's most recent publications are the collection of essays Karmic 
Traces: 1993-1999 and a translation of Bei Dao's Unlock (with Iona Man-Cheong), 
both published by New Directions in 2000. He is the editor of The New Directions 
Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry (2003). 



This article, one of the best short analyses of the Bush

administration's policies, was first published by "Vorwarts," Germany

on June 8, 2003


In the Western democracies in the last fifty years, we have grown

accustomed to governments whose policies on specific issues may be good or 
bad, 

but which essentially institute incremental changes to the status quo. The 
major

exceptions have been Thatcher and Reagan, but even their programs of

dismantling systems of social welfare seem, in retrospect, mild 
compared to what is happening in the United States under George Bush--
or more exactly, the ruling junta that tells Bush what to do and say.


It is unquestionably the most radical government in modern American

history, one whose ideology and actions have become so pervasive, and are so

unquestionably mirrored by the mass media here, that the population seems 
to have forgotten what "normal" is.


Church and State 
George Bush is the first unelected President of the United States, installed 
by 
a right-wing Supreme Court in a kind of judicial coup d'etat. He is the first 
to 
actively subvert one of the pillars of American democracy: the separation of 
church and state. There are now daily prayer meetings and Bible study groups 
in every branch of the government, and religious organizations are being 
given 
funds to take over educational and welfare programs that have always been the 
domain of the state.


Bush is the first president to invoke the specific "Jesus Christ" rather

than an ecumenical "God," and he has surrounded himself with evangelical

Christians, including his Attorney General, who attends a church where

he talks in tongues.


Military Aggression

It is the first administration to openly declare a policy of unilateral 
aggression, 
a "Pax Americana" where the presence of allies (whether England or Bulgaria) 
is 
agreeable but unimportant; where international treaties no longer apply to 
the 
United States; and where-- for the first time in history-- this country 
reserves 
the right to non-defensive, "pre-emptive" strikes against any nation on 
earth, 
for whatever reason it declares.


Race Laws

It is the first-- since the internment of Japanese-Americans in World

War II-- to enact special laws for a specific ethnic group. Non-citizen

young Muslim men are now required to register and subject themselves to

interrogation. Many hundreds have been arrested and held without trial or 
access 
to legal assistance-- a violation of another pillar of American democracy: 
habeas 
corpus. Many have been taken from their families and deported on minor 
technical 
immigration violations; the whereabouts of many others are still unknown. 
And, in 
Guantanamo Bay, where it is said that they are now preparing execution 
chambers, 
hundreds of foreign nationals -- including a 13-year-old and a man who claims 
to be 
100-- have been kept for almost two years in a limbo that clearly contravenes 
the
Geneva Convention.


Economic Policy

Similar to the Reagan era, it is an administration openly devoted to helping

the rich and ignoring the poor, one that has turned the surplus of the Clinton

years into a massive deficit through its combination of enormous tax

cuts for the wealthy (particularly those who earn more than a million dollars 
a

year) and increases in defense spending. (And, although Republicans always

campaign on "less government," it has created the largest new government 
bureaucracy in history: the Department of Homeland Security.) The Financial 
Times of England, hardly a hotbed of leftists, has categorized this economic 
policy as "the lunatics taking over the asylum."


Undermining Law

But more than Reagan-- whose policies tended to benefit the rich in general--

most of Bush's legislation specifically enriches those in his lifelong inner

circle from the oil, mining, logging, construction, and pharmaceutical 
industries. 

At the middle level of the bureaucracy, where laws may be issued without

Congressional approval, hundreds of regulations have been changed to lower

standards of pollution or safety in the workplace, to open up wilderness

areas for exploitation, or to eliminate the testing of drugs..


Corporate Kickbacks
Billions in government contracts have been awarded, without competition,

to corporations formerly run by administration officials.


Undermining Law - II

In a country where the most significant social changes are enacted by

court rulings, rather than by legislation, the Bush administration has been

filling every level of the complex judicial system with ultra-right 
ideologues,

especially those who have protected corporations from lawsuits by individuals 
or

environmental groups, and those who are opposed to women's reproductive 
rights. 
It remains to be seen how far they can push their antipathy to contraception 
and

abortion.

They have already banned a rare form of late-term abortion that is only 
given 
when the health of the mother is endangered or the fetus is terribly 
deformed, 
and a large portion of Bush's heralded billions to Africa to fight AIDS will 
be 
devoted to so-called "abstinence" education.


Totalitarian America

Most of all, America doesn't feel like America any more. The climate of

militarism and fear, similar to any totalitarian state, permeates

everything. Bush is the first American p-resident in memory to swagger around 
in a military uniform, though he himself-- like all of his most militant 
advisers-- evaded the Vietnam War. (Even Eisenhower, a general and a war 
hero, never wore his uniform while he was president).

In the airports of provincial cities, there are frequent announcements in 
that assuring, disembodied voice of science-fiction films:

"The Department of Homeland Security advises that the Terror Alert is

now. . . Code Orange." Every few weeks there is an announcement that another 
terrorist attack is imminent, and citizens are urged to take ludicrous 
measures, 
like sealing their windows against biological and chemical attacks, and to 
report 
the "suspicious" activities of their neighbors.


The Pentagon institutes the "Total Information Awareness" program to collect

data on the ordinary activities of ordinary citizens (credit card charges,

library book withdrawals, university course enrollments) and when this is

perceived as going too far, they change the name to "Terrorist Information 
Awareness" and continue to do the same things. Millions are listed in airport 
security computers as potential terrorists, including antiwar demonstrators 
and pacifists. Critics are warned to "watch what they say" and lists of 
"traitors" are posted on the internet.


The war in Iraq has been the most extreme manifestation of this new America, 
and almost a casebook study in totalitarian techniques; First, an Enemy 
is created by blatant lies that are endlessly repeated until the 
population believes it: in this case, that Iraq was linked to the attack on 
the World Trade Center, and that it possesses vast "weapons of mass 
destruction" that threaten the world.


Then, a War of Liberation, entirely portrayed by the mass media in 
terms of our Heroic Troops, with little or no imagery of casualties and 
devastation, and with morale-inspiring, scripted "news" scenes--such as the 
toppling of the Saddam statue and the heroic "rescue" of Private Lynch-- 
worthy of Soviet cinema.


Finally, as has happened with Afghanistan, very little news of the chaos that

has followed the Great Victory. Instead, the propaganda machine moves 
on to a new Enemy-- this time, Iran.


It is very difficult to speak of what is happening in America without 
resorting to 
the hyperbolic cliches of anti-Americanism that have lost their meaning after 
so 
many decades, but that have now finally come true.


Perhaps one can only recite the facts, and I have mentioned only some of

them here. This is, quite simply, the most frightening American 
administration in modern times, one that is appalling both to the left and 
to traditional conservatives. This junta is unabashed in its imperialist 
ambitions; it is enacting an Orwellian state of Perpetual War; it is 
dismantling, or attempting to dismantle, some of the most 
fundamental tenets of American democracy; it is acting without 
opposition within the government, and is operating so quickly on so many 
fronts that it has overwhelmed and exhausted any popular opposition.


Perhaps it cannot be stopped, but the first step toward slowing it down

is the recognition that this is an American government unlike any other 
in this country's history, and one for whom democracy is an obstacle.



History teaches us nothing but only punishes us for not learning its 
lessons.

-- Vladimir Kliuchesky


"Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know."