The Library of Modern Day Hubris, or, American Exceptionalism in the Flesh

“Ultimately, the success of the nation depends on the character of its citizens.”
~ George W. Bush on the occasion of the dedication of his Presidential Library

Well I’ll be damned, the world must be turned upside down or at least sideways, when we have to hear international war criminals lecturing us on being of good character so that our nation may succeed.  It really irks me to be lectured to by such a fourth-rate politician as Bush; he isn’t even a very good painter – his work is highly derivative and banal – but add a lot of color, have network TV anchors for boosters, and, voila!, you become a modern day Monet, or at least, perhaps,  a Winston Churchill.

But I’ll admit one could say that Bush did reach new heights in the arts – the arts of duplicity, obfuscation, lying.  And of course he made ignoring domestic and international laws, our Constitution, and humane norms of action into a science.

Indirectly, I guess, his little dedication day maxim is Bush’s way of blaming all us chickens – not him the chickenhawk – for the failure of his policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for the lack of success in the overall real economy.

One last point, about the Bush Library itself (in fact, about any of the Presidential Libraries): George Orwell once made a trenchant observation about autobiography as follows:

“Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.”

I believe that at least the more recently established Presidential Libraries fall under the rubric of autobiography – and thus Orwell’s observation pertains.

And from what I’ve read in various places about the contents [and lack thereof] of the Bush Library, using Orwell’s measure  the Bush Library is untrustworthy.

To sum up my little rant, let me quote Michel de Montaigne, speaking not specifically about Mr. Bush [The Decider] or his ilk, but about us all in the particular sense as well as the general:

“Can anything be imagined so ridiculous, that this miserable and wretched creature [man], who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole?”
― Michel de Montaigne, Apology for Raymond Sebond

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(c) Gregory V Driscoll 2013

Soul Searching

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my own military service in Viet Nam in 1966-67 and service there as a Government contractor in 1967-68 as compared to that of the World War II (WWII) generation of soldiers.

Theirs was the last generation of warriors where the subjective and objective perspectives on what occurred were in sync – in other words, their perception of their service coincided with our Government’s objectives in defeating the German, Italian and Japanese fascist aggressors. In war, the intentions of the makers of policy and designers of strategy are what count most in actuality, for they determine, in large part, what happens during and after the war. In WWII, personal and policy/strategic intentions were the same for our Government and its warriors.

After WWII, when American policy and strategy became – both by design and in their effects – an imperial policy, the subjective perception of those serving may have still been, in most cases, one of defending “peace, freedom, and democracy” but the objective reality was that the Korean war, the First and Second Indochina wars, two Iraq wars, two Afghanistan conflicts, and other proxy wars (primarily in Africa, Central and South America, and the Middle East) were no longer, in truth, about securing peace, freedom or democracy for the U.S. citizenry or other peoples; they were about securing and expanding the power of the American Empire and its elites.

Nowadays – if we wish to be honest with ourselves – we have to say, unlike in the case of WWII, Honor the warrior but not the war, and we have to work toward helping those deluded about what they have been involved in – and the citizenry in general – learn that, although their personal intentions may have been honorable, their Government’s purposes were far from honorable.  In my generation the Vietnam Veterans against the War took up that task, and now we have Iraq & Afghan Veterans against War doing the same.

In a very real sense WWII was the last “Good War” – if such a benign adjective can even be used with the horrific noun that stands for such mayhem, untold suffering, and mass murder.

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(c) Gregory V Driscoll  2012

Some thoughts on the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001

Peace can never be brought about by violent means.

Justice consists in doing what is fair and right and in accordance with law; proportionality is a key element of just punishment.

Fanatics, whether religious or ideological, care nothing about truth, only about what they believe is The Truth. That is why they are impervious to any rendition of facts, the evidence of the senses, or logic.

It is not rational to seek the answers to current problems in so-called ‘Holy Scriptures’ (whether Torah, Bible or Quran) written thousands of years ago.

Heroes are persons who perform actions beyond the call of duty. Just putting on a military uniform or those of a police officer or firefighter does not make one a hero. Nor does doing what a dangerous job entails make one, ipso facto, a hero.

The debasement of our language goes hand in hand with the corporate media’s abandonment of investigative journalism.

The corporate media’s operating principle in regard to the government nowadays is:  See no evil – Hear no evil – Speak no evil.

If American exceptionalism ever existed, then the fabric of our Constitution and adherence to its principles and goals and the rule of law were the crux of any such exceptionalism. Our governments over the past 45 years have done their utmost to destroy that American exceptionalism.

It is universally recognized that the United States-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 was an unnecessary, illegal and immoral war that put the nation, and the world, in further danger.

There were almost 3,000 victims slaughtered by the terrorist attacks on the WTC, the Pentagon, and on the thwarted attack plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. The United States-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have resulted, by conservative estimate, in the deaths of more than 120,000 victims. But, of course, our forces are fighting for peace, justice, democracy and freedom. All those dead are unfortunate but beside the point. What hubris!

Torture is always a crime, despite what former military service dodger and former VP Dick Cheney may say or write in his self-serving book and interviews.

After George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan will one day be seen to have been the second worst president this nation has ever had, replacing Richard Nixon. Mr. Obama is working diligently on being number four, nudging out Bill Clinton, who in turn eclipsed George H. W. Bush, followed by LBJ. Almost all of our present economic and foreign policy imbroglios can be found to have originated or been exacerbated as a result of one or another of these so-called leaders’ policies or lack of forthrightness.

The United States is an imperial power, wrapped in the delusions of de facto abandonment of its ideals, and mocked by the contravention of its own principles, while mouthing what are now mere shibboleths: democracy, freedom, and justice.

The calamitous problems of our democracy can be laid at the feet of both the Democrats and the Republicans – the two wings of the Corporate Party.

To rational people, being opposed to particular policies of the Israeli government does not make one anti-Semitic, just as being opposed to particular policies of the U. S. government does not make one anti-American.

Perhaps one day our government will declare its independence from the State of Israel.

If Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, and Tom Paine were alive today, they’d be organizing the people against the Powers That Be. I think even John Adams and Hamilton would join the effort.

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(c) Gregory V Driscoll 2011

Of public officials, the media, and parables

ALERT! ALERT! New York Congressman Weiner just had a news conference and admitted the pictures were of him, and that he sent them; he apologized but didn’t resign.

The corporate media in this country – and the nation by extension – have become a laughing-stock — here is a man in the public eye who made a stupid decision and the media are like sharks, covering this story here in NYC almost interminably day after day. Meanwhile, we have a president who violated the War Powers Act in regard to Libya and the same corporate media really don’t seem interested in that, or the previous president’s unnecessary war in Iraq, which, besides being illegal, has contributed to the trashing of America’s reputation, undermined our laws and Constitution, resulted in over 4,000 American deaths and tens of thousands of wounded, and hundreds of thousands if not a million Iraqi deaths in addition to who knows how many civilians wounded, and contributed immensely to our deficit and the further destruction of one of the Middle East’s most advanced nations — all not as newsworthy as a congressman’s stupid personal foible that had no effect except on his own family and the few other persons involved in his sending the pictures.

I guess it falls under a variation of the Christian New Testament parable’s story about the mote in someone’s eye and the “beam” in one’s own; the corporate media should read the holy book, not for divine guidance, but for some practical wisdom…

~ Greg Driscoll

And another thing that irks me…

The corporate media are no longer the public’s watchdogs — they are now the lapdogs of the powerful, and gladly accept the muzzle and the leash too — unless the muzzling and leashing happen to cut into profits, or tarnish their now vacuous reputations, then they may snap a bit, but they’ll never bite, and especially never go for the jugular.

Just look at the history of the “big papers” – The Washington Post (WPost), The New York Times (NYT), The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) – in regard to war, the most serious and consequential activity a nation can get involved in.   In the cases of Cuba, the wars in Indochina, the invasion of Grenada, the invasion of Panama, the wars in Central America, the coup against Allende in Chile and the aftermath, the two invasions of Iraq, expanding the war in Afghanistan, intervention in Libya, etc, etc. — the WPost, the NYT and the WSJ and the rest of the corporate media supported all those actions, and others, well beyond the point of its being obvious that a majority of Americans no longer did.

Later, continued support would have cut into readership, so the editorial boards began to change their tune, usually with little or no acknowledgement that they had helped get the nation into the conflicts in the first place by blindly, and without question, accepting whatever the government told them.

And need I mention the almost totally uncritical corporate media treatment of Israeli actions, no matter how many the IDF kill or wound, nor how they treat the Palestinian population in the occupied West Bank and those other Palestinians in the world’s largest concentration camp, Gaza?  Some media in Israel are more critical of their government’s policies than any of the corporate media in the Unites States.

I’ll say nothing about the corporate media’s coverage of the whole situation with Iran; it’s too depressing.

In my estimation, the last time that the corporate media fulfilled their role as public watchdogs was when Richard Nixon was President. In regard to Watergate, it was the WPost and the NYT that kept the pressure up through excellent investigative reporting and analysis. After that highpoint, things began to change for the worse.  When Ronald Reagan became “The Teflon President” through the media’s not pressing him too diligently about reality, they finally abdicated their historic role and became little more than shills for the powerful and celebrities.

There are occasionally good pieces of reporting in the corporate media but the reporting is inconsistent. The main thrust is always toward supporting the Powers That Be, whether Dementos or Reprobates, the Royalty of Finance, or the Captains of Industry, with little excursions into romanticizing and lauding the British Royal Family and lamenting the latest Hollywood or sports scandal or the passing of “stars”.

I think a lot of the corporate media’s approach to things comes from wishing to be with the “in group” – you know, like adolescents in high school – and from sharing the same socio-economic worldview as the so-called leaders in government, finance and industry  – “pirates” would be a more precise term than “leaders”, but I digress…

Thank heaven for the World Wide Web and the few independent newspapers and magazines that still do true investigative reporting, or even just seriously analyze the mostly inaccurate, incomplete, and rarely contextualized picture that the corporate media present to the public as “fact” regarding both domestic and international affairs, but especially the latter.  The work done by FAIR – Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting – in regard to the lack of accuracy, fairness, standards and just plain logic, clarity and honesty in the corporate media’s reporting is, to my mind, exemplary.

I haven’t even mentioned Fox News yet — but that would be like descending into hell, and I have no Virgil at my side, so I won’t take that one on…although, now that the Cerberus of Fox, Glenn Beck, will soon be leaving, maybe I’ll think about it…

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(c) Gregory V Driscoll   2011