voca me cum benedictus

A little while back we were having an unremarkable chat with a friend of the Gazette during which we remarked that Pope Benedict's definition of faith (Spe Salvi) seemed to us to define faith as a social committment by us to live as we would like our reality to be. Our friend immediately interjected a protest. "No, not just that!" Detecting the essential unilateralism of such a definition, he insisted that, "God is really communicating to us from the Cross."

Communicate? What a goddamn piss-poor way to “communicate”. Was He some sort of Cosmic Imbecile or what?

We rolled our eyes and let it slide; but in truth such palaver rubs us the wrong way. If God is so damn eager to “communicate” with us, why doesn’t he shower us with iPods from Heaven? I’m sure He could cut a favorable licensing deal with Steve Jobs. Why He could then keep in personal touch with each and all of us, answering our personal questions and tailor-texting us instructions on what we needed to do. But nooo! Instead he pulls a Rockefeller and sends out invites via third class mail. This Wireless Act on Stick was such a dumb and inane way of “communicating” as to leave one wondering if maybe God was that than which nothing more fucked up stupid could be conceived. And not wondering for very long either.

In fact why bother “communicating” at all? Actions speak louder than words, my mom always said. Who cares about messages? What most of us need is food for the tummy, money for operation and maybe a little better luck than getting our arms blown off by some US /Israeli drone or being born a girl sex toy in Thailand. This blathering mantra that “He died on the Cross for our Sins” is decidedly underwhelming. Whoopee dooo. I mean, here’s this ‘Guy’ whose got all the power and goods in the universe and what does he decide to do? To incarnate himself in some filthy, fanatic-filled backwater and then get himself in Big Trouble with the local sheriffs. The whole thing strikes me as nothing more than a Self-indulgent act of Divine Slumming.

And who gives a rat's ass about “God sharing our humanity.” Big deal. In case He hasn’t figured it out, most of us would rather the sharing go the other way... a little co-participation in Heavenly Ease or Seventy Two Virgins... whatever. But it gets worse. When the Beloved Darling ascends back to Daddy and his Heavenly Mansion on Park Place, does he provide any coat-tails for the rest of us? Noooo.... we’re still here in stuck in the muck of things. Looks to me like He’s just another typical Hi-There! One-of-the-fellas, rich boy.

The whole thing pisses me off. With gods like that who needs devils?

-0O0-

Of course I could never have such thoughts in Mexico. Not in a thousand years. The truth is different down there somehow. One doesn’t think about the “message” of the Crucifixion. There really is nothing to “communicate”. It is there. It is a fact. It is overwhelming.

As von Balthasar would say, we are “endowed to be a response” and to the theological drama of Good Friday we respond with horror, first, but thereupon with compassion and renunciation. If we cannot un-nail Jesus from the cross or free him from the lash, we can at least renounce the conducts, attitudes and lusts that lead to a man’s crucifixion and we resolve to do unto others as we would have done for him had we been there. That after all is the greatest whole sacrifice, is it not? (Mark 12:33)

No. The truth appears different down there. In Mexico, the Crucifixion evokes a decided response.

Evokes..... Ex Vocare..... Ah , well, in that case...

©WCG, 2009
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Existential Exercise

In an address to local clergy Pope Benedict XVI commented that the liturgy is like a school in which to learn the art of being human and to experience familiarity with Christ. The Eucharist in particular must be lived as a sign and seed of charity, he said.

That the Eucharist is something lived out through compassion with others which itself is worth more than all burnt offerings is an idea stated in the Gospels themselves. That public worship is really a "practice session" for learning the "art of being human" is an intriguing take on the functional purpose of religion.

©WCG, 2009
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Warped Mirror

“The elephants gave spine chilling screams. The baby cow elephant was lying in the narrow barrier moat on her back her legs up... she could not move... We did what we had to do but it broke my heart.”

Interior of Fraunkirche, Dresden

Close on the heels of its orchestrated witch-hunt of a so-called “holocaust denier” Der Spiegel suddenly executed a seamless volt-face and declaims that the holocaust of Dresden was no big deal, after all.

The declamation takes the form of an “interview” with Frederick Taylor, a purported historian, who has written a revisionist account of the Anglo-American firebombing of the exquisitely beautiful baroque jewel on Elbe river on the night of 13-14 February 1945. Taylor, who is English, was interviewed by Spiegel in 2005, after his book was published in 2004; but it is apparently time for a re-quel.

Taylor’s account is, in fact, largely a rehash of standard Allied self-exculpation. Nevertheless, under current definitions, Taylor’s work qualifies as revisionism in that he seeks to minimize the number of casualties as well as to minimize the moral culpability of the Anglo-Americans for the slaughter of innocents.

The main thrust of Taylor’s polemic is that Dresden was a “legitimate” military target and well ... you know, all’s fair in love in war,

“I remain unconvinced that maximizing civilian casualties -- rather than winning the war by whatever means necessary -- was their chief objective.”

The premise of Taylor’s statement is that there is a distinction between winning a war and the wholesale slaughter of civilians. Not only is the distinction correct, it is the basis for the whole structure of international conventions on warfare, the premise of which is that it is possible to wage and win war with an eye to minimizing civilian casualties.

The scurrilous falsity of Taylor’s “unconvinced” conclusion is found in the prepositional phrase; “by any means necessary” which simply swallows the distinction. By any means necessarily includes maximizing civilian casualties.

This forensic artifice is well known to lawyers. It is the “small exception” that swallows the rule, the “fine print” that destroys any real obligations under a contract or, simply, the “weasel clause”.

The fact is that the British high command had adopted a policy of mass slaughter as a means to winning the war. The evolution of that policy was an issue of intent carried on the wings of happenstance.

The idea of terror bombing preceded the World War and was the brainchild of the Italian General Guilio Douhet who argued that strategic bombing would avoid stalemates on the battlefields, such as those endured for four grim years during the Great War. Douhet saw war as a “battle of wills” and concluded that the quickest, and ultimately most “humane”, way to win would be to directly target the defenceless civilian population, crushing its will to resist or provoking it to revolt. (Douhet, The Command of the Air, (1927) Office of Air Force History, Wash. D.C.)

The Washington Treaty (1922) had outlawed the bombing of non-military and civilian targets; nevertheless, Douhet’s ideas found receptive ears in the United States and Britain. Hugh Trenchard, RAF Commander 1919-1930 and Billy Mitchell both agreed that the enemy’s center of gravity was his will to fight and that this could be undermined by prolonged attacks against the enemy’s “vital centers.” However, they both rejected the idea of targetting civilians directly. In their view both ability and will to resist would be undermined by targetting vital infrastructures (factories, food centers, communications etc.) (Phillip S. Melinger The Paths of Heaven - The Evolution of Airpower Theory (1997) Air Univ Press; Jones, Neville, The Origins of Strategic Bombing (1973) London, Oxf. Univ. Pr.) The tactical differences between Douhet and Trenchard/Mitchell underlay the later distinction between area bombing and precision bombing strategies.

Hitler, who knew a thing or two about many things, worried about English air doctrine. In May 1933 he told an English interviewer that modern warfare had sped up so much that swift bombing machines could lay waste to European capitals within 40 minutes of war being declared. In 1936, Hitler put forward proposals to ban all bombing outside immediate battle-zones. This view reflected German military doctrine that, at the time, viewed air power as a species of artillery. Needless to say, nothing came of it. (J. M. Spaight Bombing Vindicated (1944) London.

In the event, Hitler’s fears were realized; but the initiation of English terror bombing was not a simple issue of applying theory to ground. As usual, it was more a combined question of what people wanted to do, what they were capable of doing, what they thought they could get away with.and what they felt they had to appear to do.

The war began conventionally enough with both sides bombing eachother’s docked fleets. The British Ruhr Plan (1939) envisioned bombing Germany’s industrial centers in the event the Low Countries were attacked. In May 1940, they were. By what is now indisputably acknowledged as a communications mistake, the Germans bombed the center of Rotterdam. The English retaliated by bombing Rotterdam’s oil refineries as well as oil tankers in Bremen and Hamburg. Britain also bombed Aachen for no particular reason than that it was there.

The Germans now bombed installations in the Rhone Valley and conducted an air raid on Paris. The French bombed Munich and Berlin in retaliation. The English bombed an airfield in Rouen and the Germans bombed one in Jersey. The English bombed Kiel and began night raids over Germany. It is now July 1940, and the Battle of Britain has begun.

For the most part, both sides contented themselves with bombing industrial and military installations of various sorts, particularly ports and air fields. However, in late August, Luftwaffe bombers lost course and mistakenly bombed civilian areas in London. Unlike the English, the Germans did not have radar. England retaliated by bombing Berlin. Germany accepted the penalty and refrained from further retaliation; but when England continued with several more attacks, Hitler flew into a rage and ordered the unrestricted bombing of London.

The cat was out of the bag. But as early as the month previous, in July, Sir Charles Portal, then Chief of Bomber Command, wrote a private letter in which he complained of policy constraints on allowable targets. “We have one offensive weapon in the whole of the armory, the one means by which we can undermine the morale of a large part of the enemy people...and at the same time...dislocate the major party of their heavy industry...” (Letter A.M. Portal to A.V.M. Douglas (July 17, 1940) AIR 14/1930)

In so saying, Portal was merely echoing Churchill’s own opinion, expressed ten days before that “ When I look around to see how we can win the war I see that there is only one sure path. .... and that is an absolutely devastating exterminating attack by very heavy bombers from this country on the Nazi homeland.” (Churchill, Their Finest Hour Vol. 2, (London 1949) p. 505; Max Hastings, Bomber Command (1979) Dial Press. )

The war of intentions now escalated. On September 5, 1940, Hitler made his famous threat that “when they declare that they will step up their attacks on our cities, then we shall erase their cities.” On September 9, 1940 British pilots were told that if they could not hit their intended targets they need not feel any compulsion to bring their bombs back; they could always dump them on secondary targets even if they were in “built up” areas. (The Strategic Air War, 1939-1945 (1998) London.)

In October 1940, Charles Portal was elevated to Chief of the Air Staff and on December 12, 1940 Portal told the War Cabinet that Churchill had instructed that there be a change of policy “from strictly military objectives to a political objective, namely the effect on German morale “although “some” industrial importance still factored in (War Cab. Meeting. (12 Dec. 1940) WM 40 305 12/12/1940 CAB 65/16.

To all intents and purposes, the policy of targetted precision bombing had been abandoned. The only person who didn’t get it was Trenchard himself who, in early 1941, protested from retirement that that the fact that bombs missed their targets did not matter because even if 99% missed their target they “all help to kill damage, frighten or interfere with Germans ...and therefore [are] doing useful work.” (Memorandum Lord Trenchard. 19 May 1941 in SAO IV.) Portal’s wry comment to a colleague was that Trenchard was beating a dead horse, as the policy had already been adopted ( AIR 8/283, June 4, 1941)

Still there was resistance to the policy. There were those who questioned the efficacy of the Douhet’s “will-breaking” theory. Others questioned whether England had the resources to conduct such a campaign when ammunition and planes were needed elsewhere as well. On the 7 July 1941, Churchill, irked by the concentration of too much air power on strictly military objectives complained that “the devastation of the Germany cities is urgently needed.” (Church ill, War Papers p. 909.)

A month later, in August 1941, the War Cabinet released the Butt Report which analyzed the results of English bombing and concluded, unhappily, that less than a third of the sorties flown got within five kilometers of their intended targets. In other words, the British were, despite themselves, engaged in random bombing.

The proponents of area bombing were delighted. If Britain couldn’t be precise she could at least be indiscriminate. The aim of the attacks was now defined an Air Staff paper dated 23 September 1941, as follows

"The ultimate aim of an attack on a town area is to break the morale of the population which occupies it. To ensure this, we must achieve two things: first, we must make the town physically uninhabitable and, secondly, we must make the people conscious of constant personal danger. The immediate aim, is therefore, twofold, namely, to produce (i) destruction and (ii) fear of death."

Then, in February 1942, Sir Frederich Lindeman, Churchill’s German Jewish science advisor, issued the so called Dehousing Paper in which he argued that de-housing the the industrial worker would break German morale. Bombs were not to be wasted on middle class homes since these were surrounded by gardens and open space. More bang for the buck if dropped on apartments and inner city tenements. Accordingly, General Directive No. 5 (S. 46368/D.C.A.S) 2/14/42 provided

“ It has been decided that the primary objective you your operations should be focused on the morale of the enemy civil population and in particular industrial workers.”

Bombers were to “employ forces without restriction”.

From time to time, bombing policy was adjusted to the exigencies of the war. Thus the Casablanca Directive (CS (21 Jan. 1943) 16536 S.46368 ACA/AX) provided for “The progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic systems and the undermining of the morale of the German people...”

This brief summary of bureaucratic policy making shows that, despite twists, turns and modulations, British air policy was astonishingly consistent since the early days of Douhet and Trenchard: breaking enemy morale was always a policy goal.

It should not be thought that the bombing of dams, factories, rail-lines, food centers, hospitals and other infrastructures somehow did not kill civilians. It was always understood that it would, just as it was understood that the “military” blockade of Germany in the Great War had induced starvation. The difference in modulation is that by no later than 1942, the pretence of a military target was completely off the table. The direct target of bombing was German civilians and if military targets were collaterally damaged so much the better.

Der Spiegel’s Taylor cannot escape these memoranda, and states “Portal thought that the resulting damage to the German war effort and civilian morale would lead to victory within six months. A second memorandum a year later made a similar argument.”

Aha! So then, Britain, and through her, the Americans, admitedly did adopt a policy of mass civilian slaughter. But, but! Taylor argues, Portal states these things “only in so far as they aided victory over Germany -- rather than things in which he took some kind of personal satisfaction.” Oh well... in that case....

Here Taylor resorts to another trick from the sophist’s bag of tools: switching focus. The topic under discussion was whether or not the Allies had some sort of justification for bombing Dresden. According to der Spiegel, Taylor is going to explain to us that “there was a clear military rationale behind the attack” Therefore the issue concerns the nature of this military rationale. The issue is not whether Charles Portal is some sort of salivating psychopath creaming in his pants as he reads bombing reports.

Of course, such sophistries have the additional advantage of reducing what purports to be a serious discussion into a trite and imbecilic soap opera in which the world war gets explained in terms of evil stepsisters, growling gnomes, and a whole cast of us-good guys versus them awful, icky-pooh, horrible, yuk-monsters. Sixty years on and we’re still awash in Allied War Propaganda masquerading as history.

IF it is established that there was no legitimate military target at Dresden, then one can go on to ask whether the policy had some deranged personal or collective animus. But asserting that no personal hostility existed does not establish military legitimacy.

As for "legitimacy," Taylor advances the tired argument that Dresden was an important railway hub “directly linked to the conduct of the war” on the Eastern Front 120 miles away. The funny thing about railroads, is that they tend to be directly linked to places. But according to Taylor “The aim of the bombing was quite deliberately to destroy the center of the city, thereby making the movement of German soldiers and civilians impossible.”

Does Taylor actually whisper the “and civilians” part, hoping we kind-a won’t notice? Taylor avoids outright lying, but he also avoids explaining the murderous policy behind the “and.” He obscures rather than clarifies that the policy was one of so-called “dehousing”.

As a specific matter, the reference to “civilians’ is an unmistakable allusion to the fact that a hundred thousand and more civilians were desperately fleeing into Dresden from the murderous Russian advance to the East through Silesia. One Red Cross worker described the scene,

“ There were so many refugees from Silesia... What I saw there of the suffering and misery can hardly be described. There were women, old men and children in a condition that was not human anymore... a woman came and begged me for milk for her child...and showed me the child.... I wasn’t a doctor but I coud see that the child was dead, it was stiff and blue and must have been dead for several days.”

Taylor does not explain how disrupting civilian flight served a military objective. In fact, as anyone can figure out, the mass movement of refugees from the east would lead to a natural chaos that of itself impeded military movements from west to east.

As for purely military movements, what Taylor alludes to is the oft dredged up request by the Russians to bomb the rail communications at Berlin and Leipzig. Although the major thrust of the Russian request was for the British and Americans to tie down German forces in the West, and although the major military thrust of the Russians was directly at Berlin further north, it is true that Russia was concerned about its flanks to the south and that, at the same time, it had its eyes on taking Prague and Vienna, once it reestablished its supply lines and discipline among its own troops, now swarming over the borders of Germany proper. It may also be assumed for the sake of argument, as the U.S. Air Force claims, that for technical reasons relating to railway networking, disruption of the Berlin - Leipzig line required bombing the Dresden rail junction to the south of Leipzig.

The problem with all these rationales, taken at face value, is very simply that the Allies did far, far more than just bomb the railroads. The air surveillance photos prove beyond doubt that the destruction of Dresden was not the unfortunate and regrettable collateral result of some stray bombs that “missed” their target.

The photos indisputably prove that the target was not “communications” but Dresden.

And Nuremberg

And Cologne

And countless other German cities.

All German cities over 50,000 were 50 - 80% destroyed. By some calculations Germany was 20% destroyed. In June 1945 Gen. Omar Bradley said that Germany was utterly and completely destroyed.

It will never be known for sure how many were incinerated in Dresden. The official accounts of 35,000 (now minimized to 25,000) tabulated only the identified dead based on local records. They cannot possibly account for the streams of refugees, the people who were incinerated beyond recognition, the mass graves of people quickly burned on pyres.

The Nazi count of 400,000 was undoubtedly exaggerated, but estimates of in the vicinity of 100,000 to 150,000 are not implausible. At the time, the Red Cross put the estimate at 250,000. But in the end, arguing that only 25,000 victims were incinerated at Dresden is much like arguing that only 35,000 victims died at Dachau. In either case a holocaust is minimized by arguing over a singular detail. Just as the overall impact of Nazi policies on the Jews of Europe was undeniably horrible, so too the overall impact of Allied terror bombing on Germany as a nation and as a civilization was horrible and undeniable. [ FN1 ]

Churchill and, in the United States, Henry Morgenthau, aimed not simply to defeat Germany but to eradicate her. What else could Churchill have meant when he wrote after Dresden that the time had come to reconsider "the question of bombing German cities "simply for the sake of increasing the terror"? [Churchill Memo] If the blood-thirsty things Churchill said about Germans were put into Hitler’s mouth to be said about Jews, they would be cited as proof-positive of genocidal intent. Morgenthau’s policy paper for the post-war insisted that all of Germany be converted to a cow pasture and Germans reduced eeking out a survival on a “permanent diet of potatoes.”

There are those who indignantly claim, as if it were a self-evident fact, that there can be no moral equivalence. Why not? Why is the death of one child more morally worthy than the death of another? Was Coventry Cathedral more worthy in God’s eyes than Fraunkirche?

The assessment of legal or moral culpability has always been based on examining the two components of act (what was actually done and the resultant damage) and intent. That done, the evaluation goes on to assess circumstances in mitigation, justification or excuse, (as in stealing bread but in order to feed one’s child).

There is certainly enough evidence to suggest a prima facie case of democide by the Allies. The stated British intent was not simply to “terrorize” Germans but to destroy Germany as a physical, demographic, economic and cultural entity. Surely, no one thought it would be possible to “exterminate” all 65 million Germans but the goal was to kill and devastate on such a colossal and catastrohpic scale that the survivors would be reduced to a state of permanently terrorized sub-subsistence. This policy was in fact continued, by other means, after the cessation of hostilities, in what amounted to a program of de-construction and mass starvation. [ FN-2 ]

But Der Spiegel is hardly interested in presenting an even-handed account that provide an objective basis for a comparative assessment of policies. Instead it serves up Taylor’s pseudo history the sole aim of which is to obfuscate and exculpate Allied culpability for what were in fact war crimes. This follows directly on the heels of a two week long witch-hunt in which Spiegel sought to induce a frenzied hysteria over the blasphemous fact that an excommunicated bishop in Argentina had had the temerity to read and believe revisionist accounts of the Jewish holocaust.

Spiegel has nothing to contribute to any serious historical discussion. But that, most evidently, is not its intent. What Spiegel is hawking a species of mandatory self-abasement that minimizes anything done to Germany by the Allies while insisting that Nazi Germany alone committed the greatest evils ever done ever.

This is a warped mirror. National Masochism is not a proper antidote to National Socialism. It is untrue, unnatural and unhealthy and serves only to foster increasing and festering resentment. Ultimately, this is a stupid policy that puts right in the mouths of neo-nazi boors. The bombing of Dresden was a terrible, inexcusable and vile atrocity. Spiegel’s white-wash flies in the face of decency.

It is also a polemical policy that is injurious to us because it promotes the false notion of Allied exceptionalism. -- the idea that as they could no good we could no wrong. Denial of the German Holocaust becomes a necessary correlative within a trite and offensive manicheism that ends up excusing away humanitarian crimes in Gaza and terror bombing in Japan, Vietnam and Iraq. While neither of these war crimes approachthe sheer scale of the World War’s horrors, that is small justification. Better to remember that self-righteousness goes before the crime.

In my view, there is no substitute for fearless and insistent objectivity and this, most emphatically, includes, doubting the “undoubtable” and entertaining the “unacceptable”. It is only when we loose our partiality that we can see the “right” on both sides of the battle field and become truly open to the shortfall of our human existence. That, it seems to me, is a better place to arrive at than some false moral high ground from which we always and inevitably fall.



©WCG, 2009
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Rival Myths of the Suffering Jew

As defining mythical images, both The Crucifixion and what the Jews call "The Holocaust" bear certain salient similarities. The historical core of both was the arbitrary and cruel killing of an innocent host. So then, does it make any difference whether, in the 22nd Century, the image of one replaces that of the other in the consciousness of mankind?

Most emphatically, yes. The difference is that the suffering Jew, Jesus, died for the redemption of all mankind and for the sake of forgiveness. The suffering Jew of the holocaust accuses and seeks retribution for his own benefit. The Resurrection of Christ beckons man to recognize a new covenant and a new freedom. The resurrection from the ashes of the holocaust demands only the recognition of the State of Israel and the uniqueness of Jewish suffering.

This is not to deny the devastations inflicted on the actual victims of Nazi policies, which Jews are certainly entitled to memorialize for themselves in whatever way and with whatever theological implications they wish. The issue I am focusing on here is what one does with or makes of an historical event.

Years ago, an orthodox Jewish friend told me that a prophet was one who saw the "inner significance" of outward historical events. Accepting that definition (as I have), the question becomes: What is our prophecy?

This was actually the first question to vex the Early Church. St. Peter insisted that Christ's message was for Jews only. St. Paul was equally adamant that Christ's evocation was for all mankind. Peter stayed in Jerusalem; Paul went to the Gentiles. Although we do not know the details, we know that this detente was eventually resolved in Paul's favour inasmuch as Peter was executed in Rome.

Perhaps the better part of prophecy is what we will to see. Christians took a shattering historical event and turned into a giving myth. Jews have taken a horrible historical experience and turned into a grudging one; that, it seems to me, is a tragedy in itself.

©WCG, 2009

Sic Transit Arcadia

Thomas Cole was an American naturalist painter who lived during the first half of the 19th century. Like Thoreau and others of his time, Cole was inspired by a naturalist idealism which drew its breath from the Arcadian splendour of an unsullied continent. But after a tour of Europe, Cole returned with a foreboding of empire that infused his paintings with a fantasy realism that earned him little favor with critics or the public. He died shortly before the Civil War at his home in his beloved, rustic Catskills.

Lincoln's First Inaugural

Having grown up in the shadow of past glories, I have always been fascinated by the generation and decay of civilizations. And what I did not see around me, I could see in history books, such as the fascinating etchings contained in Ludwig Friedlander’s 19th century opus on Life & Manners in the Early Empire. What he, and Tacitus and Gibbon taught me was that, in so far as the application of history is concerned, detecting symptoms is as important as understanding causes.

Roosevelt's First Inaugural

Among the symptoms that indicate where we stand in the trajectory of history are the ceremonies and celebrations that attend the swearing in of the Chief Magistrate or, as he is more likely to be called, our Commander in Chief.

In a nation without a monarch, it is natural that a certain amount of celebration and hoopla will be generated around the inauguration of a new administration but by and large, throughout most of our history, these have been gaudy but low key affairs typically consisting of a denominational service of choice, an address, a parade, and a few invitation-only public parties. As for the rest of us without connections, we could buy trinkets, wave little flags, go to a bar to get drunk or just go home.

Kennedy's Inauguration

The ceremonialization of the presidency began under John F. Kennedy; but even then he kept things fairly low key and we could all be grateful for the all too evanescent savoir faire he brought to official occasions.

With differences in style (or lack of it), things remained at much the same until the election of Ronald Reagan. A symptomatic revolution occurred when he switched the situs of the inaugural from the front of the Capitol to the rear. The imperialization of presidential style had begun.

Reagan's Accession

In tandem, the hitherto traditional hoopla of parades and pennants was metamorphosed into a glitzy, multi-media, star-studded, gala-extravaganza, Celebration of Freedom in which we could all co-participate and co-share our hope, unity, optimism and happiness at being Americans. Of course, as of 2002, these and like carnivals of popular culture and patriotism were held under the watchful surveillance of security copters and kevlar padded police, but apparently none of the multitudes that crowded into the fenced off Mall let this detract from the unifying and uplifting stimulus of the moment.

Bush Accession

It was thus with some passing and idle curiosity that I wondered if President Elect Obama would return the Inaugural to the front of the Capitol -- in symbolic evocation, of course, of Abraham Lincoln. But as the multitudes crowded onto the Mall before the Lincoln Memorial for the Pre-Inaugural, Inaugural Address and Star Studded Evening Gala Prequel, I noticed that the change remained the same.

For all our sakes, I wish Obama well; but I am not going to watch the Inaugural, because I have already seen it.

The Consumation - Thomas Cole

(click to enlarge)

[click for zoom detail]

©WCG, 2009

Tannhauser

I began listening to Wagner more as a matter of historical interest than musical curiosity. Although Romantic music was pleasant enough, I was more attuned to and moved by Baroque and Classical scores. What I knew of Wagner was limited to the usual audio-clips more often than not serving as background noise for some documentary.

I did note, however, that Wagner seemed to have a unique ability to enthrall or enrage that went beyond mere taste. Unlike, “I don’t care for Puccini all that much” or “Don Giovanni is wonderful,” people rolled their eyes heavenwards and said “Ah... Wagner! or scrinched their noses and snarled, “Ach, Wagner!!” with emphatic disgust. Nietzsche apparently did both and in some places they wouldn’t play Wagner at all. The most neutral thing said about him that I could find was Mark Twain’s bon mot, “I hear he’s better than he sounds.”

So I called up a friend of mine who was an audiophile and and an opera groupie and asked him what he thought would be a good piece to start with. “You don’t know Wagner at all?” Tim asked. “No, not really.” Tim inquired what kind of music I did like and then paused before replying, “Hmmmmm, well I’d start off with the more conventional Wagner.”

“The more conventional Wagner” .... Was this the “better than he sounds” or the “worse than he sounds” Wagner? I wondered.

“Well like what then?” Tim, who could be incredibly indecisive at times, hemmed and hawed before suggesting the Flying Dutchman... “or maybe...” “No, that’s fine.” “No...maybe Tannhauser would be better...” “Well which one?” “I suppose either would be alright.” Wagner was getting more foreboding by the second.

After thanking Tim for his help, I hung up the phone and decided to bite the bullet without further delay. Soon I was fingering through plastic CD cases in the Wagner section of the stacks. “Definitely not The Ring,” Tim had warned, although he added that I’d probably “be OK” with Rheingold.

The Ring Cycle! Several years before the San Francisco Opera had done “the full cycle”. People talked about the upcoming event with a kind of delighted dread. They were setting aside the time for.... And would probably be too wiped out to.... But it was a once in a lifetime.... I couldn’t decide who was more nuts, Wagnerians or devotées of Werner Erhart (who had also gesamtkunsted in the Opera House).

Well at any rate not the Ring. So I flipped through the stacks trying to decide which of the covers looked more inviting and in the end, reminding myself that it was just an historical investigation after all, pulled free of Tim’s enthrallment, and opted for the cheapest -- a Bayreuth performance of Tannhauser.

-o0o-

It was a sun-bright, faint-breeze San Diego afternoon by the time I returned home. It was warm inside and Hobbes, the cat, was draped over a chair in feline languor. Leaving the front door open, I turned the stereo up to “opera” level and sat down. Hobbes remained languid as the soft and somber refrains wafted through the air.

At a remove of many years it is hard to recapture how I heard Wagner during those first listenings. His seamless melody which now seems structured and clear then seemed like so much tonal ambling. Tannhauser began melodiously enough but these melancholy bars suddenly turned something that sounded like a jingling gallop at the races

Hobbes looked up annoyed

which abruptly crashed into an ear-splitting, plate smashing, shrieking marital squabble

Hobbes let out a pained mee-OW and ran out the door

before resolving once again into some sort of stately pageant. For sure, overtures tend to be a tonal stew of courses to come, but the problem was that the whole opera was like the overture. When it was all over, I was decidedly unimpressed.

Hobbes struggles with laut Motifs

In fact, I must have been fairly disappointed because, after a break, I decided to sit down and listen to it again, libretto in hand. This time around the seamless jolts were a little less jarring and I got a better sense of the why’s and whereto's. But at the end of the day, Wagner placed in a tie with Schubert.

It certainly did not provide any historical insight.

It was several days, maybe a week, later that I decided to listen to Tannhuaser again. I don’t think I was still making an effort to “understand” the music. It was rather that the sing-song of the Pilgrim’s Chorus, kept traversing my mind and I wanted to listen to it again in vivo. So, I lay back on the sofa with my feet up and listened again. Perhaps simply because I had heard it twice, the parts seemed more connected, the shouting less ear-splitting, the marches and choruses as full and melodious as before. And then it happened.

Wolfram had ended his evensong lullaby, as the dark and devastated spectre of Tannhauser came dragging back into “musical view,” heavy laden past endurance and mad with grief. I sat up. What I had anticipated as more “talking” before a sonorous choral finale, now nailed my attention. If this wasn’t the very sound of world-weariness nothing was. With a sort of suspended inner quiet, I followed the narrative of Tannhauser’s Passion; and then, at a certain moment broke into uncontrollable sobbing. Some kind of internal structure just collapsed leaving me to mutter unintelligible things between sobs. Many times Bach had stilled my soul the way no other music ever could; but no other music had ever provoked my soul as this.

When it was all over, I lay on the couch feeling the physical sensitvity of an emotional wound Wagner had pierced ... or... was it, lanced? After a while, I got up and went for a walk in the park.

Und dann ich bekamm ein Wagnerianer.

Now, forgetting history, I wanted nothing but to listen to all of Wagner at once. I gave up practicing Invention 14 and begged my organ teacher, Jim Statz, to teach me to play the Pilgrim’s Chorus. Of course, I could only manage the Idiot Version in G (Reader, Hold your peace!) knowing that I could never attain the four hand-flying pedal version that Jim let loose on the pipes.

It perhaps goes without saying that not all of Wagner strikes me as deeply, and sometimes it doesn’t strike me at all. But the thing I have noticed, is that I never know when he is going to strike me in just that vulnerable way.

It was therefore with some reluctance that I sent away for a remastered DVD of a 1982 performance of Tannhauser at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, conducted by James Levine and staring Richard Casilly, Tatiana Troyanos and Eva Marton. I told myself that I would not have to listen to it during the Christmas Season; I knew that once it arrived, I would.

Traditionalists interpret Tannhauser as a morality play about the choice between lower, erotic lust (represented by Venus) and higher, chaste love (represented by the virginal Elizabeth). In the dramatic finale, teetering on the choice between Heaven and Hell, Tannhauser makes the right choice and is saved.

I have always resisted this interpretation. Not only is it morally trite, such a commonplace catechism seems unworthy of Wagner. And yet, not only did he compose it, it is unmistakably clear, at the end, that Tannhauser’s last cri de coeur is “Elizaberth!” after which the chorus applauds the choice and sings of the eternal bliss awaiting those who chose love over lust.

But while that was true, it was equally the case that much of the musical score is “sympathetic” to eros and Venus is more human and caring than a mere Circe. In addition, the dramatic action in the opera unmistakably entails an indictment against conventionality and formulaic morality, which Elizabeth herself protests against. So while the text of the finale was fairly explicit, I felt the music and drama as a whole were “ambiguous.” However, “vague and ambiguous” is not much of an interpretation of anything. One might as well simply say, Wagner was sloppy and confused. none of which makes for great art.

A number of years later, (after a couple of attempts to explain the “ambiguity” in my favor) it occurred to me that Tannhuaser’s “choice” was not between two external love-objects but rather between two internal love impulses. Internalizing the choice shifts the issue from “what do I want to have” to “how do I wish to be” -- and I think that interpretation is, if not essentially correct, closer to the truth of what Tannhauser is about.

Still, it wasn’t all coming together and I think the reason for this was that I was just listening to the music and the lyrics. If Wagner had just wanted to write music, he would have done so; but he was very clear in his insistence on gesamtkunst -- an “altogether-art” that blended in words, music, gesture, setting, in equally essential parts.

The difficulty here was that virtually all current performances eschew Wagner’s deciddly 19th century stage directions and opt for some innovative, provocative, trendy, far-out, reinterpretation. I suppose this is as fine as it goes, but it only gets one to an opinion which, in Tannhauser’s case, usually gets back to the moral cliché I ran away from in the first place. Then, just before the holidays, I chanced onto a Youtube clip of the Guest Entry from the Met’s production which had evidently gone back and given full play to Wagner’s instructions. I was intrigued beyond resisting.

Once I saw it all-together, Tannhauser’s riddle became clear: it was not about a dialetical choice of eros versus agape, but rather the story of the ascent from eros to agape. Far from “blowing the whistle” on eros (as Benedict XVI has put it), Wagner was exploring the convergence of the two forms of love. What is implied at the end, is not so much a rejection as a maturation.

The ascent motif (ahem), is indicated by the fact that Venusberg is located in the Earth’s interior whereas Wartburg Castle is on a hill, in the Earth’s exterior nearing the sky. Tannhauser’s pilgrimage to Rome, is a digression which takes place within the larger pilgrimage from grotto to castle. The pilgrimage to Rome begins with his ejection from Wartburg but the larger pilgrimage began with his rejection of Venus -- a rejection not born of disparagement but of a desire to breathe a human life.

Tannhauser’s is not the only pilgrimage. It is an “external” pilgrimage that has its correlative in Elizabeth’s “interior” pilgrimage which is just as dynamic even if she never moves from Wartburg. Although Elizabeth is presented as “virginal” she indisputably has sensual feelings, just as Venus has compassionate ones. To think of Elizabeth as some sort of asexual monster runs contrary to the text. Elizabeth’s prayer to the Virgin in the final act (III) which indisputably acknowledges “erotic” desires on her own part -- desires which may not have been fully understood in Act II (“emotions n’er experienced; longings never known”).

More important than questions of purity, Elizabeth’s progression is from needing to giving. When first seen, Elizabeth is much like a girl, dreaming and waiting for a not fully understood enfatuation. As Tannhauser had begun in Act I freeing himself from, Elizabeth begins in Act II the process of giving herself to, and in the end, prays for death in order to intercede for Tannhauser.

This vertical and feminine (sic) axis is characterized in large measure by a theme of acceptance. The juxtaposition of Venus and Elizabeth is not as complete as moralists might want. Venus is not simply an unconscious erotic force. She is a goddess but one who needs Tannhauser and feels the hurt of his rejection born of human necessity. Somewhat conversely, Elizabeth begins as a not fully human child, and moves just as necessarily from longing to a transcending selflessness. Each both give and accept.. If Elizabeth sacrifices herself for Tannhauser in the end it is equally true that Venus forgives his betrayal and welcomes him back.

The vertical Venus - Elizabeth dynamic is not the only axis in the drama. Tannhauser has his male counterpart in Wolfram. For the most part, they meet at the center space between Venusberg and Wartburg, as pilgrims enter and exit, left to right, going to and coming from Rome. It this horizontal action that serves to inversely define Tannhauser.

Wolfram is a well meaning, utterly conventional blockhead -- accepting surface truths and incapable of profundity. His song at the music contest is a monument to kitsch (“heroes like fresh oaks, proud and green...”) and his harp plucking assertions about love (“see how I apprehend love’s purest essence”) is what ends up provoking Tannhauser’s, erotically proud disdain. To know who Wolfram is is to know what Tannhauser is not -- which conforms to Wagner’s statement that Tannhuaser is a person who feels all emotion deeply. Wolfram is not a bad man. He is in fact well meaning. He is Tannhauser’s competitor in song contests but he is not his enemy. He is the conventionality and complacency Tannhauser has to move away from, if he is to realize his quest for a humanity that requires freedom and ends in death.

Up to a point Wolfram serves as a foil for comic relief. In context, his lyrical ode to the Evening Star (“Oh loveliest of stars... Thy sweet light that points the way....”) is an absurdity almost beyond belief, except for the fact that Wolfram is obviously clueless. In almost the same breath, after singing a paean to Venus, Wolfram horrorificly warns Tannhauser of his imminent damnation to hell. All this comic nonsense as a prelude to the wrenching tragic finale!

The horizontal axis between Wolfram and Tannhauser, representing the dynamic between complacent conventionality and struggling freedom, is characterized principally by a theme of rejection, most pathetically Tannhauser’s excommunication from Wartburg and, most devastating, his damnation at Rome. To this extent the drama lays a hard indictment of the superficially good, the untested, the uncompassionate.

What occurs at the end (at least in the Met production) is not a choice but a convergence. Most tellingly, Venus was not rejected, but simply fades away as Tannhauser is transformed and dies.

-oOo-

There is always, it seems to me, the pitfall of beating a play or a painting to death. Analyses that go on too long become tiresome, and the “intuitive” understanding born of sensing the logic of the whole, degenerates into a heap of citations and counter-points. In Wagner’s case, the process also invariably degenerates into a fetishistic pursuit of Wagneriana, quoting letters to Cosima and whatnot. I have avoided the second and hope I have steered clear enough from the first, intending no more than to sketch the outlines of a dramatic geography.

Other reviewers have said that the Met performance, while it executed Wagners’s intention and directions, was open enough to leave room for individual interpretation. That is certainly correct, and I think that was Wagner’s goal. There is in the end a difference between drama and doctrine.

There is also a difference between enjoyment and hobbyhorsing. I am not an opera “buff” and can hardly argue the arcana of different performances. Of the three performances of Tannhauser that I now have Wieland’s is the least inspired. For my tastes, nothing can rival Solti’s Vienna Philarmonic/Boys Choir performance with René Kollo (Tannhauser), Victor Braun (Wolfram) and Christa Ludwig (Venus), for richness of color and articulation. But the Solti performance, as we have it, is a halbkunst. If Kollo’s singing edges out ahead, Casilly's sung-acting is overwhelming. Perhaps because he is too big to be lustfully lythe, Casillay is a little stiff in Venusberg, but his in your face haughtiness at the singing contest wonderfully brings you to the edge of the dramatic precipice. His return from Rome is beyond description.

I am a poorly versed musician, but Levine’s performance strikes me every bit as worthy as Solti’s perhaps brighter, and a tad more dramatically tense. If I had to distill the differences between the two, I’d say that Solti’s Tannhauser is European and sophisticated, whereas Levine’s is American and earnest.

Levine has an unfortunate appearance more suited for buffoonery than tragic opera but his own performance as conductor (during the overture) got it right, at least, he gesticulated what the music feels like to me. I particularly liked the way his tremmolo hand pointed up the connection between eros and heroism. This is odd, because although Tannhauser is a Christian morality play, these passages from the overture are (to my ear) unmistakably Promethean.

Lastly, one criticism The Virgin Mary niche. I can understand how leaving for openness would require not having a prominent statute to the Virgen De Guadalupe center stage left. But what they have, looks like a fire alarm box. There were more felicitous alternatives that would have worked just as well.

Twenty years after the fact, I would certainly recommend this performance. More generally, I am convinced now that the only way to experience Wagner is the way he intended and directed. No more Tannhausers in turtlenecks!!!



©WCG, 2009

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Playing the Wedge Card

Undeterred in its ongoing effort to confuse the American public, the clarion of the corporate media struggles to hide the real agenda behind deregulation, the bankster bailout, the Iraq/Afhgan War, the national security police state, and devastating environmental policies.

Writing in the NYT/IHT laureate Paul Krugman asserts that "Forty years ago the Republican Party decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash" and that Bush administration policy and electoral failures can be traced to this original fault.

Nonsense. Assuming for the sake of argument that the Administration has in fact failed at what it set out to do (it hasn't), neither its policies nor its supposed failures are the result of racism. Once again, America's intelligentsia wallows in the narcosis of false consciousness, ignoring class conflict and seeking bugaboos in moralities and panaceas in personal validation issues.

Krugman begins his "analysis" by noting that Republican post-election "whining takes the form of claims that the Bush administration was simply a matter of bad luck... or the bad luck of" choosing Bush as the party's standard bearer."

Is Krugman seeking an explanation for electoral defeat or for the environmental, economic and geo/political disaster we are living? He apparently thinks it's an all-together sort of thingy. "Everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Bush as the party's champion, to the Bush administration's pervasive incompetence, to the party's shrinking base, is a consequence of that [racist] decision."

It is somewhat appalling to hear the Administration's devastating policies being soft-pedaled as a form of incompetence; but be that as it may, the "incompetence" has nothing to do with racism. On the contrary, Republican racist pandering has been very competent.

It is also hardly news. Forty years ago, not even the New York Times failed to note the Nixon - Agnew resort to code-words for "nigger". (Not that the Time's own "inner city youth" wasn't a code of its own.) Everyone knew what Nixon's Southern strategy was all about, even the blathering bimbos on the evening news. Lyndon Johnson had stated that the Civil Rights Act, which he pushed through a reluctant Congress, would be the death-knell for FDR's Democratic Coalition and it was. The Dixiecrats were up for grabs and the Republicans nabbed' em.

What Krugman astonishingly overlooks is that racism was not the only wedge the Republicans resorted to. There was that small issue of Archie Bunker and them Hippy College Kids. How Krugman manages to overlook this fault-line when Hollywood made Nielson ratings on it for years is truly amazing.

Krugman overlooks Archie Bunker because he is doing his level best to racialize the issue and get his readers to loose sight of the real problem: the neoliberal war being waged on the "Homeland" by corporate and financial interests. Archie Bunker would tip Krugman's hand because he is iconic for a cluster of disparate wedge issues the very clustering of which makes you look for what they have in common; and what they had in common was that everyone else was getting ahead except Archie. How Archie complained was great entertainment but beneath the squeals was the fact that Archie was getting screwed.

Take for starters Archie's contempt for anyone with some learning. As de Toqueville pointed out, America has always been notoriously anti-intellectual. He attributed this to a pervasive spirit of egalitarianism that disrespected all hierarchies, including those based on scientific or academic merit. But what de Tocqueville called a spirit of egalitarianism was a polite and aristocratic way of referring to class inequality and hatred.

The fact is that American college kids were never very intellectual in the first place. They were simply privileged brats on legacy scholarships destined for legacy jobs. What "those dumb college kids..." really meant was "you think you're better than me; but I'm just as good as you." No one could seriously interpret this as contempt of intellectualism, because them college kids were dumb. But they also were social betters with better shoes, better cars, better houses, and bank accounts. The howl bespoke the wound. The resentment reserved for them, was the resentment of dispossessed or struggling lower classes.

The hidden secret of the United States is that class disparity and envy has existed since even before we all gloriously and fraternally united to throw those damn Brits out. The present Constitution was basically a coup d'etat by the moneyed interests who were terrified of the Jacobin sentiments unleashed by the successful toppling of royal law and order. Ever since then, the ruling elites have done their best to pump pixie dust into the air. The existence of slavery, of Injuns to tame, of immigrants to hate have all served to deflect and confuse the country's underlying class conflicts and resentments.

The Great Depression, almost woke up the working (and not-working) classes and after the World War there was a big push at fashioning a truly more egalitarian society (at least for Whites). Working through (and for the well-being of) the private sector, Government undertook to provide jobs and false embourgeoisiement for the industrial base coupled with academically routed upward mobility. For a while it worked. Spreading swaths of tract homes was about as equal-in-everything as one could get, and President Clinton was an example of how trailer trash could rise to the top.

Alas, the country's feeble attempt at corporate sponsored social equality began to crack apart in the Sixties.

The Vietnam War drove the first big wedge between blue and white collar -- between the new bourgeoisie and the worker. As the buildup for Vietnam began, McNamara made a cynical decision. To preserve the country's technological and administrative work-force (what the Nazis called "workers of the head") he promoted student deferments while "workers of the hand" were left to man the wrenches and the rifles. This cleavage, which had always existed ad hoc was now institutionalized and rationalized on the ground that a stint in the Army gave "disadvantaged" kids a chance to get their GED and learn a trade. Unfortunately, it gave them other chances as well.

The second wedging blow was Affirmative Action which made the least financially secure segment of the population foot the bill for the reparation of historic wrongs. Contrary to propaganda, the civil rights movement was not a simply mass uprising of Blacks. It was an agitation of a portion of the negro population in which jewish lawyers, stragglers from the "old left" and white east coast college kids collaborated. The resentment was foreseeable and intense. To be sure, it focused on the threat from below -- the Black who got the job, the promotion, or academic placement. But it also focused on the betrayal from above, against college kids and the "east coast elites" who neither fought the war nor paid for the "advancement of the negro" they so ardently championed at no cost to themselves.

What had started out as a push toward social egalitarianism, ended up being a collection of disparities. All this was the doing of the Democrats and the Republicans seized the initiative. Yes there was "code" for "enroaching negro" but Agnew's "nattering nabobs of negativism" was also code for "privileged brat" and those "limousine liberals" who nibbled canapés with convict-authors on Park Avenue (Leonard Bernstein) or reverse hob-nobbed with Vietcong soldierettes (Jane Fonda).

However, neither Blacks nor limousine liberals nor hippies nor feminists were the real problem. No doubt Democrat social policies were highly discriminatory. They pushed military deferments for middle class college boys and job integration for Blacks both at the cost of the "blue collar" worker class. It was an odd way to promote egalitarianism. But beyond that, the United States was in economic trouble, in part due to the cost of the Vietnam War and in part due to the oil-embargo. Just as the Baby Boomers entered the job market, the country went into recession and what had been the powerful engine of American productivity was now known as the "Rust Belt" -- a polluted, decayed industrial Appalachia.

Had the world suddenly lost use for steel? Were goods no longer being shipped from dock to dock? Of course not. The process of dismantling and tightening had begun. Particularly hard hit was the industrial worker, the Archie Bunker class, Deer Hunter's economic and military casualties.

The fact was, America's experiment with corporate social democracy was failing; and it was failing not because different folks were brought to the table but because there wasn't enough pie for all the guests.

Carter's uninspiring solution was for "everyone" to get used to eating less. The Republican "solution" was to push the clock back, past the New Deal, to some mythical Begin State of classical capitalism. Blaming the goal of an egalitatian society for being an ineffective means, they called for free markets, free trade, and the abolition of unions and welfare. The platform was mythical because there never has been a truly free market. It was not a solution to any socio-economic problem because, at bottom, it was simply a call to: Let the games begin and survival to the fittest!

The ideology of Republican neoliberalism is simply egotism dressed up as social policy. It was a program that could only benefit the few and the conundrum facing the true and hidden Republican base was how to get the many to vote for it.

The first trick was to confuse terminology. What the Republicans actually sought was a return to "pure liberalism" -- the economic philosophy that gave us child labor, sweat shops and all the wonders of the Industrial Revolution. For that reason, all the rest of the world calls it neo-liberalism. But in the United States, Republicans called themselves "conservatives" because that word kicked up the pixie dust of a "return to traditional values." People who were economically hurting could be misled into voting for the very party that was going to hurt them even more in the belief that it would bring back the good ol' days -- when everyone knew their place and loved their country.

The second, third, fourth and fifth tricks consisted of wedge issues that would divide the actual working class (and this includes anyone who derives his primary income from work and not capital) from itself. It is for this reason that the media-politics of the past forty years has been taken up with MIAs, Blacks, Womyn, Gays, "Illegals," Lawn Order, Abortion, Quotas, Snail Darters, in fact anything except anything that mattered.

In the end, these wedge tactics preyed on the the concept of society itself in order to promote the pillage and plundering interests of the true capitalist upper class. By 1980, Nixon's rough prototype code had been refined into an improved more encompassing model . Reagan's "L" word distilled and pandered to all of Archie Bunker's mis-placed hates while screwing Archie royally. It was a stunning con-job.

Krugman is completely correct when he writes:

"So the reign of George W. Bush, the first true Southern Republican president since Reconstruction, was the culmination of a long process. And despite the claims of some on the right that Bush betrayed conservatism, the truth is that he faithfully carried out both his party's divisive tactics ... and its governing philosophy."

But Krugman is utterly wrong to confuse the "tactic" with the "philosophy". The Party's philosophy was not racism or any other -ism except neo-liberalism; and what we have witnessed under Bush-Cheney has been the near destruction of any institution that stands for the public good.

Republicans in fact make no secret of this aim because any government that has the "common welfare" in mind will put limits on plunder, will regulate economic activity and will take steps to in sure the survival of the weakest, as Jesus and Jeremiah both commanded.

Does Krugman seriously believe that the Republican attempt to dismantle all regulatory functions of government is the product of "racism"? Unless he is as clueless as Archie Bunker, he can't possibly. Yet curiously enough he manages to insinuate that very misconception while avoiding any mention of the true bette noire.

Krugman is also disengenous to ignore the role of the Democrat Party in this denouement. Ideologically speaking, Reagan completed the destruction of the Democrats. What was left, throughout the Eighties, was a pathetic foil that vociferated the other side of the irrelevant wedge issues, as it stood on the political stage like some clown having eggs cracked over his head or seltzer water sprayed in his face, while Republicans sneered Libroool!

Under Clinton, the Democrat Party finally tired of masochism. But instead of promoting a true alternative political-economy they became Republican Lite. The Party continued to "champion" select wedge issues, rhetorically and largely ineffectually, while cribbing copiously from the neoliberal agenda. Clinton completed the destruction of welfare, deregulated financial markets and managed the unique feat of pushing through NAFTA while standing on the border and blaming them Mexicans for "coming here and taking away American jobs."

While Clintonomics was not as savage as Reganomics it was not, by any stretch, a revindication of America's tepid experiment with corporate-sponsored social-democracy. By any measure the social safety net shrank as corporate "freedom" grew paving the way for the present economic disaster.

Neither was Clinton any less aggressive in foreign policy, unless one considers the economic blockade of Iraq, the ongoing aerial bombing of Desert Fox, and the destruction of Serbia to be examples of the Peace Corps in action. Nor was Clinton any less slavishly servient to Israeli interests. It is by now public news that at Camp David II, Clinton did no more than play the role of Israeli enforcer, dooming for decades any chance of a compromised solution.

Last but not least, if anyone thinks that Clinton philosophy heeded constitutional restraints on the unfettered exercise of brutal police power on Americans, he need only remember Waco (the full story).

In short, it is true that the Bush regime was the culmination of a "long process" -- but that long process includes the collaboration and connivance of an equally neoliberal Democrtatic Party. That process is not racist but economic.

Similalry, to say that the New York Times promotes a somewhat lighter version of neo-liberalism does not mean that it does not fundamentally ascribe to the same philosophy that drives the Republicans. It does and its editorial board is stocked with major neo-liberal polemicists.

In fact, the Times continues to play the role of "Librool" foil, pandering to the other side of so-called "progressive" wedge issues while the Republicans palaver about patriotism and "conservative" values. It's truly a marvel how neo-liberals have honed the art of playing both sides of the wedge.

Of all this, Krugman writes not a word. Instead, he drags out the ol' tar baby and fetishes over race in order to blame the Republicans for exploiting racist phobias. Why? Because if the issue is really racist policies (as Krugman intones) then we might be razzle dazzled again into thinking that the election of a black Obama has ended those policies and that the New Beginning is arrived.

That is not the case. There will be no new beginning until neo-liberalism is anathematized for what it is and Americans develop a true egalitarianism founded in social consciousness.

©WCG, 2009

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