Bursting the bubble
UPDATED
Agent 99 features a great (in a grim way) Mr. Fish cartoon.
Wise observers will note that the bursting of an illusory bubble is a healthy thing, and that the balloon clearly reads ‘Moral Superiority‘. Cheap jingoism aside, this much vaunted and illusory superiority does not preclude the fact that the US has laudable moral values and leadership that it can, and does provide.
- Charles Sullivan writes a piece that well accompanies this: In The Absence of Reason (short excerpt follows).
- SCA: here’s a real Reality Pill
Let us be done with Empire, and may there be a genuine and great American republic in its place.
It is worth noting what 99 subsequently writes about the gravity of this piece:
Are people catching the nuance of our most famous WWII image being the flag raising that begins bursting that bubble? I don’t think anyone can deny that American soldiers were extremely heroic in that war… that soldiers and resistance workers and troop supporters from all the allied countries were extremely heroic in that war. Forget the policies and the politicians and peacenik vs. warmonger, and concentrate on the undeniable heroism of ordinary Joes, ordinary humans. We paid for our moral high ground with our very lives. We willingly gave our lives for freedom and wisdom and goodness and human rights. And all of us would again. Mr. Fish caught with deadly precision — that I don’t even know was intentional — the travesty that has been made of it. And we just sit here and gripe… others just sit in front of their tv sets, too wiped from their daily struggles to even think about it. This image is DEVASTATING.
*Excerpted from Charles Sullivan, In The Absence of Reason:
Occasionally, conversation at the shop centers on politics and the moral justification for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. The justification for the invasion: the Iraqis attacked us when they flew those air liners into the Word Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon. I have pointed out that the Iraqis were not involved in those actions, but there is good evidence that the government was.
The men with whom I had this discussion were utterly stunned, even flabbergasted by this assertion. It was as if I had renounced their god and was, like Bruno, to be burned at the stake as a blasphemer. I offered to cite the evidence and even provide source materials for them to peruse. Neither of them was willing to examine the evidence. Neither would hear any of it. Both men were visibly agitated at the thought that such evidence may actually exist, and that it could be so easily produced. They were afraid to confront the facts, or to be confronted by them. Their entire belief system was at risk.
The very idea that the United States government might be complicit in the death of thousands of its own citizens as a pretext for war is still preposterous to most U.S. citizens, despite the historical record that is suppressed in the mainstream, but widely available from other sources. The sound of so many minds slamming shut like a steel prison door is deafening.
That would be hilarious if it wasn’t so true….!
Indeed. Mr Fish captures it very well, a great cartoonist.
wow, what a great picture!
Agreed Graeme, thanks for coming by. Mr Fish does it again.
Are people catching the nuance of our most famous WWII image being the flag raising that begins bursting that bubble? I don’t think anyone can deny that American soldiers were extremely heroic in that war… that soldiers and resistance workers and troop supporters from all the allied countries were extremely heroic in that war. Forget the policies and the politicians and peacenik vs. warmonger, and concentrate on the undeniable heroism of ordinary Joes, ordinary humans. We paid for our moral high ground with our very lives. We willingly gave our lives for freedom and wisdom and goodness and human rights. And all of us would again. Mr. Fish caught with deadly precision — that I don’t even know was intentional — the travesty that has been made of it. And we just sit here and gripe… others just sit in front of their tv sets, too wiped from their daily struggles to even think about it. This image is DEVASTATING.
Thanks for attaching that much-needed explanatory script, 99. The heroism of many of the ‘ordinary Joe’ Americans from that time is indeed being spent (abused) on dangerous and in some ways self-defeating policies in the current era.
The use of such an iconic image replete with meaning should serve as a wake-up call, and I hope people read it as you have described, 99.
I should add that for non-Americans, a typical first reaction is a grim ‘recognition laugh’. It is not because we don’t appreciate the very real sacrifices and genuine contributions of many Americans who served and whose legacy is being so debased and who are still now being used as imperial cannon-fodder.
It is because the rest of the world sees the underside of it, something an American can get only by looking in from the outside, so to speak.
As even right-wing writers acknowledge in the wider context of international relations:
I understand you’re in a tiff with the bellicoscenti over at Sigmund, Carl and Albert. Don’t listen to the bellicosity, but instead pay attention to the bits of truth that peek out around the rant.
Here’s what I posted there:
Generally, you’re close to right on this. Surely Hamas is a difficult group to defend from any charge, if for no other reason than their use of violence in defiance of any reasonable semblance of justice. Eye-for-eye morality systems are always blinded, ultimately, and some sooner than others.
But the cartoon she posts has its merits, too. We as a nation have capitulated moral leadership in the world.
And that’s a major problem. When our commander-in-chief works so hard to personally assure that we can torture captives in defiance of our own laws and any number of treaties, his calls for others to put down arms lose moral authority. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
In the law there is the old saw that tough cases make bad law. In diplomacy and statecraft, tough disputes make bad peace agreements. But it is also true that the worst peace is generally better than the best war.
There is blame enough in the Middle East, especially in Palestine or Trans-Jordan or whatever you want to call the area. Don’t tell us whose eye needs poking. Tell us how to find grounds to stop the poking at all.
Pray for justice and peace. Trust emotions, but use reason, too.
Well. Of course. Of course. I know the best we can hope for from the rest of the world is a sardonic nod. I don’t think I’d be shocked by much in the way of negative attitudes about the United States. I seem to be developing an outlook of us needing to fix our own country before we can be any use to others. It isn’t something I’ve sat down and decided. It just keeps being where I fall down on the issues. There is this thing called “globalization” that is ripping the underpinning of some societies, and certainly ours. Who knows but it might be a wonderful future somewhere in that, but not when greedheads are unchecked and nobody is planning for the well-being of the masses. Even if we were not into just about every pie on the planet, there are people, countries insisting on our participation in all manner of things, and boobs and plutocrats are running it all. This is not wise. Is time going to stop while America pulls itself together? No. Will global warming slow while the answer drops out of the sky? Will corporations moving their acts to the cheapest labor of the moment slow while we muster the kind of regulation it will take to feed and clothe and house those spit out by this development? Is the rest of the world focussed on getting this stuff solved, or just copping attitudes about the jerks/idiots in the United States? Are you waiting for us to handle it? I for one could use the assurance that there are some actual functioning grown-ups out there to take the lead while the greedy jerks in charge in my country are at play. As it is, oh, it’s hell on the nerves….
And in this my heart goes out to your country, dear 99, so very much. It breaks my heart to see fundamentally decent ordinary Joes suffer and go kill Iraqi ordinary Joes, all at the bidding of a cabal of neocon-neoliberal elites who don’t much care for the average Joe, and never have. So much for the century of the common man.
A dear friend in the US whom I love dearly wrote this to me via email. It may be disheartening but I hope its OK to share with you because I was impressed with its incisive perception of the situation:
Now I’m not sure about the exact factual figures (eg about illiteracy) or whether the lack of a capacity to question may be too harsh (hey, I think Australians suffer and share a lot of this too), but I was struck by this portrait of the American national character, if such a thing exists.
“Naive and innocent nobility” … to me, a perfect phrase. It reminded me of the beauty in the US national character, at its best rather than at its worst. The rest of the world could do with more of that, if power didn’t corrupt so effectively. Power corrupts and corrodes, but empowerment is creative and positively enabling rather than degenerative.
So how do we get there from here? I’d like to open the discussion on this, but I am inclined to say, in the first instance and at every step of the way, Education, Education, Education.
I recall an episode from 2004 when teaching international relations theory. In one particular seminar I had a German student, Jan (the male form, pronunciation ‘yaan’) who was a confirmed neoliberal globalist. He genuinely believed and insistently argued that free trade neoliberal globalisation was good for everybody and that the obstacle with industrialising, poorer countries was that they simply didn’t have enough of it. For him, it was that simple. He was a bright student, certainly capable, and used to get into spirited (OK, sometimes fiercely spirited) arguments with the exasperated Norwegian students on development, insisting upon his position to the nth degree. I let them air it out, contributing and mediating when called for; they were amicable about it, and certainly no-one tried to overtly dissuade Jan from his position, merely address his argument.
A year later, Jan emails me to tell me how he is doing after graduating from the program. To my utter surprise, he informs that he realized he was wrong and he had come to really grasp the flip-side of the argument, and revise his beliefs dramatically. That illustrated for me that education, remaining true to oneself, and to intellectual integrity and honesty does eventually have an effect, if not immediately visible.
I have had the good fortune and privilege to encounter several exceptionally talented and brilliantly intelligent and thoughtful Americans and know there are many more. I wonder whether they just swallowed in the 300 million people the words and actions of a small group of criminal ideologues in the US federal government speak for (not!)
Aside from education: alternative media such as what we are engaged in; becoming informed and talking to neighbors and challenging those in power and getting organized and so on. I do realize as you say people are often too caught up in their daily struggles to fight against the system.
That’s where we all come in to help create viable alternative systems, such as cooperatives, neighborhood networks, mutually beneficial community-based groups that could achieve any number of small-scale things and empower people. Its not quixotic, I’ve seen it happen.
To cite a small example, my father is very particular about his bread and can not eat commercial brands, even from health food shops. He now sources his bread, as do as a growing number of people, from a local home-baker who bakes heavenly bread for him and the home baker’s network grows. Coincidentally, this person was unemployed and has now a thriving small business. There are many small but significant ways we could cease using the corporate system.
If we pit ourselves against the behemoth of fascist Empire, we are likely to lose. Its that old adage, “What you resist, persists.”
That is why it is incumbent upon us, for success, to create alternatives ourselves (local, small scale and humble at first), that will effectively serve to nullify Empire and reclaim our agency, to propose rather than merely oppose.
I’m batting for the ordinary (who is actually really extraordinary) Joe and Joanna, the heart and soul of We the People.
love, Ann
Dear Ed, I’ve thanked you for your wise words and responded on another post, so I just wanted to add how much this word tickles me: bellicoscenti. Terrific! Hoping for more cognoscenti and fewer bellicoscenti ;)
I wanna be one of the bellicoscenti! That’s the great word for my experimentation with going off half-cocked when too pissed-off to see straight! I’ve so recently threatened to lobby Beijing to bomb D.C. on behalf of polar bears and Native Americans for their dangerous development of global warming WMD, and have begun dissing doddering old clown candidate liberals to the skies. I’m not a tenth as loud and outrageous as I oughta be. Bellicoscenti obviously have the power to sway certain people. We should explore that tactic before deploring it too thoroughly. Is our dignity more important than barking down warmongers?
Thanks for so much attention to my fried bewilderment. It is indisputable that education is key. Somehow the original mandatory education of our citizenry has turned into a knotted form of optional. The only way they were going to go for having a country where The People were so empowered was if the people had the first part of a clue. Enforced education and a free press were early-on acknowledged to be vital to the success of our nation. They are both effectively cardboard facades nowadays… and both have come under attack at every turn in the class wars.
While I can absolutely concur that willful ignorance is poison, the way it’s being discussed here one would think most of its sufferers had any part of a clue there is an option. This is way so not unique to Americans. It is the bane of all humankind. Add in the purposeful measures to hypnotize them, and the ever-increasing consumption of attention by mere survival for the biggest percentage of our populace, and, well, accusing them of willful ignorance is just too harsh… a fairly arrogant stance when you think about it. I heartily agree that even the stupidest human is far more capable of intelligent action and judgment than we almost ever show, but…. There are a great many people who simply do not fathom that the government actually acts on behalf of plutocrats, who have been raised in the carefully orchestrated mythos of service to one’s country… and their motives are beautiful. Even as the motives of those who propounded the myths to begin with and perpetuate them cynically are outright evil, the service men and women, by an overwhelming majority have enlisted in either the cause of freedom or the explicit understanding that they will be fed, clothed, housed, educated, employed — not destitute — or both. Some wake up to the evil underpinning and get out however they can, but most are too invested to be able to face that realization should it begin to dawn on them. Many will repent of it when they are free, but many will go to their graves unable to address such a thing. THIS IS NORMAL HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY. It’s used against us by filthy, filthy power-mad psychopaths few have the lucidity to recognize as such.
There is a fairly strong strain in the anti-war movement of blaming the soldiers for being hired killers. This guarantees the failure of the movement. Period. Full stop. It is way too facile, no matter how much more deeply the thinkers are thinking when they use it. Not deeply enough. Willful ignorance. No. If the people are to regain charge, or gain it to begin with, those who can see clearly enough to start leading others absolutely MUST rethink this position.
It’s divisive. Uniting with the greatest number of ideologies is mandatory to success. It’s insensitive, and it is insensitivity to others we supposedly deplore. No. It will never do. I have seen dirt-ignorant rednecks jump in to save the day, completely selflessly, in all manner of crises, too many times to take that mental track. Plus, it completely ignores the fact that a functioning military, like it or not, and I so seriously do not, is mandatory in this world, even with saints in the White House.
:) Point taken,
InitiateFearless Leader of the Order of Enlightened Bellicoscenti.I’m not sure that it was arrogant to term some of the blind obedience mentioned by my good friend (who served in the US military) as willfully ignorant, but I see that it does rob the average joe of the basic dignity they deserve and doesn’t give them due credit. Certainly, no disrespect was intended. In hindsight, the passage might read that way without the reference he made to a specific example, a recent run-in with willful ignorance with another blog posted about here that he’d read.
As you add in your blog: “So many of us continually bemoan the stupid oafs passing for our fellow citizens and then take refuge from the stultification of good sense this way. Not good enough. Actually, worse than that. Counterproductive.” So what do you suggest should happen, 99?
I agree with and see your point about sections of the antiwar movement erring by knocking the soldiers. Not much more to add to your thoughtful response, except to highlight this that I thought especially hit the mark:
Pingback: New word invented « Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub
I suggest we stop belittling them, understand about the pervasive human delusion that there is some mental posture we can take that will make reality not what it is, or ourselves in relation to it not how we are. Take the 9/11 Truth thing. I’m almost dead of the stupidity exhibited so avidly by so many who pass for functioning adults when it comes to this. One damn constant of earth physics says everything anyone should have to know in order to turn our whole country around. Buildings do not go from standing to not standing with that speed EVER unless the resistance between the top floors and the base of the structures has been blown out. This one point ought to put everyone, everyone, all law enforcement included, onto full investigative mode to nail the real culprits. But no. Too many cannot face the implications of this, and even many of those who can face them can’t face the fear of anyone who could pull off such a thing. I want to mow them all down, give them all a cosmic slap. That shit is going to kill us all… but… instead, I bark down the smuggest little jerks when they stay stuff like “demonstrably untrue”… because it is definitely demonstrably true. That’s the gig with the laws of physics! You can demonstrate them over and over and over. I don’t call them stupid oafs, impugn their politics, dog them, any of that. I just break their eardrums with this fact and the fact that they have no business belittling people who can face reality when they have to ignore the unbreakable laws of physics to do it.
One has to learn that a great many people are not capable of bringing themselves in accord with truth, with reality, in any practical sense. Yes, ultimately they are capable, but it would take decades of work to get them ready to jump off that cliff. So, you understand, you remember that they will jump into raging waters to save a drowning person before they even realize the danger, even though they are hopeless cases on things like 9/11 and stopping the war-makers, etc. They stop bucking you when they can see you respect them as worthy beings. And it’s not so hard either. So much of the obnoxious right wing sloganeering campaigns they blurt like farts in your face… take I don’t want to dial one for English… are really just expressions of frustration with issues too large for them to really address, but they feel nonetheless that their representatives should. When they don’t get satisfaction there, get the runaround, get their brains tied in knots, they pick on people more their size, the immigrants. When they say that stuff, they really mean that they can’t stand all their friends and neighbors losing their jobs to this endless flood of ever-cheaper labor, that all the work they’ve done and taxes they’ve paid are counting for so little that a goddam computer is answering their service calls and rubbing it in with this shit about choosing their own language. It’s resentment of the plutocracy squishing them like bugs at one and the very same time as the plutocracy is playing them like fiddles, compounding their agonies in the very places they go to get relief from them… church, the neighborhood bar, school, the tv, the radio… everywhere.
Liberals leap to call people racists, sexists, homophobes, all kinds of ugly names, when they want to address problems in ways not strictly in accord with our outrageously permissive ideals. Maybe we can live within those, but a lot of people can’t, or are very afraid that they can’t. For instance, I know a lot of people whose position on homosexuals is pretty much live-and-let-live, but legalizing gay marriage scares the snot out of them. They are afraid that making it that socially acceptable will imperil their kids. They think that it makes them have to move from live-and-let-live to actively approving of homosexuality enough to be pleased when their son announces he’s going to marry another man. That is NOT paranoia. That is actual. That is also NOT homophobia, but progressives viciously deride genuinely uncertain people this way. Despite the current fashion of stating that no person has control over their innate sexual orientation, this is not always what’s operating with homosexuals. It is sometimes. It covers a spectrum. Nature, nurture, conscious choice… and we don’t want to persecute anyone who can’t help it, whose heart is really there, but we might want to think a little harder about opening up ways to broaden the environmental influence on kids, and gays might want to think harder about being okay with people simply picking it to serve other needs. I don’t care WHO rises up to take issue with this. I’m 54 years old, and have known many, many, many homosexuals. Only about half those I’ve met did not chose it because the opposite sex was too intimidating, or demanding, or otherwise uncomfortable, and some of them just picked it because there was too much personal gain to be had that way to pass it up. All this might be great for lowering the population, and okay by most of us in any case, but most heterosexuals are viscerally uneasy about it and looking for excuses to put a lid on it however they can. That’s not wrong. That’s not homophobic. It’s only mean when someone’s pressing them to just damn the torpedos and learn to treat something they don’t feel right about as though it’s just fine by them. I’d say that bringing about a world where there is more true equality for homosexuals is something that needs a lot more work and time and efforts to build understanding… and eradicate bullshit on both sides.
My point being that the current trend of vicious attacks on the character of people who disagree on certain issues does nothing to bring people together, and everything to further the polarization that serves the evil plutocrats and that is all. We’re all out here having cows about the racism or religious intolerance of the conservatives who want to put the breaks on the massive influx of immigrants, but the stone cold fact underlying it is that they are driving wages down below what we consider living wages, and putting a lot of natives out on the streets. This does not seem to me to be the way to raise workers up to where they have real power, a real way to put the brakes on plutocracy ANYWHERE. I want badly for poverty and misery and sickness and starvation across the face of the earth to end, and I see nothing but the flourishing of these behind the so-called liberal movement and its forays into the proliferation of NGOs in the third world. Never going to be enough by a long shot, but the NGO staffs get paid and get to live “helping” lifestyles. This is plain. This is evident. Even to the so-called stupid oafs. But a really tough nut to crack. It’s goddam heroin for altruists… better even than the intellectuals’ resort to willfully ignorantly calling those who frustrate them “willfully ignorant”.
We can’t ACTUALLY address the terrible problems of the planet until all of us, starting with us vicious liberals, learn to put down the ceaseless nurture of our self-images in favor of true solutions. And we’re going to have to fight those miserable fucks who make billions on our polarization for each micrometer of progress. The mandatory starting place is to quit insulting the snot out of people with whom we must end up in agreement somehow. The way to catch the hem of that action is to stop having positions so strongly-held that there is no recourse short of hoping insult will bring them around. If one’s position is actually righteous, strongly holding it will not do anything for it. Listening to others and finding the righteousness buried under their offensiveness will do more to bring them around — and make life more livable for everyone — than any other thing.
And, heh, you’ve really gone and done it now! :-P
:) And a great seal it is. Thanks for the tour de force response.
I think I’m going to learn most from what you say here, though there is much more we can take away from your comments: