Loss of conscience due to satisfactory liberties granted by an unfree society makes for a happy consciousness which facilitates acceptance of the misdeeds of this society. It is the token of declining autonomy and comprehension. - Stjepan Meštrović
It seems even "liberals" in the United States are cheering tonight, happily imagining a world in which their government supports freedom fighters the world over, standing up for democracy and human rights. The hippie punching becomes especially exuberant and cocksure at such times. Given our history since WWII, how can people believe the US military is a force for freedom? In his Nobel Prize Lecture, Harold Pinter called it a
brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.
It seems we live in Disney Land, the land of happy consciousness. The Noble Lecture never happened. Yes, a lecture by the pre-eminent English language playwright was easy to ignore. As it is easy to ignore the children killed by impersonal bombing from drones. By this time next week, our self-satisfied efforts will be focused on some new and important issue--we'll be pretending our opinions on some new issue just might influence our government. Who any longer spares a thought for the millions of Iraqi refugees? Has anyone seen a photo? Guantanamo? Never existed. The disappeared in Chile? Please, it is time to move on and keep inflicting freedom all around the world. If there is regime change in Libya, the nearly inevitable torturing by the new oppressors, well, it won't be happening either. And if it does, and we hear about it by chance from some hard left fanatic, we'll feel bad about it just long enough to satisfy ourselves that we truly are people of compassion.
Why would I think such a negative horrible thing--that a few bombs won't change a culture, won't banish human rights abuses? Because, absent discernible change, I expect past behavior to be an excellent predictor of future behavior. Has anything changed at the Pentagon or Langley since Nicaragua? Since Iraq? Since the last illegal drone attack in the sovereign nation of Pakistan? There is not even a pretense of a change in either leadership or direction, yet so many are ready to believe that in Libya, unlike everywhere else in the world since WWII, the US stands for democracy and the sovereignty of the people. Call it amnesia or hypnotism, it is a remarkable circumstance.
But really, I don't won't to talk tonight so much as quote the people whose humanity and wisdom inspire me. Their words have been coming to me tonight, so clear and strong.
Surely we all stand for liberte, egalite, and fraternite, right? We are children of the Enlightenment, it goes without saying. Why should we look so hard in the mirror? Sure, there are aberrations, mistakes, departures. None of this affects our moral standing. Why focus on the bad when most of what we do is good? What can you expect, when dealing with those barbaric people out there, who only understand force? They are not civilized like us:
[emphasis added]
Contemporary devotees of the Enlightenment live emotionally in an idealized past. The dead emotional relics of the Enlightenment animate their reveries, and blind them to the chaos, disarray, and evils all around them, in the West as well as the non-West. When they confront these unwelcome realities, the reaction is stereotypical…. Ethnic hatred in the West, when it erupts, is rationalized away as an aberration. The solution offered for the suffering caused by the unbridled capitalism in formerly Communist nations has been to offer still more “pure” capitalism. The result really is the attitude uncovered by Baudrillard: “We” will live in our Disneyesque utopia, and all the others “must exit.” Pluralism and tolerance for “us” in the West, and ethnic hatred for “them.”… In the USA, it is a multiculturalism that so often fails to make contact with reality, internationally or domestically.
Stjepan Meštrović, Postemotional Society, p. 86
I would call Harold Pinter an astute observer. He has also observed as an active citizen participant in some of these horrors. Here's how Pinter sees the US modus operandi since WWII:
Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued - or beaten to death - the same thing - and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed....
Harold Pinter Nobel Prize Lecture
Here's his summary of US behavior in Nicaragua:
The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. 'Democracy' had prevailed.
But Libya is different, right? In Libya, freedom fighters called out for desperate help. And Ghadaffi is horrible, right? And we can pretend there never was a Project for the New American Century nor that what is happening in Libya is completely in accord with the arrogant plans of the neo-cons many of us loved to hate during the Bush Presidency. I used to think that hatred had little to do with group identity and partisanship and everything to do with principle. Used to.
It's not just Nicaragua; it's decades of consistent conduct, conduct which has never been admitted. There have been no apologies, no purges of leadership, no forceful interventions by Congress, no announcements of a quiet change of direction. Do some people really believe that the mere election of a President, especially this President, has made the US military/intelligence establishment suddenly an upstanding world citizen?
As I say, it's not just Nicaragua. The evidence is overwhelming. Back to Pinter:
[emphasis added]
But this 'policy' was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.
The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.
Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it.
It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.
I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.'
It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.
In a way, though, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Libya are different. Some of the pretense has been dropped. The more blatant style, however, does not intrude on the happy consciousness of Americans.
The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.
What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days - conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years [more than eight years with no end in sight], with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's called the 'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them?
Nothing has changed. In 1964, Herbert Marcuse and others were already writing about the end of conscience and the stifling of thought. Here Meštrović paraphrases and expands on Marcuse's ideas as expressed in One Dimensional Man:
Loss of conscience due to satisfactory liberties granted by an unfree society makes for a happy consciousness which facilitates acceptance of the misdeeds of this society. It is the token of declining autonomy and comprehension.
Happy consciousness is commensurate with Riesman’s focus on the other-directed type’s obsession with niceness, and, of course, culminates in the McDonald’s happy meal. Marcuse elaborates:
The Happy Consciousness—the belief that the real is rational and that the system delivers the goods—reflects the new conformism which is a facet of technological rationality translated into social behavior…. Torture has been introduced as a normal affair, but in a colonial war which takes place at the margin of the civilized world. And there it is practiced with good conscience for war is war…. Otherwise, peace reigns…”the Community is too well off to care!”
Postemotional Society, p. 82
The belief that the real is rational and that the system delivers the goods. Loss of conscience due to satisfactory liberties, such as the liberty to choose Wii over XBox, the freedom to watch football all Sunday afternoon. Everywhere I look, I see "declining autonomy and comprehension."
You know, "fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" was once universally recognized as immoral. I see people celebrating a Mission Accomplished moment, and for the same reason as Bush's 20% celebrated theirs--a self-centered need to be proven right is trumping both objective thought and the suffering of others.
The cool contemplation of other people's suffering while one exhibits polished manners in a society that is deemed civil is only a shade less immoral than the direct infliction of suffering. Thus, civilization, as it is often practiced today, is really manufactured, inauthentic civilization.
Postemotional Society, p. 94
I'll end with Pinter, although I do not share his optimism. I do agree, however, that it is our very dignity which hangs in the balance:
[emphasis added]
I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.
If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us - the dignity of man.