Fwd: Waiting for Godot

[Aldo Matteucci <aldo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well, well, well. What do I get as an echo to my ?call to arms??

Jim, Ian, and Michael in different ways and words all refer to the
mounting tide of revolution as a necessary precondition for success. Till
then ? it seems - it?s waiting for Godot.

Sounds familiar? It is. That?s what the committed left strummed every
time, while rightist movements burned and devastated the land. That's
what the Left did in Italy, and got Berlusconi in. Cheers to all.

Wake up, will you, for once? Bushism is laying the country to waste
today.

Bushism is no passing fever like McCarthism - a one man?s show with a few
string pullers in the background played before an audience that saw
communism? global threat as a containment job for the military (with FBI
to look after the Commie mob) and only wanted to be left to live the
American dream in peace.

Before we even discuss Bushism?s structure and content let?s acknowledge
its visceral strength ? the heady mix of religious and market fanaticism,
coupled with the vindictiveness of the slighted grocer. They?ll stop at
nothing, and why should they? They know they are right. This visceral
strength feeds on its own success and will carry everything before
itself. In the fight between guts and reason, guts win out, all the time,
for a time. We?ll repent at leisure.

By then, it might be too late. For, more even than an ideology, Bushism
is a system. It finds its origins in the accidental realisation (after
9/11) that the American democratic system of checks and balances prevents
the emergence of kings and aristocrats ? in time of peace ? but that the
system is emasculated in times of war. By declaring ?eternal war? Bush
has effectively set aside the US Constitution.[Rumsfeld, ever the easy
tattler, has let it out of the bag when he proposed recently that the
title of Commander in Chief be reserved for (and used by) George W Bush].
As CiC he will be beyond the reach of Congress and the Courts. He will be
dictator but in name, or time limits. And even should he step down, he
will be promptly cloned - like the Roman Emperors of yore.

The American Republican experiment will then have come to and end. A
bigot of the kind of Caesar Augustus will rule the old Republic. The
Senate will pay homage to the new Emperor, and the totalitarian state
will be on its way. Horses appointed to the Senate to enter front stage
left.

Does Bushism have a chance in the hearts and minds of the American
public? Contrary to communism that was perceived as a global (hence
abstract) threat, terrorism lurks around every street corner ? it is
deeply personal, and immediately frightening. Also the ?50s and ?60s was
a period of broadly based economic expansion. Half of the Americans alive
today were born after Tet and have never experienced rising pay levels.
Their whole life experience (but for the lucky few) has been a tight walk
along a ledge of declining job security with the chasm of downward
mobility at their feet.

Bushism is fascism with a human face. Marx (rightly) predicted
pauperisation of the masses. What he could not foresee is that capitalism
would learn from its past mistakes and make the poor disappear. Dickens,
Zola, or Steinbeck wrote powerfully about the poor. Who writes about the
poor nowadays? It no longer sells. The mainstream press learnedly denies
the existence of the poor and the few panhandlers in the street are just
a drugged nuisance. Meanwhile the masses are mobilised by football or
Seinfels. Pass the popcorn and pop that beer can, please.

The system need not be overtly totalitarian, or repressive. Here again,
the system has learned from past errors. It is cheaper and prettier to
buy than to oppress. For the great mass, a promise of law and order can
go a long way to elicit conformity - the sheepish instinct is in all of
us, and we love the shepherd dogs that protect us from the wolves. We
don?t mind being penned at night against evil lurking in the darkness.
Hitler gave few orders ? he never did order the annihilation of the Jews.
He knew that the final solution would emerge from the mind of his minions
vying for his praise.

And if everything else fails, find a scapegoat. The Black, the Jews, the
Arabs or Islam now. As Luttwak astutely points out, economic insecurity
is easily channelled into racism. Jim Crow laws emerged from the economic
doldrums of the 1890s, and so did the occupation of the Philippines.This
is greatly facilitated by the fact that Anglo-Saxon family structures and
values - unlike the one based on Latin law and custom are not egalitarian
(read Emmanuel Todd, alas not available in English). Yes, culture, deep
culture ? what you learn at your mother?s knee ? does matter and shape
economic forces. Avalanches come in many types and take many paths.

Marx was wrong on two more counts. On the existence of historical
imperatives, and on their timing. He never could see the revolution
coming. That?s why he missed 1848, Bakunin 1870, and Lenin fled to
Helsinki. When palaeontologists come to the conclusion that ? should we
rewind the tape of life and let it play out again, it would all turn out
differently ? it is time to accept that history is a mix of structure and
contingency, causally linked, but totally unpredictable. Read any applied
chaos theory recently?

Nazi-fascism (in the Bushist declnation) is the greatest danger to
democracy today. And this not just because it is present and powerful. It
is because we all have the virus of nazi-fascism in ourselves, though
dormant, and we could so easily accomodate ourselves to it - for a hash
of soon worthless stock options. The authoritarian temptation is ever
present. Churchill understood this. Alone he stood fast, when his
colleagues wanted an accommodation with the Hitler in order better to
fight communism, and fought Nazism and Fascism to the death.

So one have to act, or be prepared to endure. To me today, waiting for
the revolutionary Godot hardly seems an option. And please, no dreaming
about Starwars of the Masses, with which to zap capitalism into oblivion.
Nor will you be Robin/Robinette to Supermarx.

But then I might be wrong, and revolution may finally enter the scene. Do
I hear the trumpets blare? Or are they announcing rapture - followed by
Armageddon? Why not? Fifty million Americans believe in a literal reading
of the Bible, certainly more than all the world?s true Marxists put
together.

At Berkeley in the ?60s we all signed loyalty oaths. That?s how it all
started in Germany as well? Keep your pens handy.

I?ll be fanning and sunning myself in Fiji next week. For many locals the
standard fare there is frozen turkey tails, lamb flaps, or corned lamb
and beef in a hash of kumara or cassava. Kava ? served, but not drunk by
women ? is a soothing anaesthetic in the night. From the farthest corner
of the empire, I wave you my best wishes.

Aldo

PS: Robley, I?ll try to get the book. But could you boil down your piece
to something a redneck blue collar worker can understand and relate to?

Aldo Matteucci
61, Ludlam Cr.
LOWER HUTT 6009
NEW Zealand
aldo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (preferred)
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