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Today's
Stories
December
4 / 6, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
Politicize the CIA? You've Got to
be Kidding
December
3, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Lie Then Escalate
Ben
Tripp
Fun With Boycotts: How to Shop in a
Time of Crisis
Joe
Allen
Murder in El Salvador: the Assassination of Teamster Organizer
Gilberto Soto
Matthew
B. Riley
Human Rights Court Fails Lori Berenson
Meir
Shalev
In the End, It is the Violin that Wins
Bob
Wing
The White Elephant in the Room: Race and Election 2004
Christopher
Brauchli
When McCain Bit His Tongue
Sasan
Fayazmanesh
The EU, the US, Israel and Iran
December
2, 2004
Tito
Tricot
No Justice in Chile: I'm a Torture
Survivor in a Country Where Torturers Still Run Free
Behzad
Yaghmaian
The Murder of Theo Van Gogh and Muslim Migration
Dr.
Susan Block
Lana and Me: Meetings with Remarkable Apes
Frank
/ Chowkwanyun
Liberalism and Its Bounds
Lee
Sustar
Standoff in Ukraine: the Bad v. the Corrupt
Patrick
Cockburn
Another Grim Record in Iraq
Mark
Engler
Seattle at Five
Michael
Donnelly
Something Stinks in South Bend: the Firing of Tyrone Willingham
Nate
Collins
The Bay Area Mall on an Ohlone Burial Grounds
Saul
Landau
The Assassination of Danilo Anderson
December
1, 2004
Phillip
Cryan
Associated with Whom? Rightist Bias
in Wire Coverage of Colombia
Dave
Zirin
What's the Matter with "Leon"?:
Budweiser's Racist Commercial
Ghali
Hassan
Iraq's Health Care Under the Occupation:
200 Children Die Every Day
Donna
J. Volatile
Beware Western Nations Threatening "Democracy"
Patrick
Cockburn
How Saddam Tried to Arm the Insurgency
Nick
Meo
Chemical War Over Afghanistan
Mike
Ferner
The Battle of Toledo
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Shame and Determination on Global AIDS Day: 40 Million and Rising
Kathy
Kelly
Looking the Other Way: the Real Crimes
of the UN in Iraq
November
30, 2004
Jennifer
Van Bergen
The Veil of Secrecy
Toni
Nelson Herrera
Meeting Kurtz: When Art is a Crime
Paul
Craig Roberts
The Bush Delusions: Successful at Incompetence
Patrick
Cockburn
The Insurgency Strikes Back: There Are No Safe Havens in Iraq
Chuck
Munson
WTO Protests Five Years Later: Seattle Weekly Trashes Anti-Globalization
Movement
Adam
Williams
Citizenship Sold: Back to Business in Indiana
Gregory
Elich
A Dangerous Turn in the US Plans for
North Korea
Website
of the Day
Read Lynne Cheney's Lesbian Novel Online!
November
29, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Blowback in Ukraine: The Hand of
the CIA?
Omar
Barghouti
"The Pianist" of Palestine:
Roadblock Concerto at Gunpoint
Mike
Whitney
The US Media and Fallujah: How to
Market a Siege
Uri
Avnery
The Abu Mazen Style: "Give Me
Some Credit!"
Matt
Vidal
Globalization and Economic Inequality: a Look at the Numbers
Patrick
Cockburn
An Interview with Iraq's Foreign
Minister
Alan
Farago
Sex Change and Salvation: God, Girly Men and Endocrine Disrupters
Justin
Huggler
Bhopal 20 Years Later
Antony
Loewenstein
How Australia Reported Arafat's Death and Legacy
Gary
Leupp
Ukraine: Poll Results Aren't the Real
Issue
Website
of the Day
Mosul: Images from a Kill Zone
November
27 / 28, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Torture & Neo-Liberalism with
Sycorax in Iraq
Alexander
Cockburn
What Happened to O'Reilly's Loofa?
Fred
Gardner
Ashcroft v. Raich: Medical Marijuana and the Supreme Court
Kathy
Kelly
What We Can Control
Diane
Christian
The Other Cheek: "Empire Doesn't Analyze, It Acts"
Gary
Leupp
One More Neocon Target: South (Yes, South) Korea
Lenni
Brenner
Equality and Rights of Return: Jefferson Instructs the New York
Times
Ron
Jacobs
Death Squads and Iraq's Elections: the Mysterious Murders of
the AMS Clerics
Joshua
Frank
An Interview with Kevin Zeese on Nader, Kerry and the ABB Crowd
Toni
Solo
The Murder of Danilo Anderson
Saul
Landau
Fallujah, the 21st Century Guernica
JoAnn
Wypijewski
Matthew Shepard Case 6 Years Later: Why Hate Crimes Laws are
No Cure for Homophobia
Justin
Taylor
Empire's Lawless Opportunities
Amos
Harel
The Case of Captain R.
Walter
A. Davis
Tabloid Justice
Stephen
Hendricks
God's Kind of Men
Poets'
Basement
Albert, LaMorticella and Ford
November
26, 2004
Peter
Feng
Gavin Newsom: Man or Machine?
Greg
Moses
It's the White Vote, Stupid
Liaquat
Ali Khan
The Devil's Work: Bush's Minority Appointments
Michael
Mandel / Gail Davidson
Why Bush Should Be Banned from Canada: a Memo to the Ministry
of Immigration
Dave
Lindorff
Nation of Sheep, Turkey of an Election: Urkrainians Show the
Way
Gary
Corseri
When Black Friday Comes...
Paul
Craig Roberts
Whatever Happened to Conservatives?
Website
of the Day
Iraq Pipeline Watch
November
25, 2004
Willliam
Loren Katz
Giving Thanks to Whom?: "Thanks
to God We Sent 600 Heathen Souls to Hell Today"
Mitchel
Cohen
Why I Hate Thanksgiving
Mike
Ferner
An Uncommon Mom
November
24, 2004
Gila
Svirsky
License to Kill: the Example of Violence
is Set by the State
Winslow
T. Wheeler
The
Other Mess in Congress
Christopher
Brauchli
The Company He Keeps: the Syndicate of Tom Delay
Dave
Lindorff
Double Standards on Exit Polls: Hypocrisy Sans Irony
Ron
Jacobs
The Occupation of Iraq is the Root of t he Problem
Ken
Sengupta
Witnesses: War Crimes in Fallujah
Diana
Barahona
The Final Holocaust or Why I Voted for Ralph Nader
John
L. Hess
Safire the Shameless
Jason
Leopold
Did Harvard Hire (Another) War Criminal?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Mark of McCain: the Senator Most Likely to Start a Nuclear
War
Map
of the Day
Now and Then: 2004 v. 1860
November
23, 2004
Forrest
Hylton
Bush and Uribe at the Beach
November
22, 2004
Dave
Zirin
Fight Night in the NBA: Selective Outrage
in Detroit
Paul
Craig Roberts
On to Iran: We Won't Get Fooled Again?
Michael
Mandel / Gail Davidson
Why Bush Should be Banned from Canada
Kathie
Helmkamp
Our Son: a Marine Who Won't Kill
Ken
Sengupta
The Triangle of Death: "This is Now the Most Dangerous Place
in Iraq"
Mike
Whitney
Greenspan's Hammer
Roger
Burbach
Why They Hate Bush in Chile
Website
of the Day
Fed Up with Government Lies and Corporate Spin?
November
20 / 21, 2004
Alexander
Cockburn
The Poisoned Chalice
Todd
May
Religion, the Election and the Politics of Fear
Abbas
Ahmed Ibrahim
The Horrors of Fallujah: a First-Hand Account
Kevin
Zeese
Mishandling Nader
Landau
/ Hassen
After Arafat
Tom
Barry
The Vulcans Consolidate Power: The Rise of Stephen Hadley
Fred
Gardner
Pot Shots: Ask Dr. Todd
Justin
E.H. Smith
Triumph of the Will: the Sequel
Carl
Estabrook
Where We Are Now
Gary
Leupp
Imperial History-Making vs. Reality-Based Thought: a Dialogue
Dave
Lindorff
Apocalypse Soon
Jenna
Michelle Liut
Plans Colombia and Patriota: Wanton Wastes of Money, Manpower
and Lives
Mickey
Z.
The Granma Moses of Radical Writing: an Interview with William
Blum
Greg
Moses
The Same Old Struggle Against Imperial America
Sharon
Smith
Abortion Rights and the Election: What Now?
Ron
Jacobs
Sandwiches and Car Bombs
Ben
Tripp
Raising d'Etre: Finding Money in Hollywood These Days
Richard
Oxman
Basketbrawl Two Pointer: Iraq Rules!
Gilad
Atzmon
Politics and Jazz
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Albert, Ford, & Anon.
Website
of the Day
Voice of the Forest
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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Weekend Edition
December 4 / 6, 2004
Ionesco and the Empire
Dining
With the Rhinos
By
JOE BAGEANT
Thanks to an online friend, I recently
rediscovered Eugene Ionesco's play Rhinoceros-the one
about being fully human in a totalitarian state. Berenger, the
play's protagonist, is a humanist stranded in a society slowly
becoming monsters. Rhinoceroses to be exact, a symbol for a herding
mindless ugliness in an unthinking stampede. Ultimately Berenger
is the last pink flesh and blood man left in a stampeding rhinoceros
herd, and comes to grasp that the stampede itself is what it
is all about. It is the stampede, the mindless charging off together
that causes the metamorphosis of people into rhinos.
Americans at the time, 1959,
saw Rhinoceros as a play about their favorite theme, individualism.
Ionesco tried to tell critics that it was a play "not merely
against conformism but mainly about totalitarianism," and
that the very notion of a government or state proclaiming individualism
as one of its national virtues is in itself absurd. To which
U.S. critics replied that totalitarianism cannot happen here
because America is a nation of individualists, thus proving Ionesco's
point. Whatever the case, I had drinks and bar food with the
rhinos last night at a bar called King Harry's (not the real
name) and I can assure you they are having the time of their
lives, snorting and bellowing and charging everything in sight.
King Harry's is not the working
class tavern I usually patronize, but one of those faux English
pubs frequented by local business types, which here in Virginia
is to say blood spitting neo-conservative Republicans. Rhinos
of the first order who want to kill and eat liberals and reduce
such threatening enemies as France to a glowing cinder. Though
I generally avoid King Harry's---a man can stomach only so much
jingoism at a sitting---I am nevertheless popular there as an
object of derision, being an ultra-liberal and Republican rhino
lives being so in need of entertainment. Thus, when they get
a genuine socialist at the table, it is like having an unarmed
space alien drop in for a beer.
Unfortunately, it never stops
at one drink and always ends up in a near fist fight, although
throwing drinks in each others faces is about as close as it
ever comes between a bunch of overweight aging old sots like
us. I kid you not. I've had my own martini thrown in my face
on occasion, and the bartender is so conditioned she sometimes
brings me a bar towel when the pitch of the conversation reaches
a certain level.
Anyway, given the sort of university
graduates states such as Virginia grind out, they tend to equate
socialism with Joseph Stalin and the Democratic Party with "urban
liberals." Urban liberal is of course one to those conservative
code words for "taking everything away from working white
people and giving it to non-working welfare niggers and porto-rikkins
up nawth in the big cities." Which is why it really frosts
my ass to hear Democratic leadership saying that in the next
presidential election they will need a candidate from the South,
a Clinton or an Edwards, in order to win. A Southern Democrat
is simply a free trade capitalist Republican who has renounced
lynching and comes carrying an armload of southern charm. (Any
readers who think Clinton was a real liberal can bail out here.)
We Southerners learn early how to cover our darkness with Southern
smarm. Erudition with a Southern accent works on nearly everybodysort
of a Shelby Foote, William Faulkner, southern gentleman mythology
game we run on Yankees and each other. The whole world actually.
But underneath it is sheer
conservative meanness in most cases, something Southerners by
no measure have a franchise on, but do better than most people.
Southern meanness has experienced a renaissance in the last few
decades because of the unholy alliance of GOP corporatist America
with fundamentalist Christianity, and the sheer bald-faced aggression
of neo-conservatism these days. Urban liberals just do not understand
how absolutely mean Republican heartlanders, under the tutelage
of Southerners, have become over the years. Northern and coastal
liberal failure to grasp this is understandable. For reasons
of diversity, this sort of aggregate meanness is not as common
in big urban centers. It requires a certain critical mass of
repressed homophobic, Christian white people who feel threatened
by everything, plus gobs of money and guns to make it manifest.
We've got it all here honey, and there is no rhino meaner than
the Southern rhino.
OK. Just how mean are we talking
about? Blind stupid mean. Meaner than a goddam sack of snakes.
Here is a sample of standard rhino conversation, which I have
clipped from the local online forum so as to be completely accurate
in quoting them. But these quotes are from the very same people
who say the very same things night after night at King Harry's
and actually believe what they say. I remind you that these are
some of the better sort of rhinos in this town, rhinos who own
businesses, professional rhinos, etc. You do not want to meet
the real wooly boogers.
---Who cares what the rest
of the world thinks of us? They do not live here and they do
not count!
---The United States will be
forced to engage in tactical low yield nuclear attacks, in particular
against Iran & North Korea.
---I support the complete destruction
of Arab/Muslim culture and nationality. The complete destruction
of their capitol cities and money centers. Then we will see how
long they taunt us.
---Put an end to all this stupid
political correctness crap and the and simply beat some sense
into those who don't comply. The hell with what the euro tribal
councils whine.
And my personal favorite rhinism of all:
---If Americans stand together
and quit questioning themselves so much we can rule the world.
But all this liberal whining is ruining American business here
and abroad.
Huh?
Mostly the rhinos are practical,
artless animals in a rush to do necessary and useful things,
all of which involve money. Or as Ionesco put it: "a prisoner
of necessity, who cannot understand that a thing might perhaps
be without usefulness; nor does he understand that, at bottom,
it is the useful that may be a useless and back-breaking burden.
If one does not understand the usefulness of the useless and
the uselessness of the useful, one cannot understand art. And
a country where art is not understood is a country of slaves
and robots...."
***
"the very stampede
itself is the most telling and tragic of all arguments. For
when Berenger considers going out into the street 'to try to
convince them,' he realizes that he 'would have to learn their
language.' He looks in the mirror and sees that he no longer
resembles anyone. He searches madly for a photograph of people
as they were before the big change. But now humanity itself
has become incredible, as well as hideous. To be the last man
in the rhinoceros herd is, in fact, to be a monster. Such is
the problem which Ionesco sets us in his tragic irony: solitude
and dissent become more and more impossible, more and more absurd."
--- Thomas Merton's essay,
The Rain and the Rhinoceros
Dissent? We wish! Judging from
the run-of-the-mill American liberals I see here in the Washington
D.C. area, liberals think voting Democratic, giving fifty bucks
to the ACLU and dropping down at the National Mall once a year
to observe someone else's protest is enough to maintain
their credentials.
Nevertheless, some very ordinary middle class liberals are finally
feeling like Berenger. Starting to feel that creepy sense of
alienation (the kind that we American lefties have become used
to) catching a whiff of what smells like approaching totalitarianism.
This has been very hard for white collar liberals who pride themselves
on balanced judgment and restraint from political excess. But
ever since the suspect skin-of-the-teeth reelection of George
Bush, I have been able to coax honest confessions of fear out
of at least a few mainstream Democrats around the company water
cooler. These are the Toyota and Volvo driving liberals whose
most adventurous move in any given week may be parking one space
over from their usual spot in the company parking lot. (That
this daring move always draws comment should give you some idea
of the quiet desperation of publishing work in this country.)
A few of these meek liberals are starting to smell the fear,
catch the scent of the herd.
But they need more evidence.
Liberals always need more facts. After all, nothing appears much
different since the November elections. We get up in the morning
and everything is the same as when we went to bed. We still have
our jobs and the mortgage still comes due on the first of the
month. Television is as bad as ever. Yet, something has changed.
One keeps one's opinions more to one's self these days. There
is something in the air they cannot quite put their finger upon,
and if one cannot name the beast, well then, it's best not to
comment on it lest people think you are starting to fray at the
edges, becoming aberrant. And besides, in looking around, nobody
else seems overly upset except a few aberrant types on the Internet.
When I stop to consider those rare occasions when I have been
prescient in any meaningful way about American society---and
there have been damned few---I have felt like an aberrant. Hell,
I am aberrant. Most of us on these sorts of websites are. But
what is aberrant in a society that watches 6000 murders a year
on TV for entertainment? That spends more money on hard-on drugs
and personal ammo than it does on child nutrition? I've come
to accept feeling aberrant most of the time. But as a former
dope fiend, thrice divorced, ex-Jesus freak, part-time drunkard
socialist malcontent, I can safely say that what is happening
around us is aberrant even by MY standards. I mean
hell, failure of liberals to notice the growth of an entire red
state savanna land out here coursing with rhinoceroses is weird.
Calling weird, weird is very
hard for educated liberals. Most have nice lives, either in the
middle class or perhaps living comfortably amid less affluent
but intelligent and artistic circles. Others are middle class
educators and such, raising families among decent open minded
friends in a community of like souls. Of course some do smell
the fear. But they think that if they remain invisible and deny
any such thoughts they will escape the trampling of the herd.
Then too, acknowledging that
we have devolved into a one-party rhinoid system, the party of
business, but with two wings, Dem and GOP, would put the average
American liberal in the position of having to take action. Or
not. And let's face the truth about modern middle class American
liberals---they are a rather gutless lot who would not take to
the streets no matter how bad things get. That is all but impossible
when your house is on a good street and your kids' college fund
is in place, even if it took a second mortgage to pay for it.
Denial is easier, as was proved when the so-called American left
failed to rise up when the 2000 elections were rigged, something
which doesn't even fly in the Ukraine these days, as was proved
by its massive protest of similar elections there. Yet I must
admit, to stand up in the face of a rhino herd takes a lot of
ass. Maybe denial buys enough time to get the kids through school
and mortgage paid off before the rhinos tear up the lawn. Denial
can sometimes work, but only if you are buying time for yourself.
Being raised in the American
South, I am practically an expert on denial. We live in denial
of such things as the Civil War being about slavery, that tobacco
causes cancer and that global warming is real. Otherwise we would
have to cop to the Enlightenment's proposition that man can advance
through discovery and critical thought, and we are not about
to do that. We prefer the hierarchy of feudalism, including the
new global corporate feudalism. In fact, we maintained our denial
of the American social contract long enough that we managed to
win the "battle for America's soul" in the last election.
We helped make rhinoceritis dominant so America can now charge
back into some murky past dubbed "traditional values,"
rolling up the Enlightenment in the process.
***
At the same time there are
faint signs that some liberal Americans are more alarmed than
most of my middle aged editor friends around the water cooler.
There were those internet and television news stories about a
rise in the number of Americans visiting Canadian emigration/citizenship
websites. And though there has been no mass exodus, there is
the sneaking suspicion that what people think about doing, they
eventually do---or at least some of them anyway. Also, it takes
time to collect one's life to emigrate. In fact, escaping a corporation
that passes itself off as a nation, one based upon citizen consumer
debt, is not nearly as easy as it looks. So we'll have to wait
and see how many citizens are how serious.
Hard cases such as myself and
the readers of websites like this one have railed and ranted
about the rise of the rhinos for some time now. But to be honest,
I sometimes doubt myself, just like those middle-of-the-road
liberals. Like theirs, my senses do not perceive much physical
change. I get up and brush my teeth and every day is the same
as the day before. I look over at my sleeping wife, who is untroubled
by any of the impending political specters that so often haunt
me. And I wonder, am I nuts? Have I finally fallen off the precipice
over which I have so long stared? After all, the dog still chews
the corner of the carpet if I don't keep an eye on him. Are not
these the things of ordinary earthly life? Maybe I should be
paying more attention to the mundane stuff which any reflective
person knows constitutes most of living.
Then that national creepiness,
the distant rumble of the herd, rattles me again.
So next spring I am shopping hard for a house in Andalucia, or
St. Kitts, or Normandy, places where there are still secular
humanists political parties of the type the rhinos see as the
heart of evil. Hopefully, places with no Wal-Mart---yet. Places
where life involves buying vegetables without plastic wrappers
and cooking them yourself, and drinking wine late on a weeknight
with good friends because you do not get up at 5 a.m. to commute
in the herd of other useful citizens, and if I am lucky, never
owning a car or a television again. In other words, living life
with the bark still on it and watching American politics from
a safe distance. Unpatriotic, I admit. But patriotism is merely
nationalism under another guise and this belly-of-the-beast political
stuff belongs to younger men than me.
If as is claimed, American politics are a pendulum, then that
swing has been a mighty damned short one of late, somewhere between
corporate feudalism abroad, and a domestic form in which rhinos
happily play video games and watch football while their kids
charge around on the ever expanding rhino empire's wars for oil
and turf and more slave labor.
Call me hyperbolic if you want,
paranoid even. But millions of people with swollen bellies around
the planet are nodding yes, along with all those unemployed youths
in Fallujah, and Mindanao, and Bolivia, loading AK clips, in
anticipation of bagging an American rhino.
Joe Bageant is a writer and magazine editor living
in Winchester, Virginia. He may be contacted at bageantjb@netscape.net.
Copyright 2004 by Joe Bageant.
Weekend Edition
Features for November
27 / 28, 2004
Peter
Linebaugh
Torture & Neo-Liberalism with
Sycorax in Iraq
Alexander
Cockburn
What Happened to O'Reilly's Loofa?
Fred
Gardner
Ashcroft v. Raich: Medical Marijuana and the Supreme Court
Kathy
Kelly
What We Can Control
Diane
Christian
The Other Cheek: "Empire Doesn't Analyze, It Acts"
Gary
Leupp
One More Neocon Target: South (Yes, South) Korea
Lenni
Brenner
Equality and Rights of Return: Jefferson Instructs the New York
Times
Ron
Jacobs
Death Squads and Iraq's Elections: the Mysterious Murders of
the AMS Clerics
Joshua
Frank
An Interview with Kevin Zeese on Nader, Kerry and the ABB Crowd
Toni
Solo
The Murder of Danilo Anderson
Saul
Landau
Fallujah, the 21st Century Guernica
JoAnn
Wypijewski
Matthew Shepard Case 6 Years Later: Why Hate Crimes Laws are
No Cure for Homophobia
Justin
Taylor
Empire's Lawless Opportunities
Amos
Harel
The Case of Captain R.
Walter
A. Davis
Tabloid Justice
Stephen
Hendricks
God's Kind of Men
Poets'
Basement
Albert, LaMorticella and Ford
|