The Real Beneath the Real

Waferinos-

I want to follow up on the article posted by Tia at the end of the last thread, an article called "Marcuse Today," by Ronald Aronson, publ. in 2014. It raises some very important issues regarding what would constitute real social change. Let me, however, begin with an anecdote. In May of 1968 students had taken over the Sorbonne, and public debate went on for two months. A friend of mine, a prof. of French, arrived outside of Paris by plane in May, and went directly to the Sorbonne, where he remained until the student movement collapsed in June. What he told me was this: that for two months he listened to debates about the nature of man, what real change was about, and existential questions of a sort that could never be discussed by Americans because Americans are clueless; they couldn't begin to understand these types of concepts. I call these issues "the real beneath the real."

http://bostonreview.net/books-ideas/ronald-aronson-herbert-marcuse-one-dimensional-man-

The Aronson article makes it clear that Marcuse alone, during the sixties (One-Dimensional Man, 1964), in terms of sociopolitical analysis, was going for the whole ball of wax. He regarded the US as totalitarian because it had colonized the minds of every American. This, writes Aronson, "is wholly compatible with civil rights, a free press, and free elections." My own critique of the Occupy movement (which Aronson, oddly enough, regards somewhat favorably) was that its goal was the redistribution of wealth (hence 1% vs. 99%), rather than the core issue, namely the relations of power. I never saw a single article from the movement on the latter subject. But Aronson sees a deeper layer, even than that, in the Marcusean outlook. As in the case of Aldous Huxley, he is pointing to the "comfortable oppression" under which we "happily" live in a Brave New World. This reality is one that is so global, that the citizenry is unable to think in terms of alternatives, or to even be aware that alternatives might be necessary. Thus the core issue is not civil rights, or a free press, or free elections, or the distribution of wealth, or the relations of power, but the consumer society in which we are all immersed. "The pleasures of consumption," writes Aronson, "absorb political opposition." He doesn't, however, take a stand on the issue of false consciousness vs. Americans eagerly buying into the system, a la the Janis Joplin song--a weakness in the essay. But he emphasizes that there is, today, "no significant opposition to the system as a whole and its way of life." It is this that both Marcuse and Huxley targeted (along with Allen Ginsberg). Radical change, says Aronson, is not merely about alternative politics, but about creating a different sensibility and different values.

But if that is the case, then we have to talk about the consciousness of individual Americans, and how to change that. "How can a movement break with this all-absorbing world to demand and create a better one...And in the name of what?" Aronson asks. But this is where we hit a brick wall, because Americans are not Frenchmen. They can no more hold a May-June debate at the Sorbonne than sprout wings and fly. In political terms, they lack awareness of literally everything. In a word, they are children.

E.M. Forster raised the issue of individual consciousness in his essay "What I Believe," which I discuss in the Twilight book. One can regard the essay as an early manifesto of Waferism, I suppose. Marcuse had no idea of how systemic change might occur; Huxley provided an early reference to the New Monastic Option in suggesting that the dominant culture would remain as is, and that a handful of the alienated would live on the margins of this culture--like Native Americans on reservations (who have different values to this day). I also confront this issue in the chapter on Machiavelli in Genio. My argument is that his biographers all got him wrong, making him one of the most misunderstood individuals in the history of political theory. The bottom line for Machiavelli, the real beneath the real, was our actual day-to-day behavior amd values. Either they were about ego, or about decency; but like Forster, or Marcuse, or Huxley, he had to pose this mental breakthrough as an ideal, because he had no idea as to how a society might get there. Wafers have to live with the fact that decency is its own reward, and that as the whole constellation of capitalism collapses, there might be a different possibility on the other side. In that sense, he, along with these other writers, are utopians to a greater or lesser degree. But what else is there? C. Wright Mills called our present system "crackpot realism," which is where we are today.

Machiavelli died disappointed, but I hardly think his was a wasted life. Might as well go for broke, don't you think?

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The Wire Cage Experiment

Wafers-

I've recently been working on a collection of short stories. I've written 5 so far, amounting to about 60 pages. The problem is that to publish them in book form, I need at least 160 pages. Since I write only when I'm inspired, and since I can never predict when inspiration will strike, it could be another year before I pitch the book to a publisher.

I occasionally feel guilty that I don't provide enough entertainment for you guys. Granted, watching the US go down the tubes in the gauchest and most vulgar manner possible, or ridiculing turkeys like Tulsi Gabbard, is very entertaining, but it's of a rather noir variety. So what I'm going to do today is post one of these stories. It's not the best of the lot, and it's also a bit noir, but it has a nice demented flavor to it that I think you guys might enjoy. Here goes:

As a salesman of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, George Walraven enjoyed his job, but in the digital age he was fighting an uphill battle. He liked going door-to-door, talking to people about their lives, and the importance of being well-informed. But most of them didn't want to by the encyclopedia, because they said they could get whatever information they needed online. George immediately pointed out that Britannica had an online paywall; this pitch worked some of the time, but mostly not. Still, he loved the job and didn't want to give it up.

In terms of developing new sales strategies, George was inspired by an episode of Friends, in which an encyclopedia salesman comes to Joey Tribbiani's apartment and tries to sell him a set of encyclopedias. He asks Joey if he ever feels out of it, sitting around with his friends, who are discussing something he knows nothing about. Joey admits this is a frequent occurrence, but says he just can't afford to buy these books. So the salesman asks him how much cash he has on him at the moment; it turns out to be $50. "For $50," he tells Joe, "I can sell you a single volume. What letter would you prefer?" For some reason, Joey picks V. Then follows a rather silly scene in which Joey, sitting around with the Friends, keeps trying to steer the conversation to subjects such as Volcanos, Viet Nam, Vivasection, and other V's.

George loved that episode, and it gave him an idea. In these days of economic hardship, he reasoned, most people simply can't shell out $1,200 for the entire set. But like the salesman on Friends, he could probably get them to buy a single volume. Once he had sold all of the volumes, from A to Z, he figured he might be able to throw an "encyclopedia party," in which each person in attendance represented one letter of the alphabet. And then what? Some kind of party games? He wasn't sure. But he was convinced there was an angle here, one that would enable him to sell more books.

George's wife, a rather attractive blond ten years his junior, was keen on the whole idea, even thinking that if George could sell two sets of A to Z, it might be possible to organize a public competition between the two teams and run it on network TV. It took a few months to make this happen, but finally the show took place: "From A to Z: The War of the Books." Prizes ran from $1,000 to $10,000. First up were the 2 A's. Each person had a buzzer; George's job was to name an A entry, and the person who buzzed first then had to explain the item, say what it was. The two A's were a housewife from Cincinnati, and an insurance salesman from Topeka. The winner would be the first to give ten correct answers.

"What is the Aeneid?" George asked them. Brittany, the housewife, was quick on the draw. "Long poem by Virgil providing a foundation myth for Roman civilization," she said. "Right you are!" exclaimed George. "Next, what is abalone?" Lorenzo, the insurance salesman, pressed the buzzer and declared, "A type of processed meat." The audience was convulsed with laughter. "No," said George; "you're thinking of baloney, which would be a B question. Brittany?" "A type of sea snail, or mollusc," she responded. "OK," said George; "the score is now 2 to 0."

George proceeded to run through Aardvark, Aeolian harp, All Hallows Eve, and so on, until Brittany was the victor with a score of 10-5, racking up winnings of $1,000 (so far). The audience applauded, and she and Lorenzo retired from the stage. The B's were up next, but before that contest could take place, someone in the audience stood up. "Is this game rigged?" he called out.

"Wha?" George exclaimed. "Of course not." "Abalone is processed meat?" said the man. "Are you shitting me? Remember the show Twenty-One, the big scandal? Contestants were fed the correct answers, including Charles Van Doren, a professor at Columbia. People will do anything for money."

"Sir," said George, "you need to sit down. This game is not rigged, and you are completely out of order."

"But that denial is exactly what that earlier generation of execs at NBC said!" he cried. At this point, Security was called in, but the man had apparently come with a bucket of rotten vegetables, which he skillfully deployed against the officers. Somehow, this triggered a mob psychology response, with people choosing up sides: rigged or not rigged. A total melee ensued. Out of nowhere, a man in a Tarzan outfit swung through on a rope, and a woman thrust a Boston cream pie in George's face. "Criminals!" she screamed. "Thugs!"

All hell broke loose. The mob was able to overwhelm the Security guards, in some cases banging their heads against the floor. People picked up on the cry of "Criminals!" and "Thugs!", tore up the seats of the studio, attacked the contestants, and threw volumes of the encyclopedia at each other. The madness lasted for over an hour, at which point everyone stopped, as if on cue, dusted themselves off, and left the building.

"This may not have been such a good idea," George said to his wife, through gobs of Boston cream pie.

Of course, most of the melee was caught by various people on their cell phones, and the footage was used on the late-night news report. The anchor said something like, "A riot was unexpectedly triggered this evening at the opening of an NBC quiz show called 'From A to Z' by a defrocked priest, the Rev. Pierson J. Flanksteak. Rev. Flanksteak, without any evidence, accused the network of rigging the show, which resulted in an outbreak of mob violence. The audience went wild, and the riot went on for over an hour. When later questioned by the police as to why he made the accusation. Rev. Flanksteak said he was out to demonstrate Freud's theory that civilization was but a thin veneer over a massive 'iceberg' of barbarism."

"From A to Z" was subsequently cancelled; instead, all of the networks hosted panel discussions of Freud's theory, what had happened, whether Flanksteak (now sitting in jail) was a lunatic or a genius, and so on. It was all hot air; most of the TV audience, and the media, correctly concluded that these "experts" were fools. George quit his job with Britannica and went on to write a best-selling book, From A to Z: The Riot at NBC. The promotional flyer contained the following passages:

"The Rev. Flanksteak set out to validate Freud's notion that civilization was a shaky cover on top of raw, irrational emotions. He had no evidence that the program was rigged, and in fact, it wasn't. What he actually demonstrated was that the public can be made to go crazy by the use of certain charged words--'rigged' being one of them. 'Post-modern' is another. My own theory is that Americans are badly squeezed by the inexorable disintegration of their way of life, such that when these words are uttered, huge amounts of energy are suddenly released. This is important information for us to have about the fragile condition of the American people. Flanksteak now sits in jail, whereas I think he more correctly deserves to receive the Presidential Medal of Honor.

"I don't think, as a nation, that we can afford to be conducting our daily affairs while sitting on a kind of semantic volcano. What I propose is that we set up controlled experiments on the release of energy. I have consulted with Senator Riggins about this, and we are going to arrange for such an experiment two weeks from today. For this, we need 1,000 volunteers. Interested parties should sign up at the NBC studios as soon as possible."

The signup sheets filled up very quickly. NBC constructed a huge wire cage to house the participants. On the appointed day, they were all frisked for weapons and then locked inside the cage. George stood outside of it with a megaphone. "Is everyone ready?" he called out. "Ready!" came the response. "OK," he said; "here goes:"

FEMINISM!

The people inside the cage went nuts. They began to scream, tear their hair, bite each other, and beat each other up. Many got down on all fours and barked like dogs. It went on for thirty-five minutes, until they ran out of steam. Exhausted, most of them were lying on the floor. Some were bleeding.

"Well done," George called out on the megaphone. "Now let's try another phrase:"

POLITICALLY INCORRECT!

Again, this set off a massive reaction of rage and violence, but since most of these folks were rather tired from the first round, it lasted only twenty minutes this time.

RACISM!
MUSLIMS!
ISRAEL!
DIVERSITY!

George bombarded them with these charged words until there wasn't a person left standing. The medical teams and ambulances that were parked outside now hauled most of the mangled participants off to local hospitals, where hundreds of them spent a week or more in recovery.

As would be expected, George was in high demand on the TV talk shows. The typical first question he was met with was, "Given the disaster of the wire cage experiment, what do you plan to do next?" George's answer was always the same:

"Bob [or Freddie, or Chrystal], this was no disaster. As a pilot project, it was a great success. It revealed the depths of negative energy stored in the American psyche--energy we are going to have to drain, if this country has any future. You know, we are constantly hearing about the need to 'get America back on track'. Well, this is how to do it. Think of it as draining the pus of an infection. If a bunch of words can push the American public right over the edge, then it's safe to say that we are dealing with a whole lotta pus--metaphorical pus, infecting the body politic. Myself, I'm looking forward to Wire Cage Experiment No. 2."

And the rest is history. As the "pus" was drained from the American people, a certain (limited) restoration of sanity settled over the land. "I think it's safe to say," George finally announced, "That we have made America great again."

(c)Morris Berman, 2019

Fanny Trollope

Some time ago someone asked if the US was always as bad as it is today, or whether the contemporary condition is something new. An answer comes from Fanny (Frances) Trollope, mother of great English novelist, Anthony Trollope, who visited the US during 1927-31. Her book, Domestic Manners of the Americans, was publ. 1832. She basically regarded the nation as a collection of hustlers and boors, profoundly nasty, and self-deluded. A sample:

"every bee in the hive is actively employed in search of...money; neither art, science, learning, nor pleasure can seduce them from its pursuit."

"there is no charm, no grace in their conversation."

"however meritorious the American character may be, it is not amiable."

"I never saw a population so totally divested of gaiety; there is no trace of this feeling from one end of the Union to the other."

"rude indifference...is so remarkably prevalent in the manners of American children."

"they never have the air of leisure or repose."

"they never amuse themselves--no; and their hearts are not warm...and they have no ease, no forgetfulness of business and of care--no, not for a moment."

"The want of warmth, of interest, of feeling, upon all subjects which do not immediately touch their own concerns, is universal, and has a most paralyzing effect upon conversation."

"The poor of great Britain, whom distress, or a spirit of enterprise tempt to try another land, ought, for many reasons, to repair to Canada; there they would meet co-operation and sympathy, instead of malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness."

[On the American obsession with money:] "This sordid object, for ever before their eyes, must inevitably produce a sordid tone of mind, and worse still, it produces a seared and blunted conscience on all questions of probity."

"[Americans] believe themselves in all sincerity to have surpassed, to be surpassing, and to be about to surpass, the whole earth in the intellectual race. I am aware that not a single word can be said, hinting a different opinion, which will not bring down a transatlantic anathema on my head."

"...what I consider as one of the most remarkable traits in the national character of Americans: namely, their exquisite sensitiveness and soreness respecting everything said or written concerning them....these feelings, if carried to excess, produce a weakness which amounts to imbecility....they wince if a breeze blows over them, unless it be tempered with adulation....The extraordinary features of [this is] the excess of rage into which they lash themselves [if criticized]."

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The Chicken Lady Revisited

Well, we never did find out the name of the Chicken Lady, who recently smashed up her car at a Popeye's Restaurant in LA, in an attempt to force her way into the line of more-or-less nutso Americans who have gone into a frenzy over a chicken sandwich across the land. Here's the article, and the video, which might be titled "Douche Bag in Action":

https://la.eater.com/2019/11/7/20953728/woman-destroys-car-drive-thru-popeyes-chicken-sandwich-los-angeles

On one level, this is hustling taken to an extreme; but on another level, it's about a very sad country with very sad, empty people in it, who were betrayed by the American Dream. Chicken Lady really is the US in microcosm. She's just a little crazier. After all, the chicken sandwich frenzy is a national phenomenon, similar to Wal-Mart sales where customers trample each other to death. What I am most aware of is how very different is the America of today from the one of my youth, or even, really, the one of, say, 20 years ago. As the empire collapses, so do the minds of its citizens. In so many of these crazy cases that we have reported on this blog--people calling 911 because of a cheeseburger error at McDonald's or whatever--I would love to interview these folks, along the lines of "What were you thinking?" But I imagine that the reply would be just to stare at me. If there is one country on the planet suffering from an epidemic of brain death, you know which one it is. In the Twilightbook, written nearly 20 years ago, I identified "spiritual death" and severe dumbing down as two factors that were taking the US down the drain. But I never imagined anything like the Chicken Lady, or the kind of demented behavior that has been extensively documented on this blog since it began in 2006. It's like we've entered an alternate reality that has become some sort of norm.

With that in mind, what can it matter if Trumpi is impeached, or even thrown out of office? Or if Biden (Schmiden) or Bernie (Schmernie) get elected? The Chicken Lady is rock-bottom America, and no political administration can possibly fix that. I would suggest that Chicken Lady's smashed up car replace Washington on the $1 bill, so the entire country can see what we're up against; but I don't think that's going to happen.

Poor Chicken Lady.

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Cortinas de humo

"When a society is collapsing, all it can really do is beat off"--Horace J. Hardmember IV

It means smokescreens, which is what politics in the US and UK now boil down to. America beat off for 2 years with the Mueller Report--which came to nothing--and is now jerking off with impeachment, which will give us another year of meaningless distraction. It's little more than theater: party lines are so hard these days, that there is abs. no chance Trumpi will be convicted by the Senate (which requires a 2/3 vote). In addition, the impeachment--which probably will happen--can only serve to energize Trumpo's base, and win him the election for a second term. From the viewpoint of a declinist, what could be better? Trumpaloni has done a huge amount of damage since January 2017, and I believe we can look forward to even greater damage during his 2nd term. And then, god willing, he'll cancel the 2024 election and declare himself president for life. OK by me, amigos. So there's nothing to worry about, and only one thing to remember: Brexit, Schmexit. Also: Opa!

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Hind Swaraj

Wafers-

For some time now, I have been thinking about doing a book as a follow-up to my "Dual Process" essay (the last one in AWTY), exploring non-socialist alternatives to capitalism, which I see as coming to an end by 2100. My specific interest is in the models proposed by John Ruskin, William Morris, and Mahatma Gandhi--a rather daunting task, in view of the literature available on these three individuals, not to mention the accumulated works on post-industrial society. In addition, I may have been partly scooped by a recent work by John Blewitt:

https://www.amazon.com/William-Morris-John-Ruskin-Should/dp/1905816340/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=john+blewitt&qid=1571338997&s=books&sr=1-1

So who knows? Perhaps I'll do a biography of Tulsi Gabbard instead (source material in her case is a lot more manageable, for some reason). In the meantime, I wanted to share some thoughts on the subject (i.e. Ruskin et al., not Tulsi) as discussed as far back as 1996 by Patrick Brantlinger (Prof. Emeritus at Indiana University). The title of his article is "A Postindustrial Prelude to Postcolonialism." (I hope you all can access it; my own route was via JSTOR, which is available via academic institutions.) His focus, oddly enough, is on Ruskin, Morris, and Gandhi. After working his way through their critiques of industrial society as a horror show, and the alternative models they proposed, he asks whether these models were ever realistic alternatives to more and bigger industrialization, "with its attendant scourges of economic exploitation and environmental degradation." Gandhism, for example, still survives in India, but it was clearly Nehru who carried the day (after Gandhi's death in 1948), with centralization and big technology. Ruskin, Morris, and Gandhi are typically dismissed as utopian thinkers (cf. Morris' novel, News from Nowhere), although this accusation always reminds me of C. Wright Mills' famous characterization of our current economic system as "crackpot realism." In any case, Brantlinger has this to say about the subject:

"No doubt the Utopian imagination has limitations; perhaps it is always romantic, nostalgic, backward-looking. But, as Andre Gorz contends, 'those who propose a fundamentally different society can no longer be condemned in the name of realism. On the contrary, realism now consists of acknowledging that "industrialism" has reached a stage where it can go no further, blocked by obstacles of its own making.' Another perspective on Gandhian anti-industrialism...might ask whether a renewal of pre- or postindustrial village culture may not be a viable economic alternative, and not just for India--an alternative that modernizing nation-states around the globe have buried in the ruins of their relentless pursuit of 'the mirage of modernization.' The idea of such an alternative path--the nonindustrial, nonviolent, decentralized, democratic, communitarian, and economically and ecologically sustainable path that Morris imagined and that Gandhi wanted to follow--may turn out to be the only rational blueprint for survival." {Refs: Andre Gorz, Paths to Paradise, 1985; Boris Kagarlitsky, The Mirage of Modernization, 1995}

We still need Gandhi, Brantlinger goes on to say; we still need Morris and Ruskin. All of them understood "that the most important product of industrialism isn't progress, but the destruction of civilization--that is, the destruction of the very possibility of a social formation in which both justice and beauty prevail."

As one student of sustainability recently put it, "The choice is a sustainable society or no society at all."

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Dance of the Turkeys

Or maybe I should have titled this post "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." What do we have these days? The Gretification of our egos via T-shirts, coffee mugs, and handkerchiefs; a ton of impeachment crap that will ultimately result in nothing (you know it); some scandal stuff around Biden-Schmiden; more presidential debates, featuring Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie-Schmernie, that will amount to fuck all; and the usual round of massacres, McDonald's shootings, opioid data, and god knows what else; and underneath all of the apparent frenzy a huge sense of ennui, that this is nothing more than theater--a dance of turkeys. All this frenetic activity hides a terrible Void, and it is deeper and deeper into that abyss that we are sliding, slowly but surely, on a daily basis.

But who knows this? Current US population = 329.5 million, and it's not likely that more than 0.5 million understand that the whole show is meaningless; that we are like a ship without a rudder, drifting away into oblivion. For appearance is not reality, as Plato told us millennia ago, and yet 329 million Americans or more take the shadows on the walls of the cave to be real. Should Wafers go door to door, informing the citizenry that what they are witnessing is a crock? Will Mr. John Q. Public rub his chin and say, "Gee, I never thought of that. I'm going to have to rethink my whole life"? Would that be a prudent use of our time? Will Mr. Public make a revolution, or leave the country, or even throw his TV out? Clearly, mass enlightenment is right around the corner.

To arms, Wafers! To arms!

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Interview with Pacifica Radio, KPFT, Houston

Wafers-

Here's the link. When you get to it, click on Sept. 19 under the list of Past Shows:

https://kpft.org/programming/newstalk/living-art/

Enjoy!

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Kavanaugh, Netanyahu, Bolti...the dreck mounts like a tidal wave. Wafers, the truly great among us, are called upon to monitor the mass suicide. In this thread, we shall see that they are up to the task.

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Shane

One of the most iconic American films is Shane, starring Alan Ladd, which came out in 1953. I remember seeing it around that time, or maybe shortly after, although I cannot now recall what I thought of it at my tender age. Oddly enough, I ran across a copy of the book on which it is based in a cafe in Mexico City a few days ago, and read the text for the first time. I don't know how faithfully the film follows the novel--66 years later it's hard for me to remember much of the details--but I think the basic narrative is the same: a quiet, rugged, handsome cowboy comes into town, rids it of the bad guys, and then rides off into the sunset.

I call the story "iconic" because it seems to encapsulate key elements of the American value system. First, the basic plot line--the story of America, as it were: Good Conquers Evil. There is no complexity here, no character development; most of the dramatis personae are cardboard figures, and indeed, the tale is told from the viewpoint of a young boy.

Second, Shane is the ultimate loner. Nothing is revealed of his past, and nothing is said about who he actually is. He is self-contained and silent: the rock. He comes out of nowhere, does what he has to do, and then disappears into nowhere. He has no family or community ties, and doesn't really want any. He offers support to the boy's parents, but he himself depends on no one. He is described in almost animal terms: alert, powerful, always ready for action. Shane represents the radical individualism of the American West, the ultimate self-made man.

Third, no one in the story has any intellectual interests whatsoever. No one reads, no one owns a book, and no one has any interest in the world around them beyond their immediate physical environment.

What the narrative tells the American reader or filmgoer is that this is what a true hero consists of. The boy is starstruck by Shane; he wants to grow up to be just like him. I imagine films with John Wayne or Clint Eastwood have had a similar impact on the American psyche. But exactly what is it that is being idealized? Shane might as well have landed from the moon. He is a one-dimensional character, bereft of all human ties. His horse and his gun are apparently the only serious attachments in his life. He's a kind of atom, floating in interstellar space--an ideal millions of Americans aspire to. From inside the narrative, Shaneworld is dignified, heroic (and very masculine). Looking at if from the outside, however, it comes off as a species of insanity--alienation taken to its logical conclusion.

Joe Bageant used to say that Americans lived in a kind of hologram. I have, on a number of occasions, likened American life to a sphere lined with mirrors, such that American values are constantly reflected back, and where no light (or air) from the outside ever gets in. Shaneworld is very much like that, and in the end it can only suffocate, and implode (which is what is going on today). For this America--our America--is a mythological construct, and very few of its citizens manage to get beyond the myth, which is essentially a form of (very successful) indoctrination. Shane is probably the myth in its purest form.

"Don't go, Shane, don't go!" the boy cries at the end of the film. But Shane goes. He has, in effect, been apotheosized as a god. To stay, after all, would have been human.

(c)Morris Berman, 2019

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We are imploding on a daily basis. It actually has more to do with what America is, than with Trumpaloney. Altho I love Trumpaloney, and want him to keep doing what he's doing. Other than that, let's all remember that this is the only blog that deals with Reality. Everything else is a thick syrup of warm dog poopy.

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369

Well, onward and downward. Nothing could be clearer.

A couple of replies to previous comments:

Sam: Statistically speaking, it's purely American.

trying: for starters, check out last essay in AWTY.

As for Obama and the Martha's Vineyard estate: Only Progs don't get it, that he was never anything more than a silver-tongued hustler. They were too busy getting excited about having a black president, to understand that hustling and soullessness and rank dishonesty are hardly the exclusive prerogative of whites. God, is this country fucked.

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Wafers-

Well, we've been having a pretty rich discussion as of late. I am always impressed with the quality of this blog. I think of other blogs, none of which can attain to this high level, and I feel kind of sorry for them. Why don't they just pack it in? In the face of our brilliance, what are they sticking around for? Hard to say; I guess they don't have much else to do. Well, obviously it's not our problem. Our own goal is clear: to continue being a shining example of what the most spiritually evolved consciousness in the universe looks like.

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The Fix Is In

Waferinos-

Dark days, with all these shootings. No surprise to declinists, really. I mean, we're in the end game now, and the historical record is that the end game is ugly. I've said this many times before. Things that seem impossible now will in fact occur; Trump as president falls into this category. And don't kid yourself: he will get reelected, and things will get more violent and self-destructive by the day. Americans are on the edge of The War of All Against All; we shall slip over that edge within the next few years--as a number of novelists have already predicted. To outside observers, whether allies or enemies, we have the appearance of a nation not merely out of control, but irrevocably fucked up. We are certainly not a nation which other countries can admire, look up to. The lights are going out for the "City Upon a Hill," and I think there is a worldwide understanding that our end is in the cards. For most nations of the world, I suspect, this will come as a relief.

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The Happy Book (at last)

Well, Waferinos, it's been a long haul, but at last The Happy Book is finally available. I call it that because it made me happy to write it, and I'm hoping it will make you happy to read it. One thing that got omitted from the Amazon listing: the book has 21 plates, 14 of them in color. I say this because $25 is a lot for a short book, unless it has so many illustrations. I've asked Amazon, via my publisher, to add this info, so potential buyers won't be put off. Whether or not Amazon will do it is, of course, anyone's guess.

https://www.amazon.com/Genio-Italian-Genius-Morris-Berman/dp/1626548838/ref=sr_1_16?crid=AVW0KGXC4GWO&keywords=morris+berman&qid=1563889558&s=books&sprefix=morris+berman%2Caps%2C156&sr=1-16

Anyway, put it on your coffee table, get all your friends excited. :-)

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365

Well, Waferinos-

Here we are, with things getting progressively worse. Regarding Iran, I have written the Pentagon urging them to also nuke Toronto and Paris, but those yokels pay me no heed. Domestically, the rot is frustratingly slow; but it does deepen on a daily basis. On the American tendency to ram head up ass, I've been reading "American Hysteria," by Andrew Burt, and "American Panic," by Mark Stein. Jesus, we are so incredibly stupid. Burt has a final chapter on how to deal with the next bout of hysteria (which is upon us now, I suppose); yeah, that'll work. Perhaps his next book will be on phrenology.

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Hatred and Dissolution

Wafers-

We have reached a new stage in the evolution of this blog. The senders of hate mail have escalated their hysteria: they are now making death threats. It's not clear to me how serious these are, but it would not be impossible for these folks to track me down and kill me, if they really intended to do it. And they just might, especially since their bitterness is completely over the top. However, it would take a fair amount of work, and there's always the risk of getting caught. So it's hard to predict what will happen. Lots of writers get death threats and are still walking the streets; or so I am told.

Not to be excessively grandiose, but I am reminded of a similar situation in the Germany of the thirties. The Nazis held huge book burnings, and many of the books thrown on the fire were studies in psychoanalysis--Freud, Reich, et al. As some historians have observed, there was an immense irony in all of this, for the Nazis were destroying the very texts that could have helped them, psychologically speaking. Similarly, this blog, with its overall candor and insistence on reality, might just possibly serve to help these folks heal, become genuine human beings, instead of vessels of rage and hatred. Of course, as we all know, they much prefer to hate than to heal, in the same way that the Nazis did. I am certainly not writing these words in the hope of waking them up; I'm not a complete fool. And it must be added that almost all Americans are living in unreality, although in most cases it doesn't get to the point of making death threats. These guys, I venture to say, are the craziest of the bunch, the far end of the spectrum, and their response to this little essay will surely be additional threats. Inner reflection would be great, but it's not likely a path they will choose to take. Increased hatred is the more likely path. Actually, it's absolutely certain.

Unexpectedly, I felt some degree of compassion for these folks: living in that much pain can't be much fun. But there is, in addition, a larger perspective to consider, namely the one of declinism. In a series of books and articles I have (I believe) convincingly argued that the US is going down the drain; that the only future it has is a dark one; and I have also identified the causes of our decline. But it might be said that the one thing I neglected to emphasize is the poison contained in the individual American soul, multiplied by millions. It's one of the factors that put Mr. Trump into office, after all. He has created a favorable climate for these types of people, and since his inauguration the stats of racial hatred, antisemitism, and the like have taken a decided upturn. Speaking as a declinist, and as an historian, I can say that this sort of soul-poison is an obvious factor in civilizational collapse. The death threats that show up on this blog (and elsewhere) are the tip of the iceberg, as the ship of state increasingly resembles the Titanic. What future can the country possibly have when a large percentage of its population is steeped in this much anguish (and with 40% living in poverty, to boot)? In that sense, these death-threateners are historical agents, in much the same way that Trumpi is.

There's microcosm and macrocosm, as I've said before, and they operate in tandem. On the macrolevel, when a civilization or empire implodes, it doesn't look pretty. We are witnessing this right now, a nation swimming in chaos and disarray, led by a "leader" who leads by random impulse. On the microlevel, it's equally ugly: the hate-mongers claiming (e.g.) that I spend all my time with Mexican whores, that I suck Jesus' dick(?!), that my days are numbered, and that they intend to put a bullet in my brain. Very often, a Wafer will post an article about some guy who axe-murdered his two-year-old daughter (or whatever); and when you click on the link, you see a face that is pure horror. This is what I imagine the death-threateners on this blog look like, or something close to it. Meanwhile, in the face of this rock-bottom reality, we read about the silly debates of Democratic candidates (1.5 years in advance), or the even sillier left-wing predictions of how the masses are going to rise up, turn everything around. These are anodynes for fools, in the same category as Kim Kardashian's buttocks, and serving a similar function. For me, at least, what comes to mind are the words of Kurt Vonnegut: "There's a shit storm coming." What he he forgot to add was that the death-threateners are the shit in the eye of the storm; the vanguard, if you will, of a nation bereft of hope, whistling in the dark, and perched on the edge of an abyss.

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363

Wafers-

Well, the Democratic debate was a joke; the 4th of July was a joke; and there is little in America these days that isn't a joke.

Am I imagining things, or does Joe Biden's face look like the rear end of a horse?

Meanwhile, Trumpi is busy dismantling the country, and who are we to stand in his way? We can only wait and see what Tulsi Gabbard is up to, I guess.

Theater, the whole thing is theater.

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Ocean's Eight

The Sopranos was a kind of breakthrough in American film (or TV), in that the Mafia crime family comes off as more glamorous than sordid (kind of a cool, alternative way of life). Of course, they all get killed off or imprisoned by the end, thus staying within the bounds of conventional American morality: crime doesn't pay. And this is how I remember all of the cops-and-robbers movies of my younger days, namely that the bad guys come to a bad end, and virtue prevails. But the film Ocean's Eight(2018), starring Sandra Bullock and seven other assorted beauties, breaks the mold completely. It not only says that crime pays--the gals rip off $38 million per person from Cartier and the Met--and not only that it is glamorous, but that in its own way it is actually virtuous. As the eight ladies carry out their brilliant heist, step by step, the viewer finds himself cheering for them. And with the massive loot acquired, each of them is able to fulfill a lifelong dream--opening a pool hall, buying into an expensive co-op, quitting work and cruising the California coast on a fine motorbike, and so on--while we in the audience think, "Good on yer, mate!" That they defrauded a private corporation and America's number one public museum in the process--eh! Who gives a damn?

I couldn't help wondering, moreover, if this were a political statement, or even a political shift, whether intentional or not. The girls stick it to The Man, and come off as heroes for doing so. The morality here is hardly Crime Doesn't Pay; it's more the American Dream taken to its logical conclusion: Get Yours and Have Fun Doing It.

Perhaps this is just a shadow morality finally coming to the surface, like Trump, Hustler Extraordinaire, master of the shady deal, winding up in the White House. What is now seen as criminal is getting thrown in jail, as Debbie Ocean (=Sandra Bullock) did a few years prior to this caper, or being stuck in meaningless, dead-end jobs. As the film concludes, we are happy for these babes, and sit there wondering what we would do if $38 million suddenly fell into our laps. (Probably not give it to charity, although I would open up a World Wide Wafer Institute.) Cartier and the Met are just parts of the Establishment, within the Debbie Ocean paradigm; we should care if they suffer?

Thirty minutes before the caper goes into action, Debbie says to her colleagues: "You aren't doing this for me, and you aren't doing this for you. Somewhere out there is an eight-year-old girl dreaming of becoming a criminal. You are doing this for her." So this is what (some) little girls out there now aspire to: a glamorous life of crime with a hefty payoff at the end.

The United States is a new place, really, and this is what I mean by a political shift. Most Americans couldn't care less about the sanctity of private property (Cartier) or about the common weal (the Met). The new morality, the new "virtue," is Get Yours Big Time. Of course, as Kant's notion of the Categorical Imperative tells us, if everyone acted this way, there would be no society--a good thing, according to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. And this is where we have arrived. Nor can you put the toothpaste back in the tube. You can't go from a criminal morality and an ethos of every man (or beautiful woman) for him(her) self to a genuine morality and an ethos of We're all in this together. No way. Ocean's Eight is a kind of instructional film for a society in disintegration. To further that process, we need many more films in this genre.

You go, girl!

(c)Morris Berman, 2019

361

Wafers-

Good discussion, let's keep it going. Meanwhile, check out The World Revolution of Westernization, by Theodore von Laue. It's a bit dated--1987--so nothing on fall of USSR, 9/11, or 2008--but a very close look at world events since WWI. Very prescient abt the US, however: see pp. 351-55.

Later, amigos-

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360

Well, Waferinos, life in America gets more dysfunctional every day. Massacres, warmongering, widespread desperation and drugs of all kinds (hustling especially), and increasing techno-buffoonery: Could a declinist ask for more? I suspect that the fact of our descent into oblivion is recognized on an unconscious level by many Americans--perhaps even most. Making it conscious is, of course, no easy task, and with few exceptions this conscious understanding is acknowledged by only a few in the mainstream media. But there is some progress: as I mentioned in the last thread, the New Yorker has now published an essay asserting that cell phones are making us sick, and are destructive of everything it means to be human. So they took 15 years to catch up to me; that's OK. I predict that the conscious awareness of our national collapse will similarly increase over time, although it will probably take a while (50-100 years) for me to show up on the front cover of Time. In the meantime, the conclusion of the American experiment awaits a new Thomas Cole, to give us the visuals.

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The Brothers

"Americans who seek to understand the roots of their country's trouble in the world should look not at [the Dulles brothers'] portraits but in a mirror."
--Stephen Kinzer

The Brothers, a study of John Foster and Allen Dulles written by the distinguished author Stephen Kinzer in 2013, bids fair to being one of the most significant works published during the past twenty years. Foster, as he was known, was chosen by President Eisenhower to be his secretary of state; Allen, to be the director of the CIA. During Ike's administration, the two of them managed to wreak havoc and spread misery across the globe, and do a lot of domestic damage as well. But Kinzer's study is notable for insisting, repeatedly, that this was hardly a one-sided snow job, or mind-fuck--Noam Chomsky's "manufactured consent"--foisted on the American people by the Power Elite. Rather, the consent was more on the order of popular enthusiasm, to the point of mass hysteria, congruent with the deepest elements of the American psyche. The appropriate metaphor for this supposed takeover of the American mind, then, is not rape, but something more akin to consensual sex.

I was stunned to read this because the one thing critics are not supposed to say--it being so politically incorrect--is that the core of our dilemmas is the American people themselves. Somehow, The American People are sacred, untouchable, a kind of mystical entity; whereas if they are seen for what they really are--gullible, not very bright, blinkered, egotistical, and actually quite violent in nature--then there is very little hope for any major social or political change. And in fact, Kinzer offers no real solution to our national dementia, our formulaic and frenzied way of living, because there is none. Hence the last two sentences of the book, referring to the Dulles brothers: "They are us. We are them."

John Foster Dulles died on 24 May 1959, and the whole nation went into mourning. Thousands lined up outside the National Cathedral to pass by the bier, weeping over his body in an orgy of emotion. This was, Kinzer argues, because the man embodied everything that Americans believed, going back a long ways. What were these beliefs? Exceptionalism--the notion that we are more moral than others and therefore can do whatever we want to in the world, including acting cruelly; missionary Christianity--that we have an obligation to bring "truth" to the unenlightened (i.e., the non-Christian and non-American); the right to accumulate vast wealth, even (or especially) at the expense of weaker nations; and a simplistic, Manichaean view of things that had little room for empathy in it. Americans, not just Foster, saw themselves represented in films such as Shane and High Noon, movies of the early fifties that depicted a once-peaceful and innocent place threatened by evil, and saved by a hero. "The story of the Dulles brothers," writes Kinzer, "is the story of America."

All of this is bred in our bones, imperialism included. Should we be surprised that Thomas Jefferson coveted Cuba, and wanted to annex it? He stated that along with Florida, it would give the US control over the Gulf of Mexico and nearby countries. Control, control, control; what else is life about? A little over a century later, in 1917, Foster was involved in the US military intervention in Cuba--his first foreign intervention.

Foster, it turns out, was a great admirer of the Nazi regime, presumably because of its opposition to communism. In 1934 he brought I.G. Farben (later the manufacturer of Zyklon B gas, used in the Nazi death camps) into a nickel cartel, thus giving the Nazis access to the cartel's resources; and his law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, contributed heavily to the Nazi Party, setting it up as a going concern. Foster urged the German branch of his firm to avoid Jewish clients, and made trips to Germany in 1936, 1937, and 1939, declaring his admiration for Hitler, saying how "dynamic" the country now was. Kristallnacht (1938) apparently bothered him not at all, and he was perfectly OK with the German branch signing its letters Heil Hitler!When his sister, Eleanor, married a Jew, both he and Allen refused to attend the wedding.

In 1943 Foster published Six Pillars of Peace, in which he rejected what he called the "devil theory" of foreign policy that imagined a heroic nation surrounded by villains. But within two years of that, he did a complete volte face, adopting the very theory he had previously scorned. This view of Russia as the center of a global conspiracy, writes Kinzer, hardly placed him at the outer fringes of public opinion. Rather, this simplistic, monolithic, and significantly misguided view of communism--the failure, for example, to see various nationalistic movements and internal conflicts as having nothing to do with Moscow or Marxism--"reflected impulses and attitudes deeply woven into the national psyche." Foster saw in communism something he never saw in Nazism: the ultimate evil. Meanwhile, Americans projected Nazism onto the USSR, and they shared Foster's terrifying world view, that we were engaged in a titanic struggle over the fate of civilization itself. Harry Rositzke, an OSS veteran (Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the CIA), later wrote that the whole nation was in a state of hysteria, caught up in a kind of holy war. When Sukarno of Indonesia visited the US in 1956, he commented on how full of fear Americans were--of everything. Not just of communists, he said, but also of dandruff, B.O., and bad breath. There was no end to it really. Sukarno was amazed.

The voices that opposed this national insanity (allegorized by Arthur Miller in The Crucible) were few and far between. Reinhold Niebuhr asserted that the greatest threat to the United States was "the egotism of Americans and their leaders," adding that we were blinded by "hatred and vainglory." Diplomat George Kennan referred to Foster as "a dangerous man," seized by "emotional [read: rabid] anticommunism." Senator Taft of Ohio rejected the notion of an American missionary destiny. But this small handful of insightful critics were moving against the grain, and easily ignored.

Where was Ike in all this? This was, for me, another revelation of Kinzer's book, based on research most of which appeared after I published Dark Ages America in 2006. In that book, using the scholarship then available, I depicted Eisenhower as a kind of stooge of Foster's, a man who looked the other way while his secretary of state carried out his secret, nefarious plans, such as the overthrow of legitimately elected governments in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954). Apparently, just the reverse was true: Ike was really the guiding spirit, even architect, of US foreign policy, with Foster acting as his (willing) attack dog. I should have known: in his inaugural address of 20 January 1953, Eisenhower presented a Manichaean world view, talking about how "Freedom is pitted against slavery, lightness against the dark." This was not mere rhetoric, as it turns out; it was Ike who led the country into a secret global conflict, says Kinzer. In 1955 he created a Special Group to authorize covert operations such as coups and assassinations, and all its actions were taken on his behalf, while he posed for the public as an affable "Daddy" figure. He was the first American president to authorize the assassination of a foreign leader (Patrice Lumumba, 1960), and did the same thing (unsuccessfully) with Fidel Castro. President Johnson, a few years later, remarked (privately) that the CIA had apparently been running "a goddamn Murder Inc. in the Caribbean"; but the CIA could not have waged these wars without Ike's approval. Turns out, he was the most hysterical and simplistic of them all.

Why, asks Kinzer at the conclusion of The Brothers, did the Dulleses do what they did? The truth is that they did not emerge ex nihilo, and neither did Eisenhower. As the comedian George Carlin was wont to say, our leaders don't drop in on us from Mars. There is a deep cultural context here that goes back centuries. "They did it because they are us," writes Kinzer. He goes on (italics mine):

"If they were shortsighted, open to violence, and blind to the subtle realities of the world, it was because those qualities help define American foreign policy and the United States itself....The Dulles brothers personified ideals and traits that many Americans shared during the 1950s, and still share [today]. They did not colonize America's mind or hijack United States foreign policy.On the contrary, they embodied that national ethos. What they wanted, Americans wanted....[In all of this] the Dulles brothers were one with their fellow Americans. Their attitudes were rooted in the American character. They were pure products of the United States."

Many Americans believed, like the Dulleses, that our cause was so transcendent that it justified any extreme. Senator J. William Fulbright said that Foster fed the Americans "pap." But Americans devoured this pap, they loved it. "It fit with how they saw their own lives and history," says Kinzer. Foster plucked the chords of our wars: wars against the Indians, cowboy narratives, marine landings, and notions of Manifest Destiny. The idea that we must win everything, that we cannot just let some things be, is central to the idea of America in general. It was hardly born with the Dulleses. "Lashing out against real or imagined enemies, as they did, is typically American. Quietly watching history unfold is not." And Americans find it difficult to imagine how others see us, or even to care. The Dulleses "exemplified this national egoism. Empathy was beyond their emotional range." They could only simplify the world, never see its rich diversity. "In this, too," Kinzer adds, "they were quintessentially American." He concludes that what they wanted to do was project power--which was the same impulse that crushed the Indians, stole land from Mexico, and drew the US into a whole string of global wars. Americans believe we have vital interests everywhere, and so they elect leaders who believe the same thing. The fundamental assumptions that guide foreign policy today have not changed substantially since the fifties. In a word, Americans wish to ignore reality; they have a childlike belief that bad things are done by bad people (others), so the solution is to eliminate the bad people. Basically, they are fools, and remain so to this day. Changing this mindset would thus require something on the order of a mass lobotomy. "Americans never learn," quipped Gore Vidal; "it's part of our charm."

At the end of the popular TV series The Americans, Soviet agents Elizabeth and Philip Jennings (Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys), their cover blown, flee the US and return to Russia. In the final scene, they gaze out at the Moscow skyline, apparently wondering what their time in America finally amounted to. All that mayhem, all that murder and wanton destruction of so many lives, and for what? For some abstract system that made it impossible for people to live lives of their own? It's a moving scene, but I couldn't help thinking how such a revelation was unlikely to occur to Americans, with their own abstract system of beliefs. If it ever does occur, it is quite brief: Jimmy Carter's declaration, for example, that we needed to stop blaming the Soviet Union for all of our problems, quickly replaced by "Evil Empire" Ronnie--in what amounted to the greatest landslide in electoral history. We are not into Jennings'-style soul-searching; in truth, we don't appear to have much of a soul at all.

There is very little that could get us to see through our addictive "need" for war, the imperial framework of our modus vivendi, or the illusion of our entire way of life. The continuity between the mindset of the fifties with Vietnam, Chile, Reagan in Central America, Iraq, and now the demented misadventures of Trump, ought to be obvious, but such connecting of the dots is way beyond the intellectual capacity of most Americans, who live on pap, as Sen. Fulbright correctly observed. A nation of goofballs, when you get right down to it, regardless of their IQs. Meanwhile, the tiny number of dissenters from such mindsets, such blind, abstract systems--folks like George Kennan, E.M. Forster, J. William Fulbright, Reinhold Niebuhr, Arthur Miller, Ai Weiwei, Talleyrand ("Above all, no zeal") et al.--those who reject formula and frenzy as a way of life--is minuscule. But I believe there is a name we can call them by: Wafers, wry observers of societies gone berserk. It may be a long shot, but ultimately they are our only hope.

(c)Morris Berman, 2019

4 Million

Ahoy there, Waferinos!

This blog was launched in April of 2006. 13 years and one month later, it still survives, pulling in about 45,000 hits a month. The total hits for the 13 years is now nearing 4 million. It survives as a rare oasis of reality in a nation wallowing in utter and total bullshit. We have stayed the course, insisting on "truth in advertising," while providing book revs and film recs, and above all, humor in troubled times. We have crushed the trollfoons, held Wafer Summit Meetings, survived brief periods of absence (with the help of Haldol etc.), and demonstrated the Ultimate Fact: There just isn't any other blog worth bothering with. All but one of our predictions have proven to be correct, the exception being the election of Trumpola; and never were we more delighted to be wrong. So onward, I say, onward to the next 4 million. As I approach my 75th birthday (August), I realize I will probably live to 101, at which time we will proudly display a history of 10 million hits. God looked down on all the blogs in the blogosphere, saw the Waferblog, and said: "This, this is the blog I'll put my money on." No fool, He.

-GSWH

Reality Avoidance

It’s quite amazing how the news is endlessly about race, or gender, or an election that is 1.5 yrs away. Filler, is what I call it. Very little of this has anything to do with reality, which the Mainstream Media and the American people avoid like the plague. What then is real?

1. The empire is in decline; every day, life here gets a little bit worse; all our institutions are corrupt to varying degrees; and there is no turning this situation around.

2.A crucial factor in this decline and irreversibility is the low level of intelligence of the American people. Americans are not only dumb; they are positively antagonistic toward the life of the mind.

3.Relations of power and money determine practically everything. The 3 wealthiest Americans own as much as the bottom 50% of the population, and this tendency will get worse over time.

4.The value system of the country, and its citizens, is fundamentally wrong-headed. It amounts to little more than hustling, selfishness, narcissism, and a blatant disregard for anyone but oneself. There is a kind of cruelty, or violence, deep in the American soul; many foreign observers and writers have commented on this. Americans are bitter, depressed, and angry, and the country offers very little by way of community or empathy.

5.Along with this is the support of meaningless wars and imperial adventures on the part of most of the population. That we drone-murder unarmed civilians on a weekly basis is barely on the radar screen of the American mind. In essence, the nation has evolved into a genocidal war machine run by a plutocracy and cheered on by mindless millions.

Most Americans hide from these depressing, even horrific, realities by what passes for ‘the news’, but also by means of alcohol, opioids, TV, cell fones, suicide, prescription drugs, workaholism, and spectator sports, to name but a few. This stuffing of the Void is probably our primary activity. In a word, we are eating ourselves alive, and only a tiny fraction of the population, recognizes this.

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Charge of the Wafer Brigade

With apologies to Lord Tennyson:

"Morons to the right of them/Morons to the left of them/Morons in front of them/Volleyed and thundered/Stormed at with shot and shell/Boldly they rode and well/Into the jaws of douchebaggery/Into the mouth of utter buffoonery/Rode the brave 168."

I think that says it all.

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Temporary Blog Shutdown April 9-16

As some of you may know, I shall be in NY during that week, participating in the 6th Annual NY Wafer Summit Meeting (6ANYWSM), as well as getting together with old friends. Plus, the mayor will be giving me the key to the city, in addition to assigning the National Guard to protect me from adoring fans. No time for blogging, I fear, so I ask all Wafers and anyone else to please not post during that time. Then as of April 17, we can resume our profound analyses and witty repartee.

April marks the 13th anniversary of The Greatest Blog on Earth. We have much to celebrate. Opa!, as they say in Athens.

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Speaking of Liberation

Why can't we hold paradigms at a distance? Why does every explanatory belief system turn into a religion, a fundamentalism? "Fundament" is related to the notion of a base--that on which we stand, our security. From infancy, and the Self/Other split I discuss in Coming to Our Senses, we carry a deep worry that all is not well, that we are on shaky ground; really, that the Other is dangerous. This is why people double down, and why myth always triumphs over fact. It sheds light on the need for total explanations, and the fierce attachment to those explanations. It is why the cultivation of Buddhist "space" between our selves and our beliefs is extremely hard to achieve, and why genuine dialogue is rare. Arthur Koestler, who spent his life blindly chasing one ism after another, finally suggested, before he died, that we need to develop a pill to combat "devotion," by which he meant addictive attachment. I suppose lobotomy is the closest we've come to that.

I studied Russian in college, and a few times each week would go to the library and read the latest edition of Pravda, the major Moscow newspaper. It got old pretty quickly, because the daily headline was typically some variant of "Millions Enslaved by Capitalism." But why stop there? Millions were enslaved by the idea of communism. Millions are enslaved by the ideas of feminism, Zionism, technology, Hinduism, Islam, white supremacism--etc.

What this suggests is that until that root fear of Self vs. Other is resolved, we shall continue to live in a fog, a world of isms. This fog is also known as History, in the sense that James Joyce used the term when he wrote, "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken." It is revealing that these various fogs are interchangeable, as Eric Hoffer pointed out in The True Believer. What the particular belief is, is of little consequence. The important thing is to have one. The fog provides us with pseudo-safety; and so the charade goes on.

The individual who chooses to address that root fear in him- or herself, to follow the Buddist path of freedom from fear, greed, and illusion, is going to be engaged in an epic struggle; this is for sure. But can anyone seriously believe that such a goal is possible for the entire human race, or even a single nation? To call this a long shot would be the understatement of the century. It's an inspiring vision: individual enlightenment multiplied by billions, until History in Joyce's sense comes to an end. I'm guessing we'll be waiting for a long time, for that one.

"Although there is no hope for the human race," wrote Eric Berne at the conclusion of Games People Play, "there is some hope for a few individuals in it." Cold comfort, but there you are.

(c)Morris Berman, 2019

Interview with Jeff Brown from Shenzhen, China

https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2019/03/09/morris-berman-talks-about-how-the-american-dream-is-destroying-earth-and-hopes-for-the-future-china-rising-radio-sinoland-190309/

Calling All NY Wafers

Well, the excitement mounts. We are only a few weeks away from the 6th Annual NY Wafer Summit Meeting (6ANYWSM), which will occur on April 13 at 1pm. Wafers are threatening to fly in from LA and Indonesia, and I think a couple of penguins from Antarctica as well. I am now asking all active participants on this blog who plan to attend this Incredible Event to send your email address to me at mauricio@morrisberman.com. I will then send you the venue, and we can meet there on April 13. This is classified information; do not reveal the venue to anyone!

For those of you who have tragically failed to participate since 5ANYWSM: rotten luck, amigos. I begged you to participate, but did you listen? No! And now, yr out in the cold. Suggestion: as of April 17, start participating!

For those nonparticipants who have been sending me expensive gifts (i.e., bribes): What do you take me for? Save yr money, muchachos!

Finally, this blog will shut down during April 9-16. I'll be reminding you of this closer to the date.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, sadder than not being a Wafer.

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356

Wafers-

So I guess we're now in a state of national emergency. I myself feel energized by this, and hope that Trumpo will send in the Marines. Where, it doesn't matter. All that's important is that they arrive in one country or another, kill lots of people, divest the place of its resources, declare a victory, and leave, while The American People, with their cutting-edge intellects, cheer them on. It's like when Robert Duvall was ecstatic (in the movie Apocalypse Now) over the smell of napalm--invigorating. We are so fabulous, spreading democracy around the globe. Who couldn't love us, really?

On the Wafer front, there is much to celebrate. The 6th Annual New York Wafer Summit Meeting (6ANYWSM) is less than two months away, and NY is already astir regarding my arrival. By April 13, things will have reached fever pitch. I've gotten so many requests by non-blog participants to attend, along with promises of lavish gifts, that I've had to hire a secretary just to handle the correspondence. I told her to be polite, but she seems to want to answer these letters with lines like "You'll be allowed to attend when hell freezes over," etc. Sweet gal, tho, really.

And then there's the Italy book, just accepted for publication. My happy book, I call it. It's got 21 illustrations; I've been busy trying to obtain permission to reprint these. As for the text--modesty aside--it's some of the best writing I've ever done. I'm expecting sales so extensive, that I'll finally be able to put a down payment on that villa in Tuscany I've had my eye on for some time now. Life is good.

And so, my Wafers and Waferettes, let us continue on our merry way. Rome is burning, the trollfoons have been destroyed, and all's well with the world.

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355

Wafers-

So, the 2019 SOTU has come and gone. Yawn. Nothing we didn't expect. The fact that Trumpola didn't have me write it for him has hurt my feelings more than I can say. Because if he had, I would have brought him outta the closet:

"My fellow Americans. On some level, all of you know that my job, historically speaking, is to dismantle the United States. The place isn't doing anyone any good; it's long overdue to retire the whole project. I think I can take a lot of credit for the damage I've inflicted on the country since I took office. Now, I pledge to you, my dear citizens, that you ain't seen nothing yet. The gloves are off; by November 2020, the place will be a shambles. Liz Warren, ha ha, turned out not to be Pocahontas after all; and I shall be bringing in Lorenzo Riggins to head up the State Dept. As for P. Snoots, just take a guess.

"All of us are turkeys, myself included. I thank you and good night.

"Oh, I almost forgot: Morris Berman will be heading up the dept. of Total and Massive Destruction (TMD)."

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354

Wafers-

Nothing really new to report. Every day brings yet another instance of CRE (Cranial-Rectal Embedment), whether on the part of Trumpi, Congress, or our enlightened citizens. I am still excited about the possibility of Tulsi Gabbard marching into the White House in 2021, flanked by Lorenzo Riggins and Penny Snoots. Our greatness is unchallenged.

-mb

353

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore!"

Was Poe predicting the end of the United States? Was he a far-seeing clairvoyant? One has to wonder. Meanwhile, we have Trumpi doing his best to discredit himself and perhaps the country as well. I'm a believer that we get the leaders we deserve, and if he is behaving like a choleric child, so is a good part of the nation. No suaveness, no finesse, no social skills--just acting like a buffoon and throwing tantrums. Which is good, from a declinist point of view: Trumpi was "hired" by history to accelerate our decline and he is clearly doing his job. Rave on, Trumpi; you have 168 Wafers cheering you on. Only 9 days into 2019, and the possibilities for further damage seem endless.

As for the rest of the population, I can't help thinking of those lines from my favorite Christmas carol:"Above thy deep and dreamless sleep/The silent stars go by..."

mb