“Americanism” and terror

Naomi Klein crossed a line in her book “Shock Doctrine.” In it she identified terror as the primary weapon of totalitarianism. She would be fine doing that if she only stuck to American principles and identified terrorists as non-American actors. But she didn’t and is therefore, like Chomsky, a non-existent person in our society. She has power and influence, but we have to seek her out. She will not appear to us unless by accident, as she is not allowed in mainstream media.

The idea that Americans can be totalitarians and terrorists at once is abhorrent to our intellectual class because we are thought to represent noble ideas like “capitalism” and “free enterprise.” Embedded in both labels is the idea that our way of life represents the apex of human freedom. Therefore the idea that we would torture or enslave other humans is the very antithesis of our being.

But there it is, right out in the open, said Klein, in Abu Ghraib and Fallujah, Afghanistan and Vietnam and Guantanamo. Intellectuals, who enjoy a free ride on the money/power machine of Americanism, quickly step into to explain why it just isn’t so – that we are a force for good, that we don’t terrorize anybody, that we only fight fire with fire, and that every place we visit is uplifted rather than degraded. Their job is to selectively marshal facts to support that contention. These are the people, along with the submissive journalist class, that populate our media. They are endlessly paraded before us so that they fill the void and replace intellectual thought with empty sloganeering and half-truths, not to mention outright lies.

Klein got it right. We are terrorists and totalitarians. Not me, not thee of course. But it’s as if that force always lurks in the shadows, ready to take advantage of a situation to create fear. It is fear that empowers thugs. At Reichstag they merely created the event that galvanized the movement and sped up the process. Shocking events are needed, and when they do not happen on their own, must be invented.

This is anecdotal – we had to visit the passport agency with our daughter two days ago, and we decided to go in with her rather than wait in the car. As we walked in the door I was reminded, oh shit, this is America, and everyone is fearful. There stood the security goons with their officious uniforms, burger flippers who found a better life. We were to empty our pockets before entering, and so we did. I carry a pocket knife with me, and put it in the bowl, and the guard quickly said “No no! You have to take that knife back to your car.” “This is so dumb,” I mumbled, and grabbed my belongings and left without a curtsy. I waited in the car. As my wife left the agent took her aside and demanded to know my name. Shocked by an authority figure accosting her like that, she gave it up, and I am now no doubt on a watch list somewhere.

On one side of the coin is fear, and on the other the terrorist. The American people are scared, and terrorists are causing that fear. They are not Muslims. Americans are terrorizing us with their eavesdropping and scanners and constant x-raying of our belongings. There’s nothing to know about us. We’re just ordinary people, and most men that I know carry pocket knives, which are hardly useful in an emergency and nonthreatening. I use mine for opening boxes or beer bottles, but otherwise do not know it is there.

The purpose of all this technology and the ever-more-menacing local police is not to protect us but rather to scare us. We were plenty scared before by boogeymen like communism and drugs peddlers, but 9/11 walked us through the door of the totalitarian state and ushered in the final death throes of the American Republic. It had been dealt a blow in 1948 that fractured the foundation, which has been weakening and eroding for decades. 2001 was a fatal blow, and now with the formal merger of the “two” parties (Obama and his detentions and assassinations of Americans), it’s over.

“Americanism” is no big deal. We’re nothing new or different. Freedom and representative government only exist where there is concerted action to protect them. In the absence of that concerted action (“eternal vigilance”), totalitarians naturally step in and quietly steal our freedom. With an event like 9/11, they are emboldened to act and become very aggressive. It’s called the “Shock Doctrine.”

Where Naomi Klein described the “what,” the why is not so clear. After the pocket knife incident (I fully expect now that I have been Googled and some low-life goon is wanting to learn more about me) I went back to one of the more valuable books on my shelf, a set of two books actually, The American Intellectual Tradition, complied by David Hollinger and Charles Capper. Within volume two is an essay from 1953 by Hannah Arendt called “Ideology and Terror.” Klein told us what, Arendt tells us why. I re-read it this morning and will do so again tomorrow. I want to write about it, but it is going to take some effort on my part, and several blog posts.

If you are so inclined, skip Klein and go straight to Arendt. There are some excellent minds that happen by this blog, and I want your reflections. My own are never valuable by themselves. It is only by interplay with others that my own ideas are ever fleshed out.