Over at Crooks and Liars, Susie Madrak writes that Ben Bernanke “squeaked through” his re-nomination in the Senate. The vote was 70 to 30. In almost any other context, that would be seen as an overwhelming majority. So what’s the difference? My sense is that this reading of the vote – reading, that is, a supermajority+ as if it were closely contested – is an expression of the degree to which the two-party system is generally aligned with the dominant financial powers represented by the Fed. Bernanke “squeaked through” only relative to the unbroken history of bi-partisan support for the Fed. That this vote was still well beyond a supermajority (60-40), even in light of the Fed’s catastrophic ‘failure’ (all predictable malefic consequences of institutional corruption are referred to, at worst, as ‘failure’) to restrict the development of Casino Capitalism, is a ringing testament to how uncritical this bi-partisan support is. Or put in another way: it is a testament to how intimately the two-party system serves the interests of the dominant financial class.
distinctions only matter when the difference recognized makes a difference. Chomsky has described this in saying that a fact worth discussing must be both true *and* important. an unimportant truth needn’t be engaged.
so what’s the difference? what makes a distinction important?
Chomsky again provides the model, in explaining why awareness of the failings of one’s own country is more important than awareness the failings of someone else’s, both failings being equally true. In short, the failings of one’s own country are, politically speaking, within one’s realm of influence. Here, if we borrow from Stephen Covey, we might formulate a general rule: important facts (i.e. distinctions) are those that lie within one’s realm of influence, as a distinct subset of one’s encompassing realm of concern.
All relevant distinctions are thus a product of this more fundamental distinction between influence and concern. Making this distinction is the first step to being something other than an underling, both personally and politically. It is, in fact, a recurrent principle. As progress on all levels occurs in steps, the distinctions that matter are exactly those that pertain to the step you are facing.
so, for example, the distinction between Confucious and Buddha is true in any case, but only matters – is, in other words, only a distinction worth making – to those who might be, for example, in the position to use one or the other of them as an exemplar. otherwise, the point is entirely academic. to put it generally: fruitful distinctions are driven by some basic need. hence THEY say “need facilitates fulfillment,” because need creates the foundation for making important distinctions, and important distinctions fuel the step by step process which alone fulfills.
the net makes managing the memory hole a bit more difficult. with the ready availability of historical records, such management now depends upon the willful ignorance of the faithful in conjunction with the strategic ignorance of those who realize that truth only undermines the party and makes it vulnerable.
in short, most things are now hidden in plain site and people accept lies either out of a knee-jerk loyalty or a strategic calculation of political reality. either way, whether emotionally or rationally partisan, the label “Reality-Based Community” does not apply.
In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a “party line.” Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. … A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity.
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.
A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:
1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
And he will probably ask himself two more:
1. Could I put it more shortly?
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?
But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. The will construct your sentences for you — even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent — and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.
there is perhaps no more perfect example of the President’s function as mediator of the logic of state interest and the common emotion than expressed near the end of this clip of President Obama:
Ultimately when I make a decision, it’s going to be based on the over-arching view of U.S. national security, but, I think I’d be making poor decisions if I didn’t have to look into the eyes of a family member who had lost a loved one and tell them how… grateful we are as a nation. That… that… moment insures that I’m making the best possible decisions, going forward.
It is a sort of magical power, psychologically speaking if not in reality, that the President has, to render a death of value – particularly in a time where the aims of every war have become obscure. In the absence of anything resembling victory, only the President’s special charisma stands between a noble sacrifice and a tragic waste.
The fascinating thing in this for me is the idea that the president in that “moment” of emotional authenticity with a grieving family in reality bridges the gap between sane human values and the “over-arching” needs of national security. It’s a remarkable enough accomplishment if indeed those security needs are both as stated and served by the strategies being employed by the state, but verges toward the truly miraculous as this ideal state degrades toward reality.
The first degradation occurs in the step from official aims and actual aims. That is: the official aim of preventing Al-Qaeda from having a save haven within which to train is quite flimsy, given both the other lawless lands (e.g. Somalia) and (more importantly) the fact that in an age of terrorism, such safe havens are unnecessary. Indeed, the alleged 9/11 hijackers trained to fly in the US. So, it’s not difficult to imagine that these official aims are ideas for public consumption (as, similarly, the invasion of Iraq was sold on the basis of WMD’s, as this was reckoned to be the easiest sell), and that the real aims are something else.
At the first level of degradation of the ideal, the security aims of America, if not what they are supposed to be, are nonetheless genuinely conceived with the common good in mind. Securing a pipeline across Afghanistan for the removal of oil and gas from the various former-Soviet-stans might, for example, be conceived of as in the genuine security interest of the United States, even though this is not the public reason given for continuing the war. In this situation, though the President is involved in some duplicity, he might still authentically participate in the sacred ‘moment’ that binds national security with familial sacrifice.
The real difficulty arises as these covert aims diverge from the genuine common good and instead serve the private good of the various industries involved. Such divergence has been, you might say, the history of the CIA, and the ‘black’ government in general. So what amazes me about Obama is the idea that he’s mediating between those covert interests who have long acted under the over-arching rubric of national security and familial emotion. It’s as if he’s mediating between wolves and sheep.
And of course in ecological terms, wolves and sheep form a dynamic whole – or rather take part within a dynamic whole. There’s nothing inherently wrong with mediating such opposites. The question really is whether or not it can be done. Is the dynamic, as a whole, ecological?
This is a segment from an excellent video series I’ve been watching lately titled The Century of the Self. This particular segment is about halfway through the series and reminded me of a number of the conversations on this blog over the years.
so what’s the difference? what makes a distinction important?
All relevant distinctions are thus a product of this more fundamental distinction between influence and concern. Making this distinction is the first step to being something other than an underling, both personally and politically. It is, in fact, a recurrent principle. As progress on all levels occurs in steps, the distinctions that matter are exactly those that pertain to the step you are facing.
