For lack of a titled nobility
We just have no noble titles available for global liars who slaughter other peoples’ children; our deteriorated democracy has no proper social reward for the size of their whoppers, spouting geysers of innocent blood.
Bill Hatch
Oct. 31, 2005
The problem with the Bush administration, which some historians describe as our first experience in degenerate dynastic rule, goes back to the Founding Fathers’ prejudice against noble titles. In their straightened circumstances, facing mature, imperial monarchies across the sea, huddled in 13 modest, unruly states on the edge of a continent full of natives, early Americans probably could not imagine their states would one day emerge as the world’s only superpower.
If they had, I would like to think they would have provided that noble titles be distributed at the moment world hegemony was in the Eagle's grasp, because it might have given very aggressive Americans something other than mere power and wealth to aspire to. Who knows how many Enrons have been aborted in Europe by the wise practice of selling titles to successful financial pirates? But, look at Germany today, a democratic welfare state in political crisis. If they had read the title page of The General Theory closely, they would have seen it was written by John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron of Tilton.
A group of learned men calling themselves neo-conservatives have gained tremendous influence in the regime of the doltish prince. They are steeped in classical learning, particularly in Plato, whom they prefer above all philosophers because -- not despite -- Karl Popper calling him the enemy of democracy and the champion of an aristocracy of learned men (like the neo-conservatives -- get it?). Yet, rather than dwelling on Plato’s thorough education in dialectics (the learned men have dispensed with history and all the Reason nonsense), they seem to focus on one minor aspect of the philosopher’s work, "the noble lie" – what the rulers tell the ruled for their own good, etc. The noble lie is impeccable academic cover for propaganda.
Here, we have the most powerful empire that ever existed on the planet. To make it more perfect, we have a witless prince full of wanton destruction and rotten religion surrounded by evil counselors. So, what’s the problem? After all, the whole purpose of being the most powerful empire that ever existed is to relax, enjoy, squander, destroy, slaughter, enslave, enjoy the extreme luxury of believing your own propaganda, and conspicuously consume everything in the name of all that is best in one’s own cultural values at the expense of everyone else’s values and goods.
The problem is residual democratic institutions left over from the Modern Period, politically speaking roughly from the American Revolution until Florida 2000. Forget all other revolutions, from the French to the Venezuelan. Forget all other countries and peoples and political systems. America is all that counts because America spends more money on its military than all the rest of the world combined. Take a look at 2,000 dead American soldiers, but definitely don’t look at the tens of thousands of Iraqis also dead, for the sin of living on top of a pool of oil. One problem is that people do ask questions. Even Americans ask questions. You are in fact beginning to see Americans walking around wearing questions like eggs, all over their faces.
But, still, despite the war and all the money, the power and the weapons of mass destruction, Christian faith worthy of recently converted rulers from the Dark Ages, and being nestled behind impenetrable walls of their own propaganda, all is not well in the court of the dimwitted prince. His courtiers appear, at least to the rest of us folks, to have it all. But they are still unhappy and restless, want more, and appear to be regressing to a state of teenage narcissism, selfishness and tantrum-throwing, the longer they rule. They are, as the police say, to be considered armed, probably unstable, and extremely dangerous. If only they were a danger only to themselves.
It’s their reading of Plato, however, that gives them their distinctive style, their academic gloss, quite different from Nixonian henchmen. Under Nixon, rank was established by demonstration of loyalty to the president. The solution ambitious men found was to break laws. Who can forget, at a moment when 50,000 American troops and about two million Vietnamese had already died, the comedy of Tony Ulasewicz and his coin changer? In the midst of the carnage and riot it was as comforting as turning out graveyards on Election Day.
But, in the court of the numb-nut knucklehead, where Plato-quoting chickenhawks rule, rank is established by the audacity of the lie. It could make the ordinary American citizen nostalgic for the era when White House politics provided the best course in criminal law -- not just your statutory fluff, but time-honored common law felonies. Please spare us official misspeaking. If misspeaking were a felony, government from the local to the federal level in America would cease. Misspeaking is the puny fib of the local planning director.
We just have no noble titles available for global liars who slaughter other peoples’ children; our deteriorated democracy has no proper social reward for the size of their whoppers, spouting geysers of innocent blood. Learned men convinced the whole country Saddam had nuclear weapons, launched a war that killed thousands of innocent civilians and turned a weak, small country into Hell Itself, but not one of our learned global liars is reported to have received, for his noble service, fee title to a single rural county with fertile bottom land, privately managed prison gangs, and a decent castle on a hill with a noble crest on the wall.
But, if a man with political aptitude and ambition cannot even lie to get an estate in this ungrateful nation, it is worse for those who try to play the truth card. One of the most important learned man is alleged to have told the truth about a spy – that she was a spy, in fact a real underground spy doing clandestine things concerning nuclear weapons proliferation.
He got indicted (technically for lying about having told the truth about the spy) but that was just because the spy's husband said truthfully that Saddam didn't get yellow cake from Niger. It was one of those deals where the learned men decided that the best way to stop a possible outbreak of truth was with another truth, and then lie like hell about who told the truth. The indictment is reported to be a doorway leading to an entire alternative history of recent events, a story said to be more realistic than faith-based. This will be an insurmountable spiritual obstacle for our pious mainstream media, Murdock and Co. particularly, but there is always the hope of live TV coverage of congressional hearings featuring politicians trying to cover the tattoos of Jesus on their naked asses.
The best hope for the nation may be getting more of our wannabe-noble liars to tattle on each other in front of the cameras. After all, these learned men aren’t crude Nixonian burglars doing crimes, doing time and keeping their mouths shut. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern always confess.
It is a mystery what version of events since the hanging chads of Florida the republic will accept. For the last five years, it has seemed to be enjoying passionate, religiously sanctioned, carnal relations with its own pastoral gravedigger. Such an orgy might be hard to give up.
What's the problem? Neo-conservatives want in the worst way to convince the rest of us that progress is feudalism. Despite the constant blitz of history erasing propaganda since chads dangled in Florida, we seem to remember better. So, in our foolish residually democratic way, we look for the reasons why they are peddling this antique swill. We ask why these people have done this. One notion is that the feudal version of progress reflects no more than our rulers’ thirst for hereditary noble titles, the neocon version of family values. It’s not much of an idea but it might just fit a group of people who aren’t much, either, once their propaganda slips.
But these are just the notions of a small man struggling to pay the rent, speaking in part for small, fellow citizens and in part for the billions now ruled by Paul Wolfowitz, Baron of Famine.