I disliked reading Anne's 'This is the way a society dies'. As a Briton I find these things so shameful that I avert my eyes. I thought that America would stay self-reliant, then came Obama. Truth is stranger than fiction. The standard model of politics is that the pendulum will swing back, but this time liberals may engineer prolonged power. Let's face it, Obama's domestic agenda is mostly Bush's compassionate conservatism on steroids + disdain for unborn children.
'1984' hit the zeitgeist in 1948, still in the age of Hitler and Stalin, but the negative utopia of 'Brave New World' better describes present trends: hatcheries, conditioning, vaccination-workers, embryo-workers, psychotherapists, counsellors and so on. Were distopian Islamism prematurely to pursue total war before the West has hollowed itself out, then the West would be forced to a moral re-armament. Liberals realize that war breeds virility. Virility + American history = live free or die....soooo 18th century. The deep, sometimes subconscious motive for hating the Iraq war wasn't hatred of war, but fear of the politics of martial virtue. Hence both liberals and subtle Islamists will avoid all-out war, but rely on the ease with which a pacified, passified, dependent society can be switched from Brave New World to 1984 and Big Brother may be an Ayatollah. It's not a conspiracy, it's a co-incidence of interests.
So where's hope? Where's change? Well, events, dear boy, events.
Comments (2)
That's an interesting view--the fear of martial virtue underlies anti-war movements.
I'll have to think about that.
Just yesterday I was listening to the Diane Rehm show on NPR--fascinated at the relentlessness which this far-lefty and her guest remain critical of the Iraq war (which in their view--is STILL lost...). Afghanistan was referred to as "Obama's Vietnam". The message, as bizarre as it seems, was that America deserves defeat at every turn. The almost hopeful comments about Iraq subsiding under a new wave of violence was a clear worry that they're ad hoc cosmology was under threat by an anti-Vietnam--actual victory in an American intervention.
In that sense, it is a fear of martial virtue, because it threatens their delusions.
Posted by Mick Stockinger | February 3, 2009 8:45 AM
Posted on February 3, 2009 08:45
It's not about Iraq, it wasn't about Vietnam and it's not about military war. It's about the culture war in the West, which is a civil war. GW Bush is made of sterner stuff than LBJ or Gerald Ford or the Democratic Congress of 1972-75 and his steadfastness under fire around the time of the Baker Commission is one of the great acts of political courage. That led directly to the Surge and American victory in Iraq. Liberals, except a few dupes, don't care about American soldiers or Iraqi civilians. Casualties are just debating points. Liberals care that they seem to be compassionate and that conservatives seem to be brutal. The present cadre of virile middle-rank officers coming into US politics is a great hope for the future and a great threat to liberalism just because these guys are so impressive, so unlike Obama, so unlike career community activists.
Posted by mark | February 3, 2009 9:25 AM
Posted on February 3, 2009 09:25