Disclaimer: The following words are incoherent at best, and jumbled at worst. But if you choose to keep along, you can excavate some things that I hope will make you think new thoughts or clarify old ones. We are stuck in muddy waters, historically, so gathering ourselves will take slow motions, and only once a while a leap of faith is possible. As historian Jacques Barzun said, "we must recognize that our work to attain truth succeeds only piecemeal."
Who was responsible for the mass evil committed in the last century - the tyrant or the mob? The single individual, supported by the establishment - or the crowd at his feet, who are supported by their instincts and imaginations? Who plays off the energies of the other - the public speaker, or the audience?
I believe that being placed in front of the public is a privilege, a privilege that has been abused by cynical, quasi-leaders. I don't lay blame on the sheep, but on the unaffectionate and hostile shepherds, who resort to unfriendly tactics to steer the sheep in the desired course rather than the right one; the one set out by providence. Most of the famous orators of history have been the greatest betrayers off humanity, save the few generous heroes like Martin Luther King Jr.
Today, media melodrama is setting off the alarm on mob violence. The week before it was lone wolves. Tomorrow Western political organizations will be targeted as terrorists groups. The current boring chorus of concern about dangers of the mob taking over town halls, led by the media and the government, is extremely hypocritical. Commentators declare the conservative mobs are ignorant, but in the midst of all this political fury, let's not forget why people on the right, and the general public as a whole, remain ignorant - the government and the media, acting in accordance with one another, continue to distill the facts to serve the corporate-fascist agendas they serve. In other words, they are kept ignorant. Some journalists' entire role in some of these newspapers is to misinform the public about crucial subjects pertaining to the national(corporate) interest, and some are in the direct payroll of the CIA. How many stories are spun every day on the national media? And yet, tv pundits wonder why these conservatives reactionaries appear at rallies with moronic signs that shows their utter lack of knowledge about the real enemy. Again, I place the blame not at conservatives Christians, but the corporate media who fail to correctly inform them, about any issue, and that includes the entire news spectrum.
And the liberals of our day are not liberals in the traditional sense, they want to impose their beliefs as much as the next guy, and call their political opponents ignorant, falsely believing that justifies their aggresive stance. The way Ortega understood liberalism is that it must "govern with the opposition!” The left share this anti-humanist trait with the Christians; both sides want to define the other through their own prism, and as a result, both misunderstand each others intentions and values. Politics has always been a tug of war, but today, both camps declare their victory a landslide when it is nothing more than a tug, overseen by financial lords. In the health care debate ground troops in both camps dig ever deeper into their spot, which shows they are for real, but it doesn't matter who pushes the line because those who draw the line are not ideological about profit and control. Another problem is that there is no real leadership. Obama is like a whistle-blower at camp; his duties are limited and he has to report back to management once the day is over. Where he gets his power from is when people look to him to blow the whistle, which means he actually doesn't have any power. The president is the whistle-carrier in American politics, meaning he doesn't call the shots; he calls the play. Once the whistle is blown forget the political winds because the god almighty media machine can take any truth for a spin around the voting blocks.
Reforming the political system is as basic as this statement; liberals and conservatives need to realize that they are on the same team, and recognize that the tug of war they're engaged in is consuming their political energy. Only a democratic political leader who speaks to both libertarians and progressives, in the tradition of Nader and Paul alike, can save the American political system. Not so much beyond party politics, as was the case in Germany in the last Great Depression, but third party politics. A politics that doesn't use demagoguery or fear, but instead, seeks to genuinely inform the voter. What's needed at this dour hour is an inspiring and knowledgeable political leader who faces each member of the audience as a single individual, and address his concerns in due fashion, forgetting the mass altogether, but also intelligent members of society that have attained self-hood in their own lives.
I believe political-inspired violence will climb until this misunderstanding between conservatives and liberals is fixed, and no longer blocks the paths to a credible and elevated reform. "Civilization," to quote Ortega once again, "is before all, the will to live in common. A man is uncivilized, barbarian in the degree in which he does not take others into account. Barbarism is the tendency to disassociation.”
I've read Le Bon's book on the crowd for my essay in history class, as well as Ortega's Revolt of the Masses, so I'm familiar with the arguments against the mob and I'm generally sympathetic to them. And having read well over ten books about the rise of the Nazi party, I see the dangers in organizing around irrational ideas on a mass scale, which seems possible in America's near future. The only stimulant against this development is education, rapid education and the spread of information, which go hand in hand.
Kierkegaard said his task was defending the establishment, and to take aim "at the numerical, the crowd, the inorganic, the mass, the evil in society." In another entry in his journals, he says: "Either the established order - or the single individual, the unconditionally single individual, but nothing in between, which is indecision, parties, sects, and the like. On these terms I support an establishment, for you will be hard put to it to find in any one generation someone who manages to be unconditionally the single individual; they all want to botch it in parties and so on." These ideas were a reaction to the incoherent political changes in his time, most specifically to the 1848 revolutions in Europe. He writes: "When chaos conquered in 1848 it became very clearly my task - I who had acted as a stimulus towards movement - precisely to oppose the reformers. I have always seen this; it was just that I had to grasp it more fully."
I think Kierkegaard is entirely right that the focus must be put on the individual, that it is up to each person to carry civilization on his back. Soldiers dedicate their bodies during wartime to protect what they see as their civilization, so I don't see why civilians can't commit themselves to the same duty - after all - they are not given the term 'civilians' for nothing. We must change from being consumers to being civil citizens, and understand that we belong to a greater whole, which wouldn't be possible unless we each, for ourselves, carried the load. In this century, we must approach life as if there is a constant war and appropriate our concerns to it, specifically to the enemy, until the war is over, which is unforeseeable at the present hour. If we slack off and continue to believe that democracy doesn't demand constant vigilance and dedication, then our rights, our land, our standards of living, which were won by blood in the past centuries, will continue to diminish and the world will once again be divided into the nobility, merchants, and peasants, except this time there will be different terms to classify men and women.
If there is a revolution, we can not expect too much from the leaders. If a new revolution is successful, it must begin with a renewed emphasis on self-worth and the idea that every man is a king, and every woman a queen. Kierkegaard wrote in his journals that "the less a man himself exists, the more he is drawn to eloquent effusion." The reason why the Nazi nightmare happened is because ordinary Germans believed too much in hierarchy, obedience, and the belief that onyl one man is can save them, and this belief stemmed partly from their experience in the first world war, and partly because of Germany's history, of the military and political successes of strong men such as Bismarck and Frederick the Great.
The influential French sociologist Gustave Le Bon whose theories on crowd psychology were instrumental to Hitler’s understanding of propaganda, remarked in his groundbreaking book The Crowd that the “destinies of peoples are determined by their character and not by their government.” In a similar vein, the author of The Rise and Fall of Nazi Germany historian T.L Jarman says “the savagery of the Thirty Years War left some permanent effect on the German character.” One mark it left was a militaristic ethic that proved inhospitable to a civil and democratic way of being, and this mark was most ingrained in the German consciousness in the aftermath of Bismarck’s legacy. The order, hierarchy and principles dedication of the Prussian army were copied by the Nazi party and this appealed to a wide number of Germans who submitted willingly.
America's history is radically different, and the character of ordinary Americans is marked by self-responsibility and a common sense ethic that dictators are ungodly. America's strong reaction against Dick Cheney's legacy is an example of the resilience of Americans. Look at all the great individualists American society has produced; Jefferson, Thoreau, Emerson, Douglass, MLK, Malcolm X, Ron Paul, I.F Stone, Hunter S Thompson,...the list is long and includes poets, film makers, politicians, journalists, and businessmen.
My intention is not to demonize ordinary Germans, who were lied to by Hitler. According to Peter Fritzsche, author of Germans into Nazis, the appeal of the Nazis was that the “Nazis stood for renewal, their opponents for reaction and compromise; they spoke for the people, their opponents through corrupt interest groups, inept bureaucracies, and a distant, distracted chancellory.” Of course, all that was rhetoric, just as Obama's pledges and promises for reform are nothing but rhetoric. Again, the danger lies not in the masses but in their spokesmen, who are guided by a corrupt minority of elites.
In Germany, the working classes and middle classes gave up on political parties to fix the economic and social crises, and instead, believed that only a single individual could save Germany. The lesson that can be learned from this is that no matter how powerful any individual is, he is not god, and is most likely influenced by industrial and monetary elites, to whom the individual in power is beholden to. Without the masses or the elites, the politician is nobody, and represents most of all the mass-man, as Ortega understood it. Obama is not of the elite; he is an average man, groomed from the beginning to become a popular politician, just as Hitler was funded early on by enthusiastic industrialists and bankers. I'm not comparing Obama's politics with Hitler's, but only to say that these men who have gained ascendancy above the mass are of the mass but serve the tiny transnational elite. They each have their own specific destinies as individual human beings, but they are not in control of their destiny, because they would just be another mass-man, if it wasn't for the elite's wealth and political support.
I also understand the social, economic, and political complexity of Germany's post-war situation. Unemployment then was the highest in any modern industrial state. Defeat and the subsequent humiliation still weighed greatly on the national psyche, and the ineptitude of the national parties, much like today in America, all played a factor to the rise of Hitler. Juxtaposing Hitler to Obama is beyond ignorance, it shows a lack of historical comprehension. Hitler was still unknown before the Great Depression, while Obama came to prominence well before the economic crisis seeped its way into national life. Hitler was on the fringes until 1929, so his rise was in no way spectacular, while Obama gained fame at the 2004 Democratic convention, where he was made a star by the media spotlight. Hitler preached against a certain sector of the population, the Jews, and his fiery rhetoric drew thunderous applause, while Obama keeps his tone cool and rarely rouses the audience.
The only similarity I can draw is between the two political campaigns. Both drew from popular imagery, and other propaganda techniques. Many of Hitler's rallies took place at night, and if I remember correctly, Obama took the stage to accept the Democratic nomination well into the night, which is believed to have occult powers and allows the speaker to be more effective in carrying his message to the audience than during the day. Other than that, there are few historical resemblances between Hitler and Obama's ascendancy. The majority of the people in Germany were behind Hitler, and the complete opposite is the case in America. Obama's numbers are already dwindling, making him much more of a shooting star than a fascist comet. As Ortega said in his book The Revolt of the Masses, "the law of public opinion is the universal law of gravitation in political history.” You can already see Obama's political weight coming down, the only thing that willl bring him back to his initial height is a mass catastrophe, a terror attack, or some kind of disaster than forces the country to come together around the commander in chief. If you don't think liberals can't come around the flag and the president, then you're sadly mistaken. The left will cheer in the event of military forces taking down a town who opposes the state's goons, much like they did in Waco.
Although Obama is not a fascist figure, the political-economic structure he stands in for, is. His political campaign wasn't that great of a movement; there were no intense rallies, save the weeks leading up to September for the national democratic convention. Fascism in Germany carried a spiritual weight, it gave new found meaning to people's lives, and that type of politics has yet to appear in America.
Regardless of my hatred for the systematic destruction of liberties by the elite, I have to bow down to them, simply because of their ability to recognize the American people's political appetites and serving them accordingly. Is it a surprise that most Americans love their happy meals, even in politics? Moreover, the intensive interest put on Obama was a very wise move by the occupiers of the US government. All the emphasis on hope and uniformity made people believe that a better future under the current political system is possible, that it can be all achieved by going into the polls. I know many refrained from voting, but they have yet to be political actors, because by not voting you don't make any statement. Statements are made by forceful actions, and there is no such thing as a protest vote, especially when there is massive electoral fraud.
Francis Bacon wrote, "the politic and artificial nourishing and entertaining of hopes, and carrying men from hopes to hopes, is one of the best antidotes against the poision of discontentments. And it is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men's hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction." It is said of the US government that it is too stupid and incompetent but that is the greatest error in judgment the people can make. The US government, and all governments, cover up lies at an incredibly fast-rate and a for long period of time. If the war for the mind is to be won, then we must realize that the strength of the enemy is not might alone. Forget the Tank. And the Bank. An Edward Bernays is far more dangerous than an Alan Greenspan. And because the efforts of the scientist took a violent twist when he used his knowledge to make military weapons, we can no longer view oppression as only the tyrant's fist. Dictatorship has been elevated to a higher pitch, creating a deafening sound that makes waves for those who live far away from the decisions made.
In the hierarchy of peace's enemies, the warrior who wields the sword falls below the war wizard who carves it the many nights before. Who deserves more of our attention? Not the executioner, but the planner. Not the soldier who shoots the stranger in the back, but the general who loads the chamber in the back. On War, I don't concentrate my hate on those who make the claim, like Bush, but those who take the aim, like Wolfowitz. Those who view power not as a misfortune but as glory; and wrongly believe that the end is the story, when the terror is in the telling, and that what lies between is what matters most of all. The truth is heard, forget the spelling, Only Lies require Grammer, and to be a good phraser means what comes out of your soul the first time is not correct. On the contrary, the truth is; if it comes out wrong the first time then forget making it right the second time. This is Commentary off the top of the heart, turning the essay into an imperfect art. I am the garbage man of history, doing a task nobody wants to do but somebody's gotta do it, and from time to time recycling the knowledge of the men and women who visited earth before us is a pleasure, but I must also convert that knowledge into something I can call my own, something that will remain unfamiliar always because all form of creation is unfamiliar to the creator.
Extracting all the books from the library, and all the information from the net is an impossible task, unless a superhuman computer is made to distill the facts of history but even a robot can't be objective, especially if programmers install their own point of views into the intelligent observer. What is required is an inconceivable patience, and a sustained isolation, for the extractor to make knowledge pure again. Picking out the right books, the classics, the original teachers, the work of freewheeling journalists, all this is part of it. Not a university education, but an education that filters the truth that has been lodged in the ground, pushed below after many social and cultural earthquakes. Forget the cosmos. True learning is not achieved by looking to the stars, but by rediscovering our roots. I care about the inner terrain of earth, and the men who have walked on it, not the half-dead angels above. The cosmos is where we come from and where we'll go back to, yes, but to be disrespectful of earth for our brief existence here is not the direction I want to take. I went through public school without learning much the names of Plato or any Greek, and if they were brought up, it was only in passing, and in English class we read Shakespeare but not Goethe. All I can say is Thank God for Wikipedia. And I should thank Wikipedia for God. Self-education still remains the only education that matters. The library is the still student's sanctuary.
