The Question of American Guilt

[Antid Oto]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

http://www.counterpunch.org/garcia03122005.html

"Rebellion is a Protest Against Death"

The Question of American Guilt

By MANUAL GARCÍA, Jr.

"The delusional is no longer marginal, but has come in from
the fringe to influence the seats of power. We are
witnessing today a coupling of ideology and theology that
threatens our ability to meet the growing ecological crisis.
Theology asserts propositions that need not be proven true,
while ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being
contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. The
combination can make it impossible for a democracy to
fashion real-world solutions to otherwise intractable
challenges." So writes Bill Moyers in the current issue of
the New York Review of Books. (1)

Moyers describes how the anticipation of "rapture" -- the
belief in a cataclysmic Armageddon separating the "saved"
from the "damned" as described in the Book of Revelations --
trumps any environmental or even rational concern, for a
large number of evangelical American Christians. A separate
news story about evangelical Christians who have awakened to
environmental reality only underscores Moyers' point, since
green evangelicals seem to be a minority. (2)

What is going on? We are losing our minds because we are
clinging to power.

     "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts
absolutely."

     -- Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton,
1834-1902), in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton of 5
April 1887.

     "Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad."

     -- Euripides (c. 485-406 B.C.), a fragment.

Today, America wields what many see as absolute power, hence
we Americans must be corrupting absolutely. It is easy to
see this in the intentionally engineered physical
manifestations of the decay of our social consciousness and
sense of commons. For example, we are at war with the entire
concept of public education because we are at war with any
idea of contributing resources into a socialism that
breeches our tribal and class barriers.

What may not be appreciated is that corruption by power will
also include the decay of our mental faculties -- our
sanity. Unrestrained power is psychotic. Psychosis is
detachment from reality. Much of our national psychosis is
expressed with religiosity (as opposed to religion and
religiousness).

"Rapture" is just a psychotic raving that like water in
rapids mounds over hidden rocks indicating a deeper truth:
reality is ultimately fatal to all psychosis. This does not
mean cure, simply that objective nature does not allow
unrestrained psychotics to survive. Restraint is social
interaction, the recognition of "the other" -- a recognition
basic to sanity.

The psychotic on the streets dies of exposure or the
assaults of society unless taken into its care, whether
benign or pharmaceutical or judicial. The psychotic nation
similarly dies starved of any connection to a world
community -- perhaps a North Korea -- or must be put down
like Nazi Germany because its frenzied thrashing wrecks
havoc on too many others, frightening them with the prospect
of losing all life and liberty.

The ultimate rapture of US power may come soon or beyond our
lifetimes. The great conflagration consuming all,
anticipated by the evangelical psychosis, may appear as an
environmental collapse, an abrupt climate change triggered
by global warming, a depletion of world hydrocarbon
reserves, a financial collapse, a military effort by a large
coalition of nations, a mutated bird flu pandemic, or some
combination of any of these. We might delude our way into
our own gotterdammerüng, as the Maya kings of cities like
Tikal and Copan did in the 8th and 9th centuries -- blinded
to the proximity of our collapse by the luster of our power.
"Whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad" (Longfellow).

It is this madness that is our greatest weakness, and the
vulnerability most accessible to real enemies. Four jumbo
jets were flown through this opening on 11 September 2001.
The "inability" to understand "why?," and the loud howling
of indignation about Ward Churchill's stridency in his use
of the phrase "little Eichmanns" since, are only reflex
denials mounding over the underlying truth that must remain
submerged: Americans' collective guilt for the continuing
impact of American power on non-American lives. We engineer
this denial into our manner of speaking and the objects of
our daily lives. Our SUVs are psychological sculpture,
karmic Rorschach blots, anechoic cocoons free of the
Palestinian screams emitted as we squeeze the earth for
black blood to burn. (3) If ignorance is bliss, then America
is paradise.

As an American, accept the collective guilt. Denial, whether
rhapsodic evangelical or an enlightened progressive's
disavowal ("It's not my fault, I know better"), only delays
responding to its causes -- and changing this nation's
course. We are all guilty to some degree for the footprints
of America in this world. Why? Because we are -- and want to
be -- all part of this nation. This attitude is the
psychological antidote to the psychosis.

The following excerpt is from a 2000 essay by Gerhard Rempel
of Western New England College. (4)

     In 1947, the German philosopher Karl Jaspers, who had a
clear conscience, a good heart, and great moral vision,
provided a compass that can still serve us in finding our
way out of the moral wilderness of Nazism. In trying to
examine "German guilt," it is first necessary to define the
wrong that was committed that should precipitate guilt.
Jaspers and most moral Germans would agree that in the case
of Nazism such wrongdoing involved committing war crimes and
crimes against humanity. Other crimes included imperialist
expansion, the manner in which war was fought, and even the
crime of starting the war. There can be no denying that
Hitler's Germany was indeed guilty of these crimes.

     There are, however, as Jaspers points out, types of
guilt, which he labels as criminal guilt, political guilt,
moral guilt, and metaphysical guilt. Criminal guilt involves
anyone who committed a crime under unequivocal laws, with
jurisdiction resting with the court. Political guilt
attaches to all citizens who tolerated what was done under
the name of the state. We are all co-responsible for the way
in which we are governed and therefore liable for the
consequences of the deeds done by the state, although not
every single citizen is liable for the criminal actions
committed by specific individuals in the name of the state.
Jurisdiction for political guilt rests ultimately with the
victor. Moral guilt involves the individual's awareness of
serious transgressions or participation in unethical choices
that resulted in specific wrongdoing. Jaspers argued that
moral failings cause the conditions out of which both crime
and political guilt arise. Jurisdiction of moral guilt rests
with one's individual conscience. Finally, there is
metaphysical guilt, which arises when we transgress against
the general moral order and violate the archetypal moral
bonds that connect us to each other as human beings. As
humans we are co-responsible for every wrong and injustice
that is committed; and by inactively standing by, we are
metaphysically culpable. The jurisdiction with metaphysical
guilt ultimately rests with God.

     Although Jaspers was willing to admit that Germans were
morally and metaphysically culpable in the sense of
tolerating conditions that gave rise to criminal activities
on a large scale, he denies that all Germans were
collectively guilty of the crimes committed by the Nazis.
For crimes one can punish only individuals; a whole nation
cannot be charged with a crime. The criminal is always an
individual. Moreover, it would be tragic to repeat the
practice of the Nazis and judge whole groups by reference to
some abstract "trait" or character. There is no national
character that extends to every single individual. This
would be committing the fallacy of division that holds that
what is true of some presumed whole must be true of all its
members. One cannot make an individual out of a people
without falling victim to the same disease that afflicted
the Nazis. People are not evil; only individuals are.

(I have removed stray keystrokes and added more paragraph
breaks in the above excerpt from Rempel.)

Given this recognition, how do we each use what is available
to us (as Americans, this can be quite generous) to
compensate for what we regret has been done? All such
judgment is personal ("Judge not, for as you judge, so shall
you be judged."). It is so easy to find the inadequacy of
others, and so hard to push ourselves to become a little
more aware, and to do a little something about it. But, in
being willing to make space in your conscious reality for
"the other," you make your personal revolt against the tide
of national psychosis. "With rebellion, awareness is born,"
Camus wrote. (5)

Our first act of rebellion is to become aware. This creates
solidarity with all others similarly aware, and is the basis
of group action in rebellion. Camus writes from a rational
humane perspective. The existential problem he sought to
unravel does not arise in minds possessed by the irrational,
such as faith in unprovable theology, or by history, like
the apparatchik obsessed with "success." Among Camus'
observations in "The Rebel" are these four:

     "In absurdist experience, suffering is individual. But
from the moment when a movement of rebellion begins,
suffering is seen as a collective experience."

     "I rebel -- therefore we exist."

     "The consequence of rebellion...is to refuse to
legitimize murder because rebellion, in principle, is a
protest against death."

     "Then we understand that rebellion cannot exist without
a strange form of love. Those who find no rest in God or in
history are condemned to live for those who, like
themselves, cannot live: in fact, the humiliated. The most
pure form of the movement of rebellion is thus crowned with
the heart-rending cry of Karamazov: if all are not saved,
what good is the salvation of one only?"

     "O Bailan Todos O No Baila Nadie" -- Tupamaros, Uruguay
1964-1970. (6)

Manuel Garcia, Jr. can be reached at: mango at idiom.com

References

[1] Bill Moyers, "Welcome To Doomsday," New York Review Of
Books, 24 March 2005,
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17852

[2] Laurie Goodstein, "Evangelical Leaders Swing Influence
behind Effort to Combat Global Warming," New York Times, 11
March 2005,
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/031105G.shtml

[3] Manuel García, Jr., "The Palestinians Versus The SUV,"
10 May 2004,
http://www.swans.com/library/art10/mgarci13.html

[4] Gerhard Rempel, "The Question of German Guilt," 2000,
Western New England College,
http://mars.acnet.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/hitler/lectures/german_guilt.html

Karl Jaspers, "The Question of German Guilt," 1947
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Jaspers

[5] Albert Camus, "The Rebel," 1955 ("L'Homme Révolté," 1950).

[6] William Blum, "Killing Hope,"
see chapter "33. Uruguay - 1964-1970: Torture -- as American
as apple pie,"
http://www.killinghope.org/, or
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Uruguay_KH.html

**********
Dit bericht is verzonden via de informele D66 discussielijst (D66 at nic.surfnet.nl).
Aanmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SUBSCRIBE D66 uwvoornaam uwachternaam
Afmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SIGNOFF D66
Het on-line archief is te vinden op: http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/d66.html
**********