The Question of American Guilt

[Da Prinz]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Scherpe analyse.
En een feitelijk correct artikel.
Hetzelfde geldt overigens,in andere vorm, voor de
islam.
Opinie(doxa) gebaseerd op Illusie(eikasia) en
Geloof(pistis)is de laagste vorm van kennis in Plato's
kennislijn. Die zag dat toen al scherp.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
BTW
Bill Moyers is een Liberaal, dit in tegenstelling tot
Hoogervorst die zich in het Buitenhof profileerde als
"een echte liberaal" door het instellen van een
Vet-straf als je te zwaar bent.
Das niet Liberaal das Calvinistisch.

Da Prinz 9wel met een Z nu)

--- Antid Oto <antidoto at home.nl> wrote:

> 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
=== message truncated ===





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