Chairman George and his Poorly-read Guardsby arendt
March 1, 2004
"Mao had long nurtured a deep hostility toward the educated, whom he associated with the discredited Confucian system...He distrusted intellectuals, disliked specialization, and clung to his view that the peasants, not the workers, were repositories of basic virtue and the driving force of the revolution."- The Xenophile Historian - A Concise History of China; Chapter 8: CHINA SINCE 1949
http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/china/ch08.html 1. Our Great Leap Backwards
Just as the 1958 "Great Leap Forward" ruined China's economy and discredited Mao, the Reagan/Bush 1980s deficit binge and deindustrialization strategy ruined the U.S. economy and elected Bill Clinton. After both debacles, more pragmatic people moved in to clean up the mess. And, both groups of pragmatists were undermined at every step by unrepentant, outraged ideologues. In each case, the ideologues managed to grab back power within a decade.
In both cases, they went on to launch full-blown Inquisitions, carried out by ill-educated, but fanatical followers. These inquisitions were directed at anyone perceived to have an education, to be disloyal to the maximum leader, to not have the "holy" book memorized, to not salute fast enough.
In both cases, the leader was supported by a small gang of extremist ideolgoues/propagandists, who, in turn, depended on the backing of the leader for their high position. In China, they became known, infamously, as the Gang of Four.
In America, things are not quite what they seem to be. Yes, we have a glut of reactionary media mouthpieces and hit men, closer to four dozen than to four. However, Mao and the Gang of Four were clearly the brains and the motive force behind their movement and
stood a good chance of extreme punishment if they lost. They had no multi-million dollar Swiss bank accounts upon which to gracefully retire if they lost. Bush and his media thugs are clearly the hired help. If they screw up, the worst they can expect is to join Gerald Ford playing celebrity golf in Palm Springs.
In America, the big money stays quietly behind the scenes. Who has ever heard of the secretive Council for National Policy? How many Americans know that this group of Dominionist Theology-dominated movers and shakers auditions candidates, such as
George W. Bush, for ideological purity in secret speeches? Heck, unless you are one, how many Americans know what Dominionism is? Way less than the number who know Drew Barrymore's current cup size, that's for sure.
2. Swimming the Yangtze, Jumping the Shark
Regardless of the ideological commitment of our propaganda meisters, the effectiveness of their agitation is quite clear. They have successfully built a cult of personality around George Bush. Of course, when your corporate masters effectively are the Ministry of Propaganda, this is more a matter of raw power than of any media skill.
"At first Mao stayed out of sight in central China...but then the 72-year-old chairman made a spectacular reappearance. On July 16, photographs were published of him swimming in the Yangtze river, which was intended to prove he had extraordinary vigor. The Red Guards reacted as if they had seen the Messiah walking on water, and Mao returned to Beijing in triumph...
"Mao's next public appearance was in Tiananmen Square, where he wore a PLA uniform, donned an armband of the Red Guards, and received the adulation of thousands of young supporters. The rally ended with cries of "Ten thousand years to Chairman Mao," a salute once given only to emperors."- The Xenophile Historian
Just as Chairman Mao participated in media stunts to build his "cult of personality", we saw George the Posuer yell through a bullhorn at the WTC site, don a codpiece-padded flight suit, and brandish a blowtorched turkey while surrounded by hand-picked, loyal troops in the middle of a military base in Iraq.
3. Let the Games Begin
With the media orgasm over the pornographically violent Gibson "Passion" conveniently coinciding with the whipped-up, free-floating hysteria and moral panic over gay rights, the Bush Cabal is moving into the Cultural Revolution phase of its campaign to get rid of what
Mao called the "four olds" (old culture, old ideas, old customs, and old habits).
Bush's hard core fundamentalist followers are on record as despising the tolerant culture of urban America, the progressive ideas espoused in our 200 year old Constitution, the customs of open government, polite speech, and political compromise, and the habits of fiscal discipline and minimal domestic military presence in peacetime.
Like all murderous mass insanities of the modern era, the target of the violence will be anyone who might actually understand the culture that the deliberately dumbed-down fundamentalists and jingoists have been manipulated to hate.
The evidence of membership in the demonized group can be any talisman that has acquired a cultural significance: a book, an article of clothing, a style of decoration, an SUV, a latte, a Volvo, sushi. This may seem comical, but it is no exaggeration. Pol Pot shot anyone
with a wristwatch or eyeglasses, the Taliban killed schoolteachers, and the Red Guards tormented university professors, driving many to suicide.
"the infamous Red Guard student brigades went on a rampage, destroying anything associated with pre-1949 China or the West. Targets included tight trousers, jazz records, silk clothes, mah-jongg sets, antiques, classical and foreign literature, religious objects, and even pets...
"In all areas, from surgery to nuclear physics and beyond, Mao's words were law. Application of the wisdom of Chairman Mao, as contained in the little red book, Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong, was to lead to miraculous achievements. Placing political purity above economic growth, the Red Guards hampered production and research. - The Xenophile Historian
Today we have serial extremist David Horowitz and the wife of the Vice President, Lynne Cheney, creating a blacklist and setting up a witch hunt on campus and in the Volunteer Organizations community. We have the upteenth incarnation of creationism censoring science textbooks in Georgia. We have the President interfering with basic biotech research on religious grounds. We have an Attorney General more interested in ferreting out
doctors who provide abortion or cannabis than terrorists.
This anti-intellectual salon, feted in Washington soirees, has been delivering their agitprop to the fundamentalist rank-and-file for decades via an ever more tightly sealed media environment. This environment has been slowly constructing its own fantasy world,
in which the agitprop is true; and reality is false. An embarrassing study proved that the more one listened to Fox News, the more false information one believed to be true.
Extremely rightwing people of modest means have little free time, and even less inclination, to verify the truth of media information. Most lower-status right wingers don't read for information at all, or are very poorly-read. Fundamentalism actively discourages thinking
for one's self. It is these poorly-read minds that enthusiastically lend their bodies to the fundamentalist cause, and often to their shrieking homophobic, anti-abortion, pro-Ten Commandments hate fests.
And, just like the Red Guards, those fundies all wave one book. One book that contains all the truth that they think they need to know. And God help anyone who tries to tell them different. Unfortunately, that book is a crazed interpretation of the Christian Bible, dreamed
up in the last forty years - an interpretation which essentially eliminates the New Testament. Yes, that's right. Its Christianity without Christ, except as a mutilated victim out for revenge and looking for gang members to help him rumble.
4. Dominionism: Two Testaments good; One Testament better
Any attempt to produce a typology of the floridly psychotic rantings of the various extremist "gospels" of fundamentalism would be a waste of time in an already overly long essay. Someone needs to write a DSM for fundamentalism. Lacking such, I will cut to the chase.
In the last decade, the heavily mocked "Dispensationalism" (the people who were waiting for the "rapture") has been subtly hijacked by a new cult called "Dominionism" or "Reconstructionism". Whereas the Dispensationalists believed that all they had to do was wait, and the Apocalypse would happen; the Dominionists believe they must take action to make it happen:
"The Church is God's instrument to take dominion back from Satan. Jesus cannot or will not return until the Church has taken dominion by gaining control of the earth's governmental and social institutions."http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psychology/cor/dominion.htm That is, these people believe they have to "make possible" God's return, like he can't do it himself. Since this "gospel" originated among hyper-Calvinists (i.e., pre-destination believers), we already have a contradiction which has already been pointed out by Dispensationalists: The Antipas Ministries website calls such human dictation of God's
plan for what it is: sorcery, conjuring. There is plenty of Christian opposition to these people.
To be brief, the Dominionists want to apply only the Old Testament (Mosaic) law, and they want an Old Testament theocratic society.
"Reconstruction seeks to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern by imposing their interpretations of "Biblical Law". Reconstructionism would eliminate not only democracy, but many of its manifestations, such as labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools.
"The enforcement of Mosaic Law will involve the application of the death penalty for such capital crimes as murder, rape, kidnapping, bestiality, incest, adultery, fornication, homosexuality, idolatry (any non-Christian or non-fundamentalist Christian religion), witchcraft, 'unchangable rebellion' in adolescent children...and perhaps Sabbath breaking. The reconstructed society will regard dissenters and heretics as treasonous war criminals at war with the law and society. The reconstructed society will also be characterized by the rights of private property, a free market economy bordering on libertarianism,...the abolition of 30-year mortgages, a monetary system based on the gold standard, the tithe rather than public taxes financing most social welfare, restitution of wrong rather than imprisonment for many criminals, and voluntary slavery for purposes such as the restitution of a wrong or the desire for financial security."Excerpted from the 12/90 and 1/91 issues of "Israel My Glory"
quoted at
http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psychology/cor/notes_on.htm Are we getting the picture yet? These guys are pre-medieval authoritarians who make the Taliban look merciful. They are prepared to overthrow democracy in the secular realm, and hijack Christianity with a lunatic interpretation of the Bible, invented out of whole cloth in the last 30 years, that is in complete contradiction to the "end times" theology of, not only
all mainstream Christian religions, but also the earlier fringe sects of Dispensationalism. They are prepared to execute your adolescent children for the capital crime of being adolescently stupid.
Traitors, heretics, and judicial murderers - yet they propose to set themselves in judgement of everyone else.
5. First, We Kill All the Teachers
Dominionism is not religion; it is a very worldly program of extremist political agitation, based on a distorted, heretical reading of the basic text of all Western religions. As with all totalitarian systems, it wants complete control of society. To attain such, it intends to monopolize all education. To "re-educate" teachers or replace them with committed theocrats.
Is the concerted assault of the GOP on public education any surprise, then? Not when you understand that it is part of a crypto-totalitarian program of thought control:
Florida House Speaker admits he wants to close public schools
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/02/27/Opinion/Wooly_bully.shtml And, like Mao's Guards, the Dominionist armies are recruited amongst the rural, the uneducated, the unsophisticated, the unspecialized. These are what Hannah Arendt referred to as the "superfluous people", created by the mass industrialization and subsequent mass unemployment inevitable under laissez faire economic conditions. These are former small
businessmen, former small farmers, formerly self-sufficient people. Now, they are deeply frustrated victims, looking for a scapegoat for their victimhood. Being poorly informed to begin with, they are easily misled.
Their mis-leaders are what the Spanish political scientist Jose Ortega y Gasset called "learned ignoramuses", that is, people who have made money with some narrow skill, like dealing real estate, starting a pizza empire, writing a hot computer program, inheriting an oil company - but, other than that, lacking a wide understanding of history, government or political science. In short, ignorant but arrogant thugs.
Their so-called theology is a farrago of misinterpretations of Christianity, under broad attack by their fellow fundamentalists. If the broader society had any idea of their beliefs, there would be agitation for internment camps for these demonstrably treasonous people with murderous intent.
6. Then, We Ruin the Economy
I have essayed, many times, that there is a tacit agreement between corporate and fundamentalist opponents of US democracy. In that agreement, the fundamentalists allow the corporations to loot America. In return, the corporations give "dominion" to the Dominionists over the wreckage of our once great country. This was my hypothesis based on the behavior of the Bush administration. To my horror, this hypothesis is confirmed by
religious scholars:
"Reconstructionists are convinced of the eventual collapse of the American economy and the social breakdown of the American republic. They believe that when this collapse of the present apostate civilization takes place, the Kingdom of God can be developed in the world by the remnant that survives the collapse through the adoption of a medieval, feudalistic type of economy and lifestyle."http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psychology/cor/notes_on.htm These peoples' goals make Chairman Mao look like an Enlightened monarch. At least Mao thought he was creating an advanced socialist state, removing what he thought was medieval, namely Confucianism. The Dominionists actually desire to recreate medieval feudalism! And just for good measure, they want to bring back slavery.
The Dispensationalists merely went to bunkers in Montana to wait for the End Times. The Dominionists want to blow up the whole society to achieve the End Times.
7. Constitutional Terrorism Alert: Code Red
This agenda is not merely being talked about by the kind of "radical academics" who have been a phony boogeyman of the right for decades. It is being put into action by a powerful group of US Senators, led by Zell Miller, who have introduced legislation to begin the process of removing control over their brand of religion from any kind of review by any kind of judge. They call this act of treason, the Constitution Restoration Act of 2004.
http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/ConstitutionRestorationAct.htm This, plus Bush's punitive proposal for a Constitutional Amendment to demonize gays signals an active attempt by an illegitimate and paper-thin majority to repudiate the U.S. Constitution and replace it with a theocracy.
Chairman Mao would have approved of such ideological purity and such total disregard for everyday common sense, much less scientific knowledge. As for sane people, its time to read the handwriting on the wall.
Intellectuals - unless you relish being brutalized, sent to farms in the countryside, and having your libraries and labs burned in scenes reminiscent of Savonarola, I suggest you get your heads out of the clouds for long enough to avoid the knives that are out for you and your worldview.
Citizens - if you like living in a middle-class democracy, you better turn off the corporate-media tranquilizer drip and pay attention to reality.
The Cult of Chairman George and his Poorly-read Guards is upon you.
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