The madman and the iraqi war

It is the war of the sated against the famished, the obese against the emaciated, the affluent against the impoverished, the democracies against tyranny, perhaps Christianity against Islam and definitely the West against the Orient. It is the ultimate metaphor, replete with "mass destruction", "collateral damage", and the "will of the international community".

In this euphemistic Bedlam, Louis Althusser would have felt at home.

With the exception of Nietzsche, no other madman has contributed so much to human sanity as has Louis Althusser. He is mentioned twice in the Encyclopaedia Britannica merely as a teacher. Yet for two important decades (the 1960s and the 1970s), Althusser was at the eye of all the important cultural storms. He fathered quite a few of them.

Althusser observed that society consists of practices: economic, political and ideological. He defines a practice as:

"Any process of transformation of a determinate product, affected by a determinate human labour, using determinate means (of production)."

The economic practice (the historically specific mode of production, currently capitalism) transforms raw materials to finished products deploying human labour and other means of production in interactive webs. The political practice does the same using social relations as raw materials.

Finally, ideology is the transformation of the way that a subject relates to his real-life conditions of existence. The very being and reproduction of the social base (not merely its expression) is dependent upon a social superstructure. The superstructure is "relatively autonomous" and ideology has a central part in it.

America's social superstructure, for instance, is highly ideological. The elite regards itself as the global guardian and defender of liberal-democratic and capitalistic values (labeled "good") against alternative moral and thought systems (labeled "evil"). This self-assigned mission is suffused with belligerent religiosity in confluence with malignant forms of individualism (mutated to narcissism) and progress (turned materialism).

Althusser's conception of ideology is especially applicable to America's demonisation of Saddam Hussein (admittedly, not a tough job) and its subsequent attempt to justify violence as the only efficacious form of exorcism.

People relate to the conditions of existence through the practice of ideology. It smoothes over contradictions and offers false (though seemingly true) solutions to real problems. Thus, ideology has a realistic attribute - and a dimension of representations (myths, concepts, ideas, images). There is harsh, conflicting reality - and the way that we represent it both to ourselves and to others.

"This applies to both dominant and subordinate groups and classes; ideologies do not just convince oppressed groups and classes that all is well (more or less) with the world, they also reassure dominant groups and classes that what others might call exploitation and oppression is in fact something quite different: the operations and processes of universal necessity"

(Guide to Modern Literary and Cultural Theorists, ed. Stuart Sim, Prentice-Hall, 1995, p. 10)

To achieve the above, ideology must not be seen to err or, worse, remain speechless. It, therefore, confronts and poses (to itself) only questions it can answer. This way, it is confined to a fabulous, fantastic, contradiction-free domain. It ignores other types of queries altogether. It is a closed, solipsistic, autistic, self-consistent, and intolerant thought system. Hence the United States' adamant refusal to countenance any alternative points of view or solutions to the Iraqi crisis.

Althusser introduced the concept of "The Problematic":

"The objective internal reference ... the system of questions commanding the answers given."

The Problematic determines which issues, questions and answers are part of the narrative - and which are overlooked. It is a structure of theory (ideology), a framework and the repertoire of discourses which - ultimately - yield a text or a practice. All the rest is excluded.

It is, therefore, clear that what is omitted is of no less importance than what is included in a text, or a practice. What the United States declines or neglects to incorporate in the resolutions of the Security Council, in its own statements, in the debate with its allies and, ultimately, in its decisions and actions, teaches us about America and its motives, its worldview and cultural-social milieu, its past and present, its mentality and its practices. We learn from its omissions as much as we do from its commissions.

The problematic of a text reveals its historical context ("moment") by incorporating both inclusions and omissions, presences and absences, the overt and the hidden, the carefully included and the deliberately excluded. The problematic of the text generates answers to posed questions - and "defective" answers to excluded ones.

Althusser contrasts the manifest text with a latent text which is the result of the lapses, distortions, silences and absences in the manifest text. The latent text is the "diary of the struggle" of the un-posed question to be posed and answered.

Such a deconstructive or symptomatic reading of recent American texts reveals, as in a palimpsest, layers of 19th century-like colonialist, mercantilist and even imperialist mores and values: "the white man's burden", the mission of civilizing and liberating lesser nation, the implicit right to manage the natural resources of other polities and to benefit from them, and other eerie echoes of Napoleonic "Old Europe".

But ideology does not consist merely of texts.

"(It is a) lived, material practice - rituals, customs, patterns of behavior, ways of thinking taking practical form - reproduced through the practices and productions of the Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs): education, organized religion, the family, organized politics, the media, the cultural industries..." (ibid, p.12)

Althusser said that "All ideology has the function (which defines it) of 'constructing' concrete individuals as subjects".

Subjects to what? The answer is: to the material practices of the ideology, such as consumption, or warfare. This (the creation of subjects) is done by acts of "hailing" or "interpellation". These attract attention (hailing) and force the individuals to generate meaning (interpretation) and, thus, make the subjects partake in the practice.

The application of this framework is equally revealing when one tackles not only the American administration but also the uniformly "patriotic" (read: nationalistic) media in the United States.

The press uses self-censored "news", "commentary" and outright propaganda to transform individuals to subjects, i. e. to supporters of the war. It interpellates them and limits them to a specific discourse (of armed conflict). The barrage of soundbites, slogans, clips, edited and breaking news and carefully selected commentary and advocacy attract attention, force people to infuse the information with meaning and, consequently, to conform and participate in the practice (e. g., support the war, or fight in it).

The explicit and implicit messages are: "People like you - liberal, courageous, selfless, sharp, resilient, entrepreneurial, just, patriotic, and magnanimous - (buy this or do that)"; "People like you go to war, selflessly, to defend not only their nearest and dearest but an ungrateful world as well"; "People like you do not allow a monster like Saddam Hussein to prevail"; "People like you are missionaries, bringing democracy and a better life to all corners of the globe". "People like you are clever and won't wait till it is too late and Saddam possesses or, worse, uses weapons of mass destruction"; "People like you contrast with others (the French, the Germans) who ungratefully shirk their responsibilities and wallow in cowardice."

The reader / viewer is interpellated both as an individual ("you") and as a member of a group ("people like you..."). S/he occupies the empty (imaginary) slot, represented by the "you" in the media campaign. It is a form of mass flattery. The media caters to the narcissistic impulse to believe that it addresses us personally, as unique individuals. Thus, the reader or viewer is transformed into the subject of (and is being subjected to) the material practice of the ideology (war, in this case).

Still, not all is lost. Althusser refrains from tackling the possibilities of ideological failure, conflict, struggle, or resistance. His own problematic may not have allowed him to respond to these two deceptively simple questions:

What is the ultimate goal and purpose of the ideological practice beyond self-perpetuation?

What happens in a pluralistic environment rich in competing ideologies and, thus, in contradictory interpellations?

There are incompatible ideological strands even in the strictest authoritarian regimes, let alone in the Western democracies. Currently, IASs within the same social formation in the USA are offering competing ideologies: political parties, the Church, the family, the military, the media, the intelligentsia and the bureaucracy completely fail to agree and cohere around a single doctrine. As far as the Iraqi conflict goes, subjects have been exposed to parallel and mutually-exclusive interpellations since day one.

Moreover, as opposed to Althusser's narrow and paranoid view, interpellation is rarely about converting subjects to a specific - and invariably transient - ideological practice. It is concerned mostly with the establishment of a consensual space in which opinions, information, goods and services can be exchanged subject to agreed rules.

Interpellation, therefore, is about convincing people not to opt out, not to tune out, not to drop out - and not to rebel. When it encourages subjects to act - for instance, to consume, or to support a war, or to fight in it, or to vote - it does so in order to preserve the social treaty, the social order and society at large.

The business concern, the church, the political party, the family, the media, the culture industries, the educational system, the military, the civil service - are all interested in securing influence over, or at least access to, potential subjects. Thus, interpellation is used mainly to safeguard future ability to interpellate. Its ultimate aim is to preserve the cohesion of the pool of subjects and to augment it with new potential ones.

In other words, interpellation can never be successfully coercive, lest it alienates present and future subjects. The Bush administration and its supporters can interpellate Americans and people around the world and hope to move them to adopt their ideology and its praxis. But they cannot force anyone to do so because if they do, they are no different to Saddam and, consequently, they undermine the very ideology that caused them to interpellate in the first place.

How ironic that Althusser, the brilliant thinker, did not grasp the cyclical nature of his own teachings (that ideologies interpellate in order to be able to interpellate in future). This oversight and his dogmatic approach (insisting that ideologies never fail) doomed his otherwise challenging observations to obscurity. The hope that resistance is not futile and that even the most consummate and powerful interpellators are not above the rules - has thus revived.

Nuclear energy - the green solution

The United States with less than 5% of the world's population consumes roughly 25% of the world's energy. Some might argue that this is egregious, while others would say that it is simply a yardstick by which the world's largest economy is measured. But for whatever the reason for our vast consumption of energy, the fact remains that in order to consume you first have to produce. And as most of our energy comes from burning fossil fuels - which wouldn't be too bad except that:

(1) burning vast amounts of fossil fuels in this county alone dumps millions of pounds of earth warming greenhouse gasses into, what appears, is a fragile atmosphere, every day. Just warming up the atmosphere a couple of degrees on average has significant impact. Look no further than last year's hurricane season. The worst on record. And...

(2) let's not forget its close cousin; smog pollution, which adds to respiratory problems and other health conditions, not to mention the visual blight hanging over our cities as well. In addition...

(3) have you filled your tank recently? Paid the heating bill? The cost of all fossil fuels, even coal has increased significantly. As other emerging economies such as China and India vie for ever more limited resources, all bets are that the costs will continue to climb over the long haul. Moreover...

(4) as we import most of our oil nowadays - we are increasingly held hostage to an unstable supply from a number of countries that we, for whatever reasons, are increasingly unpopular with. The end game? If our supply of oil is not first arbitrarily cut off, as it becomes increasingly scarce the price will rise until our growth is strangled. In either case we will feel impelled to engage in war with other rising powers to secure our supplies.

The bottom line: Fossil fuels are not only hazardous to our health (and the planet's) but may in fact be hazardous to the American way of life.

But if energy is the lifeblood of our economy what are we to do? Wind? Solar? While anything we can do other than consume fossil fuels will help, these sources of energy are relatively diffuse and inconsistent. In other words, their "cost to calorie" ratios are not efficient and they are not always dependable. As James Kunstler points out in his intriguing book The Long Emergency, one of our best options out of these dilemmas is to do an "Apollo Project" type effort to develop additional, new nuclear energy capability. As it turns out, it just may be the greenest, viable alternate we have.

The U. S. currently produces about 20% of its electrical power from nuclear power. The advantages are; that there are no greenhouse emissions into the atmosphere, no visual pollution, it is cost relatively cost effective, quiet and we have sufficient supply of uranium here at home for the foreseeable future to provide for a major portion of our energy needs. Historically, at least, the problem with nuclear energy has been primarily two fold. First, the "China Syndrome" problem of a meltdown of a reactor which could release a large amount of radioactivity and second, what do we do with nuclear waste material that has a half-life of over 25,000 years! The perception of these two significant obstacles might doom a new nuclear drive and stand in the way of an energy-independent United States.

However, there are new technologies in this field that, like the cavalry, have come to our rescue - and none too soon. First, there is a new class of nuclear reactors that have their nuclear fuel so structured that they cannot do a melt down. Turn off the cooling to this new nuclear reactor and it only gets a bit hotter. No big deal. Turn the cooling back on and it runs more efficiently. Okay, one down. But what about all that radioactive spent reactor fuel? Let's see if we can put some perspective on it. If you gathered all the spent nuclear fuel in this country under one roof it would fill a typical high school gym. Not too unmanageable. Moreover, the spent fuel is encapsulated in super strong glass beads, which in turn are embedded into hardened concrete inside steel drums. This makes the waste product "transportable" and is designed to withstand the elements for 10,000 years. Nevertheless, even in it's tomb it is still relativity radioactive. Most of these drums are stored in water as radiation cannot penetrate more than about 3 feet of water. However, no one seems anxious to have it in their back yards. A political hot potato to be sure.

But while our politicians don't have the answer, the earth does. The answer lies in the bottom of the Marianas Trench in the Pacific. It is the deepest place in the ocean (over seven miles) and one of the fastest moving subduction plates on earth. If the drums of waste were placed in the bottom of the trench, they would, within a few hundred years, be swallowed up into the bowels of the earth and blend into the earth's core where heat and pressure (caused in part by radioactive substances contained within the earth) rendered insignificant.

Given the current geopolitical situation, which only seems to be working to our disadvantage, limited resources for cheap fossil fuels, not to mention the environmental impacts we are starting to experience, it is time we take drastic measures to get us off our fossil fuel addition. Let's hope we are not too late.

The democratic ideal and new colonialism

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful concerned individuals can precipitate change in the world ... indeed, it is the only thing that ever has"

(Margaret Mead)

"Democracy" is not the rule of the people. It is government by periodically vetted representatives of the people.

Democracy is not tantamount to a continuous expression of the popular will as it pertains to a range of issues. Functioning and fair democracy is representative and not participatory. Participatory "people power" is mob rule, not democracy.

Granted, "people power" is often required in order to establish democracy where it is unprecedented. Revolutions - velvet, rose, and orange - recently introduced democracy in Eastern Europe, for instance. People power - mass street demonstrations - toppled obnoxious dictatorships from Iran to the Philippines and from Peru to Indonesia.

But once the institutions of democracy are in place and more or less functional, the people can and must rest. They should let their chosen delegates do the job they were elected to do. And they must hold their emissaries responsible and accountable in fair and free ballots once every two or four or five years.

As heads of the state in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and East Europe can attest, these vital lessons are lost on the dozens of "new democracies" the world over. Many of these presidents and prime ministers, though democratically elected (multiply, in some cases), have fallen prey to enraged and vigorous "people power" movements in their countries.

And these breaches of the democratic tradition are not the only or most egregious ones.

The West boasts of the three waves of democratization that swept across the world 1975. Yet, in most developing countries and nations in transition, "democracy" is an empty word. Granted, the hallmarks of democracy are there: candidate lists, parties, election propaganda, and voting. But its quiddity is absent. It is being consistently hollowed out and rendered mock by election fraud, exclusionary policies, cronyism, corruption, intimidation, and collusion with Western interests, both commercial and political.

The new "democracies" are thinly-disguised and criminalized plutocracies (recall the Russian oligarchs), authoritarian regimes (Central Asia and the Caucasus), or Vichy-like heterarchies (Macedonia, Bosnia, and Iraq, to mention three recent examples).

The new "democracies" suffer from many of the same ills that afflict their veteran role models: murky campaign finances, venal revolving doors between state administration and private enterprise, endemic corruption, self-censoring media, socially, economically, and politically excluded minorities, and so on. But while this malaise does not threaten the foundations of the United States and France - it does imperil the stability and future of the likes of Ukraine, Serbia, and Moldova, Indonesia, Mexico, and Bolivia.

Worse still, the West has transformed the ideal of democracy into an ideology at the service of imposing a new colonial regime on its former colonies. Spearheaded by the United States, the white and Christian nations of the West embarked with missionary zeal on a transformation, willy-nilly, of their erstwhile charges into paragons of democracy and good governance.

And not for the first time. Napoleon justified his gory campaigns by claiming that they served to spread French ideals throughout a barbarous world. Kipling bemoaned the "White Man's (civilizing) burden", referring specifically to Britain's role in India. Hitler believed himself to be the last remaining barrier between the hordes of Bolshevism and the West. The Vatican concurred with him.

This self-righteousness would have been more tolerable had the West actually meant and practiced what it preached, however self-delusionally. Yet, in dozens of cases in the last 60 years alone, Western countries intervened, often by force of arms, to reverse and nullify the outcomes of perfectly legal and legitimate popular and democratic elections. They did so because of economic and geopolitical interests and they usually installed rabid dictators in place of the deposed elected functionaries.

This hypocrisy cost them dearly. Few in the poor and developing world believe that the United States or any of its allies are out to further the causes of democracy, human rights, and global peace. The nations of the West have sown cynicism and they are reaping strife and terrorism in return.

Moreover, democracy is far from what it is made out to be. Confronted with history, the myth breaks down.

For instance, it is maintained by their chief proponents that democracies are more peaceful than dictatorships. But the two most belligerent countries in the world are, by a wide margin, Israel and the United States (closely followed by the United Kingdom). As of late, China is one of the most tranquil polities.

Democracies are said to be inherently stable (or to successfully incorporate the instability inherent in politics). This, too, is a confabulation. The Weimar Republic gave birth to Adolf Hitler and Italy had almost 50 governments in as many years. The bloodiest civil wars in history erupted in Republican Spain and, seven decades earlier, in the United States. Czechoslovakia, the USSR, and Yugoslavia imploded upon becoming democratic, having survived intact for more than half a century as tyrannies.

Democracies are said to be conducive to economic growth (indeed, to be a prerequisite to such). But the fastest economic growth rates in history go to imperial Rome, Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and post-Mao China.

Finally, how represented is the vox populi even in established democracies?

In a democracy, people can freely protest and make their opinions known, no doubt. Sometimes, they can even change their representatives (though the rate of turnover in the US Congress in the last two decades is lower than it was in the last 20 years of the Politburo).

But is this a sufficient incentive (or deterrent)? The members of the various elites in Western democracies are mobile - they ceaselessly and facilely hop from one lucrative sinecure to another. Lost the elections as a Senator? How about a multi-million dollar book contract, a consultant position with a firm you formerly oversaw or regulated, your own talk show on television, a cushy job in the administration?

The truth is that voters are powerless. The rich and mighty take care of their own. Malfeasance carries little risk and rarely any sanction. Western democracies are ossified bastions of self-perpetuating interest groups aided and abetted and legitimized by the ritualized spectacle that we call "elections". And don't you think the denizens of Africa and Asia and eastern Europe and the Middle East are blissfully unaware of this charade.