The Triumph of the White, Male Ruling Class (I): One Fucking Great Country

Fascinating and entirely predictable fact of the week, month, year, decade and century: no matter who is elected the next president of these wondrous, unique United States of America, "the last, best hope" of all the planets in all the multiverses ever posited in your strangulated imaginations, with respect to every matter of consequence, the next president will be ... a white man! Surprise! This is one fucking great country.

Aw, gee, and shuckity shucks. Am I crapping all over your oh-so-precious, phantasmagorical, transcendental, extra-metafuckinghistorical, orgasmic, hot-cold-tingly, zippity-zappity, sweet, sweet, sweet with double extra gooey, dripping chocolate fudge and yummy, scummy whipped cream MOMENT?!?!?!?!?!?!

You bet your goddamned fat, lazy, dumb ass.

Jesus God, deliver us from The Stupids. Every time the quality of public discussion in this country descends to previously unknown depths of superficiality, triviality, irrelevance, misdirection and outright lying, I think: "At least, it can't possibly get any worse than this." I'm always wrong, every single damned time. The determined lunkheadedness and ignorance of most Americans truly knows no limits. The current orgy of The Ugly Stupids does offer one grimly amusing and fully deserved bonus: most of the major "progressive" writers and bloggers have been fully revealed as the putrid, nauseating crapfest those fourteen of us with open eyes and basically functioning minds have known them to be for some time. I have laughed very, very hard as I watched many of the major progressive bloggers enthusiastically advance the central storyline of this primary season pushed by...yes, that's right: Matt Drudge. The destruction of Hillary (and Bill) Clinton has been one of Drudge's most fervent and frequently announced desires, lo these many years. And progressive writers and bloggers are such wonderfully compliant dumbasses. Many of them joyously leaped to destroy Hillary Clinton, in precisely the ways and utilizing the exact terms that Drudge encouraged them to use.

I hope you have a good appetite for heaping helpings of irony, sprinkled with bloody bits of cranial goo gathered from the progressives' teeny tiny, imperceptible brains. You're going to get a lot of it in the next five months. If Obama is elected, you'll get it for the next four or eight years. I've written extensively about the progressives' intellectual failures; see, for example, the discussion in this essay of the progressives' inability to grasp the historical grounding, political realities, and continuity of U.S. foreign policy, or this article about the more general failures of most liberals and progressives. Most of today's progressives also appear to rejoice in their close to total ignorance of the history of the Progressive movement in this country; see here and here. I've also discussed the blatant mendacity engaged in by leading progressive writers -- for example, their years of protest against "false narratives." As I have explained, they have never been opposed to false narratives because they are false. They are only opposed to false narratives that don't help Democrats. If false narratives help Democrats, or if they help the progressives' hero of the nanosecond, bring 'em on! The recently concluded primary campaign proved my argument many times over. Thank Christ that the progressives aren't constrained by considerations of integrity, honesty, consistency or minimal coherence. If they were, they would all have to retire until such unlikely time as they remembered what they did with their minds (such as they were), and their souls (such as they were, assuming they existed in some distant earlier period).

I've also written numerous times about the progressives' complete and utter failure to act in a manner that might actually make a difference with regard to any issue of genuine significance, and particularly with regard to the matter that remains of the greatest significance right now. I've been writing about it for a couple of years: see here, and here, and here, and here and, most recently, here. What the fuck is wrong with you? See the earlier essays for the answer.

But to see many progressives eagerly following in the footsteps of the dreaded Drudge and the mainstream media, after all the years and the endless posts in which the progressives condemned and ridiculed these same purveyors of "conventional wisdom" and insisted that they, the progressives, offered something new and different and infinitely better...wow, man. That is some impressive shit. (More about that later, probably in subsequent parts of this essay.)

To return to my opening point: let us draw a distinction between the candidates' biological identities and what we might term their functional identities. McCain is a white man; no issue arises there. I am well aware that Hillary Clinton is biologically a woman, as I know that Barack Obama is biracial in hereditary terms. By "functional identity," I refer to the role all these candidates have chosen to play, in cultural and political terms. (Please note that what follows is not intended to mean that Clinton has not been the target of misogyny or that Obama has not been the target of racism. They have both been the targets of viciously irrational beliefs, for it is not a question of either-or on this point. I'll discuss this in detail in future parts of this essay.) Because all three of these politicians have chosen to engage in national politics at the highest level, they have no choice about enthusiastically adopting all the indicia of the ruling class, for indeed they are the ruling class. That is, they have no choice if they want to win. And all three of them assuredly want to win (even if one of them seems to be out of the running for the moment, but much can happen between now and November, and even between now and August).

Reflect for just a moment about what it is they want to win so desperately. Each of these three persons wants to be the most powerful ruler in the world. Given the nature of the weapons that will be at their disposal, they want to be the most powerful ruler in all of history, with the power to fundamentally transform human history and perhaps even to end it in significant part. Even if you believed that you acted righteously, with justice and truth on your side (let us set aside for the moment how one can believe that the power to murder millions of innocent people can ever be thought to be right or just, although I do not believe such considerations should ever be set aside), would you want power of that kind? If you would, I hope never to meet you. For any person who actively seeks the power of life and death over just one other human being, let alone millions of people, is deeply, irrevocably damaged in psychological terms. If we use the term "normal" to designate those goals and motives that can generally be described as supportive of individual life and happiness, no one who wants to be president of the United States is remotely close to normal. When you consider the years of relentless, soul-destroying ambition that are required to approach the office of president, together with the indefensible compromises, the endless lies, and the constant exercise of power over others in less extreme forms, anyone who deeply desires to be president verges on a constant state of insanity.

Yet one of these terrifyingly deranged people will, in fact, be the next president. Many Americans are excited, even thrilled, about the prospect, which tells you a rather important fact about most Americans, actually many important facts. I have numerous reasons for dreaming of a stateless world. There are others, but these are among the most critical of them.

As I have discussed in detail, there are unquestionably policy differences between the two major political parties, but those differences concern only derivative issues. On the points of greatest significance, the ruling class adheres to a consistent, monolithic worldview; the goals on which they all agree are a corporatist-authoritarian state at home, and unending interventions abroad, using military force as and on the scope required. (On the characteristics and dynamics of the ruling class, see "The Elites Who Rule Us," "It's Called the Ruling Class Because It Rules," "Blinded by the Story," "Once More Into the Land of the Blind," and the other essays linked in those articles.)

In general terms, the worldview that allegedly justifies the numerous, repeated acts of invasion, bombing, murder, genocide and torture engaged in by the United States government goes like this:

The West has the answer to successful human life. Since it does, and because certain elements in the rest of the world have now chosen to attack us on our own ground (and never mind that we have invaded and ruled over vast portions of the rest of the world since time immemorial), we must enlighten those benighted portions of the globe in our defense. Our chosen method of enlightenment is brute military force, to be deployed even against countries that did not threaten us. The lack of a genuine threat is no argument against spreading our version of "civilization," for our mission is grounded not only in self-defense: it is also a moral mission. Our success and our "peace" directly correlate to our virtue. Those countries and those civilizations that do not enjoy the same success and peace are without virtue. In the most extreme (and, one could argue, most consistent) version of this tale, non-Western parts of the world are less than human -- and they are subhuman by choice. They are immoral, and sometimes even evil. Since we represent the good and they represent the evil, we are surely entitled to improve them, by invasion and bombing if necessary. If they do not threaten us today, they might at some indeterminate time in the future. And while we might kill many innocent civilians in our campaign of civilization, those who survive will be infinitely better off than they would have been otherwise. Besides, how "innocent" can any of them be -- since they are members of inferior, less than fully human civilizations, and since they are so by choice?

This story may have the virtue of simplicity and the attractiveness of notions that support a faltering sense of righteousness -- but it is also grievously, terribly wrong. It ignores the long sweep of history and complex questions of philosophy, morality and politics. ... It should be noted that, besides being wrong for countless reasons, this story contains the seeds of immense destructiveness. The destruction we have seen in the last few years may only be the prelude to infinitely greater destruction still to come. ...

The fable peddled after 9/11 addressed questions dealing with the entire world. The wake of Hurricane Katrina unmasked a corollary to this tale. This time, the storyline was contained within our own borders -- but it was no less ugly for that. In fact, the domestic fable that has taken hold in large parts of our media and among many so-called "respectable" intellectuals has confirmed that ancient hatreds have never left us. Those hatreds reveal the most virulent form of racism -- and they ought to give pause to all those who champion the kind of "civilization" they contend we are morally justified in exporting by means of missiles, bombs and bullets.

That final point concerning racism is explored more fully in, "Myths of New Orleans: Poor, Bad Blacks Who Got What They Deserved."

As the above excerpt briefly outlines, the myth of American exceptionalism is an inherently, necessarily racist vision. I indicated in a recent essay that the more accurate and comprehensive phrase would be: the myth of white American exceptionalism. (I leave for another time a discussion of a very complex subject: how the concept of "whiteness" itself is an intentionally inexact, infinitely malleable one, a concept subject to continual revision and reconstruction, but always to the benefit of the ruling class. If you want to read more on this issue, I recommend Matthew Frye Jacobson's book, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race.)

In "Racist Nation," I wrote:

We are troubled by a still deeper conflict, between our preferred vision of ourselves and the facts of our history. We see ourselves as citizens of the greatest and most civilized nation in all of history. Our nation is also the most moral country in history, and we as individuals are exemplars of personal virtue. The United States represents Absolute Good, or as close to it as humanity will come. (I've discussed this mythology in a number of essays. See, for example, "The National Myth that Sustains Us -- and Its Inevitable Racism," "A 'Redeemer Nation,' with Some Explaining to Do," and "Myths of New Orleans.")

People who are Good cannot be racists. Obviously, many of us are. What to do.

This sanitized version of our history ignores or unforgivably minimizes the genocide of Native Americans, the slaughter and enslavement of African-Americans, a century following the Civil War of government-enforced segregation, discrimination against Jews, the Irish, Italians, Germans, and Hispanic immigrants today -- yet all of this is set aside so the myth can continue.

It also ignores another manifestation of the racism that inevitably proceeds from our mythologized self-assessment: the racism that has permeated our foreign policy for over a hundred years.

Vicious, murderous racism lay at the core of the war of aggression waged against Mexico in the mid-nineteenth century (see, "The American Myth Continued"), it was repeated in the disgusting and unforgivable war of aggression waged in the Philippines (see, "The Mythology of the 'Good Guy' American"), it would be revealed again in both World Wars, in the Vietnam war, and in almost every war ever waged by the United States government. With the exception of World War II, not one of those wars was genuinely defensive in nature, not in any respect whatsoever. Every one of them was instigated by the ruling class, to open up and/or strengthen markets for those American business interests with extensive connections to government, to establish and consolidate American "influence" (i.e., control), to make American hegemony unassailable, and to "civilize" The Other, who was always characterized -- and hated, despised and targeted for submission or, failing that, destruction -- because he was inferior, less than, not fully human. The United States government sanctifies each American death -- while completely disregarding and lying about the realities of slaughter in war -- and invariably employs American deaths as an additional excuse to continue the slaughter of The Other. At the same time, deaths of The Other are rarely even mentioned.

All of this is now repeated in Iraq. The United States government -- aided by a fully compliant, supportive Congress, which enabled and continues to fund this ongoing act of monstrous barbarity even now -- has unleashed genocide, torture and the destruction of an entire country. Because the American ruling class believes that "the American model of society is destined to dominate the world, by one means or another, since it is held to be the culmination of human development," it cannot possibly be the case that the United States itself is fundamentally wrong. Whatever fault and blame are involved cannot belong to the American government. Any and all important failures must unquestionably be the fault of The Other.

So says Hillary Clinton:

Our troops did the job they were asked to do. They got rid of Saddam Hussein. They conducted the search for weapons of mass destruction. They gave the Iraqi people a chance for elections and to have a government. It is the Iraqis who have failed to take advantage of that opportunity.

So said Barack Obama just last week:

It's not change when [McCain] promises to continue a policy in Iraq that asks everything of our brave men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians..."

The condescending superiority of this perspective is unassailable and unchangeable. (In yet another loathsome example of the identical mentality, John Kerry has also said the same thing.)

Listen up, Obama, you cheap, lying fraud: the United States government launched a criminal war of aggression against a nation that never threatened us. It continues a bloody, murdering occupation which does nothing but worsen the agony of the Iraqi people. We have no right to be in Iraq at all. We never did. The actions of the United States government have led to a genocide of world historical proportions.

Genocidal murderers and those who support and enable them -- as you do, Obama, since you vote to fund this continuing crime -- do not get to "ask" one single goddamned fucking thing of their victims. Not. One. Single. Goddamned. Fucking. Thing.

Get it, you pathetic little asshole?

Ah, I must correct myself. Genocidal murderers and those who support and enable them do get to ask one thing: they can beg all the victims for their forgiveness. Otherwise, get out in a matter of months. Not just "combat troops," but every last American -- out. And, no: genocidal murderers and those who support and enable them do not get to decide how to "responsibly" leave the scene of their own crimes. What, exactly, do genocidal murderers and those who support and enable them know about behaving "responsibly"?

It continues to amaze me that matters of this kind must be explained over and over again -- and that the denial of both the American ruling class and most Americans remains impenetrable. That is a measure of the depravity of this nation today. In terms of the conduct of our government and what most Americans are willing to accept, we are a nation without any sense of morality, without the smallest bit of decency or humanity, completely incapable of seeing and acknowledging the horrors we inflict on others. If the United States should attack Iran in the current circumstances -- an attack which no one is doing anything of significance to even try to stop, not the Democrats, not the useless progressive bloggers, no one -- our journey into hell will be complete. The United States will find its place among the most monstrous nations in all of history.

I should mention one further point about Iraq specifically. The American ruling class's patronizing, narcissistic, racist, homicidal impulses force them into denying simple truths that should be obvious to any semi-honest and semi-decent human being. Patrick Cockburn wrote the following some time ago. It remains true today in all essential ways:

One theme has been constant throughout the past three-and-a-half years - the Iraqi government has always been weak. For this, the US and Britain were largely responsible. They wanted an Iraqi government which was strong towards the insurgents but otherwise compliant to what the White House and Downing Street wanted. All Iraqi governments, unelected and elected, have been tainted and de-legitimised by being dependent on the US. This is as true of the government of the Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki today as it was when sovereignty was supposedly handed back to Iraq under the prime minister Iyad Allawi in June 2004. Real authority had remained in the hands of the US. The result was a government whose ministers could not move outside the Green Zone. They showed great enthusiasm for press conferences abroad where they breathed defiance at the insurgents and agreed with everything said by Mr Bush or Tony Blair.

The government can do nothing because it only came into existence after ministries were divided up between the political parties after prolonged negotiations. Each ministry is a bastion of that party, a source of jobs and money. The government can implement no policy because of these deep divisions. The government cannot turn on the militias because they are too strong.

In brief: what Obama and the rest of the ruling class propose to "ask" of Iraqi politicians is that they do exactly as the U.S. government demands with regard to every issue that concerns the American ruling class itself. Iraqi politicians cannot form a genuinely independent, autonomous government -- because the U.S. ruling class has forbidden them to do so. That is not what the ruling class wants, and it was never what they wanted. What they want is an obedient, compliant colony, regardless of the official designation they might use.

This is only one indication, albeit a revealing one, of the numerous ways in which Obama has enthusiastically made himself into a full-fledged member of the American ruling class. It is not even the most significant way in which he has done so; I will address Obama's complete identification with the beliefs, motives, and goals of the ruling class in the next installment. (For a preview, see "Obama's Whitewash," all of the "Choosing Sides" series, and the other essays linked in those pieces.)

And remember: the beliefs, motives, and goals of the American ruling class have remained basically unchanged for well over a century. That means they are the beliefs, motives, and goals of a white ruling class. Obama may be biracial in hereditary terms, but in every significant respect, he is as white as any black man can be -- ideologically, politically, and with regard to every critical policy issue.

As they say, dear reader: only in America. It's one fucking great country.