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Today's
Stories
September 25,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
C'mon
Ralph, You've Got Nothing to Lose
September 24,
2004
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
The
Value of One Life: Keeping Up Appearances and Leaving Hostages
to the Wolves
William S.
Lind
Destroying
the National Guard
Mike Whitney
The Bush Tent Show
Nancy Welch
What's
at Stake for Women in 2004?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Logical Limbo
Joshua Frank
Fear Mongering 101
Victor Kattan
An Interview with Afif Safieh
Ben Terrall
Kerry and Haiti: Will He Stand Up?
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
"Finally
It Broke My Heart": Random Impressions from Palestine
September 23,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
Why
Are They Still Holding "Mrs. Anthrax?"
Christopher Brauchli
Ashcroft's "Distressing Lack of Care": Hamdi and the
Phony War on Terrorism
Derek Seidman
Fighting for a Union at Starbucks: an Interview with Daniel Gross
Michael Neumann
Three
Years and Counting? How Time Flies
September 22,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
Zarqawi's
War: the Mysterious Sadist from Jordan
Neve Gordon
The
Wall, the Court and Sharon
Joshua Frank
History Repeating: New York, 1832 and Now
Ron Jacobs
Stormy Seas on the Citizen Ship
Jack Random
Defending Dan? Rather Not
Tarif Abboushi
Kerry's Final Straw: Confessions of a Despairing Voter
Mickey Z
Stupid White Guy Quiz
John L. Hess
Faking the Difference: a Serious Debate?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: The House Rules
September 21,
2004
Gary Leupp
"We
Are Not Secure": Kerry's "Unwavering Commitment"
to Securing a Middle East Realm
Robert Jensen
Large
Dams in India: Temples or Burial Grounds?
Elaine Cassel
Fourth Circuit to Moussouai: Ask Your Questions; Prepare to Die
Stanley Heller
Reagan and the Killing Fields of Lebanon
Adam Federman
America Will Disappoint the World, Again
David Whitehouse
What's Behind the Horror in Darfur?
M. Junaid Alam
How to Avoid Becoming an Anti-American
Paul Craig
Roberts
Attention
Deficit America
Website of the Day
True American War Heroes: the Iraq Refuseniks
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
September 20,
2004
Cockburn /
Buncombe
Get
Fallujah
David Price
Relying
on Phonies: What If The Problem with Phone Polls is That They
Are Phone Polls
Dave Lindorff
How
Dems Fight: Tigers Against Nader, Pussycats Against Bush
Harry Browne
Pre-Nup at Leeds: Talked Out, But Does IRA Give Up?
Mark Wesibrot
Bush's
Ownership Society: No Taxes for Owners, Only Workers
Karyn Strickler
The Keys to the White House v. the Shrum Curse?
Uri Avnery
The Temple Mount Bombers
September 18
/ 19, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Forgeries,
Fingerprints and Forensic Fakery
Jeffrey St. Clair
High Plains Grifter: Bush's Mask of Anarchy
Patrick Cockburn
Into the Abyss: the Week Iraq's Dream of Peace Fell Apart
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: Financial Torture (Asset Forfeiture)
Joe Allen
The Comrades Kerry Abandoned: the Real Story of Vietnam Vets
Against the War
George Corsetti
Poletown Revisited: Finally, Some Vindication
Scott Handleman
The Knock-Knock of a Sledgehammer: Sequestered in Nablus
Richard Ward
Two Weeks in Beit Arabiya
Conn Hallinan
Ashcroft and Indonesia
Lori Smith
Health Care in America: And Then I Got Sick...
Dave Zirin
Hold the Booyah!: SportsCenter Out of the Middle East
John L. Hess
Rather Will Take the Heat, As Bush's War Deteriorates
Brian J. Foley
W is for Wimp: So Why do Manly Men Love Him?
Mickey Z.
Pat Tillman and Osama bin Laden: Odd Juxtapositions
Poets' Basement
Vest, Landau & Albert
Website of the Weekend
Eye on the NYTs
Septemeber
17, 2004
Ray McGovern
Gossing
Over the Record
Patrick Cockburn
The New Iraqi Economy: Baghdad's Thriving Kidnapping Industry
Lee Sustar
The State of Working America: an Autopsy of the American Dream
Mike Whitney
John Kerry: 195 Lbs. of Political Helium, Not an Ounce of Sincerity
Victor Kattan
Black September
Ray Hanania
Israel's Demographics
Greg Bates
Nader's Victories: a Mid-Campaign Assessment
Website of
the Day
The Road to Hell
September 16,
2004
Landau / Hassen
Meet
the New Villain: Syria
Joanne Mariner
Inside
Darfur: a Photo Essay
Patrick Cockburn
US
Offers Conflicting Accounts of Baghdad Bloodbath
Greg Moses
Four Million Children Might Be News
Joshua Frank
Nader in the Battleground States
Christopher Brauchli
The Bush Drug Lottery Flops
David Himmelstein
Folke Bernadotte: a Rosh Hashonah Remembrance
Website of the Day
The Abu Ghraib Index
September 15,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
Hell
on Haifa Street
Ron Jacobs
Oppose War, Not Just Bush
David Lindorff
Blanking Out Dissent
Joanne Mariner
Talking About Darfur: Is Genocide Just a Word?
Angela Godfrey-Goldstein
An Open Letter to Madonna: Please Don't Support Israeli Apartheid
Dave Zirin
Is the NFL Ready for Us?
Yigal Bronner
"They
Are Building Walls Around Us"
September 14,
2004
Gary Leupp
The
Problem of Chechnya
Jennifer van
Bergen
What's
Wrong with Torture?
Stan Goff
Wake Up and Smell the Jungle Rot
Patrick Cockburn
The
Punishment of Fallujah: US Precision Strickes...on Ambulances
Anis Memon
Nader
in Michigan
Michael Donnelly
The Nuance Comes Off: Former Naderites Beg for Kerry Votes
Werther
Zell Miller: the Peckerwood Pericles
Website of
the Day
Osama Bin Forgotten?
September 13,
2004
Gabriel Kolko
Elections,
Alliances and the American Empire
Phillip Cryan
How Do You Say "Death Squad?": Language in Colombia's
War
Patrick Cockburn
One of Baghdad's Bloodiest Days: "I'm a Journalist! I'm
Dying! I'm Dying"
Noah Leavitt
The War on Civil Liberties
Robert Jensen
Highjacking Catastrophe: Bush, the Neo-Cons and 9/11
Mike Whitney
Alan Greenspan: Fed-Master to the Wealthy
John Chuckman
Stop Talking About the "Election"
Mike Burke
Kerry/Edwards Website Censors Discussion of Israel/Palestine
Issues
CounterPunch
Wire
The Quotations of David Cobb: "I Don't Care How Many Votes
I Get"
Website of the Day
Keep It In Your Pants: the Bush Plan to Combat Teen Promiscuity
September 11
/ 12, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Swatting
at Flies
Fred Gardner
Yet Another Prozac Scandal
Saul Landau
When Our Assassins Go Free
Jennifer Van Bergen
How to Beat Bush: a Simple Strategy for the Average American
Roger Burbach
/ Jim Tarbell
The Real Dead Enders: Iraq and the Crisis of Empire
Christopher Reed
9/11 in an Historical Context: a Minor Event When Compared to
Worldwide War Casualties
Francisc Catalin
An ABC of American Interventions
Carl Estabrook
Big Science and Government Terror
Bernard Chazelle
Anti-Americanism: a Clinical Study
Sharon Smith
Third Party Blues
Dave Lindorff
Perhaps This Time We're the Silent Majority
Mike Whitney
Fallujah: an Iraqi Beslan?
Frederick B.
Hudson
Their Sons Perished in the Flames, But Not Their Faith
Mickey Z.
Round Up the Usual Suspects: a Look Back at 9/11
Ron Jacobs
Redneck Music for the New Century
Greg Moses
Soap Opera Moments in Texas School Funding Trial
Benjamin Dangl
/ Andrew Kennis
An Interview with Leslie Cagan
Poets Basement
Del Papa, Albert, Gelman
September 10,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
Disappointment
at Samarrah?
Michael Donnelly
Democrats v. Democracy
Alan Farago
Mosquitoes in a Hurricane
Doug Giebel
Karl Rove's Terror Playbook
Mike Whitney
Bob Graham's Political Tsunami
David Domke
God's
Will, According to the Bush Administration
September 9,
2004
Joe Bageant
Karaoke
Night in Bush's America
Ed Kinane
Abducted in Baghdad
Peter Bohmer
The Cuban Revolution: Present and Future
Todd May
The Emerging Case for a Single-State Solution
Jeremy Scahill
The New York Model: Indymedia and the Text Message Jihad
Joshua Frank
Green House Party Gasses
Fran Shor
The Crisis in Public Dissent: When Protest is Considered a Terrorist
Act
Patrick Cockburn
Welcome
to the Dirtiest City in the World: Despair in Baghdad
Website of
the Day
Liberty Street Protest: No to War at Ground Zero
September 8,
2004
Patrick Cockburn
This
Doesn't Smell Like Victory: A War on Two Fronts in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush Confuses; Kerry Mute: Spinning 1000 Dead
Bulent Gokay
Russian and Chechnia After Beslan
Lisa Viscidi
Land Reform and Conflict in Guatemala
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Byrd's Eye View
Mike Whitney
Afghanistan: American's Drug Colony
Stan Goff
Body
Count: 1001
Website of
the Day
Bush and the Love Doctors
September 7,
2004
Diane Christian
Hostage Tactics: a Game of Mortal Poker
Joshua Frank
Greens
Unravel from Within
Patrick Cockburn
Fallujah
Erupts Again: US Death Toll in Iraq Nears 1000
Ron Jacobs
Bush and Putin: "We're Not Girlie Men"
Chris Floyd
Cry Havoc: Bush's Own Personal Janjaweed
Dr. Carol Wolman
No Blood for Oil at Paul Bunyan Day Parade
John Ross
The
Politics of Darkness North / South
September 6,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
An
Anti-Labor Day That Lives in Infamy: How Many Democrats Voted
For Taft-Hartley?
Ralph Nader
The
Cruel Legacy of Taft-Hartley: a Labor Day Call for Rights for
Working People
Lee Sustar
What's Driving the Attack on Pensions?
Kathleen and
Bill Christison
Dual
Loyalties: the Bush Necons and Israel
September 4-5,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
Elephants
and Gramsci
Ted Honderich
The
Way Things Are
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The
Holy Empire: Who We Are and What We Do
Douglas Valentine
What the World Should Know About Guantanamo
Patrick Cockburn
New Iraqi Police State Flexes Its Muscles
Gary Leupp
Neo Cons Under Fire
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: the Hempstead T-Shirt
William A.
Cook
The
Day of the Lemming
Dave Zirin
Kobe Bryant and the Price of Freedom
John Chuckman
The Day the World Ended
Karyn Strickler
God Save the Endangered Species Act
Vanessa Jones
Bad Day with an Ikea Cup
Mike Whitney
Kerry: the "Better" War Candidate
Mark Donham
Dear John (Kerry): Start Explaining and Fast
Mickey Z.
McBypass Nation: Feeling Clinton's Pain
Alan Farago
Can the Everglades be Fixed?
Poets' Basement
Landau and Albert
September 3,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Jesus Told Him Where to Bomb
Rahul Mahajan
Bush's RNC Speech: an Annotated Response
Carl Estabrook
The
Book of Slaughter and Forgetting
Joshua Frank
The Florida of the Northwest: Oregon Dems Sabotage Nader Again
Gary Leupp
Music to My Ears: Sunday's March
James Hollander
Deja Vu in Manhattan: Assisted Political Suicide?
Mark Engler
Republicans
Among Us: a Week at the RNC, Inside and Out
Jesse Sharkey
Making Students and Teachers Pay for the Crisis in Education
Jane Stillwater
Calling the Cops on Your Own Kid
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: the Bush Neo-Cons and Israel
September 2,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part 3: More Pricks Than Kicks
Max Gimble
Et Tu, Menchu? Extrajudicial Killings and Clandestine Graves
in Guatemala
James Petras
President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Afghan Electoral Model: "If They Want to Vote
Twice, Let Them"
Todd Chretien & Jessie
Muldoon
Will the Democrats Expel Zell Miller?
Jack Random
Spite and Venom Day: the Turncoat and the Profiteer
Alan Maass
The Real Vietnam
Christa Allen
Contre Bush
Website of
the Day
[Redacted]
September 1,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Stench of Doom
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Poor Larry Franklin
Dave Lindorff
Kerry's Litmus Test
Josh Frank
Protest in White: Not All of New York Rises Up
John L. Hess
Moles, Scoops and Flip Flops
Mike Whitney
Deconstructing Arnold
Jack Random
Kindergarten Night at the RNC
Andrew Wilson
War on the Pachyderms: Why Do Elephants Hate Us?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part Two: Mark His Words
August 31,
2004
Joseph Nevins
Escapism
and Global Apartheid: The Dominican Republic & the NYTs
Matt Vidal
Beyond
Bush's Rhetoric on the Economy
Neve Gordon
Kerry and the Middle East
Dave Lindorff
Bush
the Peace Candidate?
Mike Whitney
NPR Leads the Charge for War Against Iran
Jack Random
Opening Night: Playing the War Card
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: the Life and Crimes of George W. Bush (Part One)
CounterPunch Photo of the Day
Pete Seeger in NYC
August 30,
2004
Justin Podhur
The
Disappeared Mayor
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com
Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
Want?
Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
Weekend Edition
September 25 / 6, 2004
Vive La Résistance!
The
New Sparta
By
JUSTIN E.H. SMITH
I've just returned from a week or so
in Romania, where I was attending an academic conference in a
Transylvanian town too small to mention on a theme too recondite
for me to even bother to try to explain it. I can report, however,
on the results of the usual extracurricular breeze-shooting about
politics.
The most important lesson I
took away was one that I've long known but all too often forgotten:
that it is vitally important to remain sensitive to the local
contexts in which global events are interpreted. The Iraq war,
and Romania's prominent position in the coalition of the willing,,
are understood in this particular local context as an important
turning point in Romania's history: after the savagery of its
dictatorship, the violence that brought this dicatorship to an
end in 1989, and the uncertainty of impoverished Romania's position
within the economic and social order of the European community,
it is not surprising that Romania has been proud to be declared,
even by the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, a member of the New Europe.
Romanian support for the Iraq war may thus be seen as a sort
of locally laudable, globally unfortunate" opposition to
the bullying of Jacques Chirac, certainly a regional tyrant of
sorts, who, many Romanians think, showed his true character when,
shortly after Romania and some other former Communist states
voiced their support for the attack on Iraq, condescendingly
declared that these countries had "missed a good opportunity
to keep quiet.
What's remarkable, though,
is that many Romanians seem to have an image of the United States
as a society fundamentally incapable of collapsing into tyranny.
The symbolic apparatus of eagles and stars and stripes rather
than hammers and sickles, the rhetoric of freedom and opportunity
rather than of popular will and solidarity, seem to assure the
former victims of Ceausescu that America is just a different
sort of creature, incapable in its essence of drifting all that
far from the principles upon which it was founded. My new, unlikely
friend, Catalin Avramescu, for example, a political philosopher
at the New Europe College in Bucharest and the author of an as-
yet untranslated book on cannibalism, happily declared to me
not only his enthusiastic support of the US-led invasion of Iraq,
but also his unequivocal advocacy of US-led preemptive strikes
and regime change in Iran and North Korea. To prevent excessive
retaliation against South Korea, in the latter case the strike
would have to be swift and unexpected. Those new low-yield nukes
the US is developing, the so-called bunker busters, Catalin told
me, would be perfect for the job. (You'll just have to take my
word for it when I say that he's actually a delightful fellow.)
In any event, my impression
of America's essential character, or its lack of one, was rather
different as I drove down from Montreal a few weeks ago to appease
my late-surging activist conscience by joining the rabble outside
Madison Square Garden, as inside the Republicans plotted and
posed. It seemed to me, on this visit more than ever before,
that those virtues that many Romanians continue to ascribe to
the United States are rapidly giving way to virtues extolled
by the Ceausescu dictatorship itself, virtues that had their
most vivid ancient expression in the civilization of the Spartans.
This is a troubling change, as it is usually thought that there
has been a distinct, continuous line of descent from ancient
Athens, the enemy of Sparta, through to the American Revolution,
from the freedom of Socrates to pursue truth rather than mere
opinion, to the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Sparta
has been the eternal opposite, so the narrative goes, of everything
we stand for. And this change is particularly disconcerting for
those of us who prefer to spend our time hanging around in marketplaces
(or their modern analogues), shooting the breeze, pursuing our
erotic whims, drinking too much.
In my case, the conflict between
Athens and Sparta hits very close to home. The first stirrings
of my political consciousness came not upon hearing, as I no
doubt did, words like Reaganomics, and Apartheid,, but during
soccer practice. I, an unfortunate dreamer of eight or nine,
had been, by some tragic parent-teacher miscommunication, conscripted
to play on a team of would-be soldiers, all outfitted in camouflage
pants and T-shirts with slogans like Kill em all, let God sort
em out,. The coach was of a similar disposition. He had a tyrannical
moustache and wore a tool-belt with a hunting knife on it.
I wanted nothing more, as long
as I had to be there, than to stand about on the field, counting
dandelions, observing the dragonflies in their mysterious flight
formations, feeling the warmth of the sun. Occasionally, the
ball would come my way, and I would kick it, not in the service
of the team, no, but just to get it away from me. The coach,
invariably, would yell something about teamwork, and the boys
would communicate to me, through words, gestures, and stares,
that I was hated, and that my failure to kick the ball in the
right direction, with enough force, was in fact just an early
symptom of a general deviance that would grow, in time, to include
political convictions, morality, and aesthetic sensibility. In
a word, they were trying to live in accordance with Spartan virtues.
I wanted Athens.
Fortunately, American society
had been diverse enough to allow me to spend my teens and young-adulthood
in the company of like-minded idle dreamers and yakkers. Now,
I fear, it's as though that soccer team has seized power and
is seeking to impose its set of virtues on all of America.
As a sublimation of war, sports
are an essential feature of any Spartan civilization. Consider,
for example, this gem that I pulled from my personal copy of
Kim Jong Il's Selected Works (Pyongyang: Foreign Language Press,
1995), from a speech he delivered in 1972 to the North Korean
national soccer team: "It is very important to develop sports.
Pointing out that physical culture is one of the means to strengthen
the friendly relations with foreign countries, the great leader
[Kim's father, Kim Il Sung] said that physical culture should
be developed At present, however, the instructions of the great
leader are not carried out to the letter in the sphere of physical
culture, and sports exchange is not conducted properly, as required
by the Party. A common example is the fact that our soccer players
were defeated in the recent preliminaries for the Olympic Games.
Kim takes defeat as itself
proof that the athletes are lapsing into counterrevolutionary
laziness. Should this unsubtle hint that the higher- ups expect
to start seeing some victories cause a bit of stress, no worries,
the dear leader has a cure: "As for those whose nerves are
on edge, they will get better if they live in tents on Rungna
Islet.
Of course, the Bush administration
has come nowhere near this degree of Spartanism. As far as I
know, there has been no threat of sanctions against losing sports
teams that represent the US. One wonders, though, what might
happen if our sports teams consistently performed as poorly as
the US basketball players at the Athens Olympics. The US does
not have to start threatening its athletes yet, since, for the
most part, here as elsewhere, we continue to dominate.
As we are reminded at the White
House website for kids, though (a truly surreal experience; imagine
Karl Rove targeting the seven-year-old demographic:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/kids/sports/visitwh.html), it is
of course the winning athletes and teams that warrant our own
dear leader's benediction, not the dandelion-gazers. The losers
aren't punished, but the beauty of their failure goes entirely
undetected.
In any case, as long as public
executions of losing athletes remain beyond the pale, we must
see the valorization of athletes in our society as a relatively
harmless symptom of the tendency I am describing. Another more
serious problem is the conflation of the respective functions
of police and military in society. Before even arriving at the
demonstration in New York City, I stopped at a rest-stop just
south of Albany. Inside, there was a large, illuminated ad paid
for by, I think, the New York State Patrolmen's Boosters Association.
It depicted two men, one a state patrolman, dressed in an imposing
black uniform, with a scowl on his face, sporting an automatic
weapon; the other was a US Army soldier, dressed in the usual
camouflage, with a scowl on his face, sporting an automatic weapon.
In large letters at the top, the ad implored us to "Support
Our Troops.
Now as far as I can remember,
until very recently state and city police were thought to fulfill
a very different function than were soldiers. The former are
members of the community, protecting and serving, maintaining
order; the latter are charged with the task of defending the
integrity of national borders. Of course, even if we buy the
line that these are complicated times, and some of the work of
national security can't but overlap with that of law enforcement,
still, it is simply an improper use of English to call policemen
troops,. This elision of the functions of police and army in
American culture vividly illustrates, it seems to me, the extent
to which this culture has been militarized.
Another example. When I cross
the border at Champlain, in upstate New York, nine times out
of ten the crew-cutted goon who questions me will bark: "Where
are you going today, sir! It's a question, technically, but the
intonation forces an exclamation point after the sir, that strongly
suggests my interrogator takes this to be some sort of martial
interaction. No doubt he presumes he is treating me with respect.
That's the problem with the term sir,. Officially, it's polite,
even though we all know that whenever it's bellowed in our direction,
we certainly won't be making any new friends. The particular
problem I have with this usage of the term, though, is that I
am a civilian, I am proud to have never served in the military,
and I don't even know how to stand or sit at attention. Invariably,
when I get this treatment at the border, I slouch even further
down into my seat and respond with a string of casual, decidedly
unsoldierly mm-hmms,.
What else can I do? How can
one resist this Spartanization of our culture? Surely we cannot
fight fire with fire. But we can at least cultivate some distinctly
un-Spartan values. In particular, I would like to make the following
recommendations:
1. Do not exercise; or, if
you must, admit that you are only doing so in order to keep the
pounds off and thereby facilitate erotic intrigue. 2. Do nothing
that requires teamwork,.
3. Patronize creators of degenerate
art, no matter how bad it in fact is. See the new John Waters
film, listen to crunk, read Michel Houellebecq. Just don't spend
your money on anything with an uplifting, life- and faith- affirming,
positive, message.
4. Drink French wine.
5. Respond to chatter about
home-team victories and defeats with a resolute blank stare.
6. Above all, hate war.
This is just a beginning, of
course. Idlers, dreamers, breeze-shooters, bon-vivants are by
definition poor organizers. So the resistance will have to be,
for the most, part, left up to each of you, dear readers. It
will take the form of everyday trouble-making. Sabotage the three-legged
race at your company picnic. Let your children see you reading
in bed in your underwear of a Sunday morning, when the neighbors
are dragging their poor brats to church. If enough of us collude
in this subtle, barely perceptible movement, our influence will
be so insidious, it will take nothing short of a true tyranny
to keep us down.
In other words, in the coming
years the possibility of living one's life out of step with the
Spartanism of the prevailing political culture will be the true
test of our democracy's robustness.
Justin E. H. Smith teaches philosophy at Concordia University
in Montreal. He can be reached at: justismi@alcor.concordia.ca
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
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