[Oe List ...] Andrew Bachevich's "The Limits to Power"

Mon Sep 29 00:06:20 EDT 2008

Thanks also from me, Jack.  And thanks for Randy's comments.

I'm not an isolationist in my approach to international diplomacy, unlike Gore Vidal (but I do like listening to his descriptions of "this is not a democracy, it's an (imperial) republic").  I recall comemnts about Australia's role in the Pacific having a colonial/imperial edge to it.

The "leader fetish" is universal.  We have had it in Australia, where Kevin Rudd, rather than the Labor government, is supposed to solve all ills - NOW!  A good example of "the Messiah complex".  We had that when Gough Whitlam swept to power in 1972, after years of Liberal/Country Party government.  Then Malcolm Fraser was the Messiah for those wanting to get rid of Whitlam. And so on for the following government and opposition leaders.  And ditto at state level.

I remember, and use, a phrase from the early '70s: "There is no Messiah, and I am He".

I'm interested in a re-articulation of the middle ground you speak of, Randy.  I remember school students being taught in the early '70s, and at other times, that "Australia has a mixed economy".  Then the Chicago school of economics took hold, and Reagan, Thatcher and so on became the fashion.  It was like an implicit conspiracy.  The proponents would brook no argument.  It was if this approach was "God's will".  And I'm sure that for the Christian Right it was.  

Parallelling this has been the notion that since Gorbachev, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of "the grey bloc on the map of Europe", all things of the political left, all tehories and actions of the political left, and any analyses that use terms that may or may not have been used by Marx and his descendants - that this is all wrong.  Sloppy thinking!  Typical propaganda from the extreme Right!  

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We need only to look at the way "spin doctoring" has taken over the public pronouncements in the public arena - George Orwell would be chuckling.  In South Australia, our premier Mike Rann is sometimes known as "Media Mike" (he has a background as a press officer in the 60s/70s).  But it's across the political board.  And it's bland, bland, bland.  And people feel manipulated.

Create the reality by what you say.  But it's not real Reality.

Maybe this is not new, but it's now more insidious.  Even Murdoch has been known to speak of the media "creating the agenda".  No wonder the Right opposes media education in schools.

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A good book on is Economics by Hugh Stretton.  An introductory textbook, it has an historical perspective, something that Stretton alleges is missing from most economics courses.  He poses scenarios, asks the reader to suggest alternative actions, based on alternatives he's suggested, then tells us what actually happened.  Although a democratic socialist, he is not an ideologue.  He does emphasise that economic theories and programs are based on value judgements.  You may have to search to find it, although the internet has many good reviews of it, and some outrageous criticisms.

Stretton was an historian by trade.  Jonathan Barker tells me that his lectures were always overflowing.  After a brief stint as professor of the department (in Australia that means department head) he quit to go back to being a scholar and teacher.  His 1970s book Ideas for Australian Cities was rejected by publishers - "no market for this stuff!" - so he published it himself.  Then a new small publisher, Sun Books, too over.  They were bought out by Penguin, and it re-published as a Pelican.  "No market" ??

He was also active with the SA Housing Trust, now Housing SA, a state government body which provided housing for workers in expanding industrial areas.  It now provides housing for disadvantaged people, the disabled, for those thrown around and around by personal and economic circumstances etc.

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Cheers

Frank Bremner

Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2008 05:28:09 -0700From: rcwmbw at yahoo.comTo: oe at wedgeblade.net; dialogue-request at wedgeblade.net; springboard at wedgeblade.netSubject: [Oe List ...] Andrew Bachevich's "The Limits to Power"

I am grateful to Jack Gilles for calling to our attention Bill Moyer's interview with Andrew Bachevich.  I read the transcript and agree with Jack, it is absolutely essential reading.  I can't wait to get his book The Limits to Power.

I share these thoughts which came to mind as I read.  Maybe former senator Phil Gramm was right.  We Americans have become a nation of whiners, complaining that the rest of the world will not do their part to see that we get what we want and have convinced ourselves we deserve.  Democratic capitalism with its radical overemphasis on the individual has run its course.  The solution is not the opposite extreme of socialism but a middle ground that holds the tension between individualism and collectivism.  In the interview Bachevich says, "The (U.S) congress no longer is able to articulate a vision of what is the common good."  (My emphasis.)  There are articulations of what is meant by "the common good" that state in other ways that "all the earth belongs to all the people" as we once poetically said it.

Bacevich identifies the "imperial presidency," and the fact that congress has allowed it, as a basic contradiction.  It's not just an imperial presidency, but imperial CEOs (hence the financial crisis), imperial supervisors, imperialism in virtually all leadership roles.  Imperialism has become the dominant paradigm for effective leadership in America--the leader articulates the vision and develops the strategic plan for achieving it, while directing us to be obedient.  The problem is, we the people go along.  As a nation we require leaders who will think for us and act for us.  The messiah we await is one who can think and act in a way that will fulfill our wants, which Bacevich identifies as "this continuing flow of very cheap consumer goods"..

Jack is right.  Obama is not the messiah we await (who is not coming), but his insight that "we are the ones we've been waiting for" may be key.  "The change that is needed" is a participatory democracy that makes it incumbent upon every citizen to work for the common good, not only of the US, but of the planet for now and future generations, which is really the only "common" good there is.  It is my hope that as a nation we Americans will take the look in the mirror that Bacevich suggests.  Maybe the most important thing the new American president, or any leader, can do is to call us to that confrontation with ourselves.

Randy Williams
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