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E PLURIBUS
BUNKUM
BY PETER KURTH (published January 2001)
[This was written just after
George W. Bush’s first
inaugural]
 
"The unity of a nation's spirit and will are
worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an
individual.” -- Adolf
Hitler, March 1933
"I want everyone to hear loud and clear that
I'm going to be the president of everybody, whether they voted for me or
not.” -- George W. Bush,
January 2001
So, what moved you most
about President Select’s inaugural? Was it the "compassion"
and the "character" or the "unity" and
"civility?"
I’d answer the
question myself, only I wasn’t watching. So far – cross your
fingers -- I’ve managed never to hear Select’s voice or see his
lips moving. This is an art I developed under his father, and I mean to
perfect it in the next four years, if we live that long.
A reader writes in to
say that I’m "frantically bilious and bitter" on this
subject, and that I don’t know the meaning of the term "coup
d’état.” I can only answer that "Education Week" is
just around the corner – Select and the boys will be fixing it in no
time. Just hang on long enough and no words will have any meaning.
Take
"civility" – please! The dictionary defines it simply as
"courtesy" or "politeness," neither of which,
historically, has had anything to do with American politics. You can look
it up: The Continental Congress wasn’t the love-fest it’s made
out to be. The Founding Fathers were more like Founding Brickbats –
great big babies with huge egos, sulkers stomping off in a huff. A lot of
them despised each other and said so.
I don’t expect "folks" to know this anymore, so
debased have our culture and politics become. But when a Bush fundraiser says,
"The president-elect is an extraordinarily good unifier," she is
not echoing an American political tradition.
In its current usage,
“civility” was foisted on us by corporate protocol and
subsequently adopted as goddess-given by social workers,
“educators” and the Idiot left. All groups use it for the same
purpose: to stifle dissent. In the boardroom, civility means, ultimately,
that no one challenges the leader or "the team,” and that
everyone is part of the same system. That’s exactly what it means in
government, too, and at the doctor’s office, and on the telephone,
and in the banking, credit, retail and insurance industries. It’s
more than your life is worth to raise your voice in these arenas, no matter
what the cause. If you do, no one in a "civil” society will deal
with you at all. They've got carte blanche to pretend you don't
exist.
"Civility is not a
tactic or a sentiment,'' Select declared last week. "It is the
determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos. And this
commitment, if we keep it, is a way to share accomplishment.” The
New York Times gets all gooey about Select’s alliteration --
"community," "chaos," "commitment,"
"accomplishment" – as if he’d written his speech
himself, which we know he did not. Here’s how Select really speaks:
"The California crunch
really is the result of not enough power-generating plants and then not
enough power to power the power of generating plants.” (New York Times, January 14.)
"I would have to ask the questioner. I
haven't had a chance to ask the questioners the question they've been
questioning.” (Press conference, January 8.)
"I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously.
But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with
success as opposed to failure.” (Associated Press, January 18.)
Remember that
“civility” applies only to complaints, criticism and objections,
when accurate information and a strongly voiced opinion might really make a
difference. You won’t see “civility” on the screen, for
example – on any of your screens – or for that matter on the
streets and roads. Road-rage and air-rage are morphing into
"desk-rage" at the office, says The Wall Street Journal, but
let’s not spoil the party.
And note how quickly
the corporate media, in recent weeks, have adopted two articles of faith.
This first is that the economy is tanking, which it may or may not be. The
second is that America is "a divided nation.” There is
"a cultural divide.” We are "bitterly divided,"
"two nations," etc. Note, finally, that the call is not to bridge
this chasm, if it exists, but to "put it behind us," to put it
aside -- to erase it. “This is a day to suspend political passions,
apart from `absolute cynics’,” Peter Jennings intoned about
Select’s Big Moment. There are
to be no Gaps in America outside the mall.
My brother called last
week to ask if I was "serious about this fascism thing.” No one
ever is. Sworn-in by the same Supreme Court justices who handed him the
presidency, Select explains, "Sometimes our differences run so deep,
it seems we share a continent, but not a country. We do not accept this, and will not allow
it.”
*
REMEMBERING
DOROTHY THOMPSON
“No people ever recognize their dictator in
advance. He never stands for
election on the platform of dictatorship.
He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated
National Will. ... When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he
will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally
American. And nobody will ever say
`Heil' to him, nor will they call him `Führer' or `Duce.' But they will
greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of
`O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!'" -- Dorothy
Thompson, 1935
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