Priorities and Prospects
NOAM CHOMSKY
George W Bush: The cavalier idiot that proves Mayr correct. By rights he should be in a dungeon, cooling his heels for his multitude of crimes, but America rewards malignant mediocrities with money and power. (DonkeyHotey, via flickr)
[dropcap]A[/dropcap] few years ago, one of the great figures of contemporary biology, Ernst Mayr, published some reflections on the likelihood for success in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Mayr took exception to the conclusions of astrophysicists who confidently expected to find higher intelligence throughout the universe. He considered the prospects of success very low.
His reasoning had to do with the adaptive value of what we call “higher intelligence,” meaning the particular human form of intellectual organization. Mayr estimated the number of species since the origin of life at about 50 billion, only one of which “achieved the kind of intelligence needed to establish a civilization.” It did so very recently, perhaps a hundred thousand years ago. It is generally assumed that only one small breeding group survived, of which we are all descendants, apparently with very little genetic variation. What we call “civilizations” developed near the end of this brief moment of evolutionary time, and “inevitably are short-lived.”
Science Magazine editor Donald Kennedy, is a travesty that “included no recommendations for emission limitation or other forms of mitigation,” contenting itself with “voluntary reduction targets, which, even if met, would allow U.S. emission rates to continue to grow at around 14% per decade.” The CCSP did not even consider the likelihood, suggested by “a growing body of evidence,” that the short-term warming changes it ignores “will trigger an abrupt nonlinear process,” producing dramatic temperature changes that could carry extreme risks for the United States, Europe, and other temperate zones, as well as others. The Bush administration’s “contemptuous pass on multilateral engagement with the global warming problem,” Kennedy continued, is the “stance that began the long continuing process of eroding its friendships in Europe,” leading to “smoldering resentment”.
By October 2002, it was becoming hard to miss the fact that the world is “more concerned about the unbridled use of American power than it is about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein,” and “is as intent on limiting the giant’s power as it is in taking away the despot’s weapons.” World concerns mounted in the months that followed as the giant made clear its intent to attack Iraq even if the UN inspections it reluctantly tolerated failed to unearth weapons that would provide a pretext. By December, support for Washington ‘s war plans scarcely reached 10 percent almost anywhere, according to international polls. Two months later, after enormous worldwide protests, the press reported that “there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion” (“the United States ” here meaning state power, not the public, not even elite opinion).
By early 2003, fear of the United States had reached remarkable heights throughout the world, along with distrust of and often loathing for the political leadership. If they continue on their present course they may create much broader antagonism to the country they are turning into a pariah nation, regarded by many as the greatest threat to peace — which may, today, translate as survival.
A neutral observer might be puzzled by what appear to be calculated and deliberate efforts to engender resentment, fear, and hatred. A rational conclusion would be that such consequences matter no more to Washington planners than tens of millions of deaths, immeasurable agony and suffering, or even prospects for decent survival, when ranked against the imperatives of power and profit.
Dismissal of elementary human rights and needs was matched by a display of contempt for democracy for which no parallel comes easily to mind, accompanied by professions of sincere dedication to human rights and democracy. If this were happening in Andorra it would be merely comical. Perhaps what is really happening might amuse some hypothetical extraterrestrial observer. It does not, however, amuse the second superpower. For good reason. What is unfolding should be deeply disturbing to those on Earth who have some concerns about the world they are leaving to their grandchildren.
Though Bush planners were at an extreme end of the traditional US policy spectrum, their programs and doctrines have many precursors, in US history and among earlier aspirants to global dominance, even among those with lesser ambitions. More ominously, the decisions may not have been irrational within a framework deeply rooted in prevailing ideology and the institutions within which it takes shape. There is ample historical precedent for the willingness of leaders to threaten or resort to violence in the face of significant risk of catastrophe. The stakes are far higher today. The choice between hegemony and survival has rarely, if ever, been so starkly posed.
Let us try to unravel some of the many strands that enter into this complex tapestry, focusing attention on the world power that proclaims global hegemony. Its actions and their guiding doctrines must be a primary concern for everyone on the planet, particularly so, of course, for Americans. Many enjoy unusual advantages and freedom, hence the ability to shape the future, and should face with care and integrity the responsibilities that are the immediate corollary of such privilege.
1.2. “Enemy Territory”
Those who want to face their responsibilities with a genuine commitment to democracy and freedom — even to decent survival — should recognize, without illusion, the barriers that stand in the way. In violent and terrorist states, these are not concealed. In more democratic societies, barriers are more subtle. While methods differ sharply from more brutal to more free societies, the goals are in many ways similar: to ensure that the “great beast,” as Alexander Hamilton called the people, does not stray from its proper confines.
1.2.1. The Enemy At Home
Controlling the general population has always been a dominant concern of power and privilege, particularly since the first modern democratic revolution in 17th century England. The self-described “men of best quality” were appalled as a “giddy multitude of beasts in men’s shapes” rejected the basic framework of the civil conflict raging in England between king and parliament. They rejected rule by king or parliament and called for government “by countrymen like ourselves, that know our wants,” not by “knights and gentlemen that make us laws, that are chosen for fear and do but oppress us, and do not know the people’s sores.” The men of best quality recognized that if the people are so “depraved and corrupt” as to “confer places of power and trust upon wicked and undeserving men, they forfeit their power in this behalf unto those that are good, though but a few.” Almost three centuries later, Wilsonian idealism — as it is standardly termed — adopted a rather similar stance. Abroad, it is Washington ‘s responsibility to ensure that government is in the hands of “the good, though but a few.” At home, it is necessary to safeguard a system of elite decision-making and public ratification (“polyarchy” in the terminology of political science).
As president, Woodrow Wilson himself did not shrink from severely repressive policies even within the United States, but such measures are not normally available where popular struggles have won a substantial measure of freedom and rights. By Wilson’s day, it was widely recognized by elite sectors in the US and Britain that within their societies, coercion was a tool of diminishing utility, and that it would be necessary to devise new means to tame the beast, primarily through control of opinion and attitude. Huge industries have since developed devoted to these ends.
Wilson ‘s own view was that an elite of gentlemen with “elevated ideals” must be empowered to preserve “stability and righteousness”; “stability” is a code word for subordination to existing power systems, and righteousness will be determined by the rulers. Leading public intellectuals agreed. “The public must be put in its place,” Walter Lippmann declared in his progressive essays on democracy. That goal could be achieved in part through “the manufacture of consent,” “a self-conscious art and regular organ of popular government.” This “revolution [in the] practice of democracy” should enable a “specialized class [of] responsible men” to manage the “common interests [that] very largely elude public opinion entirely.” In essence, the Leninist ideal. Lippmann had observed the revolution in the practice of democracy first-hand, as a member of Wilson ‘s Committee on Public Information, which was established to coordinate war-time propaganda and achieved great success in whipping the population into war fever.
The “responsible men” who are the proper decision-makers, Lippmann continued, “have obtained their training… in the law schools and law offices and in business,” and in their “executive action” they must “live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd,… ignorant and meddlesome outsiders,” who are to be “spectators,” not “participants.” The herd do have a “function”: to trample periodically in support of one or another element of the natural leadership class in an election, then to return to private pursuits. Unstated is that the responsible men gain that status not by virtue of any special talent or knowledge, but by subordination to the systems of actual power and loyalty to their operative principles. Basic decisions over social and economic life are to be kept within institutions with top-down authoritarian control, while within a diminished public arena, the participation of the beast is to be limited.
Just how narrow the public arena should be is a matter of debate. Neoliberal initiatives of the past 30 years have been designed to restrict it, leaving basic decision-making within largely unaccountable private tyrannies, linked closely to one another and to a few powerful states. Democracy can then survive, but in sharply reduced form. Reagan-Bush sectors have taken an extreme position in this regard, but the policy spectrum is fairly narrow. Some argue that it scarcely exists at all, mocking the pundits who “actually make a living contrasting the finer points of the sitcoms on NBC with those broadcast on CBS” during election campaigns: “Through tacit agreement the two major parties approach the contest for the presidency [as] political kabuki [in which] the players know their roles and everyone sticks to the script,” “striking poses” that cannot be taken seriously.
If the public escapes its marginalization and passivity, we face a “crisis of democracy” that must be overcome, liberal intellectuals explain, in part through measures to discipline the institutions responsible for “the indoctrination of the young” — schools, university, churches, and the like — and perhaps even government control of the media if self-censorship does not suffice. The American contributor to the report, Samuel Huntington, explained elsewhere that “The architects of power in the United States must create a force that can be felt but not seen… Power remains strong when it remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate.”
In taking these views, contemporary intellectuals are drawing on good constitutional sources. James Madison held that power must be delegated to “the wealth of the nation,” “the more capable set of men,” who understand that the role of government is “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.” Pre-capitalist in his world view, Madison had faith that the “enlightened statesman” and “benevolent philosopher” who were to exercise power would “discern the true interest of their country” and guard the public interest against the “mischief” of democratic majorities. The mischief would be avoided, Madison hoped, under the system of fragmentation he devised. In later years, he came to fear that severe problems would arise with the likely increase of those who “will labor under all the hardships of life, and secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its benefits” — sighs that must somehow be driven from the mind. A good deal of modern history reflects these conflicts over who will make decisions, and how.
But all is safely buried, thanks to the talents of the custodians of public consciousness.
After the terrorist commanders had achieved their goals, the consequences were reviewed at a conference in San Salvador of Jesuits and lay associates, who had more than enough personal experience to draw on, quite apart from what they had been observing through the grisly decade of the 1980s. The conference concluded that it does not suffice to focus on the terror alone, extraordinary as it was in brutality and scale. It is no less important “to explore… what weight the culture of terror has had in domesticating the expectations of the majority vis-a-vis alternatives different to those of the powerful.” Not only in Central America.
Once “the Central American mode” was preserved by violence, and the “culture of terror” properly established, attention can turn elsewhere. Meanwhile, the countries liberated under the Reaganite onslaught survive largely by remittances, while children sniff glue to relieve the hunger, beg for a pittance to survive the night, or are simply murdered by the thousands in Tegucigalpa, Guatemala City, and San Salvador, where the “regional standards” were upheld throughout the 1980s in pursuit of “America’s mission.”
Noam Chomsky is well known as a critic of the American state and its criminal associates around the world.
EXCERPTED FROM THE BOOK HEGEMONY OR SURVIVAL
See more by Chomsky at his personal website.
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