The Problem of Civilization

 

The Problem of Civilization

Peter Schultz

 

                  In accounting for the savagery of the British Empire, Arnold Toynbee said that “There has been a ‘racialization’ of the division of those inside and those outside the civilized pale.” [Elkins, 180] While Toynbee’s assessment is not wrong, it obfuscates another, deeper problem, viz., the civilized pale itself. That problem reveals itself as hierarchy, in this case a hierarchy based on the British conviction of Britain’s superiority.

 

                  Hierarchy is civilization’s response to what is seen as chaos. In fact, politics may be described as navigating between chaos and hierarchy, with the civilized embracing hierarchy, a hierarchy that ultimately justifies imperialism, war, repression, despotism, and even inhumanity. In other words, whether racialized or not, civilization is problematic, at the very least. Hence, “the legacy of violence” of the British Empire, as Caroline Elkins calls her history of that empire. But it was not only a legacy of violence; it was also a legacy of savagery and inhumanity, both justified in the name of civilizing the Empire and the world.

 

                  However, civilization, hierarchy can be “beautified” via justice, friendship, caring, poetry, music, and love. That is, by embracing the erotic. This beautification does not, however, subvert hierarchy but it may be said to clothe it, to dress it up with grace. Because hierarchy is not subverted or overthrown, it remains strong, even predominant. Insofar as hierarchy remains unquestioned, imperialism, war, repression, despotism, and even inhumanity flourish, as happened in the British Empire. Triumphant nationalism is the soil in which imperialism, with its attendant features, takes root and thrives. Hierarchy bespeaks the onset and fortification of a military, despotic empire.

 

                  Regarding the other “extreme” of political life, the chaos can be beautified or seen as beautiful. There is beauty embedded in the chaos, the beauty of freedom, of adventure(s), of surprise, of mystery, of the magical, and of the inspirational. Again though, chaos, although containing beauty, is not subverted by the beautiful. Chaos persists, fortifying the appeal of hierarchy, of civilization, which seem necessary for survival. But “what if what you do to survive kills the things you love,” viz, the beautiful things, and you find your “God filled soul fill[ed] … with devils and dust?” [Springsteen, Devils and Dust]

 

                  Civilization is dangerous, however desirable or necessary it might seem. If you doubt that, just ask Socrates, Huck Finn, Billy Budd, Billy Pilgrim, Sheriff Bell, or the counselor.

The Duplicity of Leadership

 

The Duplicity of Leadership

Peter Schultz

 

                  The concept, heavily invested in, of “leadership” disguises the fact that leaders don’t share the aspirations of those they are leading. As a result, leadership leads to politics of duplicity, by which leaders seek to manipulate issues they, but not the people, embrace. LBJ, e.g., practiced duplicity when leading the nation into war in Vietnam, as did George W. Bush in leading the nation into invading and occupying Iraq after 9/11. Trump is doing the same thing as he leads the nation toward “greatness,” duplicitously inventing and fabricating crises that suit his ambitions and fortify “the swamp” he promised to drain.

 

                  But Trump is not an anomaly. He is just practicing the art of leadership as LBJ, George W. Bush, and others did. These practitioners are insecure, however, because they always have to fear the people will reject them and their aspirations and expose them as “cunning shits” or “empty suits.” Hence, the need to protest “state secrets,” the most important of which is our leaders’ duplicity.

 

                  Fabricating wars is an excellent, and hence a frequently chosen leadership option. William McKinley did it, Teddy Roosevelt recommended and did it, Woodrow Wilson did it in Mexico and US involvement in WW I, LBJ did it in Vietnam, Reagan did it in Nicaragua, Bush I did it in Panama and Iraq, Clinton did it in Iraq, Bush II did it in Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama did it in Afghanistan, and Trump did it in Ukraine and Iran. Wars are relatively easy to fabricate and then to use to distract the people from domestic issues the elites dare not resolve, all the while instigating a rabid, flag-waving patriotism that is actually a kind of pacification.

 

                  Wars win “hearts and minds,” but only the hearts and minds of those who are attacking, not of those being attacked. Even in defeat or failure, those hearts and minds are won, as JFK learned after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Even an abysmal failure like the Vietnam War could be successfully described by Ronald Reagan as “a noble adventure.” Hence, wars are crucial to the art of leadership. In German, “leader” is “der Fuhrer,” who promises “Deutschland über alles!“ Hitler made Germany great, for a little while anyway. “Funny how falling feels like flying…. for a little while.” Leaders have discovered this and so have welcomed being honored, even immortalized in statuary and otherwise.

 

                  Alexander Hamilton wrote that the love of fame was the leading passion of the noblest minds. However, he failed to see that that passion was delusional and led, therefore, to duplicitous politics.

Politics and the Irrational

 

Politics and the Irrational

Peter Schultz

 

                  Banning care for the transgendered illustrates how politics privileges the irrational.

 

                  Opposition to “transgendering” is one thing, while opposition to providing or allowing care the transgendered is something else altogether. The former is not irrational, however small-minded or fearful it might be. The latter is irrational because denying care to the transgendered is an attack not on the phenomenon but on particular human beings. It is like a war on drugs, which is actually a war that targets drug users, not drugs. Denying the transgendered care targets particular human beings, even though targeting such people will not and cannot eliminate transgendering. Although politically popular, It is futile, irrational action.

 

                  But such irrationality is what politics fosters. Why? Because politics is all about power and the desire to overpower, dominate others. The others are deemed “enemies” who must be defeated, crushed, or dominated. Thus, the transgendered, politically speaking, have become enemies, irrationally identified as threats to the rest of us and needing to be crushed, defeated, even eliminated. These attacks are legislated and disguised as “law enforcement” or “law and order.”

 

                  Even though so disguised, however, they are still attacks in a war on the transgendered, illustrating that however irrational, war is intrinsic to politics. War is intrinsic to politics, even when irrational. Thus, politics has transformed the transgendered into enemies of the state, reaching an apex of irrationality. So it goes in the political arena where irrationality reigns supreme.   

The Trump Problem, War, and the Honorable

 

The “Trump Problem,” War, and the Honorable

Peter Schultz

 

 

From Caroline Elkins' book, Legacy of Violence: “the English temperament [embraced] sanctimonious self-righteousness which … indulged in injustice and selfish spoliation … under a cloak of virtue, benevolence, and unselfish altruism.” [212, Elkins]

What’s the Trump problem? How should he be understood? Is the most problematic thing his being anti-democratic or is it his being sanctimoniously self-righteous, embracing injustice and cruelty under the cloak of virtue and justice? The critique of Trump as being anti-democratic is a partisan critique. He doesn’t support democratic policies. The latter though is less superficial, less partisan than the former. It cuts deeper, revealing roots of American politics that are beyond partisanship and more problematic. For both party elites, a sanctimonious self-righteousness is a sign and a source of virtue, of patriotism, of being a good American. California’s governor Newsom is as self-righteously sanctimonious as Trump. And that sanctimonious self-righteousness is the most problematic characteristic of our political order, not partisanship. A partisan critique of Trump does not cut deeply enough to reveal the most problematic characteristic of the American political order. 

Hugo: War “is the second and more powerful of the two normal means employed the governments to achieve the ends [desired]. Diplomacy is the other means, but diplomacy by itself would be weak and ineffectual; war is its reinforcement, its sanction, and its alternative.” But diplomacy doesn’t have the same moral appeal that war has. War is taken as a sign and a source of virtue, of righteousness because when you’re willing to kill human beings, you know and have proof that you’re righteous. Killing is proof or your righteousness. Thus, such killing has “a moral effect” and is universally praised.

“Honor killings, often thought of by Americans as the practice of primitive societies, are engaged in by US elites as well. And so it is little wonder that persons seeking to be honorable are attracted to, seduced by war, especially patriotic wars. And, so, the distance between the Boy Scouts and war, for example, isn’t all that far.” 

Addendum: There are those who seek to be honorable and there are those who seek to be honored. For the latter being honorable is not enough. They need to be honored as well. Those seeking the honorable and those seeking to be honored are very different beings, and lead to very different ways of being in the world, e.g., the life of the good person and the life of the good citizen. For the ambitious, being honorable is not as important as being honored. And the most ambitious may be said to lust after fame because they see it as a kind of immortality. And on that quest, the honorable will often need to be and often will be sacrificed.

Less Virtue, Less Cruelty

 

Less Virtue, Less Cruelty

Peter Schultz

 

                  These thoughts came to me when reading Charles Royster’s book The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the Americans. First, a quote on Sherman’s view of the secessionists and unionists:

 

“People who abandoned the nation were not creating a different form of order, but were abandoning reason. Not to resist them betrayed weakness.” [119]

 

                  For Sherman, the unionists resisting the secessionists were moral human beings, while the secessionists were immoral. So, loyalty to the United States was “a sign and a source of virtue.” Sherman “found his coherence and identity in the security of the nation.” In other words, defending “national security” is a matter of acting virtuously, as much or more than it is a reaction to threats thought to endanger the nation. It may and often is even seen as a “moral imperative.”

 

                  So, Sherman’s actions should be seen as him demonstrating his virtue, as they were about saving the union. And the cruelty he practiced – and he himself called his actions “cruel” – also demonstrated his virtue. Not only did virtue not deter cruelty; it even facilitated cruelty. A less virtuous person than Sherman would have been less cruel.

 

                  Ironically then the less virtuous are less cruel, less inhuman. The less virtuous are more likely to see cruelty for what it is and forego it.

 

                  Not only calculation, or being “realistic” but also virtue, moral and political virtue leads to, facilitates cruelty. Cruelty – or “going to the dark side” as Dick Cheney put it – is not just a necessary evil. Insofar as it demonstrates moral and political virtue, it may be embraced as good, not just as a necessary evil. One may be proud of and even praise cruelty, and, certainly, cruelty may be forgiven, e.g., as it has been regarding Korea, Vietnam, Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Iraq, Waco, and Gaza

Elkins's Legacy of Violence

 

Elkins’s Legacy of Violence”

Peter Schultz

 

                  In her marvelous book Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire, Caroline Elkins, like many others, argues that the phenomenon that led to repression, violence, and even sadism was “the racialization of civilization,” by which nations were considered civilized or uncivilized based on racial characteristics.

 

                  Without disagreeing with Elkins that nations were judged civilized or uncivilized based on racial variables, there was and is another problematic phenomenon at work, viz., the glorification, the affirmation of civilization itself. This underlay the claims of British superiority, of British exceptionalism, just as it underlies claims of US exceptionalism so popular these days. There is no acceptable, legitimate critique of what is labeled “civilization,” as may be found in those who deserve the label “political philosopher.” And the wholehearted embrace of civilization, like the racialization of civilization, leads to repression, violence, sadism, i.e., to inhuman cruelty.

 

                  “Experts” accept unquestioningly and operate within civilization. That’s the way they become experts, acquiring society’s seal of approval and respectability. To be respectable, one cannot question civilization and its worth. It was and is this acceptance, this affirmation that accounts for Britain’s legacy of violence being seen as a legacy of righteous violence and cruelty.  The Brits stood at Armageddon and battled for the Lord! Their “eyes [had] seen the coming of the Lord, trampling out the vineyards where the grapes of wrath are stored.”

 

                  And the problem goes beyond Britain. Just as the underlying problem in the US today is not Trump, but a savage governing elite, so too the problem was not simply the British empire, but was, and is, the political. It is the affirmation of the political, of civilization, that explains British blindness. “Britain’s self-proclaimed experts failed to acknowledge the Arabs’ rich history in Palestine of elaborate legal, cultural, political, and economic systems.” [179, added] They did not acknowledge this rich history because they did not and could not see it. They were blinded by their embrace of civilization as an unblemished and undiluted good. As a result, those deemed “the best and the brightest” helped lead Britain into inhuman cruelty, just as “the best and the brightest” led the United States into inhuman cruelty in Vietnam and elsewhere.

 

Thoughts on US Politics and the Political

 

Thoughts on US Politics and the Political

Peter Schultz

 

                  The following is a quote from a Catholic commentator, assessing American politics as he sees it. Following this assessment are my observations.

 

                  “As the nation’s power increased in the world, so too have its imperial tendencies, and those who govern the United States increasingly find unacceptable any competing visions of political and economic life that threaten the country’s dominance of world affairs.”

 

                  According to this assessment, America’s quest for dominance was and is reactionary. The US is responding to challenges, “threats” properly understood. So, dominance is the result of calculation and not the result of human desires. Dominance is not seen as moral imperative. It’s as if people were saying: “We wish we didn’t have to pursue dominance, but these threats make that absolutely essential.”

 

                  In fact, however, the underlying and motivating wish is to be dominant, and it is that wish that explains what governing elites label “threats.” Those other visions are “competing” only because America’s governing elites wish to be dominant. That wish, and not the other visions themselves, is the bottom line.

 

                  This helps understand what is called “realism.” Realists justify their politics because the world is a dangerous place, a war of all against all. But the actual justification of their politics is their desire, endemic the political animals everywhere, for dominance. Consider by way of illumination an imagined conversation between General Giap of Vietnam and Robert McNamara of the US, a conversation that actually took place once. Giap accused McNamara and the United States of being imperialistic, a charge McNamara denied. Why? Because McNamara saw his actions, not due to a desire to dominate, but as reactionary to threats. McNamara thought of himself as essentially peaceful, forced into war. To which we can imagine Giap saying: “No, you are not essentially peaceful. You’re essentially war-like because war proves you dominate, you deserve to dominate because you are the best. Absent the desire to dominate, to be the best, Vietnam would not be a threat. In fact, communist nations as communists would not be threats.

 

                  Why are humans war-like? Because being war-like is deemed being moral, good, virtuous. And so, the warriors, the war makers are celebrated. War demonstrates one’s power and, of course, the powerful are the best. The powerful are the best because they can do what they need to do and, most especially, they commit injustices successfully. [Cf. Pericles’ Funeral Oration]

 

                  And this is, I think, the root of hierarchy, the desire to achieve and then demonstrate one’s power, most especially the power to commit injustice when it serves your interests or desires. And what better description is there of the Vietnam War than as the United States’s governing elites demonstrating they could, because they were “the best and the brightest,” successfully be unjust?  That war could demonstrate its ability to wage an unjust and unwinnable war successfully. Now, that’s powerful, that’s being a great nation. That that’s political greatness is illustrated by empires throughout human history. And this is why those arguing against the Vietnam war as unjust were bound to lose the argument. The quest for dominance overrides concerns with justice because being dominant and being just are two very different phenomena.