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where do you find any date for the first Mailer quotes?
Look at the first link url. It ends with /2002/2002_12_02
I had trouble figuring out the same thing.
Mailer said "Now we have to keep reminding ourselves that just because we've been a great democracy, it doesn't guarantee we're going to continue to be one."
I have always believed we have a great constitutional system in our country. As I watched Senator Russ Feingold take on the Bush administration during the uprising over the NSA spying issue, calling for President Bush to be censored, it really came home to me that the constitution, great as it is, doesn't run itself. We have to make it work which is what Feingold was trying to do.
The same is true with democracy. If we don't make it work, we can lose it. Isn't it ironic that democracy is being endangered by "flag conservatives."
It is as if Americans must learn to be political. The “flag conservatives” are nationalists. There is a great literature on this “habit of mind”. Every few weeks I trot out George Orwell’s Notes on Nationalism (google it) as a refresher course. Machiavelli long ago pointed out that Christian virtues, the virtues of the Gospels, were incompatible with national power and prestige. He urged princes to adopt the virtues of Romans. He has been much maligned over the centuries by Christians. After all Christ taught that one should turn away from the world and the things of the world and that the kingdom was yet to come. It is by no mistake that many American evangelicals and fundamentalists identify with the nationalism of the Old Testament and turn Jesus into a talisman of power.
“Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.”
That final paragraph from the Mailer excerpt is brilliant, and I plan to pass it along to as many people as I can.
"Flag Conservatives?" Huh. These people aren't "conservative" at all, they're radicals. Indeed, it could be argued they are revolutionaries, or more to the point, they are counter-revolutionaries, since they are deeply opposed to the very concepts of a self-governing constitutional democratic republic, the result of the American Revolution when time was.
They are authoritarians, many of them theocratic authoritarians, and some are openly in favor of Autocracy (which is the goal I think Bush and Cheney and all the rest are headed toward.)
They are using the husks and shells of democratic institutions to enable their authoritarianism and quest for autocratic power, much as they accuse the Chavez regime in Venezuela of doing, or the Putin regime in Russia.
In fact, it's clear they deeply admire both, though for different reasons.
It's wrong -- or at least anachronistic -- to call these people and their motivations and beliefs "conservative" in any way. The correct terminology is the favorite of the McCarthyite period: "subversive."
"absolutely powerful, and yet every three minutes he's got to reaffirm the fact that his armpits have a wonderful odor. "
That line reminded me of Mr. Neutron
http://www.pistolwimp.com/media/45518/
Thank you Mrs. SCUM
What with all the flags and armbands and and pins and "God Is With Us" belt buckles our parents were exposed to, I remember a time when it was considered the uttmost of bad taste to wear any representation of the flag. If not unofficially illegal. Hippies were beat up. At an AIM (American Indian Movement) rally I attended in '76 a number of my cousins were arrested for flying the flag upside down, historically a sign of distress. Want some flag history? In my medicine bag I carry stick matches and a .45 bullet; historically the last man in the fight is to burn the flag and take the .45 in the mouth... rather than being, and the flag, captured.
The alarm bells for me in the first few days after 9/11('01) were the flags, made in China... which eerily struck me as a scene from the postwar propaganda classic The Sound of Music. Now they hang tatterd, shredded and faded. As a Boy Scout, I want to dispose of them properly... they've been "dissed" - disgraced.
I don't know what they're putting in the water east of the Rockies...
Symbols are supposed to stand for things but are so often mistaken for the things they are supposed to stand for. That is the reason that flags are dangerous. The flag cult in the United States is promoted as a way to keep people from looking at the Bill of Rights, the Civil Rights amendments and other things that could be a danger to the oligarches. That is why the flag is dangerous.
Sometimes there are other dangers, such as when the things symbolized by a flag are purposely distorted and denined even while the symbol is used to symbolize what is denied. For example:
http://olvlzl.blogspot.com/2006/...ling-
thing.html
Mailer's two-headed conservative may be correct, but what these people are about is staying in power at all costs. That's their ideology. Were Hillary Clinton to suddenly change places with Bush and become president this afternoon, you'd stop hearing all the talk about the strong executive, yadda, yadda, yadda. And they sure as hell wouldn't be supporting her war in Iraq. They'd suddenly become the voices of the 60 percent of the people who want the fuck out of Iraq.
The biggest difference between these Republicans and any politicians of my lifetime -- I'll be 58 next week -- is that they want power the way the Nazi and the Communists wanted power -- at any cost. That's what's so scary.
The sad thing is that both Mailer and Vidal won't be around much longer to slap us in the face. Anti-intellectual clowns like Coulter and Limbaugh are their successors. This is just one more indication of the appalling future this nation faces.
this is bullshit - there are no "value conservatives", only flag conservatives. The stated values of "family, home, faith, hard work, duty, allegiance" that conservatives harp are all phony, thin disguises and distractions for their self-centered, greed and fear.
If conservatives had any of those values they would support policies that help the greatest number of people attain them. But instead, they constantly undermine the ability of most people to improve their lives so they, conservatives, can attain and exercise the greatest amount of wealth and power for themselves.
"Tough Love"...that's an excuse, not a policy.
family, home...undermined by conservatives - keeping the poor disadvantaged, poor and disadvantaged just look at the Katrina response. Undermine programs to help the disadvantaged. Just build more prisons.
faith...abused for its value as a means of controlling the masses.
handwork...shipping those jobs oversees, fighting a living wage tooth and nail.
duty...sending other people's (i.e., low income) children to die and be maimed in vanity wars. Ain't no conservatives volunteering for charities helping the disadvantaged that doesn't require allegiance to conservative religious beliefs.
allegiance...party above country: 'let the republican president trash the constitution as long as it furthers republican interests'
.
I liked his term, "promiscuous patriotism". It's a keeper.
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." - Sinclair Lewis
Pechorin: The sad thing is that both Mailer and Vidal won't be around much longer to slap us in the face.
Don't forget Vonnegut. His recent best-seller A Man Without A Country is stellar. He's farther left than where I am, but his points are salient and they hit right between the eyes.
The tiny flaw in the Mailer analysis is that this country became an empire long ago; the turning point wasn't in 2000.
To be honest, the 4th of July is the only day of the year I probably would take a flag from a stranger and wave it.
You don't have to be a Christian to enjoy Christmas, either...
Funny, but 'chauvanism' is named after a Frenchman.....
The only thing worth adding is that IMHO we're no longer at the cigarette-on-the-sheet stage of the fire, but the house is ablaze all around us.
I genuinely do not believe that even a full Dem House & President can prevent the collapse of America-as-we-knew-it by 2010 or so.
"Once we become a twenty-first century version of the old Roman Empire, then moral reform will come into the picture."
The Bushco neocons interest in moral "reform" is the same as with tort "reform." They understand government as they understand business, just well enough to screw the competition, that is, anyone to the left of Dick Cheney. I really doubt that they spend much time thinking about their responsibility to the public interest or the greater good.
They want no-bid contracts, they want corporate monopolistic control, they want one party rule, and they want empire. They'll say anything to get it, and anyone who stands in their way is the enemy.
Having severe problems with Haloscan. Sorry if this is a duplicate.
posting in pieces to see where the problem lies.
Do Bush and the neocons really think fashioning an American empire like the Romans will result in greater values and morality at home? I have never heard this notion before, and frankly, it sounds idiotic. Have they never read Roman history? Oh, I'm sorry, I forget who I'm talking about. I sure Bush will *pretend* he has.
My personal epiphany
I think the conservative/progressive tension is only a reflection of a deeper split. Imagine a spectrum of personal identification: On one hand are people who think of themselves and others as unique individuals and on the other hand are those who think of themselves and others as manifestations of collective entities such as the State and the Church. The Collectivists (no relation to that economic system) believe that Individualists are disorganized wusses without the support of the Collective, traitors who don't recognize the State, and heathens who don't recognize the Church. And they're right. Individualists believe that Collectivists have no feeling for other human beings, that the government ought to work for the individual citizen instead of vice-versa and that religion is a personal matter betwixt you and God. And they're right, too. Probably most people are somewhere in the middle. I, personally, am probably as far to the Individualist end as is possible. Certainly it's caused me no end of grief in my life.
As far as the flag goes, Collectivists fly the Stars and Stripes, Individualists fly the Revolutionary War-era rattlesnake flag: Don't Tread On Me!
I haven't really thought this all the way through and would appreciate reactions. Thanks.
There is something weird about this holoscan thread. I keep getting
Bad Request
Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.
Request header field is missing colon separator.
When clicking on the comments link from the main page and also when submitting.
No other holoscan thread is doing this on the digby home page or anywhere else.
Eternal Fascism:
Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt
By Umberto Eco
http://www.themodernword.com/
eco...blackshirt.html
Fascism is a facile complaint used against the right wing, but if you run down Eco's list and apply it to our current right wing 'patriots', it's hard to avoid the conclusion that we are trending strongly towards fascism.
George Allen scares the hell out of me. He reminds me of Martin Sheen's character in 'The Dead Zone'.
Gore Vidal notes that "Americanism" is this country's civil religion, and one derides it at his peril.
Sorry if this comes up multiple times, but I am going to keep trying to submit it until I get a confirmation message and see it on the thred. See above posts for why I am doing this.
Poputonian,
While I think Mailer is an excellent writer, I can't really agree with his framing here. It's not "flag conservatives", because while they do occasionally embrace the flag, the majority of them are extremely self promotional, hiding their self-serving actions behind the guise of national interest. A better term would be "Patrician Conservatives", because their outlook is essentially that of the Ancient Roman Empire.
And while I accept Mailer's outlines in the broadest brushstrokes of the "Patrician" vision for America, there is a certain amount of monopolistic capitalism that is also backing the "Patrician"-wing of the party that he leaves completely unaddressed. As for Christianity, it has always been played as the sucker by corrupt leaders.
That somehow the Christian moral wing of the current republican machine actually thinks far enough in advance to imagine a return to virtue when managing empire, is nothing but laughable. Modern Christains believe that we are in the end times or approaching them which means world wide morals will inevitably go down and that this is actually both pre-arranged by God to set the stage for Revelation and unstoppable. So to think that the groundlings who back the patrician machine are looking for some post-empire tradeoff is to give them a much longer and distinctly different vision of the future than to what they have already been marketed.
Imagining the Chinese to be Greeks is a whole cloth delusion. China's vast population compared to the historical Greeks feeble one, will ensure by statistical
averaging alone that it has superiority and numbers enough to make it the premier world power. This cannot be stopped short of spliting the country on itself, which hasn't been possible in the last 2000 years. The last attempt via opium only slowed things down. America and the Europeans have a shot at being equal players in a China centric world only if they stop squabbling, which is a next to impossible hope given this region of world's continuous desire to fight amongst itself. Emerging China is a humongous problem for the rest of the world, and requires much more coherent long term thinking than is being utilized by the current administration and its quarterly profit seeking backers. American and European established powers must change from the single man view of the world to the overmind view of the world, or be swept under by the current tides.
As for Mailer's flag waving excerpt at the end- waste of time. Many intellects from the early part of last century had a much more globalistic outlook than modern intellects. Mailer is exhibiting old prejudices and painting them as logical justifications.
John Dean says essentially the same thing in "Conservatives Without Conscience". A good read.
Cheers,
Dude's missing the obvious: money, "free" markets and money and who controls it and, oh yes, money.
In a nutshell:
Me. Strong. Love. You. Weak. Hate.
Me = Flag Republican.
You = Democrats.
We need to change the equation:
Me. Brute. You. Wise.
Politics reduced to sound "ughs".
Even Mailer is falling for the "good patriotism" vs. "bad patriotism" fallacy. Patriotism is at the root of the problem. Here's why I'm not a patriot:
http://theroguevoice.blogspot.co...-
patriotic.html
I remember reading this first piece when it came out in 2002 and being impressed with Mailer's insights then. Four years has not dimmed the prescience of his insights. I never understood why the republicans hated Clinton so much. I think Mailer explains it to a T.
Reading it now again, it strike me that Mailer's insight is at least partly Freudian in that he is verbalizing concepts which I doubt any of those on the right have ever consciously thought, like about the projection of American empire and conquest, having Americans (or at least some Americans) learn foreign languages to administer the empire, sort of like the British raj in India. In fact, I doubt if any conservatives, falg or otherwise, have given what they are doing two or five years from now much thought, except how to win the next election, keep the people in the dark and hold onto power.
This makes me think of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer refuses to wear the red AIDS ribbon. I have always admired that episode and I think of it quite often these days, especially when I see all those magnetic yellow ribbons and I hear the obligatory "patriotic," "support our troops" rhetoric, and see that those who question that mentality are vilified as supporting and enabling terrorists.
How much longer is the Left going to sit at rapt attention at the knees of Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal, two octogenarians who honor serial killers and mass murders? Jack Henry Abbott and Gary Gilmore for Mailer; and Timothy McVeigh for Vidal. While you're at it, why not channel Marlon Brando to hear what he thinks?
Interesting that a lot of these churches are hanging their flags near the pulpit, an dputting in flag polls outside.
Jose, do you really want to start in on about serial killers and mass murderers being a supporter of the party of Ted Bundy and George W. Bush? Throw in April Gillespie and George H. W. Bush for good measure. They make all the above look like a drop in the bucket of blood. They've filled oceans with the blood of innocent victims.
How much longer is the Left going to sit at rapt attention at the knees of Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal, two octogenarians
Don't forget Vonnegut. He turns 84 this November.
The great irony is that while Bush believes that democracy can and will arise in Iraq and elsewhere because freedom is man's natural desire, here at home he is doing the most of any president to put our own democracy at peril. I don't doubt (much) the sincerity of his beliefs, but it is obvious that he does not understand that democracy is a fragile thing that needs vigilance and nuturing. He, his neocon pals and the flag conservatives take our democracy for granted, as if it is so ingrained and strong, it will be everlasting. This mindset is a serious mistake and may prove to be our undoing yet.
The obsessive U.S. need for the repeated reaffirmation of so-called patriotism: children being required to salute the flag everyday before lessons begin, as if their patriotism, by any stretch of the imagination, could justly be called into question. Some might call this brainwashing, impostion of guilt feelings which can later be exploited by the state. 'Are you for the war in Iraq?' Oh, sure, some 70 percent once said. Later in life they keep saluting the flag to remember their patriotism.
The wonderful irony of this sort of conservative is that they proclaim our exceptionalism, while focusing on the things that every nation has: Flags and borders. Meanwhile the truly exceptional thing - our Constitution - is derided as an impediment. It's like saying the really cool thing about Superman is he has dark hair...
I avoided getting a flag during the height of the frenzy because I figured that my liberal patriotism would be simply mistaken as just another flag. Then, during the summer of 2004, the one flag on our block in the bluest voting precinct in Portland belonged to the only person with a Bush sign in his yard for probably a half-mile in any direction, a former Democrat and WWII vet who we've been friendly with since we moved into the house fifteen years ago. His polyester flag was getting a little tattered and weatherbeaten, though, and since he's on a fixed income, I went out and got two quality cloth flags, gave him one, and put the other up on our place across the street, above our Kerry sign.I've paid to replace both once so far -- which I'll be doing again shortly before Veterans Day. And once again I'll joke with him about whether I'll let him take mine for disposal at the VFW or if he'll let me take his to burn at a protest. Needless to say, they always go with him.
I think Mailer's misguided when he talks about American soldiers learning the languages of the conquered. When has that ever happened on a large scale? The Brits just made the locals learn English. My parents were in a Mexican resort town a couple of years back and were appalled to see an item in the expat newspaper talking about how the Mexicans who wanted to do business with the Americans would just damn well have to learn the language.
On the other hand, that last para about democracy assuming more good than bad is dead on.
roberto, What makes you think that Bush believes democracy can and will arise in iraq? Because that is what his speech writers write for him to spew forth? Bush is one level above brain dead. I'm surprised Senator Frist hasn't done a video diagnosis on him. Vegetative, and all of that. All Bush wants is what he is told to want from Cheney...which is a return of oil from the billions of $$$ already invested and planned for investment. Do you really think that he is engaged enough to understand what he has unleashed by his Oedipal complex of a war? Poor Bush. He still thinks that someone will bail him out of this, just like he was bailed out of Arbusto Oil. Just like Harken Oil.
So....Bush doesn't and has never given a rat's ass about democaracy anywhere. All he wants is a return of investment. Someone else's investment.
'democracy'. I even previewed it. Shit.
I keep getting "Bad Request: Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand. Request header field is missing colon separator.
I have seen that a few times recently as well. What browser and OS are you using?
--
You say Tomoato, I say Tomahto:
You say "Flag Conservatives", I say PNAC Perps of 9/11/01.
Mailer is one of our "major writers" by general acclaim, though his books are not much to my own taste. Never mind that. His talents as a political thinker are located at some deep psychological level: no one would ever go to him for policy advice or campaign strategy. When he says something of value, it comes from turning over big rocks in American political culture, not from sharp analysis of the current state of play.
I thought this interview had at least one striking and original insight that perhaps only someone like Mailer could provide, namely this: one thought binding together the "value conservatives" with the neocons and imperialists is that empire could be a means to "moral reform."
They think: if America must rule the planet, then Americans will have to accept the cultural disciplines of an imperial soldiery -- which the "value conservatives" infinitely prefer to the corruption of capitalist mass culture.
It's the "war will ennoble us" idea that should have died in WWI, but is obviously perennial. Mailer deserves credit for detecting it in the current conservative mental landscape.
"Your question, is it a war to the end? I expect it is. We are speaking of war between two essentially unbalanced inauthentic theologies. So, it may prove to be an immense war. A vast conflict of powers is at the core and the motives of both sides are inauthentic which, I expect, makes it worse. The large and unanchored uneasiness I feel about it is that we may not get through this century. We could come apart—piece by piece, disaster after disaster, small and large," poputonian wrote.
Yeah, that's the feeling that a lot of Americans, from the entire spectrum of political beliefs, are getting.
People around the world know now too, that a relatively small band of men can hold off the mighty armies of the West (read: US and Israel). I'm telling ya, the entire perception thing has shifted, everywhere, on all levels. You can feel it. I ssume that Cheney and Condi, too, are aware of this and I wonder what their plans are to deal with the scenario they've created.
Someone upthread said that by 2010 things would be out of hand. I don't know about that, but 2020 for sure.
Even if nothing goes horribly wrong, the population statistics tell us it's going to be a train wreck.
~
Jose Chung, you are a moron. Vidal didn't "honor" McVeigh. He's against the death penalty, period. He's also against the criminal acts of the government. To say he supports mass murder no different from the Republitards calling anyone who opposes them "pro-terrorist". How much longer are you going to repeat smears pulled out of Dick Cheney's ass?
Most conservatives ultimately prove
to be scum underneath.
HERE'S THE REASON WHY:
http://altair44.blogspot.com/
Late to the party, but...
to my mind, the really big story here is the even greater enormity of the Neocon/Bush failure in Iraq, if what Bookman writes is true.
If the Iraq invasion was intended to set the stage for world domination, and not just to seek revenge, and, as a bonus, control a major oil supply... well, they really have failed. Big Time.
This post makes me think of a new way for Democrats to interact with the Media. In response to the stupidly dichotomous questions they just love to ask, re-frame and redirect the questions to the so-called reporters, and ask them why they have not reported on such and such question or issue, e.g., the points Bookman makes.
Of course, that would require the Democratic Party to act like a true opposition party, rather than the neocon-lite party.
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