Mazeppist Musings

1. In the late 1980's, when the Soviet union collapsed and the Chinese government traded Mao's Marxian vision for State Capitalism, the National Security State that had emerged from the United States's Cold War corporativism found itself freed from any rivals to keep it in check. Now nothing stands in the way of American greed and hubris--nothing but the people of the planet to oppose the spreading shadow of McWorld. All that's left of the "Left" is one hundred thousand little "jihads" (see Benjamin Barber's Jihad vs. McWorld, 1995!). Is it enough?

2. Trahison des Clercs: Also in the '80's: when intellectuals in Europe and North America traded Camus and Sartre for Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida, they signaled their capitulation to the U. S. National Security State and the war machine. They were now fully complicit.

Heidegger, for all of his radical gestures vis a vis the traditions of "Western" philosophical discourse, was deeply conservative when it came to politics and culture. Foucault and Derrida were never able to muster consistent political commitment.

Deconstruction is as disruptive to Leftism as it is to the Right. It is best understood as a tool--a Cynical gesture in the classical sense: think Diogenes' motto, "Deface the currency!" It is not an end in itself.

3. The pyrotechnics of 9/11, whether the work of Bin Laden or Dick Cheney, have had but a singular effect upon the American consciousness: to ennervate the national character by re-invigorating the Culture of Fear (see Barry Glassner's brilliant study of that title). No matter who the true perpetrators [perpe-traitors?] of 9/11 turn out to be, the enduring result has been the Reichstag Fire Effect. The Bush Administration took full advantage of this effect and Obama, the Right's Manchurian Candidate, has dutifully followed suit.

4. But such is not the revolution. The revolution will not be televised. Pfc. Bradley Manning, whether or not he is Wikileaks's "mole," has been assigned the tragic role of the revolution's first martyr.

Julian Assange's courage, like Manning's conscience, is considerable. And his service to the non-violent people's revolution against American Empire, as a foreign national, is most conspicuous. But the real contours of the revolution did not begin to manifest themselves clearly until the "Hacktivists" came forward in defense of Assange and, after his arrest, flexed their IT muscle by effectively shutting down significant elements of the Machine. In so doing, they demonstrated that, at will, they could throw a wrench into the gears. They appear to be the vanguard for which we've been waiting.

Proceeding slowly, cautiously, but with supreme confidence, they have exposed McWorld's Achilles' heel. McWorld will fall to one hundred thousand little "jihads"--aided and abetted, of course, by its own blind arrogance, greed, paranoia, and bureaucratic stupidity.

5. The moral? Resist. Refuse. Renounce.