George Washington couldn't tell a lie.
Richard Nixon couldn't tell the truth.
And Ronald Reagan couldn't tell
The difference 'tween the two
The Friday before the election--Halloween--Michael Moore appeared on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman. Among other things, she went through his ten proposed decrees for a new administration's first ten days in office, one which was this:
AMY GOODMAN: Michael, your sixth presidential decree for the next president's first ten days is to defeat al-Qaeda and the next generation of America-haters by building wells.
MICHAEL MOORE: Well, there's over a billion people on this planet that don't have access to clean drinking water. You know, what if we made it an American mission to make sure that the entire third world had clean drinking water? One of the statistics I read was it would cost about $10 per person in the third world of people who don't have the clean drinking water right now. So, that's--geez, that's $10 times a billion people? $10 billion. That's just October in Iraq. For the money that we're spending in Iraq in October, we could provide clean drinking water to most of the people that don't have it. And I, as an American, would rather be known by the people who are struggling to survive in the third world as the country that gave them clean drinking water or gave them other things that they need to help them in their daily existence to survive. I think most Americans would rather be known for that. Instead, we're known as the invaders and the occupiers and the people who prop up the regimes in these countries, and I'm tired of that. I'm really tired of it.
This proposal is, quite frankly, an act of genius--defending America by drawing on our deepest and truest strengths, rather than responding exactly as al Qaida would have wanted it, destroying our freedoms as well as our good name. If anything could show the way out of the terribly self-destructive path Bush chose in response to 9/11, it is precisely this sort of sweeping, simple, yet visionary act. If he has the wisdom and courage to take Michael Moore's advice during his first days in office, Barack Obama will almost certainly be well on his way to fulfilling some of the most extravagent hopes that he and his election have inspired. |
| To fully appreciate the historical depth as well as the genius of Michael Moore's proposal, one must also appreciate the contrasting folly of Bush's response to 9/11. And to fully appreciate that folly, one must appreciate the founding folly of conservative rule in modern America--the folly of Ronald Reagan.
9/11 marked the high-point of American power. Immediately following the attacks, virtually the entire world expressed its sympathy and solidarity with us. Far from being seen as holy warriors, those who attacked us were seen as monsters, utterly indifferent to the loss of innocent life. It was only after Bush responded by lashing out and killing so many more innocents in reaction that 9/11 turned into a malevolently clever attack. It was Bush, not al Qaida, that did deep and potentially irreversable damage to America. Without Bush's response, al Qaida could have been brought to justice with the whole world watching, and condemning them with one voice. It was Bush's enraged, intemperate, delusional response that transformed bin Laden from a shadowy monster into a credible world figure who millions could see as someone to be trusted and followed.
Yet, Bush's response had the air of inevitability to it. What else could a real American leader do in response to 9/11? And that's exactly what al Qaida was counting on. Bush's hyperbolic, and wildly inappropriate response to 9/11 echoed Ronald Reagan's response to the perceived faltering of American power in the wake of Vietnam and Iranian hostage crisis when he came to power in 1981. Despite the enormity of the 9/11 attacks, al Qaida did not constitute an existential threat to America in 2001. And despite the enormity of the loss in Vietnam, neither did the Vietnamese communists or their allies in China and the Soviet Union constitute an existential threat to America in 1981.
Yet, the exaggerated misperception of American weakness gave rise to a reactionary conservative response of outward bravado that deeply exacerbated the weakness that did exist. The limits to power we experienced in the 1970s did not mean that America itself was in peril. But the reactionary respose to those limits really did put us into peril. Indeed, when Reagan first came to power there was open talk of fighting and winning a nuclear war with the Soviet Union--just about the only thing conceivable at the time that actually could threaten America's continued existence. The memory of that time has been entirely erased from pubic memory, yet it was crucial in revealing the paranoid core mentality of the modern conservative movement.
This mentality was not historically unique. As described in my diary series from early this year, "Three Waves And A Wall: 2008 And The American Future", former GOP uber-guru Kevin Phillips, has described a wavelike pattern of the rise and fall of leading world powers over the past five centuries--Spain, Holland, Britain, and now us. Phillips pointed out that each world power encountered an unexpected shock at its peak of power, and responded with a sharp turn toward reactionary politics, resulting in a period of a generation and a half or more during which the elite did better than ever, while the great mass of people saw their hopes and fortunes stagnate and decline. This is what happened with election of Reagan, and the military response implicted two of the three lies in my diary's title, while the third ushered in the economic policies that have now so undeniably put the entire world financial system in peril of collapse. These three lies are:
(1) The lie that the Soviet Union was on the verge of destroying us, thus necessitating a vast expansion of our military power.
(2) The lie that we were threatened by a worldwide array of Soviet puppets, and had to support brutal, repressive regimes and terrorist insurgents in order to protect our own freedom.
(3) The lie that we could cure our economic ills by slashing government regulation and spending, through the twin miracles of deregulation and trickle-down economics.
Lie number one lead directly to the massive military buildup under Reagan. Lie numbers one and two combined lead to a pattern of empowering unstable military and paramilitary forces around the world, including the Afghan Mujahadeen, and their benefactor, Osama bin Laden. Lie number three lead to massive, unprecedented peace-time budget deficits and a series of costly deregulatory failures--the S&L scandal, Enron, and the current financial crisis, just to name some of the big ones.
Three things are notable now. First, Phillips explains that after the period of reactionary politics divides the country into prosperous elites and an immiserated mass there comes a reversal, with a return to the egalitarian values that were an initial source of national strength. This reversal is clearly indicated in the rejection of Republican rule begining in 2006, and the rise of Obama's candidacy as a source of hope for renewal.
Second, the return to egalitarian values, and policies reflecting them is being powerfully opposed by a new insistence--utterly absent when conservatives were in charge--that no significant change in policy should be considered. This insistence is presented in the questionable guise of political pragmatism, but actually reflects a deeply ideological refusal to face empirical facts.
Third, a number of prominent individuals who were implicated in Reagan's three lies are on hand as potential major players in an Obama administration. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was one of the key CIA officials responsible for falsifying information about the Soviet Union during the 1980s. He is one the chief people responsible for the fact that we were caught by surprise when the Soviet Union collapsed--something that had been playing out on the nightly news for years before its final act. Virgina Senator Jim Webb was a Secretary of Navy, who quit in frustration as the dream of a 600-ship Navy finally encountered reality. And, of course, Obama's bevy of economic advisors contains a disproportionate number who have their fingerprints all over the Clinton-era continuation of Reagan's deregulatory crusade.
It is against this background of Reagan's three lies, and their continuing influence that the genius of Michael Moore's proposal stands out. Nothing could more dramatically signal a reversal of the self-destructive "war on terror" response to 9/11, and at the same time proclaim a reassertion of true self-confidence in America's power to alter the world for the better. |
