THEY WORK FOR US

Over on Counterpunch there’s a multi-author article about the military and its relationship to civilians (“The Can-Do Troops and the New Anti-politics”, www.counterpunch.org/chowdhury05262007.html.)

It asserts, and not inaccurately, that “since the draft was abolished, the military has re-branded itself as a collection of experts”. Yes. “The model of the citizen-soldier no longer applies, because citizenship is no longer linked to military service.” Also yes.

And worse: the Reagan-era gambit was to enshrine ‘the military’ not only as an embodiment of the American spirit, but as the best embodiment of the American spirit.

‘Citizen’ became a title of second-class status. ‘Citizen’ became ‘civilian’, the latter term delivered with a deprecating or self-deprecating lowered voice.

But this is a government “of the people, by the people, for the people”. Surely at Gettysburg – of all places – Lincoln could have enshrined the ‘soldier’ as the acme and epitome of the American spirit. Surely, the fact that he didn't was not due to absence of mind. Instead, he was profoundly grateful for their service and their sacrifice, but he placed that splendid and genuinely glorious gift of their toil and their blood and their lives in proper context: as a service to and a gift to The People, upon Whom the Union and the Republic ultimately rest.

And indeed, he saw those soldiers as citizens who would, one day, doff their uniforms and once again take their place fully among the citizenry. He would then no longer be their commander-in-chief but would revert to being their employee, the employee of The People. He would be answerable to them. That was the natural order of things in the American ethos. It was to preserve that ethos that they and he found themselves at Gettysburg. Lincoln saw that. And accepted it. And acknowledged it.

The military of the immediate post-draft era took its cue from the powerful example set in the New Deal, in the massive organizational mobilization of the Second World War, and was even then in the ‘70s exploding into the civilian sphere through the administration of the Great Society and the revolutionistic implementation of the agendas of the several Advocacies: the ‘experts’ are the only ones who really ‘get it’ and are the only ones who really ‘can do’ it. The People must simply accept their status as distracted if not also backward ignoramuses in need of leading. Indeed, it became a classic trope of every Advocacy’s founding ‘emergency’ that The People or a sizable chunk of The People were pretty much the problem … the oppressor, the perpetrator, the (fill in the blank).

And so the ‘experts’ (and thus the government that employed them) flowed in and swelled up, and – it appeared at the time – with huge success and the unstoppable momentum previously ascribed to ‘historical inevitability’ or ‘God’s will’. It would have been, one might say, negligent of the military not to adopt such a winning gameplan. Anyway, the vast (by American standards) citizen armies that waged the sustained, up-close and personal combat of the Second World War would no longer be required. We sure as hell weren’t going to engage the full panoply of Soviet or Chinese hordes on the Eurasian landmass. Hi-tech armor and air strikes and atomic cannon (yes, we had them) and a lot of other countries’ ground troops would do the trick, if the Commies were ever crazy enough to try it. The chances of Elvis ever actually having to ship his guitar to the rear and get right with a rifle and a bayonet were slim to none. He and the rest of the ‘kids’ over there could get some exposure to Europe on the government’s dime; the grown-ups would do the heavy diplomatic and economic lifting.

But then ‘expertism’ and ‘government expertism’ got a second and more insidious wind in the massive domestic intrusions occasioned in the ‘60s and the ‘70s back here. And in a hugely ill-advised effort to find William James’ “moral equivalent to war” the Advocacies and the police on all levels reported the need for ‘war’ … on this or on that.

And that lead to what the article quotes from a Texas (!) State Senator: that “we (We!) are all soldiers in the War on Terror”. Apparently the so-named War on Terror does not require The People, but rather that all people be ‘soldiers’. Surely, that firm conviction explains the Administration’s assaultive pruning of the no-longer necessary constitutional and democratic processes and its hurt feelings at any dissent from the programme. ‘Soldiers’, after all, don’t get a say in what happens to them; their generals and leaders do not work for them – rather, ‘soldiers’ take their orders and do what they’re told and die when it’s their turn. And thus the Administration’s insistence – echoing every drill-sergeant in every army in every age of history – that ‘this isn’t a debating society’.

And thus this country is a society that no longer debates. The People aren’t supposed to debate since The People have been reduced to a soldiery. And thus The People – long bethumped by the Political Correctness of the Advocacies – are no longer used to debating. And thus the younger generations – hugely distracted from birth even as they are increasingly protected – are increasingly incapable of debating or even of noticing that debating – even more than ‘manners’ – no longer exists. One finds oneself reduced to the plaint of Chester A. Riley: “What a revoltin’ development this turned out ta be!”

Except that few now even seem ‘revolted’ by it. We are ‘offended’ – oh yeah! – by every damned thing under the sun, but We are not revolted by the corrosion and corruption of the Republic that was entrusted to Us. The children of light are getting a little dim.

We are coming to resemble – it can now be said – not ‘The Union’ but the old Confederacy, that military-besotted elitist hierarchical society where there was no middle-class, but only a pretend-aristocracy (morally debased) lording it over a harlequin serfery of ‘crackers’, slaves, and a smattering of mestizos, octoroons, and Indians, and everybody harassed by bible-thumping preachers to accept what-is as God’s will so shut-up and get on with it. No middle-class and no citizenry. And surely, no People.

Have I lived to see the South finally defeated a century later than the history books said, only to then see it ‘win’ almost a half-century after that? As Pogo would say: “Gack!”


The soldier works for the citizen. The soldier is of the People, is raised up by the People, to fight for the People. And will return to the People.

As Washington refused to wear his Revolutionary War uniform when he was President, and as it was insisted that the President be addressed by no honorific title but only as “Mister President” (like even the torture-whores do on ‘24’), so the Citizen’s is far more of an authoritative responsibility than the Soldier’s. In fact, it has probably been one of the toxic results of the militarization of Our society and culture that so many rights of the Citizen and the rights of so many citizens have been curtailed without public alarm: what’s a citizen anyway, or a citizen’s rights? Let’s be patriotic and go shoppin’! The experts know what they’re doing; ‘civilians’ would only get in the way.

We are Citizens, not civilians.

And if We had been doing Our job, then perhaps so many of our soldiers wouldn’t be dead now, or losing their lives, or their minds, or their spirits, or their souls, over there on the eastern front now.

Nor is it sufficient to say: ‘the troops want to stay over there, so who are We to say no?’ It’s Our call, not – bless them – theirs. We are not their commander-in-chief, but then again they are not ‘Presidential’ troops; they are American troops and We are The People. Nor are they ‘Congressional’ troops (and that seems increasingly obvious). And it is a consummation devoutly to be wished that the Supreme Court will not seek to reprise its Election-2000 clusterflok by assuming command of the troops in the field and making them ‘Judicial’ troops.

The People are responsible for the Soldier. In good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, for better or for worse … And do We wonder why that responsibility has been neglected?

MOYERS TWO

The second Moyers article is an address he gave to the National Conference for Media in Memphis, entitled “Life on the Plantation” (www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011807B.shtml).

He quotes something long ascribed to Ben Franklin, that pithy public observer: “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner: Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting that vote”.

In that image we can see the motivations of the Founders, eager to protect the nascent United States from the shrewdly ravenous appetites of kings and empires, and the necessarily lamb-like People from the inborn darker proclivities of the government power. And we can see the motivations of Abraham Lincoln, resolutely determined to deploy the government power to protect the United States from the inborn proclivity of all federations to spin themselves apart over time. And we can see the motivations of Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt who realized that the government power when properly wielded is a powerful weapon with which to defend the People from the darker inborn proclivities of entrenched Property and corporate power and wealth.

But – typically American – the ‘well-armed’ has been seen as something material, something tangible, whether an actual firearm or a statutorily-erected ‘right’ enforced by the government power on behalf – ideally – of The People. And since we are a nation of laws, then laws and their vigilant enforcement constitute an indispensable weapon in Our defense against Power, which most surely and ceaselessly does go about, seeking whom it may devour.

But law is not Our first line-of-defense, not Our fundamental weapon. For Us to be well-armed we each must be well-matured – in spirit and in the ‘higher skills’ that constitute the human birth-right, the human nature, the human gift to the vast Life of which humanity is so marvelous a part. Without being so armed, We will be incapable of ‘guarding our guards themselves’, incapable of Peopling the intricate and monstrously powerful engines that our civilization has erected and switched-on.

One of those ‘engines’ so surely designed to work almost directly for Us is the media, once known as ‘the press’. If We are not adequately and accurately informed of what is being done in the myriad nooks and crannies of our intricate and vast civilization, then We will not know what actions need to be taken. We collectively are the captain of the vessel (Yes, I’ve said it – the President is Commander-in-Chief of the military, not of the country and not of The People). The captain needs to know everything so as to be able to devise and decide the best course. We are collectively ‘the captain’. We must guard Our vital prerogative to be kept informed, and preferably as early on as possible.

Thus the vital role of the media – truly Our media. And in that regard, Moyers very rightly pinpoints the disastrous Telecommunications Act of 1996 as a fateful turning-point in the history of this Republic.

We have to stop and really give some thought to this. It’s understandable – but hardly justifiable – that We cannot be fully alive to doings that took place long decades and centuries ago in the history of the Republic. But 1996 was a mere 11 years ago; the ‘90s themselves were the decade immediately preceding the present decade. So much was done then. The pandering to corporations, so stereotypically the preferred prostitution of the Right, was matched by a hugely ill-considered (perhaps more accurately unconsidered) pandering to the Left. To mollify the demands of this or that Advocacy, to surf the waves of this or that ‘panic’ or ‘mania’ huge gaps were hacked out of Constitutional protections.

The media, which had already compromised themselves in the decades-old relinquishment of the search for Truth and even accuracy and truth, in order to ‘help’ and to ‘advocate’ (not their task in the vital engineering scheme of the Republic), were so compromised by the mid-90s that it is no surprise that they were seen no longer as a vital ‘institution’ of the Republic but simply as a commercial, cash-flow producing opportunity, much akin to entertainment, but enjoying the huge advantage of not being considered ‘fiction’ the way Hollywood movies and TV shows were.

If the robustly talented manipulations of a Rupert Murdoch could essentially create ‘shows’ that were endowed with the status of ‘news’, the media had done almost as much to themselves in the preceding decades, helping to enforce the ‘political correctness’ that stifled Our deliberations as to the assorted gambits – many not clearly desirable or workable – of the assorted Revolutions.

Moyers sees this 1996 Act as contributing to a “plantation mentality”, surely toxic to any Republic. In the scheme of the plantation, The People were reduced to status of the field-hands (May I respectfully not adhere strictly to the analogy by calling them ‘slaves’? It is too freighted a term to use here.) The ‘masters’ would be the corporate biggies, faithfully abetted by a national political class that had given up on the idea of ‘uniting’ the now-Balkanized citizenry and instead settled for pandering to and distracting the various sub-sets of citizens while accepting ‘contributions’ from the ever-reliable corporate deep-pockets; a time-honored form of non-sexual prostitution that the Framers had done everything they could think of to prevent.

And the media, impartial servants of Truth’s flame, already weakened in spirit for decades as aforesaid, were formally put on the auction-block, marketed to the highest bidder (the afore-mentioned corporate deep-pockets). Historians will one day point to this as a gravely dangerous milestone on the road that led down and away from 1776.

Moyers asserts that there are “two basic pillars of American society – shared economic prosperity and a public sector capable of serving the common good”. He’s right. And to see that the sustained economic prosperity of the post-1945 period is no longer ‘operational’ is the beginning of American wisdom. And to consider that Supreme Court Justices and the White House are cheer-leading the torture-happy, boyo-swaggering blood-blasting of a show such as “24” is to sense the tremors triggered by a profound rot.
But if those are two pillars, then the foundation is The People. It is The People who – through the working of the Constitution – ground the three Branches. An educated and an informed People is the indispensable foundation of the whole thing. No longer informed by the media, insufficiently educated so as to be able to process what information might be received, The People cannot anchor the whole apparatus. Its still-tremendous power begins to fly off in increasingly wild gyrations, domestically and in foreign-adventures. To Our great detriment. And to the detriment of all the world’s peoples, whose hope in the American ideal is bitterly dashed even as weapons rain upon them.

And if, beyond being un-informed by the media, The People are mis-informed, if The People are doused not simply with misinformation but with untruths so complexly interwoven as to constitute a sort of anti-information, then the rot is greatly advanced.

I wrestle with Moyers’ characterization of the media as being “sitting ducks”, set up by the plantation mentality. As indicated above, I think that the turn from ‘accuracy journalism’ to ‘advocacy journalism’ was a lethal self-inflicted wound, decades old by the mid-90s. The Fundamentalistic-neocon Ascendancy is not simply a disease but an opportunistic disease; it made use of what it found, of the weakened no-longer-robust condition of the media’s character and dedication to its original and first principles as they were presumed in the schematic of the Republic.

But he knows – without a doubt – still many journalists who are seeking to fulfill their calling and to discharge their large and ancient (in American terms) responsibilities. It is on that remnant that Our hopes must be pinned.

And perhaps that the infamous Act might, among so many other more recent infamous Acts, be repealed or at least greatly repaired.

We must indeed be an inquiring People. We need to know. We must want to know. Not only does the buck stop with Us, but it is our buck (trillions of them) to begin with. Virgins or not – and We are now too deeply enmeshed in the recent doings of our government power to claim that status – We must be wise, robustly and vigorously and authoritatively and unsleepingly wise.

“Soldiers”, famously, “are citizens of death’s grey land; they draw no dividends from Time’s tomorrows”. If We have sent many of our young on that vividly somber journey, and We have, then We must do all that We can to arrange matters so that they might still have cause to hope in ‘tomorrow’, that they and all of our young may live lives forelit by the possibility of just dividends that will enable them to bear the dark battles that must be borne today. It is Our responsibility to ensure that they do not return to a plantation life, facing the life of field-hands then even as they now bear the burdens common to all soldiers sent on missions such as this errand into the wilderness to which We have presently committed them.