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Edited on Tue May-04-04 08:01 PM by arendt
Another arendt rant.
Its too long; it has too many history references for today's dumbed-down
audiences. Its too pedantic and unfunny. But, its me.
DUers, do you want to live in a rational society or a fundamentalist gulag
run by bull-goose loonies? Time is running out.
If you are a scientist, a techie, or someone who makes his living with
his brain, I want your feedback. How do we organize ourselves to
defend what are, to me as a scientist, our religious beliefs?
arendt
-------------------
Lysenko Meets Malthus
- The new enclosure and the new poor laws
by arendt
For almost a thousand years, European societies have witnessed
the economic and military consequences of putting religious dogma
in charge of a worldly state. Time after time, the result is obscurantism,
followed by the flight or expulsion of the talented, followed sooner or later
by the demise of the religious state at the hands of more tolerant societies
who took in the talented exiles.
Witness the Jews driven out of Catholic Spain in 1492, who fled
to Holland where they formed the backbone of the Dutch economy
and aided Holland's resistance to the Spanish Empire.
Witness the Huguenots, driven out of Catholic France, who fled to
Protestant England and Holland, where they worked to undermine
the Bourbons and Papists in general.
Even within England, witness the Puritans, disestablished by the
Anglican Church, who took their commercial acumen to America, where
they contributed to the American Revolution.
It also happened to all of Islam, vis-a-vis Christianity. In the twelfth
century, at the height of its scientific and cultural achievements, Islam
committed intellectual suicide, although this is hardly known to most
Westerners today. (see FOOTNOTE) Secular pursuits became stigmatized,
and the society turned to fervid religiosity.
However, the Roman Catholic West was so backward and fratricidal that it
took five hundred years for the halt in Moslem intellectual activity, plus the
jump start of Western science by Protestantism, to begin to tilt the military
and economic scales against Islam. Despite the long delay, this case still
fits the pattern laid down in the first paragraph.
----
With all these examples, then, there is no excuse for talented and historically
literate people to deny what is going on in the United States today. Once again,
a reactionary religious hierarchy, unable to lord it over science, industry, and commerce
has struck back. Their weapons, as always, have been blind faith, homicidal
hatred and jealousy couched in lofty theological justifications, and the willing assistance
of secular power brokers who are likewise on the losing end of scientific advance.
Just as 18th century landowners fought the rising power of the commercial
classes by having them run out of countries on the excuse of religion, 20th century
extractive and metal-bending industries, like oil and automobiles, have risen up
against the usurpations of a new class of science-based technologists and
environmentalists.
The oil/auto industry, facing both a production peak and alternative technologies
of energy production and conservation, has purchased the White House and has
used it to blatantly enrich itself, to make an ill-fated grab for Arab oil, and to rid itself
of irritating environmental regulations and limits on drilling, pollution, and sprawl.
The Cold War-sized military industrial complex, faced with a total loss of mission to
justify a budget that outspends the rest of the world combined, has whole-heartedly
embraced the war on terrorism as a God-send (pun intended). They care not
one whit for the effects of laughably ineffective security measures on commerce
or science.
The pivot that joins the oil/defense industry to the fundamentalist theocrats is
the scapegoating of the Arab World. The Oil business wants their oil. The defense
business wants their land. And, the theocrats want their souls. All of them don't
give a rat's ass about their lives, as is on display for all the world to see in Iraq
today.
So, it is no surprise to find "Islamic terrorism" as the all-purpose excuse for the
joint program of Constitutional rape and economic pillage of the Oil/Defense/Rapture
Complex.
They have barred authors from "the usual suspects" Islamic countries from being published
in U.S. journals. They have denied visas to foreigners wanting to attend scientific
conferences in the U.S. This is paranoia worthy of the Cold War Soviet Union. And,
just as the sane nations of that era simply held their conferences elsewhere, the same
thing is happening today - to the detriment of U.S. science.
They have deliberately ruined the tourist industry and the public's sense of security
with Terror Alert scares. They have crippled the airline industry with delays and
ridiculous, ineffective searches and nail clipper seizures.
But, despite the palpable and grievous damage to the U.S. economy and to the
U.S. worker, the compensation of the CEOs and major stockholders of the corporate
behemoths that have enclosed every last bit of the U.S. economy continues to
rise out of sight. We have the head of United Health Care being compensated
$94 Million last year, while doctors are being harassed and intimidated out of
not only their own pay, but decent care for their patients.
The fanatical fundamentalists of the market are more than happy to make common
cause with the fanatical fundamentalists of End Times Theology. In the end,
both ideologies say the same thing: we are kings, and you are peasants.
----
What makes these ideologues so hard to attack is their total lack of logic - these
guys are Deconstructionists by any other name. Both financial and religious
fundamentalists agree with Margaret Thatcher: "There is no such thing as society."
Everything that happens to an individual is his own doing. If he lives in a country
that smashes labor unions and provides no education, it is the individual's fault
he is poor. If she lives in a mysogynistic society that tolerates wife beating, philandering
husbands, and denial about sexually transmitted diseases, it is the individual's fault
she contracted AIDS from her husband. To these people, the only role of government
is to provide armies and police to enforce the fatwas of the theocrats or of the
"impersonal, God-like market".
With total control of the media, the theo-corpo-crats have the cartoon like ability to
run off the end of a cliff, stand in mid air in violation of the law of gravity, and then
dive back onto the safety of the cliff. So, for example, they browbeat us about the
military and economic threat of China while they simultaneously dismantle our industrial
base to send it there. No matter what the economic situation, a tax cut is the solution.
And, after twenty years of manufactured outrage about "tax and spend" Democrats, not a
word is to be said about "borrow and spend" Republicans.
With total GOP control, we are now witnessing the Lysenko-ing of American science.
Crackpots, industry shills, theologians, and rip-off artists are placed in positions
of power. Just as Stalin denounced "cosmopolitan science" and promised Lamarckian
miracles of agricultural production, Bush's EPA denounces Global Warming and
embraces Son of Star Wars.
Who cares if the scientific evidence goes the other way? With absolute power, the
GOP theocrats have no need for logic or reason. Religious ideologues have placed
will power above reason for millenia. Augustine believed thusly, and so did the mad
man Nietsche. The powerful can do no wrong. The poor deserve what they get.
Hence these neo-Spencerian ideologues have resurrected Thomas Malthus, but
given him a "Power of Positive Thinking" gloss, courtesy of junk science hacks
like the late, and unlamented, Julian Simon. Since the PNAC crowd are a bunch
of ex-Trotskyites, it is no stretch for them to borrow from the patron saint of junk
science, Stalin's pet crackpot, T.D. Lysenko.
So, here is how today's 21st Century, focus group-tested version of the Poor Law/
Malthus spiel goes:
....The marketplace is miraculous and will solve all our economic problems.
....If you are talented and hard working, the market will lift you out of poverty.
....If you are unemployed, that is your fault. It is the almighty market's judgment
....that you are incompetent. There are 6 billion humans on the planet, and
....you couldn't cut it. Its your fault. And Jesus thinks so too. George heard Him.
....Of course, no government anywhere has the right to regulate international
....off-shoring of jobs to countries whose labor conditions make Victorian England
....look like Socialist Sweden. Pay no attention to the full-bore GOP campaign to
....deny U.S. citiizens the right to off-shore their drug purchases. Pay no attention
....to the "growth without development" impact of free trade zones, maquilladoras,
....and other corporate latifundia, chock full of union-busting goons and the police
....thugs of the local kleptocrat. Pay no attention to the on-the-job injuries, poisonings,
....and genetic damage in those hell-holes. Pay no attention to massive pollution,
....to people living in cardboard shacks on streets with open sewers. The market
....guarantees that these minor environmental and health inconveniences are not
....a symbol of failure, but rather a harbinger of imminent economic takeoff.
....Therefore, we reach the same conclusion as Malthus: the poor should not be
....helped. Even though it is the multi-national corporate "enclosure" of and off-
....shoring of middle-class jobs that has created the unprecedented masses of
....poor Americans. Even though we now know about the "demoographic transition"
....when incomes rise to a crucial level. Even though we know about the positive
....impact of female education and "micro-loans" on the poorest of the poor.
....Even though we could offer birth control to prevent huge families from
....eating any pitiful gains that might trickle down to the latifundia slaves.
....We cannot coddle the undeserving poor; but we must coddle the rich.
....The international money market is sacrosanct. No government has the right to
....interfere with hot money flows that ruin entire economies as they enrich a miniscule
....cabal of manipulators and insiders. The U.S. voting public has no right to question
....the most blatantly and deliberately imbalanced budget in U.S. history.
Why not?
Because it is the budget of the theocrats. It is the market of the theocrats. It is
the media of the theocrats. And, theocrats are not to be questioned; they are to
be obeyed.
Twilight is over America. Welcome to the long, dark night where privatized
military contractors run by the CIA want to meet with you in a dark alley.
----------------------------
FOOTNOTE
...."Amid these advances of (Islamic) science the old orthodoxy fought
....to keep the loyalty of educated classes. The conflict between
....religion and science led many to sketicism, some to open atheism...
....The theists accepted God and immortality, but denied creation and
...the resurrection of the body, and called heaven and hell spiritual
....conditions only; the deists acknowledged a deity but rejected
....immortality, and viewed the world as a self-operating machine...
...."It was in reaction against such skepticism that Mohammedanism
....produced its greatest theologian...Abu Hamid al-Ghazali...(In)...his
....most influential book - Tahafut al-Filasifa (The Destruction of
....Philosophy, all the arts of reason were turned against reason.
....By a transcendental dialectic as subtle as Kant's, the Moslem
....mystic argued that reason leads to universal doubt, intellectual
....bankruptcy, moral deterioration, and social collapse. Seven
....centuries before Hume, al-Ghazali reduced reason to the principle
....of causality, and causality to mere sequence.
...."When he died (1111), the tide of unbelief had been effectively turned...
....After him,...philosophy hid itself in the remote corners of the Moslem
....world; the pursuit of science waned; and the mind of Islam more
....and more buried itself in the Hadith (note; like the Talmud) and the
....Koran...
...."As orthodoxy triumphed, toleration waned...non-Moslems were now
....required to wear distinguising yellow stripes on their clothing;...no cross
....was to be displayed outside a church...
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