AMERICA'S FUTURE: DISNEYLAND AND AUSCHWITZ

Just the other day, I was reading a review of Pushbutton Psychiatry, which I was considering ordering, and decided against it when I found that the authors associate the widespread use of ECT with "patriarchal society". It reminded me of the argument I had in January of this year with Noam Chomsky, and which led me to re-examine my own intellectual roots. For I had found that my basic philosophy was radically different from that of my colleagues on the Left, in that it was not based upon Marxism, Feminism, Pacificism, "New Age" Pop Psychology, or any of the other Pollyannish doctrines which have been so influential among my generation. The essential difference between myself and them is that they believe that our problems stem from an inability to overcome the evils of the past-- that is to say, from an insufficiency of progress. By contrast, I believe that they stem from modernity itself-- that is to say, from an excess of "progress". I don't believe that our civilization is marching toward a new era of freedom and equality but rather toward either or hideous totalitarianism or Armageddon. As early as the nineteen-seventies, when I was in my early twenties, I was greatly influenced by Orwell, James Burnham, whose book The Managerial Revolution had a profound influence upon 1984; Karl Wittfogel (Oriental Despotism), Amaury de Riencourt (The Coming Caesars), Montesquieu and Tocqueville. I viewed America as the new Rome, and the Watergate scandal convinced me that it was in the process of making the transition from Republic to Empire. But even then, I could never have imagined that America would "progress" toward totalitarianism as far as it has in the past thirty years, particularly since 9/11.

A friend of mine said recently, "We are living in a Hamiltonian world," and that is all too apt. Anglo-American civilization is composed of two competing elements, which are symbolized by the struggle which occurred early in the history of our republic between Jefferson and Hamilton. One goes back to Magna Carta, and is characterized by a degree of political and individual liberty greater than the world has ever known. It rests upon the tradition of diffidatio, or the right of a medieval vassal to rebel against his lord if the latter broke his end of the contract upon which their relationship was based (and which thus anticipated Locke's Social Contract). It was also associated with the unique status of the independent yeoman farmer in English society. The alliance between these two classes-- the proud aristocrat and the proud freeholder-- gave birth to parliamentary democracy and thus all the rights which we enjoyed while we were growing up as the citizens of a republic guided by a government under law. The other strain in the Anglo-American tradition, which first reared its ugly head in the Enclosure Movement, is characterized by greed, materialism and a blind worship of technology. England was, after all, throughout its history, the most "progressive" of all European nations, and from that fact stems many of our problems. It adopted the bourgeois profit motive long before other European nations did, and its science, unlike that of the rest of Europe, rested firmly upon empiricism from Newton onward. This would have been fine had science been merely an intellectual pursuit, but it was fatal when combined with the English penchant for technological innovation. Thus England quickly made "progress" over all other nations and was in fact the nation in which the Industrial Revolution first took place. This second strain in our heritage was transferred to England's most important colony, America, and both technological know-how and business acumen became part of the American identity. Unfortunately, both are inimical to freedom and this Hamiltonian side of America would ultimately strangle its Jeffersonian sibling. The crucial turning point came after World War II, when Big Business became an ally, rather than an antagonist, of Big Government, ushering in the Managerial (or Bureaucratic) Revolution and ultimately the Military-Industrial Complex.

Of course this was a gradual development, not fully apparent to those of us "baby-boomers" who were privileged to grow up in the nineteen-sixties, when it still seemed possible to change the world, but in fact our world was already doomed. The ultimate outcome of the development I have described above is American fascism, or as I have chosen to call it, simply Americanism. Americanism differs from its totalitarian predecessors in the following ways. Unlike Communism, it acknowledges the human instincts for material gain and nationalism and uses them to buttress its own power. And unlike most forms of European and Asian fascism, it does not restrict its membership to one race or to males only. Condoleeza Rice is a perfect example of the triumph of Americanism, in that she is one hundred per cent fascist although both a woman and Black, something that no one would have thought possible during World War II. Orwell's description of Oceania, the super-state in which he places his protagonist, Winston Smith, is essentially a description of where America is heading, except that American totalitarianism will not be subject to the material deprivations which we associate with leftist totalitarianisms, and which Orwell, writing in England during the impoverished postwar years, mistakenly thought would characterize the future. No, it will be more like a combination of Disneyland and Auschwitz. That is to say, it will be prosperous and filled with high-tech consumer goods which will keep the majority of its citizens content and complacent regarding the oppression of the unfortunate minority in its concentration camps, but it will not be democratic. As it represents the victory of, shall we say, Cain over Abel, it must perforce deny while not openly repudiating its history. Schoolchildren in the America of the future will be taught to genuflect before the Declaration of Independence without ever being taught what it means. How indeed can the new totalitarianism permit anyone to remember that that document, like our tradition of freedom itself, rests upon the Right to Revolution? It cannot, any more than it can permit people to know that our Constitution established a government under law. Even today, many Americans display the flag in perfect ignorance of the fact that that flag has come to symbolize everything that the Founding Fathers detested-- crude materialism, military aggrandizement, oppressive and capricious government, and the suppression of individual rights.

Americanism has the potential to be the most enduring and powerful form of totalitarianism which has ever existed, and hence the worst enemy of both Mankind and the natural environment. With its penchant for developing ever more deadly high-tech weapons, it threatens the whole world with annihilation from weapons of mass destruction (yes, it is our WMDs, not Iran's or anyone else's, which are the problem). With its overconsumption and reckless and wasteful lifestyle, it threatens the natural environment. With its endless wars and its growing and routine use of torture to frame innocents for the crimes it has itself committed, it has the potential to surpass even Nazi Germany in terms of the death and suffering for which it is responsible. And it has produced one category of people who are capable of spreading its terror throughout society even more effectively than the Nazi doctors: psychiatrists. The psychiatric profession is an offspring of the Hamiltonian strain in American society. It is greedy and crassly materialistic. It has embraced technology not only as a cure for all ills, but also as a means of perpetuating its own power. It is no accident that the use of ECT (electroconvulsive treatment) is becoming more widespread now, in the post-9/11 world. For having killed all that is good in the past, what our leaders need most to do now is destroy all memory of that past. Thus they have begun a systematic assault upon history, and psychiatrists and other mental health professionals are among the most important henchmen of that assault. Anyone who remembers is an enemy of the present establishment. It is not only the mind of individuals which is threatened, but our entire "Jeffersonian" heritage going back to Magna Carta. As Orwell said, "he who controls the past controls the future."

This is truly a Manichaean struggle between absolute good and absolute evil. And what is the alternative? What am I fighting for? All the good things that my colleagues on the Left have always fought for, above all the restoration of political liberty and of harmony with Nature. But unlike them, I do not believe that this is possible without violence. If the American people were still possessed of what eighteenth century thinkers called "republican virtue", they would rise up in revolution against this usurping, unconstitutional government (and I do not mean elected politicians, who are but figureheads). But they are not. A people which allows its government to legislate for it concerning such a minor matter as whether they should watch analog or digital TV has already reduced itself to the level of infants. Thus no positive change can be brought about until some force external to the American citizenry as a whole destroys the American military-industrial complex and indeed, the entire infrastructure of modern industrial society. Perhaps an eruption of Yellowstone Supervolcano will accomplish this for us. Until then, those of us who do remember must fight-- to the death if necessary-- to forestall and obstruct the designs of this Monster. If we do not, the future can bring only two alternatives: universal annihilation or, perhaps worse, universal slavery: in Orwell's words, "a boot stepping on a human face-- forever."