Remora

The focus groups in the street

"Size of protest, it's like deciding, 'Well I'm going to decide policy based up on a focus group.' The role of a leader is to decide policy based upon the security - in this case - security of the people." - Bush, Washington Post

"I understand the concerns of the thousands who marched on Saturday. -- Tony Blair, Guardian

Millions of Soviet people are profoundly sympathetic with the Hungarian workers' struggle to successfully transform their homeland into a free, sovereign socialist state. We understand the desire of the Hungarian workers, peasants and intelligentsia to raise the standard of living of the population, utilizing the great advantages of the people's democratic system to do so. -- Pravda, November 1956, commenting on the Hungarian Revolution


The reaction to the protests is very -- as Donald Rumsfeld might say (vide our last post on him) --- interesting. We have been especially amused by NPR. They excerpted Bush's speech, and followed it with the explanation that "thousands" demonstrated over the world. Expect that same innumeracy when it comes to Iraqi casualties in the war (Some tens were killed in Baghdad's bombing today...). But there is a more profound issue here than that of war or peace in Iraq. The question is: who runs things. The dismissal of the Protesters has been breathtaking in its reach, and revealing in its vocabulary. In the Figaro, there was an interview with Laurent Murawiec which, we think, is representative. Murawiec was the man who caused a bit of a stir last summer when he instructed Richard Perle's White House sponsored Defense council on the advisability of overthrowing the Saudi government. Here he is breathing the very air of the Bellicose cabal:


"What do you think of the anti-war protests last Saturday?

The "pacifists" believe they are giving peace a chance, but in fact, the only thing they are giving a chance to is their blindness. The protests last Saturday were the marriage of John Lennon and Neville Chamberlain. A naivete pushed to the point where there is an absolute unconsciousness of the issues of the conflict, a complete contempt for reality. There's nothing to be expected from such an alliance."

This is the tone of Pravda on the Potomac. What is more disturbing, however, is that the assumptions underlying this tone are shared, to a large extent, by the opposition in this country. I talked on the phone to my best friend yesterday, and he was rather mocking about the demonstrations making any difference. It is that frozen response to the mechanism of oppression that shows just how much oppression has become the default, in this country. It is a conviction that false consciousness is all there is to consciousness. Flattering both to elitist policy makers in right wing think tanks and academic leftists, who have provided themselves with a wonderfully narrowed field of action, it seems to me so clearly false, so clearly not the story of the last couple hundred of years, that I am surprised how prevalent, how almost universal it is. "Resistance" in academia is almost invariably trivialized: it is a matter of choosing to watch Buffy the Vampire Killer, or dressing Barbie in a strange way. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the Enlightenment project of adults governing themselves. In this way, the "union sacre" to use Murawiec's words has been consumated between the world view of Madison Avenue and the world view of Cultural Studies. It is coupled with another idea, also immensely flattering to those educated in expensive Universities: that the popular mood is infinitely malleable. This has animated both the makers of Wag the Dog and the busy staffers working for Karl Rove. But why would anybody, in the long run, believe it? Two hundred years of history, from the American and French Revolutions to de-colonization to the end of the Soviet empire, show how badly Revolutions from above fare.

But we don't have to look at the Grand Pattern - all we have to do is look at the spectacular failure of media and policy elites to impeach President Clinton. That is a history replete with the comedy of secret makers and shakers betting on the magic of the coup. Well, it didn't work. Once again, those makers and shakers are betting on the magic of a coup - running roughshod over the popular mood to create a war. Well, they might just create a war, but the damage is becoming clear. Those who have attached themselves to the Cabal of belligerents (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld) are going to have severe trouble retaining their 'leadership" roles - starting with Aznar in Spain and going through Tony Blair in the U.K. Let's take Aznar first. Here's a report from the Voice of America, not a leftist bastion:

"Anti-war demonstrations took place in 57 cities throughout Spain, including all the provincial capitals. The two biggest were held in Madrid and Barcelona with a total of about two million people. Spain's Prime Minister Jos� Mar�a Aznar has been a staunch supporter of U-S policy toward Iraq despite the fact that polls show that the vast majority of Spaniards are against the use of force to make Iraq disarm. The result has been that his ruling Popular Party has stood alone in parliament in defending the U-S policy on Iraq.

The peace demonstrations were organized or supported by the major opposition Socialist party, the United Left Coalition, the major labor unions, and various non-government organizations like Green Peace. Following Pope John Paul II's opposition to the war option against Iraq, Catholics led by priests and nuns turned out in large numbers and church bells chimed in some cities during the demonstrations.Both the Madrid and Barcelona demonstrations were headed not only by opposition politicians and union leaders but by Spanish actors and artists as well. Film Director Pedro Almodovar, nominated for Oscars as best script writer and director, read the closing manifesto in Madrid."

And this, from today's Guardian:


More significantly for Mr Aznar, opinion polls have shown that, for the first time since securing a clear victory in elections three years ago, the Socialists have overtaken the People's party in voting intentions.

Mr Aznar also faced embarrassment yesterday when it was revealed that in 1997 he had offered to pay Baghdad in "aid" if it gave oil contracts to the Spanish-owned Repsol company. The government was ready to make a "donation" if Repsol was given a concession in the Nasiriya field, despite the fact that the UN had just issued a series of resolutions condemning Iraq's continued blocking of inspections, according to El Mundo newspaper, which quoted official documents."

As to Tony Blair, I don't need to quote polls.

Now, the point here isn't just that the war is unpopular, but that the very ability of the American media to analyze the factors which would be set in motion by Bush's foreign policy have been almost universally pathetic. That because the media has bought into the common 'educated' perception that elites run things while the common man drools over brainless celebrities. This is comically illustrated in the analyses, leading up to the U.S. foreign policy debacles of the last couple of weeks, that France wasn't "serious" about opposing the U.S. policy. No, they'd get out of the way at the last moment. That was the almost universal opinion, in spite of the fact that there are plenty of reasons to think France's interest, especially as interpreted by Chirac, would be precisely the opposite of that. This isn't a matter of opposing the war: it is a matter of understanding, outside the filter of one's personal opinions, the interest of the other. The expectation that the popular mood just doesn't count has so seized the educated that it has become inscribed in the very way that even those who oppose the war here think about politics. The war is inevitable refrain is partly about the fact that the clever top class always gets what it wants.

Well, the quietism of the left in America is a scandal which we aren't going to embark on analyzing at the moment. But we do think that somebody ought to ask: if the planners are so smart, why is the plan so dumb?

Instead of believing that democracy is a mere sham concealing the puppetmasters pulling strings and getting their way, LI subscribes to the belief of the Psalmist: "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength."

And of Blake: "How do you know but every bird that cuts the
airy way, is an immense world of delight, closed by your senses five?"

These are the pillars of our politics, mes amies.