German playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote a fable that sums up the slow death that Bush and his NEOCON partners in crime have cooked up for the American people. It goes something like this:
A man living alone answers a knock at the door. When he opens it, he sees in the doorway the powerful body, the cruel face, of The Tyrant. The Tyrant asks, “Will you submit?” The man does not reply. He steps aside. The Tyrant enters and establishes himself in the man’s house. The man serves him for years. Then The Tyrant becomes sick from food poisoning. He dies. The man wraps the body, opens the door, gets rid of the body, comes back to his house, closes the door behind him, and says, firmly, “No.”Submission to a tyrant takes many forms. Most people just muddle through when forced to choose: either your life or your soul. Few are so dramatically challenged. Most of us live our lives in the grayish hinterland of compromise. Most of us seek and find, for awhile anyway, safety in the no man's land of "no affirmation" and "no denial".- Howard Zinn, Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology
But that is not the stuff of high existentialist drama. Poets and playwrights, rather, find in tyranny the seeds of personal crisis. In this crucible is sometimes born a hero's death ala Sir Thomas More as portrayed in "A Man for All Season". Submission is not a choice, though some may think so. But neither is living when life becomes but slow death from a thousand cuts. If not the body, the soul is bled to die quickly or slowly, but like ashes, it simply melts away in gray rain.
Here's the official description of tyranny:
A tyrant is a single ruler holding vast, if not absolute power through a state or in an organization. The term carries connotations of a harsh and cruel ruler who place their own interests or the interests of a small oligarchy over the best interests of the general population which they govern or control. This mode of rule is referred to as tyranny. Many individual rulers or government officials get accused of tyranny, with the label almost always a matter of controversy.That description applies to many tyrannies including that of Adolf Hitler and, more recently, George W. Bush.- Tyranny
As we are told, life is a cabaret but never more poignantly, tragically than in times of repression, times in which your life is thought by power to be expendable in service to some higher, ideological ideal. German cabaret, for example, blossomed in post-war Germany just as a young Adolf Hitler exploited the angst that birthed cabaret. Americans' best exposure to cabaret came to us in the form of Bertolt Brecht's "Three Penny Opera"Through a cultural filter, we absorbed the Cabaret version of I Am a Camera, a 1951 play by John Van Druten.By the 30's Nazis had begun to repress criticism. That included journalism and popular forms of entertainment including cabaret. In 1935, Werner Finck was briefly imprisoned and sent to a concentration camp. Kurt Tucholsky committed suicide while almost all German-speaking cabaret artists fled into exile in Switzerland, Scandinavia or the US.
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19 comments:
A couple of quick thoughts....I'm running waaaaayyyy behind today...as I have been for the last two weeks (rofl)
First, the compromise between "your body or your soul" doesn't apparently happen in one, dramatic event. Instead, I believe that it is a series of small, seemingly insignificant choices over a period of time, all taking place below the level of consciousness.
Second, someone once said that we won't recognize when a tyrant has taken over America because he will come carrying a bible in one hand and an American flag in another. I've been warning about that for years and have been branded (occassionally) as a heretic because of it.
Nice to find a few heretics are still around.
Great comments, as to be expected from you, Hizzoner.
The "compromise" or, more properly, the decision that seems to be the defining characteristic of tyranny most certainly begins, as you say, in "...a series of small, insignificant choices". This is what Bolt's great play "A Man for All Seasons" portrays so accurately.
As well, the performance of "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" (the last video) portrays in allegory. The Hitler youth seduces the crowd with his youth and voice. But, by song's end, a trap had been sprung. The Nazi grimace had revealed its nature ...but too late for those having made a bad bargain.
In the case of Bush, we were prepared to surrender a few liberties for safety. But, the fix was already in. I believe I am correct in saying that the Bushies had already written the Patriot Act by 911. It was waiting in the wings, a trap to be sprung.
Fuzzflash sez...
Len, "Life is a Cabaret but tomorrow belongs to Mein Fuhrer!" is a magnificent composition. The blend of your passionately held ideals, brilliant and apt quotations, and zietgiest zapping clips shows a mastery of this "new" medium achieved by few others.
Below is a link to Maureen Farrell's "When Fascism Comes to America", first posted in 2004. It's taken a long time, but folks are tumbling that "people like us" are not a bunch of kooks after all. Better late than never, but there's still a ways to go, as History has so far not blessed us with the likes of a present day Tommy More. Certainly not amongst the lily-livered Dem contenders: a bunch of low-rent Fausts and a former First Lady Faustette, stricken to a person with Beltway Blight and the hubris of Icarus.
http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/04/09/far04031.html
Meanwhile, the battle for hearts and minds on the "cyber-tubes" continues unabated. Bloody well done, squire!
Fuzzflash wrote...
"Life is a Cabaret but tomorrow belongs to Mein Fuhrer!" is a magnificent composition.
There is no higher, no more humbling compliment than one from someone whose opinion you respect and honor. Thank you.
Your link is right on target. Here's an except:
American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information
That coalition, typified by Fox, was made possible with the dismantling of the Communications Act of 1934.
What happened to Germany apres Hitler is tragic but, in many ways, the people were spared having to foment a revolution in order to undo Hitler. Unless America is conquered from without, the people themselves will have to rewrite the many "cuts" dealt American democracy. Frankly, I despair that they are up to it. Germany might not have been up to it; it was forced upon them by the allied coalition.
The memos referred to in the article, while shocking, are not surprising. Clearly, FOX conspired with the administration to slant and invent news. The same thing happened in Nazi Germany. A campaign of violence and repression is documented and chronicled so ably by William Shirer in his The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
Unless Bushco is stopped, you can bet that the internet itself will be targeted. We're next!
Below is the from the statement Bush made to the American people following the 911 attacks:
Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve. America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining.
That turned out to have been the first of a series of public lies told by Bush about 911.
In fact, it was not the terrorists but Bush himself who has RELENTLESSLY attacked the very foundations of American democracy and the freedoms guaranteed the people in OUR Constitution.
Bush may be right in one important respect. It was "terrorists" who attacked WTC and Pentagon.
The question is: who were the terrorists?
The question looms ever larger: were the "terrorists" of the homegrown variety? Were the "terrorists", in fact, our own crooked, lying, venal administration?
Was 911 was our Reichstag Fire?
9/11 as the Reichstag fire is a rather chilling thought, and an important one. Bravo, Len.
There is no real evidence that anything said by Bush and various Bushies about 911 has been in any way true at any time about anything.
The "official conspiracy theory" is a house of cards. Like the towers themselves, the Bush cover story comes crashing down upon its on, fatal, inconsistencies. Sherlock Holmes said it best:
It is not really difficult to construct a series of inferences, each dependent upon its predecessor and each simple in itself. If, after doing so, one simply knocks out all the central inferences and presents one's audience with the starting-point and the conclusion, one may produce a startling, though perhaps a meretricious, effect.
--Sherlock Holmes in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Dancing Men"
That process, alone, will bring down the Bush "theories" all of which depend upon Bush's non-existent credibility.
Bush theories are "faith-based"! All fall down.
And to drive the point home:
When you have eliminated the impossible, that which remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
--Sherlock Holmes, "The Sign of Four"
It was not only the twin towers and the Pentagon that fell that day. It was the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the anti-tyrannical principles of Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. We know - beyond a shadow of the merest doubt - who killed them off.
GEORGE W. BUSH!
I have never supported the death penalty, having seen how it was sadistically abused in Texas by one George W. Bush who cackled and giggled maniacally and sadistically about the deaths of inmates whom he refused commutation or pardon in appropriate cases.
But, for the perpetrators of 911-those who pulled off this "inside job" - a firing squad is too honorable, hanging too kind! It was the Mikado who said "Let the punishment fit the crime!" When this nightmare regime is brought to its knees in a Wagnerian Goetterdammerung, it will fall to someone the task of fitting a punishment to one of the most heinous crimes ever perpetrated.
911 Was an Inside Job
A nice cultural trip as always Len. I would add into the mix Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse. The book is a near autobiography, Hesse's protagonist, Harry Haller an obvious doppelganger of the author. Condemned to outsider status in the emerging fascist society of 1930's Germany, he is unable to so much as find a middle road of compromise, let alone take it. He reconciles himself to the existence of a rejected loner, or 'Wolf of the Steppes' - hence Steppenwolf. He determines to commit suicide on his 50th birthday, but is rescued at the last minute by a love affair with a cabaret dancer who takes him on a spiritual journey of self-discovery. I haven't read the Bertholdt Brecht, but it must have been influential.
Perhaps prompted by the Canadian rock band of the same name, Steppenwolf became a favorite novel of the hippie movement of the sixties. A movie was made in 1974 starring Max Von Sydow. It was an extraordinarily good treatment of a book that was so complex and abstract that one would hardly imagine it possible to make a movie of it. Using Monty Python-esque animations and acid-trip visuals, director Fred Haines somehow brought Hesse's Magic Theater to life, even making Hesse's ideas more accessible. It used to show from time to time at the $2.00 community theaters in Toronto when I lived there. Every time it came to town I would go see it, and always came away with some new insight I had missed previously.
Steppenwolf: IMDB entry
Highly recommended if you can find a specialty video rental place that has it. Ditto the book, but I haven't met anyone yet that claimed to fully understand it in less than two or even three readings.
Great blog!!! I'll have to stop by more often.
To sadbuttrue:
I've got an old VHS copy of the Fred Haines take on Steppenwolf. Went out of my way to find it. Like you, I was impressed at the job Haines & Co. did filming what seemed an almost unfilmable novel. I may be biased in that the novel is a personal favorite, but I thought this was a very underrated literary adaptation. Glad someone else thinks so. Like you, I highly recommend it.
Sadbuttrue wrote of Steppenwolf...
Condemned to outsider status in the emerging fascist society of 1930's Germany, he is unable to so much as find a middle road of compromise, let alone take it.
That's the nature of tyranny, the favorite tactic of wannabe dictators. Bush gave himself away almost immediately after the Reichs...uh...911.
He said: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.".
Bush did tell the truth in that same speech when he said, "...freedom itself is under attack." And it has been! By Bush!
Thanks, Sad, for the survey of Hermann Hesse. Your reference to the "spiritual journey of self-discovery" is a universal one. For Joseph Campbell this journey is a hero's journey or quest. In German psychology we find the word "gestalt" and, in Wertheimer, the destruction of one gestalt in favor of a more encompassing one -the creative process itself. These, of course, are all our journeys as individuals and as a species. See The story of mankind">The Story of Mankind [Hendrik Wilhelm van Loon].
Loon's book was originally written for children. Nevertheless, it is a thoroughly enjoyable and surprisingly detailed world history.
Hi, Len:
Fellow Texan Manifesto Joe and I are intrigued by the cultural commentary we find here. A thought or two on the comparison of "USA today" with early '30s Germany: The '20s was a remarkable period of cultural ferment there; but it thrived only briefly, with a fascist movement lurking nastily beneath, simmering up. By the mid-'30s, the Bauhaus architecture, the great UFA cinema, Herman Hesse, the great literature and theater of the time, had all been dispersed or its standard bearers silenced or imprisoned. We haven't seen that here just yet -- but the apparatus seems ominously in place.
If you click on the link to Wikipedia below the definition of tyranny, there is a list of forms of government on the right. Perhaps the Bush administration can more accurately be described as a kleptocracy.
"A kleptocracy (sometimes cleptocracy) (root: klepto+cracy = rule by thieves) is a government that extends the personal wealth and political power of government officials and the ruling class (collectively, kleptocrats) at the expense of the population.
A kleptocracy is fundamentally premised on the Hobbesian social contract, whereby the people give up some rights to an authoritative body in exchange for the perception of basic protections. Basic protections such as defense must be funded by resources provided by the masses to the ruling elite, thus providing the core mechanism for transfer of resources from the masses to the ruling elite." (Article)
That sure sounds like Bu$hCo™ to me. As far as a definition of tyranny goes, I like Madison's:
"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands may justly be pronounced the very definition of a tyranny." -- James Madison
Again, Bu$hCo™ fits the description to a tee. There is nothing more consistent in this administration than its disdain for the constitutional principle of separation of powers. From day one his theory of the unitary executive, his stacking of the Supreme Court with loyal Bushies and the Prosecutors Purge were designed to extend the influence of the administrative branch into the judiciary. The legislative branch was already stacked with loyal Republicans when he got sElected to the White House. Still he had to write more signing statements than all his predecessors together. His main aim has always been to use Madison's definition as an aiming point.
As someone very accurately observed, George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four as a warning. George Bush reads it as a manual of operations. For more on how that manual was developed, I recommend this diary from DKos: Rove's Playbook.
One other thing. Hizzoner, the quote about tyranny you mention is from author Sinclair Lewis, best known for Elmer Gantry.
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." -- Sinclair Lewis
Wonderful story, Sad.
Love the movie and the book too. Not long after seeing the film and chatting about it with some of the city-hippy freaks and libertines to whom my home was a virtual 24/7 salon back in 70s Sydney, I named my Steppenwolf, Carlos.
He's an honery bastard who will not be trifled with. His needs are few but if met, life's peachy. If denied, he bursts from my thoracic cage like an aggro alien and runs amok. Peaceable situations turned ugly fast. Carlos used to call the plays back then because I hadn't paid him the respect of simple acknowledgement.
So we made a pact.
I let him off the leash once every full-moon for a couple of hours and he leaves me alone the rest of the month. Carlos and I have cultivated a nodding acquaintance but never became pals. This detente between ego and id has allowed me to marry happily, be a passable dad, hold down a career for 20 years and maintain friendships.
Without Hesse's insights, life would have been a hell of a lot more un-necessarily cathartic.
AH-OOOoooooooo.....
btw, c'est moi @ 5am. Fuzz.
I gotta love the Brecht shout-out.
Have you read Fear and Misery in the Third Reich and The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui?
Brecht wrote some of the most insightful stuff around on the abuses of power and the complex relationship of the oppressed to the oppressors. Genet delved into that, too. Outside of theatre, there's educator Paulo Freire and his Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Pedagogy of Freedom...Sorry, I turned this into the book club! ;-)
Jon Gregory said...
We haven't seen that here just yet -- but the apparatus seems ominously in place.
Thanks for dropping in Jon. I have put a link to your blog on my blogroll.
Your point is well-taken. As you might have noticed from my profile, I am native Texan of pioneer stock. My ancestors most certainly pre-dated Stephen F. Austin and the railroad. My grandfather's horse was shot out from under him by Commaches. But for fate, I might never have been conceived.
As for analogies, I have come to the conclusion that I didn't move to the "left"; Texas, rather, made a dramatic turn to the right. As of about six months ago, it was not yet as overt as brownshirts in the street, although that "little" fracas involving Tom DeLay's "thugs" in Sugar Land, TX comes very, very close. If "Juanita's" web site is still up, you might find an account of it in her archives. There is also an account of that incident in my archives.
Sadbuttrue, thanks for quoting Madison. It is too bad that Madison is not as well known as Jefferson, Washington or Adams. Madison very nearly drafted the Constitution himself. The debate was about details. Of course, what we know about the Constitution, we owe to Madison. His notes, I believe, are either the only notes that were kept or they are the only notes to have survived. Madison also drafted the Bill of Right and, like Washington, made it clear that the US was in no way founded upon the Christian religion.
Also thanks for the Sinclair Lewis quote. He was absolutely right and I'm afraid it DID happen here.
Hi, Len:
Have put you on the right-hand side of my e-chapbook, standalone. What I'm doing isn't really a blog; but the trades help, so thank you so much. Yeah, there have been some disturbing incidents for several years now, going back to the "yuppie riot" in Florida back in 2000, orchestrated by the Republicans with their bussed-in bourgoisie pretending to be musclemen. I keep expecting them to start singing "Tomorrow Belongs to Me."
keep expecting them to start singing "Tomorrow Belongs to Me."
It's a siren's song and always reminds me of "Ulysses" which I saw as a child.
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