Bush W. as braggart may be of interest to those inclined towards unraveling
of the subjective attributes and quirks of the individual persona. It is not
my cup of tea or worthy of intellectual discourse in the context of a thread
riveted to Bush W. as a fascist and his adopted Southern roots. Bush W. as a
fascist and his intimate decision to adopt the historical cultural attributes
of the old Southern ruling class is a markedly different focus than what may
be called in our literature "Texas Braggadocio," . . . which is the title of
an article by Stanley Marcus. (1) There is of course a certain "overpride" -
Marcus used this term, and a tendency towards exaggerated boastfulness
exemplified in books like the 1930's "Texas Braggs."
Texas is in fact a huge state, the largest outside Alaska and their
potatoes, watermelons and trucks - and many of the young boys and girls, are
just as
huge. Over pride fuses with an ideology of conquest of the western frontier
to produce a Braggadocio, that any outsider would called Texas nationalism.
Bush is of course not a "real Texan" but an outsider in a new homeland and
real
Texans are quick to point this out. Apparently, these real Texans find Bush
W. portray of them be a horrible caricature and will in a "matter of fact"
manner instruct one to examine King George's birth certificate. Bush was born
in New Haven, Connecticut, the grandson of a U.S. Senator from Connecticut
and the son of an immigrant from the Northeast whose heart always remained in
Kennebunkport. Maine.
There is something in the word and state of Connecticut that screams
"Yankee" and something about King Authur's Court. Yet Bush is an authentic
cultural
Texan to the same degree and in the same definitions that KRS-1 is a New
Yorker along with the popular rap star Jay-Z.
The political George W., as President is less Texan - with its history
shaping divisions between the western frontier with it's old ideology
expressing
the democratic striving of the small producer versus the ideology centered in
that part of Texas that is Southern or founded on the old slave plantation
system. Bush W. seeming adoption of "Texas Braggadocio," as a device to cover
his spewing forth of nothing less than a modern versions of aristocratic
plantation ideology. This amateur bit of acting fools only the novice who may
share with Bush an award for the "ham of the year."
Waistline
1). Stanley Marcus is considered A Texas icon and was associated with the
famous Neiman Marcus emporium of international distinction. He has been Trustee
of the Southern Methodist University and is author of hundreds of articles in
magazines including Fortune, Atlantic Monthly, and Architectural Digest.
Comment on Bush
Melvin P.
Bush as an alcoholic or sociopath has no interest for me on the A-list,
Marxism-Thaxis or MLL. It is an American axiom that all politicians lie with
a
more than less straight face. Bush as a liar is not what distinguish his body
politic in American history or on the current political landscape. I am not
opposed to or indifferent to assessments of the ego but this is not my concern
in discussing American fascism as a political trend in American politics and
culture.
George W. as a class and representative of a class segment, with its
historical and cultural roots in the pre-Civil War Southern sector of the
ruling
class cast an interesting light on what may be understood as self deception
and
limitations. I guess George W. can be looked at and be understood as a force
of history since he is President of a very powerful country with a massive
and aggressive state authority in the world. His personal limitations as flesh
and the category called "historical limitation" become fused together because
George is "King."
Historical limitations as politics is tricky and complex for me. Historical
limitations as politics were fought out up to the Civil War. In the larger
sense the Civil War, s if was fought out, was not historically inevitable, but
became the inevitable historical consequence of a series of actions and
inaction. My entire thesis concerning George W. the individual fascist, the
definition of fascism and the so-called "Southern take Over of American
Politics"
is that Bush represents an always present political current in American
history. That he is a modern heir of the old Slave oligarchy as a political
and
cultural artifice in the American political landscape needs to be taken
serious.
Therefore, an assessment of George W. on my part would reasonably fall
within the context I set out to describe his actions.
II Class
As a class segment of the capitalist class in general, the Southern ruling
class contained sectors and the society of the plantation South was rent with
intense class contradictions. A sector of the Southern ruling class
understood that slavery faced a material limitation and would sooner or later
be
abolished if for no other reason than the form of the advance of the laboring
process.
Why could not the Southern planter as a class and in its Slave Oligarchy
form compromise and recognize its limitations expressed as sharp political
battles within the state of the American Union? This issue is complex and has
been
debated every since the ending of the Civil War.
In America the sharpest opposition within the capitalist as a class, was to
the Slave Power rather than the slave system. In a like manner the sharpest
opposition within the capitalist as a class, to the body politic of George W.
today is over aspects of his low-tariff, free trade regime that places
premium on America remaining the premier agricultural producer, along side of
heavy
tax cuts for the most wealthy and his apparent regional bias or economic
favoritism towards Southern infrastructure development. Then Bush W. election
was viewed as a Southern coup - illegal, by a segment of the political class -
bureaucracy. There is of course sharp sectarian opposition over his foreign
policy and monetary policy expressed by men such as Ron Paul of Texas 14th
district.
To an oppositional segment of the capitalist class, George W. is portrayed
as a fool - religious zealot, and con man, which in the Twilight Zone World of
American politics and American ideology, is no different from the portrayal
of President Clinton as a con man dubbed "Slick Willie."
I personally doubt that the North would have moved against slavery and gone
to war in the 1860s. The planters understood they would lose in twenty or
forty years what they finally lost in five. The stonewalling from the South
made
it impossible to reconcile the economic and ultimately moral demands of the
North against the slave power. The plantations South was an economic regime
whose form of the laboring process passed into antagonistic interest to the
advance of the industrial regime of the North.
III Limitation and Compromise
This issue of personal and historical limitation is tricky because a
historical limitation - boundary, becomes manifest as a personal limitation as
politics then is fought out in the superstructure of society. The slave power
could not accept its historical and immediate limitations for several reasons.
Or
rather sought to circumvent these limitations, which turned out to be not
possible, due to the subjective factors driving history. The Slave Oligarchy
could not compromise.
One reason was the South's - meaning plantation South, ties to England.
Trade with England was forcing the North and the South to develop into two
separate countries or in different directions. The CULTURE of the slave owning
South - violent, cavalier, chauvinistic - was another reason that did not
allow
for compromise or to passively accept the limitations being imposed upon it by
the economic logic and needs of the industrial North. To this very day this
violent, cavalier and chauvinistic ideology is fused with the culture and
ideology of "state rights" and remains one of the calling cards of the
American
fascists.
Bush W. carries forth this cultural tradition.
When Marx speaks of force being the midwife of every society pregnant with
the new and the overthrow of a class or class segments whose interest becomes
antagonistic to the advance of industry or the general advance of the
laboring process, it is fairly simple to accept this proposition as being
true. It
is another matter to live this process and examine how the individual as
representative of a class or class segment behaves. In the flesh and in real
time, Bush W. as ideologist cannot be reduced to simple categories like
"con-man"
or "fool" or non recovered alcoholic, which are descriptions advanced by his
own opposition without the historical Southern ruling class and OUTSIDE the
Southern ruling class, within the bounds and framework of the sectarian
struggle of the ruling class.
One way or another the ruling class cannot accept its historical limitations
and this applies and applied to the ruling clique of the former Soviet Union
as well. One can of course call the old Soviet leaders fools for failing to
transcend a material limitation but this fails to describe the concrete
phenomenon of the industrial bureaucracy and under what complex of
circumstances
the form of this bureaucracy is open for revolutionary assault or qualitative
change in the structure of society.
This issue of limitations is extremely complex because each individual, if
given ample opportunity, will tend to rise to their own level of personal
incompetence and discover their limitation. This same principle applies to
classes and representative of classes and the Marxist school of thought tends
to
place this limitation or rise to ones level of incompetence in the context of
changes in the mode of production.
One way or another a ruling class cannot let go of old means of production
and the old institutions and artifacts of society by which they have ruled and
harmoniously leap - make a transition, to a new econoic and political order.
Then there is Bush W. who expresses a fascist assault on aspects of the old
industrial superstructure. His specific body politic and approach is that of
the old Slave Oligarchy with its demand for less government administration of
things and a strengthening - enlargement, of the military aspects of
society, combined with a distinct ideology of state rights as his calling
card.
In this concrete meaning - the decay of the industrial artifact or
transition in the industrial mode of producing, and the daily social struggle
to
modernize the infrastructure, Bush is no fool, but represents a distinct
approach
and economic policy. Segments of the bourgeoisie - North and South, are
leading the assault on the old industrial superstructure from the standpoint
of
the preservation of the value producing system as the engine of reproduction.
And the subjective components of the social revolution are advancing in a most
complex manner.
IV. Southern heritage
Bush W. may be foolish but he is not to be understood as a fool or con-man.
His personal ideology - violent, cavalier, and chauvinistic, is part of the
American ideology that is our Southern history and heritage and this very
same cultural artifact sits at the base of our military culture with its deep
Southern roots.
This "deep Southern root thing" is not the meaning of swaggering . . . but
rather means "to be cavalier and to embody an ideology of honor" - Southern
brand. Swaggering may be applied to myself or even "fool" - (which is probably
accurate given my three marriages and marrying the same woman twice, which
means three and a half marriages). To swagger in our culture as a general
category is related to Northern culture and today is best exemplified in our
Northern Rap Boyz. A Southern swagger is even more different because it is
related
to the growth of Southern cities in the post WW II era and a segment of a
class of new Southern industrial workers. In my opinion this new class of
Southern industrial workers evolved in correspondence to what was called
Northern
cool in the post WW II period.
The Civil War in America was the most traumatic event in our history and one
belittles this at their own peril. This does not mean that the genocide of
the Indian was less important or the thief of half of Mexico's territory is a
small matter. What is meant is that the Civil War and its results provide
anyone willing to look a unique opportunity to understand the American
ideology
and its Regional bias or what might be called an important subjective aspect
of the Colonial Question that is North and South or Wall Street imperialism's
domination over the state of the United States of North America.
The Southern ideology and culture, with its deep seated expressions of
personal guilt and remorse is fused with a cavalier demeanor that allowed and
provided the ideological framework to fight on the wrong side of history - and
also, produced a distinct body of literature with writers like say Alice
Walker
and Toni Morrison, who are not my personal favorite. The warrior class of
our state and country has as its ideological center this Southern ideology of
"my country right or wrong" or fighting the good fight without considerations
as to what is justice.
Bush is a living embodiment of this. He is not running a con game. Here is
how the Texan and Southern author Michael Lind decries this roots of this
cultural thing called cavalier in contradistinction to the meaning of swagger.
"The wealthy families who for centuries have dominated the politics and the
economy of the South, from Virginia to Texas, have their roots in Britain,
not among the ccivic burghers but among the rural aristocracy. The "cavaliers"
are the heirs of medieval knights, not medieval merchants. Moving to the
western hemisphere in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, these British
aristocrats and their upwardly mobile imitators, on the slave plantations of
the
West Indies and the North American mainland, created feudal systems without
the reciprocal obligations to the rest of society which at least in theory,
moderated the rapacity of feudal European aristocracies. These British -
American planters, and their Spanish and Portuguese and French speaking
equivalents
in the western hemisphere, specialized in exploiting slave labor in the
export of crops and raw materials to Western Europe." (page 162)
The book "Made In Texas" gives a concise outline of the economic and social
fissures within George W. social base. Earlier material was presented
outlining some of representative Ron Paul's attacks from the 14th district on
the
police state polices of the current Bush administration.
There is a deeper issue of George W. Southern religious - (not economic)
base, that is the meaning of the Bible Belt and its fissures. Given the
"anti-intellectualism" of the South in our history, there is of course the
Southern
recruitment of the Northern intellectual - the so-called Eastern
establishment, as neco-con.
This just touches upon the most visible aspects of American ideology and
politics.
Melvin P.
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