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Norman Mailer:
Gaining an empire, losing democracy?
Iraq is an excuse By Norman Mailer (Tribune Media Services) Tuesday, February 25, 2003
By downslope I'm referring not only to the
corporate scandals, the church scandals and the FBI scandals. The country
has gone kind of crazy in the eyes of conservatives. Also, kids can't read
anymore. Especially for conservatives, the culture has become too sexual.
Iraq is the excuse for moving in an imperial
direction. War with Iraq, as they originally conceived it, would be a
quick, dramatic step that would enable them to control the Near East as a
powerful base - not least because of the oil there, as well as the water
supplies from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers - to build a world empire.
The Bushites also expect to bring democracy
to the region and believe that in itself will help to diminish terrorism.
But I expect the opposite will happen: terrorists are not impressed by
democracy. They loathe it. They are fundamentalists of the most basic
kind. The more successful democracy is in the Near East - not likely in my
view - the more terrorism it will generate.
The only outstanding obstacle to the drive
toward empire in the Bushites' minds is China. Indeed, one of the great
fears in the Bush administration about America's downslope is that the
"stem studies" such as science, technology and engineering are all faring
poorly in U.S. universities. The number of American doctorates is going
down and down. But the number of Asians obtaining doctorates in those same
stem studies are increasing at a great rate.
Looking 20 years ahead, the administration
perceives that there will come a time when China will have technology
superior to America's. When that time comes, America might well say to
China that "we can work together," we will be as the Romans to you Greeks.
You will be our extraordinary, well-cultivated slaves. But don't try to
dominate us. That would be your disaster. This is the scenario that some
of the brightest neoconservatives are thinking about. (I use Rome as a
metaphor, because metaphors are usually much closer to the truth than
facts).
What has happened, of course, is that the
Bushites have run into much more opposition than they thought they would
from other countries and among the home population. It may well end up
that we won't have a war, but a new strategy to contain Iraq and wear
Saddam down. If that occurs, Bush is in terrible trouble.
My guess though, is that, like it or not,
want it or not, America is going to go to war because that is the only
solution Bush and his people can see.
The dire prospect that opens, therefore, is
that America is going to become a mega-banana republic where the army will
have more and more importance in Americans' lives. It will be an ever
greater and greater overlay on the American system. And before it is all
over, democracy, noble and delicate as it is, may give way. My long
experience with human nature - I'm 80 years old now - suggests that it is
possible that fascism, not democracy, is the natural state.
Indeed, democracy is the special condition -
a condition we will be called upon to defend in the coming years. That
will be enormously difficult because the combination of the corporation,
the military and the complete investiture of the flag with mass spectator
sports has set up a pre-fascistic atmosphere in America already.
Norman Mailer's latest book is "The Spooky
Art: Some Thoughts on Writing." This comment was adapted from remarks Feb.
22 to the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities and distributed by
Global Viewpoint/Tribune Media Services International. |