MEMO: to Drew Carey: Naomi Wolfe is exactly correct

3 November 2007

Naomi Wolfe was on Randi Rhodes Wednesday discussing her recent
article in the Guardian, entitled: “Fascist America, in Ten Easy
Steps”. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this has been the
organizing theme of my commentary since 1981 in this media and through
the various manners of distribution associated with Appleseed
Enterprises. And to sharpen the point to an infinitely discrete
dimension, she is exactly correct: everything associated with
conservatism and the Karl Rove wing of the GOP, which includes the
evangelical-industrial complex of Jesus, Inc., Newt Gingrich, the
Contract With America and the authors and proponents of the Project
for the New American Century. In other words,
all the usual suspects.

I assume that the interview is available on the Air America
archives. If you are in a Blue State of mind or you are a military
veteran or subscriber to Reason magazine who tends to associate her/
himself with Drew Carey’s version of libertarianism, you owe it to
yourself to google the Guardian page and read it for yourself. And,
if, in particular, you are a Drew Carey version of libertarianism or a
disciple of Old Will @ aol dot com, or a subscriber to the Wall Street
Journal, Washington Post or NY Times, one of the things you need to
ask yourself is why this was printed in the Guardian and not the Wall
Street Journal, the Washington Post or NY Times. I mean, I’ve sort of
lost track, but doesn’t Robert Murdoch own the Guardian? He is
building his fortune on a Fascist doctrine as a capitalist tool, so,
if he does own the Guardian, then he needs to be given credit for what
seems to be something of an arms-length relationship to the editorial
policies of the news room at the Guardian. At the Wall Street
Journal, the editorial position of the Editorial page is already
Zionist Fascist, as is Roger Ailes and FOX=666 News. The NY Times
considers David Brooks (not David Brock) to be a legitimate journalist
instead of the mercenary journalistic thug and Fascist activist that
he is. And, for all intents and purposes, the only difference between
Len Downie and Wesley Pruden, ideologically, is that Downie has access
to better talent because it is generally the liberal Fascism from the
‘60’s that has all the talent. I mean, even Frank Sinatra voted for
JFK and then moved with organized crime, Southern white racists and
Jesus Freaks to Nixon as a result of the deliberate social
polarization of the anti-war movement’s Trotsky insurgency tactics.

If you are a Drew Carey version of libertarianism, which means
military service was a priority in your life at some point, there is a
reason why Kant wrote Critique of Pure Reason was to inoculate the
field of inquiry from the fallacies of Hume’s epistemology, which is
to say, that perception is reality. Hume was reacting to the
“enthusiasm” of the Glorious Revolution, which was an evangelical
movement as passionate in their convictions as *** Cheney’s core
constituency and misperceived the implications of Newton’s cosmic
paradigm, and, consequently, misapplied the fulcrum Newton supplies to
subjective reality instead of directly to existence, itself. It is
important to understand that perception is A reality, but it is not
THE reality. It is perfectly correct to say that my subjective
reality originates in my subjective perception of existence
independent from my perception, but it is not correct to say that this
subjective reality either represents objective reality, or even,
existence, itself. And this is where Hume jumps the shark,
epistemologically. He is saying perception is reality, A=A and a
logical conclusion leading to fallacy is that we can change reality by
changing our perceptions. This is what Karl Rove is getting at when
he says that perception IS reality. It’s all mind over matter And
where this fits in with the 10 Steps to Fascism has to do with the
role of propaganda in the strategy of a Fascist paradigm to dictate
reality by requiring conformity to a ideological narrative which may
or may not have any existential antecedent. (Like Bushie says, you
either buy the party line or you’re against us. and if you don’t buy
the party line, it’s like what happened to the Dixie Chicks. From
Bushie’s point of view, it is the nature of compassionate
conservatism: I don’t mind and you don’t matter.)

Which is Kant’s complaint. Reason is not uncouple from existence in
the way that Hume posits or it becomes little more than navel gazing.
In this regards, Hume is very Platonic. Plato represents an
epistemology that posits that the only efficacious approach to the
Forms is through meditation, which is to say, cognition. Aristotle
stipulates to this path of inquiry on the condition that this is not
the ONLY means to the Forms and demonstrates a complimentary path of
inquiry by abstracting the Forms from systematic observation of
existence, however tenuous the connection might be. Of course, Newton
represents the fusion of these two methods and fundamentally
reconciles DeCartes and John Locke. Newton is to the Socrate Method
and political science what  is to mathematics.

And what Kant is saying is that Hume is out leaving  of his calculus,
which allows Hume to float off into the ozone and obtain any
convenient result just like Alice’s Restaurant. You can get anything
you want/With David Hume’s epistemology (in the grand traditions of
the field of inquiry initiated by the death of Socrates, David Hume’s
epistemology is the basis for the Wag the Dog communications strategy
of the Karl Rove wing of the GOP and the collective reality of anyone
who continues to score *** Cheney, Alan Greenspan and Hank Paulson
with high job performance ratings).

Kant is saying, Not so much. His Categorical Imperative is the  of
his perceived reality and is the organizing principle of Reason in his
epistemology. It is an irrational structure and has an important
experiential relationship to the Pucker Factor, which is the
organizing principle of Passion. But they are not the same thing and
knowing the difference is a legacy of military service, if unrealized
in the main. This is the point I have been trying to make to
libertarians like Old Will and Drew Carey: the communication strategy
of Fascism, generally, and the Republican Noise Machine, in
particular, is a constant appeal to the Pucker Factor as a substitute
for the Categorical Imperative and the result is mob rule and Ditto
Heads.

By irrational, I mean in the sense that line is irrational and color
is rational (thanx and a tip of the hat to the Phillips Gallery). The
irrational qualities of visual perception are adequately demonstrated
by the famous young woman/old crone gestalt sketch in 7 Habits of
Highly Successful People. There may be a certain Freudian half empty/
half full aspect in the naïve response, but it is the naïve response,
in and of itself, which is of the essence.

The nature of the Categorical Imperative conforms to whatever duty
meant to Drew Carey as a Marine. The Categorical Imperative can set
off the Pucker Factor, but they aren’t the same thing until you act.
The Pucker Factor is the fight/flight response and the embrace/consume
response of the Pleasure Principle. The Pucker Factor is the
organizing principle of Self Esteem. The Categorical Imperative is
necessarily aligned with the Hegelian progression as a north seeking
needle of a compass seeks north and the sunflower the sun. The
Categorical Imperative is what ever it was that motivated the fire
fighters at Ground Zero on 911 and it is the irresistible response to
Yaweh, Queen of Battle, in the field of valor, while the Pucker Factor
counsels discretion. Without the Categorical Imperative, selfishness
is as likely a virtue as generosity of spirit and despotism as likely
an outcome as righteousness. I mean, consider Merrill Lynch and ***
Cheney.

The Categorical Imperative is the organizing principle of the
scholarship of Naomi Wolfe in regards to the 10 steps to Fascism and
the journalism of Dan Balz, generally. There are a lot of Iraqi
journalists who are being killed in response to the Categorical
Imperative and Jean d’Arc and Socrates and Jesus each responded to the
Categorical Imperative while Bill O’Reilly responded to his Pucker
Factor when he avoided military service. As a Navy Brat, he should
have known that his father’s attitude towards the war was a personal
problem, as is the response of the Foreign Service officers who are
balking at serving in Baghdad. The fact that a Baghdad tour of duty
might be a death sentence may be true, but the “Hell, NO! We won’t
go!” response is an artifact of the Pucker Factor and a personal
problem. I agree with the objections to the total jug *** Bushie and
the Rove Republicans have made of everything they touch, but duty
requires them in Baghdad never the less. Duty is a bitch, but it is
She who must be obeyed that is the basis of the rule of Law, the
American Republic and Western Civilization. The Categorical
Imperative is a paradox and, in the field of inquiry, the singular
event permitting the rational disposition of the chaos and absurdity
of armed conflict. The Categorical Imperative is the guiding
principle of pragmatism and the means of illuminating the Shadow which
falls between the Idea and the Realty. Which is why I recommend Naomi
Wolfe’s essay in the Guardian regarding the connection between
conservatism and the 10 steps to Fascism.

And that’s the truth.

Along these lines, Ray Saurez interviewed Clark Kent Ervin of the
Aspen Institute and Mark Kirkorian of the Center for Immigration
Studies in regards to Eric Spitzer’s proposal to issue driver’s
license to undocumented immigrants that tripped up Sen Clinton last
week. From my perspective, Ervin is exactly correct and Kirdorian is
just another Fascist activists and Clinton is exactly correct to
associate herself with Spitzer’s proposal. We should have begun doing
this in 1986 and avoided this whole mess at that time, but the Supply
Side agenda of Grover Norquist essentially siphoned off the taxes
needed to finance this activity to tax cuts for the Bunker Hunt Wall
Street lobby of the Karl Rove wing of the GOP.

Also, Wolfe mentioned at the end of the interview that the role of
lying by Fascists isn’t to conceal the truth but to sow confusion,
which is one of the advantages of David Hume’s epistemology. You can
get anything you want/At Alice’s Restaurant.

And that, too, is the truth.

.

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