Psychoanalysis of Torture Logic

Psychoanalysis of Torture Logic

Or: Freud meets Abu Ghraib …With a little prayer at the end


“Tortured Logic”, title of Anthony Lagouranis’ New York Times (Op-ed 2.28.2006), is apt for the rationale of any process that leads to imprisonment of a soldier for following what is believed to be a legal order, in this case use of dogs in interrogations. Bringing this under incriminating definition of torture subjects him to contradictory demands: whether he follows, or refuses to follow, the orders, he gets punished.

In broad terms, no one could voluntarily will to put themselves in such a position. Therefore, on Kant’s categorical imperative, according to which whatever is impossible to will is wrong, the process leading to this point is wrong also, since contradictions are only implied by contradictions.

If, to this, is linked the subject matter leading to the contradiction, torture, the double entendre of the title vivifies the aptness. The tortured logic that has gone on in the process somewhere is the logic of torture, in which a system* creates tasks so abominable they require “being routinely brutal” in cruel, inhumane, degrading ways, and no one could want to do them. The ones at the bottom of the ladder get called upon to carry out what polite conversation wants to keep out-of-sight, out-of-mind. But that won’t work today so easily. The average German surely knew less about what Hitler’s Nazis did to Jews than average Americans know what has been done in their name in torture prisons. That is festering somewhere not too far under the surface of collective consciousness.

The inner logic captured by the double entendre is a psycho-logic: the psychodynamic playing out of a particular mentality shared by those who put Bush into office and promoted the Iraq war. “Reaganesque” is the tag Paul Wolfowitz put on its style. It was assumed from the outset that the war would be intelligence-intensive. This meant harsh interrogations to extract information from those sworn to silence. As a matter of a shared mentality -- “group-think”, as it was called in media consciousness for a brief period – carrying out these assumptions was delegated to the dark precincts, the agencies of the collective unconscious. What they do is split-off from the ambient media talk circuitry. “We don’t want to hear from that”. Then flatly denied when exposed. “We do not torture.” Even without further analysis, this qualifies as classical repression.

Further analysis comes forth, however, when the torture perversions are taken as symptoms. The sadistic content of the Abu Ghraib pictures was as if it had been scripted by Freud: “The manifest content (of the fantasies, which the performances act out) is of being pinioned, bound, beaten painfully, whipped, in some way mishandled, forced to obey unconditionally, defifled, degraded. More rarely, some kind of mutilation is included in the content.” (“The Economic Problem of Masochism”, 1924) These perverse brutalities are traced to unconscious dominance of the masochistic, self-punishing trend, reversed by the pictures into sadism on “towelheads”.

Moreover, Freud found that the suffering which a person, or group of people, inflict on themselves by self-destructive lines of thought is very much bound up with a twisted “love of Father”. This occurs when the child has been made to feel worthless and degraded by abuse that it is received by a show of affection. Still further, the deep connection between paranoia, religion and homosexuality emerge here: “We have translated the words “unconscious feeling of guilt” as meaning a need for punishment by some parental authority. Now we know that the wish to be beaten by the father, which is so common, is closely connected with the other wish, to have some passive (feminine) sexual relations with him, and is only a regressive distortion of the latter.”

If the torture that came to light at Abu Ghraib, Guantanomo and elsewhere are symptoms then the regressive masochistic trend defines the condition of which they are symptomatic. The symptom is, like the dream, an out-growth, or “expression” of the underlying processes from which they emerge, and these mark the psychic condition. Whether the term “diseased” strictly applies or not, other recognizably similar expressions point to a common source of psychic disturbance.

Another major symptom of the condition is the cul de sac U.S. policy has reached in Iraq. Never invited in, never asked to impose a government, now whether it stays or leaves, responsibility for great loss of life falls on its shoulders. This is argued in detail elsewhere.

The condition these symptoms express is conflicted ambivalence. One line of ideas and course of action is met by another exactly opposed to it. A person driving themselves to do what is instinctively resisted. The numerous cases of lethal accidents, over-reactions and “friendly fire” deaths in the Gulf War II indicate such an ambivalent condition. The latter phrase itself is the soothing token-double reversal masking the pathos. In this split-off state, commitment is unwittingly made to both sides of competing ideas or issues, thus setting up the situation of being counted the enemy of both in later clashes. This just what is happening in Iraq: “I can tell you the main reason behnd all our woes – it is America. Everything that is going on between Sunnis and Shiites, the troublemaker in the middle is America.” (Niclolad Kristof quoting a Baghdad clothing merchant named Abdul-Qader Ali, “The Soldiers Speak. Will President Bush Listen?” NY Times op-ed 2.28.2006 )

Putting this together with the above, psychoanalysis of the condition would be this: conflicted ambivalence toward the Punishing Father. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have delivered to America exactly it ordered up..

It should be added that this does not contradict, but supplements, deMausean psychohistorical analysis of the group psychic condition in terms of rebirth-compulsion. Bush’s projected Perpetual War on Terror is waged on both levels: as re-birth ritual by people who unconsciously fantasize themselves stuck in the birth canal; and as libidinized anal rape. By participating in libidinized anal rape ritual on Muslims with the Father, we can be reborn. That is the two-trauma dream thought, Oedipal and birth, driving the psychic condition.
Freud’s words near the end of “The Economic Problem of Masochis” read like a prophetic description of ’06 deconstruction: “(The hidden meaning of ) moral masochism becomes clear to us. Conscience and morality arose through overcoming, desexualizing, the Oedipus-complex; in moral masochism morality becomes sexualized afresh, the Oedipus-complex is reactivated, as regression from morality back to the Oedipus-complex is under way. This is to the advantage of neither of the person concerned nor of morality.”
****/
Reading: Moral masochism, the love of getting punished for wrongdoing, brings back childhood Oedipal conflict with Father, including defense against punishment by “being good”; but because this is a regressive position, morality having been a refined development of the earlier harsh external control, neither God nor morality benefit. When conscience gives way to obedience, reliance on the law replaces grace.
****/
“An individual may, it is true, preserve the whole or a certain amount of his morality alongside his masochism, but, on the other hand, a good part of his conscience may become swallowed up by his masochism. Further, the masochism in him creates a temptation to “sinful acts” which must then be expiated by the reproaches of the sadistic conscience (as in so many Russian character-types) or by chastisement from the great parental authority of Fate.”
****/
Reading: “Conscience swallowed by (reversed to sadistic) masochism” surely describes the words of one Abu Ghraib guard convicted of torture: “The half of me that was Christian said it was wrong, but the half of me that was fighting there loved to see the guy piss on himself.” The words “Chastisement from the great parental authority of Fate” lead to:
****/
“In order to provoke punishment from this last parent-substitute the masochist must do something inexpedient…”
****/
Read: bomb Iran
****/
“….act against his own interests, ruin what prospects which the real world offers him, and possibly destroy his own existence in the world of reality.”

******/
Fate’s answer, that would be. Hubris. Karma. In human terms, a psychoanalytic condition. May knowledge prevent it from happening.

HE WINS AGAIN

HE WINS AGAIN


If there is anything to the old dictum “Whatever doesn’t destroy me makes me stronger,” G.W. Bush is flexing big muscle tonight.. The attempts to destroy him have not only failed, they have left him the one looking level headed, consistent, in touch with reality.

No doubt Cindy Sheehen, followed by hurricane Katrina, gave the President a black eye. The picture of him speaking in New Orleans over a podium with the words “The Worst Disaster to ever hit America” conveyed an unintended surreal sight-gag. This was the “tipping point” when the administration’s balloon started cracking up, to mix metaphors. But when it came down to it, what could he have done differently at the time to make a big difference? No one has pointed that out. It’s all Monday morning quarterbacking.

Then there continues to be the dirty flank attack on the Vice President’s office by indictment of Cheney’s aid ‘Scooter’ Libby in the CIA leak investigation. Still brewing under the radar somewhere, but it looks more like fizzle than stout. Vindictive nit-pickers and heel-biters.

Then there was to be the Supreme Court Showdown over Alito, with the liberal Democrat’s uncorking all their guns, even the nuclear option (filibuster) to prevent conservative dominance of the third branch of governmenet. Well, the put up a squawk about his “extremism,” citing attitudes toward ‘minorities’, and abortion. But one key witness to that, a Princeton alumnus wanting to address the Senate confirmation committee on the candidate’s link to an ultra-right wing group “Concerned Alumni of Princeton”, was scratched, apparently by a deal cut between Ted Kennedy and Arlen Specter “not to go there.” A look at the situation shows that the funder of “CAP” and its notorious publication “Prospect” went on to acquire National Review, hire Jonah Goldberg and Rich Lowry, and its basic positions taken back in l972 were the ones that got Bush elected in ’00 and re-elected in ’04. The charge of “extremism” based on those kinds of credentials, even while directly on point for liberals, puts them out of touch with the dominant thought strands, as if whining about what the voters had approved, already.

Next came Dick Cheney’s accidental shooting of his hunting partner and the WH reaction. Boy the media mad dogs pounced on that one. It was “GOTCHA!” to the nines; mainly because he “got himself” by firing his weapon carelessly. The vindictive mind-set always revels in this “they are doing it to themselves” charge, it externalizes their own self-destructiveness which they can proceed to try to destroy. Bunch of humanly insensitive bitches, these liberals.

Then … whisk whisk … Bush gets blindsided on his strong point, national security. The massive outcry whipped up by the media, key legislators, across party lines and alignments on other issues had one theme in focus: hatred of Bush, and the feeling of “one-upping” him on national security, the old “we’ll protect you; they won’t” card he and Rove have played so often, so well. Again, “well hoist on his own petard” The Nation’s William Greider put it, admitting the substance was bogus the entire uproar mass hysteria, but he is delighted at the turn of events, because Bush had it coming, anyway. But that is surely shortsighted. Not only does sit encourage fake-hate publicity stunts, it leaves him in the position of level-headed realist, under constant merciless, manipulated attack.

If this is all his political enemies have to put up – exposing themselves as no more than second guessers, nit-pickers, and out of touch hysterics – he comes off looking stronger than ever.

TALK

TALK

How everything good in the 60’s got reversed in the ‘06’s


I. THEN

In the 60’s, talk was therapeutic.

It “cleared the air”. The times opened up several new venues:

-stone rap sessions
-open mics at rallies
-getting together in groups to talk everything out
-in conversation: listening to another speaking in their own way until finished;
-and, perhaps most importantly, learning not to interrupt the near sacred silence in the air after everything that needs saying has been.

This last is perhaps most important because it preserves continuity of relatedness. There is nothing to go back to, get out, or get over later.

This deepens the veins of communication. Books with names like “Deep Subjectivity” appeared on tables at the American Philosophical Association the last time I went. Confessional poetry and explain-it-all literature abounded. Talk of various drug highs abounded, with LSD trippers always getting the last word on the far out. Ecstatic states, re-birthing trauma, peak experiences, parapsychology, channeling, cults, revival of ancient gnostic and esoteric traditions ...all new head-spaces calling for communication. As a totality, what was opened up from the psychic depths of human experience went far beyond the ability of any single person to master, everyone was totally a part of it in their way. No doubt much was lost in what was only there, then. Each his his thing, his way, and that was also a new dimension of privacy the World (speaking esoterically) would be jealous of.

***/

-This phenomenon repeats the mechanism of Freud’s “talking therapy” at the generational group level, but wasn’t carried through. The very term “baby boomers” (in-joke for post WWII brats who protested Vietnam) is a belittling self-image condescension they have worn to hel

In opening up new lines of communication with each other, the youth were acting out what was necessary to reclaim their humanity under the conditions the times imposed. The act of talking, itself, with free, unjudged associations, has the effect of integration and healing.

This goes with the idea that communication is sublimated sexual intercourse. “Cutting off talk” is sealing the libido barrier; also, coitus interruptus. “Suunis Suspend Talks” with Shiites in Iraq cuts the bonds of a unity government, and was therefore reversed, it was announced next day. “Unity government” is a libido-token now backed by force of the U.S. military. The message: “You will get along (whether you like each other or not)”. Such a policy predicates on a conjunction of internalized opposites that stand no chance of ever getting worked through by open, full, honest talk. This is another illustration of the self-defeating logic of this policy.

****/
II. NOW

Far from Therapeutic, Talk can be poisonous

There are mechanisms involved in the neuro-psychological processing apparatus, according to Freud, that can convert libido into substances toxic to the healthy system. The effect of carrying reverse-text-token dichotomies by group value-identification terms, I think it can be shown, is one of them.

This being the hypothesis, the task of tracing what happened between the 60’s and the ‘06’s can be narrowed to the focus on how the anti-liberal forces hi-jacked group communication using such terms.

There were three major components, or ‘moments’ of the right-wing reclamation project: Talk Radio as style; Right-wing themes as content(e.g., “Feminazi”); take-out of content tokened at a displaced textual level.

These can be succinctly illustrated by: Rush Limbaugh; his trademark double reverse put-down token “Feminazi” (reverses the charge of “nazi” from him to them, based on joking reversal of cruelty toward Jews); and, the attempt to impose democracy (oxymoronic conjunct) on Iraq.

For over two decades now, the dulcet tones of Rush Limbaugh have rippled through the radiowaves of the south, his “feminazis” shtick coined from back when the feminist movement briefly had its day. Radio itself, reviving old currents of imagination of subject matter, was re-emerging somewhat as urban sub-culture rival to soap-opera TV communication.

Children of the conservative counter movement to the ultra-liberal 60’s inherited its gains of deeper subjectivity, on-campus freedoms, accessibility to its media stars’ human side – along with the unreconstructed group-Father attitudes. This allowed them to process generational sibling-rivalry bonds latent in the “baby boomers” in moralistic terms. Those who could regard themselves as having kept faith with the Fathers who foisted off Vietnam could grammatize their reactions to the rebellious ones as having defied not only the law, but principles of duty and God. In short, of having gone to the devil; become “sinful”. Thus they gave themselves permission to appropriate all the quips, gestures, slang words, insights of the “lost” psychedelic sub-culture; thinking to redeem, and to renew them and themselves through youth church ties. Thus all America could be brought closer to God by the next generation or two, the thinking likely went.

Reversal of “liberal” as positive token for permissiveness, for which the 60’s was most noted, to negative token carrying latent judgment of The Almighty, was accomplished, in talk, by Ronald Reagan, using the “abortion issue” as content. What is most ecstatically positive, organically speaking, is the sexual climax, the involuntary orgasmic release response, in W. Reich’s terms. This, the most powerful dynamic motivational component in the instinctual drive to reproduce the species, is not grammatized in the public forum where the Father’s presence has dominated parental group discourse. Preventing women in general from sharing volupuosities of the orgasm reflex may, indeed, have been one of the deeper unconscious motives of male God religion. In any case, the Return of the Repressor, Reagan, survivor of the bullet thrown at him by readers of Pierre Salinzer, is able to smear the entire Woodstock generation experience with blows from the bully pulpit. “Liberals”. The way he said it. The greata communicator. “Support the abortion industry,” Archbishop John O’Connor adds, comparing the slaughter of the unborn to the Nazi holocaust of Jews.

This is only one, though a major one, of the reversals in sign-use brought by Reagan. Another was use of “Contras” for “freedom fighters” in Nicaragua. As something we were supposed to be for, if we supported Reagan, this text reversed that, even as events on the ground reversed the token of democracy. (These were hired killers of Somaza’s old regime defeated by the Sandanistas.)

The pivot of the reversal is always attachment of something judgmental and punitive, associated with a sexual matter, to some necessary, would-be-positive element in the group dynamic situation. The conjunction suffocates the would-be-positive element; blackens it; makes it poisonous. To love “The Contras”?


The ’06 terminus of TALK TAKEOVER is in the oxymoron of “imposed democracy”: Overthrowing the head of state of a foreign government – “regime change” – on the pretext of imminent threat to U.S. security; ….

With a pre-arranged plan of setting up an international corporate bazzar for the helping nations and industries afterward, rubber stamped by a politics claiming to represent ‘the Iraqi people’, but actually manipulated behind the scenes. And a foreign policy pre-scripted by the neocons to attack Iran next.

The deep connection is this. “Democracy”, as a form of government, is based on the same instinct of a group of people to “talk it out”, as emerged full force in the 60’s. Such it was on Athens’ podium in Socrates trial. There are accusations, charges, and a response. After both sides are heard, they vote. But this can only manifest at the high peak that Greek civilization had reached at the time. Where there is a built-in systematic bias, the requirement of hearing both sides before impartial judges, essential to justice in the objective sense, is defeated. One defense of democracy as a form of government is that it makes for an inherently more peaceful nation. Whether true or not, this idea is a repetition of the 60’ talking revolution, exported to Iraq, where the conditions for it working do not exist, by those who picked up on the external “that” (the text of democracy) without knowing its “what” (feeling toward the tokens that make it work)

*****/

In sum. The good functions of talk, per se -- cleansing attitude, emptying emotion, balancing judgment – reverse into their opposite when used in the right-wing political reaction. Instead, it conjoins what is highest with a neutralizing bring-down, anti-ecstatic opposite; biases attitudes; and unbalances judgment. All because the deep motive for talk as public activity has shifted from positive purposes – freedom and creativity – to reactive control. The latter is not always negative and is of course so regarded by those who are pro-Bush and the “war on terror”, but if these arguments are correct, in today’s context, they have been spun in opposition to true liberalism to sustain an entirely illusional reality.

When the text does not square with its token’s context, it does liberate but enslaves.

Portal of Explanation

Portal of Explanation

The following is a sustained argument in four parts that the firestorm* over United Arab Emirates ownership of US seaport facilities can be explained by Freudian psychodynamics; specifically, as unconsciously acting out defense against the group-fantasy of anal male rape. (“Gaynxiety”)


1. Hysterical over-Reaction.

David Brooks, right-wing New York Times columnist, speaks for a large segment of expert opinion on the pertinent facts of the port deal:

“But let’s be clear: the opposition to the acquisition by Dubai Ports World is completely bogus,” he writes. “The deal would have no significant effect on port security. Regardless of who operates the ports, the Coast Guard…Customs Service…harbor patrols, police...do their job” of handling physical security. (“Kicking Arabs in the Teeth”, New York Times, 2.23.06 A27)

Contrast the previous day’s New York Post editorial:

“At last: a uniter, not a divider.
“There stood President Bush yesterday, vowing to veto legislation that would prevent a company owned by the United Arab Emirates from taking operational control of six of the nation’s ports – including New York and New Jersey.” Jersey’s Sen. Jon Corzine has noisily filed suit to block the deal, citing concern for the security of his state’s people.

The Post’s editors go on to say “The UAE – and, specifically, Dubai – has been a breeding ground for terrorism …banking system provided most of the case for the 9/11 hijackers…stonewalls U.S. Treasury Department’s efforts to track al Qaeda’s bank accounts…” etc. Others link two of the 9/11 hijackers.”

Attention is called here to the enormity of the gap between sober-sided fact, over against the tenuous threads linked to terror threat. The Post’s eds are speaking with/for the “unified” – against Bush, on this one – but pulling threads to inflate threats of terror like crazy. Having no fact to support their case, there is nothing to which they can appeal except to the source of the inflation, itself – the unconscious fantasy complex.

The one thing the serious commentators agreed on was the facts in no way warranted the hullabaloo. From Tom Friedman to George Will and elsewhere, this was the reality-based judgment. The orchestrated massive outcry was the paranoid, narcissistic, homosexual complex Freud found in the case of Daniel Shreber. It is a peculiar kind of perverse sexual energy discharged along paths first established in early childhood (with whatever trauma/abuse); later revived in regressed states as unconscious templates of token repetition.


2. The psychodynamics is in the Sign-use connections

The mass reaction to talk of “vulnerability”, “penetration”, “putting Arabs in charge of national security” in regard to ports, must, from the above assesement of the facts, be considered the tokens directing discharge of the peculiar sexual perversion underlying the hysterical overreaction.

This is only the first step in understanding it; without it, however, predicating on a group phenomena, the direction to look in for its explanation is undetermined. With it, and with Freud’s deciphering of dream-thoughts, the explanation in terms of motive is given by the symbolic character of the tokens.

These converge unmistakably on the fantasy of anal rape. The “port” is the harbor, where ships put in. It is the ship’s left side; displacing the “port holes” “below”, it becomes the backside, especially of “portly” people. Repeated pictures of dockside packages unleaded by cranes, from trucks, on ramps with Fox NEWS ALERT voices warning of possible weapons they might conceal, heightens the arousal. Augmented again by announcers seeming to jump up and down in their seats. Add in “vulnerability to penetration”, and the motive to ward off anal rape threatened by Arabs emerges on its own, even without the background of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, etc..


3 Political Exploitation of the group fantasy.

There is no doubt but the media has whipped up the case to banter Bush. Lou Dobbs, New York Rep. King, Sen. Shumer, practically all joined Corzine’s chorus. One source attributed ultra right-wing commentator Michael Savage with flicking the bic on this as a national issue, but the firestorm it set off quickly took on a life of its own.

Though essentially innocent of wrongdoing on this one means little. They’ve stolen his thunder on national security. The fact that the threat is entirely bogus just makes retaliation by the “united” more delicious. Giving back what they got (combining the push-pull of fetal-placental relations with unconscious anal rape fantasy reversal).

He can even be charged, harmlessly, with their hysteria. “What WERE You Thinking?” editorials blared. “Prez is Nuts.” Turning over control of our vulnerable, easily penetrated “ports” to swarthy Arabs. Bush didn’t do that? …characteristic of this administration. This is the unconscious thought explaining what is being acted out politically.

The political pivot that is that by turning against Bush in this way, those who have used him and his line to bugger everyone else can simply shift over from Republican to Democrat and continue the same pattern of abuse without missing a beat. On to Iran and China. Thus, upstate NY Rep. Peter King, prominent Catholic, and downstate NY Senator Charles Schumer, prominent Jew, were still out front on TV talk shows Sunday, conjoining the opposites: a show of unity across political, religious, regional boundaries, just like the Post said.

But even this all-out assault may fail to set Bush back. After the quickly arranged 45 day “cooling off” period, during which the Arab owned Dubai Port World company modifies its profile, his may appear the level-headed response to his hater’s demonstrated irrationality.




4. Timing
Though the deal was several months old, it only became big news during the week following Dick Cheney’s shooting accident.

The swap-off of energy is explained, again, through the group fantasy dynamics.

The story of Cheney was surely risible. Tough talking man’s man peppers hunting companion in face with birdshot. Another enfeebled daddy gets his karmic thunder stolen. Hee Haw – but knock it off. He’s still the V.P., there’s still a war on terror going on, “No! No! – We don’t hate him, we love him!” This is the mechanism of “reaction formation”: reversing the death-wish impulse toward The Father (in fantasy) into Love-wish expression. The symbolism of getting shot by the surrogate Father, carried by identification with the victim Harry Wittington, pushes this Dark Rapist Killer Monster image from among the most ancient among human archetype to the limit – too close to consciousness. Reaction formation, acquired elsewhere from personal childhoods, kicks in below the surface, converging with low poll numbers for the President, neutralizing the blame both bear. The media was compelled to turn FROM the Cheney story, by the consideration of not overly-offending Father; the symbolic route the unconscious followed was TO the bogus Port security threat; the psychodynamic motive is therefore defense against anal rape threat from Father, displaced onto “His enemies”, Arabs (Allah worshippers).

Self-Defeating Logic

SELF-DEFEATING LOGIC/ WIT’S END:

THE STORY OF AMERICAN HISTORY TODAY 2.26.2006



SELF-DEFEATED LOGIC: U.S. policy in Iraq ….

The U.S.* is now demanding a unity* (non-sectarian democratic) government to be set up and functional in Iraq before it can pull out (or pull down) its military presence there. Ambassador Zalmay Khalid has stated American money will not be used to support sectarian* (read: Muslim) politics (read: al Sadr’s militia). His remarks were denounced by Iraq’s Prime Minister as helping inflame destruction of the holy Shiite Mosque in Samarra.

But Tom Friedman on ABC’s Sunday talk show stated the obvious when he said sectarianism* is what politics there is all about. What is being demanded is therefore impossible, a mere word construct.

Moreover, it U.S. actions that have rendered it so. First, all Baathist (Saddam Hussein’s) party members were to be excluded from the new government by decree of Paul Bremer. Then, to get national services, not to say security forces operating, that had to be rescinded, leading to Suuni’s running the infrastructure. That was gong to be smoothed over by “democracy”, with the likes of Alawi and Chalabi cutting the deals behind the scenes. But with a large turn-out, the Shia predictably got the votes and were not inclined to make concessions. Many of the police agencies, especially in the south close to Iran, were of this sect. Thus, U.S. support for the government in effect arms both sides of impending violent sectarian conflicts. This is a null-case option.

The only alternative is take over by a unity* government – but if the democratic* vote didn’t produce it, what’s left?

Now comes the kicker. The only point on which Suunii and Shia vehemently agree is getting the U.S. the hell out of their coundtry.

And this rounds out the self-defeating position “from the other side”, so to speak.
What is demanded as the condition for pulling out – a non-sectarian government – had been defeated already by previous actions. And if, per impossible, it could be met, that would be a defeat as well.


THE LOGIC OF THE SELF-DEFEATING (originating in the psychodynamics of child abuse, explained in detail elsewhere)

The double null case scenario that has played out in Iraq is a predictable outcome of the mentality that elected* George W. Bush; laid over onto Americans who submitted to his bait-switch rhetoric (from “compassionate” to “faith based” conservative), … watched the WTC towers implode on TV; …. protested (many did) but could not stop, the relentless, lying buildup toward the Iraq war; … cringed under the cruelty of “Shock and Awe” and the destruction of Baghdad; … cried out in deepest shame at the Abu Ghraib pictures; …endured crypto-sectarian violence unleashed against homosexuals and pro-choice “liberals” in the ’04 election; …: the sub-group mentality responsible for actively bringing these about is historically tabbed, now. “neoconservatives” or “neocons”); also – using -- the Republican Party. It developed a cult-like ideology, centered around defense of right-wing Israeli Likkud party positions, represented here by the link between Netanyahu and extremist Southern sectarians Falwell, Robertson, Land, (unreconstructed Southern Baptist types) et al. This political bond between religious right wing conservatism of Christian evangelicals (“Bush’s base”) and their Likkud cohorts in the Holy Land, as we once called it, could was a witches brew worthy of the Elders of Zion, themselves (fraudulent authors of the “Protocols” everyone in the Arab world reads) Its outcome, for America, is the picture of Paul Wolfowitz saying “Reaganesque. That was the only thing we could all agree on in shaping Mid-East foreign policy” at the beginning of the Bush administration.

The inner side of the crypto-sectarian neocon movement is the token “Zion”: as in, “the Law shall go forth from” when the faithful Jews return to Israel; “ZionISM” (late 19th century idea of Jews returning to Jerusalem, e.g., Theodore Hertzl), “Zionist State”, now used officially of Israel (by this President, G.W. Bush, with Ariel Sharon). As a sectarian* token, this represents (a.) an escalation via linguistic boot-strapping of Israel as a religious state; (b.) psychosemiotic injection of a sacral term as referentially descriptive into American discourse; (c.) tacit marriage of their Old Testament God* to the Protestant New Testament God* under which the U.S. constitution of this country was signed; and (d.) tacit conscription of the general citizenry it governs to Zionist Jewish causes. Which, it is relevant to note, lest we be charged with anti-Semitism, 70% of Jews in the U.S. oppose, according to a recent poll. (Compared with the major Jewish and neocon organizationa.) In psychopolitical terms, this is equivalent to having your portside shanghaied. It is a conjunction of religious opposites – the two uses of God* -- under a political umbrella, with differences seldom mentioned, much less aired. When war policy is made on pretenses of defending religious, “Judeo-Christian”, “Values of Western civilization”, but predicated on such a self-contradictory union of opposites, the result of the process can only play out membership in the double null class of options in Iraq.

In Sum: when the logic of a policy that is based on a religious identity, and that religious identity is not consistent with itself, that policy, by its logic, is self-defeating. The more the difference is masked by the rhetoric of “common terrorist enemy”, sealed with blood, the bigger the difference the differences masked make. The success of the manipulated U.S. (Great Britain)-Israel war on Iraq and the Arab world in general would mean the break-out of sectarian opposition between those who hi-jacked America’s religious heritage in the first place, which made such a war unfold

Do myths exist?

Do Myths exist?


Perhaps it might be said that “6,000,000 died in the Holocaust” shouldn’t be challenged as a sign-use construct because it has “truthiness” -- even if the figure is mythic** and the description is sacralized.
** The same number is used three times as in “Save Six Million Men and Women in Eastern Europe” in March 1920 NYTimes ad.

Pardon, but I must submit in reply that the same could be argued for publishing The Protocols of The Elders of Zion – perhaps with a warning of fraud and disclaiming approval. “The authors certainly know what the Jew is like, how he thinks, whether they were Jews themselves or not,” would be the unconscious up-take of instinctive anti-semtism. In other words, it communicates “truthiness, ” to them. One man’s truthiness can be another man’s lie, which is one good reason not to predicate on mythic use of terms. “Truthiness” unleashes fantasy to search for fact, the way the Iraq war took shape.

If these were widely published, more people would likely start thinking along those lines. Why all the hush-hush about “The Holocaust,” that European countries would imprison “deniers” of it? If the record is clear and distinct enough to predicate so much on, why not welcome all talk and discussion? At bottom, I think, is a fear of mass contagion. Once started, where can it lead but to “revisionism”?

To say such and such* is a “myth” is to say it* exists as a collective mental content: something* a group as a whole (which may be a sub-group of a larger whole) imagine and fantasize about, whether true or not, though it is thought to be most likely based on fact. Thus urban myths abound: Peeping Toms peering into teen-age girl’s bedroom windows, “basically destroying my daughters feeling of security, for the rest of her life,” her father said on TV. The content is something the group wants to believe. It materializes out of the blue, like Smiths, because they want it to be. The goal of action, Freud held, is to bring about a match between desire and perception. In other words, we are ‘driven’ to fill the Big Screen with what it pleases us to see, and we won’t stop until it’s there.

To argue about whether a myth, or character in a myth, “exists” or not is, in a way, a betrayal of solidarity with the group’s fantasy state, even if the argument concludes “yes”. Thus, the “proof of the existence of God” offered by Descartes, after the term for “God” had been reduced to an innate abstract general idea in his psychosemiotics, was viewed with as much suspicion by “believers” as by non-believers. As if what it communicated needed logical certification. This was Descartes daring radicalism, taking what “God” communicated up to another level of sign-use. He could see that the token had lost its power to convey anything specific about the world except what could be retained by converting it into the rationality of text, itself, through its own self-necessity. His existence could not be denied, but its affirmation adds nothing to mathematical laws of actual motion.

Will the Real Dick Cheney....?

WILL THE REAL DICK CHENEY …?

There are two “Dick Cheney’s” being talked about in the news. Two threads of predicates leading from the single name.

One leads to a flesh and blood man, who can surely be forgiven for trying to grab a little quality time down Armstrong Ranch in south Texas way. No one could wish another the shattering thing he has gone through, all fault aside. And seen from that point of view, the scene and events Vice President Cheney related seem like a perfectly acceptable reality, the narrative of a tragic American drama all can and, I suppose, must live with.

However, because of who he was, and what he represents, this was not just a private event; it is something that happened to us all. I argue here that this is true in two senses.

It is a touch of tragedy whenever an individual is singled out for punishment for a guilt incurred by the entire group he represents, as if Germany’s Third Reich was all about Hitler. To make him a scapegoat for the program all have promoted is not right. Perhaps that, by itself, will evoke a sympathy reaction strong enough to shield him.

But he IS Mr. Military-Industrial Complex, incarnation of the figure Dwight Eisenhower warned against in his last address. The WHIGs, White House Iraq Group run from his office, coordinated the neocon’s war build-up. Public relations-wise, he carried the heavy water for the Republican political base, defending torture, spying, and routinely equating their political enemies with al Quida terrorists. He became so radioactive CNN actually showed an big X over his face recently – glitch in the switch, lamented the producers.

Such was his enormous karmic burden 2.17.06. Further, legal terms, he was under the gun of Fitzgerald’s possible indictment in connection with the Libby CIA leak case.

One needn’t be a mystic, psychic, or spiritual genius to surmise that a man under such intense pressure, together with all those with him that fateful afternoon, can simply crumple inside, if momentarily, under this weight, and ACTS OUT what, for any hunter, or human, is the worse thing they could do. In psychoanalytic terms, he was being “pursued by the unconscious”, catching up to with him with this historical curse, with him impulsively trying to ward it off .

I agree with those who think he will resign. Not because he cannot rise to the level of objective self-forgiveness, which he should, as many are obliged to do. I have looked into the face of a young woman who had watched her mother drown, as a girl. It took her a long time to come back and look at anyone at all. It isn’t something you want to see as a daily mirror.

He will retire because of what his re-appearance on the public stage would do to America, as one who did it. Riven into two fresh new camps: those who will take his shot, and “move on”, as they have it. Or one who will say: wait. Enough, already – as of a long time ago.




This is where the second Dick Cheney, the one that belongs to all in Public communications splits (ramifies) again. On the one (right) hand, he must be accepted as a Charlton Heston NRA hero, interrupted by an act of God or the impulsive gesture of an old man, in the process of carrying on whatever his destined life as best he could, who could demand more?

Or the Dick Cheney of Darth Vadar fantasy frame.

Dark Dick Cheney is what is lodged in the Collective Unconscious, ready to erupt with the full volcanic rage and hate set off by cartoonizing what is sacred to Muslims. These events, brought together by fate in these times, are also linked by deep unconscious psychodynamic processes.

Publication of the cartoons was a Cheney/Rove neocon type political act, exported to Denmark last September; then, brought forward recently, as the situation called for release of mass pent-up energy. Fleming Rose, editor of the newspaper first publishing them, is probably Jewish – not to indict all, but possibly as such he thought it might advance Israel’s cause to inflame hatred of “western values”, carrying over to burning tokens of western culture, especially churches, to create solidity in reaction against the inflagration.

From a neuropsychological standpoint, it should be noted that the act of shifting types of tokens from words to pictures, in representing Mohammed, what is communicated is brought down from the realm of pure conception, appropriate to the essence of spirit as unseen, to the realm of the visible – and risible. This is another stark connection between Cheney’s misfire and the Cartoon’s bonfire: risibility – laughter; a distinguishing mark of the species, as Aristotle first noted, I believe. Hardly anyone I spoke to about the VP’s accident could refrain from laughing; from snicker to hee-haw to knee slapper. Not to his or the Wittington’s face, of course. Behind their back. It would be extremely discomforting, if not outright dangerous, to have waves of cartoons showing him hunting down liberals. Wonder if any will appear? But he has, in fact, as argued above and elsewhere, put us all under the gun of Iraq war makers. In the case of Muslims, it is not just Vice President, but the one they call “The Prophet” pasted on newspaper cartoons for tittilation of the degraded. Their reaction to this as a way of “burning” their spiritual leader is to burn back. The violence of the reaction comes under the heading of what Carl Jung called “loss of soul”. It is what one must not do unto others, make fun of their innermost domain. The “west”, under the Cheney/Bush neocon Republicans, seems driven to do just that, first at Abu Ghraib, now in faux ‘liberal’ cartoon caricatures of sacred objects.

These things do not add together well. Cheney’s “shoot first, ask questions later” brigade, yucking it up with beer while splattering tall turban targets?

About this there is something as chilling as a ‘Noreaster deep freeze in February.

Cheney Misfires; Cartoons Inflame

CHENEY MISFIRES; CARTOONS INFLAME

The common symbolic thread (2.18.2006)


Illustrating the Old DOUBLE DOUBLE REVERSE SPECIAL

As a Form of Sign-Use, with Freudian psychodynamics


***/
Now, the complex consisting of (1) the pair of symbolic events (Cheney shooting, Cartoon protests), plus (2) use of the word “double” – perhaps doubled, as in “double double” – to articulate the connection between the otherwise non-signified pairs. One double is the pairs, on the same level of complexity as regards constituent. The other double is that between these constituents, at this level, and words, which belong to a higher level of complexity, communicating through the logical connections of text. When, in general, words are doubled, as in “remembering to remember”, the token repetition brings two instances of the textual meaning in relation to each other. Such “doubledness” is itself “doubled” in the “double double” double, in particular, as a meta-language construct from the elements of the object language.

The is significant because of the function of this construct as a unit*, S*, of communication: something wholly contained as content of a single thought in conscious awareness. It elicits a common factor in different materials by bringing them together for comparative survey by the mind. This sort of content is what “the mind”, as term, was invented to stand for. Whatever is wholly contained under S* exists through internal, not external connection of its elements, as “4 legged animal” is the sign-use through which “dog” is predicated of Emily, the generic third term subsuming both. Similarly, a generic third term includes both Cheney’s misfire and the cartoon protests – karmic payback -- but it can be arrived at only by symbolic analysis.

The symbolism of Darth Cheney shooting friend Wittington, as explained at length elsewhere, is the Freudian Death Father (read also: castrating) killing a rebellious son that, in fantasy, when he grows up, is a threat to kill him (and possess the mother). This was what Abraham was prepared to do to prove faithfulness, excused from the ultimate atrocity at the last minute by his own Death Father who demanded it as a test. Something like this seems to be what George Lucas had in mind as the story of Darth Vadar, father, and Luke Skywalker, son, in the Star Wars movies. But if the dark forces threatening cosmic destruction are, as Brandon Emerick insists (and I agree), are symbolic, at the group level, of the same destructive Vietnam war forces captured by Oliver Stone’s Apocalypse Now. This was a sadism inflicted by that generation of fathers on the rebellious sons and daughters of the 60’s who chanted “Hell NO! WE WON’T GO!” – some of them – to Richard Nixon. Lucas’ enormously popular and influential films started out as if destined to fiercely oppose that force and restore his princess sister to the throne. That would be the peaceable kingdom Patti Smith sings about. Then, looping in the previously aroused symbolic fantasy connections by “pre-quels”, to explain how things had gotten as bad as they were, he betrayed the baby boomer generation’s cause; reconciled it, and its children, to the unrepentant, unchanged, twisted father.
It is a despicable act, on such an enormous scale that mere summary in a few words cannot but hint deserved judgment. HIS karmic payback is to have thrown the weight of his genius behind the forces that led to G.W. Bush; thence, via Cheney’s shot, thus under the gun of their regime. He admitted as much himself, quipping g “I know that could get me a backside full of buckshot” after comparing Cheney with the Emperor who “always stands behind Darth Vadar”. He knows, that shows, how much America regards his contribution and how it will be misused.

The natural reluctance to blame fathers is an instinctual a priori. We WANT to love them; almost more than anything, because without loving them, and receiving love in return, how can we love ourselves? When the shock of a reality -- abuse for instance -- drives back this instinctual outreach, it is replaced by the mechanism of reaction formation: an automatic reversal of rebellious hate-kill impulses, when they reach consciousness, into “I LOVE HIM! I WILL DIE FOR HIM!” defense against the inner threat of even thinking “bad” thoughts. This is how sadism gets incorporated into psychodynamics of the afflicted personality (cf. Nick Nolte, etc.). The professed love of father, under reaction-formation, is an easily feigned religious front for acting out sadistic punishment fantasies on His enemies, the Evil ones. Giving pain is their way of showing love. This belongs to the psychodynamics of what Freud called the “super-ego”. The Demo-Repube political war party has inflicted America with a severe super-ego attack. That is because it is at the same time undergoing massively inflamed id-impulse arousal. Reality – an ego-function – is lost as the battle between good and evil must be waged more strongly each day.

The karma in the act is that what Cheney’s group -- the WHIG’s, the one’s who made up the Iraq war – did to America at large was what was brought about by the confluence of events on 2.11.’06 : shooting (us, Wittington) in the face. It pronounces a curse on our historical inner life, if ever anything did. Could one way that it was “destined”? – that their way-of-being brought it about, in some cosmic sense? That is what the theory of karma holds. This holds that there are inner lines linking individual and group token-space, showing the same thing at two symbolically linked levels.





THE MUSLIM CARTOON protests turned violent is a massive acting out of a shared hatred, rage, brought about by the way they are treated.

The inflagration of KFC’s abroad externalizes the inflammation within. The symbolic link is “burning” – for how they are made to feel, as inferior children, acting-out by hysterical conversion.

It is significant as a symbolic coincidence that a spate of churches in Alabama are being burned during the first of February. It suggests an arragned double instance, as if the demonic motive attached by the official war mongers to the Muslim protests there, might ignite a similar demonic outbreak of righteous rage here, requiring defense of the religious establishment by the ATF.

ANOTHER DOUBLE DOUBLE REVERSE SPECIA

ANOTHER DOUBLE DOUBLE REVERSE SPECIAL

ITEMS IN THE NEWS 2.13.’06 (off Drudge)

FIRST:

Gay male prostitute for the Texas House

Ridin’ Bush’s coattails. “Cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other” sings Willie Nelson. “What do you think those saddles and boots were about?”

Feb. 17, 2006, 3:44AM
House candidate admits former work as prostitute
Associated Press

DALLAS — A Dallas Democrat seeking election to the Texas House of Representatives has acknowledged that he once worked as a prostitute.
Tom Malin, a salesman and actor, said he no longer works as a prostitute but conceded that his previous life could cost him the nomination in the March 7 Democratic primary.
"I've made mistakes in my life, and I've stood before my creator and I've accepted responsibility for my behavior," Malin told The Dallas Morning News for its
***

NEXT

Senator Harry Reid nixes bid by strong, anti-Republican anti-war Iraq vet Paul Hackett for the Democrat’s Ohio House of Representatives seat. Showing Dems won’t fight against the war-makers, even when a viable, strong candidate is available.



http://motherjones.com/news/update/2006/02/hackett_drops_out.html

****
Backroom Battles
NEWS: Economic sabotage, whisper campaigns, and threats: How the Democrats took Paul Hackett out.
By David Goodman
February 16, 2006







Democratic Senate candidate and Marine Corps Major Paul Hackett is accustomed to waging quixotic battles and taking his hits. He just didn’t expect the lowest—and fatal—blows to come from his own party.
In an announcement that stunned many in Washington and even some in his campaign staff, Hackett declared on February 13, 2006, that he was dropping his bid for U.S. Senate in Ohio, ending his 11 month political career. “I made this decision reluctantly, only after repeated requests by party leaders, as well as behind-the-scenes machinations, that were intended to hurt my campaign,” he said, only hinting at what had gone down. The day after his withdrawal from the race, he told me about the backroom battles that forced him out.
Hackett was running against seven-term Akron Democrat Rep. Sherrod Brown in a May primary, with the winner going on to face two-term Republican Sen. Mike DeWine in November (assuming DeWine wins his own primary against a longshot Republican challenger). DeWine is considered one of the most vulnerable incumbent Republicans, and the national Democratic Party is pulling out the stops to defeat him.
But first, the Democrats had to get Hackett out of the way. The weapons used in the rubout included economic sabotage, whisper campaigns, and threats.

Hackett, an Iraq War combat veteran, was hailed last summer as just the kind of “fighting Democrat” the party needed to reinvigorate its base and end its years in the congressional wilderness. After narrowly losing a race for Congress in a lopsidedly Republican district outside Cincinnati last August, the telegenic veteran—famous for dissing President Bush as a “chickenhawk” and “sonuvabitch” while on the stump—was courted heavily by Democratic leaders, including Sens. Charles Schumer and Harry Reid, to take on DeWine. But no sooner did Hackett enter the Senate race last October than Brown announced his candidacy for Senate, reversing an earlier decision he had made to stay out of the race.

With Brown, a party insider, on board, the Democratic establishment quickly began pulling away from the fiery Hackett. Schumer, after having wooed him in August, called again in October. “Schumer didn’t tell me anything definitive,” Hackett told me at the time. “But I’m not a dumb ass, and I know what he wanted me to do.” Hackett, a maverick who relishes the fight, decided to buck the Beltway insiders, and stay in the race.

Hackett’s scorching rhetoric earned him notoriety and cash on the campaign trail. He declared that people who opposed gay marriage were “un-American.” He said the Republican party had been hijacked by religious extremists who he said “aren’t a whole lot different than Osama bin Laden.” Bloggers loved him, donors ponied up, while Democratic Party insiders grumbled that he wasn’t "senatorial."

Swift boats soon appeared on the horizon. A whisper campaign started: Hackett committed war crimes in Iraq—and there were photos. “The first rumor that I heard was probably a month and a half ago,” Dave Lane, chair of the Clermont County Democratic Party, told me the day after Hackett pulled out of the race. “I heard it more than once that someone was distributing photos of Paul in Iraq with Iraqi war casualties with captions or suggestions that Paul had committed some sort of atrocities. Who did it? I have no idea. It sounds like a Republican M.O. to me, but I have no proof of that. But if it was someone on my side of the fence, I have a real problem with that. I have a hard time believing that a Democrat would do that to another Democrat.”

In late November, Hackett got a call from Sen. Harry Reid. “I hear there’s a photo of you mistreating bodies in Iraq. Is it true?” demanded the Senate minority leader. “No sir,” replied Hackett. To drive home his point, Hackett traveled to Washington to show Reid’s staff the photo in question. Hackett declined to send me the photo, but he insists that it shows another Marine—not Hackett—unloading a sealed body bag from a truck. “There was nothing disrespectful or unprofessional,” he insists. “That was a photo of a Marine doing his job. If you don’t like what they’re doing, don’t send Marines into war.”

***/

Hackett had demonstrated his ability to shake money from donors during a January fundraising roadshow in California and New York. But he soon discovered that top Democrats were attempting to cut off his money. The hosts of a Beverly Hills fundraiser for Hackett received an e-mail from the political action committee of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) that concluded, “I hope you will re-consider your efforts on behalf of Hackett and give your support to Sherrod.” Waxman’s chief of staff, Phil Schiliro, said the e-mail was only sent to a handful of people and that “it probably came from a suggestion from the Sherrod Brown campaign.”



Next (and last)

Eric Baldwin in
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alec-baldwin/will-they-go-to-court_b_15875.html


Cheney is a terrorist. He terrorizes our enemies abroad and innocent citizens here at home indiscriminately. Who ever thought Harry Whittington would be the answer to America's prayers. Finally, someone who might get that lying, thieving Cheney into a courtroom to answer some direct questions.



POLITICAL CONNECTIONS THROUGH FANTASY LINKS

-The first two items illustrate how the two parties have switched sides on:

One: the homosexual rights issue (cf. Allan Simpson for gay-right wing Republican support; also, the LogCabineers – why not an ex-Guckert buddy in the Texas House?) (the homosexuality in German fascism under Hitler; tending toward sadistic perversions)

Two: Marine Corp Major Hackett is one of ‘their’ true off-spring, veteran of the hellwar started by the military-industrial-political establishment in Iraq. He has been there, first-hand, and is willing to come back and confront the ones responsible in their own terms, putting the war and its warriors down as wrong in principle. As the opposing political party should. But to do this is equivalent to desecrating the bodies in the bags they filled. So what does he get charged with doing? Inappropriate handling of dead soldier’s remains in body bags. Allusions to necrolepsy.

If these things could be shouted ….

Although it stretches the mind to do so, seeing these two items together against the background of Vice President Dick Cheney’s misfire on the Texas prairie explains Eric Baldwin’s claim.

The connection is through the symbolism of good-bad guy/sportsman-sniper/family protector-killer – the union of opposites, in Jung’s terms. If the VP is not condemned, he must be supported. As an inner act, this support amounts to tacit approval of having oneself shot in the face in similar circumstances. Perhaps one says “I would need be such an idiot as Wittington, coming up on his blindside like that.” Perhaps not. But those whose fire is friendly may have off days, too, so it is a vote for pre-emptive blasting.

It is with this perspective that Eric Baldwin’s remark aligns. The twisted ones, gay prostitues like Guckert who helped the Republicans win the ’04 election by whipping up hatred of gays, will probably will approval, while a manly, mature candidate in Ohio is waxed by Abu Graib democrats. This is already double double reverse special. Past that across the Darth Vadar/Cheney symbolism – the dark one is really doing it for the kid’s sake, to show him what it takes to be a man …

It is indeed hard to put all these together, even seeing their symbolic connections. “These are the terrorists”, one voice of that generation does it with.

Cheney-Cartoon conjunct syssmbolism

Concluding comments

ON THE KARMIC CONTENT OF THE CHENEY SHOOTING INCIDENT CONJOINT THE CARTOON UPRISING

.. in both cases, payback for the way they are (the unconscious; irony)


The president called Cheney’s account of the accident “powerful” and (twice) “strong.” These are the favored tokens of virile, pro-war, pro-torture Republican males (in group fantasy). It back’s the potency of the Emperor behind Darth Vadar, his authority. And places everyone else under his gun.

Both cases of this double eruption of the unconscious into consciousness are pay-backs in kind, at the karmic level.

Acting out shooting Americans in the face -- by his policies, first, then by his over-eager hunting companion second. What he did there is what he was going on a group level elsewhere.

Similarly, the images of Muslim/Arab violence sparked by the Denmark cartoons characteristically featured burning: of flags, buildings, cars, cities – now, churches in ruiral Southern US. Psychodynamically, this is an externalization of the soul-rape sensation of “being burned”, which proceeds as inner psychic rebellion against loss of spiritual blessing of super-ego function. Doctoring the Muslim’s symbol of transformation, the Prophet Mohammed, in PublicTokenSpace obliged to be shared by everybody by putting a bomb cap on his image is a way of doing that to their soul; X-ing its spiritual exygen, as it were. This over-bearing, threatening presence of eminent “punishment” gives a burning sensation for the passion to avoid it, please the Father (“No! No! – I don’t hate you, I love you.”), and repress sexuality (male individuality). “Hell” would token this: “Burn in hell, fiend!”, the revengeful instinctual cry of the abused child. Now unleashed on the west by the distorted use of “liberal” free-speech by Danish racist conservatives.

The final, and in fantasy respects most extensive application of symbolic analysis to the Cheney-Cartoon shoot-out showdown is the role of Darth Vader, himself, composite image of every evil there is to imagine (except that in Pasolini’s SALO: The 120 days of Sodom, which is a Freudian compliment to Lucas). He has pursued his son, as it turns out – Luke Skywalker, the cosmic hero to save humanity from darkness on which the baby boom generation was raised as common myth, paralleling Star Trek exploration, yielding later to the Matrix’s “Neo”. Now bowing out as of last year with the sellout betrayal of George Lucas to the old Vietnam “we forgive you, father” routine, at the end. Darth Vader was just trying to make a man of his son. Does anyone remember Nick Nolte in The Afflicted?


This brings together the core elements of the inescapable, implacable, twisted, perpetually on-going group fantasy process America is living through 2.17.’06.

Which sin is worse, liberalism burning the Muslim soul, or them burning a KFC? The Nation is saying “of course, there is no equivalence between publishing cartoons and burning buildings.”

Risibility and Righteousness

Risibility and Righteousness

The story of how “Friendly Fire” Cheney and Cartoon Bomber “Tokyo Rose” shared a Danish down Texas way

Funny how things work out sometimes, isn’t it

Part I. Who is the joke on?

“Humans are the risible species,” Aristotle remarked. This is one of its distinguishing characteristics. We are the animals who are capable of laughing. An entire branch of the grammatical “we” tree is devoted to communicating about it.

Sigmund Freud was able to take up Aristotle’s observation from the standpoint of late 19th century neurological science and to note two things: in addition to the involuntary muscle reactions (as in hiccups, gag reflex, sobbing) there is a psychological component. The content is invariably childhood sexual association, when fantasy and impulsiveness ruled. The human species is rigged to undergo spasmodic jags from hmphs to chuckles to belly laughs due to the way it is called upon to reproduce itself as a species. Remove the urge to merge, remove the comedy routine surge. Spock knows that, for heaven’s sake.

Freud connected the peculiar ha-ha hee-haw reaction to repression: the repetitive convulsion is the simultaneous impulse to release, then not release, the unconscious thought into consciousness. Like shoving against an inner gate with strong exhalation. What is “comedic”, the joke, has this effect: by conjoining opposites, to simultaneously show – by way of picturing, or by acting-out -- what must not be said – concealed, censored, because it contradicts the ongoing reality assumptions of the conscious standpoint. This ongoing reality is the level of common conscious life mediated by learned language for sharing group content. It is marked “Public TokenSpace” in the psychosemiotic manual. It is the entity predicated on as “we”, by the power-possessing beings (government, authorities, law enforcement, health agencies, etc.). This entity exists only as the common “half” of each individual consciousness, its own “we” deriving from the historical memory each retains from womb-life as source of associations. This is “Private TokenSpace”; or, simply “TokenSpace” (since it includes Public TokenSpace as a separate domain under “we” use). The two segments of the single unity of consciousness under all sign uses weave, or twine, within the anatomical processes, first, through the unfolding of its gene-pool, through the phenotypes, determining the typology of reproduction; then, second, through the imprinting and patterning of neural-enviornmental responses beginning in utero, as we now know. The upper and lower triads of sign-use processing in the psychic apparatus correspond to these two sources of sign-uses – words, for communicating necessity through the upper triad, independent of experience; vrs. pictures, for communicating through the lower triad, carrying individual experience through deep waters, etc. That which communicates only through signs used as text, as in names and predicates to make sentences; numbers; logical syntax; determine the logical form of Public TokenSpace (PbTkSp). The only shapes, or pictures occurring in pure intellectual PbTkSp are geometric models and schema, for no pictures dependent on perceptual apparatus have objective necessity, only necessity relative to conditions of the apparatus (three dimensional, for instance).

Private TokenSpace (PvTkSp), by contrast, spans content from both triads, applies common abstract general ideas to objects of sense perception, when an existentially self-aware, religiously committed (let us say) person brings this completion of ego by consciousness as a unity for themselves. This is mentioned here, yet again, as background setting of the seven (7) token types of sign-uses spanning the universe of discourse of PvTkSp, because its sharp logical compartments are the only guide through the confusions sown by false twining “I”’s and “We”’s that don’t belong together into the same PbTkSp. In common terms, this amounts to being brought under someone else’s “God”, the way that natural human life is/can be brought under someone else’s “scientific” psychology as a control.

It is my contention here that the event everyone is dealing with now in the news, Dick Cheney’s shooting his hunting comrade in the face, carries an unconscious thought, in Freud’s terms, that can only be met with risibility – by arousing our species response of laughter at the comedic. I submit that to be a certifiable fact about the media coverage. “White House Shoots Foot”, was The NY Times editorial cheap shot. “May you go hunting with Dick” jokes abounded. An episode you would rather have missed, but since you didn’t, must grin, make fun of, and bear up under.

The psychodynamics are unmistakable. Cheney is the classic Dark Force of the group-unconscious (that which is censored from PbTkSp), psychologically identified with Bush’s “Father” figure (“the Emperor always stands behind Darth Vader”, George Lucas said). He represents everything about the Military-Industrial Complex Eisenhower warned America against in his final presidential speech. Through his office, the “WHIG” committee coordinated Pentagon, media, political, secret agency operatives to bring off the war on Iraq. Having hyped the data to fit the policy, he has routinely condemned those opposed to the war as unpatriotic, soft-on terror, in bed with the terrorist enemy, etc. He has defended US torture policies, virtual al Quada terrorist supporters.

****

Risibility and Righteousness (continued)

Specific indications – symptoms – that Cheney was under the gun of the unconscious, so to speak, already abounded before 2.12.06.

Making most noise just the week before was ‘Scooter’ Libby’s reported grand jury testimony that he had received authorization (if not instruction) from his “superiors” to leak Joseph Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame’s CIA identity to the press in the ongoing hi-level scandal. This places him in the forefront of not just plotting a lying war but of attempting to silence or discredit whistleblowers through their family connections. Tracing the pre-conscious loop, this is almost as if the “leak” in the Plame case, leading back to his guilt, had been covered over – “doubled” – by the “leak” to the Caller-Times Corpus Christi press. It was first announced with “We would not have known about the shooting if one of the party had not called to leak the news”: something good to do. So the terms communicating the VP’s “bad”, “revengeful death-father” image, are overlaid with something it is OK, even right to do: get the word out to the press. Indeed, the pro-Cheney spinners talked about his “acting to get the administration’s case out to the public”, nothing wrong with that. This goes with the Rove strategy of making the best of the worst, jabbing at the tiger’s eye. The way the shooting incident got reported re-iterated that. This “doubling” of the same token font creates a two-sided text-switch mechanism in communication. The pro-Cheney conscious standpoint is given an excusing, vs accusing verbal path away from the crime scene.

Only a few weeks earlier, a picture of Cheney’s face had appeared on CNN marked over by a very prominent “X”. The was so striking it was posted by Drudge, and I downloaded it at Christmas to show non-newswatchers. A switch failed to go off or something, executives explained later; hi-tech glitch, not symbolic retaliation for his recent defense of torture prisons.

In another media incident, one CNN commentator’s remark “that’s bullshit” could be heard nationwide over the mic assumed to be shut off. (My friend has a copy),


These mark Dick Cheney as the ultra polarized and polarizing good-bad loving-rapist/killer Father. Those committed to following the path that he, Karl Rove, G.W. Bush and other major figures designed and followed, would see a virile hunter with comrades on a South Texas ranch. What dude wouldn’t want to go along for that?

The Speilberg camera shot would be the eager expectation on Harry Whittington’s face as he approached from the wrong side and witnessed the shotgun barrel suddenly swinging toward him just before hearing the blast. That shot would place top rung on the gallery of the grotesque.

“Too close to consciousness” the dark, dark side presses. This is the psychodynamics of repression, in Freud’s terms; of the repulsion of psychological opposites, in Jung’s. The unconscious thought “he wants to kill us” must be reversed; “it was an accident, a mistake; he loves us.” This is the mechanism Freud called “reaction formation”, typically the reversal of “No! No! I don’t hate him!” felt by the son fearing reprisal from Father, inwardly ‘sinned’ against by wishing dead, “I love him” (subtext: “please don’t hurt me, Daddy! See how sweet I am?”) What “Dick Cheney” represents to all is this figure; how the public divides depends on how its individual members relate to the reaction formation/reversal formation, which depends further on their relations to their own fathers, or authority surrogates.

In Jungian terms, this makes him symbolic. The Swiss psychologist’s focus on the symbol as two-sided, conscious/unconscious communicator, comes to the fore here, subsuming the Freudian Oedipal content as a particular instance specifically linked to sexuality. What is symbolic has these two sides, corresponding to text (symbol as cognitive) and token (symbol as picture) of the sign-use. Either dark or amiable Cheney can be brought forward in conversation as context requires. Even predicating on his name, now, brings both together, and puts those communicating with or about him in the position of Harry Wittington. What “Shooter” has done, combing text with token, is shoot America in the face. “We are under his gun” that is the unconscious thought brought too close to consciousness, repulsive and repugnant to Americans in general as sit is. To Republicans, in particular, it is like a BB pellet embedded in and rubbing up against their heart muscle.

BB pellets. Birdshot. Buckshot. “Buckshot in the backsides”, hi-school joke- token of narrow escape from cuckolded husband’s wife’s window. “Shotgun wedding.”
The Red Ryder rifle advertisement in 40’s comic books available at Lockney’s Rexall Drug store; Saddam Hussein’s finely tooled piece flashed repeatedly on CNN. The King Ranch, Duval County politics (the courthouse burned down after LBJ’s ’48 election to the Senate after a 1000 vote margin for him was turned in late from this county); this is a place Texas Rangers once patrolled on the lookout for rustlers, owlhoots, horsethieves; selling body-building equipment for martial arts men these days. The hospital at Corpus Christi, where relatives live, was nearby to aid the wounded. This picture is the stuff of Old Texas fantasy lore following WWII, looming larger symbolically in the trip I made from high school from West Texas to Baylor University in Waco in central Texas. My father was associated with the cotton harvest in The Valley in the 50’s.

These are core childhood associations from those times, that era, brought together by the blast from Cheney’s gun.

In order to appreciate the communication situation fully one further male psychodynamic element needs figuring in. It has already been noted that Whittingon = America, in particular, Republicans and others panting to join in the Sportsman’s retinue, aer obliged to identify with the victim. If they back Darth Cheney, they must back him even when he makes a “mistake” and fires on them. Just doing what he had to – shouldn’t have got in the way. And the man, Cheney himself, must struggle for an objectivity that permits him to face it as an accident, something for which he, ultimately, is not responsible for bringing about, allowing for negligence.

Yet, lodged in his brain, somewhere, is a fraction of fraction of a second when he is looking through gun barrel sights tinged with the face of his friend. “Friendly fire” its called when one gets shot by someone on one’s own side. This, even if fictitious, will be amplified in the imagination of comedians, deviants, crypto-rebels. “If this is what he would do in the line of manhood, out on the ranch, to one of his own party, think what he would do to YOU!” – and he had a right to do what he is. How does he know, how does anyone know, Wittington is not a secret betrayer? – perhaps even without knowing it. Genghis Khan killed a brother who stole from him. A fearless leader must be prepared to kill even their own son! (Darth Vadar was Luke Skywalker’s father!) And we all know Abraham was.

This is the double-double reverse psychodynamic twist. It is good to go over it again and again because the spin put on this one will be perpetual – and psychotic. To tolerate it is to accept being shot in the face by Dick Cheney. Hey, its OK. South Texas prairie land, waving brush, Chuck Norris nearby, … (fade into Goodman’s rave in The Big Jabowski….on the death of his friend ) If it’s all kept light, wrapped in split-off metaphors and predications, maybe no one will notice. Or common speech habits can be gerrymandered so that both sides of the “Life/Death Father” symbol are not displayed with such blatant simultaneity as came to happen with pictures of Hitler.

When the laughter erupts over this one, as it will, for a long, long time, peal after peal, who will the joke be on this time?


Part II. Righteousness over risibility

Taking the Muslim side in the issue between free speech and cartoons of the Prophet.

Fish's Seinfeldian theology

Against the Seinfeldian theology of Stanley Fish’s “Faith in Letting It All Hang Out” (NY Times 2.12.02 wk 15) I urge: stick to the faith of our fathers. “Holy faith,” as the old gospel hymn has it.

At issue is whether publication of cartoon drawings of the Prophet Mohammed by Danish newspaper editor Flemming Rose, admittedly known to be seriously provocative, crossed the line between pushing the free speech, anti-self-censorship envelope, to disrespect for Muslim religion. “What religious beliefs are owed is ‘respect’; nothing less, nothing more”, he affirms, the “first tenet of the (his) liberal religion is that everything (at least in the realm of expression and ideas) is to be permitted, but nothing is to be taken seriously.”

He goes on to explain how this is accomplished by keeping one’s serious religious issues on the private side, while assigning public religious uses a “jus’ goshin’, folks” pro-forma routine. Nice move. Wonder what Deacon Fish thought about Rev. President Bush’s recent sermon at Coretta Scott King’s funeral? Is that a “Ra! Ra!”? A “no! no!”? neither? both? When he said “God bless you all, and God bless our country” it certainly sounded, and was intended to sound, serious. But this manipulates conscription to his “God”’s causes onto those who were assembled more in sympathy with hers, and might well reject those he stands for as despicable and evil. What would Seinfeld say to that? Is “nothing is to be taken seriously” to be taken seriously?

What is either not seen or unappreciated in the cartoon outrage is that the images are not merely an attack on Muslim “beliefs”, but on their mode of spiritual communication. Specifically, by presuming to picture what is sacred, this being understood as intrinsically unseen (spirit), the understanding of the psychological state through which the religious reality is related is changed. It might be called “the Undressed Mother” syndrome; a step once taken cannot be undone, like loss of virginity.

It is a matter of raping their soul, if soul has anything to do with infusion of spirit. For these are matters belonging to what the psychologist Freud called “sublimation”, the silent, subtle transformation of lower, sexual, energy into energy ‘cathected’ by the head-state of consciousness directed toward the cosmic containers. For sensitivity-challenged newspaper editors to put The Prophet on the level of idols, caricatures, graffiti, a “let it all hang out” is not just condescending fatuity, it is metaphysical extinction of their religious system.

As to the metaphysics, “Unseen”, for the Hebrew God, is predicated by the second commandment: “no graven images”. The revelation on Mt. Sinai was by sound/light manifestations; idols and golden calf worship were Canaanite. “Things seen are great, but those unseen are greater,” the New Testament echoes. It is from the sky the great religious leaders ‘descend’ and ‘return’, but this is not, perhaps, just the sky above. In the beginning of Greek philosophy, the link supplied by necessary truths -- geometry, arithmetic, music, sun-moon-planetary orbits being the major fields of application, with notions of “Being”, “Unity” and “Reason” arising at the highest speculative levels of discourse.

Now, among things unseen on earth that are real are pent-up feelings of individuals when the historical setting of their group life has been burned. “Burned” is the proper term here, because it refers to the searing sensation in the pit of your stomach, right behind the navel, when the inner basis of spiritual life is assaulted by insult. Then rounded on by “jus’ goshen’”. This is the existential side of Abu Ghraib. The entire Muslim world has been burned by the US-Israel press which has scapegoated it, Islam and everything Arab, for the tragedy of 9/11. That is what the cartoons unleashed.


-Submitted to the NY Times op-ed