America As Spectacle: Beyond Good and Evil.

Is “our” American Enlightenment philosophy an example of sheer political cynicism, or is it brute historical fact where there is no God but power, imperial Roman-like power, redux?

Appearance, reality, unreality. We see one thing when reality is so often another. A lot of Enlightenment philosophy is like that. Consider a few of modern day Nominalism’s tags: Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and so on. I hope against hope that it all fades away because it all indicates a wilful ideology which has jumped the teleological rails away from creation’s goal / terminus. Appearances are one thing, reality grounded in creation is another. And it all goes very far and deep.

America the fantasy and the American psyche

Consider Los Angeles media fare spread throughout the world, where — to cite but one instance— Marilyn Monroe still is made to “exist” in our psyches. To this day she remains an icon on the streets, in the Malls, an aspiration for children and young adults, the pinnacle of glamour and succesex. Andy Warhol’s goddess.

Marilyn Monroe hasn’t existed since 1962. She lived a sad and sorry life which ended in suicide. Poor soul. But what does that matter? Even in the morgue, or rotting beneath the souls of our our shoes, she lives —in the American mind. On posters, in the movies. Like the fantasy Barbie.

And she is only one of “our” fantasies.

Switch the fantasy focus —-there is our glorious blood fantasy of global military prowess. We bring “freedom,” “liberty,” all kinds of celebrity singer-strippers and pornography galore. We (or our proxies) bring it all to the poor and downtrodden of the earth as a gift of thanks for allowing us to bring Liberation (from anything) to them. We imagine ourselves to be always and everywhere good. Very good. Even if millions have had to die. Who would dare hold us to account? We recognize no higher authority than ourselves.

“Liberty,” Democracy…the new Good News.

Allowing for some easily forgotten mistakes, we are the last best hope of the world. Says we.

Or consider earlier American liberations, right here. Take WACO, Bill and Hillary, and our virtuous ATF*. It is macabre to dwell on the very many burned women or children.** Who even thinks about them anymore? Then there is Vince Foster. Remember him?

Those responsible for all of this sleep well at night nonetheless and they look good on the golf course.

Politics and America are all about virtue. Isn’t it so?

We all know that at some very important level it is a lie. But it is our lie. We musn’t talk about it. Instead just say to the hapless soldier, “Thank you for your service, sir” and give him some Valium and a titanium leg. Or some Percocets and a bio chip. Our side is good, virtuous. We create Reality. Your responsibility is to salute it.

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” (Ron Suskind, NYTimes Magazine, Oct. 17, 2004).

But them? Pick one. Any one. Their side is always evil and and must be defeated at all costs if we are to save the Rainbow. Democracy, the “liberty” to create our own Reality.

We “love” our country, “right or wrong.” And it loves us back so much it bombs the meat out of any who object and who are not us. We are accountable to no one. We are the “greatest nation on the face of the earth, or that ever was”. Our political philosophy was bequeathed to us by, among others, Ben Franklin, and the cunning Thomas Jefferson who wrote,

“And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away [with] all this artificial scaffolding…” —Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 11 April, 1823; Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Cappon II, 594

…and of course their disciple of liberty, Maximilien Robespierre.

The wise men and, above all, the Word of God, however, pull back the curtain on all governments and statesman who declare themselves ultimate, serving no God but themselves, in the will to power.

“…promising men liberty, while they themselves are the servants of corruption” (2 Pet. 2:19)”

“….she licensed every form of lust with laws to cleanse the stain of scandal she has spread;”—Dante, The Inferno, canto V, 57

But who listens to all that?

Close to the quick