[was: Re: [PEN-L:1835] Thatcher and nationalism ]
Brad wrote:
>>>But the idea that it is no business of the rest of us what dictators do
>>>to their own people *is* positively, totally, utterly, completely nutso.
I wrote:
>>This kind of dogmatic style is a total turn-off, simply a way of shutting
>>off any further discussion...
Brad ripostes:
>In my experience, people who jump to the level of meta-discussion--urge
>that others be filtered, urge that others be excluded, talk about issues
>of discursive process, condemn others for style--do so primarily in an
>attempt to *avoid* a substantive discussion.
You should read more carefully. I wasn't saying that you should be
filtered, since you usually are polite. And I was not avoiding substantive
discussion, since that discussion was between you and Néstor (or between
you and Louis). Since I am basically an ignoramus on the issues of
Argentine history and economics, I only threw out some hypotheses at the
beginning of the discussion. I only intervened because I didn't want to see
a flame-war and it looked like Michael Perelman might be asleep at the switch.
However, I see nothing wrong with discussing style of e-mail discussions.
As you should know, impoliteness leads to conflict. Your assuming a
know-it-all attitude toward Argentina and lording your alleged moral
superiority over Néstor has a similar effect.
BTW, the paragraph above by Brad is on the level of discussion (i.e.,
meta-discussion) which he decries.
>Please don't remain at what I see as the sterile and pointless level of
>meta-discourse.
If you read my steady (and perhaps excessive) stream of e-missives on
pen-l, you'd notice that I hardly ever venture into that level.
>Please return to the level of substantive discussion:
I will return if I think that people are being reasonable in the form of
the discussion. However, I do not value your advice on this matter.
>Your claim that Argentina's internal arrangements are no business of any
>non-Argentine is truly remarkable and extraordinary.
I have NEVER made that claim. You are confusing me with Néstor. Though I
find his contributions to very informative, I don't know enough to agree or
disagree with him. He never made his political principles clear enough for
me to agree or disagree with him. He did seem to know more about Argentina
than you do, though.
Your confusion of me with Néstor suggests that you have taken leave of your
senses and have started to hallucinate. The highly technical term from
psychiatry, i.e., "nutso," springs to mind.... More likely, you are
assuming that Eldridge Cleaver was right that "if you're not part of the
solution, you're part of the problem," i.e., that if I don't agree with
your self-evidently correct position, I must agree with the Néstor's
"nutso" position. (Do you have a pair of Cleaver's famous slacks?)
>Defend your belief: tell us why you think dictators have a valid hunting
>license to turn their countries into free-fire zones for their amusement,
>with no one else having the right to say "boo."
I have no brief for _any_ dictators. But this insult encourages me to make
it clear what I do favor, to return to "substantive discussion."
The first difference between you and me (as far as I can tell) is that you
want to talk only about political incorrect dictators like the gorillas in
Argentina (reminiscent of those who went (and still go) on and on about
how horrible the Khmer Rouge was without mentioning the similar crimes of
US-supported Indonesian army in East Timor that occurred at the same time).
Secondly and more fundamentally, you seem to define "dictatorship" as only
a political phenomenon, ignoring the socioeconomic kind of dictatorship
that characterizes the rule of capital. Of course, such a socioeconomic
dictatorship often involves political dictatorship (as in Argentina under
Galtieri) or anemic democracy (of the sort that's under the thumb of
international financiers, of the sort that prevails in most poor countries
these days), unless there is a strong political organization of the working
class and similar dominated forces to counteract the power of capital. (The
limited Bore/Gush type of democracy we've got in the US is the luxury of a
rich and internationally-dominant country.)
Third, you seem to ignore the need for democracy in international
relations. It's okay with you (as far as I can tell) that the US and its
allies impose its "solutions" on other countries in undemocratic ways, with
absolutely no respect for national self-determination (though of course,
politically incorrect countries like the gorillas' Argentina or Saddam's
Iraq aren't allowed to use similar means). I've never seen you criticize US
capital's socioeconomic dictatorship over most of the rest of the world and
its alliance with gorillas such as those in Argentina (and Chile and
Vietnam and ....)
Now what do I think about the gorillas and other types of despots in
Argentina? about the invasion of the Malvinas (or Falklands, if you prefer
politically-correct language) in 1982? Starting with the second question, I
never was forced to take a position on that and I feel no obligation to
take a position on absolutely every issue. In absence of detailed study of
the issues at hand, I'd say that my attitude is "a curse on both their
houses." Since I wasn't an Argentine or a Brit, I could afford that
luxury. It's true I didn't support the Argentine junta, given its obvious
bloodthirsty oppression of the people there, but Margaret Thatcher's
rapidly anti-labor and often undemocratic rule (migod, even outside of
Ulster!) didn't attract my support either.
On the first question, I think the only solution to political or
socioeconomic dictatorships for the oppressed themselves to fight back and
try to end the rule of gorillas and of capital. To paraphrase old Karlos,
only the workers can liberate the working class. Liberation can't come from
above or from the outside.
An example from international relations: during the Cold War, I didn't see
the efforts by the USSR to promote their kind socialism in the "West" as
useful, since the socialism they'd encourage would be the kind that's
top-down, bureaucratic, and loyal in all ways to the foreign-policy line of
the USSR (as both Castro and Tito discovered, in different ways).The US
efforts to bring US-defined "democracy" to the East Bloc were similar
efforts to harness social movements (like the Hungarian Revolution of 1956,
the Czech spring of 1968, and Poland's Solidarnosc) to serve US foreign
policy goals and to install capitalists (and carpetbaggers like the Harvard
Boys in Russia) in power.[*]
Usually, I'm not as even-handed as above. That's because I never paid taxes
to the Soviet government. They never spoke in my name. I never felt
responsible for them. Further, they weren't dominating me or sending my
friends or relatives off to fight imperialistic wars. And to criticize the
USSR was simply to go along with a sh*t-storm of propaganda that was
already dominating official discourse, the media, and the popular mind.
Since a lot of that storm was lies, the point was to tell the truth rather
than to push a "curse on both your houses" line.
What does this say about domestic dictators? The same principles apply.
Liberation doesn't come from above, so we shouldn't support the Galtieris
and the Thatchers of the world.
[I apologize to any real gorillas who are insulted my comparison of them to
the Argentine military dictators.]
[*] I do look back to the "good" old days when the fight between the
superpowers meant there was some room to maneuver for popular movements of
people looking to transcend capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and other kinds
of oppression. It's true that the Big Boys were always threatening to blow
up the world and were engaged in all sorts of bloody wars (Vietnam,
Afghanistan, etc.) that destroyed people's lives, but now that there's only
one superpower, we still have all sorts of bloody wars (against Iraq,
Serbia, the Sudan, etc.) and the nuclear threat is still there. Of course,
it's quite possible that new kinds of internationalist opposition movements
are brewing...
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine
