| |
Home
War Is Peace:
The Pax Americana Imperium Wishes You An Orwellian Christmas!
by Evan Augustine Peterson
III, J.D., December 23, 2004
Americans have run the entire cycle of Christmas-deconstruction by spiritualizing,
sentimentalizing, universalizing, and -- ultimately -- commercializing
the holiday. Today, our version of Christmas bears almost no relationship
to the nativity story in the synoptic Gospels. Probably by the design
of our technopoly's high priests of social engineering, Christmas is so
devoid of content that it is compatible with virtually anything, including
its antitheses: (A) virulent materialist greed, because the Wall Street
investor-class worships The Market; and (B) rampant warmongering, because
the military-industrial complex's revolving-door fatcats worship blood-soaked
Mars. [1]
Of course, the original Christmas event did have profound spiritual meaning,
but it wasn't merely symbolic, like ours is now. For instance, when read
in its original Koine Greek, John 1 defines Christ as the "Logos"
-- "the transcendent divine mind" -- made manifest. The celebration
of the birth of Jesus marked the moment when "the Logos became flesh
and dwelt among us." This authentic Christmas spirituality has profound
practical implications for the lives of disciples everywhere, all of whom
are called upon to drastically re-order our individual and collective
behavior in this world in accordance to the in-coming revelation of the
transcendent. [2]
Furthermore, the story of Jesus' birth is incomprehensible to most Americans
because we do not understand its political implications in their historical
context. [3] If Americans were illuminated by the political implications
of Christmas, one predictable consequence is that we would understand
the world around us quite differently. For instance, we'd know that the
Romans thought they were "liberating" the "less-civilized
Jews" by forcibly subsuming their faraway land of Judea into the
Pax Romana Imperium ("Imperial Roman Peace"). This Roman rationalization
for conquest should sound familiar!
If Americans celebrated Christmas authentically -- with all of its implications
intact -- we'd see, by way of historical analogy, what the nativity story
of Jesus reveals.
- That the birth of The Prince of Peace
calls into question the USA's might-makes-right "New World Order"
("Novus Ordo Seculorum"), because:
(A) the postmodern equivalent of the ancient Romans' forcible imposition
of their "Pax Romana Imperium" is the Americans' forcible
imposition of their "Pax Americana Imperium" ("Imperial
American Peace");
(B) the postmodern equivalent of Roman-occupied Judea is American-occupied
Iraq;
(C) the postmodern equivalents of Judea's Zealots are Iraq's nationalist
insurgents; and
(D) the postmodern equivalent of Pontius Pilate's Imperial Roman Army
is the US military.
- That the birth of The Prince of Peace
calls into question the USA's non-defensive war of aggression against
a faraway land that neither attacked us, nor imminently threatened to
attack us, nor even had the military capability to attack us. 3. That
the birth of The Prince of Peace calls into question our ongoing imperialist
occupation of a faraway land in the misbegotten attempt to forcibly
convert it into:
(A) a client state that is obedient to the West's marionette version
of democracy;
(B) a petro-state economy that subordinates itself to the multinational-corporate
version of global capitalism; and
(C) a secularist society that is cloned from the USA's bipolar-schizophrenic
version of symbolic Christianity combined with functional neopaganism.
[4]
The Bottom Line: Instead of ambivalently celebrating commercialized symbols
of Christmas honoring the birth of an eviscerated False Christ who is
bereft of real-world implications, why not rediscover The Real Event and
The Real
Person? Our efforts to do so could be the "stitch in time that saves"
millions of lives from being destroyed by the Bushite neocons' concocted
"World War IV" against a nonexistent "Islamofascism"!
[5]
ENDNOTES
[1] The Atlantic Monthly Online requires a subscription, but you can read
a concise summary of Harvey Cox's outstanding essay, "The Market
As God: Living In The New Dispensation," at:
http://www.jctr.org.zm/bulletins/market%20as%20god.htm
Also see Mark Fiore's humorous 12-21-04 animation, "Bushy Claus,"
at:
http://www.markfiore.com/animation/claus.html
[2] Whereas Martin Luther erroneously taught that the Pauline doctrine
of government in Romans 13 was an absolutist "two kingdoms ethic"
that bifurcated Christ's spiritual "kingdom of the word" from
the state's temporal "kingdom of the sword." The result was
hypercompliant moral blindness: although "good spiritual people"
may apply the peaceable Christian ethic on Sunday, they must apply the
state's bellicose ethic on Monday through Saturday -- however violative
of every conceivable human right it might be! Luther's all-too-convenient
ethical teaching neatly sums up why the West has suffered from a centuries-long
bout with bipolar-schizophrenia concerning the "moral theology of
war," and why so many German Protestants watched in silent horror
as the Nazis created their neopagan "Reichskirche" and filled
their concentration camps.
Most Westerners have experienced their culture's normative bipolar-schizophrenia
-- especially at Christmastime -- because they repeatedly encounter it
as cognitive dissonance. Here are two examples involving the "prayer
vs. preyer" dilemma.
A. Prayer: Inside homes and churches, Americans are supposed to be celebrating
the birth of Christ, the Prince of Peace. Preyer: Meanwhile our heedless
nation is indiscriminately raining down bombs on Iraq's cities in hell-bent
pursuit of its unjust and illegal war of aggression, which has killed
100,000+ innocent civilian noncombatants;
(B) Prayer: Inside field chapels and mess halls, US military chaplains
are supposed to be leading America's pious troops in Christmas prayers
celebrating the birth of the Prince Of Peace. Preyer: When these obedient
soldiers have finished, they must resume their combat duties to advance
their nation's unjust and illegal war of aggression in Iraq.
[3] Read James Carroll's 12-21-04 CD/BG essay, "The Politics Of The
Christmas Story," at: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1221-23.htm
[4] Read Karen Horst Cobb's 10-25-04 CD essay, "No Longer A Christian,"
at:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1025-25.htm
By the mid-nineteenth century, Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard
was lamenting that Christianity had been thoroughly corrupted by, and
subsumed into, the modern nation-state. Hence, it no longer was possible
to openly practice anything other than the state's purely-symbolic religiosity,
which Kierkegaard dubbed "Churchianity," and defined as "the
ambitious citizen's showpiece display of sanctimoniously-hypocritical
piety." He concluded that authentic Christian discipleship was far
too threatening to the existing political order, so nation-states imposed
this unfortunate devolution into "Churchianity." Therefore,
one could pursue discipleship only by becoming an "anonymous Christian."
Postmoderns need add only this to SK's astute observations: "Plus
ça change, plus c'est la même chose!" ("The more
things change, the more they remain the same!").
[5] Read Jim Lobe's 12-20-04 TP essay, "Neocon Christmas List,"
at:
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/neocon_christmas_list.php
Now that the realists -- George Tenet, Colin Powell, and Richard Armitage
-- have tendered their resignations, the Bush neoconservatives are back
in the saddle again. Now that the neocons control Mr. Bush foreign-policy
team (e.g., the NSA, the CIA, the DoD, and the DoS), we have a new problem.
The neocon's foreign-policy agenda, as summarized in the following two
points, is based on a demonstrably-false worldview:
(a) the democratic West has won "World War III" (i.e., the Cold
War) against the communist bloc (e.g., fought through proxies in Korea,
Vietnam, and Afghanistan);
(b) therefore, the USA must fight a concocted "World War IV"
against their latest imaginary demon, a phantom they've dubbed "Islamofascism."
At best, the neocons have exposed their ignorance of history and politics
by inventing the term "Islamofascism." At worst, it reveals
their appalling ethnocentricity, because it's really nothing more than
a vile Islamophobic slur.
In actual point of fact, "Islamofascism" is a grossly-inaccurate
misnomer. And here's why.
Islam hasn't created a single fascist state in it's 1,400-year history!
That's because Islam creates Koranically-based medieval theocracies that
are governed by regionally-diverse interpretations of Shari'a law. However,
totalitarian fascism is a modern concept. And several elements that are
essential to the definition of fascism are always absent from Islam's
medieval theocracies.
Perhaps the closest Islam has ever gotten to reifying fascist totalitarianism
was in the Ottoman Empire. During World War I, the Ottoman Empire was
an unstable medieval theocracy that allied itself with German militarism.
However, at that time, Germany was still in the process of devolving into
fascism, so it would NOT be true to state that the Ottomans were allied
with the fascists. Moreover, Turkey is all that remains of the Ottoman
Empire today. And postmodern Turkey is a relatively stable democracy that
is actively seeking membership in the European Union.
Some Islamic nations have devolved from democracies into autocracies,
like the USA's backsliding client-state, Pakistan. And Saudi Arabia remains
deeply mired in the House of Saud's feudal theocratic monarchy. Nonetheless,
the vast majority of Islamic nations have been slowly evolving away from
medieval theocracies, including the two at the top of the neocons' hit-list
-- Iran and Syria.
Hence, the Bush neocons lack the necessary historical, political, and
legal grounds on which to justify their imaginary "World War IV"
against their nonexistent foe -- "Islamofascism." Meanwhile,
they're ignoring the USA's real foe, who is more precisely analogous to
a worldwide criminal organization like the Mafia -- the amorphous transnational
franchise known as "al-Qaeda."
Therefore, the question we ought to be asking ourselves here is: "Why
are the Bush neocons hell-bent on using the US military to forcibly conquer
and remake the Near and Middle East?"
Again, the answer can be found in the neocons' religio-political affiliations,
which create their worldview. The neocons could be fairly characterized
as "Holy-War Fundamentalists," because they're either Christian
Evangelicals or Jewish Zionists. These literalistic groupthinkers have
created a new "faith-based" foreign policy that, in their blinkered
estimation, justifies a "perpetual war for perpetual peace"
agenda.
The neocons share at least six quasi-theological beliefs that shape their
foreign policy:
(1) American exceptionalism;
(2) muscular triumphalism;
(3) the miraculous transformative power of American might, or militaristic
messianism;
(4) "end-timers" and Zionists somehow can conflate the USA with
God, and/or Israel with God;
(5) the USA should ignore its own national interests in order to advance
"Biblically-based" interests in the Mideast, which are currently
embodied by Ariel Sharon's Likudniks; and
(6) therefore, the USA must pursue an "Israel first" foreign-policy
agenda.
Like it or not, that's why we invaded Iraq last year, and that's why the
neocons are lobbying to invade Iran and Syria next year. Like it or not,
that's why "war is peace" inside the Pax American Imperium,
and that's why we're
having an Orwellian Christmas.
About The Author: Evan Augustine Peterson
III, J.D.,
is the Executive Director of the
American Center for International Law ("ACIL").
©2004EAPIII
|
|
