23.8.11

XCII - Known and Unknown, a Memoir, by Donald Rumsfeld, comments by André Bandeira

Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense in George Bush's cabinet, wrote this Memoir and carefully reviewed it. In a «schocked and awed» society, where Psychology is more effective then notional nuclear arsenals, one has to massage perception, in order to remember.Historical reports have always been different from what History itself was.Thus, this careful review may be useful to a court hearing, and I don't mean the «Court of History». The gossip I leave it to irresponsible journalists and broadcast zombies. Still, Rumsfeld didn't admire Condoleezza Rice. He probably scorned her and she deserved it. The same goes for Paul Bremer III. The planned, by both, implementation (forcefully, of course) of a dogmatic democracy, in Irak, was either pathetic (Rice) or an obscure episode in US domestic social climbing (Bremer III). The memorialist knows Patraeus: he was driving and ambitious. When Rumsfeld handed his letter of resignation over to Pr. Bush, Henry Kissinger invited him to share with that he was being criticized for overpowering the Generals, whereas what he consented to was precisely the opposite. Let's begin by the end of the book: Rumsfeld was frustrated because the National Defense Review didn't include his proposal of a «counter-ideological» strategy ( against islamism/radical islamism). The problem, here, is recurring: the United States -- of which Rumsfeld ends up praising the Yankee part of it and the «cartoon» Kit Carson -- is not a Nation. The USA are only the top-of-the-cream center of Power in Western Civilization (West of what? Of Asia of course). Sometimes they have civil wars and other times, they have «creative destructions», some call «free market». That is the reason why Rumsfeld's attempts to finance a «counter-counter-ideology» dust down as maxims, quotations and very-well-saids. His analysis of Extremism based on Religion is correct and reliable, but an astute allocation in a balanced budget is not enough. The strength of the West doesn't dwell on ideologies (whenever they pop-up, the West weakens) but in spirit and soul, whatever this may mean. That's is why Rumsfeld, if he ever aspired to, could never become President. As political scientist for background (that means a policy-manager in office) he is not a Politician. But, ironically, this fact comes to his rescue: he presented twice his letter of resignatin after the shame of Abu Grahib jail broke out. The blame stays on George Bush. Rumsfeld represents the hawkish America we already knew -- that is the «known unknown». In a USA which is declining - and that is the «unknown unknown» -- where the decline should happen in an orderly manner, Rumsfeld is not an «oldie», everybody should respect. He is the hindsight we should care about. He neither should be confused with the frail morality of young conservatives, managing the wreck of Peer-Gynt socialists, nor with the hidden agenda of the self-labeled neo-conservatives. In this book, Rumsfeld remains superbly wise and a touch of final humbleness, may announce that his life is only about to begin -- he kept his family. But, still, the wrestler Donald Rumsfeld stays clumsy, and his vanity, albeit meek, holds futile. All he knows, he got it from allowing the adversary to move first. Indeed, he left many more «unknown unknowns» than knowlegeable unknowns. And the laconic part of his book, still lurks proud and stubborn, with almost no angle exposed, prone to any kind of flexibility. The wrestler didn't disclose any secret. He did his job. Unfortunately, the job description is depressing.

15.8.11

XCI- (Re)Leituras - Anti-Oedipus, by Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, comments by André Bandeira

This book, of 1972, should be called «Stupidity».It is about Psychoanalysis and Capitalism, and it states that the desire of consumption, in capitalism, makes out of us, «desire-machines». Consumerism would be so co-native to capitalism that we end up considering ourselves as bodies full of desire, without organs, longing for the desert, to fulfil our desire, as if we were a simple, formless, organ of it. The book, bigotely aims at making us aware of the hellish machinism of capitalism and, at the same time, liberate us from the constraints which hinder the plenishment of our desire. Taking into account that the book explores many authors (and artists too), it intends to substantiate its thesis by means of erudition, as if what the book contends for, was the quintessence of all that extensive, quoted Literature. But what they call «Desire» is so void as their «quintessential» erudition. They end up considering Freud reactionary, because he indulged to the necessity of Patriarchalism in society. Instead, they consider themselves the heirs of Nietzsche's Anti-Christ, out of which they extract a top-of-the-cream therapy, they call «Schizoanalysis». We know that some of the creators of nazism were the french self-styled heirs of medieval Catharism, and that Napoleon was the utmost model of Hitler. The fact that these demagogues began as left-wingers is completely irrelevant. So did Goebbels. As a matter of fact, there was something «schizo» in Nietzsche, but as Mancini once said, he told almost everything of almost any subject. And if Nietzsche was struggling with some schizofrenia, that could be the stuff of his work, but it certainly was not the result of it. Well, these two authors may be out of fashion but not the fashion itself, go ask Lady Gaga. A body conceived as «desire», which could dipense and receive pleasure by any edge, is very much in fashion. The authors, so eruditical they are, even found a name for an ancient cult to support this «possession», the one of Bephomet, a demon. So, they are very much up to date. Still, what they say is completely stupid, not because it is unclever, but because it is superbly clumsy. A body without organs, their «desire-machine», which gets rid of the others, to enjoy the plenty of desire, has implicitely to extend the «desert» around it, because at the end, it can get no satisfaction. In order to have a perfect schizofrenia, now you have one personality. Where is the other one? That would be the liberation of capitalism,if one should adopt this top-of-the-cream therapy. Disease and therapy are here deliberately confounded, as any charlatan would do. The second personality, it is their hate for a moderate satisfaction of our desires, and they worship the demon Bephomet, the lord of transformations,because they really do not want a Desire in quest for plenishment. The balance among conflicting satisfactions seems to be as ancient as Reason. What they really want, it is to spread the supreme unsatisfaction. If they prescribe the continuous transformation of one thing into another, what they actually want that is to destitute all of us of any identity or property, in order to fulfil their hatred. Thus, they'll begin to have some results, even if they are not therapeutic at all. The charlatans have taken over the stage.