Will a man on horseback come to rule America?

And to think, some people have accused you of not being optimistic! This post is much more optimistic than my outlook.

Celsius 233: To my understanding, “man on horseback” = military dictator. Or something in that direction at least.

Bolo PERMALINK
May 7, 2012
Celsius 233: To my understanding, “man on horseback” = military dictator. Or something in that direction at least.
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Thanks, didn’t know that.
Yeah, not exactly a knight, yes?

Ha. I wrote a piece on managers and “fixers” called “The Fixer”. It’s kind of a compliment to this piece as it talks about the difference between managers who try to manipulate and control but don’t fix anything and what would be real fixers. Sometimes the fixers are like Steve Van Zandt’s character in Netflix’s Lilyhammer”. In his former mob life he was actually called “The Fixer”. Also I mention Jim Caviezel’s character in CBS’s “Person of Interest” as another avenging guardian angel who goes around authority. But both guys employ bashing heads.

My conclusion is similar. I think the U.S. government is doomed. We are very much in danger of some military guy in charge because the left doesn’t exist in any significant numbers except for the bubbling Occupy. But maybe we can try to fix at the local level. In this the left and right libertarians are in agreement. Bureaucracy sucks. And maybe secessionists aren’t all that nuts. My governor was pushing for a Montana health care plan. Well, along with fricking and fracking. With the fracking we will need it. http://themontanamaven.com/2012/05/07/the-fixer/

Digby has been wisely watching Petraeus for some time as a likely candidate for this.

The US, like all Presidential systems that don’t have figurehead Presidents is already vulnerable to such a dictator, and they’ve spent a couple decades since the Watergate reforms eroding the controls on the executive branch. Something that I think got far too little attention in the Bush years was that Condi Rice suggested that if the Democratic Congress cut the Iraq War funding, Bush would simply keep funding the war out of the Treasury anyway, Article I be damned. I sometimes think Congress is so pliant to the Executive branch on defence matters because they know they have no power and prefer the illusion that they approve of everything to starting a staring match and losing.

After all, if Pelosi had held firm in early 2007 and refused to fund the Iraq war, and Bush has violated Article I to keep funding it anyway, the public would have cheered his resolute decision to “fund the troops” and all that rot.

The only reason the Iraq war was even authorized by Congress was that Daschle begged to be allowed to hold a vote, and promised it would pass. Bush was prepared to go it alone even then. Obama refusing to seek authorization for Libya was just the inevitable next step in the progression.

By the time the white knight comes, there will be no shared sense of ‘america’ left to rule. when the money runs out and shit hits the fan, we will not pull together but rather pull apart.

southwestern america will become northern mexico

perhaps the mormons will break away

there are already rumblings in the south about secession again

this is actually a better solution than forcing all of us to stay together IMO

I can’t imagine a more banal evil than a “shared sense of ‘America’.” It is by virtue of this petty hydra that we have the stupidity of a national project eating its way through the lives, heads and livelihoods of millions of people who would other wise at least be rational enough to admit that they are better off without fealty to a national notion.

it’s looking like our best likely end result is to continue down the Soviet America path with a bunch of colorless apparatchiks until it all comes apart. not that that worked out all that well for Russia itself, but at least the rest of the bloc got to spin out and have their own individual troubles…

meanwhile, speaking of the vague beast known as the American “left” – am i missing something, or does this Robert Reich post actually outline a fairly credible left-wing platform?

http://robertreich.org/post/22542609387

sans foreign policy, but still – i was a bit surprised.

Ian’s idea of a “man (or woman) on horseback” coheres with an idea I have been hesitant to repeat. I have posted only a few times in comments elsewhere over the past few years.

Basically, in the U.S. post-industrial economy, the last remaining significant reserve of technological competence is the military. Almost anyone who rises in business in a post-industrial economy must, by definition, conform closely to Veblen’s characterization of a technically uninformed and incompetent “leisure class.” Rising in business in a post-industrial economy requires that one learn to think of businesses not as foci of technological knowledge and capability, but as mere financial assets that can shuffled and reshuffled to fit a particular hedge fund portfolio (this is what James Crotty of PERI calls the portfolio view of the economy). This view of corporate assets goes hand in hand with financialization., Mitt Romney, of course, is the exemplar of someone who has thus risen in a post-industrial economy.

The military, because of its mission of war-fighting (meaning holding territory by killing or incapacitating people) is largely immune from this depreciation in technological competence.
The military, to continue to fulfill its purpose, must maintain its technological competence.

Now, this is very ironic, because Veblen, of course, lumped in the military with the rest of the leisure class. From a strict Veblenian perspective, of producers versus non-producers, this is true, because the military exists to kill and destroy, not to build and nurture. But the reality in a post-industrial economy is not that simple: when New Orleans was destroyed by Katrina, the only societal entity able to respond on a large scale was the military. This include not just outright rescue efforts, but emergency provisioning of food, water, and shelter.

But the New Orleans / Katrina example may tend to obscure the larger truth: that in our post-industrial economy, the only institutions that value and reward technological competence – building and fixing things – is the military. Look at the point Ernest Callenbach (the recently deceased author of Ecotopia) makes on “Practical skills” here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/07/1089518/-Open-thread-for-night-owls-Epistle-to-the-Ecotopians-from-Ernest-Callenbach-RIP-

That the military are the only institutions that value and reward technological competence is all the more significant because the military is willing to ignore the increasingly rigid class stratification that has come to characterize the U.S. Indeed, for many youth of the working class, the military has become the only readily available path for escape from the penury, poverty, and pain of working class live in modern America. Access to the colleges and universities that provide entry to the networked pathways of ruling elites, such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc., is now, for all intents and purposes, closed off to the working class. While the military officer corps continues to feature a large number of graduates from such institutions, especially the higher you go in the flag ranks, the officer corps really is a much more homogeneous sampling than the corporate boardrooms.

And if you look at the ranks of non-commissioned officers – the sergeants and chief petty officers that have forever been and will probably forever be the real backbone of command and order of any military – the military in the United States truly is, for the working class, the last bastion in America of non-prejudicial advancement based on mastery of technological skills.

So, it might be that the emergence of “man on horseback” my not necessarily be an entirely bad thing in the context of a post-industrial economy largely stratified by class. Indeed, as the economy continues to be ravaged by looting from rentiers and usurers, making the mere physical survival of the working class ever more precarious, the military becomes one of the few areas we can look to for someone to emerge to national leadership who does not (as Obama does, which is his fatal flaw) share wholesale the outlook and view of the ruling rentiers and usurers.

All of which, let me hasten to note and emphasize, does NOT remove the danger of the oligarchy fastening its favor on an “Austrian corporal.”

It is also instructive to look at the failure of the left in the context of technological competence. There are a few points to make here. First, is the left’s acceptance of the post-industrial paradigm for the economy. This is what made it so easy to predict and bewail the likely (and now realized) failure of Obama to rebuild the economy when he first announced his economics policy team, even before his inauguration. Much of the left throws the baby out with the bathwater – it condemns industry itself, without realizing the impossibility of supporting current levels of world population without an advanced industrial economy, and as corollary, without realizing the differences between industrial capitalism and financial capitalism, and how industrial capitalism must be defended from the attacks and depredations of financial capitalism.

In the American context, what is required is a fusion of the two antithetical historical forces first set in motion by Hamilton and Jefferson. Hamilton was correct in seeing that the future of American security and prosperity required a shift from an agricultural to an industrial economy. Jefferson was correct in seeing that the danger of Hamilton’s proposals was to create a “stock jobbing” mentality in the population – i.e., financialization and a portfolio view of the economy. Here, the left errors grievously when it accepts the false argument that Hamilton’s financial program was intended to create a new financial oligarchy, rather than the more accurate, and benign, view of intending to create the capital basis for funding future industry. On this, see Chapter Seven of Frank Bourgin’s extremely important 1989 book, The Great Challenge: The Myth of Laissez-Faire in the Early Republic. What is required now is a reassertion of Hamilton’s emphasis on industry, coupled with Jefferson’s desire to prevent the emergence of a new financial oligarchy. We want real captains of industry, not hedge funds titans or leveraged buyout bandits.

Second is the left’s knee-jerk reaction against the military. Now, this is understandable, given that the military has always been the oligarchy’s instrument of repression. But what the left has to accept is that no revolution has ever succeeded against an oligarchy without the creation of s separate military not under the influence and control of the oligarchy, or the co-optation and co-operation of a sizable chunk of the military. Chris Hedges is quite clear on this point – and he has been witness to almost all the revolutions in East Europe – a regime finally falls when the military and the police refuse to accept orders from the existing elites. That is why I believe the turning point in Occupy last year was Occupy Marines, when the open alignment of recent, war-wise and combat ready veterans with Occupy forced U.S. elites to move swiftly and per-emptively to end Occupy as a public spectacle. Quite simply, U.S. elites could not, and cannot, afford to suffer the existence of a social movement that attracts the support – and worst, allegiance – of those members of the U.S. working class who know how to select the proper target and neutralize it. In other words, bring to bear technological competence against the oligarchy itself.

Washington stepped a way, so there is a precedent for that zot23. Granted, the times are different now and General George didn’t have a massive military indistrial complex to do his bidding, but he is the closest example we have to a MoH deliberately choosing to do what needed to be done and then going back home to his plantation…

Tony: I’m generally in agreement with you on the point of needing a more coherent industrial policy and that there’s very little discussion of such a thing in the US at the moment. I’m not sure if the left is culpable or not, since I haven’t really seen the left in the US much (and let’s not get into an argument about who/what is “the left” in the US 🙂 ). I do believe that, across the entire ideological spectrum in the US, there is a huge deficit in clear thinking about technology, energy, and the use of them to provide for the general welfare and liberty of the people.

I would be very hesitant to create a new class of captains of industry unless it were stipulated that (1) they manage the economy not based solely (or even mostly) on the profit motive and (2) they be accountable to the people and to democratic means of control–in other words, they can’t truly own the capital which they direct and if they screw up they go to the poorhouse rather than get a golden parachute. Even then, I’m worried that such a setup would easily fall back into the robber baron era after a generation or two. Granted, at least the “captains” of industry were producing things back then, but they were still sucking the life out of much of the economy.

By odd coincidence, I’m reading Veblen’s The Theory of Business Enterprise right now. 🙂 Only on page 43 though…

In reply to Bolo – and in the spiirt of Pepe’s quote of Franklin. The military, like any tool or institution, can be used for good or for evil, or even for a bit of both at the same time. Pepe’s quote of Franklin points us in a useful direction, but we must ask HOW is a population corrupted? But before we answer THAT, we need to understand The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (see the book by that name by Bernard Bailyn, and Gordon Woods’ The Creation of the American Republic).

Both the Revolution, and the creation of the Constitution and federal union, were motivated by specific beliefs that only a republican form of government could ensure political and economic freedom; that the goal of any good government was to promote the general welfare, and that the maintenance of republican government depended above all else on a sense of public virtue. When Franklin warns about the public being corrupted, he is pointing to the erosion of the concept of public virtue.

Sp, what is public virtue? Some idea may be gleaned from these notes of mine from Woods’ books:

P47 “…as Thomas Paine pointed out [in The Rights of Man] “What is called a republic is not an particular form of government.” Republicanism meant more for Americans than simply the elimination of a king and the institution of an elective system. It added a moral dimension, a utopian depth, to the political separation from England—a depth that involved the very character of their society. “We are now really another people,” exclaimed Paine in 1782.”

P2 52-53 “Thus before a nation is completely deprived of freedom, she must be fitted for slavery by her vices.”

GW 53-54 “The sacrifice of individual interests to the greater good of the whole formed the essence of republicanism and comprehended for Americans the idealistic goal of their Revolution. From this goal flowed all of the Americans’ exhortatory literature and all that made their ideology truly revolutionary… it alone was enough to make the Revolution one of the great utopian movements of American history. By 1776 the Revolution came to represent a final attempt, perhaps—given the nature of American society—even a desperate attempt, by many Americans to realize the traditional Commonwealth ideal of a corporate society, in which the common good would be the only objective of government.”

55 “From the logic of belief that “all government… is or ought to be, calculated for the general good and safety of the community,” …followed the Americans’ unhesitating adoption of republicanism in 1776. The peculiar excellence of republican government was that it was “wholly characteristical of the purport, matter or object for which government ought to be instituted.” By definition it had no other end than the welfare of the people: res publica, the public affairs, or the public good. “The word republic, said Thomas Paine, “means the public good, or the good of the whole, in contradistinction to the despotic form, which makes the good of the sovereign, or of one man, the only object of government.” “

The conservative movement, most especially the Randians, have frontally attacked these very ideas, and argue that the slavish following of self-interest results in, through the magical power of the markets’ invisible hand, in the greatest common good. In fact, they argue, the very concept of “general welfare” is a slippery slope to despotism and fascism. Note that the philosophers conservatives quote to support these arguments are mostly European, in large part, British (Adam Smith, Hume, Locke, Mandelville, Ricardo, Burke). In other words, lackeys of the old world’s oligarchs.

This has resulted in our present corporatist state, where it is argued that the sole purpose of a corporation is to increase shareholder value (the corporatist’s form of individual self-interest) . This is completely at odds with the historical record of early American corporate chartering, when corporations were generally limited to explicitly explained economic functions, and generally expected to do so in the interests of the general welfare. Corporations that failed on these counts could, and sometimes did, have their corporate charters annulled.

Here is the point I am driving at, in the context of the present discussion. What institutions in America society now come closest to the Revolutionary concepts of common good, general welfare, and public virtue? What institutions are more focused on getting an individual to think of himself or herself in service to others, rather than ones’ self? I believe the honest answer can only be the military. Even American christianity and organized religion, at this point, fails the test: the emphasis is on individual salvation – saving the self from damnation – rather than on the social gospel of good works (for a long, but vitally insightful view of how American christianity has been so corrupted – remember Franklin’s quote – see William Neil’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Market at http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010010211/sinners-hands-angry-market). It is the military, with its emphasis of sacrifice of self for the preservation of the unit, and the concepts of honor and national pride, that comes closer to the Revolutionary ideal of public virtue than anything you can find in corporate America.

But the issues raised by Bolo remain quite valid, and dangerous. Again, the military, like any tool or institution, can be used for good or for evil, or even a bit of both. We would be failing in our duties as citizens were we to fail to attempt to influence our society’s military institutions simply because we simplistically dismiss them as hopelessly reactionary.

As men on horseback go, an Eisenhower would be an improvement on most of the folks we have had since him. I don’t imagine the one we will get will be like Ike even if he wanted to be, but I wish it were possible.

Aristotle and Plato’s ideas on how to prevent political degeneration into tyranny included having a large middle class and a well-educated public. (Franklin’s quote was based on their ideas on Kyklos).

Tony Wikrent:

Basically, in the U.S. post-industrial economy, the last remaining significant reserve of technological competence is the military. Almost anyone who rises in business in a post-industrial economy must, by definition, conform closely to Veblen’s characterization of a technically uninformed and incompetent “leisure class.” Rising in business in a post-industrial economy requires that one learn to think of businesses not as foci of technological knowledge and capability, but as mere financial assets that can shuffled and reshuffled to fit a particular hedge fund portfolio (this is what James Crotty of PERI calls the portfolio view of the economy). This view of corporate assets goes hand in hand with financialization., Mitt Romney, of course, is the exemplar of someone who has thus risen in a post-industrial economy.

The military, because of its mission of war-fighting (meaning holding territory by killing or incapacitating people) is largely immune from this depreciation in technological competence. The military, to continue to fulfill its purpose, must maintain its technological competence.

I differ with you on this. The US still yet contains islands of competence–indeed, military competence is derivative in nature, as it originates in the technological and educational competence of the society at large. The improvement in the performance of the victorious Soviet army of WWII vs the defeated one of WWI is such an illustration; it can be explained by the vast improvement in both technology and educational opportunity in the 1920s and 30s Russia. One of the things which might have been decisive is simple literacy–the Soviet WWII army had it, whereas the czarist army of WWI was largely illiterate.

The problem is that the engineers and scientists no longer have much sayso in calling the shots in the US anymore; they’ve been superceded by the financial elites. In almost every company, technological prowess is given lip service while the focus is on short-term financial wheeling and dealing, designed to help the short-term bottom line often at the cost of the long term future (Ian has called this “burning down one’s home to keep warm”).

The corollary to this, and the ultimate irony for the financial oligarchs of the Right, is that the loss of technological and industrial competence dooms the military force they are so eager to employ. Ian says that the oligarchs are stupid and incompetent, and I tend to agree with that observation. They don’t even do the right thing for their own self-interest.

Access to the colleges and universities that provide entry to the networked pathways of ruling elites, such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc., is now, for all intents and purposes, closed off to the working class.

It’s not just that. These so-called “elite schools” *don’t value competence. They even sell themselves to prospective students as enclaves where the most important thing is not what those students will learn, but who they can *network* with. It’s quite literally what you know when you come out, it’s who you know.

I tell you, not only are the top 10 % of students at a Cleveland State the equal of the top 10 % at Yale or Princeton, they might actually be superior in competence. They might be superior because unlike the “elite” schools, their grades might not be assigned from a curve.

-StewartM

I agree, Lurker the Third. Tony seems to be amongst those 80% Americans that vastly overestimate the virtues of their military. One might wonder why the American elites invest so much money in the pentagon if it was really some kind of last bastion against the corruption of the oligarchy. Indeed, one might wonder why the military budget keeps increasing while other, much more essential, programmes get cut. Including some that, as you point out, do a much better job “on getting an individual to think of himself or herself in service to others, rather than ones’ self.”. Personally, I think it has to do with Lockheed’s bottom line. Somebody has to buy those overpriced jets.

P.S.: I don’t live in the US, though I like to keep up on the news from the Imperial Capital by following Ian’s blog, among others (lest I am taken by surprise when the Senate sends the legionnaires marching South). Let me tell you by personal experience: military dictators are as corrupt as any other, and twice as incompetent.

Nihil Obstet:

The U.S. spends about as much on its military as the rest of the world combined.

To me the jaw-dropper is that our military spending today is within spitting distance of WWII!!

Let’s compare then and now to see what we’re getting for almost as much money.

Over 12,000,000 personnel in uniform then vs 1,400,000 now.

88,000 tanks produced in WWII’s four years to about 300/year?

300,000 aircraft produced in WWII to about what? You can look here for an estimate, production runs are in the hundreds: http://www.defense-aerospace.com/article-view/feature/114488/cost-of-us-military-aircraft.html — seem to be in the dozens.

36 fleet carriers vs 11? 23 battleships? Over 8,300 ships in service in WWII. 281 today.

WWII: 250,000 artilllery pieces produced? The Liberty ship merchant marine? The list can go on and on and on…

It seems to me that our “bang for the buck” for our money today is rather poor.

Now, some will protest that our technology is superior today which makes weapon systems more costly. I would argue that in relative terms, that was not so. The B-29 Superfortress was considered a technological marvel for its time, incorporating many innovations. US battleships used radar-controlled gunnery which by mid-war meant that they could paste enemy vessels well-out of range. The US Navy had invested a lot of research in ship armor, so that our 12.9″ belts on battleships produced during the war was equal in protection to the 18″ armor on Japanese battleships. The US employed proximity fuses for artillery, gyroscopic compensation on tank turrets, sonar, and many other technologies considered “high tech” in WWII.

And lastly–there was the Manhattan Project, which was as high-tech as anything could come.

Much of US military spending is just corporate welfare.

Oh, and for the Bin Laden raid as a sterling indication of recent success–I still buy the leak, reported in the UK Daily Mail, that the Pakistani military was bought off. They had in essence detained Bin Laden, and our money convinced them to look deliberately the other way while US Navy Seals swept in to kill him. Even then, with no opposition, things fsck’ed up–one of the helicopters crashed.

-StewartM

nihil obstet asks the obvious question: “Is the military really very competent? It would help if they could actually win a war.”

Earlier this year or late last year, Ralph Nader made a very interesting observation that it was not the professional military that pushed us into the Iraq War, but the conservative politicians – Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, and the rest of the bastards – who even set up their own intel analysis shop that would churn out the threat assessments needed to justify war.

And recall that the initial war in Afghanistan was actually won within three months, at a cost of about $90 million total at the time, and by less than 2,000 special forces troops inserted to assist the Northern Alliance forces attack and defeat the Taliban.

It’s been a few years since I’ve written this, but I can pinpoint the exact date and event at which the United States was foredoomed to turn the quick victory in Afghanistan into a defeat by plunging into a protracted, unwinnable war in Iraq. George Packer described it in his book The Assassins Gate. On pages 110 to 112, Packer describes a meeting at the American Enterprise Institute where Condeleeza Rice presented the plans drawn up by the State Dept and the military for the post-war rebuilding of Iraq:

Chris DeMuth, president of the American Enterprise Institute, where the administration’s neoconservatives drew their support and many of their personnel, neither consented nor refused when Gelb broached the possibility. On November 15, the representatives of the think tanks met with Rice and Hadley in Rice’s office at the White House. John Hamre of CSIS went in expecting to pitch the idea to Rice, but the meeting was odd from the start: Rice seemed attentive only to DeMuth, and it was as if the White House was trying to sell something to the American Enterprise Institute rather than the other way around. When Gelb, on speakerphone from New York, began to describe his concept, DeMuth cut him off. “Wait a minute. What’s all this planning and thinking about postwar Iraq?” He turned to Rice. “This is nation building, and you said you were against that. In the campaign you said it, the president has said it. Does he know you’re doing this? Does Karl Rove know?”

Without AEI, Rice couldn’t sign on. Two weeks later, Hadley called Gelb to tell him what Gelb already knew: “We’re not going to go ahead with it.” Gelb later explained, “They thought all those things would get in the way of going to war.”

The competent people were frozen out of the war planning. It was incompetent, and moreover, ideological, civilian leadership that overruled the military officers.

The more damaging criticism is by Radical Livre and others, who argue that I “vastly overestimate the virtues of their military.” Perhaps. But they are missing the more important point I have made – which is that whether you like it or not, the outcome of almost every revolution is finally decided at the point that the military and police refuse to obey elites’ orders to disrupt or kill fellow citizens in the streets. I suggest that it is not “vastly overestimating the virtues of the military” but, rather, insisting on recognizing the overwhelming importance the military will have in any future regime change in the United States.

Yes, Morocco Bama, “almost.” But, unfortunately, refer back to my second post: “no revolution has ever succeeded against an oligarchy without the creation of [a] separate military not under the influence and control of the oligarchy, or the co-optation and co-operation of a sizable chunk of the military.”

I’ve always thought that the point of the second amendment was to insure that citizens constitute the armed organizations that keep the peace, rather than the mercenary, frequently foreign, armies that the European monarchies were fond of. An army drawn from the people will possibly side with the people if government gets too oppressive. The authoritarians quickly turned that into a very silly wild west fantasy. But it reads to me as though the founders would agree with Tony Wikrent on the need for an army with weaker loyalty to the oligarchy.

Next time you are on a plane and asked to applaud a military person on the plane

Is this going on? I haven’t flown in several years, so I don’t know. It never happened when I did fly before several years ago. What happens if you don’t applaud? I’m sorry, but if I did have to fly, I’m not applauding if this happens, and I’m willing to get in the face of anyone who has a problem with that. I don’t agree with these “wars” and I don’t agree with having a bloated military budget, so I’m not lending any more support other than my compulsory federal income tax, and if I could change that (the tax), I would. I’ll be damned if I’m going to applaud it, or anyone directly involved with it. That being said, I don’t agree that spitting on them and mocking them is constructive, either.

To Morocco Bama: My husband has pleaded with me not to stand up and say “and are there any teachers on board. Let’s hear it for them.” even though he agrees with me and he’s a “conservative” rancher. He just doesn’t want to have to get me out of jail. Yes, MB, it happens on every flight now and thanking the military signs are everywhere in the airport. It used to be during a war, but now that we are perpetually at war, it is all the time. But really it is softening us up for the guy on the horse I’m guessing.

Petro: I google and read everything Graeber to keep me from despair. He is our young Chomsky along with Paul Street. It is heartening to hear that other societies have lived within a different paradigm. I love the tribe in Madagascar called “they who would not cut their hair”. When the Kind died, men were supposed to cut their hair. This tribe didn’t and hid in the woods rather than give their tax money.
Also become a Groucho Marxist. Watch “Duck Soup” . One of the greatest anti-war movies ever made. Filled with wholesome anarchy.

@Radical Livre:

But please don’t paint too rosy a picture, most of said “left” is composed of nationalist developmentalist Keynesians, which can only be considered radical in our crazy times.

Hey now! Let’s not make the perfect the enemy of the good here, eh?

*ducks behind sofa*

So, it might be that the emergence of “man on horseback” my not necessarily be an entirely bad thing in the context of a post-industrial economy largely stratified by class.

Save for the teeny tiny little point that faced with insurmountable systemic problems, a man in horseback will turn to military adventures to maintain his hold over society. Always.

Which means that in a couple of decades, my children and your children may be shooting at each other. And that in a decade after that, your country and a large chunk of the rest of the Earth may glow in the dark.

Correction: She does “know” the history.

Other military officers who became, imho at least, men on a horse, and who defy the typical leftist stereotyping, include, again imho, Charlemagne, Uthman ibn Affan, Suleiman, Gustavus Adolphus, and Frederick II (the Great).

Except, Tony, that Chavez didn’t face insurmountable systemic problems in leading Venezuela – as Ian points out in his last paragraph in the post above, whoever is leading the US WILL.

Please do try to read what was actually written.

One country that utterly fascinates me is Poland, so I am chagrined to realize I did not include Józef Piłsudski in my list of positive examples of men on a horse.

ATYD:

Dont bother Tony. Liberals don’t read history.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Apparently you don’t read anthropology, which was the reference to that quote:

To view human behavior as being about economic calculation flies in the face of thousands of years of anthropological study. There are other forms of organization other than hierarchical or by markets.

Which is factually, objectively, true. I understood what MontanaMaven was talking about.

Oh, and BTW: “history” does not encompass the whole story of humankind. Only the itsy-bitsy bit of it after writing was invented, by which time many things had already gone terribly wrong. If the aim of the study of the past is to understand humankind and how humans behave and interact better, it doesn’t do to focus on the last 10,000 years and ignore everything else that came before. You get as warped a perspective as if you had studied only, say, US history and had ignored Chinese or European history.

-StewartM

Not to discount Graeber’s welcome ideas as food for thought and potential action, but he can’t self-describe himself as an Anarchist and be in the employ of Yale University. Seriously, Yale? Consider the implications of that University….its tentacles into all these things we discuss here. It’s at the very center of it. Even if Yale gives him a long leash, and obviously Yale does, it’s still a leash. Yes, Graeber may appreciate many of the notions of Anarchism as he defines it, but appreciating the notions and walking the talk are two very different things. And, don;t get me wrong, I know walking the talk is a near impossibility considering this onerous system. If he did walk that talk, he wouldn’t have an audience. Obviously, Yale considers him useful in some way other than his face value. It would be interesting conjecture to consider what that use is for Yale. Afterall, this fine upstanding Ivy League School is the cornerstone of U.S. intelligence. What purpose does Graeber serve for them?

I’m not trying to be contentious with the above observation, rather I’m just trying to keep it real and in its proper perspective, if there such a thing as a proper perspective.

@Montana – thanks, I was just going to mention that as well. But really, according to MB Chomsky isn’t “allowed” to call himself anarchist (which Chomsky does) due to his employment by MIT (which Chomsky himself notes is obviously problematic).

Whilst we would all love to live up to our ideals many of us fail in this. I could go out to the fields and live in a shack or truly live in the not as ideal muck of this world in my very not ideologically pure occupation (finance). More power to those going off the grid and living the ideals, but if that’s the expectation (i.e. a sort of ideological purity), it’s no wonder we’re all rather fucked. Rigidity in any philosophical leaning is a sort of intellectual death. Maybe I’ve read too much Hannah Arendt…

Here’s an informative video debate between to individuals whose opinions I greatly respect. It’s a great conversation….one we should be having continually until we finally get on that road. After viewing it, which one would you consider to be the Anarchist, if you had to choose one or the other? I would go with Foucault, and note his comments on the university system, and institutions in general.

Chomsky can call himself anything he likes, just as I can call myself Santa Claus, but that doesn’t make it so. I don’t like to label or categorize, because I believe to do so puts things and people in a box and tries to keep it/them there, but only as a directional, I see Chomsky more as a Reformationist, rather than an Anarchist. That’s the problem with Anarchism, though, the concept itself precludes defining it…..because at its core, in the least, confinement is anathema to it.

http://www.myspace.com/video/this-isn-39-t-noam-chomsky/noam-chomsky-debates-with-michel-foucault/806445

Talk about your man on a horse, an inmate in West Virginia took 41% of the primary vote from Obama. Ian was right, Obama should have been primaried hard from the left.

an inmate in West Virginia took 41% of the primary vote from Obama

We’ll all be squealing like piggies in no time with results like that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwulUkvxbnk&feature=related

That’s not a Man On Horseback, it’s a Man On A Bar Of Soap.

On Friday the 19th of December, 2008, the local papers reported the removal of the last equestrian statue of the dictator Francisco Franco from its plinth in the square in front of city hall in Santander, Spain. This was the last public vestige remaining of another “man on a horse” who, (with others), “rescued” (coup d’état against the legitimate government) authoritarian Spain. Be damned careful what you wish for.

If anything, there is a parallel in the run-up to the Spanish Civil War (X – there have been several) to what is transpiring in the U.S. today. The probable result will be the same unless other factors are introduced. Good luck.

No mention as to where the pigeons are now alighting and depositing.

David Kowalsky, small quibble. Peron didn’t belong to a group called “gulpistas”. Golpista (with an o) literally means something like “Couper” in Spanish. i.e.: Person who performs a coup d’etat. Peron was part of a coup in the forties, but that coup only landed him in the labour department. It was his populist policies and cooption of the labour movement while in that department that brought him popular support to protect him against his rivals in the military and got him elected president later.

The 30s and 40s is actually a time where “Men on Horses”, elected or not, thrived all over Latin America (thanks, in great part, to the breakdown of the old agrarian social order accelerated by the Great Depression), and interesting comparative studies can be made on the variation between countries. Just like they could be made about the current rise of “the left”.

Decent documentary here on the Spanish Civil War. Prelude to a Tragedy is perhaps where we are right now in the U.S. This fits nicely with Ian’s post. There are many similarities.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=x7S9XcDMkdA

Do not beckon the dreaded Man On Horseback.

Thanks for the book suggestion, FTB. It will most likely be the next one I read. As you mention, the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War has been largely overlooked by the world at large for many reasons, to include an atmosphere of censorship of the subject in Spain, but also, I believe, because so much time and effort has been focused on Germany, the Nazis, and Hitler, that it’s overshadowed every other significant tragedy in this tumultuous period. It was an amazing period. Worlds were quite literally rocked, and yet, this younger generation, and even the generation that preceded it, no little about the depth and complexity of it all, and that’s a very sad statement, because you know as I do, if you don’t have anything near an accurate representation of the past, you’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

It is mind-boggling to consider that Francoist Spain survived until 1975. It makes you wonder about Hitler and the Nazis if they hadn’t gone the expansionist route replete with preemptive war. The world would be a very different place today.

@MB – So, I take it that Graeber and Chomsky in your opinion are not anarchists? I believe that was the main thust of my post. They state that they are, but instead you just call me a “fan-boy”. Jesus H-on a popsickle stick. Chomsky has said (as I noted) that it is problematic that he works at MIT and how they help in the military, but the world isn’t a clean place. From your answer, I guess you think they collude and can’t be trusted. But you didn’t say that, so I’m surmising from your dismissmal of me as fanboy.

I, by the way, never said I was an anarchist in the post, mearly that I don’t live an ideologically pure life. I don’t live up to my ideals was my point. So I am not going to throw stones in that glass house with reference to a person like Graeber.

My other point at the end of my post, which I seemed to have made poorly, since you dismissed me as the problem, was what seems to be your drive for no compromise in life and world view would silence interesting thinkers who do have things to contribute to how the world can and should be very different. It’s comendable that you can live up to the ideals.

A little something to put some flesh on the wounds inflicted by Franco’s dictatorship and their present day consequence from El País English (14 May).

http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/05/14/inenglish/1336996949_106345.html