Hastert and ... tobacco

Tom Lehman TLEHMAN at lor.net
Sun Dec 20 19:26:13 PST 1998


Dear Doug,

The Germans, after they defeated the Dutch "boy scouts" and occupied Holland had to bring labor discipline to the valuable Dutch aircraft factories. What the Germans did was shoot every tenth man. The Germans also fire-bombed Rotterdam and Amsterdam, which was a first in WWII. Interestingly enough the Dutch and the Germans are more or less cousins and the Dutch once held considerable political say in what is now Germany. Too top it off the Dutch had remained neutral during WWI and had even given asylum to the German Kaiser after that war.

Have you ever seen the Dutch movie a Soldier of Orange. I like the English sub-title version the best. The book the movie was based on has been out of print since the late 40's as far as I know.

Some things can't be explained, although the analysis you quote is as good as any and better than most.

Your email pal, Tom L.

Doug Henwood wrote:


> Tom Lehman wrote:
>
> >Are the Republican's jealous that Clinton has carried forward the corporate
> >agenda with more skill than they could?
>
> Yes. I think the best explanation of their anti-Clinton mania is that he
> co-opted their issues, leaving them little of substance to talk about
> except their hatred of Clinton for his alleged embodiment of the "sixties."
> As Maureen Dowd wrote in today's New York Times: "Tom DeLay, the
> jagged-edge exterminator who may next-up in the Speaker roundelay, was
> choked up, praising the greatness of Mr. Livingston for understanding that
> this was 'a debate about relativism versus absolute truth.'" I think all
> these hyper-vulgar Marxist attempts to see tobacco capital at the root of
> the impeachment melodrama is embarrassingly wrong. These cretins are
> serious, and about 20-30% of the U.S. electorate stands behind them
> passionately.
>
> But about 60% or more of the U.S. electorate finds the cretins repellent,
> and their attacks on Clinton may paradoxically have had the effect of
> boosting his support. I thought of this as I was reading Zizek's Sublime
> Object of Ideology last night. This passage on political identification is
> pretty damned profound, in my ever-humble opinion:
>
> <quote>
> Our predominant, spontaneous idea of identification is that of imitating
> models, ideals, image-makers: it is noted (usually from the condescending
> 'mature' perspective) how young people identify with popular heroes, pop
> singers, film stars, sportsmen.... This spontaneous notion is doubly
> misleading. First, the feature, the trait on the basis of which we identify
> with someone, is usually hidden - it is by no means necessarily a glamorous
> feature.
>
> Neglecting this paradox can lead to serious political miscalculations; let
> us mention only the 1986 Austrian presidential campaign, with the
> controversial figure of Waldheim at its centre. Starting from the
> assumption that Waldheim was attracting voters because of his
> great-statesman image, leftists put the emphasis of their campaign on
> proving to the public that not only is Waldheim. a man with a dubious past
> (probably involved in war crimes) but also a man who is not prepared to
> confront his past, a man who evades crucial questions concerning it - in
> short, a man whose basic feature is a refusal to 'work through' the
> traumatic past. What they overlooked was that it was precisely this feature
> with which the majority of centrist voters identified. Post-war Austria is
> a country whose very existence is based on a refusal to 'work through' its
> traumatic Nazi past - proving that Waldheim was evading confrontation with
> his past emphasized the exact trait-of-identification of the majority of
> voters.
>
> The theoretical lesson to be learned from this is that the
> trait-of-identification can also be a certain failure, weakness, guilt of
> the other, so that by pointing out the failure we can unwittingly reinforce
> the identification. Rightist ideology in particular is very adroit at
> offering, people weakness or guilt as an identifying trait: we find traces
> of this even with Hitler. In his public appearances, people specifically
> identified themselves with what were hysterical outbursts of impotent rage
> that is, they 'recognized' themselves in this hysterical acting out.
> </quote>
>
> Extrapolating to Clinton, I think the American masses like his evasiveness,
> his feel-goodism, even his cynical ability to bomb Iraqis from afar. How
> nice it would be to launch 450 cruises against your personal enemies and
> not have to worry about getting shot back at!
>
> Doug



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