One, of course, is reminded of Marx's comment on history being repeated as farce with Clinton/Lewinsky as latter-day versions of JFK/Marilyn Monroe. What a comment on how degraded bourgeois politics has become that this slob can not get it together to have an affair with someone from Barbra Streisand's social circles, but rather with a starstruck intern. I suspect that the real reason he chose to have an affair with Lewinsky was that he is a case of arrested development, like Elvis Presley who, according to biographer Albert Goldman, had a fixation on much younger women when he reached his forties. Since "Bubba" is a combination of Elvis and JFK, this should come as no surprise.
The more interesting question, which is popping up in the bourgeois press right now, is why would the leader of the most powerful imperialist nation in history act in such a reckless manner? Didn't he understand that he had the weight of the world on his shoulders? Why would he risk his "place in history" by starting an affair with a clearly impulsive and obsessive post-adolescent?
This question of the psychological makeup of ruling class politicians is intriguing. The last time I heard such soul-searching from the pundits was when Contragate was in full swing. Reporters told us that the Reagans relied on astrologers to make important decisions. It was difficult for them to accept that America's fate relied on the way Tarot cards turned up.
The most interesting take on this subject is Trotsky's in "History of the Russian Revolution" where he addresses the reliance of the Czar on Rasputin, among other signs of political, moral, psychological and intellectual incompetence. Trotsky writes:
"[King] Louis [XVI] and Nicholas were the last-born of a dynasty that had lived tumultuously. The well-known equability of them both, their tranquillity and 'gaiety ' in difficult moments, were the well-bred expression of a meagreness of inner powers, a weakness of the nervous discharge, poverty of spiritual resources. Moral castrates, they were absolutely deprived of imagination and creative force. They had just enough 'brains to feel their own triviality, and they cherished an envious hostility toward everything gifted and significant. It fell to them both to rule a country in conditions of deep inner crisis and popular revolutionary awakening. Both of them fought off the intrusion of new ideas, and the tide of hostile forces. Indecisiveness, hypocrisy, and lying were in both cases the expression, not so much of' personal weakness, as of the complete impossibility of holding fast, to their hereditary positions.
"And how was it with their wives? Alexandra, even more than Antoinette, was lifted to the very heights of the dreams of a princess, especially such a rural one as this Hessian, by her marriage with the unlimited despot of a powerful country. Both of them were filled to the brim with the consciousness of their high mission: Antoinette more frivolously, Alexandra in a spirit of Protestant bigotry translated into the Slavonic language of the Russian Church. An unlucky reign and a growing discontent of the people ruthlessly destroyed the fantastic world which these two enterprising but nevertheless chickenlike heads had built for themselves. Hence the growing bitterness, the gnawing hostility to an alien people that would not bow before them; the hatred toward ministers who wanted to give even a little consideration to that hostile world, to the country; hence their alienation even from their own court, and their continued irritation against a husband who had not fulfilled the expectations aroused by him as a bridegroom.
"Historians and biographers of the psychological tendency not infrequently seek and find something purely personal and accidental where great historical forces are refracted through a personality. This is the same fault of vision as that of the courtiers who considered the last Russian czar born 'unlucky.' He himself believed that he was born under an unlucky star. In reality his ill-luck flowed from the contradictions between those old aims which he inherited from his ancestors and the new historic conditions in which he was placed. When the ancients said that Jupiter first makes mad those who whom he wishes to destroy, they summed up in superstitious form a profound historic observation. In the saying of Goethe about reason becoming nonsense-' Vernunft wird Unsinn '-this same thought is expressed about the impersonal Jupiter of the historical dialectic, which withdraws 'reason ' from historic institutions that have outlived themselves and condemns their defenders to failure. The scripts for the roles of Romanov and Capet were prescribed by the general development of the historic drama; only the nuances of interpretation fell to the lot of the actors. The ill-luck of Nicholas, as of Louis, had its roots not in his personal horoscope, but in the historical horoscope of the bureaucratic-caste monarchy. They were both, chiefly and above all, the last-born offspring of absolutism. Their moral insignificance, deriving from their dynastic epigonism, gave the latter an especially malignant character."
This is the context in which we must place the feebleminded Reagan and the priapic Clinton. We are living in the age of capitalist decay, just as the ages of King Louis XVI and Czar Alexander represented feudal decay. Bourgeois politicians have very little of the sense of mission that they had a generation ago. Bourgeois politics came to a climax during Lincoln's administration and has gone downhill ever since. There was a bit up an uptick in FDR's New Deal, but for the most part the White House has been inhabited by characters with chickenlike heads, as Trotsky puts it felicitously.
Take Clinton (this should be said in the same tone as Henny Youngman's "take my wife"). He represents an absolute paucity of principle. Lincoln and FDR put up a stiff resistance to segments of the ruling class in order to advance its overall interests. Meanwhile, Clinton, the corporate lawyer, takes his instructions from investment banker Robert Rubin, who really rules the USA.
When Clinton was my age, he protested the war after a fashion, but made sure to let his draft board know that he didn't want to do anything to jeopardize his future career in politics. Instead I decided to flush my "career" down the toilet when I joined the Trotskyist movement. When I look around at the degenerates who rule the USA, I can not regret my decision.
We were all mistaken when we assumed that Fukuyama was correct. When I asked subscribers to the Marxism mailing-list why they remained Marxists, even though the evidence of "the end of history" seemed palpable, it only showed how shortsighted I was. The "old mole" revolution was digging away even while comrades were filling out the questionnaires.
Our main task is to construct a socialist movement that can replace the degenerates that are currently ruining the world, from the drunk in the Kremlin to the jerk-off in the White House. For too many years, we have been telling ourselves that socialism has a lot to plead forgiveness for. We must overcome this attitude. We have to start thinking seriously about how the great mass of humanity can begin to rule society in its own interest for the first time. This means re-engaging with history, rather than believing it has come to an end. Most importantly, we have to take our Marxist politics seriously. Those small number of us worldwide who have made this intellectual and political breakthrough will be called upon to make major contributions in the near future, since here is no alternative to socialism.
Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)