>On Tue, 18 Feb 2003, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> But let me try to put the point in more sober,
>>less offensive language. There are a lot of people
>>in middle America who feel alienated and
>>trapped. They're deep in debt and have little
>>pleasure in their lives. But instead of hating the
>>pig system, sometimes they identify with the empire
>>and get a charge out of bombing our "enemies."
>>Nothing Norman Solomon could write would ever reach
>>people like this. And don't tell me they don't
>>exist.
>
>Okay, let's grant they exist. How then to explain
>someone like Thomas Friedman? During the Kosovo war,
>he exhilerated about bombing the Serbs back to the
>Dark Ages fit to burst a pants button. Clearly this
>can't be the same emotional hydraulics that
>transforms frustrated desire and impotent rage,
>because Friedman is as successful and as influential
>as a man could be. Similarly the whole chickenhawk
>crew.
This is an interesting question. My guess is that America is a society in which everyone can very easily feel full of impotent rage, even if you're near the top of the social ladder. Maybe even especially if you're near the top. If you're Thomas Friedman, you may be wealthy on an absolute scale, but you only have 1/1000 of the money of the incredibly wealthy people you hang around with. You may have more influence than almost anyone, but you don't have as much influence as Donald Rumsfeld, with whom you just played tennis this morning.
But then if you ARE Donald Rumsfeld, you feel impotent rage because you spent your whole life striving to get to this pinnacle, and it turns out the mighty US military can't even bring you Osama's head in a box. Plus there are these pissant Europeans making trouble, not appreciating the power of your enormous swinging dick.
Maybe I'm wrong about this. But I suspect that steeply hierarchical societies make everyone, from the top to the bottom, angry and unhappy most of the time. It sucks not to be king, but it's not even that much fun when you are king.
On a slightly different subject, I just read something in the NY Press listing the signs that someone suffers from pathological narcissism. They all seem to describe the United States exactly:
"A persistent and recurrent inability to get along with all coworkers; a domineering sense of entitlement; unrealistic and grandiose fantasies; requiring excessive attention; responding with rage to criticism or disagreement; excessive and destructive envy; exploitativeness; lack of empathy."
__________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Shopping - Send Flowers for Valentine's Day http://shopping.yahoo.com