[lbo-talk] A Calculated Provocation

[John Adams]

On Saturday, April 17, 2004, at 02:04 AM, Chuck0 quoted:

> "A few have complained of the 'cold-blodedness' and 'insensitivity' 
> embodied, not in the vocations pursued by the latter group, but in 
> describing their attitudes/conduct ashaving been in any way analogous 
> to Eichmann's. Left unstated, however, is the more accurate term we 
> should employ in characterizing a representative 30-year-old foreign 
> exchange trader who, in full knowledge that every cent of his lavish 
> commissions derived from the starving flesh of defenseless Others, 
> literally wallowed in self-indulgent excess, playing the big shot, 
> priding himself on being 'a sharp dresser' and the fact that 'money 
> spilled from his pockets...flowed like crazy...[spent] on the black 
> BMW and those clothes--forgetting to pack ski clothes for a Lake Tahoe 
> trip, dropping $1,000 on new stuff," and so on. As a 'cool guy' with a 
> 'warm heart'? A 'good family man'? Just an 'ordinary,' 'average' or 
> 'normal' fellow who 'happened to strike it rich'? How are we to 
> describe Eichmann himself?"

Well, let's see. How about calling Eichmann a genocidal mass murderer, 
and those who "literally wallowed in self-indulgent excess" assholes? 
(They didn't literally wallow, of course--bad, but possibly not 
ineffective, writing on Churchill's part.) Isn't that a bit more 
proportionate? I mean, if owning a BMW makes you an Eichmann, then we 
need to deliver bell hooks to Nuremburg immediately. (Not her best 
essay, I add.) And are "30-year-old bond traders" likely to have "full 
knowledge" of where "every cent" (_Every_ cent? Where's the misused 
literally when it's needed?) of their commissions come from? Any more 
likely than 30-year-old ultra-leftists having "full knowledge" of what 
their beliefs would produce?

Does Churchill ever get around to "the more accurate term we should 
employ"? Does he have one? Does he mask his failure to come up with a 
coherent analysis with, "Well, if they aren't Eichmanns, what are they?"

I've come to think of Zerzan as much more of an Eichmann than any bond 
trader, and maybe more than Eichmann himself, if you go just by the 
body counts that would result from implementing his politics. The same 
goes for a lot of the fundamentalist Greens--they'd be offing billions 
instead of millions if they got their way. (All in a good cause, of 
course.)

This is the sort of rhetoric which coincided with the left pissing away 
a winning position in the US after the sixties. It's also (I think) a 
sign of the American right imploding even as we speak. Good news, if we 
can exploit it, and here's a hint on how--we'd be better off imitating 
the right's successes than its failures.

	John A