“Beecher declared that men “who have been cast down from affluence to poverty should not grunt and grumble, but bear matters unflinchingly. They should never forget that they are men, even though they die of hunger. An Indian, uncivilized though he was, never flinched when fire was applied to his body. The manly way to meet misfortune is to go down boldly to poverty.” (Lyman Beecher was the Minister of the Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn, and the Father of Harriet Beecher Stowe.)

Susan Jacoby: The Age of American Unreason. Random House; New York. 2008. pp. 73

We encourage you, our Reader, to go and have a look at our Definition For A New World Order: “Economy” and The Democracy,” regarding the Monstrous Reification of “The Economy.” Stealing the future is that much more reprehensible when for a generation we are sold the lie that we have an “economy” and that we have a future. We could have done something about it. This is the true hallmark of the con-man, or the insane demagogue. The delusion lasts long enough to ensure complete, irrecoverable desolation and emmiseration. “It is so much easier, so much safer politically, to simply say “You were the victim of a lie,” than to suggest that both voters and their elected representatives, in both parties, must shoulder much of the blame for their willingness to be deceived. It is easy to imagine the chorus of sneers from ignorant talking heads on cable news if a presidential candidate dared to use the word “ignorance” in public.”

Susan Jacoby: The Age of American Unreason. Random House; New York. 2008. pp. 144

When do we call this terrorism? The Kidnap. The Hostage. The Ransom. The Hijack. The Extortion. The flaming wreckage. The despoliation and ruination of innocents.

“They are Leaders.” (They have led us… where?)

“They are Experts.” (They are charlatans in phony wizard costumes.)

“They know what to do.” (They know what to do, all right. Again, and again…)

“They are skilled.” (They are skilled deceivers. They repeat the same colossal theft over and over again.) 

“They take risks. They must be compensated.” (What risk? The risk that they will take their criminal “compensation” and go to another corporation to extort criminal “compensation?” Or the “Public Sector” to steal from the “public?” The fuck they take risks.)

“It is a Competitive job market. They must be compensated commensurately, or they won’t do the job.” (“Competitive?” Like the “free markets?”)

“They are the best in the world.” (They are a unique breed, that’s for sure.)

“They won’t do it if we don’t pay them their millions upon millions.” (What the fuck do you mean, they “won’t do it?” They won’t extort hundred of millions of dollars from us if they don’t extort hundreds of millions of dollars from us? Again? They won’t hijack, plunder and utterly destroy the productive capacity of global enterprise and the livelihoods of the populace?)

“They earn it.” (They have deluded generations of us to believe that they “earn” profits from real growth of real capital in real productive activity. There are no profits. They “Keep” the (real) “Money.”)

“They bring (shareholder) value. It is they who bring value.” (“Value?” Just how do you “value” the automobile industry now? Your future financial security? Our collective national and global security? Any future ecosystemic continuity?)

“They create profit.” (They invent fictitious “profit.” Then they appropriate it and steal it. “Profits?” What profits? Where are they? Huh? Research and development? Innovation? Your retirement fund?)

“The Market establishes their value.” (“The Market.” “The Market?” The market of they and themselves? Or that there ol’ “Free Market” we’ve heard about?)

“Economic ingenuity produced all this good- and produces only good. And such good is a public good- of general and public benefit.” “If it was invented in the financial markets, it produced only profit (and not loss- or “risk”).” The catechism of Strange, Magical Beliefs: That “the value of Things is found in their Market.” That “It “worked.”” (“It” hijacked and killed any notion or residuum of any economic future for us all, and substituted a farcical tissue of invention.) That the “profits” “It” invented were money. (They still “have” the “money.”) That “It” must therefore be ingenious. (Oh, yeah. Like a hundred clever movie heists.) That “It” produces the highest and best social value. The Mystery and Magic of Neo-liberal Financial Instruments:

WE CONFLATE: fiction with “profit” with money with value and productivity and growth.

WE ADDUCE: productivity from growth.

WE ADDUCE: growth from profit.

WE ADDUCE: profit from fiction.

WE ADDUCE: that “It” works.

WE ADDUCE: That “It” is good.

WE ADDUCE: That “It” is good for all.

WE ADDUCE: That “It” is real. All Glory be to “It.” Amen. 

“There is an acute awareness that things do not find their worth just in the market valuation on a given day.”

The Nation 15 Dec. (Cite Edition and Volume) pp. 36. Thank goodness. Hey, Brother Executive, Can You Spare A Dime? Doesn’t this seem like a really stupid time to be standing there with your hand out? When everything is smashed: When the sandbox is full of excrement and putrescence and the toys are all broken: When they stand there, parroting their tired demands for extortionist lootings. Droning the old doctrines about unfettered capitalism and the freedom of the marketplace… Then, brother, they are deluded. They are deranged. They are insane.

Look around you. Look at what they have done, at what they have wrought. Have you not had enough? What further discrediting of delusional extremist fundamentalism could you possibly imagine? Could you conceivably want further evidence of this insanity? How can you… believe? Can you delude yourself that they are not responsible for this? How can they? They are lunatics. This is beyond daring and beyond careless greed. Anybody who will still stand there and tell you, True Believer, that they are magic and you should give them money, shouldn’t be trusted with their own shoes. We, the Editor, certainly don’t want you, dear Reader, to be standing anywhere near them. It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall. When everything has failed and the world is burning and the hostages are all dead… Isn’t that when we kill the terrorists? Don’t we drag them out by their hair and beat them to death with stones? Brother, doesn’t this seem like a really stupid time to be standing there with your hand out?

The Widespread Sense of Horror: Isaiah Berlin

We choose as we choose, that is all that can be said; and if this leads to conflict and destruction, that is a fact about the world which must be accepted as gravitation is accepted, something which is inherent in the dissimilar natures of dissimilar men, or nations, or cultures. That this is not a valid diagnosis has been made clear if only by the widespread sense of horror which the excesses of totalitarianism have caused.

Isaiah Berlin: The Crooked Timber Of Humanity. Random House, New York: 1992. Pp. 203

War on Terror: a “war (not)against the psychic effects of organized, deliberately caused fear of war-like acts of violence.”

-Definitions for a New World Order: takebackourlanguage.com, 2008

THERE IS NO WAR: Our Misuse of the Term Masks Worse Crimes and Abuses

There Is No War.

Some recent wars: War on Poverty. War on Drugs. And, no shit, a recently declared War on Global Warming. War on you. War on Christmas. War on Mr. and Mrs. America. War on the Religious Right. War. What manner of war be these?

War on Terrorism. War on Terror.

“Terror” used to be for “B” movies posters and off-hand references to the French Revolution. It’s not just for movie posters anymore. Virginia, particularly around the Williamsburg area, was a Battleground State.

We are certainly at a loss as to what to make of “culture war.” We can only conclude that a large number of Americans are very, very angry with us, and have “declared war” against us. Apparently this is because we don’t sufficiently hate; you and I don’t faithfully, ardently and harmoniously hate gays, central Americans, Muslims, the “liberal media” and sundry other people and “cultures.”

We really don’t know how to situate War on Terror in our consciousness. No more than a Culture War on Ourselves, or our culture. Our avowedly moral and patriotic neighbors have declared war on us. What are we to do with this? Take up the lethal Arms that the right insists are our right? We will Take Up Words and endeavor to recapture the contested Territories of meaning and common understanding. We hope you will join us in taking back our words.

If this is an “armed conflict” or something, if it is “war,” then what the fuck, man? Watcha gonna bring? At the very least, we could “render extraordinarily” and imprison the “architects” of this war, spirit them away overseas, with no access to due process. Shall we name one? Newt Gingrich. We could supply him with a “warrior” name. How about pseudo-Lizard? If he would prefer to be called Newton we could throw apples at his head. I think the name derives from “New-Town,” actually.…  but carry on, word soldier.

Wars declared against some(thing) that cannot be made war upon are ridiculous. (Please see our Essay on C.E.R.N.’s Hadron Collider, dated 01 August, 2008  with attention to people, property and organizations, such as Blackwater and the Department Energy of the Federal Government, that are not “entities” and do not exist.) Such usages are sticky, inescapable nightmare solecisms. They are irreversible up-endings and obliterations –ob-literations- of meaning and language.

These are “wars” that can never begin, and never end, because they can never exist. They are grotesque, Kafkaesque perversions. They are absurd, like the Russian absurdist literature of Bulgakov and Gogol.

This is such a deep contradiction. It is such an overwhelming maw of deception and erasure of meaning that it is hardly possible to speak of it. But lets.

Bringing to bear a term of reference that has no meaning to a situation is a hallmark of the appropriation of power. It renders the term itself ridiculous. It steals away the term, the meaning, and the language itself.

It casts the situation itself into a dangerous realm of (not)language, that is no longer comprehensible. The rules of language, of thought, and of understanding that are true and proper to the situation are erased: stolen. All reference to reality –especially any sort of shared, common discourse about reality- is lost.

The language we have used to mutually understand reality is vaporized. The situation itself becomes indescribable, unknowable, impossible to understand and discuss, and horribly, indescribably dangerous.

What are Wars?

Wars are declared, among sovereign nations, internationally recognized as belligerents. There are, truly, “laws of war” that are understood among potential and actual belligerents in actual and potential wars. There is a common language among the civilized. Check it out. Investigate the Hague and the Geneva Convention and post your conclusions and important links here. Lets define this.

Proper, commonly understood terms like these have arisen within an international commitment to resisting illicit, unallowable nationalist aggressive ambitions. They do not have correct meaning as explanations or justifications for the tyrannical, aggressive violence of the United States abroad.

Okay, so it isn’t a war. No War on Terror.

Our Bush presidency, and it’s aspiring successors, claim they conduct their aggressions abroad and their outrageous domestic transgressions according to the “laws of war.” What are those “laws of war?” When there is no war?

What are “Laws of War?”

Humbly submitted for your consideration and review, these are the laws of (not)War:

When there is a (not)War, anyone can be defined as an Enemy Combatant. In fact, they must be. Everyone must be, since we are all Combatants in a (not)War.

Anyone must be held forever. In fact, they must be, because no-one can be a (non)Combatant in a (not)War. Because you are a (not)Prisoner of (not)War, you are a perpetual prisoner. Of the Laws of War. We cannot not hold everyone forever, and we cannot possibly release anyone who has been apprehended. You cannot (not) be a Combatant. You cannot be a (not)Combatant.

These appear to be the Transitive, Substitutive and Commutative Laws of (not)War.

Are these the Laws, of  (notWar), nothing less and nothing more than the Suspension or Contradiction of the Laws of Peace?

Perpetual war, or perpetual (not)war as we have paradoxically defined it, must be the inversion and erasure of the right-side-up Universe: the Universe that is not at (not)War. When the Universe is at non-combat, or maybe only at non-perpetual war.

Bizarro-Universe, Bizarro-War.

This must be the denial and repression of the state of the world when it is NOT insane, perverse, and incomprehensible. Not(in)Sane.

When war is perpetual, what are the Laws of the Universe of this (not)War?

When the “laws of war” are brought to bear, and the logic, in a situation in which there is (not)War, the contradictions, and the hypocrisy, and the… well, ,we’re just fuckin’ speechless, are(not) we?

We hear about our perpetual Imperative (note the root of the term), our moral compulsion, to conduct War on Terror, according to the “Conduct of war.” What we see is the horrific material expression of the “Conduct” of (not)War. Perpetual terror.

Look at this conduct. Is this how we ought to conduct ourselves? Is this how we ought to treat one another?

When we are at War with Terror, and the “laws” are the “laws of war,” then we are all terrorists. We must all suspect one another as terrorists. We must all surveil, mistrust, and betray one another.

If you don’t think you are a terrorist, go to the airport and see how our public officials, the Homeland Security Agency, treat you.

When we are at perpetual (not)War, you are a perpetual prisoner of War. Absurd? Does this seem absurd? But horribly, portentiously true. This is the language and the method of fascism.

In the last century, writers –Word Warriors- reclaimed the human voice from the grip of fascism.

The absurd and the grotesque were subversive, discursive weapons taken up to reclaim the power of public speech. Do not overlook the desperate necessity of the literature of the absurd and the grotesque. Do not overlook or underestimate the power of fascism.

We submit:

Definition of War on Terror
-Definitions for a New World Order: takebackourlanguage.com, 2008

War on Terror: a “war (not)against the psychic effects of organized, deliberately caused fear of war-like acts of violence.”

How is this for a “working definition for a New World Order?”