The Banality of MoDo

Maureen Dowd writes about how much Osama bin Laden reminds her of Norma Desmond, one of the major characters in "A Star Is Born." Or something.

Following is an e-mail a friend sent to Kate Madison, Karen Garcia & me this morning re: his thoughts on some of the comments to MoDo's column. I have the writer's permission to share the letter with you. I've redacted a few personal notes, including the opening paragraph in which the writer briefly mentions the banality of Dowd's column.

Kate did a nice job of calling out MoDo on her use of the "Bin Laden Slipped Away" meme, trotted out by the MSM, the Neo-cons and just about, well, everyone. He didn't, as Kate declares, "slip away". The Bushies took their eyes off the ball because they were too busy plotting world domination. Bush wasn't kidding when he said he really didn't think much about Bin Laden after the initial furor. He was thinking of blood and glory and killing brown people and re-making the Middle East in his own stunted, half-thought out image. Maybe that's why it's so fucked up now.

I did notice an interesting strain running through several comments, specifically, Marie's and Gemli's. They both refer to the banality of evil. It's funny, I was reading an essay in Hannah Arendt's Life of the Mind the other day. Arendt sat in on the Eichmann trial. She coined that phrase “banality of evil” to describe what Marie notes as Eichmann's seemingly innocuous and pleasant nature. How could such a nice little man be responsible for so much horror? You can say almost the same thing about Bush, except I don't think anyone would describe him as all that pleasant and polite (he's an arrogant, snotty little shit) but his public demeanor is one of good ol’ boy, back slapping, joke telling, occasionally pain in the ass frat boy. But here he goes, in full sociopath mode, initiating not one, but TWO, count 'em, TWO wars. You have to go back to FDR for that kind of two-fer (at least he didn't start the actions in the European and Pacific theaters).

But even closer to home, Gemli's comment called to mind that we are very close to that sort of thing (total evil in a “guy next door” package) right here in the US of A. Karen mentioned the Frontline piece “Capture/Kill” and right at the end there's an interview with an up and coming killer. This guy is the real deal. A hater, a murderer, a guy who made his bones by blowing up scores of civilians with a pipe bomb; someone to whom reason, hope, love, political expediency, national pride, money, power -- nothing -- matters. Only killing. He says that there can be no discussion, no negotiation. He says, revealingly, that this war that Bush started (and Obama continues) is like a sweet dessert for him and his kind. If a day or two go by and they haven't killed someone, they're antsy and restless. Ready for more blood.

It's not a stretch to take that checkered scarf off his head and put on a greasy trucker's cap with NRA or NASCAR stitched on the front, and put him in the mountains of Colorado ready to start a-shootin' guvmint men comin' to steal his freedoms!

I remember that I was reading Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1975 when I heard that Arendt had died. I was just getting into hard core philosophy and I distinctly recall a passage talking about Eichmann discussing his love of Kant and relating that he tried to live his life according to Kant's moral philosophy. Arendt of course rips him a new one for only reading one sentence and ignoring the rest of the 467 pages in the book, but I was struck at how dangerous philosophy could be to lamebrains, or smart, canny, unscrupulous people like David Brooks or Glenn Beck who can use it to provide support for the insupportable, cover for what should never be covered up. Eichmann focused on Kant's rejoinder to the rest of us to obey the law (he was specifically referring to the moral law). But think for a minute. Why did Bush and his legal assassins like Yoo and Gonzalez and Cheney's bully boy Addington, work so fucking hard for so long to provide legal cover that would allow them to attach electrodes to a man's testicles, pour water on him and turn on the juice. They were OBEYING THE LAW.

This is part of Brooks' obsession with those in the Baby Boom generation who (like all of us) questioned authority. A while back Brooks quoted from the work of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, specifically a book called Metaphors We Live By. Brooks, of course, didn't read it all the way through, probably only scanned for quotes so he could look smart. Unfortunately, I don't have that gene. I actually read the fucking thing. If Brooksie HAD read it, he would have come across the primary, seminal metaphors that describe the way the right and the left work politically, in this country. I believe it has gotten much worse since L and J wrote their book, but the gist of it is that the right wants a patriarchal society in which the Daddy calls the shots and we all dance. He dishes out assignments as quickly as punishment and we all have to take it. This goes along with the idea of why so many on the right (a total puzzlement to most lefties) so frequently vote against their own best interests. They are happy suffering as long as their enemies (mostly, us) suffer too. As long as Daddy spanks us hard, they'll take the lash too. The defining metaphor for the left tends to be much more matriarchal, nurturing and supportive. This, of course, drives the right to distraction.

Anyway, the point here is that there is so much going on under the hood that remains barely noticeable and certainly not thought out. Our news cycle (Marie and Karen, you both must feel the stress of getting things out there in a timely fashion in order to remain relevant -- the other day Marie sent a link to a piece about the disclosure of the Bin Laden killing. Ten minutes made the difference between a scoop and a left-in-the-dirt, also-ran condition) does not allow for thoughtful analysis of what's happening to make us this way. Granted, plenty of people who are making things happen don't have anything close to the type of analytical skills necessary to do more than celebrate surface victories.

But we are getting further and further away from any kind of thoughtful consideration of where we're headed and why or, more to the point, WHO, is pointing us there.