I. Free Speech or Mind Control?
One of the unavoidable aspects of contemporary life for all of us -- especially in a city like New York -- is the "mindfuck" experience. I will get around to a definition of this controversial concept in a moment. I saw a new book by Colin McGinn at Manhattan's "Book Culture" (it used to be called "Labyrinth Books") bearing this single word as the title. I could not resist purchasing and reading it. McGinn's book -- really, it is more of an essay -- elides rather than eluding many of the difficulties of the topic, perhaps due to space limitations.
McGinn is a fascinating and important philosopher who, in accordance with the quaint British custom, writes his books in readable and elegant English sentences. This is unacceptable in American academia or legal circles where the word "elides" is much loved. I enjoyed this book and polished it off pretty quickly. I highly recommend it to others as a stocking-filler.
McGinn shies away from the deeper political implications of what he calls "mindfucking" and touches only superficially on some others. I agree with Professor McGinn concerning the centrality of the experience. We are indeed all "mindfucked" these days, both in pleasant and not-so pleasant ways. I will begin with a definition and brief comments concerning McGinn's analysis. I then take off in my own darker direction. I conclude with a summary and warnings about the dangers of mindfucking. After a brief initial concern with definitions for purposes of clarity, as I have indicated, I will examine two political-cultural questions: 1) Is America's professed commitment to human rights "real" or is it public relations nonsense? 2) Will things change with the arrival of a new administration? I will not leave the reader without hope, not at this holiday season.
I write these words on a day when I have made the same corrections in an essay several times, after insertions of errors by hackers enjoying access to government technology or resources, licenses to commit crimes. If you are any kind of writer in America, my experiences should scare you. (See "'The Reader': A Movie Review.") Allow me to spare you the suspense: I continue to believe in the American Constitution. My goal is to persuade public officials and judges to abide by that Constitution. Some day, American politicians and judges will comply with Constitutional principles, provided that we continue to insist, peacefully, that they do so. I hope.
After writing the foregoing paragraph I find myself obstructed from accessing my e-mail, unable to work at my MSN sites today, again. I will continue to struggle to write freely. After questioning whether Mr. Rabner may have profited from the release of alleged mobster, Prisco, I discovered new "errors" inserted in this essay, "errors" not found in previous versions of the work. Could there be a connection suggesting complicity on the part of N.J. law enforcement in violations of federal civil rights law? How shocking. Where is the independent media to cover this nightmare resulting from New Jersey's judicial corruption and incompetence? Will the U.S. Attorney General act in this matter to preverse the First Amendment? Let us continue to hope so.
There is a widespread feeling in the world that something has gone terribly wrong in the United States of America -- partly as a result of 9/11 -- with the loss of an identifiable enemy or rival superpower, the Soviet Union. The world has become a more complex place. One thing fascists do not like is complexity. Among the aims of out-of-control mindfuckers is the reduction of the world's complexity to limited proportions. Ossama bin Laden we can deal with -- except that we can't. The collapse of the "metaphysics of presence" (Derrida) and subsequent diffusion of logos is not so easily grasped or dealt with in our postmodernist cultures of spectacle and endangered realitiy(ies). ("Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz.")
Analytical philosophers will wonder about the meaning of the last sentence. The full exploration of that sentence would require an essay of substantial length. Suffice it to say that, if you turn on your television set and see the news, then your favorite comedy show, followed by a Hollywood action flick -- you will be hard-pressed to determine which of those programs has the greater truth-content. This entertainment-media "reality" in which we live has an impact on everything from your identity to the meaning of good and evil. (See "The 'Galatea Scenario' and the Mind/Body Problem.")
Ossama bin Laden likes Westerns. Sadam Hussein's favorite movie (when he was alive, obviously) was The Godfather. These men claimed to hate America. I suggest that both loved aspects of America that are seen through a distorting prism. America's enemies have already been shaped, decisively, by American culture in ways that neither they nor we like very much. Some of what we are coming up against is a weirdly distorted reflection of our own pathologies as a society. Various fundamentalisms in the world are twins of America's hyper-sanitized, depersonalized, science-worshipping military and industrial machine. Our bizarre fondness for behaviorism is being subjected to "behaviorist conditioning" aimed at making us more humane. These ideas are bound to be plagiarized soon. Get them while their hot. ("What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "The Long Goodbye.")
America is seen by the world as a deranged terminator-like cyborg, behavioristic, cold, capitalistic in a brutal way, hypocritical and self-contradictory, armed to the teeth. (Dick Cheney.) It is also seen, just as accurately, as brilliant, hopeful, romantic, idealistic, respectful of human rights and concerned with legality as well as justice. (Barack Obama) To ignore either side of this duality is stupid. (Compare "Nihilism Against Memory" with "Nihilists in Disneyworld.")
A friend was kind enough to invite us to dinner when I visited Rome. We were taken to an "American" restaurant which was like a Roy Rodgers fast food place on steroids. The food was great. The place was a twisted caricature of Western movie images of America. The same experience awaits the Italian or British visitor in Disneyworld, where I was foolish enough to choose the England-themed restaurant for dinner.
The aim of genuine artists and intellectuals, conversely, is to remind persons of the unavoidable complexities in human social settings and within the human heart, avoiding excessive simplifications to achieve some level of meaningful understanding that transcends "ideology." All art is expressive of freedom and true vision. The Chinese are essential to America's survival, economically, much the same may be said of the Japanese, who can foreclose on us at any time. We can not hate them. The Brits are O.K., even as Europeans make things that we like, like cars. Otherwise, the world is increasingly baffling and often demonized to "blue collar America," which senses (correctly) that it is getting screwed-to-the-wall and finds it difficult to identify the enemy doing the screwing-over. Perhaps the enemy is right here at home. Right, Senator Bob? How's the shopping at the Xanadu mall? ("Senator Bob Says -- 'Xanadu and You Are Perfect Together!'")
I enjoy watches of various kinds, especially good automatics. I like to linger, painfully, over windows admiring Breitlings, Rolex, IWC and Hamilton watches. I have owned Rolex, Tag Heuer, even a Patek Phillipe that was stolen. I can no longer afford such watches. However, I discovered an Orient automatic, stainless steel, water proof, a shock- and scratch-proof watch for well under a hundred dollars. This watch is competitive with a Swiss Army automatic that sells for $650.00 and several high end models. Japanese technology is unbeatable. And China is pretty unstoppable at the moment. I would love to see a U.S.-made watch at this price range that is just as good. I remember saying much the same when Toyota began to take over the blue collar car market. Even American watches are now (mostly) made in other countries with foreign designs and parts. On the other hand, Americans are good at selling one another insurance. Toyota's current troubles are a blip on the screen. Long term the future looks good for Japan's business samurais. Banzai!
A surreptitious message of American power is "hate the little brown people." The goal is to prevent you from seeing those powerful members of your own society whose "mission" is to screw you over. ("Senator Bob, the Babe, and the Big Bucks" and "Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?") The shocking realization may be that you, as a middle class American, have a lot more in common with the "little brown people" doing janitorial work in your office than with the people in evening clothes going to a political dinner in order to, let us say, contribute to President Bush's "Presidential Library" in Crawford, Texas. Why don't they (the 2% that owns most of the real wealth in America) want you to realize your common interest with the poor? A library is definitely what I associate with G.W., given the former president's fondness for scholarly learning. All three of Mr. Bush's books will be deposited in that library. ("Why we should not hate George W. Bush.")
We will have to learn to live as fragmets, pieces of subjectivity in shattered contexts in this holographic cultural space that mirrors our new scientific "pictures" of reality. Among the people equipped to help us grasp these challenges are those "weird" persons adept at overcoming their own mental crises and assaults in the various torture chambers of our world: Intellectuals, artists, philosophers, scientists, inmates -- the people nobody understood at the dinner table -- have more to teach us these days than ever before. We ignore them at our peril.
Part of the answer to our collective alienation is a colossal "mindfuck" to which we have been subjected for the past eight years, at least, possibly beginning much earlier. Hence, the unrelenting insertions of "errors" in these writings intended to cause serious and permanent nerve damage, like battle fatigue. Maybe we can no longer blame bin Laden for this "conceptual" tragedy. There may be good reasons why powerful interests in America want you to be confused about much of this stuff. Why are philosophy and humanistic learning, for example, such esoteric concerns that are not more widely available to people who may need and be fascinated by theory? Some of the smartest people I know are guys who work in construction or at a Deli making sandwiches. There's no reason why those guys or gals can't be fascinated by art or physics.
I was not surprised that, the day after 9/11, 400 pages of national security legislation giving enhanced powers to the executive was submitted to Congress. I am confident that this draft of legislation was not an overnight text. Dick Cheney's wet dream of power became reality. These laws had been contemplated well before that date, as were the techniques used at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo (which were used, secretly, well before 9/11 on people like me). The terrorist incident merely allowed for what had previously been only a fascist fantasy -- a regime of "total control" in America -- to become a gruesome and, seemingly, inescapable reality. One of the most effective methods of control is the "mindfuck." For example, again, deleting letters from drafts of this essay or suppressing and censoring my writings. My struggle against state censorship is a daily reality to which you are a witness. This is one of several times when I have made the same corrections of inserted "errors." ("What is it like to be tortured?" and "What is it like to be plagiarized?")
I find myself subjected to distractions and interruptions calculated to prevent me from writing. I wonder why they don't want me to post essays on-line, since my essays are so well-documented?
This is not to suggest that we should hesitate to go after the 9/11 terrorists. Every government on the planet supports our efforts to do exactly that. Others are puzzled about our drive to murder more than a million people in the two Iraq wars, however, including well over 500,000 children, in a setting that has nothing to do with 9/11. I wonder why? If another country were doing these terrible things, what would you think? Is it worthwhile, Madame Secretary of State, for us to remain in Iraq? If not, then how do we get out without creating an even greater catastrophe? Torture and censorship of dissident intellectuals (like me) must be easy by comparison with those "civilian casualties." Ashley Smith, "Beyond the Surge in Iraq: Where is the Occupation Headed?," International Socialist Review, November-December, 2008, at p. 19 and Tariq Ali, Speaking of Empire and Resistance (New York & London: The New Press, 2005), entirety. Joel Geier, "The Free Fall is Over, But the Crisis Continues," in International Socialist Review, July-August, 2009, at p. 29. Neil MacFarquhar, "U.N. Inquiry Sees Gaza War Crimes; Israel Chastised," in The New York Times, September 16, 2009, at p. A1. (What do we mean by "ethics"?) Peter Baker & Mark Landler, "Obama Demands Afghan Reforms Produce Results," in The New York Times, November 19, 2009, at p. A1. (Good luck.) Elizabeth Bumiller, "U.S. Intelligence Offers Dim View of Afghan War," in The New York Times, December 15, 2010, at p. A1. (Intelligence agencies are reporting to the military on the failed effort in Afghanistan which will become much more costly and tragic soon.)
It now appears that we have lost the populations of Iraq and Afghanistan: Dexter Filkins, "Eight Protesters Die in Afghan Unrest," in The New York Times, January 13, 2010, at p. A6. (Riots against Americans fueled by Taliban; unrest among the people in Iraq.) Compare Jane Perlez & Pir Zubair Shah, "Drones Batter Qaeda and Allies Within Pakistan," in The New York Times, April 5, 2010, at p. A1 with Rod Nordland & Riyadh Mohammed, "Bombs Hit Hub Of Diplomacy In Iraq Capital: Political Doubt Makes Baghdad a Target," in The New York Times, April 5, 2010, at p. A1. If the pattern of the past five years holds, then you may expect an acceleration of bombings in Iraq from April to September. The growing rage at the "drone weapons" in Pakistan and throughout the area may lead to incidents all over South Asia aimed against American interests. (A word was deleted from the foregoing pargraph, again, since my previous reviews of this work.)
Americans are frightened of a government that now claims the right to declare anyone an "enemy combatant" -- regardless whether the person has wielded arms against the country -- and to hold such individuals, indefinitely, torture them, secretly, and never afford them or anyone else captured in the "War on Terror" due process of law. We are told that "national security" requires dispensing with such legal niceties as human rights. That is what I call a "mindfuck." Getting people to participate in their own imprisonment and enslavement, use of psychological techniques to manipulate or monitor people, through creative use of their fears and wounds in life, to destroy (by disconfirming) their identities and social functioning skills through frustrations is an Auschwitz-like evil. I have experienced such evil over a period of years. ("American Hypocrisy and Luis Posada Carriles.")
Psychological torture must be easy for the kind of person who puts bombs in airplanes. Encounters with persons who delight in torturing others in horrible ways is something you will not forget. This is to blur the boundaries between totalitarian states and so-called liberal democracies, like the United States of America. (See "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "What is it like to be tortured?")
No wonder they are suppressing my books and defacing my texts. This is dangerous stuff. Two options remain for government officials and their servants arguing or working against me: First, ad hominem attacks directed against me; second, denials that any of this has happened or assertions that "we" (Americans) never torture people. Both are increasingly difficult "canards" to sustain. No wonder they refuse to distribute my book to on-line booksellers while continuing to deface my texts and blocking my use of images. Finally, power can try to induce mental collapse or suicide in me (or others like me) through frustrations, isolation and denigration, closure of creative opportunities, financial pressures also help. Good luck with that. Such tactics may explode in your face. The final alternative is to meet with me, tell me the truth, and attempt to make amends for these terrible crimes for which the state is responsible. Good luck with your choosing options, New Jersey. ("How Censorship Works in America.")
II. What is "Mindfucking"?
"Mindfuck means either a thing that messes with the minds of those exposed to it or the act of doing so. The Harper Collins American Slang has the following entry under 'mind-fuck' (they retain the hyphen): 'To manipulate someone to think and act as one wishes,' and it equates the word with 'brainwash.' The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) offers a greater variety of definitions. As a noun, the word is defined as 'A disturbing or revelatory experience, [especially] one which is drug-induced or is caused by deliberate psychological manipulation. Also: deception.' As a verb we have 'To manipulate or otherwise interfere with a person's psyche; to disturb psychologically.' ..." (McGinn, p. 2.)
McGinn is primarily interested in the more positive connotations of the term and experience. A great aesthetic encounter may be thought of as a mindfuck. Falling in love, attending a great lecture where someone sets your mind on fire, both fit the definition. Indeed, the author's concern with this concept and with the experience of being mindfucked began after Professor McGinn delivered a lecture described by a student as a mindfuck. Philosophy itself may be described as the ultimate mindfuck in the good sense of the word. Law school and the legal system is a mindfuck in the not-so-good sense. Experiences of censorship and suppressions of speech -- daily cyberwarfare to write on-line -- must count among the worst forms of routine mindfucking in America. There is worse in our increasingly "invasive" society: "We Can't Tell You," (Editorial) in The New York Times, April 4, 2010, at p. A8. (Routine secret surveillance and eavesdropping on Americans without warrants is denied, hypocritically, by a government lying to its people with impunity.)
"The biographical approach and the intellectual insinuation have the same moral effect upon [law] students and teachers alike. They flatter vanity the better to injure self-respect, and pump up their victims only to render them more pliable. Their shared lesson is that the order of thought and society is contingent and yet for all practical purposes [not] transformable. They preach an inward distance from a reality whose yoke, according to them, cannot be broken. They distract people by enticing them into the absurd attempt to arrange themselves into a hierarchy of smart alecks." (Unger, p. 113.)
More important today is to concentrate on the nefarious versions of the concept to which I have alluded, involving the use of new techniques of mindfucking by the state seeking a kind of totalitarian control over the psyche of individuals and socially, collectively, in the public square. Wisecracks will not be enough of a resistance to illicit power in America. The people hacking into my computer, attacking my writings, the people who have tortured me (I believe) are acting for the state. They are instruments of power, torturers, placing their training in the healing arts and other disciplines (like computer science) at the service of political power for a small fee. This atrocity is a new phenomenon in America, where reports of such events in the news produce boredom and indifference among overfed and undernourished Americans who are losing their moral sense. Government is seeking the nationalization of collective memory. Your mental landscape is contested territory in the ideological wars of our time. Meanwhile, the enemy may appear in the pleasant form of advertisements and catchy slogans, or "fun-filled" tunes that substitute for serious thought about our "issues." ("Yes, we can!" and see the forthcoming film, "Inception.")
These horrors of exploitation and cruelty are still often hidden, but they are becoming quite common in American society. All of the technologies of propaganda and mind-control -- in their extreme forms -- aim at the domination or destruction of the target of "conditioning" and "control." How is it possible for traditional victims of such methods to become torturers themselves? Money? Lenin insisted: "When we hang the last capitalist, he will sell us the rope." Today, the last capitalist would sell revolutionaries the rope and insist on the television rights to the spectacle of his own hanging. How does a Jew become Mengele? By being mindfucked? Robin Pogrebin, "For Jews, Madoff Scandal Brings Feelings of Betrayal and Shame," in The New York Times, December 24, 2008 at p. A13. Terry? Debbie? Stuart? Whatta-ya say? Any new "errors" inserted in this essay? How is the spacing of paragraphs? ("How Censorship Works in America" and "Censorship and Cruelty in America.") I urge readers to study the events surrounding my posting of the essay, "The Heidegger Controversy." ("Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'")
Among the most indecipherable mysteries surrounding the undeniable horror of the greatest evil experienced by humanity -- the Holocaust -- must be listed numerous examples discussed by Hannah Arendt of Jewish Nazis and collaborators with Nazis. Before such unspeakable evil one recoils in bafflement and wonder. ("The Torture of Persons" and "News From the War on Terror" at Critique, if it still exists, then "What is it like to be tortured?" and "Deborah T. Poritz and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey," then "America's Holocaust.")
Cuban-Americans claiming to flee political oppression who resort to censorship and suppressions of speech, even to the alteration and destruction of the creative work of their fellow citizens, fall under the same category of disgusting criminality and evil. ("Miami's Cubanoids Protest AGAINST Peace!" and "Babalu and Free Speech Too!" then "Cubanazos Pose a Threat to National Security!" finally, "American Hypocrisy and Luis Posada Carriles!")
Psychological torture or absorption techniques are concerned with dissolving opposition and disarming or neutralizing criticisms of power by coopting radicals or dissidents. In extreme instances, they aim at destroying dangerous thinkers (like me) and radical thoughts. The fate of rebels in our kinder and gentler zoo is not a pleasant one. Termination from employment, harassment, insults, threats, destruction of relationships and economic harm, rape, assault, labeling persons as "unethical" or "intellectually inferior" (also like me), and silencing are not unusual experiences for people like Lenny Bruce, Mumia Abu Jamal, Angela Davis, Cesar Chavez, Assatta Shakur, Howard Zinn (ostracism in academia), Lynne Stewart, Noam Chomsky (Chomsky, Hannah Arendt, Philip Roth have been called "anti-semites"), along with many others. ("Sartre or Guevara?")
Pictured, at my MSN Group, is an interrogation under American juridical principles. This is approximately the tenth time that hacker-inserted "errors" have been corrected in this essay. (Images cannot be posted in this blog due to hacker-inserted damage and other attacks against my computer as well as my writings.) My yearly adventure to renew my security system is memorable. I cannot be certain whether I will be able to write from one day to the next. Mr. Obama has called on China to respect the rights of dissidents. Cuba has been asked by Ms. Clinton to improve its human rights record. You must decide whether there is room for improvement in America's human rights record. ("U.S. Courts Must Not Condone Torture.")
Somebody like Stuart Rabner is always available to say that such persons, dissidents, should not be heard -- regardless of the merits of their arguments -- because they are "bad people." Unethical, maybe. Noam Chomsky's irrefutable intellectual eminence and tenure at MIT are his only protection from ostracism or secret torture. Few of us are in his position. There are various ways that forces associated with clusters of power in the megastates where we must live accomplish this objective of passification and silencing. Women should understand this experience really well. The suppression of my work is now almost total. There is little that the average person can do to protest the rise of totalitarianism. However, what little we can do, we should and must do. Resist, always and everywhere, no matter what. I will continue to revise this essay, while focusing on the digusting corruption in New Jersey's judicial and legal circles. I will continue to try to use images with my writings, to struggle for my books to be available from booksellers, to find outlets for my writings against what (I believe) is government censorship.
I know that this essay will be defaced countless times. I expect insults and threats. I sit down at my computer knowing that I am at war. Seeing efforts to draft a memoir demolished at my home computer and experiencing the resulting violation of one's mind -- even of a space for private reflection and thought in a country that proclaims its defense of free speech and privacy -- is beyond my ability to describe:
"To accuse someone of trying to fuck with your head is to accuse them of trying to mindfuck you. In this linguistic vicinity, we also have the phrases 'playing mind games' and 'pushing your buttons.' In these locutions, the most instructive elements relate to the notion of a game and to that of sensitive points of the psyche that can be activated. The notion of a game suggests that the perpetrator's intentions are not serious, in the sense that the person is seriously concerned to convey the truth or to elicit emotions appropriate to the actual situation." (McGinn, pp. 10-11.)
The crucial political insight is this:
"To push someone's buttons is to exploit them emotionally: to use their emotions against them. [Get it, Terry?] It falls into the category of abuse. Putting these various expressions together, then, we may speak of fucking with somebody's head by playing mind games on them, pushing their buttons and, as a result, mindfucking the individual in question." (McGinn, p. 11, emphasis added.)
I live in a society that does such things to people without their consent, secretly, often with lethal consequences for the lives and well-being of victims and their loved-ones, including children. It is particularly despicable for a physician or any so-called psychologist to assist in such efforts to inflict deliberate harm upon a person whose rights are criminally violated. This is true not only in the case of inmates, but also of persons not convicted of any crimes who are manipulated through these sadistic techniques. The goal of the process is to produce criminal behavior by the torture victim that can be used to legitimate the original torture process. The ethical opinions and judgments of such monsters do not trouble me. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")
Judith Butler is informative on these issues. The electorate is the ultimate object of competing manipulations. The people are the true victims of marketing candidates, like toilet paper, "just for you." We will be "stuck" with candidates who resemble toilet paper -- soft, pliable, not very long-lasting. In New Jersey, under Stuart Rabner's leadership, the legal system has turned the Constitution into toilet paper. New Jersey's judges and politicians resemble used toilet paper. Al Baker & Nate Schweber, "Six Arrested After Girl, 7, Is Gang-Raped In New Jersey," in The New York Times, April 4, 2010, at p. A13, then "New Jersey's Crooked Politicians, Judges, and Child Molesters" and "New Jersey is the Home of Child Molesters," also "Neil M. Cohen, Esq. and Conduct Unbecoming to the Legislature in New Jersey.")
"[Mindfucking] involves the illegitimate exercise of power. The victim of the mindfuck is exploited, leaned on, invaded, imposed on, controlled and manipulated. Mindfucking is an inherently aggressive act. It is an act of psychological violence, more or less extreme. As such, it is clearly immoral. The intention behind it is morally objectionable: it is an intention to do harm."
Physician? Therapist? Attorney? Judge? -- Can such professionals, ethically, lend themselves to sinister manipulations of their fellow citizens which, in extreme forms, are intended (ultimately) to produce psychosis or suicide? Mindfuckers will always produce disgust and justified outrage in victims. More "errors" were inserted in this essay since this morning. January 14, 2009 at 2:04 P.M., after defacements on December 27, 2008 at 3:55 P.M., and after similar vandalism on December 23, 2008 at 2:03 P.M. I am sure that this harassment is the work of New Jersey officials or their hirelings. "The Right to a Day in Court," (Editorial) The New York Times, December 24, 2008, at p. A24. Obstacles to renewal of my security system, harassment, obstructions. August 8, 2009 at 2:28 P.M. New "errors" were corrected once again. November 20, 2009 at 11:39 A.M. and more "errors" inserted and corrected on September 22, 2010 at 10:47 A.M.
"This is clearly the implied meaning of the term; the idea of domination is built into the concept. That is not to say it can never be practised by the weak on the strong, indeed, it may be the only way the weak can escape the domination of the strong." (McGinn, pp. 38-39.)
American foreign policy under Mr. Bush is perceived by many of its victims as falling under a schizoid pattern of carrot and stick simplistic conditioning. Persons in most other countries are seen by Washington's social scientists as comparable to "mules" in need of being led in what the U.S. perceives as a "good" as opposed to a "bad" direction through such "incentives" or disincentives, like robot bombs. (See "Richard A. Posner on Voluntary Actions and Criminal Responsibility" and "S.L. Hurley on Beliefs and Reasons for Action.")
Curiously, people in other countries do not see themselves as "mules." Also, persons in other cultures may have radically different views of rationality, self-interest, freedom and "cooperation." Persons may consider even death "rational" in order to preserve human dignity and escape slavery. I agree with this view of the vital importance of dignity. Each time you see an "error" inserted in my texts -- my books suppressed or essays censored -- it means that the U.S. Constitution has been trashed. ("The Long Goodbye" and "What is it like to be plagiarized?" as well as "Is Senator Menendez a Suspect in Mafia-Political Murder in New Jersey?")
China, Cuba, the Middle East -- all are reluctant to be governed from Washington, D.C. ("'The Prisoner': A Review of an AMC Television Series.")
III. Is America's commitment to human rights real?
With the arrival of photos of torture and the sadistic delight of men and women in the uniforms of the U.S. armed services inflicting suffering and murdering brown-skinned people, something archetypal was released into the global collective subconscious. The Abu Ghraib photos bear comparison with all of the hell holes and nightmares of twentieth century history. They are symbolic, however, of something more important for Third World people. The torture photos released to the world population can be seen at: Mark Danner, Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror (New York: NYRB, 2004), pp. 217-224. (1,000 photos have been kept from the public by the Obama administration.)
These images of exploitation and torture convey the experience of poor countries' relations with the U.S. -- that is, one side of those relations. America's encounter with poorer and less powerful countries is the true subject of the Abu Ghraib images. The brown-skinned people of the developing world often feel that they are treated no better by America than torture victims in secret prisons. The misery of billions is a direct result of the greed of a small percentage of the world's population. This was the basis for Mr. Lula's comments concerning the blue-eyed few whose "comfort" is purchased so dearly. Spacing may be affected in this essay by New Jersey's protected hackers. ("Freedom is Slavery!" and "How Censorship Works in America.")
There was an element of recognition for powerless persons in the world that "this is all we are to America's government." Slaves. Experimental animals. Things. Posner's "objects." Many of those on the outside in American society also saw the horrible images from Guantanamo as reflective of America's attitude to "abnormals" and "radicals" right here at home. Those who "don't play ball" or refuse to "go along in order to get along" will wind up in the psychological and economic equivalent of those prisons that are torture chambers: $61 BILLION dollars were spent in the U.S. (2004) on incarceration for "abnormals" and "dissidents," only some of whom may be criminals. Many people in the world are being tortured along with me each day that I am subjected to censorship. ("The Torture of Persons" and "Psychological Torture in the American Legal System.")
We imprison more persons in the U.S. than in any other country in the world, even as we are the most generous people in the world in a crisis. You need to perceive both sides of this paradox to understand America. American compassion, generosity, and cultural imagination exist alongside hideous cruelty, hypocrisy, secret experimentation on citizens, government action outside the boundaries of law, or the Constitution -- all of which is accompanied by sometimes legitimate and at other times hypocritical criticisms of the human rights records of other countries. Only in America will people torture you, steal from you, violate your rights and engage in a cover-up of such activities, while expressing outrage at what they perceive to be your moral faults. ("Havana Nights and C.I.A.Tapes.") The New York Times reports:
"Most Americans have long known that the horrors of Abu Ghraib were not the work of a few low-ranking sociopaths. All but [President] Bush's most unquestioning supporters recognized the chain of unprincipled decisions that led to the abuse, torture and death [Ms. Poritz?] in prisons run by the American military and intelligence services."
Mr. Rabner, it is time to acknowledge and deal with this evil. Mr. Obama should appoint a special prosecutor to look into responsibility for the tortures -- tortures which have come to define us to the world -- both at secret prisons beyond the nation's borders and in dismal places, like New Jersey, which has been called "America's legal toilet." Mr. Holder, it is time to "flush" New Jersey's corruption away (this means you, Alex, and others like you):
"Now, a bipartisan report by the Senate Armed Services Committee has made what amounts to a strong case for bringing criminal charges against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; his legal counsel, William J. Haynes; and potentially other top officials, including the former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff."
These are America's "ethical" attorneys, like Mr. Rabner in New Jersey. These people would never engage in or be responsible for torture and censorship, right boys? ("American Legal Ethics Today.")
In fact, all of these so-called "torture lawyers" and medical doctors facilitating torture have been exonerated because they are deemed to have done nothing criminal or unethical in the eyes of legal officials, like Mr. Margolis of the U.S. Justice Department. ("America's Unethical Medical Torturers" and "Is America's Legal Ethics a Lie?")
" ... these top officials, charged with defending the Constitution [emphasis added!] and America's standing in the world, methodically introduced interrogation practices based on illegal tortures devised by Chinese agents during the Korean War. Until the Bush administration, their only use in the United States was to train soldiers to resist what might be done to them if they were captured by a lawless enemy."
We have become the "lawless enemy nation" to the world. Worse, these terrible practices have become routine means of secret control and monitoring in a number of American jurisdictions, such as New Jersey, where so-called "therapists" and "psychoanalysts" lend themselves to the sadistic infliction of emotional suffering -- mindfucks -- in order to control persons or populations by making them amenable to "serving the interests" of the state, willingly or not. Such things can only be described as evil. That's you, Terry Tuchin. ("Foucault, Rose, Davis and the Meanings of Prison" and "Why U.S. Courts Must Not Condone Torture.") I can not approve of New Jersey's legal ethics. What do you think? ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")
Some of these subjects of control -- no one knows how many victims there are -- have committed no crimes, even civil infractions are often produced by the torturers themselves, as previously indicated, in order to provide cover for government criminals. Do you speak to me of ethics, Mr. Rabner? Judges allow for the occurrence of these atrocities among selected members of the "lower orders," like me. Perhaps you will someday be the recipient of such "attentions" from agents of the state. Do you dare to be "abnormal"? (See again: "Psychological Torture in the American Legal System" and "An Open Letter to My Torturers in New Jersey, Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli.")
The titles in the above paragraph have been corrected in similar ways several times now. The hackers' goal is to maximize frustration in order to cause profound emotional harm to the victim making identical corrections on numerous occasions. December 27, 2008 at 4:04 P.M. This sustained effort, usually combined with enhanced stress, is made possible by the abuse of government power in violation of the Constitution.
Government hopes to develop "psychological prisons" into which "monitored" individuals, artists, intellectuals, "weird persons" (like me) may be placed, preferably secretly. ("'The Prisoner': A Review of an AMC Television Series.") Electronic mail, Internet research, purchasing habits, video rentals, medical records and more may all be accessed as regards a politically targeted person under recent legislation aimed at making us "free and secure." America's post-9/11 mantra is Orwell's slogan in 1984 -- "Freedom is slavery!" ("A Letter From the DRB, in New Jersey" and "Another Letter From the DRB, in New Jersey.")
"The basic question which Orwell raises is whether there is any such thing as 'truth.' ["Why I am not an ethical relativist."] 'Reality,' so the ruling party holds, 'is not external. ["It is all relative."] Reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else ... whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth.' If this is so, then by controlling men's minds the Party controls truth."
Eric Fromm, Afterword," in George Orwell, 1984 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1949), pp. 262-263. Alfred W. McCoy, A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2006), pp. 126-150. ("'Inception': A Movie Review.")
If officials can get away with these actions when dissidents are victims, then they will surely try the same tactics against others. The final stage of the logic of total domination, first developed in Nazi death camps -- now "marketed" by America to "authoritarian" governments everywhere in the world, as a form of population control, designed to ensure the "ethics" and/or obedience of victims who must "cooperate" -- brings us to what Hannah Arendt means by "making human beings superflous" which is seen as "the core and horror of radical evil." Terry Eagleton's recent and typically brilliant essay On Evil (London & New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010) is dedicated (with vicious irony) to Henry Kissinger.
CBS and 60 Minutes has featured a news story of companies selling brain scans of persons for commercial and political control purposes to governments and corporations. Allegedly, these scans can reveal preferences and thoughts, or the lies and truths of subjects. Good luck with that. Not only are there ethical issues, but there appears to be a "category mistake" in the entire project. No philosophers were interviewed for the segment that I saw. For Arendt, any such objectification of persons as "objects" is evil:
"It is the extraordinary attempt to transform human beings [into subhuman objects,] to destroy any vestige of human individuality and spontaneity -- and consequently any vestige of human freedom and solidarity. ..." (Bernstein, pp. 210-211.)
To make persons into "objects," which would please Judge Richard Posner, is to engage in a kind of psychological assassination effort. I wonder whether Mr. Bernstein's writings are defaced? I wonder whether Professor Bernstein's essays are suppressed and vandalized, altered without his consent, along with his e-mails? I doubt it. Why are some of us subjected to such experiences and not others? Why are some of us censored? Or denied opportunities to be published even at our own expense? Why is the American "free press" untroubled by this censorship? Arendt says:
"After the murder of the moral person and annihilation of the juridical person, the destruction of individuality is almost always successful ... For to destroy individuality is to destroy spontaneity, man's power to begin something new out of his own resources, something that cannot be explained on the basis of reactions to environment and events." (Ibid.) ("The Philosophy Cafe" at MSN?)
Hannah Arendt was accused of "anti-semitism" as well as "self-hatred." Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow and other Jewish thinkers have been called "antisemitic." Traitors, perhaps? Why object to conditioning "for your own good"? Why not surrender your humanity to your "superiors" who can instruct you? "Mindfuck" is the right word. Why indeed. This raises the controversial notion of what the U.S. Constitution envisions as the proper relationship between persons and government. That precious and (sadly) increasingly irrelevant document requires respect for the dignity and rights of persons -- including alleged terrorists -- certainly American citizens who commit no crimes merit respect.
President Bush insists that such concerns obstruct us in the "War on Terror." I believe that disregard for human rights and the Constitution is how we lose the "War on Terror." Worse, it is how we become terrorists. You decide. ("Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'")
Constitutionally, government must not act secretly upon the lives of persons, enslave or make them objects of experimentation or control, seek to alter their value schemes, relationships, affections, aesthetics or ideas "for their own good." Such actions are not for the good of a free society. To add lies and cover-ups of such heinous actions by public officials, combined with increasingly ludicrous attempts to blame victims as "the worst of the worst," only makes America's humiliation greater. Numerous detainees have been released, finally -- after years of torture and solitary confinement -- because it is admitted that they have done nothing wrong. "Mistakes made themselves." No doubt Washington will demand an apology from these poor people. Rape, theft, assault, slander -- do not appear, to me, to be forms of "therapy." When will you provide me with the torture files, Mr. Rabner?
Too late for terrorists to try to blow up the Statue of Liberty, President Bush's torture policy may have done it for them. Time to take another letter or word out of this essay because you do not like what I say? Do you believe that such tactics do anything more than confirm your inability to respond effectively to my arguments? I think you are proving the validity of my criticisms with such "tactics" of censorship. (See again: "Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me'" and "Havana Nights and C.I.A. Tapes" then "New Jersey's Feces-Covered Supreme Court.")
IV. Will things change with the arrival of a new administration?
I was happy to vote for Mr. Obama. I believe that we desperately need a change in America's political leadership. At the moment, the situation of the United States is grim. We are facing what most people recognize is an economic recession at best, perhaps a depression. We are detested, everywhere in the world. There are persons in this country who are so stupid as to take pride in that fact when at least 80% of America's "economic prosperity" depends on foreign trade -- notably with Latin America -- which is also on the verge of EXPLODING against U.S. interests.
Mr. Obama's efforts early in his administration will have a major effect on whether that situation (intense anti-Americanism in Latin America) is defused and lives are saved. President Obama has already achieved greater success in the Third World and Latin America, specifically, than Bush/Cheney did in eight years. Furthermore, there can be little doubt that Obama/Clinton initiatives have "deconstructed" MANY highly tense situations south of the border. A key role in this effort was played by Vice President Biden's seemingly "off-the-cuff" comments warning America's enemies "not to try this new president." President's Lula's handshake with Mr. Obama was a foreign policy achievement for the current administration not recognized by the press.
I am sure that neither Obama nor Clinton appreciated before taking office the severity of the hatred for the U.S. in the world or the number of threats "out there," thanks to Bush/Cheney. Resolving the difficulties with Cuba and turning the page on that sad episode in our history would be a major achievement in peace-making for this administration comparable to Nixon's trip to China. ("Time to End the Embargo Against Cuba!")
We are indebted to China and Japan. We are overextended, militarily, while U.S. so-called "intelligence" is seen as over-reliant on technology, ignorant of foreign cultures and manners, uncooperative with other countries, caught flat-footed not only in Russia's actions in Georgia, but equally oblivious to much that is taking place in every other continent. Under Bush, we were inept in the Sudan, neglectful of diplomacy in the Middle East, unaware of shifting power-relations and new influence for the Left in Latin America, as tensions rise every day in Africa (Mugabe) and South Asia (Pakistan/India). Right-wing paramilitary groups -- including anti-Castro fanatics in Florida and New Jersey -- enjoy state government protection when they censor my writings and those of others, indicating that the "War on Terror" excludes some terrorists from the fray. ("American Hypocrisy and Luis Posada Carriles" and "You Can't Fix Stupid.") Floridians must be smart enough not to elect Mr. Rubio as governor. This has nothing to do with whether Mr. Rubio is a homosexual, if he is a homosexual. ("Is there a gay marrige right?")
The first thing I thought when I learned that an airplane fell into the Hudson river today was that Cuban-American terrorists had decided to topple an airplane to protest Castro's revolution or the success of the movie, Che. No one seemed surprised by this possibility. Let's see what they try next. I guess preventing me from accessing MSN was proof of some GOP members' commitment to freedom of expression. What do you think, Senator Bob? Senator Mel of Florida? ("Babalu and Free Speech Too!")
My torture experiences at the hands of New Jersey officials date from 1988 to 2010, and beyond. They are well known to Stuart Rabner, Esq. and Anne Milgram, Esq. Both persons are "ethical" N.J. attorneys, allegedly, also guilty bystanders to atrocity. Both of these persons will lie through their silence -- or by means of explicit denials -- concerning these facts. Continuing attacks on this essay must be expected from the corridors of power in New Jersey and Miami's calle ocho.
The response to these crises in the U.S. is a compliant and docile media. Where is the so-called "independent press" to cover my daily experiences of censorship? Who do you think will be next? Censorship is a hungry beast that will devour its friends as well as enemies. Allowing politicians to insert their jargon into newscopy diminishes the credibility and respect accorded to the U.S. press everywhere in the world, including America. Meanwhile, the U.S. government continues to spout its drivel and issue-avoiding "double-talk":
"Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory [truth-telling] since the majority of politicians on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power."
Do you wish to speak of lies, Mr. Rabner? Senator Bob? OAE? More censorship, boys and girls? Hey, I write the first draft of this essay hours before Mr. Bush's "farewell address." Will America "fare well" because of Mr. Bush's efforts? I have my doubts about our future prospects. After the First Quarter of 2009, the U.S. lost 500,000 jobs that will not return to our economy. Another 300,000 jobs, at a minimum, will be lost before the end of the year. 250,000 jobs lost in July; 200,000 in August, 2009. 283,000 in September. Unemployment is officially at 10.07%; in real terms, about 12-17% of potential workers cannot find jobs. Why worry? Despite the alleged "recovery," job creation and opportunity is "sluggish" in 2010. More like "non-existent." This would be a good time to insert another "error" in one of my essays.
"To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed." (Pinter, p. 24.)
The contradiction in America is between 1) a reality we experience; and 2) a mythology that we are taught is the truth about the U.S. and our role in the world. I do not suggest that we should dispense with mythologies or ideals. I believe that we need both as goals to strive towards, not as alternatives for attempts to grasp our contested realities. To speak to me about the Constitutional guarantee of free speech -- as I experience daily suppressions of speech and overt political censorship -- is absurd. The greatest harm that you as a New Jersey hacker are doing is not to me, but to the Constitution of the United States of America and to our global credibility on free speech issues. These harassment tactics hurt America, New Jersey, the Constitution, and legality throughout the world, including Cuba.
I will not relinquish my belief that free speech and privacy are fundamental rights guaranteed to every person under the Bill of Rights or to insist on recognition of my right to speak freely of these matters. How can you wear judicial robes, Mr. Rabner? How can you be a witness to these crimes, for years, and fail to prevent their continuing reality? Ms. Milgram, how do you have the nerve to call yourself "Attorney General" of New Jersey while allowing for the occurrence of these crimes and blatant corruption beyond the worst horrors in Third World countries? Paula Dow, this question has now been placed on your plate.
I will confront the legal system -- including New Jersey's unbelievably corrupt legal structure -- with its own professed ideals and commitments as against the daily betrayal of those ideals and commitments in utterly cynical actions taking place behind a smoke-screen of mindfucking obfuscation. The Bush administration's claim to fame and genuine achievement may be the perfection of a system of communications that allows the bells and whistles, balloons and flag-waving to substitute for discussions of substantive policy issues, true political debate, engagement in public analyses of legality, economic policy, defenses of strategy and goals before the tribunal of public opinion. The sovereignty of the people is undermined by this disdain for their opinions. Public consulation is not a mere annoyance for political leaders in a democracy, Mr. Cheney. ("Deborah T. Poritz and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "How to Execute the Innocent in New Jersey.")
The Bush administration has constructed a narrative in which there are evil terrorists and their friends who object to U.S. actions against Americans who are the only good guys and gals. We forget that the proverbial sheriff in classic Westerns -- like Gary Cooper in High Noon -- only derives his authority from the people, whose failures are his failures, because the sheriff must be appointed to act as their "lawman." Did the world "appoint" Mr. Bush as "sheriff"?
Mr. Obama's challenge is to enlist the cooperation of a world grown wary and defensive as well as hostile in response to U.S. bullying. We have failed to persuade others to join in our efforts to stop the scourge of terrorism because we have not bothered to discuss the matter with anybody or to invite others to join us, as equals, determining on the basis of their values and objectives whether our struggle against terrorism is worth sharing -- is also their struggle -- as opposed to whether we have become the terror for others to struggle against and fear. I am not worried about America's ideals, as embodied in the Constitution, when compared with any other set of ideals in the world. I worry when the U.S. abandons those Constitutional values because of "expediency." State terrorism by the U.S., or Israel (or anyone else), is still terrorism.
In a society that has led the world in the discourse of images and mass media, movies and advertising, popular entertainment and art -- we have abdicated the public explanation of our values and ourselves to others. We are "above" having to explain ourselves or speak truth to the "little people," even as we deny this fact publicly. This is to make ourselves liars and frauds on the world stage, hardly in a position to judge those same "little people" when they cooperate with our enemies. Worse, it is to allow our enemies to define us. There is, on the one hand, "mindfucking" and, on the other hand, there is a possible "fusion of horizons" by way of the aesthetic encounter. Mexican philosopher Maria Pia Lara writes:
"I want to propose a 'normative bridge' between narratives and the effect they produce on the reader by elaborating a 'theory of reflective judgment.' [This theory] will involve ... examples of the relation of narratives to philosophy and social science. ..."
Notice the key point:
"According to Gadamer, 'we can never fully comprehend a text unless it is related to the context of our own life [hermeneutics] as a possible answer to an existential question.' Thus Gadamer" -- also Paul Ricoeur -- "insists on the possibility of establishing a permanent dialogue between philosophy and literature, ..."
Also between philosophy and politics/law, philosophy and cinema:
" ... He sees it as a process of Ausbildung, something that will help our self-education. In this way, the cultivation of intellectual and moral virtues creates a context where human judgment has a chance of becoming meaningful." (Lara, pp. 244-245.)
Professor Lara says: " ... by creating new understandings of what happened, it is possible to recover humanity. ... humans are not born in order to die, but in order to begin." To "begin" is to meet in language -- as a social space -- making understanding possible for and among, equals. Long before today's fancy Continental theorists, Mary Whiton Calkins made strikingly similar arguments, informed by a deeply original, creative and profound reading of Kant and Hegel, James and Hume. Ms. Calkins merits recognition as the equal of Peirce and James, Royce and Santayana. (See "Is it rational to believe in God?" and "Immanuel Kant and the Narrative of Freedom.")
Where is the scholarship among feminists in universities to point out the importance of these philosophers' ideas today? Why do we find it necessary to turn to Europe, still, to think such thoughts? Why is Judith Butler relegated to the feminist section of the bookstore and excluded from the philosophy section? Is it not possible in America to be both a feminist and also a philosopher of politics for men and women? At the "Border's" bookstore in New York, Professor Butler's work was placed on the "Women's Studies" shelf and not in the much larger philosophy section. This is intellectual ghettoizing. Angela Davis is included only in the tiny African-Studies section, whereas Professor Davis' Autobiography, which is -- along with Sartre's "The Words" -- one of the great philosophical autobiographies of the 20th century is not found in the philosophy section. ("Nihilists in Disneyworld.")
Saying these things makes me a "fool," a "sissy," or "homosexual" among so-called "real men" -- who are usually gay. I think saying these things just makes me rational. The methods of the past eight years have not been a glittering success. We are and must be smarter than we have appeared recently. Is it really necessary to subject me to censorship and silencing, to deliberate inflictions of emotional suffering, publicly, for expressing such opinions and the need for genuine communication in the world? If so, then you will have to continue to do so. I will express my opinions regardless of what others think of them. In response to new censorship and error-insertions in this essay, I will focus on allegations pertaining to the sex lives of New Jersey judges, in addition to political contamination of legal procedures and the always popular Union City "graft-experience." ("Is Senator Menendez a Suspect in Mafia-Political Murder in New Jersey?" and "Is Senator Bob 'For' Human Rights?")
V. Conclusion.
I suggest that it is time to try dialogue and diplomacy, not robot-bombs. No one will be better at self-definition and communication than America. I hope and believe that President Obama will be a success. Obama's willingness to reach out to the best and brightest -- despite previous political differences -- indicates a willingness to celebrate and use intelligence in the public interest. Obama's focus on education and new media, empowering and facilitating more communicative efforts and a far more complex self-definition for the United States of America will win many battles for us without firing a shot. ("Barak Obama and 'The New Yorker.'")
The political opposition to Mr. Obama should bear in mind that upon Obama's success will depend your children's future. Give the Obama administration a chance to succeed. We need each other now more than ever. Are these the statements that you wish to censor and suppress? I hope not.
My discussion has relied upon these and other sources.
Primary works by Colin McGinn:
Colin McGinn, Mindfucking (London: Acumen, 2008), entirety. http://www.acumenpublishing.co.uk/
Colin McGinn, Moral Literacy: How to do the Right Thing (London: Duckworth, 1992), entirety.
Colin McGinn, The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World (New York: Basic Books, 1999), pp. 139-175.
Colin McGinn, The Making of a Philosopher: A Journey Through Twentieth-Century Philosophy (New York: Harper-Collins, 2002), entirety (esp. pp. 157-241).
Colin McGinn, Problems in Philosophy: The Limits of Inquiry (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993), pp. 62-79. (McGinn's The Problem of Consciousness is also recommended for graduate students.)
Colin McGinn, Shakespeare's Philosophy: Discovering the Meaning Behind the Plays (New York & London: Harper Perennial, 2006), entirety. (I especially recommend the discussion of "The Tempest" in light of the themes of this essay.)
Selected Periodicals:
Elizabeth Bumiller, "U.S. Intelligence Offers Dim View of Afghan War," in The New York Times, December 15, 2010, at p. A1.
Peter Baker & Mark Landler, "Obama Demands Afghan Reforms Produce Results," in The New York Times, November 19, 2009, at p. A1.
"The Torture Report," (Editorial) The New York Times, December 18, 2008, at p. A42.
"The World According to Cheney," (Editorial) The New York Times, December 23, 2008, at p. A23.
Robin Pogrebin, "For Jews, Madoff Scandal Brings Feelings of Betrayal and Shame," in The New York Times, December 24, 2008 at p. A13. (Jews wonder: "How could a Jew do these things?")
"The Right to a Day in Court," (Editorial) The New York Times, December 24, 2008, at p. A24.
"The Crisis of Capitalism: Symposium," International Socialist Review, November-December, 2008, pp. 10-26.
Joel Geier, "The Free Fall is Over, But The Crisis Continues," in International Socialist Review, July-August, 2009, at p. 29. http://www.isreview.org/
Supplemental Sources:
Tariq Ali & David Barsamian, Speaking of Empire and Resistance: Conversations With Tariq Ali (New York & London: The Free Press, 2005), entirety.
Richard J. Bernstein, Radical Evil: A Philosophical Interrogation (Oxford: Polity, 2004), entirety.
Bob Brecher, Torture and the Ticking Bomb (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 40-75.
Judith Butler, Precarious Life: Powers of Mourning and Violence (London & New York: Verso, 2006), entirety.
Fidel Castro & Ignacio Ramonet, Fidel Castro: My Life (New York & London: Charles Scribner, 2007), entirety (on my list).
Noam Chomsky, Problems of Knowledge and Freedom (New York & London: The Free Press, 1971), entirety.
Mark Danner, Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror (New York: NYRB, 2004), pp. 217-224, pp. xiii-73.
Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003), entirety.
Angela Davis, Abolition, Democracy: Beyond Prisons, Empire, Torture (New York: Seven Stories, 2005), entirety.
Terry Eagleton, On Evil (London & New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), entirety.
Terry Eagleton, "Discourse and Ideology," in Ideology (London: Verso, 1991), pp. 193-220.
Terry Eagleton, "Art After Auschwitz: Theodor Adorno," in The Ideology of the Aesthetic(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), pp. 341-366.
Stephen Eisenman, The Abu Ghraib Effect (London: Reaktion Books, 2007), entirety.
Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Marx & Engels: A Biographical Introduction (New York: Ocean Press, 2008), entirety.
Harry S. Kariel, The Desperate Politics of Postmodernism (Amherst: University of Mass. Press, 1989), pp. 118-149.
Russell Keat, The Politics of Postmodernity: Habermas, Freud and the Politics of Social Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 38-66.
Duncan Kennedy, Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy: A Polemic Against the System (New York & London: New York University Press, 2004), pp. 1-145.
Maria Pia Lara, "Narrating Evil: A Postmetaphysical Theory of Reflective Judgment," in Maria Pia Lara, ed., Rethinking Evil: Contemporary Perspectives (Los Angeles: University of California, 2001), pp. 239-251.
Rahul Mahan, The New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2002), pp. 11-94.
Alfred W. McCoy, A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War, to the War on Terror (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2006), entirety.
John McGowan, Postmodernism and Its Critics (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 211-281.
George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," in A Collection of Essays by George Orwell(New York & London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich/HBJ, 1953), p. 156.
George Orwell, 1984 (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1949), entirety.
Harold Pinter, "Art, Truth and Politics," in Not One More Death (London: Verso, 2006), pp. 14-32.
Roberto Mangabeira Unger, The Critical Legal Studies Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), entirety.
Locus Classicus:
Classic Marxist sources on this general discussion are: Marx & Engels, The German Ideology and Marx's famous chapter on commodity fetishism in Capital, Volume 1; Georg Lukacs, "Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat," in any edition of History and Class Consciousness. Antonio Gramsci on "philosophy as a universal corrective" and "hegemony" in The Prison Notebooks.
