In Defense of Democracy Against Bloomberg's Apologetics

Let’s face it. Most of the Islamic world is not interested in democracy. The Muslims interested in colonizing Ground Zero with an extravagant mosque are apparently interested in the kind of “useful” democracy that gets them what they think their money can buy.

At least they are not interested in the kind of democracy I and Jefferson are interested in.

To follow up on the Bloombergian assault on authentic, organic, peoples’ democracy, we must respond to this billionaire plutocrats’ recent ass-kissing event at the annual Ramadan Iftar dinner at the Gracie Mansion residence.

Bloomberg pontificated, as reported by Huffington Post:
“But if we say that a mosque and community center should not be built near the perimeter of the World Trade Center site, we would compromise our commitment to fighting terror with freedom.

We would undercut the values and principles that so many heroes died protecting. We would feed the false impressions that some Americans have about Muslims. We would send a signal around the world that Muslim Americans may be equal in the eyes of the law, but separate in the eyes of their countrymen. And we would hand a valuable propaganda tool to terrorist recruiters, who spread the fallacy that America is at war with Islam.

Islam did not attack the World Trade Center -- Al-Qaeda did. To implicate all of Islam for the actions of a few who twisted a great religion is unfair and un-American. Today we are not at war with Islam -- we are at war with Al-Qaeda and other extremists who hate freedom.”

Bloomberg is so out of touch with reality he seems to have forgotten that our knee-jerk response was not to “fight terror with freedom” but with the US Marines invading Iraq. Oddly, now it seems all those soldiers who died in Iraq were fighting for religious freedom. It’s not now convenient to continue to claim they died fighting for democracy.

Now Bloomberg directly attacks his “countrymen.” Bloomberg ‘worries’ about whether terrorists think America is at war with Islam. He ought to be worrying how the American political class is at war with America. The billionaire crowd doesn’t have to worry about terrorists. They have to worry about both the middle class and the growing class of unemployed, demoralized and disenfranchised Americans.

Bloomberg and his ilk would worry about the the ‘third-worldization’ of America except that they really don’t care. Their interest is in destroying the working class, unions and any semblance of a people’s democracy. They want cheap labor, obsessive consumers and easily accessible cannon fodder for their wars of empire. Otherwise they just want you and me to shut up and get in line at the unemployment office. Or, see your local recruiter. I’m sure we will need more cannon fodder soon in Afghanistan.

Bloomberg fails to see that terrorists already do believe America is at war with Islam. We could turn the Whitehouse over to the Cordoba crowd and the terrorists would still believe we are at war with Islam.

The soldiers fallen in Iraq and now Afghanistan presumably were there primarily fighting for democracy. They weren’t fighting for religious freedom in those countries. As far as the Iraqi and Afghani peoples were concerned they had religious freedom. In fact they, for the most part, believe our kind of “democracy,” Liberal Democratic empire building “democracy,” is a threat to their religious-cultural practices. Except for the wealthy Muslims in America who are a part of the international New Political Class, American culture in general is considered a threat to Islamic culture.

Bloomberg seems to be accusing his fellow countrymen of hating freedom. He forgets that the democracy that these anti-Mosque protesters are practicing and defending is the basis for religious freedom.

Bloomberg continues:
"I know that many in this room are disturbed and dispirited by the debate. But it is worth keeping some perspective on the matter. The first colonial settlers came to these shores seeking religious liberty and the founding fathers wrote a constitution that guaranteed it. They made sure that in this country the government would not be permitted to choose between religions or favor one over another."

Why, pray tell,should the people “in this room [be] disturbed and dispirited by the debate.” I’ll tell you why? Because they, including Bloomberg, don’t get and don’t respect the virtual sacredness of democracy. That’s why democratic debate disturbs and dispirits them.

And by the way, the settlers that Bloomberg refers to ran from monarchy first of all. If they had had a democracy they could have practiced their religion. The founding fathers in a democratic process wrote the Constitution that “guarantees” religious freedom. But religious freedom doesn’t mean legal and political license to do whatever the hell you want to do and you think your wealth gives you the right to do.

I wonder if it’s true that as wealth and power increase, IQ and human empathy, not to mention compassion, decrease. Bloomberg is evidence for the thesis.

A MOSQUE AT GROUND ZERO: Abstract universal rights and tolerance vs the core American value of a Community’s Right to Democratic Self-determination

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have finally spoken a few words of wisdom. She asserted that “any controversy surrounding the proposed mosque at Ground Zero should be regarded as a local issue.”

If you follow my writings, it will be no surprise that I concur wholeheartedly.

This is not to deny that there are national feelings regarding the issue. Obviously, there are. These should be taken into serious consideration. But given that the usual suspects are espousing the primacy of “universal human rights,” religious rights and pure tolerance over and above the primacy of community, local autonomy and the right to democratic self-determination, I must agree with Pelosi. The decision is to do “what is right” with the interests of the community as primary. The integrity of community is the root and core of American spiritual identity.

For me, solving this issue is not simply a way to defuse the matter and prevent a national religious conflict as it is undoubtedly for Obama & Co. It is a way to assert the primacy of democracy. The present dilemma points to the impotence of big, centralized government and professional politicians in solving most of the nation’s ills. The country is too big and too diverse for the managerial Liberals to administer one-dimensional bureaucratic-legalistic solutions to issues of communal, ethical and political import.

The Liberal apologists for the mass nation-state, both Republican and Democrat needless to say, want to preserve the “unity” which is really based on a national somnambulism and false value system by asserting not only “rights” but also Law and the US Constitution as the criterion for a solution. Bloomberg and Obama “have both expressed support for the right of developers to construct the religious center near where the World Trade Center stood.” Note they said “developers” and not the putative Muslim religious “community.”

Obama said explicitly, "As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country."... "That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances…..This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable." Obama continued, as reported in the Huffington Post, that although Ground Zero is “hallowed ground” the “proper way to honor it was to apply American values and our capacity to show not merely tolerance, but respect towards those who are different from us – and that way of life, that quintessentially American creed, stands in stark contrast to the nihilism of those who attacked us on that September morning, and who continue to plot against us today.”

Obama, however, diminishes the value of this "hallowed ground" by failing to see that Ground Zero is a sacred site, for Americans in general and New Yorkers in particular, whose spiritual value is at least as great as the Muslim interest in their Mosque. A looming Muslim mosque throws a shadow on that hallowed ground. If it were possible to always separate the authentic Muslims from the terrorists it might be different. If it were possible to take all people at their word, it might be different. But that is not the case in an age of absolute warfare in the form of terrorism.

Again according to Huffington Post reporting, and along lines similar to that taken by Obama, “NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent who has been a strong supporter of the mosque, welcomed Obama’s words as a “clarion defense of the freedom of religion.” Bloomberg had the temerity to reduce the outcry of the people to mere "popular sentiment." Such popular sentiment he forgets is the lifeblood of democracy. Sentiment is not mere 'sentimentality.' It is felt value of that which is sacred, constitutive of identity and worth dying for.

Entering the highly charged election-year debate, Obama surely knew that his words would not only make headlines but be heard by Muslims worldwide. The president has made it a point to reach out to the global Muslim community and ambassadors and officials from numerous Muslim nations, including Saudi Arabia and Indonesia.“ It seems Obama, coloring this controversy as an indisputable and incontrovertible 'religious freedom' issue, has failed to take into account the value of the democracy for which thousands of American soldiers are dying.

The gist of this pro-Mosque rhetoric is summed up by Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee when said that even if the mosque is built America will not come to an end. Dean called for a compromise without really being remotely clear what that looked like. Yet the clue to his real interest is in this “so what” attitude. Dean like Obama and the big business barons are interested only in “American unity” meaning American quietism, passive acceptance of centralist rule from Washington, the belief in the big stick of “universal human rights” and the resolutional power of “pure tolerance.” For what purpose: stable business conditions for globalist development.

The fact is, however, America is not unified, should not be unified and has not entered into a golden era of harmonious post-partisanism, any more than its revolutionary history has come to an end despite the ideological writings of such as Francis Fukuyama. The centralist Liberals(neo-Liberals,managerial Liberals) are interested in one thing primarily: American unity. But what this means is not any real diversified unity based especially in vibrant robust organic communities where true social individuality may be spawned. Obama’s abstract, lock-step “unity” is the homogenized unity of the mass nation-state where citizens are self-alienated individuals being stripped of cultural and political substance of their own making. They are being denied educationally the intellectual substance and voice which would render their opinions as important and incisive as those of Obama, Bloomberg , Dean and the rest of the super-community of New Class political professionals.

Washington's Liberal Democratic “freedom” is the kind that imposes any and every condition that furthers the economic and political interests of big money, governmental power and corporatism while strangling the freedom of democratic choice. Obama's freedom excludes the concrete freedom of cultural self-determination and democratic choice, that is, the political freedom which is the real “American Creed” and “core value” that make America what it is historically and in principal--not to mention theoretically from the standpoint of the “neo-populist Federalism” which I have been advocating in this blog journal.

Obama’s “unity” imposes an abstract equality upon our citizens and peoples in the interest of leveling out the real, concrete differences that are the source and cause of the populist politics that are surfacing as we speak and may yet help save our democracy, community and authentic federalism in America. Liberal Democratic equality really means that no one has the right to determine values that are primary, exclusive and self-determinative. Liberal equality legally forces the tolerance of any value or way of life no matter how much it compromises our way of life and no matter whether we democratically reject that way of life and other values.

Let the people of New York City decide this issue. And this does not mean, as Bloomberg pontificates, “the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.” Bloomberg accentuates his position finally with: “This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable.” However, if such religious freedom displaces and devalues democracy, then we are setting are self up for a kind of superiority of religious relativism which law and the military will not in the end be able to control.

Yes, so when, the ideology of constitutional or universal human “rights” and “freedom” doesn’t work, clobber the people with “laws” of private property, suspect ‘local laws and ordinances’ and bring in the bureaucrats, lawyers and local sell-outs who want to profit from the “Muslim community” trucking in millions of dollars to NYC.

No, there must be a referendum on this issue and let the people speak. Yes, let’s debate the issue and let’s let democracy prevail. But let the people’s democracy decide, not the bought-and-paid-for institutionalized government that serves the interests of big business. Let the people work out this dangerously sticky issue of cultural, religious and political conflict as truly American political practice would have it. If not, what’s next, sending it to the Supreme Court? That would be the most ridiculous of political fiascos, not to mention power plays that the bureaucratic centralist elitists might pull off since sending the Florida results of the Bush-Gore election to the Supreme Court for final “decision.”

No let’s not let the people speak. Let us unequivocally demand that the people speak, debate, think, criticize and act according to their popular will and purpose. Yes, the people could be wrong. But why should we think the professional politicians, lawyers, bureaucrats and technocrats cannot be wrong. This issue is not a matter of scientific, legal or managerial specialization that the “experts” can objectively resolve. This matter is precisely a question of values, feelings, purposes of community sanctity and real political/democratic choice. This matter is preeminently about the “sentiments” that Bloomberg derides and ridicules in his dry, smug dismissal of the voice and community integrity of the people.

Nationally, let us let all communities independently decide how they wish to live their lives, what values are paramount within different communities and who stands authentically for the future of the American polity. Let us not be trumped by legalist trickery, the power of globalist interests and manipulations of mass communications attempting to shape a “unified” consciousness of a slavishly “useful America,” an America whose citizens impotently succumb to group-think and are willing to accept the selling out of America, the fighting of meaningless wars and the demagoguery of a self-serving political class whose “values” are tucked away in secret Swiss bank accounts alongside their Muslim New Class compatriots.

FOUR VIGNETTES: Cultural Psychology at Work

• It’s not news that the corporate leviathan now has its sights firmly fixed on consciousness itself. It’s your consciousness that the monster is selling you. It “helps” direct and fix it firmly, usually with considerable emotion, to the commodity of your choice. Or should I say the ‘fantasy’ of your choice. Your attention becomes convincingly fixed on the thing that gives your mind an imagined context within which to continue to feel comfortable, entertained and, of course, wholly oblivious. Witness the house around the corner from mine: a shrine to the Buffalo Sabres. Flags, posters, signs, altars with figurines, logos, hockey sticks. And it’s all outside in the yard and on the porch. They want everyone to see it, feel it, know it and hopefully join in the fun, the passion… the oblivion. ………………….

• Mayor Bloomberg of NYC would have your “opinion” reduced to “popular sentiment.” In the recent melee over whether a Muslim mosque should be permitted to be built within spitting distance of “ground zero” Bloomberg handily dismissed the public outcry as “popular sentiment.” So in one fell swoop Bloomberg would denigrate the very foundation of democracy and dismiss it as emotionality, affected impulse or the thoughtless, biased ranting of “the people.” Although the “public sphere and space” continues to be retaken by the people over and over again throughout the country and world, plutocrats such as Bloomberg will use their ubiquity in the media to disparage and denigrate the roots and lifeblood of democracy—the people expressing their opinions and discussing the merits thereof. But for the likes of Bloomberg, the peoples’ opinions have no merit. They are mere sentiment. The people are sentimental, too emotional and not to be taken seriously. Yes, they may be humored, fooled, manipulated and used. But having no substance, no meaningful nor valuable force other than the irrational explosiveness which must be contained, sublimated and/or re-interpreted such that their historical roots and political power may be diffused if not annihilated. …………………

• Why is it that Bruce Fisher, in his otherwise excellent cover story for ARTVOICE[July 29-Aug. 4] entitled “Fishing for Salvation,” gives Ralph Wilson a pass on receiving public funds for a private enterprise. Fisher claims the Bills are a “unique public enterprise”! Does that go for the equally large number of taxpayers who could find no way to care less about the Bills, football, crazed fans and a brutal sporting event. And will it still remain so unique when the Bills inevitably leave town for more profitable parts? And did the people ever get any part of those profits in this unique public enterprise. It’s quite fascinating how objective judgment and an interest in law and justice quickly fade into shoddy thinking and effectively ideological rationalization, when our addictive dependence upon “the corporation” for our culture and “entertainment is faced with the prospect of going it alone without Big Daddy to provide us with spectacle and the monster athletes to give us an identity and sense of belonging if not purposefulness. What, pray tell, ever happened to the love of the game as the game? Why do we need professional, over grown specialists in athletic mayhem to allow us to enjoy ourselves? Wouldn’t local clubs of authentic sport enthusiasts be as interesting as multi-million dollar adolescents squeezing out every buck they can from this unnecessary business? Go Bills! Go somewhere else and let us return to genuine community! …………………….

• The proliferation of stand-up comedy over the last few decades in America—not to mention the plethora of not-funny Hollywood movies—testifies to our need for comic relief. At its best such stand-up is high art and a truth-teller of great proportions. But the misuse of laughter is another matter. I recently heard a retired woman on NPR telling her story of living on an unlivable Social Security Income. Her sad if not pathetic saga was frequently punctuated with “pleasant” laughter, accepting if not resigned laughter. It wasn’t forced and yet it wasn’t genuinely spontaneous, from the gut. It was the effete, exhausted, demoralized affective punctuations of a defeated being. Along a similar vein on “60 Minutes” I saw a story about a squad of Marines given the hopeless and thankless task of establishing an outpost in one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan. The soldiers filmed their project. The post was to be near a small village where the young men were suspected of being at least Taliban sympathizers. The Taliban militias had a documented, established presence in the area. On the video the soldiers “joked” about having to build a post—not only with insufficient materials and supplies—but in hostile territory surrounded by mountains, the high ground of which was every insurgents wet dream. The soldiers were clearly scared but “joking” about how as they spoke there were hostiles watching them waiting for their moment to strike—and it would be soon. All of the soldiers’ commentary were expressed as if there situation were “funny.” It wasn’t. Within hours of the filming the Taliban attacked and wiped out most of the squad. Not so funny. The father of one of the dead soldiers had received messages from his son regarding their “suicide mission.” He wasn’t laughing. The point of this is that the soldiers who were in a hopelessly dehumanized situation, which of course they kept themselves in, discussed it in the mode of supposed humor. They joked, laughed, found it strangely, darkly funny. What else could they do? And what else could the woman on social security do besides laugh. Her situation was as lethal as the soldiers. But all they could do was laugh and joke. There was no truth in this humor—unless of course we see it for what it is: a desperate plea for help to do it differently, to find a way to take control of our lives—in short to find a way to again be political beings. As every good comedian knows not everything is funny, not everything should be laughed off.