The Secret Knowledge

“The sense of community perceived in Cuba was not only nurtured by the political ideology of the system, but had its subterranean reservoirs and supports in the stereotype of the joyful, affirming attitude, attributed to the musically gifted song-and-dance loving natives, their natural and politically engendered vitality” From: Susan Sontag: “Some Thoughts on the Right Way (for Us) to Love the Cuban Revolution,” Ramparts, April 1969.

There we have from a supposedly intelligent and observant human being, not only a recitation, but an unconscious confession of her immersion in a fantasy: The workers, though naturally happy, have not seen the potential increase in their joy brought about by continuous work without sleep; they must be inculcated in the new, political reality. American children, likewise, must discard books and schools and intuit their responsibility to dismantle their culture, reverting, thus, to the bliss of the song-loving natives off our coast.

46

“Never let a good crisis go to waste.”—Rahm Emanuel

47

For a perfect dramatic representation of this crisis see Alec Guinness in The Bridge on the River Kwai. He has spent the whole film building a bridge for his enemies, the Japanese. It is only at the film’s end, as he is trying to stop its destruction by his own army that he realizes his crime and says, “What have I done?”

48

The Nazi swastika was a cross. The USSR’s hammer and sickle, just somewhat less identifiably, was one also.

49

Any theory put into practice may have its failure ascribed to underfunding, insufficient time for results, or the unfortunate, still insurmountable burdens placed upon it by a previous administration—this being the totality of the Obama administration’s explanation of its dismal performance.

50

Compare Marcus Garvey’s “Up, you Mighty Race, you Race of Kings. You can accomplish what you will.” (recorded 1921)

51

That the President only wants to cut taxes to those enterprises he deems politically productive is, of course, understandable. This is called “Politics.” It does not, however, synchronize his matter-of-fact admission that tax cuts create jobs with his, then, irrational insistence on helping the economy through raising taxes.

52

That the West is exploitative, destructive, racist, and finally, unworthy.

53

May they grow rich through misleading or defrauding the stockholders? Of course—if the first, let them be voted out, if the second, prosecuted.

54

In my family, as in yours, someone regularly says, “Hey, you know what would be a good idea . . . ?” And then proceeds to outline some scheme for making money by providing a product or service the need for which has just occurred to him. He and the family fantasize about and discuss and elaborate this scheme. Inherent in this fantasy is the unstated but ever-present truth that, given sufficient capital and expertise or the access to the same, the scheme might actually be put into operation (as, indeed, constantly, throughout our history, such schemes have), bettering the lives of the masses and bringing wealth to their creators. Do you believe such conversations take place in Syria? In France?

55

This is the widely noted fallacy that “work” must contain a physical element of actual labor. That one who merely “writes things down,” or “plays with figures,” is not performing “work,” but is merely “a manipulator.”

But what of the man who sat on a rock, and came up with the idea of a wheel, or the idea of a bank, or the theory of relativity?

Is there an element of gambling in the stock market? Of course there is, and you and I participate in it either directly, or through choices and purchases we each make on the basis of our predictions of a likely rise or fall in prices.

But let us assume a worst case—that the manipulators, beyond aiding any beneficial transaction (buying and selling of futures in order to, potentially, regularize the cost of commodities), or indeed just gambling (buying and selling futures solely to make money from their fluctuations), are engaged solely in “rigging the market,” and other sharp practices.

“Do you not see abuses,” the Liberal says. “In fact, do you not see inherent abuses in: the money market, the insurance industry, and so on—should they be allowed to continue unchecked?”

And the Liberal is not wrong in his outrage. But what human agency cannot be abused, and abused to the point of outrage?

And might not the Liberal, given an ironclad tip on a stock, consider acting on it, whatever his disdain for the stock market’s “practices”?

The problem is that if Government can be invoked and employed to arbitrate over every outrage, it may be invoked constantly. For outrage is a feeling and its invocation and adjudication subject to no objective test. The job of the Government is only to make and administer Laws.

The Liberal, in his legitimate, or at least supportable, “outrage,” has, quite literally, had his feelings hurt.

But if the State is called upon to take more power in such a case—if no “outrage” is