Do Gooders Gone Bad
By Bill Bonner
Regular sufferers of the Daily Reckoning will recall that we've
been digging down - into this bedrock of money- grubbing capitalism
- for so long, we are developing a bad back.
But today, to the relief of readers and ourselves...we move on...and
sink into the Sahara of contemporary politics...where our spade sinks
in more easily.
Some will say that this is the problem with politics. The sands
shift so easily and readily that you can make no headway. As soon
as you have dug yourself a nice little position, along comes a wind
change that collapses the sides and fills it up. But that is also
what makes it entertaining - at least to onlookers with an appreciation
for the absurd or the sordid.
Some people are irritated by the grit of politics. Others seem to
take it in and, like an earnest oyster, roll it into a gaudy pearl.
Before you know it, they are so thrilled with their little jewel,
they want everyone to wear it.
You will recall, no doubt, our brief mention of the Cannibal of
Rotenberg. The poor man thought his anthropophagism might catch on
and become the Next Big Thing...a great pearl of a program...which
would solve the problems of overpopulation and undernourishment in
a single slice. "The Third World is ripe for the eating," he
pointed out. And if his recipe for planetary improvement had not
been interrupted by the polizei, who knows what might have happened?
But now the fellow is in the hoosegow making do with hamburger.
And so is another of the world's do-gooders gone bad: Saddam Hussein.
We don't know much about the Butcher of Baghdad, but we imagine that
his defense will be little different from that of all ex-dictators;
surely he thought he was building a better world. Iraq is a wild
and wacky place...with different tribes and religious groups ready
to slit each others' throats. At least, that is Saddam's story; without
his firm leadership, the country would have been a mess.
Riccardo Orizio makes a habit of interviewing dictators. He goes
after those who have retired, been deposed...or sent to jail. His
book, Talk of the Devil: Encounters with Seven Dictators, is a like
a travelogue of different highways to Hell...each one of them paved
with good intentions.
It is a shame that do-gooders don't set off some signal before they
go bad...like a fire alarm that is running out of juice. Maybe some
adjustment could be made.
But the most successful of them - such as Mussolini and Hitler -
actually gain market share as they go bad. Their delusions are self-reinforcing,
like the delusions of a debt bubble; the higher prices go, the more
people come to believe they make sense.
We think of Il Duce. The clown thrashed around in typical leftist
claptrap, looking for a program. When he finally got into office,
he simply threw out the whole thing...and got a new program better
suited to his ambitions: Put on silly uniforms. Strut around, telling
the masses that you're recreating the glory of ancient Rome. Spend
a lot of money.
So many people came to admire the man that he came to admire himself...and
began to believe that his program might do as advertised. Then, he
invaded Abyssinia...and the bull market in Benito Mussolini was over.
We wonder, too, at America's latest breed of do-gooder, the neo-conservatives.
Is their stock rising...or falling?
"These Cold Warriors were mostly liberals of a special, ideologically
zealous variety," explains an article in The American Conservative. "Many
of them had come from the extreme Left. They had opposed communism
because they had universalistic objectives of their own and did not
want any competition. These proponents of a single model for all
societies were able to form an alliance with putative conservatives,
who had come to believe during the Cold War that to be conservative
was always to be hawkish and assertive in foreign policy. Used to "standing
up for America," these nationalistic and saber-rattling conservatives
found in the cause of a better world, a new outlet for their desire
to "exercise American power."
The neo-cons preach a rousing sermon of "global democratic
revolution," to quote George W. Bush. There's nothing conservative
about revolution, but that doesn't seem to bother anyone. The sands
shift, who cares?
Of course, President Bush is probably not a neo-con himself. But
he seems ready to go along with just about anything. According to
former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, the leader of the free world
even had a little trouble following the foreign policy discussions
in the White House. But he's a shrewd politician who knows a good
slogan when someone gives it to him and who saw immediately the advantages
of attacking Abyssinia or Mesopotamia. It gave him cover to spend
more than any president had ever spent...with hardly a peep of protest.
Traditional conservatives were struck dumb by the audacity of it.
No do-gooder program we have ever heard of has been more ambitious
than the neo-con scheme. Afghanistan, Iraq...next up are Syria, Iran
and Saudi Arabia - all countries in need of "regime change," according
to the neo-cons. But the program goes far beyond occupying a few
hapless third world countries. These fellows think they have a panacea
for everything bad; they believe they are delivering us from Evil.
The pompous absurdity of it is hardly noticed. Reagan dared to tag
the Soviets as the "Evil Empire." A few years later, the
empire was history.
That is why it is sometimes better to lose a war than to win one.
Victory seems to bring out the worst in many people. After the Soviet
threat was removed, the neo-cons found new a new source of evil...militant
Islam.
"This poses a much more serious threat than the Soviet Red
Army," explained Thomas L. Friedman, a cheerleader for the neo-con
team, "because these human bombs attack the most essential element
of a society: trust."
Thus do they "have the potential to erode our lifestyle," he
continues.
You and I, dear reader, might see less danger in a handful of fanatics
with plastic explosives in their pockets than in a whole arsenal
of thermo-nuclear warheads aimed at us by a determined enemy. But
we lack the vision of the neo- con messiahs. What they see is an
almost inevitable 'clash of civilizations' between the Arab world
and the Western world.
And if one is not inevitable...it will at least be likely, after
they get finished throwing their weight around.
Bill Bonner
The Daily Reckoning
