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Shame of '04

Thread ID: 16102 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2004-12-28

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TexasAnarch [OP]

2004-12-28 14:04 | User Profile

SHAME OF ‘04

The following series of factors have saturated the existential background of America since the should-have-been-aborted 2000 election, erupting at the end of 2004 in widespread epidemic spasms of shame:

--the Bush family alcoholic abused/abuser consciousness inflicted on America by the political front organizations (neocons, mostly Catholic and Jews, by religion; almost seamlessly Catholic-Jewish in philosophy of statehood under “God”)

--“faith basing” the pitch of “compassionate conservatism”. A transparent bait-switch ploy many in the media saw, but either passed off as Republican politics, or played along as if everyone suddenly stood in need of salvation. From/by them. Bush announced almost immediately after his inauguration in ’01 his wooing of these two religious groups as swing votes in the ’04 election, at that time 3 ½ years down the road. Sure enough, when the time came, Israel’s role in promoting the Iraq war is kept out of the news, while in the 4-front are the conviction and death sentence for Scott Petersen, and the shame evoked by “gay marriage”. **

-- September 11, 2001 Twin American symbols of phallic male dominance on the New York City horizon, exquisitely penetrated at its top/head, and caused to demolish.

--Christmas eve, 2002   - shooting of the bell ringer at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem as a result of Sharon-instigated Palestinian intifada that set off the suicide bomb war (Friedman); 8-month pregnant Laci Petersen and her ‘unborn son Connor’ go missing in California

--Israel’s state assassination of Sheik Yassin in Gaza March, ‘2, followed by the April hanging of mutilated bodies on Fallujah’s bridge; mass slaughter of over 600 civilians in the first U.S. led assault; continued shameful pounding of the city by heavy bombs.

--The desecrations of personal being shown at Abu Ghraib by the pictures that emerged in late April/ May, ’03.  These, given Freud’s uncanny description of exactly the same sadistic torture images entertained in the fantasy of severely self-hating, masochistic individuals (bound, whipped, sexually and physically assaulted by animals, others – ways of seeking attention, and love, from the fantasies of abusing Fathers pursuing them in their heads)  See his The Economic Problem of Masochism, l923   These pictures show the deconstruction of “group-think” mentality planning a “war on terror” against such a phantom, inner Being as pursued Daniel Shreber, the famous German judge who hallucinated anal  rape assaults by “God”, experiencing ‘voluptuosities’. (Freud, of course, saw this as the driving force of the fantasies of punishment by the father for being a “bad boy”, which goes back to early anal-stage childhood psychological development, where “mastery” by “holding it in” represents a hard-won victory of conscious will over the instinct-system.  Daddy’s strength and forbearance, innured to all flinchings from such discomforts arising from within, is drawn on by identification; later, under conditions of regression, this link of ‘little man’ with Father can be revived as threat and defense against the threat, of torture/trauma), thus explaining the perverse reversal found in the Schreber syndrome.

--the presidential campaigns of both parties reeked of shame. Taunts of “girliemen” stuck to Democrats Kerry and Edwards.  “Feminized”, as men partly made over into women, as “toughness”, perceived as required to protect aagainst “terrorists” appears almost shameful when emenation from the feminized male, as if the couldn’t really mean what they said in using the word “kill”, as the campaign managers and media required them to do.  The Republican campaign ran on the same dimension stirred up by homosexual issues, specifically, ‘protecting the sanctity of marriage’ from ‘the gay agenda’.  *  Karl Rove said afterward that Bush’s re-election showed a victory of moral values.**  Neocons picked up media control of shame TV  as if nothing had happened.  War with Iran seems to be just around the corner.

-- The election of G.W. Bush, bringer to earth of “war on terror”, against enemies who are “evil”.  Psychodynamically equivalent to Hedda Nussbaum taking back Joel Steinberg, after he beat her with his fists and killed their adopted daughter Lisa.

-- followed immediately, as if unleashing, “operation phantom fury”, the second U.S. led onslaught on Fallujah. …and the verdict of the California jury finding Scott Peterson “guilty of the double murder” of his wife and unborn son

--gruesome cutting of live fetus from the womb of slaughtered mother – to ‘save the baby’ the killer would-be mom had adopted in her mind; showing actual fetus-worship, to the group’s strangely silent response to the dead mother.


****

• From the standpoint of the economics of Sign-Use (see The System S*) the same energy cathected to the Abu Ghraib pictures, namely, male homosexual degredation, is cathected to the issue of “gay marriage”. Both energies derive from the shame of undergoing that act. Though the act itself may be tolerable, in the event, its sadistic, forceful performance is the act of utter and final desecration of another’s being. A virtual Blue State “liberal” revolution to legalize it, met with virtual war declared on what it represents for the Red State religious male, and the heterosexuals won, hands down. The common energy cathected is that aroused by/to anal intercourse between males. A fantasy element in the background of this is impregnating another male in such a manner. These merge in the fantasy construct of the Rapist/Killer Father torturing, killing and eating the babies, to show love. “That’s the way the Father shows love for the children – by punishing them.”

   ** Shame is an existential condition of morality (see argument below)  That is/was tacitly recognized in the reaction to Abu Ghraib.  It showed what shamelessness is.   Displayed is an utter moral deficit, a depravity of being, sin most vile, of most ancient condemnation.  At a most deep, collective unconscious, level each person relates to the same transition, from Abu Ghraib pictures to gay marriage.  Though separate in the political-social sphere, outside all, the  TokenSpace (see SystemS*) they appear in is identical for all, because cathexis to them, in it, creates it (=the political-social sphere of interactions).

By Freudian principles, the juxtaposition of these, both together, in the genital male consciousness, creates a withdrawing in repugnance from the pictures, recognized “on the token side” of consciousness as begotten from themselves, through Bush,  and defending themselves, internally,  against its ‘return’ by opposing recognition of what “gays” do.  By this displacement, what they do can be brought to consciousness as latent in individuals from their own case as something “bad”, punishable in the other.  The Abu Ghraib deeds are perversions deconstructed by “de-fusion of instincts” what was latent in the thinking and planning of “war” of that type.  This “war” is becoming visible as an entity as a mechanism driven by group-individual ego defenses against the fantasized terrors of anal rape, accompanied by fantasies of demonstrating male virility by planting sperm in the anus of Saddam Hussein and Ba’athists.  This baby boomer generation’s attempt to redeem itself from Vietnam war guilt, transmorphed into shame by refusal to repent.  That is what lay behind both sides of the presidential campaign, Swift Boat ads vrs. the flip-flopper (veteran-who-switched-sides (twice)).  After the transmorgrification, the shame of Vietnam blended with the shame of Iraq, and in the focused psychodynamic vision, the two fuse, through what is de-fused by them:  the homosexuality latent in father-son(children) relations.  Those who cling to childish love of The Father,  and accept the abuse -- these  go along with Bush, and support the “war on terror”.  They feel threatened by, and need to defend against, the same thing.  Organized overtly as a voting bloc, they dominate group consciousness.  Children of shame, shamelessly shaming themselves, and America.

***  Argument that shame is an existential requirement of morality.

a. From moral intuition.
It is intuitive that moral judgment is meaningless to a person who has no shame. They lack an essential quasi-empirical ingredient in the apprehension of a contemplated deed in moral terms, without the data of how wrong it is to endure and feel as one made to undergo sexual penetration and violation of personal Space*. If a person is beyond being shamed for doing anything, they lack what it is in a person to adopt a moral point of view toward another.

b. From the possibility of acting in accord with moral judgment (transcendental conditions; see System S*)

This argument is the detailed demonstration of the way shame affects moral judgment: removing efficacy of the maxim.

  Morality is acting from or in according with moral judgment.

Moral judgment is possible only under conditions; remove the conditions, the possibility of moral judgment is removed.

These conditions are laid out systematically in the System S*. Here, only the condition of acting in accordance with a maxim required for morality need be addressed.

The maxim is the articulation of an act under a meta-sign-use, with respect to doing it, that connects it with reason or motive. A body-initiated act is not verbal, per se – let an example be: getting a drink of water.  The gross body movement is coordinated by its parts’ subordination to the form of a text providing the link, “Because I was/am thirsty”. The maxim of the act under moral judgment, as a whole, omitting consideration of anything else, is “to get a drink of water when thirsty”, and it is morally neutral.  The point is not the value of the judgment here, but the possibility of making one, whatever that value is.

Supplying the maxim brings the process of doing things, which the body is busy at in any case, under rational oversight, and order. The person as a totality is called upon to relate to a moral judgment, because Being-sanctions are connected with it. One’s identity is at stake. If one is an immoral person, that is different, has different consequences, from being a moral person. One lacking a sense of shame, either because they never had one or had it taken away by abuse, lacks the totality required even to formulate the maxim, as they will easily lie about reasons. They will always be intending to do the right thing.

Now, on the regressive transcendental series, the form of intention in the maxim is of a higher order of unity than the body movements executing it.

Sid Thomas, Ph.d.

Kevin_O'Keeffe

2004-12-28 15:07 | User Profile

This article is a bit heavy on the Freudian jargon, so I can't claim to have fully understood it, but its interesting, never-the-less. I especially enjoyed the comparison of George W. Bush to Joel Steinberg, and the American electorate to Hedda Nussbaum (although in light of the fact that I don't believe Bush legitimately carried Ohio, nor am I certain about Florida and Nevada, its perhaps inappropriate to fully blame the American people for Bush's second term, although they have been delinquent in their duty to expose this apparent electoral corruption).

TexasAnarch

2004-12-28 21:52 | User Profile

appreciate the read and comment, K O'K.

What's confusing, even in Freudian terms, is the way Iraq played out, over against the homosexual issue.

It happened again on CNN this morning (8:45-9 segment). Bill Hemmer's fill- in is interviewing a Republican black guy -- young, good looking -- vs a young Democrat gal -- about politics. He's passing off the necessary "belief in Democracy" sauce lines, she's thumping his noggin with aplomb, and Man in charge of segues says "Pressed for time..got to change the subject. What are your parties making of the gay marriage issue?" -- and there you have it. The multicult slut firm Ailles and Associates fronts the black to utter the news everyone is obliged to groan at swallowing -- Bush's lines to keep the process going; the 'red-state-red-neck's gotta-hate-'em fems' to dish out the necessary truths......followed up with the 'red-state-red--neck's gotta-hate-'em' issue of approval of queers. This puts everybody back in the boat with Falwell. Robertson, Rove, the fundies and the neocoons. The public has been taken out back and buggered, once again.

I argue that both the paranoid war and the gay marriage issue proceed from the same source, turned differently, and used twice on genuine Americans of our sort (if I may -- as cro-magnon liberal). First, the war was sold on the basis of appeal to paranoia. Paranoia = homosexuality, as Freud established in the Daniel Schreber case. Symptom: "God" (fantasized in his head as a rapist demon) is after him at night, to impregnate him with a new humanity, with nocturnal emissions. (transl.: bug-ass nuts, with symbolic cosmic fantasies) "God" taking Bush-o-crats, and whoever surrendered their identity to the coaliltion of the willing, into war against Sadam Hussein, clearly, I would say (and in fact blogged on it here, 'back when) a symbol of superior masculine virility, was a paranoid/latent-homesexual rape trip. This was at the deep unconscious level. The war was about covering their asses, especially the CIA's blotched attempt to assassinate S.H. in l996, the year the neocoon cabal announced a "Clean break" with U.S. policy on Israel. That's how symbolism gets distributed by sign-use.

Then, this deep unconscious vein having been sliced open, the overt homos are encouraged to make their move before November, sealing the fate of girliemen dems. (Scenes of Clown Kerry tippy-toeing through the tulips with J Ed -- only those rendered shameless already could fail to be revolted IMHO.) So the male group's ego-defense mechanisms, AS PROJECTIVELY ARRANGED BY THE BIG SCRIPSTERS, in open insult to mature American males, who did not ask to deal with sexuality on the public stage, at all -- anymore than with "God" -- are called back in at the consciouis level to have a target to be against. This if Freudian displacement, as I understand it. It makes the process about "gaynxiety" -- hysterical fear (the "terror") that a tsunamic hate wave is hanging heavy, heavy, over all our heads, bound, gagged and stripped naked under the Sword of Allah's revenge. That would be forever.

[B]NULLIFY THE LAST ELECTION AND THE MENTALITIES OF THOSE WHO MANIPULATED IT. FOR GOOD. [/B]