Looking for some amnesiacs, walking contradictions with lots of power in the media-----self-parodies who play politicians, while sadly, being actual politicians in reality? Just take John McCain singing "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" last year as a presidential candidate. And now: Here's the same man in today's self-righteous cocoon of dangerously impetuous GOP liberation theology:
"It’s not just what takes place on the streets of Iran but what takes place in America’s conscience. We have to be on the right side of history," he said. "We just need to say that we’re on their side as they seek freedom."
The artistry of the first line's beautifully apt, unintentionally ironic, depiction of a U.S. Senator's mind, particularly of the GOP persuasion, is on par with Orwell's intentionally-ironic Ministry of Love, where dissidents were meted out education through pain and torture (But hell, at least with Winston Smith, it worked, even without the Beach Boys' bombing anthem. McCain's "the revolution takes place in our conscience" platitude misses something substantial, like credibility, force----reality.)
Clearly this first line means that to the GOP opportunists of the hour, the "revolution" in Iran isn't only what their people do in the streets or the pain and oppression they receive a la Supreme Leader, but also what America's collective "conscience" experiences and says. That "conscience" used to say, "Bomb for peace," which was much more in tow with Orwellian tough love doled out by a Ministry of Peace. Kudos guys, you're unwittingly following your own dystopic artistic propensities. What the FU...?
Is he really implying that like some other purely subjective realities (LSD, poetry, coitus), the current Iranian "revolution" is taking place in our minds ("consciences") as much as it is objectively taking place on the ground. Such a profound implication would mean that, like many, if not all objective events-----for his group of partisans, anyways----occurring outside of America's collective "conscience," they are actually highly subjective. This is because, as Americans, we know our "conscience" is an objective fact. What it experiences is objective reality. What truths lie on the ground in Iran, therefore, are neatly appropriated into the American subjective experience, which can be prone to the same whims of selective remembrance, defense mechanisms of the conscience, and full-fledged self-delusion.
Well then, with such an inversion----our internal truths now being objectively absolute, and the facts of the outside world being highly subjective and hence worthy of dismissal----we shouldn't doubt that these latest events in the Gulf will be open to some highly subjective revisions, re-imaginings, and reinterpretations of cause and effect, now and in the future. The historical record, say pre-Obama presidency as far back as 1953 would also fall under America's purview of subjectivity and exclusion, of course.
The inversion of the objective with the subjective is to be expected from an "American conscience" that can only publicly acknowledge the world and all its historical facts as subjective as its own "conscience." This "conscience," with its highly selective, although mainly amnesiac memory, does not know it's completely deluded into believing itself the definition of absolute objectivity. Not surprising at all for an empire. In short: Everything that occurred before Mr. McCain woke up today is subject to the same inverse rules and regulations within its own American universe of objectivity, opposed to the outside world's chaotic, subjective facts and histories. McCain, this American universe, and its "conscience," are One----and It blithely accepts the lie of Its own, self-evident morality and objectivity. If that weren't true, a leader of McCain's caliber and "integrity" couldn't go all over the media, be interviewed by plenty of people with IQs above 80, and cry that "we just need to say we're on their side" without any historical context, and without being laughed off camera. The historical context is America's, and to America the Iranian "revolution" we're witnessing is part of our subjective "conscience." It's whatever our "conscience" says it is.
In an alternate reality, one more focused on the objectivity of historical facts, media figures would ask the senator about the apparent contradiction between bombing the people of whom's freedom you supposedly care so deeply about. This might produce a more enjoyably candid response to Bob Scheiffer's latest interview:
"Bob, I did support bombing Iran when belligerence was still cool and seemed to win elections, but now, much later on down the road, when our president has to walk a delicate diplomatic line, I feel the Iranian people are best served by making our very own, distinctly American consciences paramount with vapid, self-indulgent rhetoric. Their revolution is almost as important as our need to posture as a moral agent in the universe, even if it puts more ammo into the hands of the repressive Iranian government to squelch any foreseeable reform. At which point, I could go back to singing my 'Beach Boy Bomb Song'" and urge the peaceable bombing of the Iranian population."After witnessing another year of America's intensely subjective understanding of the facts pertaining to itself, and its bouts of conscience and/or lack thereof, the logic becomes clear as day: While campaigning for president, McCain must have meant that it's important to bomb Iran into supporting its own future revolution because, god knows, no organic uprising could ever possibly occur without that. And what a genius idea, in a Bush Doctrine kind of way, since obviously nothing breaks a people's solidarity with their own government like being under attack (Remember Pearl Harbor? No? Just remember back then to what it was like after 911: America, ready to bend to Al Qaeda's will at any moment, "islamo-fascism" in the fluoride of our drinking water----treasonous citizens itching to oust their illegitimately appointed president, George W. Bush. Americans were just leaping at the chance to topple their own government, as treason and sedition abounded).
So what an impossibly useful suggestion coming from McCain and the GOP: to flop from "bomb Iran" to open solidarity with Iran's people. And to think it was only stupid leftists espousing their views on solidarity not but a couple months ago when the bombing craze was all the rage. McCain, the artist, has unwittingly traveled back in time to meet those leftists who are now respecting and appreciating that fine line Obama has to walk today so as not to squelch any possible reform by openly supporting the reformers.
But imagine: If only not-so-recent historical facts were as subjective as the whims of McCain and the GOP, one could utterly erase the history of U.S. intervention in Iran, especially that one inconvenient event responsible for bringing the mullahs and the Ayatollah to power in the first place! Maybe that's just it: Would McCain like to see Obama respond with our objectively- absolute American "conscience," being "on the right side of history" by spearheading a CIA-led coup, much like that of 1953, which removed Iran's democratically elected prime-minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq?
I’m not for sending arms. I’m not for fomenting violence, nothing except to say that America’s position in the world is one of moral leadership.
Whether it be threatening to bomb them, or making grandiose pronouncements against their government, or just straight-up, old fashioned regime change, Iranians right now must be really agonizing over the plight of "America's conscience," while they are endangering themselves by demonstrating in the streets. They want to succeed, not listen to our screaming "consciences" that can only embolden the reactionary forces against their reform movement. By the way, "I'm not for sending arms"? What about "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran!" That was only months ago; certainly McCain can remember that expression of solidarity with the Iranian people he made way back in the dark past of 2008.
In 2008, "moral leadership" for the GOP meant bombing Iran all the way to victory at the polls. Today, it means losing this "revolution" by demonstrating just how much America intends its support to a member of a supposed "Axis of Evil."
Obama's handling this correctly. McCain and the GOP should go back to being honest and advocating a policy of "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" because Iranians, like the Kurds in the First Gulf War, understand what prospective U.S. support means: failure if not outright betrayal.
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*Oh, and don't forget Mr. Foreign Policy's major blunders about a region he's so keen on "liberating":
- At an April 2007 town hall meeting in South Carolina, McCain responded to a question about potential military action against Iran by asking: "You know that old Beach Boys song, 'Bomb Iran?' " He then sang: "Bomb, bomb, bomb -- but anyway." Asked about those comments during a September 2007 radio interview, McCain said he was "proud" of the moment's popularity on YouTube and continued: "Look, when I'm in the company of veterans, which I was, and one of them says to me, 'When are you going to send a message to Iran?' and we're joking around, I'm gonna joke around. And if someone doesn't like it, my advice to them is to lighten up."
- As Media Matters for America has noted, on three occasions over two days in March 2008, McCain made the false claim that Iranian operatives were training Al Qaeda for fighting in Iraq -- once on March 17 while being interviewed by nationally syndicated radio host Hugh Hewitt and twice during March 18 remarks to reporters in Amman, Jordan. In Jordan, after Sen. Joe Lieberman whispered in McCain's ear, he corrected himself: "I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not Al Qaeda." McCain's presidential campaign subsequently acknowledged the misstatement.
- In a July 21, 2008, interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC's Good Morning America, McCain referred at one point to "the Iraq-Pakistan border." In fact, Iraq and Pakistan do not share a border -- they are separated by Iran.
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