One of History’s recent ironies is how the Bush Regime’s failings are helping to gestate an internal American culture of Babylonian decadence. One must say so far it is a gloomy Babylon without much fun.
Fashion is its own theater, and cabaret took center stage on the fall runways. While L’Wren Scott raided Marlene Dietrich’s closet, showing sharp-tailored suits and slouchy men’s trousers — “a girl should always have a corset in her closet,” says the designer — Dolce & Gabbana added a little S-M, strapping models down with patent leather belts, their eyes hidden behind black masks. Otto Dix could have painted the louche ladies at John Galliano with their rouged cheeks, blood-red lips and smoky eyes. Not to mention the chorus line of feathers, hats and lacquered Sally Bowles-style pageboys that traipsed down the runway . . .
For more degenerate art and artifice, the Box on the Lower East Side serves up enough naughty fare — led by M.C. Raven O, a modern-day Joel Grey — to frighten the neighbors who have threatened to shutter it. “This place makes people feel liberated at a time when we are back to 1950s political correctness,” says the Box’s co-owner Simon Hammerstein, who takes a stand against the city’s current buttoned-up no-smoking, no-trans-fat mood. Political correctness hasn’t deterred Spiegelworld, either, a cabaret theater that is bringing its risqué show “Absinthe” to Miami this December. “It’s just sexy entertainment,” says one of the Spiegelworld performers, Julie Atlas Muz, who does a topless number in a very large bubble. “It’s a lot better than watching porn by yourself.”
To be sure, these remain isolated pockets, experientially distant from most Americans — like stars on the galactic rim, separated by millennia of cultural time debt. Nascent decadence at best; it has not reached Peoria, as they say.
Perhaps it doesn’t have to. American culture and technology is so distributed that there no no central nexus for transmission anymore, no means — for good or ill — for instructive signaling. America, unlike Weimar, never had High Kultur to attract talent or to define our times. No matter how encyclopedic,pronouncements from the Met can not compete with the Home Shopping Network or Cartoon Network. And even those modes are disintegrating as younger Americans abandon “channels” altogether and search for content ad hoc. Structural breakdown like this may well be a harbinger. Even so, one can not escape noticing the milieu is more about exhaustion and resignation than transgression.
We said at the outset that its all ironic. That’s because Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christians and Neocons both use the Babylonian myth of decadence as a central plank in their quest for cultural and political transcendence. Use of the mythos is and was central to their effort to hijack the liberal democratic tradition. Babylon is how they lump everyone into the enemy “-ist” (Islamo-fascist, Secularist, etc.)
Ian Buruma wrote way back in 2003 (reviewing Paul Berman’s Terrorism and Liberalism):
There is, however, much to admire in Berman’s book too. As a general analysis of the various enemies of liberalism, and what ties them together, it is superb. All—Nazis, Islamists, Bolsheviks, Fascists, and so on—are linked by Berman to the “ur-myth” of the fall of Babylon. The decadent city-dwellers of Babylon, corrupted by luxury and poisoned by greed, infect the people of God with their wicked ways, even as the forces of Satan threaten the good people from afar. The people of God will only be freed from these abominations after a massive war of Armageddon, in which the city slickers and Satanic forces will be exterminated. A pure new world will rise from the burning ruins and “the people of God will live in purity, submissive to God.”
As Berman says:
There was always a people of God, whose peaceful and wholesome life had been undermined. They were the proletariat or the Russian masses (for the Bolsheviks and Stalinists); or the children of the Roman wolf (for Mussolini’s Fascists); or the Spanish Catholics and the Warriors of Christ the King (for Franco’s Phalange); or the Aryan race (for the Nazis).
And there were always rootless cosmopolitans—Jews, Freemasons, Chinese, bourgeois capitalists, Zionists, Crusaders, homosexuals, and whatnot—to destroy root and branch. The cult of death has always been at war with the desire for the good life; unity, purity, and submission always were the promised goals of zealots, once the wicked city was razed. And pockets of liberty in the world were always vulnerable to less tolerant predators.
That the Fundamentalist/Evangelical Right and the Neocons, viatheir own Unified Government, foster such a domestic dynamic? Too difficult to accept. None of the attendees at the so-called Values Summit are prepared to do so. Neocons merely blame Bush the man not the program. The word catalyst vanishes from their vocabulary.
We spoke to contacts of ours in the non-Neocon Movement. They also served in the Administration. Privately they look forward to a HRC victory. First, because it relieves them of cognitive dissonance and onus for 2001-08. Second, HRC as poster woman for ‘social degeneracy’ is ideal for fund raising and base mobilization. And they remain deeply concerned that a Rudy or Romney win would take the Movement into a lateral place, making them defend some complicated ‘Third Way’.
To paraphrase the Warlord, they might welcome an outbreak of Babylonian decadence in America, saying “Bring it on.” They hope to better effect. We shall see.
Comment says
During the rest of Cheney’s war speech at WINEP – he cited Petraeaus – saying the Noble Patraeus “noted” Iran is setting up a “Hezbollah-like” force –
What ever happened to ‘Ol Department 2800?
Anon says
Speaking of Cheney — recall when he lied during the campaign by pretending to have been pro-Mandela? You recall? Anyway – this reminds us of something Mark Crispin Miller documented – but has largely gone unnoticed because Miller says some questionable things. Anyway Miller has shown how Bush misspeaks almost always when he is secretly hostile or does not care what he is talking about. He will make malaprops when discussing his concerns for Arab freedom or healt insurance aid – But not when he is discussing things that truly interest him. This video clip was very revealing ( as Bush is not unaware that Mandeala loathes him and Cheney)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1KGwQ1O88Y
Anon says
Another semi irony is how so many conservatives (like liz Cheney recently saying Dems acknowldge the Armenian genocide only to hurt US soldiers – ofcourse, she cited Krauthammeer, who claimed this is not what he believed, but knew it would cited as such) have recently sided with Turkish Muslims – both secular and religious – when they threatned to possible cease to help (harm) American troops.
That actual resolution really honors American history – and Americans in helping the Armenians – and these Conservatives side with the Turks – Mostly out of ignorance, but many out of cynicism. Also consider Dick Cheney – an admitted draft dodger – discussing American weakness and explain how this is twisted in the mind of the movement to be pro American:
“As time passed, the terrorists believed they’d exposed a certain weakness and lack of confidence in the West, particularly in America. Dr. Bernard Lewis explained the terrorists’ reasoning this way: “During the Cold War,” Dr. Lewis wrote, “two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival superpowers. If you did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire. If you said or did anything against the Americans, not only would there be no punishment; there might even be some possibility of reward, as the usual anxious procession of diplomats and politicians, journalists and scholars and miscellaneous others came with their usual pleading inquiries: ‘What have we done to offend you? What can we do to put it right?'”
————
Is Cheney forgetting who won and who lost the cold war – no thanks to him?
Anon says
Bletchley unbound – Cancel Zakaria’s next book party – Get Beschloss on the phone:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/57346
jlw says
“Privately they look forward to a HRC victory.”
This, in my estimation, is why there’s rumblings of a third-party effort if Giuliani gets the nomination. The theo-cons and the pluto-cons both want to have Hillary to blame for every sparrow’s fall, and with Giuliani as the GOP nominee, splitting the base is the only way to ensure it.
I’m reading the Shock Doctrine right now, and I’m seeing some eerie parallel’s between how Allende was demonized, and the “Hillary-the-Socialist-destroyer-of-America” meme now being circulated on the right. Setting the stage?
Armchair says
Here’s the poem HRC will have recited
at her inaugural (after taking the Oath
of Office by putting her hand on her
copy of The Second Sex)
A “Lament” For America
Listen, children
Your father is dead
From his old coats
I’ll make you little jackets
I’ll make you little trousers
From his old pants
They’ll be in his pockets
Things he used to put there
Keys and pennies
Covered with tobacco;
Dan shall have the pennies
To save in his bank;
Anne shall have the keys
To make a pretty noise with
Life must go on,
And the dead be forgotten;
Life must go on,
Though good men die;
Anne, eat your breakfast!
Dan, take your medicine!
Life must go on;
I forget just why
~Edna St. Vincent Millay
Comment says
Try to imagine telling the Value Voters the irony of Bush planting a huge military base in Ancient Babylon – They would have no idea what you are talking about – Very few people in the media even discuss that base and the fact that stealing archeological artifacts is what poor people in Iraq now do to make a living. That is decadent –
Comment says
In addition – the neocons are prepping themselves for a HRC victory – thinking ‘the worse, the better.’
Comment says
A HRC win would serve to cleanse the movement’s psyche of the Iraq war. They will say Hillary the socialist came to destroy – to take away our patriarchal God and impale America on one of her demented Christmas tree decorations.
Comment says
Another irony – making your post a double secret irony, is the fact that Bush has actually, in real life, established a huge military base in,on, and around the ruins of Ancient Babylonia – Abraham’s birthplace is withing mortar range at any place on the base – As has also been noted – the tanks on the base are crushing the clay soil and destroying counteless shards of Mesopotamian archeological history. Babylon indeed – As Rummy says – Stuff happens!