Political and Technological developments are rapidly obliterating all cultural differences and it is possible that, in a not-remote future, it will be impossible to distinguish human beings living on one area of the earth’s surface from those living on any other, but our different pasts have not yet been completely erased and cultural differences are still perceptible.
The most striking difference between an American and a European is the difference in their attitudes towards money. Every European knows, as a matter of historical fact, that, in Europe, wealth could only be acquired at their expense of other human beings, either by conquering them or by exploiting their labour in factories. Further, even after the Industrial Revolution began, the number of persons who could rise from poverty to wealth was small; the vast majority took it for granted that they would not be much richer nor poorer than their fathers. In consequence, no European associates wealth with personal merit or poverty with personal failure.
To a European, money means power, the freedom to do as he likes, which also means that, consciously or unconsciously, he says: ‘I want to have as much money as possible myself and others to have as little money as possible.’
In the United States, wealth was also acquired by stealing, but the real exploited victim was not a human being but poor Mother Earth and her creatures who were ruthlessly plundered. It is true that the Indians were expropriated or exterminated, but this was not, as it had always been run in Europe, a matter of the conquerer seizing the wealth of the conquered, for the Indian had never realized the potential riches of his country. It is also true that, in the Southern states, men lived of the labour of slaves, but slave labour did not make them fortunes; what made slavery in the South all the more inexcusable was that, in addition to morally wicked, it didn’t even pay off handsomely.
Thanks to the natural resources of the country, every American, until quite recently, could reasonably look forward to making more money than his father, so that, if he made less, the fault must be his; he was either lazy or inefficient. What an American values, therefore, is not the possession of money as such, but his power to make it a proof of his manhood; once he has proved himself by making it, it has served its function and can be lost or given away. In no society in history have rich men given away so large a part of their fortunes. A poor American feels guilty art being poor, but less guilty than an American rentier (rentenier. svh) who has inherited wealth but is doing nothing to increase it; what can the latter do but take to drink and psychoanalysis.
In the fifth Circle on the Mount of Purgatory (Dante’s La divina commedia. svh), I do not think that many Americans will be found among the Avaricious (gierigen. svh); but I suspect that the Prodigals (verkwisters. svh) may be almost an American colony. The great vice of Americans is not materialism but a lack of respect for matter.
Dit laatste, namelijk dat ‘de grootste ondeugd van de Amerikanen niet zozeer het materialisme is, maar een gebrek aan respect voor de materie,’ vloeit voort uit het protestantisme dat de materie als zondig beschouwt. Charlotte Black Elk, een bekende Indiaanse milieu-activiste uit de VS wees er met nadruk op dat de witte christenen in de legende geloven dat 'Adam and Eve were banished onto earth and earth is an enemy,' en dat 'you don’t really have to care for it because someday you are going back to paradise when you complete your banishment.’ Eén van de kwalijke gevolgen van dit geloof is, aldus de Amerikaanse auteur Erik Reece, dat ‘We are currently witnessing — and ignoring — the sixth great extinction since the advent of life on earth. This is not a hysterical cry of some druid; it is cold scientific fact.’ Desondanks kan de mens in het huidige totalitair functionerende technocratische bestel weinig aan met deze waarschuwing. Het geglobaliseerde westers neoliberaal systeem, waarbij volgens de heersende ideologie het 'zelfregulerende vermogen' van de 'markt' op die manier 'collectief welvaart weet te creëren,' blijkt in de praktijk niet te werken. Integendeel zelfs, het egoïsme leidt wereldwijd, en nu ook in het Westen, tot een toenemende kloof tussen arm en rijk. Dit economisch systeem, gebaseerd op individueel egoïsme, is niet in staat een mutualistische band te scheppen tussen individu en collectief. In plaats van de noodzakelijke samenwerking, waarbij een interactie tussen twee levensvormen voor beide positief uitwerkt, functioneert de westerse roofbouw-cultuur als een alles vernietigende parasiet, aangezien zij een permanente gewelddadige strijd betekent tussen mens en natuur.
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De natuur beschikt niet over een leger, en dus blijven de plunderaars aan de macht. Dat kan domweg niet anders, want ‘American democracy is that citizens have the freedom to speak, but unless they are wealthy, not the authority to be heard,’ aldus Reece. 'In this view, such seeming injustices as exploitative bosses, terrible working conditions, and grinding poverty may not get righted in this world, but will certainly be compensated for in the next.' Volgens hem is het gevolg van deze nihilistische houding dat de meeste mensen nu zo fatalistisch zijn dat zij gelaten toekijken hoe de zesde grote uitroeiing van soorten sinds het ontstaan van leven op aarde zich voltrekt. Reece:
The history of life on earth has seen five great extinctions, all caused by natural phenomena. The last extinction, 65 million years ago, possibly caused by an asteroid, wiped out the dinosaurs. Everybody learns this in school. What we don’t usually learn is that up until the age of agriculture, species became extinct at roughly the rate of a few every million years – the same rate at which new species evolved. Or as E.O. Wilson has figured it, one species out of a million went extinct each year. That formula is known to biologists and archaeologists as the ‘background rate.’ Now, because of rising temperatures, chemical pollution, the introduction of exotic plants, and forest fragmentation, species worldwide are disappearing at 1,000 to 10,000 times that rate. That is to say, roughly one species goes extinct every hour.
According to the World Conservation Union Red List, one in four mammals and one in eight bird species are in some degree of danger. Since 1980, habitat destruction has reduced our closest genetic and socially predisposed relative, the bonobo of West Africa, from 100,000 to merely 3,000. Of the 9,946 known bird species, 70 percent are declining in number.
Door het 'vooruitgangsgeloof,' met zijn centrale dogma van de expansionistische groei, verdwijnen er overal ter wereld steeds meer soorten in een tempo dat 1000 tot 10.000 keer sneller is dan vóór de industriële revolutie. 'That is to say, roughly one species goes extinct every hour.' Slechts één voorbeeld: 'of the 9,946 known bird species, 70 percent are declining in number.' Dit alles is het resultaat van een westers mens- en wereldbeeld, gedomineerd door een niet aflatende agressieve mobilisatie. Met betrekking hiertoe stelt de Australische paleontoloog en auteur Tim Flannery in zijn boek Een ecologische geschiedenis van Noord-Amerika (2001):
De kern van de pionierservaring schuilt in de enorme rijkdommen en als die rijkdommen onbegrensd zijn, waarom zou je daar dan zuinig mee omspringen of ze zelfs maar efficient benutten. Het doel is de bestaansbronnen zo snel mogelijk te exploiteren en vervolgens verder te trekken. Het is deze pioniershouding ten aanzien van de benutting van bestaansbronnen die ten grondslag ligt aan het kapitalisme en waar hedendaagse natuurbeschermers het zo moeilijk mee hebben. In deze zin is de erfenis van de Amerikaanse pionier nog altijd onder ons.
Maar liefst 437 pagina’s lang laat Flannery zien hoe door de geschiedenis heen het Amerikaanse kapitalisme tevens een oorlogsverklaring is geweest aan de natuur, en zich ontwikkelde tot een roofbouw-systeem dat alles radicaal verbruikt, of als het economisch nutteloos is, verwoest:
In februari 2009 waarschuwde Tim Flannery zijn landgenoten dat de terugkerende grote branden in Australië een 'Deadly reminder' waren aan het feit dat 'we must tackle climate change':
The day after the great fire burnt through central Victoria, I drove from Sydney to Melbourne. Smoke obscured the horizon, entering my air-conditioned car and carrying with it that distinctive scent so strongly signifying death, or, to Aboriginal people, cleansing.
It was as if a great cremation had taken place. I didn't know then how many people had died in their cars and homes, or while fleeing, but by the time I reached the scorched ground just north of Melbourne, the dreadful news was trickling in. And the trauma will be with us forever.
I was born in Victoria, and over five decades I've watched as the state has changed. The long, wet and cold winters that seemed insufferable to me as a boy vanished decades ago, and for the past 12 years a new, drier climate has established itself. I could measure its progress whenever I flew in to Melbourne. Over the years the farm dams filled less frequently while the suburbs crept further into the countryside, their swimming pools oblivious to the great drying.
Climate modeling suggests the decline of southern Australia's winter rainfall is caused by a build-up of greenhouse gas, much of it from coal burning. Victoria has the most polluting coal power plant on earth, and another plant was threatened by the fire.
Hoewel Flannery over Australië schrijft, gaat precies hetzelfde op voor de rest van de wereld, en nu zeker ook Europa. Het neoliberale model werkt overal verwoestend. In ernstige mate verstoort het de natuurlijke orde en de plaats van de mens daarin. De globalisering is de laatste fase van dit proces waarbij de hele wereld een grensgebied is geworden. De Amerikaanse historicus Jackson Turner beschreef al in de negentiende eeuw hoe de cultuur in de VS gebaseerd was op expansionisme, dat als ‘a gate of escape’ functioneerde ‘from the bondage of the past.’ Dit ‘escapisme’ kenmerkt de geschiedenis van de Europese kolonisten die in 'Amerika' op zoek naar 'Lebensraum' de Indiaanse volkeren uitroeiden. Na 1890, toen de interne grenzen waren bereikt, verschoof de ‘frontier’ naar de Stille Oceaan, via Hawaii, de Filipijnen, Guam naar Vietnam. Het grote probleem voor Washington en Wall Street is dat tot voor kort het grensgebied in het Midden-Oosten lag, waar de VS oorlog na oorlog verloor, terwijl bovendien in oktober 2014 bekend werd dat 'China just overtook the US to become the world's largest economy, according to the International Monetary Fund.' Daardoor is het grote probleem voor de hele wereld geworden dat de Amerikaanse economische- en politieke elite, met talloze, doorgaans nauwelijks zichtbare banden verbonden met elkaar in de ‘deep state,’ dit feit niet wil accepteren; zij blijft de hegemonie op aarde claimen. Hoe diep deze drijfveer verankerd ligt in haar bewustzijn blijkt uit onder andere de woorden van de voormalige Amerikaanse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken, Madeleine Albright die op 19 februari 1998 in NBC's Today Show verklaarde:
If we have to use force, it is because we are America! We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.
I Believe in American Exceptionalism with Every Fiber of My Being.
Kortom, ook deze voormalige opperbevelhebber van de Amerikaanse strijdkrachten geloofde met 'elke vezel' in zijn lichaam dat de VS 'a special nation' is 'with a special role – possibly ordained by God – to play in human history. The belief in American exceptionalism is a fundamental aspect of U.S. cultural capital and national identity,’ of die nu in een zwart- of wit lichaam huist. Het begrip 'geloof' is hier op zijn plaats, aangezien het 'exceptionalisme' niet is gebaseerd op een wetenschappelijk feit. Het is een agressieve aanname, een uiterst gevaarlijke veronderstelling die vandaag de dag nog desastreuzer kan uitwerken als de aanname van de nazi's dat de Duitsers een 'Herrenvolk' vormden, dat op zoek naar 'Lebensraum' andere volkeren aan zich kon onderwerpen en zelfs mocht uitmoorden. Niet voor niets benadrukte de Amerikaanse hoogleraar Geschiedenis Juan Cole in 2014 dat:
The Ukraine crisis was in some ways provoked by aggressive expansionism by the EU and NATO into former Russian spheres of influence, in contradiction to promises made by the West to Premier Mikhail Gorbachev in the early 1990s.
http://www.juancole.com/2014/12/blocked-europe-pipeline.html
De teloorgang van de Amerikaanse illusies werd al in 1925 beschreven door één van de grootste Amerikaanse auteurs, F. Scott Fitzgerald, in zijn roman The Great Gatsby. De Amerikaanse emeritus hoogleraar Literatuur en auteur, Kermit W. Moyer, wees erop dat:
In the light of Fitzgerald’s historical perspective in this novel, the dead end was inevitable from the start: as the frontier disappeared, as the possibility of making the virgin land fulfill its first intense promise passed, American materialism increasingly became just that – simple, spiritless materialism, un-regenerative and omnivorous. Gatsby (embodying the complete historical progression) inevitably arrives at this dead end himself. Near the close of the novel, Gatsby waits amidst shattered hopes for Daisy’s telephone call, the call that never comes.
Ook bij F. Scott Fitzgerald keert het besef terug dat ‘de grootste ondeugd van de Amerikanen niet zozeer het materialisme is, maar een gebrek aan respect voor de materie,’ aangezien de auteur van The Great Gatsby zijn protagonist opvoert als ‘een rijke man,’ maar niet meer dan dat: iemand zonder richting, wiens leven zinloos was geworden, nadat hij had ontdekt dat de ‘Amerikaanse Droom’ inhoudsloos bleek te zijn en hem had vervreemd van zijn omgeving en van zichzelf, waardoor hij in alle eenzaamheid achterbleef. Gatsby besefte uiteindelijk dat hetgeen overbleef ‘in wezen leeg is.’ Of zoals de Amerikaanse stand-up comedian George Carlin het vele decennia later formuleerde:
Forget the politicians, they're irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice — you don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They've long since bought, and payed for the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets, and they own all the big media, so they control just about all the information you get. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying — lobbying, to get what they want.
Well we know what they want. They want more for themselves, and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don't want — they don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that — that doesn't help them. That's against their interests. That's right. They don't want people that are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don't want that.
You know what they want? Obedient workers — Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines, and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and vanishing pension that disappear the minute you go to collect it, and now they're coming for your social security money. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They'll get it — they'll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in The Big Club.
By the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think, and what to buy.
The table has tilted, folks. The game is rigged, and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people: white collar, blue collar it doesn't matter what colour shirt you have on. Good honest hard working people continue (these are people of modest being) — continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don't give a fuck about you. They don't give a fuck about you - they don't give a fuck about you. They don't care about you at all - at all - at all, and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care.
That's what the owners counted on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white, and blue dick that's being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth. It's called the American Dream cause you have to be asleep to believe it.
Net als Carlin onthult Fitzgerald de werkelijkheid door de façade om te trekken, het omhulsel, de buitenkant, de dekmantel, de maskerade, waarachter de mainstream niet durft te kijken, uit angst geconfronteerd te worden met de daarachter schuilende gapende leegte van de westerse cultuur.
De mens die zich overeind probeert te houden met 'hoop' dat de 'Droom' zal uitkomen, kan onmogelijk de werkelijkheid accepteren; juist op het moment dat de werkelijkheid niet meer te negeren is verlangt hij het meest wanhopig naar hoop. De ‘hoop’ is in wezen de hoop op verlossing, sinds de ‘ontdekking van Amerika’ de diepere drijfveer achter het gewelddadige expansionisme van de kolonisten die Europa waren ontvlucht, of als ‘indentured servants’ — witte slaven — uit het Avondland waren gezet. Op zoek naar een droom sleepten zij hun judeo-christelijke geloof met zich mee, een religie die vanaf het allereerste begin een pathologische relatie heeft onderhouden met de materie. De mens als rentmeester van de christelijke god kan niet anders dan de als bedreigend ervaren natuur volledig onderwerpen, met zo’n overmaat aan geweld dat de Indianen alleen maar verbijsterd konden toekijken. Het Sioux-opperhoofd Luther Standing Bear constateerde nog in de twintigste eeuw dat:
The white man does not understand America. He is too far removed from its formative processes. The roots of the tree of his life have not yet grasped the rock and the soil. The white man is still troubled by primitive fears; he still has in his consciousness the perils of this frontier continent, some of it not yet having yielded to his questing footsteps and inquiring eyes.
Door de pijn van de vervreemding is ‘The man from Europe still a foreigner and an alien. And he still hates the man who questioned his path across the continent. Men must be born and reborn to belong. Their bodies must be formed of the dust of their forefathers bones.
Anno 2023 is ook voor de witte inwoner van de VS de veel geprezen ‘Droom’ voorbij. Wat overbleef, is alleen nog de alles overheersende angst die hen altijd al in zijn greep had gehouden. Wie de beschrijvingen leest van de eerste pioniers ontdekt al snel dat het land en de natuur altijd als bedreigend overkwam, als het Domein van het Kwaad, dat vanzelfsprekend bedwongen moest worden. In 1867 beschreef Clarence King, een aan Yale University afgestudeerde geoloog, de woestijn ten oosten van de Sierra Nevada dan ook als Dante’s Hel.
Spread out below us lay the desert, stark and glaring, its rigid hill chains lying in disordered grouping, in attributes of the dead. The bare hills are cut out with sharp gorges, and over their stone skeletons scanty earth clings in folds, like shrunken flesh: they are emaciated (uitgemergelde. svh) corpses of once noble ranges now lifeless, outstretched as in long sleep. Ghastly colors define them from the ashen plain in which their feet are buried. Far in the south were a procession of whirlwind columns slowly moving across the desert in spectral dimness. A white light beat down, dispelling the last trace of shadow, and above hung the burnished shield of hard, pitiless sky.
Hier past alleen nog het begrip subliem, de ‘quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual, or artistic. The term especially refers to a greatness beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement, or imitation.’ Beheerst door een combinatie van existentiële angsten en megalomanie, ontbreekt het de Amerikaanse elite nog steeds aan een gevoel voor verhoudingen, zoals Fitzgerald laat zien in The Great Gatsby (1925). Daarover schreef de Amerikaanse auteur Kermit Moyer in 1972 dat ‘among recent critics at least, a strong consensus [is] that The Great Gatsby must be understood as a meditation on American history.’ Moyer verwees naar wijlen Edwin Fussel, die als hoogleraar Engels aan de Universiteit van Californië in 1963 had geschreven dat ‘Fitzgerald’s basic plot is the history of the New World.’ Een geschiedenis die vanaf de allereerste dag gekenmerkt werd door begeerte en geweld. Met betrekking tot deze continuïteit voegde Moyer hieraan toe dat:
Fitzgerald’s subject in The Great Gatsby, Fussell insisted, is not the Jazz Age or the Lost Generation, ‘but the whole of American civilization as it culminated in his own time.’ This sort of historical approach to the novel has since become more or less standard.’
De VS evolueerde van ‘the dream of those who discovered and settled the American continent,’ in een nachtmerrie van de continue ‘American Wars and the Culture of Violence.’ Richard Lehan, emeritus hoogleraar Engels aan de Universiteit van Californië, stelt dat in The Great Gatsby ‘We move from a personal sphere (a story of unrequited love), to a historical level (the hope and idealism of the frontier and of democracy in conflict with a rapacious (roofzuchtige. svh) and destructive materialism.’ Lehan vergist zich, want het betreft hier niet het materialisme, maar juist het gebrek aan respect voor de materie.’
Dit disrespect voor de materie veroorzaakte tevens het gebrek aan respect voor het leven op aarde zelf, zoals dit zich manifesteerde in de genocide op de Indianen en naderhand, in de gewelddadige Amerikaanse interventies in Zuid- en Midden-Amerika, China, de Filipijnen en de rest van de wereld waar de materiële belangen van de elite in Washington en op Wall Street behartigd moesten worden. Die gewelddadige buitenlandse politiek uitte zich logischerwijs ook binnenslands als gevolg van de aloude ambtelijke corruptie en de grootschalige diefstal van gemeenschapsbezit door de Robber Barons in de tweede helft van de negentiende eeuw. En nog steeds gaan de gewelddadige interventies en de grootschalige corruptie door. Daarover berichtte The New York Times op 14 oktober 2014, het jaar dat mevrouw Nuland, staatssecretaris van Eurazië en Europa tijdens de regering Obama, 5 miljard dollar had uitgetrokken voor het Maidan-geweld, het volgende:
The Central Intelligence Agency has run guns to insurgencies across the world during its 67-year history — from Angola to Nicaragua to Cuba. The continuing C.I.A. effort to train Syrian rebels is just the latest example of an American president becoming enticed by the prospect of using the spy agency to covertly arm and train rebel groups.
An internal C.I.A. study has found that it rarely works.
The still-classified review, one of several C.I.A. studies commissioned in 2012 and 2013 in the midst of the Obama administration’s protracted debate about whether to wade into the Syrian civil war, concluded that many past attempts by the agency to arm foreign forces covertly had a minimal impact on the long-term outcome of a conflict…
The findings of the study, described in recent weeks by current and former American government officials, were presented in the White House Situation Room and led to deep skepticism among some senior Obama administration officials about the wisdom of arming and training members of a fractured Syrian opposition.
But in April 2013, President Obama authorized the C.I.A. to begin a program to arm the rebels at a base in Jordan, and more recently the administration decided to expand the training mission with a larger parallel Pentagon program in Saudi Arabia…
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/15/us/politics/cia-study-says-arming-rebels-seldom-works.html?_r=0
Het feit dat de neoconservatieve Victoria Nuland onder Biden opnieuw staatssecretaris van Eurazië en Europa is, demonstreert hoe belangrijk de Amerikaanse 'deep state' de ineenstorting van Rusland beschouwt. De continuïteit van het Amerikaanse agressieve expandionisme werd al door Fitzgerald beschreven:
Fitzgerald makes this parallel between Gatsby’s history and American’s history explicit on the last page of the novel:
'as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here (Long Island, nabij Manhattan. svh) that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes — afresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity to wonder.
Just as Daisy flowered for Gatsby, so the new world flowered for the Europeans who touched her shore; in both cases, for one electric moment, the material world promised to fulfill the imagination’s deepest longings.'
Dit magische 'elektrisch geladen moment' week al snel voor de totalitaire heerschappij van het puriteinse christendom dat de materie, de natuur en het lichaam verafschuwde en tegelijkertijd begeerde en verheerlijkte met een dermate onbeheerste bezetenheid dat zij het leven wel moest vernietigen. Daaraan ten grondslag ligt de diep gewortelde pathologische angst voor de wildernis, voor de natuur, voor alles dat een eigen stem heeft, zoals de Indianen als eersten wisten nadat de witte mens voet aan wal had gezet. Opperhoofd Luther Standing Bear, een Sioux Indiaan zei het zo:
Wij beschouwden de grote open vlaktes, de prachtige golvende heuvels, en de kronkelende stromen met struikgewas, niet als ‘wild.’ Alleen voor de witte man was de natuur een ‘wildernis,’ en alleen voor hem was het land ‘vergeven’ van ‘wilde’ dieren en ‘wilde’ mensen. Voor ons waren ze tam. De aarde was overvloedig, wij werden omringd door de zegeningen van het Grote Mysterie. Pas toen de harige man uit het oosten kwam en met brute razernij ons en onze families, die we lief hadden, groot onrecht aandeed, werd de natuur voor ons ‘wild.’ Toen de dieren in het woud voor zijn komst op de vlucht gingen, pas toen begon voor ons het ‘Wilde Westen.’
He had come a long way to his blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
Professor Moyer:
Gatsby’s dream, the dream inspired by Daisy, is here identified with the dream which pushed the frontier ever westward. The assumption contained in this identification is that, like Gatsby’s history, American history has been the record of a futile attempt to retrieve and sustain a moment of imaginative intensity and promise. By reaching into the future, by pushing continually up against the receding frontier, we have tried to recapture that original sense of wonder evoked when the whole continent was a frontier — that original sense of wonder which soured because its evocation was essentially meretricious (bedrieglijk. svh), a reading of spiritual, transcendental promise into mere materiality. So we struggle on against the current of time only to be ‘borne back ceaselessly into the past’: our vain effort to seize the lost moment of promise by reaching to the future creates the fabric of our history.
De droom van Gatsby, de droom geïnspireerd door Daisy (de vrouw die hij meende lief te hebben. svh), wordt hier geïdentificeerd met de droom die de grens steeds verder naar het westen duwde. De aanname in deze identificatie is dat, net als de geschiedenis van Gatsby, de Amerikaanse geschiedenis het verslag is geweest van een vergeefse poging om een moment van verbeeldingsrijke intensiteit en belofte terug te vinden en vast te houden. Door naar de toekomst te reiken, door voortdurend tegen de terugwijkende grens op te stoten, hebben wij geprobeerd dat oorspronkelijke gevoel van verwondering terug te krijgen dat werd opgeroepen toen het hele continent een grens was — dat oorspronkelijke gevoel van verwondering dat verzuurde omdat de oproep in wezen belachelijk was, een lezing van spirituele, transcendentale belofte in louter materialiteit. Dus worstelen we verder tegen de stroom van de tijd in, alleen om 'onophoudelijk teruggevoerd te worden naar het verleden': onze vergeefse poging om het verloren moment van belofte te grijpen door naar de toekomst te reiken, vormt het weefsel van onze geschiedenis.'
Het is de ‘droom die het grensgebied steeds verder westwaarts duwt,’ tot het de hele wereld zal omvatten. Pas dan zal de Amerikaan met zichzelf worden geconfronteerd, en zich realiseren met lege handen te staan, dat zijn ‘Amerikaanse Droom’ vanaf het allereerste begin een nachtmerrie is geweest, allereerst voor alle andere volkeren die de Amerikaanse terreur over zich heen kregen. In zijn boek Frontline Ukraine. Crisis In The Borderlands (2015) werpt de Britse hoogleraar Richard Sakwa in het laatste hoofdstuk de vraag op:
What was it all for? This is the question that faced Europe in 1918, and does so once again. One hundred years ago Europe ‘sleepwalked’ into war, and now a century later comfortable illusions that ‘globalization’ would render another major international conflict of that sort impossible were nullified. Instead, the architecture of European and global security was found to be wanting (gebrekkig. svh). The obvious response was simply to blame Putin and Russia, and thus obviate (voorkomen. svh) the necessity of examining the foundations of a system that had provoked the most dangerous confrontation since the end of the Cold War, if not since the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. I have argued that the heart of the conflict was the coming together of two major processes: the ‘Ukraine’ crisis as a particular manifestation of the inadequacies of the structure of international politics; and the ‘Ukrainian’ crisis, the domestic contradictions that had been bubbling away since independence in 1991 but with roots that go all the way back to the emergence of Rus and the division between its Kievan and Muscovite manifestations, between Ukrainism and Malorussianism (Malorussians worden gezien als een variant van het Russische volk. svh). These two crises combined, with devastating effect.
Inmiddels zien we hoe juist Sakwa’s scherpzinnige analyse is. Maar hoe nu verder, nu Oekraïne uiteen gevallen is? Professor Sakwa:
- A commitment, embedded in the constitution, by Ukrainian political leaders to power sharing that prevents the domination of one section of the country by the other;
- A federal structure in function if not necessarily in name;
- Acceptance of Russian as an official language along with Ukrainian in regions with a significant number of Russian speakers — ideally in the entire country; and
- A credible assurance that Ukraine will not become a member of a military alliance hostile to Russia, perhaps by requiring the vote of a supermajority as a prerequisite to joining any military alliance.
Bovendien:
As for Crimea, David Owen, a former British Foreign Secretary, came up with the useful idea that the international status of the region could be established ‘along the lines of an indefinite international lease of Crimea to Russia along the lines of the US–Cuba agreement over Guantánamo.’Another idea was to hold a second referendum under international supervision after a certain period, say five years, to determine the real aspirations of the Crimean people. This would be in keeping with the UN principle of self-determination and recognize the historical special status of Crimea.
Als gevolg van de belangen van het Amerikaans militair-industrieel complex en het zwart/wit simplisme dat zowel de mainstream-media als de westerse politici infecteerde, waren Brussel en Washington niet bij machte zich te realiseren dat:
The Ukraine crisis had deep structural roots. Instead, too often the issue has become personalized in the form of the incomprehensible and ‘rogue’ behavior of an individual. Christopher Booker puts the issue well: For months the West has been demonizing President Putin, with figures such as the Prince of Wales and Hillary Clinton comparing him with Hitler, oblivious to the fact that what set this crisis in motion motion were those recklessly provocative moves to absorb Ukraine into the EU.
Alexander Lukin (Russische filosoof, Head of the Department of International Relations in Moscow. svh) outlines the larger picture and the choices facing Russia: ‘The post-Soviet consensus was based on mutual understanding with the West that both sides would move towards closer co-operation, respect each other’s interests and make mutual compromises. However, these conditions were met only by Russia.’ This is in keeping with long-standing concerns about not only the asymmetrical nature of the end of the Cold War, but the continuing imbalance whereby Russia is expected to concede while the West gains ground. Lukin notes that it is the West that is the new ideological power, far more than Russia:
‘In the West, practically everyone believes its ideology […] This ideology of ‘democratism’ […] is quite simple: Western society, albeit not ideal, is nevertheless more perfect than all the others, it is at the forefront of public progress, and the rest of the world should try to use the Western model as we know it. In principle, this is primitive cultural chauvinism which is characteristic of many nations and countries from small tribes to large civilizations which considered themselves the centre of the universe, and all the others were barbarians. The West’s foreign policy is based on this belief.’
The monism (the view that there is only one set of true beliefs. svh) espoused by the dominant nationalizing elites in Ukraine has been accentuated by this monism of the West. More than that, the West’s civilizing mission, in Lukin’s view, has sought to incorporate new territories, even if they did not meet the appropriate democratic standards. Economic and political engagement was anticipated in due course to come up to the required standards under the West’s benign influence. This also explains ‘why radical nationalists in Ukraine remain unnoticed: they are the ones who are acting towards progress and from the historical point of view they can be justified and some of their crimes can even be overlooked.’ Russia has refused to subordinate itself to this civilizing imperative and thus cannot be incorporated into the ideal of Western society. Echoing my distinction between the projects of 1989 and 1991, Lukin notes: ‘This is what makes Russia different from Eastern Europe.’
This is not because Russia’s leaders are congenitally opposed to the West, but Russia’s whole history militates against simply adapting to an alternative ‘imperial’ project, in this case succumbing to the West’s ideological expansionism in the form of democratism:
‘Countries close to Russia are being torn apart by the West’s ideologized expansion which has already led to the territorial division of Moldova and Georgia, and now Ukraine is falling apart in front of our eyes. […] the cultural border was drawn across their territories and they could stay undivided only if their leaders would have taken into account the interests of people living in both the regions that gravitate towards Europe and those that would like to preserve historical ties with Russia.’
Russia’s proposals to resolve the Ukrainian crisis — including the formation of a coalition government taking into account the interests of the south and east; federalization and neutrality; and the granting of official status to the Russian language — could not be adopted: ‘Accepting these proposals would be interpreted by Western ideologists not as a solution that satisfies all sides but as an attempt by “the bad guys” to slow down Ukraine’s movement towards progress, and that is an ideological taboo.’ The US has sought to create a regime in its image, while Russia has sought to prevent the creation of one hostile to its perceived interests. In classic realist terms, the borderlands have become a power vacuum, and thus the site of competing geopolitical projects.
Russia became a bone in the throat of the Atlantic community, while the EU struggled to recognise the enduring multipolarity of European politics. The EU demonstratively refused to engage with the various projects for Eurasian integration, which was clearly a major mistake. No one pretends that there are no serious governance and human rights issues in the countries comprising the EEU, but these are not the bloody despotisms presented in much of the Western media. An intelligent policy would have been to understand that classic EU methods of extending its normative zone of peace had reached their finality in the borderlands between Europe and Eurasia, and that new approaches were required. This would not be at the expense of the ‘sovereign choices’ of the relevant countries, but these choices would be mediated by the legitimate concerns of the larger geopolitical environment. It is pure hypocrisy to argue that the EU is little more than an extended trading bloc: after Lisbon, it was institutionally a core part of the Atlantic security community and had thus become geopolitical. The meeting in Minsk on 26 August of the EU, Ukraine and the Eurasian Customs Union (ECU) should have been held before the crisis, not after. Nevertheless, it is to be welcomed as the beginning of an adjustment of European policy.
Maar zoals we anno 2023, acht jaar later weten waren de Minsk -Akkoorden geenszins ‘een aanpassing van de Europese politiek,’ maar juist een voorbeeld bij uitstek zijn van het extremisme dat zowel de EU als de NAVO in zijn greep houdt. Mevrouw De voormalige bondskanselier Angela Merkel verklaarde immers eind 2022 dat ‘The 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time. It also used this time to become stronger, as you can see today.’ Met andere woorden de oorlog in Oekraïne werd door de NAVO uitgelokt, in een poging een regime-change te veroorzaken in de Russische Federatie, zodat het uiteen vallen van Rusland een stap dichterbij zou komen. Maar dit nu is voorlopig totaal mislukt. Meer de volgende keer.
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