The Illusion of Central Position...
By Matthew Storey
Us, and them.
And after all we're only ordinary men.
Pink Floyd
Barack Obama, has been traveling all around the Globe, speaking to people from such disparate realities as Prague...Mexico City...Baghdad...Indianapolis...and he has told them, repeatedly, America is not the only country - we are just ONE country and this is a good thing for America, as well as all other countries.
He spoke in Europe of the end of the Second World War and how FDR and Churchill sat together in a room and divided up the world, then moved on to Stalin to negotiate terms. Obama expressed gratitude for such a reality being an impossibility in the Modern World.
And the critics POUNCED! Conservative columnist, Charles Krauthammer, a Pulitzer Prize Winner, screeched;
After all, it was Obama, not some envious anti-American leader, who noted with satisfaction that a new financial order is being created today by 20 countries, rather than by "just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy. But that's not the world we live in, and it shouldn't be the world that we live in.
It is passing strange for a world leader to celebrate his own country's decline. A few more such overseas tours, and Obama will have a lot more decline to celebrate.
This phenomena, wherein an ideological and philosophical stance (in this case, Krauthammer's neo-conservative, anglo-centric world view...) are not impacted, ONE IOTA, by the spectacular failures of their implementation is known as 'Illusion of Central Position', but it might also be called 'Faith-Based'.
For Krauthammer, the failure of Bush, the 'supply-side' approach to economics and 'neo-con' approach to foreign policy and the movement towards a world that actually BELIEVES 'All men are created equal' never happened. In his construction, Bush was a success! Supply-side works! America's Irag adventures show our STRENGTH!
For him and others of his ilk, it is those who would deny the above reasoning, who are at the root of our decline. After-all, when Americans and English BELIEVED they had a special role...an 'Anglosphere', things worked so well!
He looks back through his rose colored spectacles and sees history through the eyes of a benign aristocracy that would see to the World's problems at the head of a natural hierarchy wherein the Atlantic Alliance sets the global tone in the manner of the Vatican establishing sexual and behavioral guidelines for the faithful. He ignores Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Hirohito, Gandhi...
This is, of course - ABSURD!
Laughable on its face. In light of the Bush example, such belief, in a person of demonstrated intelligence could almost be considered an indication of insanity.
And that's what Faith-based reasoning is all about. And for Krauthammer, an avowed atheist, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the 'Allmighty'.
Gee, Chuck, do you think that Mulatto Obama might see the relative strength of an America with a PRESIDENT such as he in a different light, relative to one where he would not even be able to play Major League Baseball? There is relative 'decline' involved, but it is not the decline of 'America', it is the decline of a White-Male-Heterosexual hegemony - America, and England, can move ahead, quite nicely, thank you, without being beholden to racial and cultural fantasies. The only ones who CANNOT, are those who refuse to let them go...the 'decline' of this hegemony need not interfere with the personal progress of a SINGLE White Male Heterosexual, mind you, only to the idea that he, by very nature of his existence holds exalted position.
It is not something ACTUAL that is being challenged, only an idea, an idea whose efficacy has been challenged, and been proven false.
The definition of 'Reason' varies over millennia, but in all cases it is data-dependent, which is to say that as new data comes in, which contradicts previously held assumptions - the REASONABLE thinker will adjust his/her understanding to reflect the facts. The 'True-Believer' who is unwilling to factor in the data is part of the problem, and can never be, by definition, part of the solution.
For Millennia, man believed himself to be a construction designed by a supreme being to hold 'dominion' over the Earth and that his Earth was the REASON behind creation and lay at the center of the Universe (Geocentric), warmed by a Sun designed for that purpose and lit by a Moon made on its behalf.
When Nicolaus Copernicus wrote his epochal scientific treatise 'De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres)'. He had the good sense to DIE shortly thereafter, in 1543.
By scientifically removing the Earth from the center of the Universe and placing the SUN in its stead (Heliocentric) he had undone the 'Illusion of Central Position' that under-girded Christian theology, and that was likely to PISS off those whose station and thought were entirely dependent upon that world-view.
Poor Galileo Galilei, who was born 21 years later and died 99 years after Copernicus, wasn't so lucky and bore the brunt of Christendom's anger at having the script rewritten by mere FACTS.
All over the world, groups are seeking to self-sort into more tightly controlled, smaller, 'purer' units and for NO OTHER REASON than to maintain allegiance to discredited and impracticable ideas.
For the Catholic Church, ignored in its traditional European backyard, altered beyond recognition in its North American, Latin American, African and Asian constructions...the 'answer' to modernity has been to deny it. After millennia seeking to expand the reach of the church, the Vatican and its remaining adherents seek to expel those who identify the obvious and exalt those who remain steadfast for the 'team', no matter the cost, no matter the absurdity.
As the Priesthood atrophies and the flock move on, the rhetoric accelerates in a diametrically opposed direction.
In Texas, a man named Larry Kilgore, has spearheaded a movement, designed to create an independent Republic of Texas - a distinct Nation that might, or might not, be the seat of leadership for other seceding 'United' States (the ultimate oxymoron!). In this construction, Texans, whose interests have been shunted aside will reclaim their RIGHTS to live as THEY wish to, under Biblical Law that has been rejected by the godless coasts and have sole determinative rights over its shorelines, oil resources, workforce, military and taxes. Kilgore sees Texas as the 'center' of the Universe, of America and refuses to allow for the intrusion of reality in his planning. What is IMPORTANT to him is not the acknowledgment of diversity and modernity but the explicit REJECTION of same!
In Texas, as in no other place, the Illusion of Central Position runs DEEP. Even the Vatican is responding to the reality of its own survival as an entity with its devotion to nonsensical rationale. For Texas, the issue is pure E-G-O, having held America hostage to fundamentalist constructions of how things work and SHOULD work in the form of Bush/Cheney and seeing those ideas fail to hold sway Internationally and be rejected domestically - the ONLY option, as Kilgore sees it, is to control the debate, remove the objections and the reliance upon reality and wall off the populace from the intrusion of said reality.
For a place that joined the Union in 1848 and seceded 13 years later, its par for the course.
They have funny ideas about Patriotism, just as they do about economics, culture and knowledge.
Remove the word 'Texas' and you can see the Taliban, or Tibet. The cultures vary, but the Illusion is the constant.
As is the destructive nature of belief in that illusion.
