Letter to a friend

Carol – I wanted to let you know that since I published that Clark essay at the Free Market News Network two days ago I have received over 25 emails from readers on my blog and at the Free Market News Network & they are continuing this morning. I don’t ever remember that publication getting so many responses. And it is not a venue that is necessarily particularly friendly to General Clark. I usually only get one or two responses, usually none. It shows what a need there is for a new direction. I sent the essay to Charlie Rangel’s office – perhaps he can use it. I usually don’t write about politics. I am a Buddhist and write generally about art and Tibetan Buddhism (Quigley in Exile) and long-term patterns of history. Was only Boy George what brought this out, misguided from the first and intentionally deceiving a free people. I write about history as shapes and packages over long terms and kinds of governments – federalism, regionalism, monarchy – as distinct kinds of psychological packaging, each with their own consequences for people. In a vast federation like ours, people have few anchors and are easily deceived – sometimes, like recently, willfully deceived. I’ve been watching General Clark for a long time - since before Kosovo, as his relationship with the Army very much reflected what was happening in our country as a whole. Historical periods start at the end of a war – ours started in 1946 – and after they stabilize and develop their patterns of power, they reach a point of what I call sustainable incompetence – they form management patterns which always affirm the prevailing wisdom. To do so they then must dispense with all the honor, strength, creativity and intelligence which built them in the first place as it destabilizes the prevailing orthodoxy – William James writes about this in religions but it is the same in politics – the army was a Petri dish for this model – and the man or woman of the highest integrity is always the first spurned by the “descending” management strategy. Industry, college administration, car culture, politics, etc. all take the same direction – they began around 1992-3 promoting incompetence and purging excellence and character. Around the 60^th post-war year the culture will elect as President its most incompetent agent, but it has already long been on a downward trajectory (Eisenhower thought Nixon too lightweight a character for VP; Nixon thought the same of Bob Dole – we are descending the stairs). That would be Boy George. George could conceivable be remembered in history much along the lines of Wilhelm II, pseudo-German and pesky grandson of Victoria, who hated his own English people [as George hates New England, but he is not a real Texan or Southerner, no?) and longed for the glory of Teutonic manliness, with sword in hand on horseback (“Real men hunt with swords,” my kids say now.) Nobility takes on caricature when honor dies. When George brought up his policy of “preemptive foreign policy” it echoed Wilhelm II’s policy; Wilhelm’s net result was to coalesce latent hostilities of Christendom into alliances which brought complete disaster to the world for 30 years and brought the destruction of Europe. Any number of advisors could have and did predict the results of Boy George’s first actions in Iraq – including Wes Clark, Brent Scowcroft and Gary Hart. The steps ahead were predictable; now they are even surpassing predictions: issues took a seismic jump with the election of Revolutionary leadership in Iran and again in Palestine. Tolstoy pointed out that if you travel south in Russia you will find that Orthodox Christianity blends and becomes Islam in the South; there is no place of real distinction (ancient music shows this as well) – these two forces are related much as Catholic and Protestant Europe are related (and thus, in Old Soul - before Peter the great wnated to Westernize and went to war on Isalm, they were cultural relatives). That Russia will team with Iran is now a possibility – heightened by Western incursion into Russia's near frontier since 1992. Bush’s first problem today is that he never served in warfare although he apparently supports warfare as a tool of enterprise and policy (there is nothing like the quiet of a 10-year old hootch girl who was selling you rancid ice cream just ten minutes before; now with a still chest so flat to the ground & her head blown off by an unseen assailant trying to kill somebody else - it quickens the intellect and the moral initiative and matures them together throughout adulthood). Had Bush served when he was young and was expected to he would have learned at an early age what kind of a man he was. This is the problem today with all of the President’s Men, Rumsfeld in particular (alors, don’t lets hear how brave he was flying T3s around New Jersey or wherever as a ROTC officer twix and between Korea and Vietnam.) These men had every opportunity to serve in war and every opportunity to avoid it. Cheney – who showed real promise as a Wichita lineman – I believe set the record for deferment . . . anyway, what I was getting at before distracted from my sheep and simple Buddhist practises by these creeps and their poisonous Dark Dwarves who have now found there way daily to the op-ed pages of the Washington Post and the LA Times – (how could so few with such poisonous and poor character commandeer the will of a free people?) . . . was that in a large federation like our own, the will of the people is hard to change – as it is like a big Destroyer trying to turn around – but when it does turn it is fierce, as we are a fierce people because we are a new people. And when it does turn – and it usually turns in the 60^th year (see William Strauss and Neil Howe, The Fourth Turning) it turns again to the man first spurned; the man of the highest character and keenest intelligence. A man of honor and authenticity, not fancy, dress up, caricature and wish fulfillment. We are almost there. I think this year we will flip. And when we do we will turn to Wes Clark. I appreciate what you all do. Glad I can occasionally help. – Cheers, Bernie (photo by Barr Ashcraft, Vietnam, 1973 threabouts)