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Erika Ransom
8/05/2003
MRR, November 2003
Culture Wars
(serpent bites its tail)
This month, I wrote the outline for this article while waiting for the owners of All Asia to open their restaurant so we could start setting up. I was supposed to be watching the door for the show we had booked that night, but instead I was just hoping that the door would open at all. It was the first chilly day of fall in Boston, and I stood outside scribbling on little pieces of paper while watching people pass me on the street. At this time, one US soldier died a day in Iraq, and the Iraqi people are left without electricity, food, medicine and anything close to “liberation.” Thoughts of punk music intertwined with empire, and my thoughts looked for roots. Read on.
Sometime in the 90s, I wrote a song called, “priests are in the temples” with my former hardcore band THE BABY SHAKERS.
I had just returned from an intense and beautiful backpacking trip with Adam (my comrade in arms) down the east coast of the Yucatán peninsula, going as far south as Belize. From Tulum, we took a day trip west, and visited the ruins of the great Mayan city of Cobá. Around 1000 AD, during the city’s heyday, Cobá was very large, covering some twenty square miles, and was the most important city in the northeast region of the Yucatán. It was the New York City of the Mayan world.
Nohoc Mul, Cobá’s pyramid of white stone, stands high above the surrounding dense rain forest of Quintana Roo–and is the tallest structure of all the Mayan ruins. Adam and I slowly climbed the stones to the apex of the temple, and viewed a carpet of lush rain forest stretching as far as we could see. Not many tourists were out, and it was quiet and breath taking.
While looking down from this great height at the rest of the archeological site, I tried to imagine a bustling Mayan city. I envisioned the people who had stood on this very same spot a thousand years ago, the priests and kings who had preformed rituals and ruled the city. I wondered how many people had died for the gods on this very stone. The priests’ chamber behind us was empty and ghostly. The only sign of life was a group of bats living in a corner of the ceiling.
Similar to many other societies–both ancient and modern–Mayan priests lived off sacrifices from farmers and common folk. Priests and kings alike were at the top of the pyramid; literally, looking down at the masses that sustained them.
Back in Boston biking around downtown, I looked up at the banks, government buildings and other skyscrapers that crowded out the afternoon sun, and saw this same temple image brought into the twenty-first century. CEOs sat at plush desks on the top floors and made millions from the exploitation of workers, while looking down at everyone below. The parallel images of the temple and the skyscraper, the priest and the businessman in his ritual dress of the Suit, were as haunting as the dark temple on top of Nohoc Mul.
Hierarchy and exploitation of the masses by a small elite has been going on for a very long time.
(And so I wrote a song.)
The wind blows, and the ancient rock pile stands baking in the sun. Lizards as big as my arm grin with mouths full of teeth and old gods sleep in the steles.
In a different capital filled with white rock, powerful men plan to defend their temple and their gods.
Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neo-conservative advocacy group, is a good example of the rational behind the pre-emptive war in Iraq, and the wars to come. The Project’s goal is stated in policy papers such as Rebuilding America’s Defenses. “At present the United States faces no global rival…America’s grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible.” PNAC urges that the US dominate the globe through its military might: using US troops, “forward bases,” nuclear weapons, pre-emptive war, and even weapons in space to deter any possible challenge to US interests.
But
PNAC is no X-Flies conspiracy group.
Founding members include Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld and a host of other Cold War era hawks who worked under Reagan
and Bush Sr., and currently enjoy high offices in the Pentagon.
Behind the world-view that PNAC spouts in their policy papers and the
“memos to opinion makers” found on their web site (www.newamericancentury.org),
things are very cutthroat. Might is right. You are either at the top of the
pyramid enjoying your third home and a latte, or making shoes for Nike. Both
scenarios are valid realities, depending on who wins. Equality, collectivity,
solidarity and inherent human rights are not in their agenda.
I’m reminded of the pigs in Animal Farm who corrupted the revolutionary commandment painted on the side of the barn to read:
“ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.”
Inequality is as old as the temples, and modern renditions have their roots.
Leo Strauss, the so-called “philosopher-king of the neo-conservatives,” greatly influenced today’s ideas of dominance and US foreign policy. Famous followers and former students of Strauss include Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, one of the main architects of the Iraq war; William Kristol, founder of the Project for the New American Century; and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to name a few.
Leo Strauss, a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago in the 40s and 50s, taught in his lectures that an elite few were responsible for leading the ignorant masses, whether the masses wanted to be led or not.
Strauss was a German Jew who believed Nazism rose from an excess of liberalism, and only a tightly controlled population would avoid anarchy and the destruction of society. National leaders and the intelligent elite, Strauss asserted, should use “noble lies” if necessary to sway public opinion. Strauss also advocated that democracy worked best when the population was harnessed by extreme nationalism and sedated by religion. (A twisted idea from someone who escaped the Holocaust, don’t you think?)
"Because mankind is intrinsically wicked, he has to be governed," Strauss once wrote. "Such governance can only be established, however, when men are united – and they can only be united against other people.”
Not surprisingly, President Bush waves a US flag in one hand and carries a Christian cross in the other as he screams WAR on “evildoers.” Bush also makes use of not-so-noble lies. Weapons of mass destruction, anyone?
Of course, politicians or professors did not invent ideas of domination. Our culture holds the basic tenants of hierarchy, passed down through many generations, now manifest in all spheres of our lives.
The serpent turns, and scales slide smoothly, overlapping one on top of another down to the tail.