From: Kerry Miller <ASTINGSH%KSUVM.bitnet@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
Subject:      SOMA/LIE
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: ?
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 07:53:38 GMT


POLITICS IS THE IMAGE OF THE POSSIBLE
By Kerry Miller

Doug Ireland ("So, Maul Ya?" Village Voice, 15 December) cites
Charles Paul Freund ("Outlook," Washington Post, 13 Dec):
 "Bush's televised address to the nation last Friday, Freund wrote,
was an attempt 'to define a policy free of political interest. As a
response to *images* of appalling human suffering, that would seem not
only appropriate but necessary. But there is another dimension to these
images that we are, thus far, choosing to ignore. Whether it is in
the president's statement or in much of the discussion in the print and
electronic press last week, we are reacting to this *imagery* as if it
does not have a political context, whereas in fact it does...  Atrocity
*imagery*... is the central rhetorical device of modern manipulation.'"
[Emphasis added.]
as a rare instance of realism in the puffery surrounding our invasion of
Somalia. Perhaps it is. Certainly the networks have been needing an excuse
to put a terrific human suffering story on prime time. Certainly Bush would
rather be seen as a righter of the world's wrongs than as a political has-been.
But even Freund seems to be more than a little blase in accepting imagery as
a sufficient basis for political action: does he, perhaps, mean to agree with
the rest of the "modern manipulators" that they are, in fact, *necessary*?
Might not Ireland have made as clever a play on the words, "Soma /Lie"?

It is often said, "the military is just society in miniature."  In the Somalian
context, one has to wonder if the military is not being too modest. "Society"  t
large has stood around and wrung its hands, unable to mobilize more than a few
hundred relief workers, for at least a year; we commented on "charity burnout"
as if there was nothing more that could be expected.  Whatever else may signify
in the geo-political situation, the military has at least been able to focus,
and execute their "mission" -- but one which would not have been beyond the
capabilities of most US cities, if they themselves had been the site, for
instance, of some natural disaster.

But  that reminds us of Miami, where Hurricane Whozis laid waste.  Did the
good citizens unite, saying, "Thanks, but no thanks, we don't need to become a
military compound"?  (Would it have made any difference if they had?)  And
do we even need to be reminded of  South Central Los Angeles?

The only social *structure* that remains is the military, and it is being writ
larger every day.  The rest of us is more like a pea soup, having been simmered
for years over the fires of material greed,  fueled by the  waste of our -- that
is, the world's -- natural resources.  We have been seduced, lied to, tricked an
bamboozled -- in short, entertained -- by *images* of power, success, and
institutionalized righteousness for so long, we can conceive of no other way
of being -- but the reality of our erstwhile social structures, such as health
service, education, and community integrity have crumbled to dust.

Theodore Roszak, writing twenty years ago in _Where The Wasteland Ends_,
put it eloquently: "Those who anguish over a starving mankind... might do well
to pay a special kind of visit to their local supermarket.  Not to shop [read,
*trance out*], but to observe and meditate on... what they have always traken
for granted. How much of the world's land and labor was wasted producing the
tobacco, the coffee, the tea, the refined cane sugars,... the soft drinks, the
thousand and one non-nutritional luxuries one finds there? The grains that
became liquor, the fruits and vegetables that lost all their food value going in
cans and jars... the potatoes and corn that became various kinds of chips,
crackles, crunchies and yum-yums,...

"How many forests perished to package these non-foods? How many resources
went into transporting and processing them? ...

"Much the same mad waste of resources can be found in ever other walk of
life: our clothes, appliances, household furnishings,... and of course most
glaringly in the world's military pyramid [!] -building. The space programs and
weapons systems of the great powers alone burn up enough wealth and talent
to underwrite the intelligent development of whole nations. *This* is why
there may well be world famine without precedent in the next generation -- on
a scale far surpassing the 15 million people who already die of malnutrition
each year in the obscure and exploited  corners of the earth.

"So that we in the rich nations can enjoy bad nutrition and tooth decay; so that
we can have somewhere to park our cars; so that we need not soil our fingers
with our own garbage; so that we can boast history's vastest military overkill.
is out of such routine extravagances that the technocracy weaves its spell over
our allegiance -- and then assures us we are the hope of the world."

 We have met the New World Order, and it is us. You bet we need those
images. We might just up and do something *structural*, otherwise.
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