Photograph Source: Yeny Garcia for Voice of America – Public Domain
Published on http://www.counterpunch.org
“No, I don’t mean love, when I say patriotism. I mean fear. The fear of the other. And its expressions are political, not poetical: hate, rivalry, aggression.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
What you are reading is a translation from the Martian.
I have no reason to doubt the translator and the accuracy of the translator’s translation, and yet I do. You could say it is part of my Martian inheritance: Treat everything said by anyone with skepticism. Not because the sayer may be a liar or a bullshitter but because words are linked in minds in variant ways, and are therefore unreliable.
We Martians speak via the language of music, unknown to those of Earth, except by the virtuosi of Bebop, but here I use English language words, a language I pursue faithfully on Duolingo.
I witnessed on Earth the same sort of foundational divide we have on Mars. Namely, those who are prosperous, do not espouse any politics that threatens their prosperity. When, in former times, we Martians had a not very prosperous but a doing quite well, thank you, class, there was scant fear that the prosperous would via power gained manipulate the lives of the “Everyday Martian.” Our economics led to a comfortable level of wealth distribution. The “Everyday Martian” enjoyed what was on Its own plate.
However, imminent galaxy threats, that I will not go into, compelled our economics toward arming the prosperous class so that the enormous sums needed to militarize defensively could be produced. Our belief was that the “best and the brightest,” the already proven Winners would keep all Martians safe, and perhaps a surplus beneficence would trickle down upon the “Everyday Martian.”
As I look back now, I see that the need to survive led us to believe that we could not be under survival circumstances anything but rational when in truth a mass psychology built on dominating competitively brought along the dark side of winning – losing. That fear of losing the battle to survive triggered ever growing levels of a will to win. We were heading for a collision with Beejarki (Jupiter) and pressing the pedal to the metal.
What the Martian Ownership class wanted was no interference whatever in their strategies of profit creation. More greed here than fear. They demanded full license in eating up competitors without governmental interference. A worshipped leader told us that running to the government for help of any kind was like a Kaputi running to a Staki for help. A chicken running to a fox. The Ownership class strenuously objected to any taxation of their winnings re-directed to those who had not succeeded in supporting themselves.
I admit to being ignorant of what psychology, moral or pragmatic, lay behind this turn in economics on Mars until attending this RNConvention on this planet.
I was told that giving a human a fish was a dead end enterprise but advising a human how to fish would create a solvent, contributing citizen. As we have no fish on Mars, having no water, a Wealth Management Consultant led me to an understanding, which is this: Someone who has a lot of fish won’t give you any but that human will be available to you as a Wealth Management Consultant for a front loaded fee.
I discovered that no kind of advice given by any kind of Wealth Adviser could in any rational way explicate the aberrant logic of investment gains and losses. Rather like the game of Destroy we play on Mars, which is advertised as nurturing “an enlightened self-interest,” the RNC’s Market Rule does not lead to any level of egalitarianism. I have failed to see how the opposing political party has corrected this through cultural politics rather than a direct attack on Market Rule, which creates an immoral distribution of profit upward and not downward.
All Martians are not created equal but I presume to say we are all equally subordinate to Ownership. Dissident Martians are sent to other planets to provoke and annoy them. Also, I point out that as we create ourselves through sexual union, a “Creator” and the act of creation is partitioned over the entire Martian population. There is no celestial Great Owner but only private Ownership clubs all over the planet. We have nothing celestial but rather extraterrestrial, such as myself, and I am no angel. We do not have those either.
When it comes to morals, the “Everyday Martian” is like the ”Everyday Human,” in so far as both are different in this realm than the “Elite.” On Mars, we refer to the Elite as those who have authority of Ownership to tell us what we can’t do. Because I see here at the RNC a chant that all authority is “fake” and in need of overthrow, the Everyday American can call whomever It doesn’t like The Elite. Need I say that this confusion, an impenetrable smoke screen, suits The Elite perfectly? Their eliteness, by definition, in an egalitarian society is not saintly but unjustifiable, suspicious at the very least.
As we have nothing on Mars quite like a moral view in which a man found guilty of rape, found guilty of 34 felony accounts, impeached twice but not convicted as U.S. President, charged with trying to overturn the 2020 election, falsifying business records, and his handling of classified documents, is welcomed at this RNC as a return to a moral presidency, I must respectfully, yield my time here.
I have studied the belief that you will be judged in the After Life by your actions in this life. I conclude then by the overwhelming support and love for this human, his actions may matter in the After Life but not here at the RNC. The Court of the After Life may follow alternative facts denied Earthly courts.
I do note here something similar to what we have on Mars, and that is, moral talk tends to follow the money, which feeds the talk, which consolidates the power.
If for instance a human makes an obscene amount of money keeping wages low, or simply making more money by having an obscene amount of money, moral talk is not above a whisper. It’s not in the interest of Money/Power to critique the immorality and inequities of the casino economics that works in their interest. On the other hand, any movement to challenge, obstruct, or destroy that power receives moral indictments straightaway. The man who impeaches another man for “incitement to insurrection” now faces, it seems, being impeached for daring to impeach the insurrectionist.
Here I note what I call “The World Turned Upside Down” condition.
If it’s plausible that all charges brought against the “moral” President have been “politically weaponized” and that neither the House of Representative in their impeachment charges, nor any of the court trials finding the “moral” President guilty were based on what would be commonly accepted as facts, evidence, proof and logical conclusion, then the present structure of democratic republic/liberal democracy is indeed crooked, immoral and in need of a new structuring.
However, I find it difficult to believe that the “moral” President was falsely charged on every occasion he was charged. This human had boasted he could shoot a man on some avenue and be immune from arrest. The Supreme Court took the hint and granted him such immunity. He shall never be charged and so never again falsely charged.
I shall return to Mars, avoiding all avenues.
For a brief time, we Martians toyed with the game of denying facts as facts and proposing “alternate facts.” We also played around with the view that for every bit of evidence there was an equal amount of counter-evidence. A strong voice appeared, who, rather like Humpty Dumpty, declared that he alone decided what anything meant. But as skepticism lingered in the Martian soul, this solo performance riled up the folks, in the vernacular of the Arkansas delegation, who soon demanded something new after the old was destroyed, rather like the message at this RNC.
I found that to be a prevailing view, nay, heartfelt belief, at this Convention. The incumbent rule had to be destroyed if the country was to be saved. In turn, the incumbent rule called for the destroyers to be destroyed before they destroyed the country. They are at an impasse for the moment. I have expectation that reason will return and this planet turned right side up again.
A delegate from the real state of Ohio, however, told me he couldn’t be reasoned out of his opinions, not because he hadn’t reasoned himself into them, but because he “reasoned personally” and the Government couldn’t change that.
I yielded my time at that point in our conversation.
I was leaning toward a view of that a wild west capitalism had over the past 45 years or so scrunched the former middle class and left them with a pack full of woes, anger, frustration, a desperate need of change and a fire of destruction in their eyes. By which I mean I saw more heat than light at the RNC, a greater desire to destroy than to know the consequences of that destruction; I saw a blind trust in a human with feet of clay; and I witnessed a sad misconstruing of what were the causes of hurt and anger. (As I am a Martian also with feet of clay, literally, I feel a certain kinship with the Human of Total Immunity.)
But what do I know? I’m not an emissary as in LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. I’m a visiting Martian with a big cowboy hat sent here to annoy attendees at the RNC. (I don’t have what you call a head so this hat is not easy for me).
We Martians never bit into the Tree of Knowing so I am, sorry to say, not ever certain of what I think I know. I have weaponized skepticism against myself.
I retreated to my vehicle without incident. My next stop the DNC, where I have been messaged will be full of fear and trembling.
