Simone De Beauvoir, as I have often pointed out, defines seriousness thusly:
"But the serious man puts nothing into question. For the military man, the army is useful; for the colonial administrator, the highway; for the serious revolutionary, the revolution -- army, highway, revolution, productions becoming inhuman idols to which one will not hesitate to sacrifice man himself. Therefore, the serious man is dangerous. It is natural that he makes himself a tyrant. Dishonestly ignoring the subjectivity of his choice, he pretends that the unconditioned value of the object is being asserted through him; and by the same token he also ignores the value of the subjectivity and the freedom of others, to such an extent that, sacrificing them to the thing, he persuades himself that what he sacrifices is nothing...It is the political fanaticism which empties politics of all human content and imposes the State, not for individuals, but against them."
Which, of course, dovetails nicely with Glenn Greenwald's piece on "serious" Joe Lieberman:
"By contrast, the pundits of The New Republic and Time who cheered on George Bush's invasion of Iraq and who work for Marty Peretz and who defend George Bush's lawbreaking and who spent years treating Dick Cheney like royalty and who carefully ponder with Great Angst whether we should start a new war with Iran are the deeply serious, very sane, mainstream thinkers who can banish the nerdy anti-war outcasts to the 'lunatic fringes'.
Joe Lieberman is, of course, one of the very serious -- deeply, deeply serious -- sane and mainstream political figures. Agree or disagree, he is a real serious and thoughtful and mainstream political thinker.
Last week, as Philip Weiss noted yesterday, Lieberman was the honored guest of evangelical Minister John Hagee and the group he leads, Christians United for Israel. As the Press Release distributed by Very Serious Moderate Lieberman aide Marshall Whittman demonstrates, Lieberman gave a speech there which Weiss, with understatement, calls 'shocking'... "
Shocking...that Lieberman went from Gore's running mate to an apocalyptic whore-or not so shocking, given how serious (mercenary) he is.
Unfortunately, your last paragraph's somewhat incorrect. For all the things that Lieberman is, mercenary is not one of them. He's remarkably consistent in his views from the start.
ReplyDeleteHe was the Veep candidate with Gore because his DLC-happy campaign staff (led by Donna Brazile, a true mercenary if there ever was one) needed the "triangulation" to continue. They needed some hard-right hawk cred to balance Gore's lib'ralness. Not to mention distancing themselves from the most popular president since Kennedy.
Lieberman has basically been for blasting anyone who's ever said anything bad about Israel off the map -- even if he has to get in bed with the Christian fundies to do it. Because, after all, if you kill the Muslims, then they'll leave Jerusalem alone.
Now, Holy Joe doesn't seem to have an answer to what all the Left Behinders will do after the Muslims are defeated. (Torquemada...paging Tomás de Torquemada...please assist a customer in the thumbscrew aisle...)
Details, details...
It's the frog and the scorpion. You can't claim that you don't know what Lieberman stands for. Unless you're a voter in Connecticut, that is.
Point taken, but "mercenary" cuts several ways, particularly if we consider what, at the root of mercenary, is a self as absolute only in so far as that self is the instrument of a transcendental idea-Israel, for instance, or even an ideology. The serious, in the Existentialist mode, would be someone who, in order to protect Israel, would align himself with those whose purpose is to create a pan-Abrahamic auto de fey, killing everyone outside of Christian thinking first, and then turning on its own. The fact that Lieberman knowingly places himself in the role of Official Covenant Spokesperson for these Christian nihilists underscores this.
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