In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate...
- W.H. Auden
One of Aesop's fables describes the U.S. government's favorite international pastime. It is called "Cherishing a Viper." The fable is about a hen that finds some eggs belonging to a serpent. She adopted them as her own, keeping them warm until they hatched. A swallow was watching from an open window. "You fool," chided the swallow. "Why do you rear creatures that, once they grow up, will make you the first victim of their evil-doing?" Aesop doesn't describe the hen's reaction to this criticism. More than likely, the hen would express shocked surprise at the meanness and cynicism of the swallow. All of God's creatures, she would argue, are deserving of assistance. Perhaps, like President Bush, she would build a democracy with her reptilian hatchlings.
A few days ago I received a note from a friend in Iraq. "We have lost," he explained. "We came here so confident and we will leave humbled." He went on to describe ways in which America is cherishing serpent's eggs in Baghdad. "We are screwing up ... and to top things off, no one wants to talk about it."
That is the key phrase: "no one wants to talk about it." Here we see the new management style in America. It is a management style that avoids the key issues, whether these issues touch on the failings of our country's schools, the dangers of our trade policy, or the debt-ridden system that threatens to come tumbling down. Everyone turns to a catchphrase, to soothing words that cannot solve our problems. Our leaders seem concerned, but the right path isn't charted. It seems that our leaders find a plausible slogan to get behind, and the right way to accomplish necessary goals is set aside. There is one special case, of course. President Bush is hatching a democracy in Iraq, and he is sincere. But democracy in Iraq is a viper's egg, because it will be a Shiite democracy led by people whose beliefs are opposed to America's interests.
The public wants a solution that can be explained in a sound bite. Everyone, even our leaders, simplify the world into ideological categories and stock answers. In the end, most of the political ideas we're hearing today are an attempt to promote convenience at the expense of real solutions. It is convenience, at the center of our society, that now becomes a political determinant. In "The Art of Political Lying," Jonathan Swift described a politician known "for the management of nice affairs." According to Swift, "The superiority of his genius consists in nothing else but an inexhaustible fund of political lies, which he plentifully distributes every minute he speaks.... He never yet considered whether any proposition were true or false, but whether it were convenient...."
The many lies that are affirmed today by politicians (and the public) have worked their way into our system of education, into our media, into our entertainment. The corruption has spread from the political to the cultural. We can hardly tell the truth from a lie any longer. Our way of talking has itself become corrupted. Some years ago Sissela Bok wrote a book titled Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. Bok made the following acute observation: "The very stress ... on achieving material success which so marks our society also generates intense pressures to cut corners. To win an election, to increase one's income, to outsell competitors - such motives impel many to participate in forms of duplicity they might otherwise resist."
Our manner of talking about issues is itself a form of duplicity. Policymakers promise results, but frequently deliver the opposite. This signifies that ideology has gotten the upper hand over common sense. Specifically, we must beware people who talk about democracy or helping the poor as if such were formulas for curing every evil. Here is a nest where serpent's eggs are cherished. This is not only the case in Iraq. We have long nurtured a serpent's egg in Russia, that nuclear-armed colossus of the East. Last weekend riot police in Moscow and St. Petersburg beat up pro-democracy demonstrators to ensure "law and order on the streets." And so we find, tragically, that the Russian democracy we've been supporting all these years isn't a democracy after all. Russia's state-controlled TV ignored the demonstrators, except to say that they were probably financed from abroad. In fact, Mikhail Gorbachev said that the CIA routinely channels "money to opposition forces" in specific countries. He further noted, "This probably explains why such organizations have been mushrooming in [Russia]." In reality, of course, America has given billions to privatize and democratize the country. In effect, we have given billions to the KGB itself, through various false fronts. Consequently, the Russians have turned those billions to account, and now they are rearming.
There was a long overdue letter to the editors of the Wall Street Journal on April 18. It was by Alice Felt of Walla Walla, Washington. She wrote, "When the Soviet Union initially 'collapsed' I remember wondering aloud to my husband whether at some point the Russians would say, regarding their newfound democratic zeal, 'just kidding.' It sure sounds like Mr. Putin is basically saying that in not so many words, with Russian democracy now so weakened and Russian power now so strengthened.I have my doubts whether a truly free society was ever seriously entertained in the first place."
In 1984 a KGB defector named Anatoliy Golitsyn published a book titled New Lies for Old. He warned the West about a long-range Russian deception strategy. He said that Moscow was planning to collapse communism into a controlled democracy. According to Golitsyn, "the 'liberalization' would be calculated and deceptive in that it would be introduced from above. It would be carried out by the [communist] party through its cells and individual members in government, the Supreme Soviet, the courts, and the electoral machinery and by the KGB through its agents among the intellectuals and scientists. It would be the culmination of [KGB Gen.] Shelepin's plans. It would contribute to the stabilization of the regime at home and to the achievement of its goals abroad." He further stated, "Western acceptance of the new 'liberalization' as genuine would create favorable conditions for the fulfillment of communist strategy for the United States, Western Europe and even, perhaps, Japan."
It is now too late to heed Golitsyn's warning. America has already fallen into the trap. Europe is already helpless in the face of Russia's KGB president with his hand on the gas valve. The Iraq adventure is already a disaster that is destined to destabilize the entire Middle East. Since 1991 we have pushed democracy on many nations, lazy in our assumption that this was a sufficient remedy. The president believes in the myth of democracy, and our generals formulate politically correct policies based on this myth. We now administer by democratic lies, we educate with democratic lies, and soon our state will be broken on a wheel of "democratic" lies.
Before the atom bomb, before the advent of the KGB's deception strategies, Jonathan Swift wrote: "Considering the natural disposition in many men to lie, and in the multitudes to believe, I have been perplexed what to do with that maxim, so frequent in every body's mouth, that 'Truth will at last prevail.'" The effect of so many lies, said Swift, was "to corrupt our manners, blind our understandings, drain our wealth, and in time destroy our constitution both in Church and State; and we at last [are] brought to the very brink of ruin; yet by the means of perpetual misrepresentation, have never been able to distinguish between our enemies and friends."
And so it is today, as we hatch our serpent's eggs.
