Να κι ένα πολύ ωραίο σημείωμα που έγραψε ένας φίλος προχτές.
Sarah Palin and the Eschatological Nihilism of the Neocons
by Aidan Tynan
It's recently come to my attention that during Sarah Palin's address to her church (the Wasilla Assembly of God) a few months ago she made the comment that the war in Iraq was part of God's plan. Obviously, this unscripted remark (she said she hadn't prepared a speech) exposes her as the creepy messianist she is, a bit different from the wholesome "hockey mom" image which has recently been promoted. I decided to watch the rest of the speech on You Tube. She was addressing the graduating class of commission students, so basically talking to young people and telling them to pray for things like the soldiers in Iraq and a gas pipeline she wants built. Obviously, the whole thing is insipid lovey dovey spew, with one hilarious moment when her pastor gets up on stage and spontaneously bursts into tears while talking about the touch of God or some such bunkum. But when the guy presenting the whole thing brought the pastor on stage, and thanked Palin for her "awesome" "prophetic statements", he made a strange comment about how Alaska was an important "refuge state", and that it would get hundreds of thousands of people seeking refuge "in the last days" and that it had to be ready to "minister to them".
For a few seconds I was wondering what on earth he was talking about. Then, I realised he was talking about the day of judgment. Now, since Palin basically grew up in Wasilla Assembly of God and spent all of her formative years undergoing Pentacostal indoctrination, it is reasonable to believe that she also thinks the day of judgment is at hand and that, furthermore, it is her responsibility as a politician to usher it in. This isn't "mere" Christian belief involving such mundane activities as consulting God on major policy decisions. It is eschatological (doctrine of the end of time) and nihilistic (will to nothingness) -- in other words, apocalypse as human destiny. In an important sense, Palin's faith isn't a "belief" at all, since to believe (if we go to the root of the word) means *to affirm*. But to usher in apocalypse it is necessary not to believe in anything, since affirming would necessarily get in the way.
This goes to the heart of American foreign and economic policy of recent years. The Neoconservatives emerged as an intellectual class (from the bosom of Hayek and Friedman in Chicago) with Reagan, but opposed the Realpolitik of Bush Sr. and Clinton precisely because it lacked the sense of moral conviction and belief which characterised the early cold war and the Red Menace years of the 50s and 60s. Neocon talk is all about values, beliefs, ways of life -- culture in the classic anthropological sense. But is belief really what we're talking about here? Isn't the messianism of the Project for a New American Century and so forth a kind of non-belief precisely because it presupposes an eschatological and apocalyptic vision, the destruction of the world as such through ecological devastation, war and poverty? Neocons don't really want American world domination, they want the destruction of the world, and American domination is a way to achieve that. Now, isn't this exactly how capital works? If, as Marx said, with capitalism every solid conviction about the world dissipates "into air", then, beliefs become eroded by necessity. And, as Nietzsche said, the will prefers to will nothingness rather than not to will at all.
