Sunday March 5, 2006
White House values based on hidden contradictions
Everyone holds some contradictory convictions. I, for example, believe strongly in reducing the use of fossil fuels. At the same time, I drive an aging Jaguar that will pass anything except a gas station.
As parents, most of us believe we should encourage our children to make their own decisions. Then sometimes we don\’t like their decision, because it conflicts with some other value we hold equally dear.
We saw this analogy acted out on the international stage when the northern nations pressured the Palestinian people to hold truly democratic elections. So they did. But then the Palestinians ran into a condition we hadn\’t mentioned – they had to elect a government that we approved of. Now the wealthy world is cutting off aid, until a democratically elected government renounces the policies that got it elected.
We thought we believed in democracy. We didn\’t realize that we believed even more in conformity to our views.
When missionaries evangelized the Native peoples of Fisher River in Manitoba, they promoted the benefits of becoming Christian like us. But after Chief Peguis led his people into the church, they discovered that they were still Native, after all, and treated like Natives. To be “like us,” they also had to become White.
The hidden value contradicted the overt one.
Hardly anyone in my church tradition still believes that God deliberately causes tsunamis and earthquakes and mudslides to kill hundreds of thousands of people. But almost everyone still believes that God intervenes to protect favoured individuals from disaster or disease.
“If we didn\’t believe that,” as one man said, “why would we bother praying?”
The micro contradicts the macro.
The boomerang effect
This conflict of values usually means that people proceed comfortably professing one belief, while the contradictory belief sneaks around behind to bite them on the butt. Author and political analyst William Rivers Pitt calls it the “boomerang effect.”
Specifically, the inhabitants of the White House in Washington D.C. believed they needed a means of controlling a dispirited and discontented populace. So they focussed on selling national security – also known as fear — to their people. Now that fear has boomeranged against them.
Canadian media have not paid much attention to this controversy. The bid by Dubai Ports World to control a number of U.S. ports seems to be an internal problem for the U.S. But the case illustrates the perils of not recognizing, or understanding, deeply held convictions.
Dubai is one of seven small emirates on the Persian Gulf — Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm al-Qaiwain, Ras al-Khaimah and Fujairah – sandwiched between Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. Like Alberta, they have grown astonishingly wealthy by the accident of existing on top of a huge pool of oil.
Now they\’re also awash in dollars to spend.
As syndicated talk-show host Thom Hartmann pointed out, “We no longer manufacture anything they want to buy with those dollars.”
American-brand running shoes that sell for $150 in the U.S. are made for $5 in China or Malaysia. So why pay $150 for them?
“Instead of buying our manufactured goods,” continues Hartmann, “they are buying us, the U.S.A., chunk by chunk. … The \’things\’ they\’re buying are corporations, utilities, and natural resources.”
With its oil wealth, Dubai Ports World bought the venerable British P&O shipping line. P&O runs numerous U.S. container ports. Dubai Ports wants to take over that control.
Media reports refer to six major ports, in Louisiana, New York, Florida, Connecticut, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. In fact, says Pitt, Dubai will be taking control of 21 ports – 11 on the East Coast, another 10 along the Gulf Coast.
The adverse reaction has been instant. And apparently unexpected. “It is a wonder that the administration didn\’t see this coming,” writes Pitt. “They didn\’t.”
Because they never saw that their cherished values contained internal contradictions.
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It\’s also worth pursuing Richard Fairchild\’s United Online site. Another site worth visiting is David Keating\’s \”SeemslikeGod\” page.
To manipulate public opinion for their own benefit, Bush Rumsfeld & Cheney Inc. deliberately portrayed Arabs and Muslims as a threat to Americans. Osama bin Laden and the 19 individuals who crashed those airliners into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon were all Arabs. The insurgents who kill American soldiers in Iraq are Arabs. The drug-dealing warlords in Afghanistan are Arabs. The threats that have kept Americans on constant yellow or orange alert for the last five years are based on Arab surveillance. Tough new immigration procedures are intended to prevent Arab terrorists from infiltrating the U.S.
To quote Pitt again: “Since September 12, 2001, George W. Bush and his administration have used every available opportunity to scare the cheese out of American people in order to get what they want… all cloaked in a none-too-subtle message that all Muslims and every Arab nation are to be feared and reviled – this has been the ticket for passing every budget, the basis for every campaign, and the establishment of a false rationale for an invasion of Iraq.
“Some have claimed that opposition to this deal stems from anti-Arab racism. When a president spends every day of five years… frightening his own people to make the populace easier to govern, a degree of anti-Arab racism is bound to flower.”
But that induced paranoia now threatens Bush Rumsfeld & Cheney\’s second belief — that nothing should impede trade. Free trade is their lifeblood. The Gross National Product is their gospel. Everything is for sale. Because every sale boosts the GNP. And that must be good. Mustn\’t it?
The problem is not with potential terrorists who might gain control of U.S. ports. The problem is with people in the White House who cannot or will not scrutinize their own values.
I suspect they\’re genuinely bewildered that the citizens of the U.S. find it difficult to simultaneously fear Arabs and welcome their dollars.
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Copyright © 2002 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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