Reply #112: I think the root issue is both deeper and simpler

[starroute]

The world situation we are living in today began in the 1940's. World War II -- and particularly the atomic bomb -- made it obvious to everyone that the human race had no future in a world of warring nations. Somehow or other, the planet had to be brought from a condition of recurring (and ever more destructive) wars to one of permanent peace. The only question was how that could be accomplished.

That "how" is the real joker. Nobody these days doubts the goal of a peaceful world. The only real disputes involve the means -- and the shape of the outcome. And here I see a range of defining questions.

1) Can the world be brought together peacefully through multilateral processes (treaties, free trade, the United Nations, etc.) or can it be unified only by one powerful nation establishing hegemony and forcing all other countries to submit and disarm?

2) Can the fate of the world be trusted to democratic processes, with free peoples cooperating gladly with other free peoples, or must it be directed by a detached elite, acting through secretive procedures to manipulate the emotions of the childlike and short-sighted masses?

3) Is the bounty of the world ample enough to provide equally for everyone, or is any new world order inevitably going to involve haves and have-nots, with certain nations or classes living permanently in comfort off the toil of the many?

4) Can the shift to a global system be made in a let-bygones-be-bygones fashion that will insure the safety of the small fraction of the earth's population which has oppressed and exploited the rest of the world during the last several centuries, or would the members of that European-derived minority be best advised to take whatever steps are necessary to maintain their dominance and avoid what would otherwise be an inevitable wave of retribution?

Putting together the first element of each of those points gets you to a sort of Star Trek future, where everybody plays nice together and can't imagine things being any different.

Taking the second elements of the first two points produces what might be called an open conservative position, where the US will have to impose free trade and democracy on the rest of the world for its own good, but where things can still be all sunshine and good feelings afterwards. That's where the neocons in general seem to position themselves, and it can be very hard to argue with them on behalf of liberal idealism in the face of what they see as their own hard-nosed realism.

But the real issue between the left and the right isn't over points #1 and #2 -- it's over points #3 and #4. I'd say the left in general believes that you can't use coercive and secretive methods to arrive at a free and open society, and that the inevitable result of current conservative methods will be a world that is oppressive, exploitative, and down-to-the-bones racist. What's more, I'd say that much of the left believes that at least part of the right knows this and is perfectly content to have things turn out that way.

This is why things can get so tinfoil around here. It comes out of a sense that the real motives are hidden and the real issues aren't being talked about.

It's also why the Israeli-Palestinian issue gets so contentious. For the left, that issue has nothing to do with the Jews (except by historical accident) and nothing to do with anti-Semitism. It's all about whether a small and nominally democratic society can impose its will on a larger and much poorer region through its massive store of atomic weapons and its well-oiled system of covert operations -- and whether the outcome of that process will be peace and prosperity for everyone concerned, or merely an economically-faltering apartheid state. If Israel is the shape of our own future, and Israel's relationship with the Palestinians the model for our relationship with the rest of the world, we have good reason to be terrified by what we see.