John > the 'bad guy' label is enjoying wide popularity <
I think the slang term "guy" was introduced round about the time of WW2. I remember, as a kid, that I was quite confused when I heard it for the first time because, until then, it was something one burned at Guy Fawkes on Nov 5. In other words, an effigy of something allegedly bad. I imagine the new "guy" was a corruption of GI, the US soldier. After its military use, it was introduced into general parlance as a generic term for any young man and, in fact, today, girls call each other guys. The term was never polite, usually an indirect slight. Someone who wasn't an "officer and a gentleman". So I suppose "bad guys" is merely going back to its original meaning -- someone the government doesn't like -- rather than someone who fought for it. As you say, the term is actually quite arbitrary.
Perhaps it's good that way because next year, or whenever, the US government will be friends with the present "bad guys" and find someone else to mess with. In fact, part of the idea of having a scrap with someone is to make up afterwards.
> This is a formula for unrestrained, arbitrary dictatorial unaccountable power to act on a whim. That's the very obverse of the idea of the rule of law, whose cardinal principle is that it binds the ruler as well as the ruled.
That's true. But that's what half (more or less) of the American people allegedly want. Or do they even know what they want? Do they, in fact, know anything?!
> Apparently the president's arbitrary power is complete and unrestrained if he simply declares that it's a matter of national security.
Yes, furthermore he, and he alone, decides what constitutes "national security". Not you, your Congress, your Constitution, but the President, decides all that. And, what's more, he's trying to decide for me too -- and I'm not even American. Indeed, he probably does!
> Is the total control of another person via torture just another form of the total control of whether they live or die via the death penalty? and the desire to be god-like?
Sure. Torture is a way to wreak vengeance on someone, anyone, for the lousy life the torturer and his bosses have. The Arabs are being punished, or even sacrificed, in the traditional religious sense, as a means of appeasing the Gods so they (the torturer & Co) have a better life (in terms of the barbaric notion that the Gods love sacrifices). Think Aztecs. Think early Jewish religion.
Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz are being elevated to the level of High Priests because it is through, and for, them that the sacrifice is being given. As I mentioned previously, the ability to kill anyone, anything, arbitrarily, is central to the notion that man is God's agent here on earth. And now I'm talking about the generic God -- the God of Gods -- the original Mc Coy -- and not the God of any specific religious genre, especially those Gods who have been "watered down and pacified" over the years as society has developed on more "humanitarian" lines.
> when the virtues of a free-market economy and society are used to justify actions that have as their ultimate motivation greed and power, and the infliction of suffering on other peoples. Capital seems to be such a powerful form of social organization, that there is a corresponding need to have checks and balances that moderate its affect
There are no controls which will work, and certainly not for any length of time. Every system will eventually destroy itself and it is only when that has happened that a new one, or a different one, can start up. Change is ruthless and inexorable. No-one can stop the clock. Not even Greenspan -- and he's trying as hard as he can. You pointed me to Polybius. It's all happened before. There is no good and bad -- there is only what there is. |
