Feeding Frenzy

In biological terms, it’s a feeding frenzy.

Greed overpowers restraint and the herd attacks, again and again, to get anything it wants. Higher brain functions cease; gluttony rules. Think National Geographic pictures of piranhas at work on an animal that falls into their river. They won’t stop until they’re sated, exhausted, or until there’s nothing left to eat.

In psychological terms, it’s megalomania: "a delusional mental disorder that is marked by infantile feelings of personal omnipotence and grandeur":

    "I am the federal government."
    "You are with us or you are against us."
    "God is on our side."
    "Our God is bigger than their God."

Most people who seek power learn, by the time they achieve power, that it is in their own self-interest to exercise some degree of restraint in the exercise of the power they have sought and gained. For them, power is good, but power with survival is the highest good.

The cleverest dictators, tyrants, and CEO’s learn the difficult trick of balancing their power and their desire for absolute control and their desire for appreciation with the practical realities of the world they inhabit. They learn that, yes, they can be ruthless against their perceived enemies, as long as they give their underlings whatever bread and circuses are required to keep them more or less contented and on their side.

Now and then, greed and the prospect of untrammeled power on an unprecedented scale overcome the lessons of necessary restraint. When that happens, you get some of the great disasters of history: Hitler, the Holocaust, and World War II; Mao and the Cultural Revolution; Pol Pot and the Killing Fields of Cambodia; Stalin and the 1930s purges and starvations; Robespierre and the Terror of the French Revolution, etc.

That "etc." of course is one of the horrific, repeating realities of human history that we mostly don't want to think about, or if we think about it we conclude by saying, "It can't happen here."

The terrible American truth that many of us, since November, 2004, don't want to think about is this: It—that giant, terrible "et cetera"—is in the early to middle stages of happening here. Now.

So far the greedy grasp for total power has been sort of sugar-coated and wrapped in red, white, and blue. Lately, the sugar-coating has been coming off, and the colors have been fading as the grasp for absolute power reveals the ugly nakedness of its bottomless maw.

The characteristic that is always the sure give-away that you're dealing with a true feeding frenzy is complete, merciless viciousness. No quarter is given. Compromise is impossible. The ends totally justify all means necessary to achieve the ends. Reality is what I say it is, and if you don't agree you are not merely sub-human, you are non-human and are beyond any rights accorded to humans.

Thus:

    Opponents of the war in Iraq are unpatriotic, if not traiterous.
    Homosexuals are evil, as obviously revealed by their obscene
      desire to make a mockery of God-given marriage between a
      man and a woman.
    God gave man dominion over the earth and its creatures to use
      as we see fit.
    Human life begins when I say it begins, namely at the moment
      of conception, and it ends when God sees fit to end it.
    And finally and most important: Yes, the rule of law is essential...
      except where it conflicts with the divine law of my God.

Usually, a given society has various internal constraints and restraints that act as a brake and a limitation on such behavior. The restraints vary from place to place and from time to time. They may be economic (the wealth is spread among a ruling elite, as in Saudi Arabia), or religious (secular and religious power balance each other, as in Renaissance Italy), or familial (clans countermand the orders of other clans), or legal and constitutional (as in the United States, up until the present administration).

Now, the United States stands right on the brink of an epochal feeding frenzy.

A government that came into power under questionable circumstances lied its way into a war and got away with it. The government, with enormous public and private resources, stood for election and through the Big Lie technique (say it often enough and loud enough and a lot of people will believe it) got an electoral mandate.

In spite of persistant lying, in spite of photographic proof of torture, in spite of intimate financial ties with Enron and Halliburton, in spite of the treasonous revealing of the identity of a CIA agent, in spite of alienating world opinion of America (and that after the wave of sympathy for America following the 9-11 attacks), in spite of determined attempts to write discrimination into a constitutional amendment, in spite of all that and more, this American government spent hundreds of millions of dollars and convinced the electorate that they were the good guys.

And the electorate bought it.

Having got away with so much, and now being in control of both Congress and the White House, what was to restrain their greed?

The rule of law? No. Remember, the rule of law is fine until it conflicts with the divine law of my God.

International treaties? No. As necessary, I declare this or that treaty void and proceed accordingly, whether the "accordingly" means torture or rape of the evironment or whatever is necessary to advance my cause.

Externally, nothing stands in their way. Afghanistan, then Iraq. Clearly Iran is next, whether the violent intervention is directly American, or whether it's Israeli. Then comes North Korea.

Internally, a few problems remain. Certain rules of Congress, such as the filibuster, are troublesome, but we control Congress, so we change the rules. And the courts may prove resistant. But we appoint and approve the judges, so that problem is easily fixable, given a little time.

As Hitler and Mao and Stalin and Pol Pot and Robespierre must have often asked themselves, "Why stop?"