The Secret Knowledge (15 page)

Why? A director cannot deal in fantasy. His job is to take the delineation of a fantasy (a script) and transform it into film-in-the-can. He has a certain amount of time and money with which to do so, and no amount of fantasy will stop the sun going down on a day on which he has not completed his assigned filming.

More importantly, a director (I speak as one who has directed ten features, and quite a bit of television), is exposed to something of which the actors and writers may not have taken notice: the genius of America, and the American system of Free Enterprise.

The director sees, on the set, one or two hundred people of all walks of life, races, incomes, political persuasions and religions, and ages, men and women, involved, indeed
dedicated
to doing their jobs as well as possible (indeed the ethos of the film set could, without overstatement, be described as “doing it better that it's ever been done”), in aid of the mutual endeavor (the film). Each brings not only his or her particular expertise and craft, but an understanding of and dedication to the
culture
of filmmaking: work hard, pitch in, never complain, admire and reward accomplishment.

Travel posters of the postwar era proclaimed “See America First.” I would recommend this as an anodyne to the Adventure Tourist's Weltschmerz: look around you.

I am very willing to recognize the good in many men of these two classes, but a politician or a civil servant is still to me an arrogant fool'til he is proved otherwise.

—Nevil Shute, Slide Rule:
Autobiography of an Engineer
, 1954

 

 

A czar is an absolute ruler. The wish to appoint a bureaucrat and name him Czar is an example of magical thinking, for, if government is inefficient, how may it be improved by making it omnipotent?

But perhaps Government is unsatisfactory because it is made of bureaucrats. This “czar
,
” then, will be but another. He will have to deal not only with the bureaucracy he inherits, but with that which he creates—the attempts to amalgamate the two, resulting in an organization inevitably worse than either.

The new group dedicated to the streamlining of Government will be paced by a corresponding group of incumbents ensuring that this takes place within the existing rules (which is to say that its jobs are not threatened), and the net results will be an unavoidable increase in the infighting which is the main occupation of all bureaucrats, and a concomitant increase in the power of the State. The inefficiency of Government cannot be addressed through an elaboration of Government.

The delusion that it can calls to mind the Cabinet Spiritualists of the late nineteenth century. These assured the public that they possessed supernatural powers. Locked in a cabinet and bound, they could, for example, cause musical instruments to play, cause writing to appear upon slates, cause objects to fall from the sky, and so on.

But these feats, they explained, could only be performed under those special circumstances necessary for the intercession of the Spirits. The Spirit World demanded privacy. So, the cabinet in which the acts were performed must be closed. To still the doubts of the unbelievers, however, the Spiritualists would be bound, and the cabinet investigated by an impartial committee of the audience.

Here we have a charming example of codependent thinking on the part of the audience, who, in this figure, represent our Electorate. Their
will to believe
is in direct conflict with their
understanding.
They may enjoy the demonstration only if it is believable, but they know it to be a hoax—what are they to do?

The spiritualist and the politician are essentially magicians, one offering diversion, the other security, in exchange for a suspension of common sense.

For, if the spiritualist could actually cause the instruments to play without his intervention, let him do it in the light—he cannot.

Neither can the politician suspend the natural processes of bureaucracy by
expanding
them. He can at best, and only under special circumstances, perform the
illusion
of doing so—these special circumstances being that period prior to his inauguration, or a time of emergency sufficient to distract the populace or otherwise stay any outside power of verification.
⁴⁶

How, for example, may a new agency, named Homeland Security, offer improvement over that security previously provided by various diverse government agencies, each of which itself originated as an amalgamation of its predecessors in the name of efficiency?

This tendency toward elaboration is, of course, the way of the world. In the mobile society of our Democracy each new stage of elaboration is inaugurated by the selfsame vision: that what is needed is a centralized power, and a revision of laws to allow this efficiency. This is called a return to common sense.

But how may it be common sense for the auto industry to be run by one with no experience of it? This might be envisioned only through the intervention of some magical power—the process taking place in the dark, or in some closed cabinet. This is the essence of the wish for a czar: “Do it, but don't tell me about it, I'm sure it will be fine.” It is the wish to be dominated by a strong beneficent power—the wish, in essence, for enslavement. See the various programs headed over the years by “czars,”—the Poverty, Car, Energy, Drug, et cetera—all exercises in magical thinking. What have they accomplished? Nothing.

How can a country grow rich through “redistributing” the wealth, by driving production overseas through taxation, by a refusal to exploit natural resources? This could be imagined only by those willing to suspend their understanding of the laws of cause and effect—the audience at a magic show.

Curiously, as magicians know, the more intelligent the viewer, the more easily he may be fooled. For the less imaginative and less theoretical
know
that a rabbit may not be produced from any hat which did not previously contain a rabbit; that wealth can accrue neither to an individual nor to a society not committed to the production of wealth, and that no organization may be made more efficient by adding to its bulk.

This delusion of an expanded government's increased efficiency is, in Liberal thought, buttressed by a belief in such a government's increased
fairness
—that more laws and more extralegal or administrative procedures will somehow bring about more and “better” justice than that provided by the Constitution. As some groups, we know, were discriminated against in the past, justice may now best be served by discrimination against
other
groups. This is suggested as a commonsense mechanical device. Psychologically, however, it is magical thinking: awarding to the State non-Constitutional powers, correctly deemed notorious when exercised by the individual.

How may justice be served by awarding to any special group a preference? Such awards may be welcome to the recipients, and their contemplation enjoyable to those of the good-willed who are not adversely affected by the redistribution, but they cannot be just.

Contemporary Liberal sentiment endorses the abrogation or elaboration of law to ensure that
no
one suffers, but the first and most important task of law in a democracy is not to right individual wrongs, but to ensure that no one suffers
because of the State
. And the simple, tragic truth is that this may be accomplished not by a Czar or a committee, or by reorganization, or by accession to office of the Benevolent or Wise, but only by limiting the State's power.

Freud posits three main aspects of the mind: the Id, which is the unmitigated urge or nonnegotiable demand (“I want it”), the Ego, which attempts to integrate this demand with the Ego's other conflicting needs (“I know I want unlimited sex, but I also want to stay out of prison”); and the Superego, which is taxed with finding a solution to this hopeless and enervating struggle.

Here is my example of the process.

One finds oneself, in the middle of the night, stopped at a deserted intersection by a red light. The Id says, “What the hell are you waiting for, drive
on
.”

“But wait,” says the Ego, “what if it is a trap? What if the police are hiding, right behind that road sign?”

“No,” says the Id, “their car would not quite fit, and we would see the tires, for the love of God.”

“But what if there is a hidden camera,” says the Ego. “Is it worth the risk? Why not wait the extra half-minute.”

“You fool,” says the Id, “there is no danger. You weak fool.” This is, of course, intolerable. A random moment at a stoplight occasions a battle for self-esteem and psychic integrity. Even the changing of the light will not still the conflict, for one stands insulted and accused, and the question of what
should
have been done remains unanswered and unanswerable.

However, comes now the Superego.

“No,” it says, “It is not that you are weak and foolish. You are, in fact, both worthy and good, and I will tell you why: you stopped at the light because you are a Good Citizen. And you realized that if everyone obeyed only those laws the transgression of which would result in immediate punishment, where would Society be? I congratulate and honor you for your choice.”

Everybody happy, well, I should say.

As we have seen, all under the sway of the Nazi regime had to greet each other with the Nazi salute. Many found this, as it was an avowal of subjugation, intolerable. The Id said, “I will not give the wretched salute.” The Ego replied, “What does it
mean
? You don't actually have to believe in the Nazis; it's just a simple gesture, and performing it will save your life.”

But this interchange, unfortunately, caused the individual to enter into a painful negotiation scores of times a day. To wit: “I
do
it, but I don't
believe
in it. I am not a coward. I am merely making a rational and cost-effective accommodation. I am a worthy person, whatever the Id may say.”

How can one eliminate the pain of the continual repetition of a distressing and seemingly insoluble negotiation?

Here comes the Superego with a brilliant solution: let the gesture be consigned to the realm of the unconscious—it turns the continual nature of the repetition from a reiterated pain into a selling point. “Look here,” says the Superego, “there is just not enough time in the day to worry about it—we will let the dialogue lapse from consciousness, and replace it with unthinking habit.”

But this instance differs from that of the stoplight.

For here we have an unfortunate unresolved remainder. For though the conscious negotiation ceased, the salute survived.

What was the effect, Bettelheim asked, of the now unconscious habitual repetition of a gesture of subjugation? The individual became a Nazi. How could he not? Was he not now pledging, unthinkingly, his loyalty scores of times a day?

A friend reports that she saw a doyenne of the Left at a restaurant and asked her advice on some question of Liberal Doctrine. “Contact
MoveOn.org
,” the doyenne replied, “And do whatever they say.”

The struggle of the Left to rationalize its positions is an intolerable, Sisyphean burden. I speak as a reformed Liberal.

How may one support higher taxes and government intervention as an aid to the economy, when all evidence historical and current (cf. Greece), records the disastrous folly of such a course?

How can one support racial preferences and set-asides, when they run contrary to the evidence of the results of all race–or genetic-based programs in history—their existence an incipient invitation to murder?

How can one deny (as the Obama administration insists on doing) that the military threat to the West has a name, and that name is Islamic Fascism?

Et cetera.

These positions, ad infinitum, are incompatible with reason, and one can embrace them only with great assistance, which, unfortunately, for the Liberal, is forthcoming.

That assistance is the Superego, capable of adjudicating all things.

A proposition or a person emerges promising the impossible. (“The New Economy”), or crooning about the unquantifiable (“Change”), and the Liberal finds this soothing sound consonant with his self-image as a brilliant and compassionate individual.

This individual is in the exact position of the confidence man's mark. In fact he
is
the confidence man's mark.

Now, the main problem in structuring a con game is in answering the mark's question, “Why
me
. . . ?”

In the Spanish Prisoner, played for over two thousand years, and seen today in its incarnation as the Nigerian Letter, the individual is appealed to as one of noted repute and standing in the community, as someone who can be trusted with the confidence man's improbable claim.

The mark is flattered. He understands why he has been chosen. He has been chosen because of his excellence. How could one (the Confidence man) who was
that perceptive
, then, be other than honorable also? The question does not arise.

The flattered mark glossing over all inconsistencies, and improbabilities, and indeed, impossibilities, in the confidence man's story, forks out his money.

The Liberal is flattered that he, in contradistinction to his benighted countrymates, has been chosen to advance the policies and doctrines of Liberalism. He, in endorsing them, is part of the Elite, one of those empowered to eradicate those historical evils entailed upon humanity because of the unfortunate delay of his advent. (“We are the people we have been waiting for,” Obama campaign, 2008.)