The Attack of the Existentialists
“We are facing an existential threat against the nation,”
- Vice President Dick Cheney
At a meeting about a new political strategy, which really meant fastening on a new terminology to describe the old strategy, Karl Rove brought a new speechwriter on board to cast around some new ideas. This was John Screed IV, Ivy League educated, patrician and true believer but too smart sometimes for his own good. His nickname, bestowed upon him by none other than George Bush himself, was Screech.
Pres – Got a problem here boys, a big problemo. It’s fear. Fear tactics just aren’t working now like they used to. Try as we may some people just won’t stay scared. It’s my one trick pony, my only reliable, tried and true play. Try as I may to scare the bejesus out of the public everyday, some Americans are actually getting comfortable, and back to normal again only five years after 9/11. What do I do? I’ve done my best. We’ve frightened ‘em with visions of mushroom shaped clouds, dirty bombs everywhere, anthrax, poisoned food and water supplies, attacks on nuclear facilities, everything I can think of boys, what more can I do? We all know what it means if the waters get calm enough for the public to clearly see that our war on terror has really been more a war of errors.
Look at N. Korea. I cleverly maneuvered them into my trap of acquiring nuclear weapons.
Veep – That was shrewd, sir.
Pres – I know, they didn’t even know what hit ‘em and I thought for sure that would keep Americans on edge for years, at least through the end of my presidency, but it just isolated North Korea more and frightened Russia, China and Japan. Hells bells, boys, I can’t win for losing. So here’s what I need to know, what can we do now to scare ‘em for the next two years. I repeat, I don’t have anything else.
Rove – That’s why, Mr. President, I thought it wise to bring in a new speechwriter, Mr. Screed here, to get some new ideas on this subject.
Pres – Hey, Screech boy, how’s it going?
Screed – Honored sir. Karl told me what you needed, Mr. President, and I’ve given it some thought, done some research. There is a pattern to fearfulness. Take our own history, “Remember the Alamo, the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor and now 9/11.” These are great slogans and motivators for war and go a long way to energizing the public into a compliant political enervation. But they only go so far. The slogan soon has to be replaced with an ugly nemesis’ face plastered alongside some xenophobic hate to endure for more than a few years at a time.
Take Pearl Harbor, for instance, we went right to Tojo and then had Hitler and the Nazis to back him up. They were great. But in Iraq we’ve just got the Sunni and Shiite and people can’t get too excited about either of those, especially as they are allegedly our allies in the pacification and bringing of a perfect democracy to Iraq.
Rove – Well we did have bin Laden. He looked good for awhile. In fact, he looked like Sauron, the bad guy in the Lord of the Rings. Too bad we let him go. Then there was Saddam, but unfortunately we caught him and everybody found out he didn’t have weapons and so the fear factor we built up there kind of worked against us. Made us look afraid, like we were crying wolf, when we were really only trying to scare the public so we can look brave by comparison.
Pres – Sure, and we had the whole Axis of Evil thingy. Worked too. For awhile. But then people forget and get all uncommonly brave and resilient again. I’ve made the world a much more dangerous place, invented enemies where none existed and turned most of the world against us and what do they reward me with? Calm? I deserve better than this.
I mean North Korea was just one axe. Iraq was the second axe and now the third axe of the axis of evil is us fixin’ to move on Iran. But people are fighting us. They say we actually have to have a reason to start a war this time and that I also have to start justifying my wholesale assault on their civil liberties as part of my unitary reign.., I mean, presidency. I find this to be an unreasonable restraint.
Rove – One problem we have is that Iran is such a weak sounding place. I-ran reeks of cowardice. Even Iraq, when pronounced like I-rack, like you do Mr. President, sounds more martial than that. I think we need to work on a new name for Iran, like we-nuke or nukes are us or something really scary. And Ahmadinijad hardly rolls off the tongue like Hitler or Stalin. He’s such a short little wimp he looks more like an insurance adjuster or grocery store clerk on his day off than any great threat against the world’s greatest superpower. Historically, your best megalomaniacal dictator has a name of two syllables and should have hair on his face to look truly threatening.
Pres – Yeah this is really unfair and hard. There aren’t enough good tyrants around for me to fight. I mean Kim Jung Il is more buffoon or cartoon than threat. Putin’s a little satrap tsarist, Saddam’s dead, Casto’s dying and we let the real baddies, like bin Laden, get away scot free. (As he straightened his tie in the mirror, not aware of any self mimicry in what he was about to say, he concluded.) There aren’t any larger than life leaders to measure myself against anymore, they’re all a bunch of really short, small minded, no imagination, bush leaguers.
Screech – Yeah, I thought the true genius of the propaganda after 9/11 was the terminology itself, the “war on terror.” I thought that was a great misdirection. How do you possibly ever win a war against an abstraction like “terror”? The word is defined as extreme fear. A loosely configured, open ended war against fear itself is absolutely ingenious. It’s just too vague a definition to ever gauge whether we’re winning or not.
Meanwhile, talking about terror all the time only creates more terror. It’s a classic of governmental manipulation and propagandistic control over our own people. It gives us an open ended opportunity to break laws or fight against anyone or arrest anybody or read people’s mail and tap their phones under color of an endless war without even bothering with a coherent explanation of who the war is actually being waged against. Anybody who objects to the loss of civil liberties can actually be portrayed as weak, as if they are less patriotic for arguing against the very sort of government oppression that the Constitution is designed to protect us from. But I have to admit it’s wearing thin on the public.
Veep - That’s why I, personally, have been test marketing a new threat. Rather than fixating on something or someone more specific, I think we should be even less specific and enunciate a new, nameless, amorphous threat which menaces us in order to try to stimulate the nation’s subconscious angst. People are naturally more afraid of threats they can’t see than those they can. Therefore I have been saying that there is an existential threat which faces the nation today. It is just far enough out there to sound menacing without actually having any real meaning whatsoever.
Pres – Yeah, yeah that’s good Dick but I just want to agree with Screech for a sec. We’ve got a lotta mileage outta the “war on terror”. You know what I liked best, other than getting to say the word terror over and over? I liked those color coded threat levels, like blood red and Halloween orange. Absolutely frightening. Any time we needed a threat to change the subject, boom, we could invent one, pick a color we wanted to raise the threat level to and block out any real news for an entire cycle at a time whenever we wanted.
If we had to colorize the level of threat the nation fears now it would have dropped to puce or mauve or ecru or something. It’s hard to justify destroying someone’s right to a free trial when we’re only under the penumbra of a puce level threat, like we’re in danger of being attacked by fashion designers and decorators or something.
Veep - Makes me want to puke just thinkin’ about it.
Pres - God, remember how Ashcroft even raised the terror threat level from overseas on phony information about some guy six months old? Those were the days, huh? And it musta worked good too, ‘cause I don’t even ‘member what the news was we were trying to bury. Probably yellow cake or something.
Rove - I‘ve always thought it was too bad that yellow cake sounded so benign. Sounds too much like something you’d serve at your kid’s birthday party. If we’d had more time maybe we could’ve gotten the name changed to devil’s food. That sounds much more threatening and evil, doesn’t it? Saddam getting unlimited access to devil’s food from Niger in deepest Africa, heck that would’ve been so much more scary that no one would have even dared question us. Anybody who suggested it was OK for Saddam to be getting his vittles from the devil would have had to think twice, we would’ve labeled them soft and enemies of America and God so fast it would’ve made their head spin.
Veep - Yeah that’s the flaw, guys, it’s a pity. We could’ve used more help all the way around. We could’ve used a couple more well timed terror attacks too, so that all our alerts wouldn’t have started to sound so contrived. Just a few more salutary and bracing attacks against the homeland would’ve been an enormous help if we could’ve timed ‘em just right. And then Congress hasn’t exactly helped either. Other than their slavish compliance to do exactly what they’re told, even cede all their constitutional rights over to us, Congress’s only contribution in this entire affray has been to rename French fries to freedom fries. Unless you have cholesterol levels like mine that’s not exactly going to scare anybody.
Screech – That’s true. Think what this Congress would’ve done in World War II with hamburgers. Because of its German name they would spent all their time trying to get them called liberty burgers or something. Imagine a double Lincoln with cheese on a sesame bun? I think with these guys in Congress we probably would’ve lost WWII too. Perhaps our political class was a little more competent and diligent in those days than now.
Pres – Well yeah, I’m not above blaming Congress and the press for our mistakes either, but I’ll tell you one thing, those people back then just didn’t have the flair for propaganda we do. I mean look at Roosevelt, a cripple, he couldn’t be elected at all nowdays. I mean, in that wheelchair he couldn’t even strut straight. As far as I know he never even learned to do wheelies in that thing. Though he did wear a cape which I have to admit was pretty cool and he got to hang around with Churchill and had Hitler and Stalin to contend with which led to some shared stature where all I get is Blair, a raving used to be, has been liberal. But I did my part. I looked really good in that flight jacket and when I went to pretend to provide hurricane relief in New Orleans notice I didn’t have to be told to roll up my sleeves to pretend to be working hard at something the way that loser Michael Brown did. That’s what separates the men from the boys and the Pres from the FEMA director, let me tell ya.
Screech – Nobody can fault you, sir, or say you weren’t prepared for this job. Why in Iraq you wasted a whole ton of taxpayer money, half a million or billion or something, just to build a new media center to help sell that war. Tell me that wasn’t the most important detail that had to be attended to. And your phony little trip to declare hostilities ended, where you wore the flight jacket and all, was masterful p.r., I don’t care what anybody says. No, no one can say you haven’t done all the phony little things well. From fear mongering, to rigging the intelligence, to keeping all the sabers rattling, to playing the blame game, to waving the bloody flag of 9/11 at every opportunity, you’ve done them all. And Mr. Vice President, may I say too, that you have been admirably persistent in saying the war was going superbly well and we were winning even when it was obvious to a dead man we weren’t. Is it our fault that it’s not?
Pres – That’s true, we have done all the little political things very, very conscientiously, it’s maybe just a few of the bigger policy issues that got away from us a bit. Why just before the last election, I said we were winning, too, “absolutely”, I said. I said it really, really forcefully, almost completely believably and if words alone won battles, by God, I think we would have won the war right then and there, not to mention the election. We can’t be faulted. What more could we possibly do?
Screech – I think we desperately need a new enemy to deflect the public’s attention away from results back to fear, from the war of errors back to the war on terror. I applaud the desire you’ve shown to change the subject to Iran. We need to get those sabers rattling loud and proud again to drown out any real debate. Too bad you can never mention bin Laden again without reminding people how you let him go on the whole 9/11 thing?
Pres – Yes that is a pity. But he was so goldarn hard to find. If he’d just stayed put in a bunker like Hitler did or crawled into a little nearby hole like that mouse Saddam it would have been easier. I mean who know he might actually move and change his position as the Taliban fell. How could we be expected to have anticipated anything as clever and as far sighted as that. And who would’ve thought he’d go into those mountains and not be hanging out at a Starbucks or something like everybody else does nowdays. Why that’s just devious, man. Of course, Rumsfeld was in charge then and he could be outsmarted by a chickpea.
Screech – But bin Laden had the look of a loony, that’s the kind of enemy we need.
Pres – I’ve said it before, I think he looks like a hippy. Is he a hippy? I hate them. They used to play music I didn’t understand and read books and stuff. All beards and long hair and unkempt attire and marijuana instead of just drink beer and do cocaine like all the rest of us good old boys did. They protested Viet Nam too, you know? Can’t we somehow tie all this together and call these terror camps just new fangled hippie commie communes?
Rove - That might be tricky to do at this point, Mr. President.
Pres – No I’m serious, can’t we just call these terror guys liberals and be done with it? Are they liberals Karl?”
Rove – No, I’m afraid they’re pretty conservative.
Pres – Are they for sex education?
Rove – No.
Pres – Women’s lib?
Rove – No.
Pres – For abortion?
Rove – No. And they’re pretty much into killing the living too.
Pres- Well, then are they for gun control… well I guess, I know the answer to that one..; but are they worried about the poor or global warming or health care or beholden to Hollywood?
Rove- Not a bit.
Pres – Well, how does this make sense? I can see fighting crazed liberals, free speech nuts and people who believe in generosity to poor people, you know wackos, but why should conservatives like us be fighting conservatives like them?
Rove – Takes us to know ‘em, I guess?
Pres - Can’t we find common ground, with elitist tax cuts for the wealthy or something? We need to turn this back to familiar ground, make this more about the cultural war than a war of cultures. How ‘bout oil? Are they against oil, Karl?
Rove – No, in fact I think if they got control of it they’d gouge us even more and control markets even worse than they’re controlled today.
Pres – Well heck, that’s another thing we’re in complete agreement about. That’s what any of us’d do. But they do hate democracy right? We’re right about that at least, right?
Rove – Yes, Mr. President, but really when you get right down to it, so do we, at least in America.
Veep – But see, this is exactly what I mean. We’re overthinking this. That’s what I like about existentialism. It’s just far enough out there to sound psychically menacing without giving us any tangible enemy to actually have to combat. It’s the kind of war we can’t lose, or win for that matter, like being afraid of the dark. Obviously we fear mongered the public into our irrational war against Iraq and it’s gone very badly and we, er, I mean, the Iraqis may have messed it up a bit, but now we have to frighten the people all over again into letting us stay for fear of what will happen if we go. Negative reinforcement all the way through. It’s consistency like this that we need to consistently be consistent about.
Screech – Right, how do we keep getting the people to fall for us continuing to cry wolf? It’s an interesting dilemma. But I like the concept, Mr. Vice President, I think you’re on the right track. If we can’t find a good hirsute two syllable tyrant to hate soon, and Sartre is only a two syllable name when the French pronounce it, becoming more vague rather than less may be the clearest way to go.
Veep – Right and that’s what I like about existentialism. It sounds intellectual and liberals don’t understand that trap. It’s the same thing they do with obscure things like science or facts and stuff like Darwin and global warming or health care; it drives ‘em crazy and they can’t help but try to rationally explain it to us. I mean once we get them talking about the intricacies of French philosophy we got ‘em by the short hairs again. Uniting intellectualism and the French, it’ll fry ‘em worse than freedom fries.
Screech – But might this just be an intellectual trap for us?
Veep - It’s not an intellectual trap for us precisely because we aren’t intellectually curious enough to fall into it, it’s a trap for intellectuals. Our supporters are immune to deep thought. Irrationality is the antidote to rationality. We’ll just get some of our propagandists to say the bible was adamant in its opposition to existentialism antecedent to its existence.
Pres – Exit-i-entails? Exi-tail-intiests-ers?
Rove – OK, now I’m beginning to see where you’re going with this. I still think we push forward with Iran and try to keep picking that scab till it bleeds. But I can sure see the virtue of trying to create some deeper unreasoning fear in the population in the meantime. So if we present it right, I think inventing an existential threat is as good as anything else we’ve got.
Screech – Well, here’s a Webster’s, let’s see if there’s anything in the definition of the word we can use.
OK first, the word existential itself is essentially defined as “having being in space and time”. Are terrorists and democrats against existence?
Rove – They are against our existence, at least.
Screech – OK, then that makes them existentialists, I suppose. Existentialism is defined by Webster’s as follows: “an introspective humanism or theory of man that holds that human existence is not exhaustively describable or understandable in either scientific or idealistic terms…”
Rove – Stuff happens, in other words.
Screech – Yes, and it continues. “…and relies upon a phenomenological approach that emphasizes the analysis of critical borderline situations in man’s life and especially of such intensely subjective phenomena as anxiety, suffering and feelings of guilt in order to show the need for making decisive choices through a utilization of man’s freedom in an uncertain, contingent and apparently purposeless world.”
Pres- I hope no one’s expecting me to define that. A whole lotta twenty five cent words there. Exite- aerialister- istisms.
Veep – No, Mr. President, and that’s the beauty of it. We don’t need to define it. Just call it what we want and make others define it to try to explain why it’s not an existential threat we face. That’s what we do with everything. God knows we’ve never failed through oversimplification. We call everybody but ourselves immoral and let them try to prove they’re not, or say we’re in favor of family values as if someone isn’t, or say we are against flag burning as if they were for it or call them cowards as if they weren’t braver than us and let them try to prove their courage by being more afraid than we are. We must always be offensively on the offensive to create an illusion of activity, and only leave them left with a list of negatives to try to disprove. We take the demogogic high ground on every issue and leave all the definitions and distinctions and hard work of actually governing to others. That’s our charm. Take terror.
What’s a war on terror mean? Who knows? But there’s been hardly a bang or whimper about it because no one wants to get on the wrong side of an absurdist philosophical debate over the meaning of the war when all we have to do is speak aggressively in inane generalities and accusatory sound bites and frighten them with dire consequences if they don’t roll over for us. Once we have defined an existentialist threat, like a culture war, true or not, we have created one. We win even when no one knows what the debate is about in the first place.
Pres – This is pretty deep.
Veep - Terror, you see, is just a declension of fear, it’s a negatively phrased concept rather than an enemy we can ever hope to beat. So we’re free to define it however we want through whatever actions we choose, not by our words. Therefore an opponent of our wars becomes a supporter of terror by default and by not being as afraid of terror as we are, they become less brave than we by implication, even though we’re really the most craven and materialistic people in the history of the country. This works because the more you talk about fear the more you create it, the more we wage war against the abstraction of terror the more we reinforce its effects in the backs of people’s minds and the more nations we refer to as deadly enemies of ours the more we increase their numbers which gives people something to really be afraid of. Therefore the more we wage war against the abstraction of terror the more we actually spread it and the more easily we can increase our stranglehold on power.
Screech – This is truly amazing. This is an epiphany. I see something I never realized before. Sir, my hat’s off to you, you really are a dark genius, and I mean that in the kindest and most admiring way possible. It seems we are the existential threat you are warning the people is threatening them. We are enemy of whom we speak.
We are doing just exactly as the definition of existentialism I just read says. We create “critical borderline situations in life…as anxiety, suffering and feelings of guilt to show the need for making decisive choices through (our) utilization of (their) freedom in an uncertain and apparently purposeless world.”
This characterization fits us aptly. Our actions are creating the very sense of disquiet and anxiety, the feelings of guilt and terror and the deep political divisions across society that we claim only we can save them from. This is beyond ingenious. The Vice President has hit on and identified an existential threat against the nation and now I see that it is us.
There was a profound quiet after this startling insight. Then Rove spoke.
Rove – Well if that’s true then it’s all the more clear that we need to get out in front of this and cover it up before anybody else finds out about our existentialism and blames us for it. Always brand your opponents before they can brand you. That’s our motto. Maybe the Vice President’s right then. As the most frightened, least honest man, he’s the canary singing in our mind shafts. Write your speech Mr. Screed and incorporate these principles in it and blame others for them.
Screech – Fine, I suppose you want me to use the old tried and true, hypocritical tu quoque formulation then, - where we blame others of that of which we are actually guilty before they can blame us for fomenting that which we say we are fighting?
Rove – Exactly. It’s our stock in trade.
Pres – Well, OK, I don’t know too much about this “too quo qwee” stuff or this “excite- stimulous- scientistists” nonsense. I really just want to make absolutely sure that whatever war it is we finally decide we’re fighting that I can tell everybody we’re winning it. Absolutely.
Veep – I think it’s a given, sir. This is the one war we’ve proven we’re actually competent to fight.
