The Dominist Manifesto
We have a choice: either to change the way we live, which is unacceptable; or to change the way that they live. And we chose the latter. —Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
The "war on terrorism" is violent and punitive. The war will be won by those who are able to exact the higher price in lives and resources, by those who are able to instill the greater fear. In short, the victor in a violent war on terrorism will be the party that is most adept at inflicting terror. —Lee Griffith
Three months after the terrorist attacks on America, and two months into the war on terrorism and the bombing of Afghanistan, a small group of Pakistani terrorists assaulted the Indian parliament, killing several people. The incident had the predictable effect of pushing two long antagonistic nations to the brink of war. It seemed eerily like 9/11 all over again, with one huge added terror: since the last time they warred, India and Pakistan had both added nuclear weapons to their arsenals.
As troops mounted along the Indian-Pakistani border, America faced a conundrum. On the one hand, Pakistanis cooperation was critical in the assault on Afghanistan and the continuing search for al-Qaeda cells and leaders; Pakistani President Musharraf had taken a perilous position in joining the American war and the prospect of a radical uprising in his country loomed large. On the other hand, India clearly had suffered a terrorist attack—at the very heart of its democracy—and thus had every right to follow America's lead: to brand Pakistan as a nation harboring terrorists; to demand Pakistanis immediate and non-negotiable compliance in eliminating future threats; and, as the militarily dominant of the two nations, to threaten mass destruction and massive civilian casualties if Pakistan failed to fall in line.
As if the danger of a nuclear meltdown in Central Asia did not frighten enough, this same scenario was simultaneously unfolding in several other global hotspots. The Israelis ran out of patience with the Palestinian uprising and decided they would no longer deal with Yasir Arafat; instead, Israeli antiterrorist rhetoric and threats began to mirror America's in tone and effect. Russian President Putin framed his nation's continuing war in Chechnya as a terrorist crisis requiring antiterrorist action. The Chinese started referring to their dissident Muslim populations as terrorists, as did the Spanish the Basque Separatists, and the Nepalese a small group of Marxist insurgents.
In response to all of these festering threats, President Bush could only issue platitudes about the need show restraint and peacefully work out differences. He seemed unaware of the contradictions and outright hypocrisies of his position. Or perhaps he grasped the situation perfectly: one set of rules for America, another for everyone else, and darn those annoying consequences.
What began as an American-directed morality play, pitting the darkest evil against the purest good, had mutated into a murky mess of realpolitik and tangled truth. As all the king's men embarked on this new crusade against terrorism, it became clear that some old scores were getting settled. Moreover, in every case the terrorists had similar grievances: they had suffered humiliating defeats and abuses; they had lost loved ones, land, and resources; they felt forced to live in debilitating circumstances; and they believed that they had exhausted all non-violent means to resolving their grievances. They all lived as subjugated people in dominist systems and felt rightfully compelled to attack the systems, however misguided, futile, and inhumane their efforts.
Ever since Ronald Reagan defied the US Congress and the United Nations with his secret support of the Nicaraguan contras against their popular government, the line between terrorists and freedom fighters has been hopelessly blurred. Few so-called terrorists get to the point of waging violence without having experienced dominist-inflicted abuse and suffering. Few so-called freedom fighters can lay claim to blameless pasts or lily-white intentions. If we assume for all people the inalienable rights of self-defense and the pursuit of personal and political freedoms, then, try though we may, we simply cannot define terrorism—and thereby justify antiterror actions—based solely on the apparent righteousness, or lack thereof, of a combatant's cause.
Grasping for a better definition of terrorism, the new crusaders point to the utter depravity of terrorist tactics. Only terrorists, they say, target civilian populations. Indeed, the argument goes, unlike civilized nations—who go to war, when necessary, against obviously hostile combatants—terrorists aim to demoralize an enemy by terrorizing its women and children. Civilized nations openly declare war and then conduct it according to a high code of ethics that forbids the intentional targeting of civilians; terrorists break all such rules, commit unpardonable sins, and deserve neither consideration nor quarter from good people.
In the wake of 9/11, this argument easily won the support of some nine out of ten Americans, along with strong majorities of Canadians, Australians, and Europeans. It presents such a stark and terrible picture—they intentionally murder innocents; we never would—that for months after 9/11 any attempts to question or even slightly moderate this viewpoint got branded as the worst of treason, as a vile insult against all victims of terrorism, as consorting with evil itself.
Most Americans believe strongly in this fiction of the perfect moral compass. Yet, without even cracking a history book, a painful litany comes to mind: the Indian Wars, Sherman's March, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo, Viet Nam, Nicaragua, Panama, Baghdad. When America goes to war, we always kill civilians. We can try to cover it with terms like "collateral damage" or with the claim that our smart, new precision bombing kills so many fewer civilians. We can ignore the monumental suffering of innocents that occurs when we intentionally destroy a country's vital infrastructure and ecology, as we did in Viet Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. We can likewise ignore—though the rest of the world will not—the disquieting truth that in more than two hundred years, America has lost a mere handful of civilians in war compared to the yearly tallies of so many other peoples. Indeed, it only took a few months for the "smart" bombs in Afghanistan to kill more civilians than the terrorists killed on 9/11; given that Afghanistan has a fraction of the overall population of America, we can only conclude that its people suffered far worse.
The horrible events of 9/11 that so catalyzed America—that struck us as so extraordinary and life-altering, that created such a moment in our history—occur with such frightening frequency as to seem commonplace to many of the world's oppressed. And, in too many instances America sold the weapons or supported the generals or manipulated the politics that led to such horrors. So "they target civilians" flatly fails as an argument; since all organized violence inevitably kills civilians, America, the current master of war, kills far too many innocents, and certainly far more than the small bands of fanatics we call terrorists.
At this point, most Americans fall back on moral reasoning: Regrettably, some civilians do suffer from our attacks, but we act in a just cause, while the enemy does not, and besides, they started it. We justify our actions by claiming a priori the justice of our actions. We simply ignore the circular reasoning and suspend, and perhaps even forbid, any further discussion. Case closed and off with their heads.
In truth, so-called terrorists and antiterror warriors all follow the same militaristic thinking: they believe that by inflicting sufficient quantities of suffering and death they can influence the choices and actions of others. Any group—nation, tribe, or Al-Qaeda cell—that commits itself to organized violence as the primary solution to intergroup conflict of necessity embarks upon a path of inflicting terror. Militarism always terrorizes, and the most dominant militaries terrorize most effectively. Moreover, militarism always spreads dominist poison, which leads to some measure of militaristic response among those it terrorizes—a response that, from the perspective of the terrorized, seems patriotic, courageous, and utterly justified—and thus plants the seeds of answering terror. And so the cycle of terror and violence, of vengeance and revenge, self-perpetuates endlessly.
Contrary to Bush-speak, terrorists do not arrive on Earth as the devil's spawn; rather, they grow inevitably from previous acts of viral militarism. In their adherence to ever-terrorizing militarism as the best way to control other people, George Bush and Osama Bin Laden can lay equal claim to the title of preeminent world terrorist. When militaries move from "strong defense in the face of clear and present danger" to "offensive, punishing, coercive force to dominate others" they cross over into the terrorist camp and their violent acts do not eradicate but rather feed future terror.
The dangerous logic of militarism dictates the mean and hostile nightmare world of modern times. As long as nations—and especially the most dominant—consider organized violence a legitimate response to real and perceived injustices, then we can expect no respite from ever-escalating terrorism or from the chronic pathologies of viral dominism. Conversely, we will never move beyond dominism into a world of peace and partnership unless we resolve the cycle of militaristic action and reaction forever and for all.
Might Makes Right Makes Might
Several months before 9/11, the Bush administration pulled out of negotiations over the Kyoto Agreement, an international attempt to address global climate change. Before his first year in office was over, Bush would also repudiate international treaties that limited the testing of nuclear weapons; that limited the production of chemical and biological weapons; that called for an end to the production and use of landmines; and that proposed an International Court for the trial of war criminals. In every case, the President justified his actions with the same terse explanation: the treaty does not serve America's best interests.
Even with the onset of the war on terrorism and the pressing need for international cooperation, Bush made clear that America would act as manager of the team rather than member of a coalition. You're with us or against us, he told the world, and if you're with us, then listen up while we give you your marching orders. Nor would this war require the input or services of the United Nations, an international body that Bush largely ignored; despite its successful peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, the UN would not be called in to help make the peace in Afghanistan, and would only be consulted with the greatest of reluctance before the invasion of Iraq.
In his staunch rejection of genuine, peer-to-peer partnerships with other nations, the President echoed a unilateralist position that has long been a fundamental tenet of dominism. Unilateralist nations conduct their foreign affairs separately and seek minimal consultation and involvement with other nations, including their allies. Though all nations have unilateralist tendencies, as a rule unilateralism only works for dominant nations who, by virtue of their superior strength, can force their ways upon others. Weaker nations, by contrast, only act unilaterally at their peril; they have more to gain by forming active alliances with others and by pursuing the peaceful resolution of conflicts, though not all nations have the wisdom to see this.
To some extent, dominists take unilateralist positions simply because they can. Why bother with the opinions of others when they have no power to resist you? This sums up the means, method, and rationale of the bully: do whatever you must to prove to others that they cannot stop you. Such brainless bullying plays a part, more or less, in all unilateralism.
Yet the underpinnings of unilateralism run even deeper: dominists come to believe that because they have superior power (as measured in armies, weapons, resources, or money) they also have superior intelligence, morality, ethics, vision, and leadership. Survival of the fittest morphs into survival of the wise, the worthy, the blessed, and the pure. The dominant nation sees itself as the best of all nations and as a beacon in all ways to the rest of the world—the head of the family, chairman of the board, dean of students, bulwark against evil, and keeper of the grail.
Moreover, having established its superiority in all things that matter—having placed itself at the center of the geopolitical universe—the dominist feels compelled to only pursue ends that add to its powers. So runs the argument against cooperation and multilateralism: if, in the effort to resolve conflicts, we must seriously engage with differing viewpoints and agendas, then we will almost certainly make decisions and take actions that oppose "our best interests" (as defined by the dominant group within a nation). Since we sincerely believe that achieving our best interests serves the best interests of the rest of world, then the right course of action, always, lay in the unilateral pursuit of our agenda.
Dominists see their superior strengths and achievements as indication of their innate superiority as people and institutions. Their might makes them right. Then they use the mantle of rightness—always backed up with the threat of force—to manipulate circumstances to increase their strengths and achievements. Their might makes right makes further might. They have no need for the input of others, nor inclination to undermine this pernicious logic of power by taking their eyes off the prize of "our best interests." For dominists, unilateralism brings the symmetry and order of a tightly run ship; multilateralism invokes the chaos of children running loose with knives.
Seen in this light, Bush's unilateralism made perfect sense. Despite the monumental threats posed by global climate change, and the near universal consensus of scientists at home and abroad, pleading for the kinds of actions proposed at Kyoto, Bush and his supporters simply could not see beyond the short-term threats to American corporations. Since addressing environmental concerns seemed to undermine their best interests, the President felt duty-bound to save his world by ignoring all things environmental. More insidiously, by refusing to take certain critical steps—such as taxing gasoline to lower consumption—America became (at least temporarily) stronger compared to the rest of the world.
Similarly, though the treaties restricting nuclear weapons brought thirty years of steady progress toward the elimination of these horrible weapons; though the Russians had made commitments and taken steps to drastically reduce their nuclear arsenals; and though the treaties created standards that all but a few rogue nations followed, the treaties did not serve the best interests of the American defense industry. So Bush unilaterally announced the repudiation of the treaties. No need for negotiations with the Russians. No inclination for international discussions. While this matter obviously concerns all of the world's people, the opinions of all but a handful of wealthy Americans could not matter less.
Nowhere does the foolishness of American unilateralism become more apparent than in its dealings with the United Nations. The UN has long represented the world's best hope for peace in our times as it gathers nations together to talk conflicts through in an atmosphere of mutual respect and careful listening. Yet American unilateralists, especially those on the political right, have worked fanatically to undermine the UN. Their chief complaint: that any decisions of the United Nations that disagree with our best interests amount to attempts to usurp American sovereignty. The most dominant nation in history simply will not—does not have to—stoop to multilateralism.
With God On Our Side
Just two days after 9/11, the Reverend Jerry Falwell and Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson had a televised chat in which they blamed the terrorist attacks on America's failures as a Christian nation and suggested that God was punishing America for its flirtations with heathens, feminists, and the A.C.L.U. Though a brief hullabaloo followed reports of their conversation, it quickly passed. Few spoke out against them, and both men continued to enjoy widespread respect and to find prominent perches from which to crow their tired nonsense.
Leaving aside the sick notion of a God who would slaughter innocents to get a whole nation to change its ways—God the Almighty Terrorist—someone needs to take both of these so-called religious men for a good, long look in the mirror. For just their sort of religious fundamentalism appears as the common ingredient in so many acts of terrorism: the Islamic fundamentalists who attacked America heard the very same God issuing commandments in their ears as do the Falwells and Robertsons of Christian fundamentalism, as did the Jewish murderer of Yitzhak Rabin and other militants of Jewish fundamentalism. Indeed, if the God-fearing and obeying adherents of these three old time religions would just stop fighting among themselves and against each other, the world would at once become dramatically more peaceful.
One of the more hypocritical post-9/11 discussions focused on the notion that Islam has essentially violent tendencies, deriving from its sacred text, the Koran. The Christians and Jews who utter this pap have the historic grasp of infants and the self-reflection of stones. For the Koran only mirrors the many examples of, justifications for, and exhortations to violence spread throughout the Old Testament of the Bible. The fact that the Old Testament serves as a basic text for Jews, Christians, and Muslims suggests that if we really want to get to the roots of fundamentalist violence, maybe we should start in Genesis.
Beginning with the expulsion from Eden, and on through the murder of Abel, the Flood, the destruction of Sodom, the razing of Babel, the torments of Job, the slaying of Jezebel and massacre of her followers, and the countless scriptural justifications of rape and exhortations to torture, the Old Testament describes a terrible world, filled with wicked and abusive people, ruled by an angry, jealous, vengeful God. And while we can blame much of this horrid history of human suffering on bad people making bad choices, the bulk of it stems from the stern ultimatums of God—But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images and cut down their groves, for thou shalt worship no other god, for the Lord whose name is jealous is a jealous God. (Exodus 34:13-14)—along with the constant "natural" disasters this Dominus Deus, this God the Dominator, inflicts as punishments.
But God the Dominator does not stop with the subordination of his minions; he goes on to dictate the total domination of everything and everybody on Earth by those who obey his laws. He divinely curses Nature in Genesis and then gives his followers dominion over all plants and animals. We search the Bible in vain for the simple love of nature that so inspires the Upanishads, the Tao Te Ching, and the mythologies and oral histories of many Native American and other indigenous cultures. Indeed, it follows directly from the Bible that Judeo-Christian-Islamic culture has grown into an ecological blight upon the entire planet.
Yet of all of God the Dominator's actions and commands, none has so effectively terrorized this world as his First Commandment. "I am the one and only God," he insists. With this single proclamation, the genocide of entire races, the rape and conquest of whole civilizations, the violent eradication of pantheistic religions, the burning of temples, holy texts, and sacred groves, the torture and murder of witches and pagans, the brutal conversion of "ignorant savages," and an endless saga of crusades, jihads, and holy wars all thunder into terrible and unrelenting parade. "Thou shall have no other Gods before me," he commands, thereby giving his blessing to any abuse inflicted in the service of his universal domination. As his followers adamantly point out, God leaves no uncertainty in his first commandment, no room for negotiations, and no doubts about the fate of unbelievers: You're either with him or against him and if you're against him, then it's to hell with you and extra hosannas for those who send you on your way.
Only one God, only one way: once one makes that choice, so many other choices become dictated, commanded, preordained. For the real fanatics—the suicide bombers and cross-wielding crusaders—all free will, conscience, and personal morals get subjugated to this dangerous logic of monotheism. Only my God, only my way: monotheists apply the Parable of the Tribes to the religious impulse by forcing everyone they encounter to either fight (thus betraying the peace and good will of one's religion); to flee (thus abandoning the holy earth from which most non-monotheistic religions derive); or to convert (thus becoming righteous recruits in God the Dominator's army).
Wherever and whenever monotheists encounter "other-believers," this same tableau of forced conversion invariably occurs. While individuals may freely choose the new god and religious practices, for the invaded culture as a whole, and for its established religion(s), the conversion process follows classic dominist principles: with as little force as necessary, but as much force as required, everyone will set aside their blasphemies and come to the One and Only God. For those who do not gracefully accept being saved, then it's flag-draped crosses and onward Christian soldiers. Monotheists brook no opposition because God commands them not to and because, according to his dictates, all other-believers are bound for eternal damnation. Monotheists sincerely believe (at least the good ones do) that they serve others by delivering the word of God and changing infidels into believers. So runs the dangerous logic of monotheism: we dominate you for your own good; to not dominate you would constitute the worst of failings.
Monotheism functions as the fundamental of all fundamentalisms. From the rigid belief in God the Dominator flows an equally rigid adherence to his teachings as revealed in specific writings. While in truth a great deal of editing and all too personal selection goes into which of a body of writings actually represents God's word and, of those writings, exactly how to interpret his meanings in present terms, fundamentalists have no use for such distinctions. They glorify the supposed perfection of the world as God intended and the way it used to be. They see themselves as divinely chosen to pull the sinning masses back into line. Anyone who does not conform to the writings of a bunch of long-dead middle-eastern men must repent, convert, or suffer extreme sanction. Monotheism leaves neither middle ground nor gray area; whatever does not strictly conform gets terrorized into submission.
As a nation founded by men and women who were themselves fleeing from monotheistic oppression, America has labored from its beginnings to tolerate all gods, religions, and spiritual practices. By separating church and state, the Founders hoped to avoid the overwhelming coercion that occurs when those two institutions agree in dominist thrust. Two centuries later it seems clear that, despite its brave and enlightened birth, America has developed into an ardently Judeo-Christian, monotheistic nation in all of its politics and most of its community life. While other-believers undoubtedly feel safer and have greater freedom in America than most other countries, Buddhists do not run for office, Taoists do not push their opinions from regular seats among the TV punditry, and sports teams do not gather in circles to perform Wiccan rituals. To the contrary, virtually all legal and political proceedings, as well as most elementary school days, begin at the very least with an invocation of "One nation under God." To the fundamentalists, this does not go nearly far enough; they constantly cavil about America's failings as a monotheist nation and, with utter dominist gall, portray monotheists as victims of even the slightest accommodations to the views or feelings of other-believers.
All aggressive States tend toward monotheism because it provides the ultimate cover for the State-sanctioned violence of war. Nothing creates masses of willing martyrs, ready to storm the bulwarks of evil, better than the wide-spread and deeply-engrained belief that God himself commands the army, directs the battle, and lifts dying straight to heaven. Any personal fears, realpolitik ambiguities, or nagging moral nuances fade before the bright and shining image of God bestowing his exclusive blessings upon the troops. True, the other side usually thinks the same, but that's the genius of monotheism: they're wrong! Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. God is on our side.
It's A Man's World
In the mid-1990s, when the Taliban began to take over Afghanistan, the world's feminists raised a hue and cry about the resulting mistreatment of Afghani women. America paid no attention to these outcries and actually tried to develop the Taliban as a good and useful ally. Yet when American bombing brought the collapse of the Taliban, and the status of women in Afghanistan began to moderate ever so slightly for the better, American leaders quickly positioned themselves as ardent defenders of women's rights.
It made for good PR spin—Sir George and his knights went off to slay the dragon and rescue the damsels in distress. In truth, the plight of Afghanistan's women served as but a useful pawn in the political strategizing of the moment. If Bush and company really cared about the systemic oppression of Afghani women, then they would have had to show similar concern toward ending the oppressive conditions of women worldwide, including in America, and especially in such countries as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Kuwait. But no such feminist revolution occurred; as we collectively moved on from the war in Afghanistan, women's issues disappeared back into the shadows of neglect and denial. We should never expect dominists to willingly work for women's liberation because the subjugation of women stands side-by-side with militarism, unilateralism, and monotheism as a first tenet of dominism.
For Western and Middle Eastern cultures, the subjugation of women begins in Genesis with "God the Father." The father or male principle appears throughout the Bible as the active, initiating force and sustaining presence for all aspects of the human experience. We find little reference to a mother or female principle, anywhere in the Old Testament, which does not even have a word for Goddess." The New Testament does have the Virgin Mary, but she acts as a mere mortal in the company of the divine Father and Son. Clearly, the men who wrote the Bible made certain to establish God as masculine. Though they tell us that God created us in His likeness, in fact quite the opposite occurred.
Having determined God's gender, the first few pages of Genesis go on to cast woman as a subordinate—hardly an afterthought—to man. God creates Eve from Adam's rib as his "helpmeet" and to keep him from his loneliness. She then engineers the big booboo of listening to the snake and its sexy talk. For her sin, God damns all of humankind, makes childbearing forever painful, and deems that a woman's desire should turn only to her husband and ruler.
This biblical story has profoundly affected all of the Jews, Christians, and Moslems who have ever read the Old Testament and considered it the word of God, as well as all of the other people of the world who have found themselves under the domination of one of these three Old Testament religions. In the first few pages of the Bible, the nature of woman as subordinate to man gets divinely cast and forever justified. Remember, she asked for it. For the rest of dominist history, she gets it.
The travails of women, through both the Old and New Testaments, makes such a sorry tale that one wonders how so many can think of the Bible as "the greatest story ever told" or, for that matter, as a holy book. The very people who so revere the Bible would quickly denounce as pornography any book written today that contained so much rape, pillage, murder, bondage, and child abuse. Yet because God himself demands the constant violence and violation in the Bible, his believers deem it sanctified. Brutality in the name of God the Dominator becomes righteous, even holy, because he commands it. Besides, it's all her fault, anyway.
Any religion that so posits the father/man as a power over the mother/woman invariably becomes a system of domination, of ranking and judging, and of ordained abuse by men against women. This in turn gives credence, and the blessings of God, to the many precepts of dominist culture: only men can serve as priests; only husbands can own property and only sons can inherit; female sexuality brings suffering and sin into the world; above all, man rules over woman and has dominion over nature.
Men rule the world; women serve as helpmeets. In the next chapter, we will explore in greater depth the biological and social explanations for why and how such sexism naturally arises in any dominist culture. For now, understand that however much a nation might strive to create balanced and equitable gender relations, so long as that nation's underpinnings derive from Old Testament doctrine, the very idea of women's liberation will strike many as utter nonsense, if not terrible blasphemy.
To the fundamentalist, women's real liberation comes in serving the roles defined for them 2,000 years ago in the Bible. The many coveted freedoms of modern women—to take part in all levels of society, including as political and religious leaders; to follow their passions and skills to whatever work most excites them; to receive payments for their efforts equal to the payments men receive for like efforts; to have sovereignty over their bodies; to genuinely cooperate with men in matters of sex, reproduction, and raising children—all of these cherished liberations run starkly counter to biblical doctrine. A nation led by religious fundamentalists can only see women as divinely ordained, second-class citizens.
As in the case of monotheism, biblical sexism derives from the absolute, non-negotiable, and unambiguous word of God. Women who stray from the fundamentalists' rigid proscriptions get punished according to their cultures. The Taliban called such women harlots and stoned them to death in public squares. In America, we call them shrill, aggressive feminists and marginalize them with legal chicanery, media spin, and glass ceilings. Or we shrug as Falwell, Robertson and their ilk denounce uppity women from public pulpits and inspire fanatics to attack women's health clinics. Or we simply take for granted that, even in modern America—leader of the free world and bastion of civilization—violence against women occurs with soul-sapping regularity.
Like militarism, unilateralism, and monotheism, sexism virally spreads in dominist culture. The more widely-accepted the dominist version of ment's and women's god-given roles, the less that individual men and women will ever see beyond their proscribed realities, and the more likely that most people (sinners aside) will come to confirm God the Father's supposed plan. So runs the dangerous logic of sexism: because God ordained from the beginning that women should not tarry with things such as reading, writing, and thinking deeply, men wrote the books that for thousands of years have been used to keep women from pursuing literacy and education; because God ordained from the beginning that only men should serve as political and religious leaders, women never had a voice in developing the political and religious systems that oppress them so; most tragically, because God ordained from the beginning that the varying differences between men and women led naturally to non-negotiable roles and standing in life, individual freedom and untold human potential has withered on the vine of sexist predetermination.
Different, Therefore Less Than
When George W. Bush talks about the war on terrorism, he always casts it as a battle between good and evil. He branded the 9/11 perpetrators as "evildoers" in his first speech on the matter and in his 2002 State of the Union address he used the word "evil" five times and introduced a classic of Bush-speak: the "axis of evil." As a self-proclaimed born-again Christian with deep ties to fundamentalist doctrine, it certainly makes sense that Bush would perceive events through a biblical prism. Yet, for all his holy posturing, his words have more to do with politics than theology; like all war leaders, he has learned to characterize the enemy in ways that will inspire his people to the bloodletting hatred that success in war requires, and if such characterizations require that you lie about the enemy, turning ordinary people into vessels of absolute evil, then lie you must.
As a far more accomplished war leader, Winston Churchill, observed, "truth is the first casualty of war." When dominist cultures come into contact with peaceful cultures, truth always gets murdered as the prelude to aggression. Rather than honestly reaching for the fruits of peace and partnership, the aggressors proffer a litany of war-inducing lies. "They threaten our survival," declare the dominists. "We must have their land and food. We cannot trust them to cooperate. We stand for good, but they stand for evil. God demands their ruination. They are evildoers, but we act at God's behest in a just and righteous cause. We cannot avoid this war, so in the name of all that is good, we must prevail, at whatever the costs."
One linchpin lie holds the whole dishonest business of war in place: difference equals inequality. Under the spell of this lie, one people looks across the divide at another people, notices obvious differences, and turns those differences into proof of the others' inequality and subhumaness. Because they do not look, sound, or act like us, they deserve mistreatment, enslavement, displacement, and death. "Differently human" gets twisted into differently weaker, poorer, dumber, or less evolved. The myriad shades and colorings of diverse cultures become the grounds and justifications for the thief, soldier, empire-builder, missionary, colonizer, industrialist, and predatory capitalist: "They are different. They are less than us. If those differently unequals get in the way, dispose of them."
Any differences we see in our adversaries stand as evidence of their inferiority, wickedness, and unworthiness, and we do well in ridding the world of them and their kind. This millennial-old lie has been told with perfect sincerity by the winners (and often the losers) in every war that humans have ever fought: Their differences make them less than us and—the crux of the matter—their pain, hardship, and death do not count for as much as ours. They do not bleed as we bleed, nor cry as we cry, nor love their families as we love ours; we do the world a favor by eliminating such vermin.
This xenophobia—this visceral dread and loathing of them—may have served early humans well as they negotiated a world of infinite unknowns. And throughout history, though some have surely known better, most people have lived in such ignorance and superstition as to easily give in to xenophobic fears. Even in modern America, the supposed zenith of human civilization, the demonization of other races, religions, creeds, nations, and political systems occurs with depressing regularity. The xenophobic disregard and disdain that Americans once felt for Injuns, transferred easily to niggers, to wetbacks, to Krauts, to Japs, to Wops, to commies, to Arabs. In times of peace, these ill feelings toward them may settle into mild dislike and vague distrust; but once the war drums start thumping and the hatemongers start spewing their different-and-less-than screed, the American people have always marched off, brains properly holstered, bound to eradicate evil once again.
Of course, no one calls it xenophobia. We prefer grandiose terms like "manifest destiny" and "American exceptionalism," terms that allow us to feel pride in our dominist aggressions while we ignore the inevitable wake of collateral damage that follows us everywhere. We Americans fancy ourselves as "benevolent hegemons"; we conquer people for their own good. We stand as the one true beacon of democracy throughout the world—isn't that why they hate us so?—and, regrettably, we often have to thwart the democratic impulse in those who just don't seem ready for it yet. Democracy's not easy, we tell the "developing" world, like parents telling children they're too young to drive.
True, America helped rebuild Germany and Japan after conquering them, and at least tried to do the same for Afghanistan and Iraq. But such aid always happens on America's terms and to the distinct advantage of key American industries, beginning with arms manufacturers. As our penchant for unilateralism ever demonstrates, we have no interest in creating real partnerships with former foes or faithful allies; rather, we act as we need to act—sometimes benevolent, sometimes harsh—to further our domination of nations and events.
As the world's only superpower, America's xenophobic tendencies naturally have wider visibility and effect. Yet, just as all nations have more or less succumbed to dominist infection, people everywhere display varying degrees of xenophobia. The visceral distrust of them underlies a wide range of all too normal but ultimately pathological human behaviors. Xenophobia can manifest as a deep-seated fear and hatred of those who merely look different (racism, antisemitism), or those of different sexual orientation (homophobia), or those from different economic backgrounds (classism), or those from other nations (patriotism, nationalism), or even those from other schools, fraternities, or sports teams (boosterism, provincialism, parochialism). For each of these common human tendencies we can find countless examples of people treating other people abysmally, simply because of their differences.
The dangerous logic of xenophobia meshes neatly with the dominist drives toward militarism, unilateralism, monotheism, and sexism. Dominists crave monocultures in which all diversity has been weeded out, all deviants have been assimilated, and everyone marches to the same conformist tunes. One God, one color, one language, one history, one ideology, one culture—one world ordered in service of the best interests of those giving the orders. Those who stand outside of the established order, by definition threaten it, and thus invite their own ruin. It was us or them, the dominists proclaim, and who can argue with that?
The Tyranny of the Bottom Line
The American economy lurched toward a terrible downspin in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Wall Street closed and all stock market activities paused for an unprecedented five business days. With the nation facing billions of dollars in repair bills, and even more for homeland security and the war against terrorism, and with the airline and insurance industries both reeling, many Americans, including those in the financial community, fretted over an economic collapse. They especially worried about a widespread sell-off of stocks—a run on the nation's bankn—when the markets reopened.
As reopening day approached, a groundswell of support arose for the idea of not selling any of one's stocks. The Internet hummed with impassioned pleas for everyone to hold onto their stocks, at least for the first few weeks, to give the markets time to stabilize and to reestablish the all-important aura of confidence. Well-meaning investors pitched the whole notion as an act of patriotism: each of us can and should do this one thing, should make this sacrifice for the greater good, should demonstrate to the whole world the infinite power of Americans acting as one nation, indivisible.
Sorry, no deal. The market dropped precipitously when it reopened on September 18, and continued losing ground for several days. Both individual and institutional investors sold rather frantically. The American economy eventually slipped into a recession, and things would get much worse in the months to come.
What happened? Though the impulse toward a patriotic esprit de corps undoubtedly tugged at most investors, an even stronger force pulled them in the opposite direction: they simply could not intentionally lose money. In the final analysis, investors had to take the steps that would tend to enhance their individual financial positions. They had to follow their own best chances for profit; before their service to the greater good, came their service to the bottom line.
I should say right now that I have no quarrel with capitalism per se, or with the notion that one make a reasonable profit for valued work. Problems arise, however, when we place the concrete realities of material gain and loss—the bottom line—ahead of less tangible realities, such as friends and family, service to one's community, the health of the environment, and vital matters of ethics, morality, love, commonwealth, and spirituality. Whatever the overarching economic system, to the extent that people must value, attend to, and take direction primarily from the world of money and things, their lives grow narcissistic and greedy; they move in tinier orbits, with limited range of curiosity, perception, imagination, and creativity. When whole nations become overly materialistic, they in effect place a price tag on everything; decisions come down to what will help or hurt the economy (especially, the pocketbooks of those making the decisions), and concerns that do not conform to some measure of profit-loss accounting fall off the table of discussion and out of public awareness.
This reveals another key principle of dominism: command over and control of the material world leads to greater powers of domination. Those who control the flow and use of natural resources; who control the labors of other people; who control the production and marketing of valued goods and services; who control the development, manufacture, and distribution of weapons; who control the creation and flow of information; who control the necessary supports for scientific and technological progress; and, who control the movements of and access to capital, naturally and inevitably gather power—and thus greater riches—to themselves. This simultaneous accretion of power and wealth dictates that small groups of dominist elites (the overclass) come to feel self-evidently entitled to lord over far larger numbers of the poor and dispossessed (the underclass). The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the gap between rich and poor—citizens and nations—invariably grows larger.
All such dominance of the material world (or lack thereof) ultimately reduces to one's ability to pay for it. As the modern "golden rule" puts it: those who have the gold, rule. Money has become the one true measure of power as well as the most straightforward and socially acceptable means for exerting said power. In a dominist world, the full range of human experience gets subjugated to the exigencies of finance. The most basic rights to food, shelter, healthcare, and education become mere line items in government budgets; the rich and overfed quarrel over whether they can afford to fund such things. The self-serving concerns of a single corporate CEO can sidetrack such patently reasonable ideas as species and wilderness protection, universal childcare, or the development of alternative energy sources. Conversely, demonstrably foolish and failing programs—like the War on Drugs or the space-based defense initiative—can go on squandering public resources for decades as long as they enhance the bottom lines of the power elite.
Modern America reigns as the all-time champion of bottom-line materialism run amok. From its origins and nearly two centuries as a slave-based economy, through a tear-soaked trail of broken treaties with its indigenous peoples, and on through the modern era of robber barons, rapacious monopolizers, resource plunderers, labor exploiters, inside traders, market manipulators, and corporate raiders, the captains of American industry have always been willing to do—have felt it their most solemn duty to do—whatever it takes, however amoral, unethical, or illegal, to increase profits and power. Every day brings new evidence of a pathologically sick economic system: the obscene gains of failed CEOs, who cash in their lucrative stock options even as they cashier thousands of longtime employees; a campaign finance system that requires politicians to spend more time influence peddling than governing; the plight of local communities who watch vital industries skip town in pursuit of cheap labor and weak environmental standards; the money-stoked, full steam ahead marketing of genetically-modified crops, cloning, and nanotechnologies despite a host of troubling, unanswered questions; the industrial polluters and chemical purveyors, the megamall builders and paradise pavers, the old growth loggers, oil drillers, stripminers, and factory farmers—all doing their jobs, just making their livings, while destroying whatever gets in the way of their God-given rights to turn a profit.
The Enron collapse in the fall of 2001 neatly demonstrated just about everything that can go wrong with bottom-line materialism. The largest bankruptcy in American history—and the series of related business scandals that followed—became a counter-balancing passion play to the War on Terrorism. In the end, we learned that when corporate executives, board members, financial auditors, and government regulators all have a stake in a company's bottom line then—surprise!—no one can be counted on to tell the truth or do the right thing; when bottom-line, paper profits become the top-of-the-mind, all-encompassing, prevailing corporate priorities, no one can afford to follow socially responsible, much less sound, business practices; and, when "I got mine" becomes the driving force and primary mantra in a culture, few will worry over the needs of others, bother with ethical concerns, or even notice the boundaries of common human decency.
Of course, America paid $500 billion to learn those same lessons just fifteen years earlier via the Savings and Loans fiasco. For that matter, business scandals of all stripe and size—from the epic to the crass and ordinary—have littered the American landscape from the beginning. It doesn't take a hard-boiled cynic to assume that the high-stake shenanigans, ponzi schemes, and creative accounting practices that brought down Enron still pass for business-as-usual in most corporate boardrooms. Though the wingtip crowd will make obligatory motions toward better understanding "what went wrong" and will pass a new law here and a regulation there, nothing substantive will change; especially, no changes will occur that might actually inhibit the profit-seeking prime directive of corporate culture. No amount of government regulation or industry self-audit and oversight can overcome the basic equation that drives bottom-line materialism: money increases power increases domination increases money.
"Greed is good," proclaimed Norman Gecko, the archetypal successful businessman in the movie Wall Street. Though Americans may cringe at the sentiment, we never actually refute it. Bottom-line materialism makes us greedy, which makes us money, which makes us good Americans.
The dangerous logic of bottom-line materialism dictates that every player—individual, small business, or large corporation—lives or dies according to its ability to keep income greater than expenses. This tyranny of the bottom line demands that non-material concerns have low priority in the day-to-day business of life; all of us must do what we must do to survive, to get ahead in the game, to stay on top. While many (indeed, most) try to run their lives and businesses without abandoning ethical, moral, or spiritual principles, and while some (far fewer) actually manage to balance great material success with non-material ideals, the greatest successes and largest corporations—the most influential and powerful players—invariably follow, embody, and reflect the fundamental tenets of me-first, whatever-it-takes dominism.
An old story tells of a scorpion who, needing to cross a river, enlisted the aid of a turtle. "Let me climb on your back so you can carry me across," said the scorpion. The turtle protested, "But you will sting me and not only will I die, you will drown." The scorpion replied, ''Nonsense, why would I do such a foolish thing?" So the turtle assented. Halfway across the river, the scorpion stung the turtle. As they both sank beneath the water, the turtle cried, "Why did you do that?" to which the scorpion replied: "I'm a scorpion."
As surely as a scorpion must sting, a bottom-line materialist must do whatever it takes to turn a profit. Greed is good, because greed increases profits. Increasing profits means increasing power means—bottom line—everything in dominist culture.
Competing Values
The year of America's War on Terrorism also brought the Winter Olympics to Salt Lake City. Before the games even began, a tawdry financial scandal undermined Salt Lake's selection as the host city, multiple allegations arose concerning public investments going into the pockets of private individuals, and a chorus of foreign voices protested excessive American jingoism at what fancies itself as a nation-transcending event. As the games wore on, several controversies erupted over dubious judging, Russia and South Korea threatened to quit and go home angry, and the usual bevy of doping scandals led to some withdrawn medals and questioned records.
Some games. In fact, like most sports from Little League baseball to the World Series, the Olympics have far more to do with fighting than playing. Though some individuals always stand out with their childlike love of play and the sheer joy they find in overcoming adversity, pushing beyond limits, and setting new standards of excellence, for too many athletes and fans it all comes down not to how you play the game, but whether you win or lose. Only one racer can finish first, only one team can win a championship, only one Olympian gets the gold: everyone else loses, falls short, disappoints, lets down, fails. In the end, everyone asks, "Who won?" and that's who we reward and remember. For the losers, the end comes like sudden death—cold, final, and heavy with regret.
Granted, many not only see no problem with this description of sports, they believe that the win-or-lose challenge provides the motivation, rationale, and ultimate thrill of any athletic contest. Athletes aspire to and achieve greatness, the argument goes, because of their deep drive to compete. One athlete on his or her own can only go so far, so fast; when two or more vie against each other, then all go further and faster. Competition, we're told, makes the mediocre great and the great, even better; without the hovering threat of loss, no one would rise to the challenge, would make the good fight, or would ever reach the top.
In dominist America, this pro-competition credo extends beyond sports to color virtually all aspects of life. It most obviously pertains in the business community, where competition looms as an omnipresent, vital force that (supposedly) keeps the engines of society well tuned and powering on. As early as kindergarten we see the introduction of win-lose learning experiences and pedagogic techniques that stress one student's success over another's failure; primary and secondary education present a never-ending series of scores, tests, bees, contests, challenges, evaluations, tournaments, and final exams that grade and rank students from top of the class or team to bottom. We say this prepares students for the real world and, indeed, various competitions typically pursue one through life, determining where one works and what one gets paid and whether or not one gets funding for projects, or gets elected, or gets the girl, the promotion, the grant, the scoop, the recognition, or the best parking space. Our legal system assumes an adversarial relationship between any two parties in conflict and imagines that with advocates on both sides competing fiercely to win the case truth and justice will somehow emerge. Similarly, our majority-rule political system divides people into two ever-bickering sides on every issue, as if the nasty business of competing for votes could actually render good public policy.
It will come as a surprise to most Americans to hear that a vast body of scientific research has demonstrated that all of the supposed benefits of competition amount to little more than shopworn myths. Competition does not make athletes, workers, students, artists, lawyers, or politicians perform better; to the contrary, the evidence shows that the stresses of competition undermine the performances of most people, including winners. Being more competitive does not make businesses any more innovative, efficient, or productive; rather, the structural demands of constant competition (including the aforementioned interpersonal stresses) deplete and misdirect human and natural resources that would otherwise go into products and services. Competition does not improve one's chances of surviving conditions of scarcity; the resources allocated toward grabbing and protecting a bigger piece of a limited pie ultimately cost more than the apparent prize. Competition neither reflects nor properly prepares one for the "real world;" instead, early exposure to competitive means and values can utterly destroy real human ways of cooperation, sharing, compassion, tolerance, and service to a greater good.
Even without the voluminous research on this subject, the many problems that competition brings to individuals, businesses, and nations appear with stark clarity to those willing to look beyond the pr spin. For every professional athlete gushing on about the joys of the competitive spirit, thousands of young people daily quit team sports, sickened and frustrated and determined to forever avoid all competition (as if they could). The billionaire CEO crowing about the wonders of free market competition neatly overlooks the myriad bankruptcies, lawsuits, scandals, layoffs, polluted environments, unsafe products, dangerous work conditions, and everyday corporate misdeeds that pass for business-as-usual in any competitive system. The educators who prescribe yet more standardized testing for already troubled schools simply ignore the many signs—learning disabilities, attention deficit disorders, alcohol and drug abuse, truancy, cheating, violence—that point to grade-stressed children who have long lost their natural joy for learning.
Faced with such evidence, defenders of competition will resort to their fail-safe argument: Competition, they say, is basic human nature. To the competitor, the whole natural world functions as one big game of king of the mountain. All living creatures necessarily compete—critter against critter, species against species—to meet their basic needs and to successfully reproduce. Survival of the fittest becomes the ultimate game; humans, as part of nature, must compete, and must do all that they can to survive, to live well, and to pass on genes.
This dog-eat-dog caricature of nature finds little validation within the scientific community. To the contrary, since early in the 20th century, naturalists have been pointing to common and at times remarkable examples of cooperation throughout the plant and animal kingdoms. In any biosystem, we find a lush profusion of living beings, from microscopic bacterium to large, complex mammals and everything in between, which display an astonishing degree of interconnection as every creature in some way relates to every other creature. What the competitive see as a tooth and claw war for survival, to the cooperative-minded appears as the continuing cycle of all living systems: give and take, eat and be eaten, live and die.
Species disappear not because the sorry losers failed to compete, but because they failed to adapt to a changing environment. The historical record shows as many tough and nasty predator species gone extinct as "uncompetitive" weaklings. Survival of the fittest means that those who can best fit in will survive, and fitting in requires giving and taking in balance with the surrounding ecology. In periods when the environment remains stable, all species tend to thrive as they in essence cooperate to sustain the balance of life. When the environment becomes unstable—due to extreme conditions (weather, earthquake, fire, flood), the invasion of new species, or the actions of humans—then only those species that can adapt to new patterns of cooperation live on.
To our detriment, we mistakenly project human patterns of competition onto nature, proclaiming, "Competition is natural!" We utterly fail to see, much less appreciate, the dynamic interconnection and cooperation that governs the natural world. Most tragically, we fail to embody the essential, humane, and ever natural spirit of peaceful cooperation that should likewise govern the human world.
Competition diminishes people by directing their most creative juices toward the odious task of defeating others. When this becomes the predominant definition of a life, then wither love, compassion, empathy, sharing, play, wholeness, and simple human kindness? When we make the goal of beating others our top priority, we naturally have less focus on and commitment of energy and resources to the task at hand, much less to the interpersonal and psychoemotional consequences of our actions. Nice guys finish last, while the winners typically leave a trail of stepped-on toes and elbowed ribs in their wake.
American dominists show zero tolerance for anti-competitive views and dismiss all such talk as the nattering lamentations of the weak, the lost, and the envious. Competition, they never tire of shouting, has made America great, while cooperation has long been discredited as the foolish standard of communism, socialism, and '60s counterculturalism. Our leaders do everything they can to turn governance into a cutthroat competition for money and votes, then cast aspersions upon the evils of "big government" and taxation that might allow for the cooperative funding of essential goods and services. The culture makes icons out of millionaire rogues and thieves, while woefully underfunding, and basically ignoring, such noncompetitive professionals as nurses, teachers, police, firefighters, EMTs, and childcare workers. Having established competition as the state religion, America consigns losers to a purgatory of restricted access, marginal rights, under-funded opportunities, and outright disenfranchisement.
Secret Governance
If we live in a world filled with evildoers and cutthroat competitors, if the mass of humanity stands against us rather than with us, and if constant interpersonal struggle, violence, and war so define the human condition, then common sense dictates that we approach most, perhaps all, relationships from a protective veil of suspicion and secrecy. As a necessary function of growing up dominist, we come to view others—even family members, but especially strangers, foreigners, and those we perceive as fundamentally different—as potential threats to our happiness. Everyone more or less becomes "the other side" in the great and petty wars that fill our days. Just as we learn to never show our hand in a game of cards, so we learn, in the dominist game of life, to keep our innermost thoughts and feelings securely to ourselves.
The more dominist a relationship becomes, the more essential the need for secrecy between parties. For two or more people engaged in a struggle for dominance, each person's "inside" information has the potential to become, in the opposition's hands, a weakening force or fatal blow. The need to keep one's secrets to oneself, combined with the quest to discover the secrets of others, can cast a distrustful subtext on the most innocent of relationships.
Any group, organization, or social enterprise made up of such secrecy-inflicted individuals develops an information hierarchy based on access to inside information. We can picture this as a large circle defining the group, with a series of concentric sub-circles within, defining deepening levels of information access. All members of a group become classified according to level of access (a classification which relates to power and money). The closer one moves to the inner circle of a group, the more one learns of the group's deepest secrets. Group function comes to depend on the members of each sub-circle keeping secrets from those outside the sub-circle, while the whole group keeps most everything secret from absolute outsiders. Naturally, everybody learns to distrust most everyone else, distrust well earned as most everyone else tries to uncover everybody's deepest secrets.
Secrecy, for the typical dominist organization, functions like a form of currency. Success, power, and wealth obtain to the one that can gather the most secrets and keep them most securely. Businesses jealously guard their research, designs, formulas, and plans, even as they ferret out the inside information of their competitors. Governments develop great and complex webs of data classification; the more dominist the government, the more assiduously it hides information from other governments, from its civilian population, and within the government, one agency from another. Athletes hide their game plans and strategies, as journalists hide developing stories, politicians hide personal agendas and dirty laundry, financial analysts hide insider tips, religious authorities hide the shameful behavior of subordinates, manufacturers hide product flaws, and environmental polluters hide incriminating data. Lawyers, by law, hide every word, document, or communication that comes their way. Likewise, the military hides everything it can and considers the willing breach of its classified information the worst form of treason.
While we may raise a great ruckus over specific secrets as they come to light, we rarely question the personal and professional impulse to hold secrets in the first place. Rather, like all things dominist, we tend to accept chronic suspicion and the cult of secrecy as just human nature and the way things work.
When, however, the most dominant government in history takes the practice of secrecy far beyond the limits of common sense and basic decency and when, in its craving to keep things hidden, it casually violates a host of ethical and moral standards, and when it connives to conceal especially odious, even criminal, circumstances, then we can certainly hope for a widespread awakening to the dangers of secret governance. Enter the Bush administration.
One of the first acts of the new President was to counter a Freedom of Information law that would have released documents from the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations. This was followed by a series of still-secret meetings led by Vice President Cheney at which executives from the oil and energy industries helped to craft the nation's energy policies. After 9/11 came the USA Patriot Act, a collection of laws and fiats that, among other things, closed formerly open immigration hearings and led to the secret arrest and detainment of hundreds of individuals. As the War on Terror progressed it spawned the standard trappings of the Security State: increasing government surveillance of the People, decreasing transparency of government activities, and authoritative assurances throughout that it was all for the nation's own good.
Yet, conversely, for more than a year the Bush administration resisted the sort of independent congressional investigation into 9/11 that had followed similar, many far less serious, events in American history. The administration seemed bent on engaging in the classic blunder of presidential cover-up. Little tidbits that managed to leak to the press—showing data overlooked and warnings ignored—only added to the sense that someone had something to hide. When Bush finally did appoint an investigative commission, he named master secret-monger Henry Kissinger to lead the effort. Though Kissinger would eventually withdraw from the commission (he was unwilling disclose personal secrets), his brief association with it and the fact that Bush would even consider him for the job left the whole enterprise tainted.
With the passage of the Homeland Security Act in [October 2002] the Bush administration's quest for absolute control of the nation's secrets turned utterly Orwellian (a word that, after just two years of Bush and company, had grown in use a millionfold). The bill authorized the new Total Information Awareness office to snoop into every aspect of American life—from grocery purchases to internet traffic, to every airplane taken and motel room rented, to medical prescriptions, housing sales, video rentals, and tax statements—and then to correlate the data with individual fingerprints and social security numbers. In an action sure to arouse Big Brother watchers and conspiracy theorists, the office was given the logo of an all-seeing eye scrutinizing the planet from atop a giant pyramid with the motto scientia est pontentia—knowledge is power.
The pernicious logic of secrecy dictates that knowledge/power accrues to those who best control the flow of and access to information. The Bush administration contended that the knowledge gained from its invasion of the public's privacy and suspension of civil rights was needed to make the nation powerful enough to win the war on terrorism. They had to know the People's secrets, even as they kept government secrets from the public. By expanding its knowledge of everyone who may in any way stand against it, the administration would increase its powers, promote its survival, and prevail against hordes of evildoers. Simultaneously, by concealing its own secrets from all outsiders, it would undermine the powers of potential enemies. That all this was, according to Bush, driven by the exigencies of a perpetual war, meant that Americans should grow accustomed to living with suspicion, paranoia, and the cult of secrecy.
The War on Terra
One final arrow in the dominist quiver demands our attention: To the extent that an individual, group, or nation turns dominist, it inevitably turns against the environment. Wherever dominists go, they terrorize the local ecology by depleting natural resources, generating excessive wastes, spewing toxins into the earth, air, and water, and eliminating plant and animal species. To the planet, dominist humans behave like out of control cancer cells, multiplying beyond the bounds of balance and reason, while destroying the host in the process.
The fact that their lifestyles prove so detrimental to the environment causes little concern to dominists. "Since humans are superior to plants and animals," they reason, "human needs matter more than the needs of other species, which matter not at all." The Bible makes clear that nature exists to serve humanity; God commands that man shall "have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the Earth." The modern gods of mammon hungrily concur: any degradation of the Earth, including the wholesale elimination of other species and entire ecosystems, makes good sense if it supports the best interests of and turns a profit for the dominist elite.
Such anti-environmentalism flows ineluctably from each of the aforementioned dominist principles. Militarism, for example, causes unfathomable damage to nature. Contending armies have been setting the enemy's fields and forests afire, killing their livestock, poisoning their wells and streams, and salting their earth since the beginning of organized warfare. America, the reigning prince of war, has blanketed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear radiation, has defoliated Viet Nam with the extreme toxin Agent Orange, has similarly poisoned the marijuana and coca producing landscapes of several nations, has used uranium-tipped bombs in Iraq (twice) and Bosnia, and has rained tons and tons of destruction on too many biosystems to mention. Just practicing and preparing for war takes a horrible toll in wasted and misdirected natural resources. Moreover, in modern times especially, the destruction goes on long after the fighting stops, from scattered land mines and unexploded bombs, and long-persisting toxins, and flora and fauna that may take generations to recover. War is hell, especially, because it leaves the environment hellish.
The militant dominists who perpetrate these crimes do so without a trace of hesitation or thought given to the ecological consequences of their actions. While they have learned to at least pay lip service to the problem of civilian casualties—those nagging collateral damages—damage to nature still goes unacknowledged. Worse, those who try to raise environmental concerns during war get branded as fools and sissies; standing for the environment always means standing against the dominists.
We likewise see strong currents of unilateralism in the anti-environmental worldview. The more pressing ecological concerns transcend boundaries between peoples and nations. One nation acting alone cannot hope to address such issues as ocean and air pollution, ozone depletion, species extinction, or climate change; people everywhere contribute in large or small measure to these problems and genuine solutions demand that all people come together and work cooperatively. Yet one superpower acting unilaterally can throw a tar-ball of self-interest onto the best laid plans of expert panels and global conferences. As America repeatedly demonstrates, when might makes right, it also makes any contrary or discomfiting science wrong, especially that coming from do-gooder environmentalists.
The dominist principles of monotheism, materialism, competition, and sexism also tend toward environmental ruin. I have already mentioned some of the anti-environmental antecedents found in the Bible. While people of various religions have at times behaved destructively toward the local ecology, monotheists have by far done the most serious damage, in part because their theologies focus adherents more on heaven than on a deep and abiding love of nature. Likewise, while other economic systems, most notably communism, have taken terrible tolls on the environment, the competitive, bottom-line materialist greed of 20th century America has brought the entire planet to the brink of ecological disaster on multiple fronts. And, wherever sexist, male-dominating culture takes root, Mother Nature suffers as badly as the women do; conversely, the most gender-balanced societies today—Sweden, Scandinavia, Norway—have the world's most environmentally progressive and enlightened attitudes and practices.
Anti-environmentalism especially reeks of xenophobia. The xenophobe's fear and hatred of others logically extends to the wild and unruly of Nature. Xenophobes attack Nature's otherness with evangelistic zeal, aiming to cage, tame, domesticate, or eliminate all creatures that give offense. Nothing rankles the xenophobic dominist more than the profuse, teeming diversity of Nature; he will raze a forest to plant the straight and ordered rows of a woodlot, will bulldoze mountains to lay the straight and ordered asphalt of an interstate, will dam, dredge, and redirect rivers to create straight and ordered industrial waterways.
Dominists suffer such a profound disconnection from alien Nature that they barely feel the tragic consequences of their behavior. While the whole planet slips into a chaotic stew of global climate change, and people everywhere cry out for enlightened leadership, and scientists everywhere cry out for immediate action, the dominist overclass plunder-blunders on, utterly incognizant of the terrors they perpetrate. They rigidly view others—human, plant, and animal—as separate, different, and probably evil, and perforce fail to understand the forever self-inflicting wounds of their xenophobic attacks.
The twisted logic of anti-environmentalism leads us down a hard path of ever-increasing peril: Those who do not experience connection with the environment will come to fear and hate it, will thus abuse it, will thereby turn it unsuitable for healthy human habitation, will therefore experience increasing disconnection, fear, and hatred. Moreover, while dominism has always cast an anti-environmental pall upon the world, the past century and a half of industrial dominism has resulted in threats of planet-sized dimension. For all the dangers of global militarism, dominist anti-environmentalism poses the most serious of challenges to sustainable human culture.
This examination of anti-environmentalism reveals a critical key in our understanding of dominism. Like threads in a finished tapestry, or like strands of viral DNA, each of these basic tenets of dominism—militarism, unilateralism, monotheism, sexism, xenophobia, materialism, competition, secrecy, and anti-environmentalism—connects to, feeds upon, interacts with, and reinforces the others. Militarists tend to behave unilaterally, to take absolute religious and philosophical beliefs, and to create sexist, materialistic, competitive, secretive societies. Xenophobes fervently militate against other races, religions, ethnic groups, economic systems, species, and the opposite sex. Materialistic societies develop strong militaries, fixed gender roles, highly competitive culture, and an errant disregard of the environment. We never see just one of these behavioral patterns in isolation; rather, they tend to manifest, in varying degrees, as essential elements of a whole worldview and lifestyle.
While an individual will embody certain of these tenets more than others, and may bypass some entirely—the soldier who loves nature, the male CEO who treats women as full equals, the ardent monotheist who preaches antiracism—the more dominist a person or group becomes, the more powerfully they will manifest the full pattern of dominist thought and behavior. Since the dangerous logic of dominism dictates constant viral expansion, dominist individuals and groups invariably grow more dominist—more militaristic, unilateralist, monotheistic, sexist, xenophobic, materialistic, competitive, secretive, and anti-environmental—with time and experience. Once infected with any aspect of viral dominism, one eventually succumbs to the whole disease.