The Pissing on John Kerry

I have it on rumor that, on the Hill, John Kerry is referred to as "a haircut in search of a brain."  For sure, "fleet" is not a word that comes to mind while imaging Kerry.

Nevertheless, as he himself has said, he has "been around long enough." That being the case he ought to have known that the A-word is never to be used in syntactical proximity to the Holy State of Israel -- which is what Kerry >gasp< did at a conclave of the Trilateral Commission over the weekend.

Now, the entire world knows that Israel is in fact an apartheid state.  It is hard to see what else it might be called when 20% of its inhabitants (not counting the Occupied Territories) are excluded de facto from military service and from anything more than nominal participation in government.

In sublimely contradictory fashion, Israel defines itself as pluralistic Jewish state.  How that is different from a multi-racial Boer state might well be left to sophists to hammer out.  But, in practice, the way it works is this:  Unlike the dunder-headed Dutch, Israel's Jews are cunning enough to allow Arab representation in the Knesset (12 out of 120 seats) with a smattering of low level posts in the Government.  Nevertheless, until 2001 no Arab-Israeli served in any Cabinet and then only by the blatant tokenism of a minister sans portfolio.  Virtually no Arab Palestinian has served in the diplomatic corps and, as per the latest available statistics, only 6% of the civil service list was comprised of Arab-Israelis.

What Jewish Israel has managed is a controlled, emasculated "inclusion" which skillfully dodges the overt threshold of de jure apartheid.  As as the United States had separate but equal, Israel has effective segregation. 

When the Occupied Territories are factored into the equation, the situation is worse.  Token participation gives way to "Separation Walls" and "Jew Only" roads.

The entire aim of the so-called peace process is simply this: to throw a thin tissue of nominal and limited "sovereignty" over a patch work of segregated Palestinian enclaves -- to achieve on a territorial, geo-political level precisely the same kind of effective segregation the Jewish State has imposed on its Arab "citizens" in Israel proper.  

What Kerry's statement meant was simply this: without an agreed upon tissue of sovereignty, Israel's imposition of actual apartheid over Palestinian Arabs will be too bald too hide.

To the sane half of the world, this remark (albeit made in private) was at least an evanescent moment of refreshing candor from a Washington incapable of uttering a truth.  After all, without a flag, an honor guard and a seat at conference tables, the croaking frogs atop  their lilly pads in a Jewish pond will be nakedly seen for what they are.

Yet, for acknowledging the obvious, Kerry has all but been drawn and quartered by the Harpies on the Hill, which brings us to the real significance of the episode.

A more venal, vicious, vile and vainglorious place than the U.S. political establishment can hardly be imagined. The Caesars, the Borgias, the waning days of l'ancien regime are as bagatelles in comparison.  

There has been a lot of comment in the past few years about the internecine gridlock of Washington -- always accompanied by the pious obligato to bring back "civility" into public affairs.  But no one asks why the gridlock is so internecine. It is assumed sub silentio that the enmity is the result of opposing ideologies that have no common ground. 

This is a false diagnosis; just the opposite is the case.  The internecine viciousness that permeates Washington results from the fact that there is no ideological opposition.  Washington is simply an immense, white washed brothel and every single denizen of this congerie   is a prostitute sharing the common ground of whoredom. 

If there were a true political polemic at issue, the politicians could come to compromised agreements because objective realities can be fit, adjusted and worked out in practical ways. 

But the whores in Washington, like the courtiers of Versailles, all ascribe to the same regime without exception.  Espousing no true political polemic to be fought over, the only thing they have left to fight is themselves. Like kept bitches in a seraglio, the fight is clawed and vicious precisely because it lacks that restraint which is imposed by practical and objective realities.  Having nothing but their position in the harem to fight over, they claw at one another savagely.

It will be argued, perhaps, that representatives and officials in government all have their respective constituencies for whose interests they are bound to do battle.  But this battle -- a fight for the King's Favour, for the Pasha's Affections, for a slice of the pie -- is not a political fight.  It is simply the grabbing and clawing for court favors on behalf of a "client". 

The fight between Bryant and McKinley, between "Silver" and "Gold" and between the Grange and the Street was a contest in political form over real social and economic realities and interests and the "ideologies" which flow from those interests. But a material dialectic is not the same kind of fight as a competition over how many licenses or tax breaks corporations can get.  This is simply a scramble for largesse at the expense and on the backs of those who no longer matter.  There is no ideology, only appetite.

And so with no real causes to fight over, the whores in Washington simply look for ways to ridicule and wound whoever is hapless enough to let his guard down.

Future historians will marvel at how a small foreign state managed to impose its own interests as a kind of religious orthodoxy on the world's richest and most powerful empire. For uttering a blasphemy, in private, Kerry must now allow himself to be pissed upon in public.

©Barfo, 2014