Junk for Code

sex, power, terror

This was the outfit that the outfit Condalezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, was wearing Wednesday (Feb 23) when she arrived at Wiesbaden Army Airfield in Germany.

Sex and power is a powerful combination, especially when it is associated with an imperial state. The Washington Post comments:

"Rice's appearance at Wiesbaden -- a military base with all of its attendant images of machismo, strength and power -- was striking because she walked out draped in a banner of authority, power and toughness. She was not hiding behind matronliness, androgyny or the stereotype of the steel magnolia. Rice brought her full self to the world stage -- and that included her sexuality. It was not overt or inappropriate. If it was distracting, it is only because it is so rare."

More is happening here than Rice bringing her full self to the world state. The context is the military power of an imperial state. The context is one of violence of the military machine.

Who is the machine protecting us from in the 'post-9/11' environment? The dirty intolerable, unredeemable rabble that threaten us. Who are they? The terrorists.

Does not the image invoke, and bring back, memories of imperial Rome? Or Nazi Germany?

It is what Walter Benjamin, in his essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936), called the aestheticization of politics in the age of mechanical reproduction. I would go further and say we have links to the the cult of death in modern capitalist culture of the West and its ritual of sacrifice. What Benjamin discerned in fascism's aestheticization of politics is the inevitable culmination is war.

Is this not what we have here in this image? The Cold War of yesteryear has been replaced by the war on terror. Consider this passage by Alphonse van Worden:

"...this cluster of mass-culture genres, designed to appeal to kiddies, is where Thomas Friedman, Christopher Hitchens, Ian Buruma, David Aaronovitch and other US-regime apologists set their tales of 'the Other': Iraq is populated by weird inscrutable psychos and snarling rabble, wild eyed madmen working in wondrous, invisible and secret underground weapons labs on their sinister plots against the world, for they are corrupt and greedy without ever being specifically interested in profit....'Our enemies' reside in 'dark corners of the earth,' murky landscapes where nothing is certain, a realm of fog and chaos and ambiguity."

So let us name what the image invokes: a compassionate fascism that lies behind a liberal democratic veil. Only some tough action can save the Empire in the face of such savage, brainless, nihilistic terrorists as threaten us.

Compassionate fascism. Is that too strong?

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at February 27, 2005 08:57 AM | TrackBack