Suffering Cockburn: 9/11 and the Left's Collective Unconsciousness

Two weeks ago, Alexander Cockburn collapsed into a pile of rubble. Today, that pile is still steaming:

"It's as dismal a political landscape as I can remember in thirty years. Yet some discover a silver lining. They find it in the 9/11 conspiracy cult, which I have discussed here in recent weeks. A politically sophisticated leftist in Washington, DC, wrote to thank me for my attack, but added, "To me the most interesting thing (in the US) is how many people are willing to believe that Bush either masterminded it [the 9/11 attacks] or knew in advance and let it happen. If that number or anything close to that is true, that's a huge base of people that are more than deeply cynical about their elected officials. That would be the real news story that the media is missing, and it's a big one."

"I'm not sure I see the silver lining about cynicism re government," I answered. "People used to say the same thing about the JFK conspiracy buffs and disbelief in the Warren Commission. Actually, it seems to demobilize people from useful political activity. I think the nuttishness stems from despair and political infantilism. There's no worthwhile energy to transfer from such kookery. It's like saying some lunatic shouting to himself on a street corner has the capacity to be a great orator. The nearest thing to it all is the Flying Saucer craze. 'Open up the USAF archives!' It's a Jungian thing."

Jungian, schmungian; Alexander Cockburn is an amateurish amateur psychoanalyst. But does he have the capacity to be a great orator? Not if this feebly demagogic performance is anything to go by. Within a single peevish paragraph (which pleased him so much that he chose to reprint it), Cockburn complains of "nuttishness ... despair ... political infantilism ... [and] kookery" while haughtily disdaining to construct a rational argument or even address any relevant facts. What's roused his ire is the plebs' refusal to toe the party line on 9/11. It was imperial blowback, you see -- the guys at The Nation had that all worked out for us by the afternoon of the very same day. Whodunnit? Mad Muslims of course, all on their own; and no goddam wonder, for didn't we make them mad? Case closed.

Shockingly, though, a large and growing number of people still won't take Cockburn & Corn's word for it. In New York City alone, 49.3% of the population is nuts. (Notoriously unsophisticated, those Manhattanites.) The poor rubes on the street persist in their cynicism re government by refusing to swallow Corn & Cockburn’s account of that incomparably handy crime (an account identical to the government’s). Even worse: they also think it matters that their government might be lying to them, especially since The Handiest Crime in History has provided Bush, Cheney and their successors with a universal and imperishable casus belli. And those clueless rubes are still insisting that the US ruling class should not be allowed to get away with it.

What kookery!

Alexander Cockburn, by contrast, is politically sophisticated. Marshalling the profound wisdom that comes only with age, he informs those youthful activists that their cynicism re government is equivalent to a nutty obsession with invaders from Outer Space. The grand old man of the American left clearly feels that this argumentative strategy is kinda kewl, for he never tires of deploying it. Other than that, he offers them (and us) an irrelevant quote from Adorno about occultism; a useful reminder by Richard Aldrich that the US government routinely engages in sophisticated perception-management; and a plausible observation by Chuck Spinney that people should not be wasting their time with all that no-plane-at-the-Pentagon stuff.

Naturally, Cockburn entirely misses the point: Yes, the refusal to release video evidence from the Pentagon exemplifies precisely the kind of distraction tactic described by Richard Aldrich; but no, this is no argument at all against the rational, evidence-based belief that they are using this issue to distract people from far more serious anomalies in their account. It is merely a further reminder that cynicism re government should include wariness about what they want us to focus on - a fact noted by rational and conscientious cynics re government long before Cockburn mounted the pulpit and cleared his throat.

What else does he have to offer us? Well, that's it. No, seriously. Apart from lots more invective, that's Cockburn's entire case against cynicism re government. He devotes the final third of his tirade to rumpling his nose at the plebs by reprinting a rude, confused, angry email received by a colleague from someone called "art guerrilla aka ann archy". It’s certainly a very noisy missive. But does it clinch Cockburn's argument against cynicism re government? By no means. It merely demonstrates that some young people are rude, angry, and confused; but of course we knew that already. And some old people are no better.

The most striking thing about the whole performance is its air of wounded vanity. Cockburn’s entire subtext is: Why won't these people listen to me? A rude and angry person might say that he sounds like some lunatic shouting to himself on a street corner. That would be wrong. In fact, Cockburn resembles a Tory taxi-driver bemoaning the abolition of hanging.

This is the American left in 2006, and it's simply not good enough. To state the obvious: the case for cynicism re government does not depend on there having been no plane at the Pentagon (a claim dismissed by most sceptics), nor does it depend on there having been explosives in the Twin Towers (though this is what the government and the corporate media would like us to believe). It does not depend on no cynic re government ever uttering a foolish or untrue word about the 9/11 attacks. It does not depend on ann archy’s ability to control her use of block capitals, expletives and exclamation marks. It does not depend on any rube or group of rubes successfully emulating Miss Marple.

It depends only on attention to the obvious: that the burden of proof lies with the Bush Gang, who alone have full access to the evidence they couldn't destroy or delete, who have refused to testify under oath or on record, and who have singularly failed to substantiate their own remarkably convenient and truly world-shaking coincidence theory. The Bush Gang had the means, the motive and the opportunity to commit or permit that crime of mass murder, as well as a record of lying and conspiring as long as Cockburn’s face. Five years on, the evidence is mounting that Cheney, Rumsfeld and others were at least complicit in a crime that claimed only dispensable victims and that served only those who exploited them. Their threadbare, reluctant and belated account of 9/11, compiled by a committee of hand-picked toadies after Kissinger had turned down the job, is indeed a scam, a whitewash and a fraud.

On all this, Alexander Cockburn has not a word to say. Instead, he prefers to lambast the perceived defects of a few carefully selected "cynics" who have the temerity to distrust their government. We could cite Brecht here, and his modest proposal that the government should dissolve the people and elect another. But, under the circumstances, let's stick with Jung:

"All neurosis is a substitute for legitimate suffering."

The Cockburnite left's response to 9/11 was a paroxysm of premature smugness: "Imperial blowback! We told you so!" Five years on, we are all still paying for the neurotic indifference to reality manifested in that evidence-proof response. In the face of an oxymoronic War on Terror now rechristened "The Long War" (or "World War III", as the President would have it), something better and more rational is required. Something more effectively anti-war. Something more persuasive than opportunistic pseudo-omniscience. Something more sophisticated than rash acceptance and stubborn de facto support of a notoriously mendacious right-wing government's most indispensable myth. Something lefter than narcissistic laments about the gaucheries of carefully-selected proles.

It is in fact available. As Cockburn's anonymous "sophisticated leftist" points out, "a huge base of people ... are more than deeply cynical about their elected officials." That "cynicism" is entirely justified - and incomparably more rational than Alexander Cockburn's real or simulated credulity. That "huge base of people" is also the natural constituency of the left. So Cockburn would do well to listen to those people, to learn from them, to support them in their efforts to hold their warmongering leaders to account, and to help them avoid red herrings like the Pentagon missile yarn.

If that means apologising for his shameful attitude hitherto, then it might constitute a blow to his vanity. While Alexander Cockburn ponders whether such a blow would be endurable as legitimate suffering, the rest of us may wonder whether the left, and the world, can afford to ignore the deeply counterproductive effects of such vanity for very much longer.

[ Further links to be added later.]