Degradation Rituals

Our Sadomasochistic Society

L. Romanienko

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137393982
• eBook ISBN: 9781137387080
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

A candid exploration of sadomasochistic practices driving contemporary culture, covering the demoralizing socioeconomic and political conditions that give rise to agonizing rituals of cruelty demonstrated at systemic, transnational, religious, familial, and even sexual spheres of human relations.

Part I

Regulating Conventional Culture

Chapter 1

Deconstructing Degradation Rituals

Introduction

We are living in a sadomasochistic society. To whatever extent one agrees or disagrees with this assertion, the rise of principled dissent against public-private sector repression is utterly undeniable. These acts of individual and collective dissent composing the broader culture of creative and experimental civic engagement provide evidence of extraordinary independent and collective action taking place globally to address the deteriorating socioeconomic, political, and cultural processes associated with contemporary systemic arrangements of cruelty, whatever label one chooses to give them. The overwhelming resistance to the socioeconomic and political changes indicative of disintegrating democracy benefiting only a miniscule sliver of the world’s population and significantly harming the rest of us is now part of the common fabric of urbane cosmopolitan civic participation happening around the world (Kagendo 2004; Kellner 2003). This contemporary phenomenon of individual and collective resistance has, in fact, been so persistent that it is now considered part of the permanent feature of an emerging social movement society (Meyer and Tarrow 1998). According to Soule and Earl (2005, 334–47), “Drawing on observations about the ways in which social movement actors make claims against their targets, [movements] are becoming institutionalized as part of the standard repertoire of political participation. [T]here has been a general upward trend in the number of participants reported at protest events, . . . the number of claims articulated by social movements over time has expanded, [and they have a] fairly continuous [and less] sporadic nature.”

Disintegrating democracy and the rise of lived insurgent activism are therefore indicative of persistent and often seamless, formal and informal, tacit and overt, public and private, individual and collective, organized and disorganized, and episodic and continuous resistance against deteriorating socioeconomic and political conditions. The popularity and persistence of the lived experimental engagement project are further advanced by a simultaneous decline in other conventional forms of formal and informal civic participation traditionally available through nonprofits, church, and state (Romanienko 2010). These resistance endeavors are not without challenges, however, and are being met with a variety of social controls designed to demand conformity to, and coerce complicity with, repressive regimes. Before we examine these in greater detail, my analysis might best be served by first demonstrating deteriorating styles of regime-mediated human relations and the incremental decline of diplomatic communication.

The Rise of Coercive Diplomacy

One of the factors associated with both conformity to and insurgency against existing systemic arrangements is the remarkable deterioration evident in the negotiating style of diplomats and other US government leaders. Theorists have argued that the gradual decline of civility first became apparent in contemporary international relations with the United States and then later through the United States’ increasingly antagonistic treatment of its own citizens in domestic relations. This deteriorating negotiation style domestically and internationally has been attributed to the unintended consequence of power distance (Druckman 1996), the paucity of integrating nation-state issues (Doran 1997), the historic paradoxes of posturing (Khanna 2004), the lack of creativity in multilateral coalition building (Ungerer 2007), and the disregard of the majority of the world’s people’s wish for harmonious globalization and related harmony (Montville 1989). The concept surrounding deteriorating relations that is germane to the current analysis is the rise of coercive diplomacy:

Coercive diplomacy and deterrence are political and psychological strategies that must be directed by political leaders, coordinated with diplomacy, and sensitive to the adversary’s political constraints, world views, and perceptions. [T]he strategy of coercive diplomacy is an age-old instrument of statecraft [. . .] in which threats, persuasion, positive inducements, and accommodation were integrated into a crisis bargaining strategy that provided political leaders with an alternative to war or to strictly coercive military strategies [. . .] that aims to influence an adversary’s will or incentive structure. Coercive diplomacy also differs from deterrence. Deterrence invokes threats to dissuade an adversary from initiating an undesired action, while coercive diplomacy is a response to an action that has already been taken. (Levy 2008, 540–45)

In recent history, the United States has been increasingly coercive in nearly all its exchanges, a trend visible in relations not only with people from other nations but also with its own citizens. The extent to which one personally experiences this coercion is often determined by race, gender, ethnicity, and class. Some forms of coercion are ubiquitous, while others are selective. One example of a coercive domestic policy that affects single mothers (who are disproportionately women of color) is the fingerprinting of the poor. There are many others.

According to diplomatic theorists, contemporary state antagonism and the absence of civility in American human relations may indeed be getting worse, but this is nothing necessarily new. These theorists argue that the recent solidification of coercive diplomacy both domestically and internationally reflects centuries of hierarchical negotiations built on a series of historical narrow choices and other methods deploying little more than calculated ultimatums. According to Logevall (2004, 474–45, 488),

[T]here is a fundamental reason why American officials defined their choices so narrowly, why diplomacy held almost no place in [contemporary international negotiations, due in part to] Americans’ attitudes toward European-style diplomacy, with its emphasis on mutual give-and-take. Geographic separateness allowed Americans to indulge in such notions. America’s neighbors were weak, and through the early years of the twentieth century was to a large extent shielded from predatory powers by two vast oceans. Both before and after attaining great-power status, therefore, America lacked the necessity to negotiate and compromise continually in order to survive and prosper.

Evolving throughout its history, as any objective analyst of international relations would have to conclude, the patterns of a deteriorating diplomatic style indicative of explicit coercion and the demand for unquestioning conformity have not enhanced the popularity of the United States internationally. According to a recent RAND report triangulating Gallup and Pew public opinion polls conducted worldwide, the international opinion of the United States is, in fact, frighteningly low, even among our alleged allies (Wolf and Rosen 2004). These opinions are even lower in the developing world and at rock bottom in Islamic nations (Gallup International Association 2009a; Pew Global Research 2009; BBC World Service 2010).1 But within the United States, public opinion about the United States is truly disparaging. During the George W. Bush administration, only 39 percent of the American public believed he was competent to “do the right thing” (Pew Global Research 2009). Of course, American public opinion reporting on international or domestic public opinions is fraught with suspicion, as any margin of error is likely to represent opinion in a more favorable light. The Gallup poll, in fact, boldly stated on the cover page, “Not to be publish[ed] before July 4th—US Independence Day,” apparently to ensure that information regarding the vehemence with which the world distrusts and dislikes the United States would not put a damper on domestic celebrations (Gallup International Association 2009b). To enhance the likelihood of validity, Islamic scholars have created their own global public opinion project at the University of Maryland in cooperation with the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Corporation to triangulate data using their own informants and more objective social scientists and methods (Brookings Institution 2009). These regime censorship tactics lead any casual observer to wonder if global alienation and the carefully timed obscurantist dissemination of unfavorable public opinion data are evidence of a disintegrating democracy.

The authors of the RAND report suggest that the United States should reverse the deleterious trends of decivilizing international discourse and instead be more sensitive not only to the explicit worldwide rejection of American values associated with consumerism and the objectification of women but also to consider reversing policies increasingly understood around the world as aggression in service to the State of Israel (Wolf and Rosen 2004, 19):

Misunderstanding of American values is not the principle source of anti-Americanism. The source lies in explicit rejection of some of the salient characteristics of American values and institutions. [M]aterialism and conspicuous display—are (in some places and for some groups) resented, rejected, and bitterly opposed. [In addition,] US policies have been, are, and will continue to be major sources of anti-Americanism in some quarters. The most obvious and enduring policies that arouse strong anti-Americanism are strong support for Israel. US concern and support for the plight of the Palestinian victims is viewed as half-hearted and grudging. To explain let alone extenuate US support for Israel as actually a reflection of democratic values, tolerance, and defense of freedom, rather than a denial of these values to the Palestinians, may be an insuperable task.

As a chillingly prophetic policy statement, the RAND report examined the ideological underpinnings driving the civil rights movement and recommended the development of an experimental martyrdom public relations (PR) model of diplomacy using politicians of color who would emulate Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. and would allegedly facilitate the United States’ ability to garner ethical legitimacy and improved relations with the Middle East and the rest of the world. To that end, a quantitative discourse analysis deconstructing effective elements of Mandela’s and King’s speeches is offered in order for the United States to advance similar public diplomatic tactics with the intent of raising domestic and international approval for expanding military aggression throughout the Middle East. They suggest that these Mandela- and King-like public relations campaigns can be implemented through radio and other outsourced multimedia abroad, since official changes in coercive diplomacy would be highly unlikely.

The persistent diminution of the ethical discernment and intellectual capabilities of domestic as well as international public audiences by this and many other advisors formulating US foreign policy is truly appalling. Despite this civil rights imitation tactic driving the Mandela-King PR campaign developed by political strategists and designers at RAND, coercive diplomacy will surely sustain its record as an abysmal failure based on a two-pronged approach to world domination that is destined not to withstand the rigors of even the most casual cost-benefit analysis. The foundation of coercive US diplomacy typically invokes (1) overestimation of the potential of media to successfully advance increasingly bizarre PR campaigns under the cloak of historic African American struggles and (2) underestimation of the ability of public audiences at home or abroad to access relevant, objective, alternative knowledge and formulate nonnostalgic sentiments and actions accordingly. Citizens around the world almost ubiquitously ridiculed, for example, the daily color-coded terror alert warning system allegedly indicating the threat levels of terrorism and a military PR spectacle that would have surely impressed the likes of Lenin and Hitler. On May 1, 2003, anchored just thirty miles off the coast of the United States with his helicopter hovering in sight and outfitted in full combat regalia, then-president George W. Bush landed ceremoniously amid exceptional pomp and circumstance on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier with an elaborate banner in the background proclaiming the deceitful message, “Mission Accomplished.” Though the notion that US bombing campaigns to secure oil reserves in Iraq might become more popular through this or any other marketing campaigns is indeed preposterous, coercive diplomacy coupled with manipulative, emotion-eliciting tactics vacillating between martyrdom and militarization can hardly be expected to improve the United States’ unfavorable opinion domestically or internationally. Is the increased reliance on carefully timed and orchestrated promotional spectacles on a grand scale reminiscent of Soviet- or Chinese-style socialism to enhance state legitimacy an indication of disintegrating democracy?

Regardless of the extent to which one condones the exorbitant use of public funds in the form of citizen taxes to launch elaborate and expensive PR spectacles to improve highly tarnished domestic and world opinion through faux military spectacles, it appears that audiences are interested in genuine substance and not style. Protracted bloodshed, debt, and coercive foreign policies—referred to in diplomatic circles as hard power—cannot be deceptively framed by Mandela- or King-like speeches for very long, even by the smoothest executive-level officials, who may or may not be African American. According to Khanna (2004, 1),

This [hard power] reflex has contributed to America’s plummeting international reputation, and—as is evident from Iraq—it is an approach which can be staunchly resisted, circumvented, and undermined by terrorists and militias. It has even alienated many traditional allies of the United States who abhor terrorism. If the use of U.S. power proves counterproductive, it is hardly a virtue. Hard power alone is not what matters. What really counts is the ability to get things done, which is what power is, after all.

Objectives-oriented management has never been the goal of autocratic or totalitarian systems of rule—quite the contrary. Mismanagement, chaos, and exploitation usually go hand in hand with old and new forms of dictatorship. Yet the persistent use of coercive diplomacy and related failures of domestic and foreign policy driven by the US regime’s hard tactics in the age of cruel modernity is indeed astounding. And what would actually change if these concocted PR campaigns were effective and opinions of the United States were improved? The three-thousand-year track record of successful resistance to colonization of oppressed people around the planet is unlikely to change overnight with modern-day invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, or any other sovereign nation. Furthermore, the short-run intention to continue to colonize petroleum reserves or reduce threats to the State of Israel will surely be politically, technologically, and logistically untenable, even with the popular support of governments secured through the perpetually ineffective combination of coercive diplomacy, martyrdom, and militia. At this juncture of history, no matter who is elected or appointed as a Supreme Court–legitimated, RAND think tank–designed, presidential figurehead, neither colonization of petroleum reserves nor protracted deployment of troops is likely to find much support among either domestic or international audiences. Nevertheless, the United States’ unusual modern combination of coercive diplomacy, martyrdom, and militia remains the new formulaic modus operandi setting the declining standard for deteriorating international relations around the world.

Coercion and the Decline of Civility

What should not be lost in all these undiplomatic faux reparation schemes designed by the corporate-bolstering US think tanks is the fact that the new relentless coercion with which regime officials control both foreign and domestic interests has permeated human relationships throughout the empire. The deterioration of civility and the rise of coercive communication more generally have profoundly negative consequences for humanity due to the destruction of traditional mediation methods and forms of consensus building required for civilization to flourish.2 According to Gupta (2006, 13),

Civilization is a cultural entity that involves values, ideals, artistic expressions and moral qualities shared by individual members of society. The promotion of civilization requires absence of fear and existence of social order. It is unrestricted development of personality. Physical conditions of living lift man above primitive struggles for existence. Civilization [. . .] is not mere material growth, bound to the place of birth. It is a cultural creation of art, knowledge, conscious awareness, realization and wisdom from experience of the past. Civilization always seeks new homes where agreeable conditions exist. When people are free from fear and insecurity, curiosity, the mother of all pursuits is created. Man is then on the road to civilization. Contrarily, it begins to decline when impulses to creativity are no more growing, when laws of the land are not enforced. When social cohesiveness in population [disintegrates and] becomes an instrument of state [manipulation].

Thus the quasi-military, economic-finance, market fundamentalism that drives current forms of coercive globalization can only occur through the colonization and destruction of other nations’ sovereign paths to advanced civilization and self-definition of democratic ideals. Material-cognitive colonization and related dependency not only break down critical thinking and vibrant civic dialogue, even in stable democracies, but are responsible for decivilizing processes of anomie and human fragmentation in competition over allegedly scarce resources required to satiate the enormous hunger for ever-expanding material consumption associated with existing multilateral, “free”-trade-driven, systemic arrangements. These are the revolting, undemocratic material conditions that hegemonic militias seek to foster. In addition, international economic treaties among complicit governments that operate to the detriment of smaller players lead to larger social distances between the people and their own polity. The disenfranchisement that accompanies broad blocks of disaffected voters from the political apparatus, as well as human beings from the security and freedoms traditionally associated with democratic civilization, has led some individuals to accept the path of pharmaceutically induced, state-orchestrated nihilism. But the majority of individuals, as they witness their governments operating in the exclusive interest of elites orchestrating tax-free multilateral agreements, have moved on to construct their own independent bases of power and awareness elsewhere in the multitude of alternative knowledge enclaves springing up everywhere that are impervious to the tentacles of democracy-disintegrating, public-relations-driven, military-corporate government. It is precisely in these safe spaces where insurgent, principled dissent in limitless forms has started to proliferate in order to restore democratic free speech, voluntary adaptation to sustainability principles; and noncommercial, monetary-circumventing microtrading at the local community level.

Meanwhile, antagonistic communicative arrangements are not expected to change any time soon. Despite the naïve hopes of international and domestic audiences, and in light of a wildly premature Nobel Peace Prize, observers of the Obama administration can hardly make any claims of an alleged reversal of hegemonic style or deteriorating US diplomacy at home or abroad as both his successful presidential campaign bids persistently promised. Nor has the transfer and redeployment of troops from Iraq to Afghanistan made any improvements to the enormous levels of American enmity and disgust around the world. Because unprecedented levels of debt are required to perpetuate the now ubiquitous failure camouflage of market fundamentalism the United States is attempting to impose on the world at gunpoint through lucrative defense contracts to private military corporations, those back home in the United States are left to their own devices in a faltering, innocuous civilization, with little more to look forward to than the mind-numbing stagnancy and dormancy that is indicative of our times (Romanienko 2011). For those incapable of naturally generating the requisite enthusiasm at the sight of a Prada shoe or Louis Vuitton handbag, and who are unwilling to accept the path of drug-induced pacification and docility to bring about the requisite materialist response required by the regime, principled dissent rooted in extreme kindness and love to combat suffocating cruelty is the only alternative left for survival.

Diplomacy and Distorted Communication

Coercive diplomacy theories may accurately describe the deterior...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Part I: Regulating Conventional Culture
• Part II: Regulating Alternative Culture
• Part III: Regulating the Regime: Past, Present, and Future
• Notes
• References