May it please the Dean if it does not? I must apologize for filling up your answering machine.
I`m sure the Dean has better things to do with his time than listen to the ramblings of the Mentor.
I beg to report that I did create quite a stir disturbing the quietude of the Electronic Point of Contact
when I came across the cartoon of Our Leader helicoptoring off from the Official Residence with a bag of loot.
Schadenfreude, that`s the German term for it "Sick-Joy" or "Gloating," perhaps.
Schadenfreude is a German word not well known in this country. Although many German terms such as
reel politik, Gedankenexperiment, and Weltgheist have filtered
into English, Schadenfreude was popularized by the comedian - commentator Al Frankin in his running monolgue
leading up to the November Elections. I don`t suppose you were following Mr Frankin, a bit to the left for a
er - Rooseveltian Republican such as the Dean.
My reseraches have brought me to an interresting hypothesis advanced by Walter Russell Meade purporting to analyze the direction of US foreign policy. Given the dominant influence of American Protestants in US foreign policy, Meade would divide the US Protestants into Liberals, representing the mainline denominations with declining congregations, Evangelicals, the amorphous group we call the BAC, and the Fundamentalists, denominations utterly hostile to the secular order. Now I know, Dean, that you express certain sympathies with the Evangelicals and have accused me of fearing that I would be converted. No Dean, I do not fear that they will bring me to spiritual light; I fear I will be unale to bring them to a state of rationality.
Mead in his book,
Special Providence: How US Foreign Policy Changed The World
says of the tripartite division of Protestant Christianity that the subtle differences in doctrine translate
into enormous differences in policy.
Liberal Protestanism dominated US foreign policy well into the 1970s emphasizing the ethical teachings
of Jesus and presenting Christ as the sublime moral teacher. The Social Gospel they preached according
to Professor Meade slipped into a secular humanism. With declining membership, despite their great wealth,
their influence faded away.
Fundamentalists accept the Bible as the literal truth, defend the faith against dilution and discourage
cooperation with governments prohibiting proselytzing as most of the Islamic world indeed does.
You might recall the Society`s discussions over the USSR`s retreat from Afghanistan. As the Islamic
mujahdeen closed in, the US Embassy advised the fundamentalist missionaries to leave with the forces
of atheist Russia. I do believe the Society debated a proposal to express its thanks to the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union for its humane action on behalf of marooned Christians on such occasion.
We do hope US security services reading the transcripts of the heated debate together with the condemnation of Gorbachev for having invited Billy Joel to Russia instead of Bruce Springstein had a sense of humour.
Schadenfreude, is an interesting term Dean; it can mean sickjoy but also can be taken in some sense to
denote "irony."
The Evangelical Christians are the largest part of American Christianity today. They are legion for they are many;
where once isolated in the deep South and rural areas, they now have many sympathizers even in less amorphous
denominations.
Like Fundamentalists, they take the Bible as the literal truth, but make no pretense of making a science of
creationism. Evangelicists wait for the Rapture but while perhaps rejecting the Liberal Protestant
concept of faith and good works, they are active in promoting social well being, fighting addiction,
improving health standards and preserving the ecology as part of their missionary work.
The Dean has often expressed much admiration for them.
They did raise eyebrows at the State Department when they pushed through the Freedom Act
which attaches condition aid on the right to proselitize on foreign land. Yet the Evangelicals in their
approach to the world embody much of that signature ebulient optimism characteristically American
even if they are regarded by many as intellectual weaklings. I wonder how they greeted the advice
from their temporal allies, the neo-cons, to obtain some intellectual depth from all the Roman Catholics
they put on the US Supreme Court? The neo - cons even the effete sophisticates at The Times of New York
can be not a bit tart in their sarcasm.
Schadenfreude does carry a connotation of maliciousness.
Where does the road lead? It leads where it has for more than a century to China, salvation of souls and oil.
I do note the Dean`s interest in the recent release
Empires On the Pacific
which claimed that the clash between the Empires of Japan and the United States over China, oil and
dissolution of the former British overseas possessions shaped the 20th Century. Ameica`s script for a post World War II
China centered on Chiang Kia Chek who was amenable to American missionaries. Regrettable Mao Tse-Tung
won the civil war largely due to the ineptness of Chiang`s KMT and the inability of the Flying Tigers
mercenaries in US pay to fight the war on their own.
China became a truly independent nation under Mao. While his successors bandished the Gang of Four who
adhered to true Maoism, the PRC jealously maintains the Mao-soleum as a memorial to Chinese independence.
US dreams of controlling China lay on the funeral pyre there.
Now with Our Leader puddling so badly in the Middle East and US policy in the hands of a coalition
of the rational Neo-Cons and the spiritualistic Evangelicals both hell - bent on the same irrational, if not unattainable
end, albiet for a different rationale, Red China has taken the high road.
It is laying rails on the Old Silk Road. Twenty-eight nations have joined in the condominium
to build a true orient express from Istanbul (Constantinople) to Shanghai. Indeed the line is complete to Llasa,
the Tibetian capital.
Naturally, the Chinese had consulted an American engineering firm beforehand. The Americans declared
the job impossible. When the Chinese opened the station in Llasa, they invited the Americans back to marvel
at the project completed in some sections over permafrost kept solid by solar energy. How did you do it?,
the Americans asked in dismay.
"Why should you be so surprised," the Chinese hosts politely replied, "We built your railroads with picks and shovels
through the Rocky Mountains!"
The project is a technological marvel which will put the PRC on the verge of recreating the great Mogol Empire.
Schadenfreude does contain an element of gloating.
Our Leader`s response? While reports circulate in underground and alternative press that he sent
the First Dog into Iraq to visit with the troops, Our Leader, like a deposed German war lord, has been
buying up a hacienda in Paraguay, no less,
no doubt where he can wait out the Rapture or more probably the rupture between the Evangelicals
and the Neo-cons.
The Society to its credit has distanced itself from the alternative press in sharp criticism.
"It is," the Society proclaimed, "unworthy to compare a noble, loyal and courageous creature to Our Leader.
Schadenfreude does bear overtones of wickedness.
On that note, Dean, trusting in the view that I haven`t filled up your machine,
I must bid you a most Cheery Cheerio,
Cheerio, Dean,
A Most Cheery Cheerio,
James Davies, Lord Woodbury
MENTOR - RPPS
