What
do Cheney-Bush, Stalin-Saddam, Fernando Marcos, Augusto Pinochet,
Omar el-Bashir (head honcho in Sudan), Conrad Black-Kenneth Lay,
to mention a few, have in common? They have all subscribed to
the modern version of the Divine Right of Kings theory which proclaims
the monarch is chosen by God, and is, ergo, answerable
only to God -- code for they are exceptional beings with exceptional
rights, chosen for exceptional roles in the unfolding human drama,
code for not answerable to any parliament, judiciary, opposition
or dissent.
Membership in the
club of the exceptional countenances all that which serves their
exceptionality: political assassination, meddling in the affairs
of nation states, the use of illicit funds to achieve an objective,
and everything and anything that satisfies the expression of
their elite status concerning the manner in which they wield
power and indulge in pleasure – all at the expense of
the unrevolted masses. Kierkegaard, in Fear in Trembling,
introduces the notion of the ‘teleological suspension
of the ethical,’ where Biblical law prohibits murder.
But for the higher cause, of God, Abraham is prepared to transgress
the universal law that proscribes murder, and kill his son Isaac.
Exceptional beings, by dint of their manifest highest standing,
come to know themselves as the sons and daughters of Abraham
and perforce, under the full weight of destiny, must suspend
ethical judgments for higher causes. And where the inconvenience
of institutions they purport to honor and respect exist that
would restrict the expression of their exceptionality, honor
and self-respect oblige the circumvention of those same bodies
in order to make manifest their destiny.
Always one step
ahead of the Zeitgeist, exceptional beings have learned
to never speak of their special status for fear of provoking
the envy and revolt of the normally submissive masses -- the
nuisance of which would distract them from their higher calling.
For their role, the masses, without ever speaking of it and
refusing to confess it even to themselves, have chosen to dwell
in the kingdom of denial, a pillowy palace built and sustained
by the propaganda devised and implemented by exceptional beings.
The former come to believe the causes they support are their
own when in fact, as designated proxyites, they serve
the will of their masters. Nonetheless, the convenient head-in-the-sand-view
of life that defines the masses as qua masses does
nothing to reduce the brutal weight of the fact that the concept
of the exceptional being has been around long enough -- at least
in the back pages -- to have been effectively challenged. The
Russian novelist Dostoievsky (1821-81), the philosopher Nietzsche
(1844-1900) and the historian Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) were
all fascinated by the notion of the exceptional being. Spengler
divided the world into two types: the historically significant
and everyone else, a taxonomy that precludes arbitrariness;
if Napoleon were a foot soldier he wouldn’t have been
Napoleon, just as we know if Marcos hadn’t amassed a fortune,
he wouldn’t have been Marcos. They were gods in their
time, and in them we trusted.
Based on the observable
behavior of history’s exceptional beings, what can we
conclude about their belief systems? How do we come to recognize
their exceptionality, the brotherhood, the unspoken bond that
connects them -- even when they disagree or hate each other?
Exceptional beings
subscribe to an edifice of unspoken presuppositions and exemptions
that derives from their exceptionality. While Cheney-Bush must
loath Saddam Hussein and vice versa, they and their league share
the same values and historically deep, disinterested disregard
for the masses -- the raw material of their ambitions. From
Sumer to Alexander through Ghengis Khan to the Cheney-Bush doctrine,
whether in the service of good or evil, it’s the same
ambition operating under the same principle. Over and against
an unvarying plenitude of mediocrity, exceptional beings understand
their exceptionality as a function of their remarkable ability
and intelligence and de facto highest standing. They
view the masses, not so much with contempt but as the banal
means with which they realize their aims and objectives. When
it comes to the execution of their designs, be it waging war,
erecting monuments or indulging in lavish pleasures, their first
mission is to convince us that we ourselves desire that outcome.
To this end, in war and peace, in the construction of pyramids
and palaces, we provide for their wealth and well-being. Which
begs the question: are we, the unrevolted masses, demonstrative
proof that Spengler’s formulation is correct, or to cite
another elitist, Allan Bloom: Are the thoughtless always going
to be prisoners of other people’s thoughts?
Exceptional beings
showcase their special status by the obedient institutions they
establish and their ability to dwell in exceptionality for as
long as possible. Thus, Stalin and Saddam, answerable to no
one, must be judged as superlatively exceptional because they
manifested their exceptionality over a much longer historical
period than their institutionally enfeebled democratic counterparts,
whose independent institutions -- congress, parliament, judiciary
-- conspire against the very exceptionality to which they aspire.
But as the record shows, these institutions often end up co-opted
by the cunning that provides for their circumvention. Leaders
emerging from democratic backgrounds, limited by terms mandates,
the inconvenience of elections, or annoying separation of power
clauses invariably create the ‘ways and means’ to
finesse the institutions and laws that apply to everyone else.
So what we have today, in America, is a leadership whose entire
enterprise is dedicated to circumventing the system it represents
as the model for the world to follow.
Dictators, answerable
to no one, are the secret envy of democratically elected leaders.
With impunity, they plunge the coffers, suppress and eliminate
opposition, give themselves office for life, and provide the
ethos many corporate CEOs feel, as their due and destiny, compelled
to implement: Enron’s Ley, Hollinger’s Black, WorldCom’s
Ebber, Tyco’s Kozlowski .
But what decisively
distinguishes exceptional beings from everyone else is they
don’t care about you or me. Notwithstanding memorable
locutions, (I can feel your pain), we know as fact that they
don’t care because actions always speak louder than words
that don’t speak at all unless backed up by actions. Cheney-Bush
can cry out to the world that he believes in the principles
of democracy and freedom but if he fixes an election, not once
but perhaps twice, he, as fact, doesn’t care about democracy.
Kenneth Lay and Conrad Black can claim they care about their
employees, but if the former bilks his workers to the tune of
11 billion, we know he doesn’t care.
When our elected
officials budget $10,000 for a state supper, do you suppose
for one moment they think about the one year you labored to
make that money available in the form of taxes to a government
pledged to serve your needs and welfare? They don't care. If
the expenditure enters their minds, it’s only to corroborate
the inner-circle conceit that this is how it is meant to be,
that humans are created unequally, that the polarity that governs
the divide between exceptional beings and everyone else is fixed
for all time.
So, if the existence
of the exceptional being is proof of his exceptionality, are
we proof of the opposite, and is the partnership that provides
for the way things are as fixed and immutable as the categories
of ‘us’ and ‘them'? Jean Baudrillard, in his
analysis of 9/11, argues the event was the inevitable result
of the necessary relationship between good and evil, that the
former excites the development and execution of the latter.
Calling it the way he saw it, the poet Carl Sandberg wrote:
