I was party to a conversation about whether Bush actually believes what he says when he insists charges that abuse is going on at Guantanamo are “absurd,” or whether he is really disassembling.
I think the answer is yes and no: he thinks he doesn’t believe it, but he knows it’s true, because that’s how the world works. It’s a belief that links upper class guys like him to working class guys like the saps who voted for him.
The upper class gets this message as part of their birthright. It reminded us specifically of a story that Buckminster Fuller told Hugh Kenner.
Fuller came from a prominent New England family with a long pedigree (which included the Emersonian inspirer and transcendentalist, Margaret Fuller). When young Bucky was thought ready to be told, a rich uncle took him aside and explained how the world works. “It is not you or the other fellow,” his uncle explained. “It is you or a hundred others.” If you are going to succeed, you will be required to slit the throats of those hundred (metaphorically speaking, perhaps.)
This is what Bucky would have to do, what men have to do. There was no point in telling the women. They can live in their fantasy Golden Rule world, because men like his uncle had taken care of the 100 barrier/competitors to his aunt, so she was already protected.
This is what men learn, in all classes. The difference is that the upper classes are also told how to lie about it, because the rest of the world is like the women, and would be very upset if you told them that the Golden Rule is fantasy. It would make them unhappy. So you don’t tell them.
You tell them everyone is given their rights, and more. Even the people who hate America. We know they hate America because why else would they be at Guantanamo? Who believes reasoning like that? Nobody except those who need to. What these men know is that it doesn’t matter if you violate some rights, muss up a little hair and take away years of some innocent fellow’s life; what matters is you get rid of the enemy, you hold on to power. If it comes down to that, you kill 99 innocents to make sure you get the one who might get you. The only thing that matters is who is standing when it’s all over.
At a certain point you are so good at lying about this that you become sincere. In public. But when you are with the men, it’s safe to speak the truth and it’s important to learn the truth. Men understand this. Real men, of course. Not the girly men.
It is a factor, by the way, also in how you get away with “disassembling.” That leaders should be well-spoken and smart, or even that the expensive education is important for any other reason than it was expensive, and you partied with the right people, is another pretty little fiction you have to pretend to believe.
If your handlers can make you look good, so teachers can hold you up as a model, that’s good. But when it comes to the real world, how could it possibly matter? More than family connections, business connections, a web of deals and influence that spells power? Real men know this. It’s the way the world works.