There’s Another Ex-President Who Needs to Be Arrested‪!‬ The Harper’s Podcast

A little after the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War, editor emeritus Lewis Lapham discusses three essays he wrote during the George W. Bush era: “The American Rome” (August 2001), “Cause for Dissent” (April 2003), and “Going by the Book” (November 2006). With fine prose and razor-edged contempt for war, lies, and complacent members of the commentariat, each article captures a distinctive historical moment.
SHOW NOTES
[1:43] The Ballad of the Green Berets
[3:52] Quote from Charles Krauthammer, No power since Imperial Rome had commanded the world to the extent of the American power in the year 2001.
[4:12] Charles Krauthammer’s 2001 TIME Magazine column
[8:27] Madeleine Albright saying “it was worth it” for 500,000 Iraqi children to die of malnutrition during the Iraq war
[10:00] “The American Rome” (August 2001)
[15:30] “Cause for Dissent” (April 2003)
[17:06] Al Gore in 2001 on Americans living in a police state
[21:35] Walt Whitman’s “Drum-Taps”
 [25:05] Network, a movie released on the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence
[26:55] Jacque Rousseau’s The Social Contract
 [31:04] Thomas Paine quote
[31:20] Tocqueville quote from 1831
[32:26] Toni Morrison’s Stockholm speech, December 7, 1993
[37:59] Money and Class in America by Lewis Lapham
[38:52] Veblen’s theory of the leisure class
QUOTES
I think the invasion of Iraq was a stupidity based on a delusion. The Americans were pleased with the thought that they were the rulers of the world.
But one of the distinctive characteristics of the American establishment, or what we now call the deep state—the plutocracy—that’s been an office in Washington since the arrival of Reagan… one of their distinctive characteristics is to speak in a language that means nothing. To say nothing, that is the great art of self-advancement in Washington. I tend to see the characteristic in both the Republican and the Democrat.
Americans lack a tragic sense of life. The doctrine of American exceptionalism, which has been with us since the 1820s—a parting gift of Thomas Jefferson—has excused us from committing any crime.
The Eighties are distinguished by—and this starts with Reagan—with more laws, protecting the rights of property and fewer laws protecting the rights of people. It’s the free market that ignores any value that can’t be translated into cash—that doesn’t recognize human value, endeavor, worth.
Justice Louis Brandeis 1941, talking to Roosevelt about the New Deal, says we can have democracy or we can have concentrated wealth in the hands of the few, but we can’t have both. He’s wrong. We can’t not have both the plutocracy and democracy of permanent members of the human condition. Neither of them can be deplatformed or canceled. And it is the separation of their powers, the selflessness of democracy, a check on the selfishness of plutocracy. That is the American experiment with a combustible element of freedom. People in power are always afraid of freedom.
People in power are always afraid of freedom. Terrified of it. I mean, the American ruling class today are paralyzed with their fear of the American people. This brings out of course, responses. I mean, the more frightened you are, the more violent and vicious your attempt to do away with your fear. I mean, that’s why we’ve got heavily armed police all over the country, right? And the Americans, we don’t have a tragic sense of life, and therefore we can’t get over our fear of death. In my view, that’s the great challenge.
One of the consequences of the [COVID-19] epidemic was to give people time and space to think about other meanings in life, than the ones offered by money. And there are hints of that, in all different kinds of ways: less people going back to work, more people going back to work for lesser money in return for more time to themselves, learning to not gorge themselves on the food and drink and so on. I mean, lived democracy ins