Who Runs The Country: "The Good Shepherd"

Sunday, December 24, 2006

I recommend highly the new DiNiro film, "The Good Shepherd". Not only for the superb directing and the exceptional acting, but also because it is a look into the longstanding and prevailing culture that underpins our national politics. It explains in very subtle ways why we are where we are in this country politically, regardless of party affiliations. But, in the case of the film, the why and the how the Republicans have prevailed. It's about how certain privileged people are trained to recognize and give loyalty to each other, feel entitled, and see as their mission the control of the political and the competitive industrial world.

"The Good Shepherd" starts examining the roots of creation of a so-called power elite. In the first scene Matt Damon is first humiliated and then, having proven his loyalty, then inducted into Yale's Skull and Bones. This is approximately 1934. In pre WW II days at Yale and later into the 50s and 60s, Skull and Bones invested its members with the goal of loyalty to each other first, then to America - their country! - and an allegiance to something mystical that is the spirit of Bones. As individuals and members of a group for life, they see their mission in life to lead America in every kind of endeavor. Every other parts of their lives, families no exception, are surrendered to this cause.

And so begins the tradition of recruiting Yale seniors and Bonesmen into the OSS and its successor Central Intelligence Agency. And it is the building of a cadre of elites who see the Jews, the Blacks, the Italians, and most Catholics as only visitors in their country - the elites country. These are Damon's parting words film.

Damon and his fellow Bonesmen and non-Yale colleagues learn all of the dirty tricks and they need for their continuing sense of distrust and paranoia, necessary to defeat the enemy and maintain the superiorty of the US against the Russian menace thereafter. It is ultimately about maintaining their superiority. What is also inculcated is the need to periodically santize the agency of disloyal agents, moles, and spies, all in the name of protecting America. Power and control are invested in this very small cadre. People are commodity.

"The Good Shepherd" is not about the very much hackneyed "conspiracy theory". It is about the attitudes, beliefs, and actions of people who have power, money, and influence so strong that they can use government and intimidate a large chunk of the population into believing that this is the order of things. References are very often made to "the powers that be", as if they are the final decision makers whose decisions may be contested on the one hand, but given great respect and status regardless of their negative impacts. "They" are up there and we are "down here".

The film's message is the we others are only (wage) servants to these powers. And fear of job loss and the status jobs in corporate settings proivide prevent any kind of sustained protest and disobedience. And now in a volitale economy with layoffs and outsourcing of everything out of the country for cheap wages, cheap land to build factories, and friendly government elites, fear, personal survival, and isolation become the prevailing and all-encompassing emotions. Loyalty to the order of things and the moral guidelines this order spreads are more important than cooperation and mutual respect. Whereas the middle class and unskilled workers were previously protected by unions, now there is no protection. 

While DiNiro is weaving this very shopisticated picture about how things got to be where they are, he is, by extension, commenting on the way this country is being run. In the first case, President George Bush is a Bonesman. His accolytes believe as he does that they know how to run the country and without very much attention given to how the citizens feel and express. He is waging a war he still believes can end in victory of some sort. He can underfund or choose not to implement programs he initiated. He can push for the privatization of Social Security, at great long term costs to everyone over a long period of time. It is because he believes that people should own their own lives by making choices and not leaving it up to government. This is the continuing fantasy of bootstrapping, which Bush never had to do.

The other message is a more universal one that has nothing to do with Yale, Skull and Bones, or rule by some self-sustaining elite. And that is the old saw that power, money, and status corrupt us ultimately, because we must maintain that position. Those who do not have it are regarded as lesser beings, as Matt Damon says, "visitors in our country".

Why we enoble wars, live with sprawl, take pollution for granted and discredit global warming, deny universal health care, displace experienced workers for cheaper substitutes, and confuse media sources of the news as truth can be largely explained by the natural "order of things" as I have described it. Change and improvement of conditions only follows the political need and profit to be derived to "the powers that be". And that is the maintenance of hegemony locally and world wide.