I was thrilled to read Harold Pinter's Nobel Prize acceptance speech. I must admit to never reading Pinter, but what struck me in his speech was an understanding of the political that resonates with the posts of the past two days.
Let me begin by stating that my intention in the previous posts was not to demonize Bush or the conservatives, but to point out the importance of the apocalyptic as a signpost to the understanding of the force of tremendous political power - and how the gospel of Jesus challenges us to resist that power in the name of the kingdom of God.
Pinter on language and truth:
Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.
On US hegemony and the comfort of mass deception:
The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis ...Its official declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources ...
Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable.
On the prophetic calling of the writer:
When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror – for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.
The great irony of course is that millions of Americans are familiar with the symbolism of Revelation, not through a critical analysis of biblical literature or an assessment of how that literature speaks to our real life-and-death struggles today, but as a result of the phenomenal success of dispensationalist theology and the Left Behind series of books. If only people could 'move a millimetre' and see the truth that stares back at us: Babylon the Great is us.
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