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Kafka’s America: A Society At War With Itself
By Patrick Henningsen
Global Research, April 09, 2014
21st Century Wire
Url of this article:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/kafkas-america-a-society-at-war-with-itself/5377348

Society is in motion, only it’s heading backwards.

Many a thinker have wondered about the true meaning of the latin term status quo, which is short for ”in statu quo”. We use this term every day in discourse. It’s popularly understood as meaning “keeping the things the way they are presently.” The term in itself has become meaningless, because it is incomplete. That term was originally part of a longer phrase based on “in statu quo res erant ante bellum,” which translated means, “in the state in which things were before the war.” In the context of the 14th diplomatic latin language from which the term is derived, it’s referring to an end to a ‘Marshal Law’ scenario, or the withdrawal of enemy troops and the restoration of power to pre-war leadership.

In case you haven’t noticed, America, and Europe, we are presently locked into a permanent state of war, or war state. The question is, against who? As the existential enemy fades into irrelevance, the state has become fixated on its own people.

Societies and political cultures only have two directions to take – they either mature and thrive, or fester in a state of arrested, or negative development. In America, you can count on any political party in power – whether its a Democratic regime, or a Republican one, to always insist that “things have never been better” in the country. The same can be said between Labour and Conservative in Great Britain. We’ve all heard that tired old line, over and over again. It seems to be built into the political machine code in our ‘mature democracies.’ Why? Because no political advisor or head of communications wants to stick their neck out in the event that a strategy of realism triggers a slump in the polls, so they opt for the politically correct option, which is in their minds the easy way.

Americans especially, do not like realism – and mobs will almost always rail against it – even if what they’re hearing is true. Just look at what happened to Texas Congressman Ron Paul, taunted and crucified by media, Democrats and Republican, and even by the Israel lobby (Sheldon Adelson’s gang forked out roughly $5 million to run negative ad  campaigns against Paul during the 2012 primaries), all for being a realist. Establishment gatekeepers and culture makers are now attempting to make realism ubiquitous with their own derogatory term, ‘conspiracy theory.’

This present trajectory is comfortable for those clinging to administrative power, and ironically, it also suits the crowd too. For politicians, rejecting realism is simply an excuse to do nothing – so long as the cheques keep rolling in. For the crowds, rejecting realism means they can avoid risk by not initiating any action, boycott, strike, demonstration or applying pressure on politicians to the ’ethical thing.’ Neither group wants to stick their necks out, no matter what the long-term prognosis is. The net result is a fait accompli: a gradual degeneration of political life across the entire spectrum – politicians, voters and everyone in between. This is exactly where America is at today – entering into a void of ethics, terminally ill with malignant growths in a government that is medicating itself by passing an ever-increasing amount of new laws and regulations. The system is completely addicted to them. They need a new one every day it seems, to patch up the one they passed yesterday, and the day before that.


KAFKA AND WEBER: Drowning in a sea of administration.

In this legally medicated society, the fundamentals of ethics have become obscured. History has taught us (some of us anyway) how in a vacuous ethical epoch, a significant amount power becomes concentrated in the administrative class; government agencies, administrators, ‘law enforcement,’ third sector quangos, corporate charities, and private government contractors. Collectively, they are ”the man in the middle.” The more oppressive public life becomes, the more the man in the middle thrives. Even the political classes fear the man in the middle, who now form the largest voting bloc in the United States. The crowd fears the man in the middle because at any given moment in time, the administrative machine can ruin their life – with threats, tickets, fines, detention, restricted access, or social exclusion – the list is virtually endless.

What the political and administrative classes struggle to understand is that when the ethical meltdown goes radioactive, then things begin to mutate, and at this point anything is possible.

As much as in any other point in history, we’ve never been in more dire need for a in statu quo res erant ante bellum. The German writer Franz Kafka once remarked, “Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.” Maybe what’s needed is not so much a revolution, but a restoration. So a restoration… of less government, less administration, less laws, in a society underpinned by common law, and based on common sense. Administrators and politicians won’t like it. It’s risky, sometimes messy and it guarantees nothing, but compare this to the present ‘in statu quo sins warranty’ (state of affairs during the war) which is already halfway down a dark Kafkaesque tunnel.

This story below illustrates everything that is wrong with western society today – where a New Jersey school child is steam-rolled by a low-empathy-staffed, politically correct administrative machine. Not only did he and his family not see it coming, but they never had a chance once it hit them. In America’s post-Sandy Hook culture is where PC now stands for ‘prison culture.’

“If you are old enough to remember, you may wake up one day only to realise the world you’re living in unrecognisable to the one you once knew.”

Kafka Middle School, New Jersey, Where Nothing Makes Sense, And Nobody Cares

Ethics Alarm

“I know you love these,” wrote the friend and reader who sent me the latest example of student abuse by school administrators who have lost their minds.

No, I really don’t. They make me sick and angry and leave me with the feeling of having just stepped off the curve and had a bus whiz by close enough for me to feel the breeze. If this happened to my son, I could see myself snapping and going for the responsible administrator’s throat. This was not an inconsiderable factor is choosing to home school.


Glen Meadow Middle School (in Vernon, N.J.) seventh grader Ethan Chaplin (photo, above) told reporters that he was twirling a pencil with a pen cap on in math class when a student who harassed him earlier in the day shouted, “He’s making gun motions! Send him to juvie!” 

As local school Superintendent Charles Maranzano explained, policy and law requires him to investigate any time a student is made  “uncomfortable” or threatened by another student.

Thus it was that Ethan was summarily stripped, forced to give blood samples (which allegedly caused him to pass out) and urine samples, so he could be tested for drugs.  Four hours later a social worker cleared him to return to class, but a doctors decreed that a five-hour physical and psychological evaluation was necessary before the boy would be allowed back in school.

The entire community is responsible for allowing schools like this to exist, administrators so challenged in basic concepts of common sense and justice to be hired, and their children to be educated in institutions so warped by fear and stupidity. A horde of lawyers should descend on Vernon and punish it severely, not only the school. Every single responsible parent should withhold their children from these insane abuse-factories until satisfactory reforms and  overhauls of staff can be assured. If this account is true, the institutionalized child abuse in Vernon should be as big a story as Chris Cristie’s bridge traffic scandal, or bigger.

This is the United States of America, dammit, and our children must not be treated this way.

Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article.