Scott Nearing:The Great Madness

Scott Nearing

1883-1983

My thoughts on The Great Madness and the 2016 "Humanitarian-Precision" Death of Drone Warfare and calls for carpet bombing our "enemies"...

In 1918 the United States government indicted Scott Nearing (a pacifist, political activist, socialist, economist, etc.) for publishing an article entitled The Great Madness: A Victory for the American Plutocracy, on the charge that it interfered with the government's ability to recruit soldiers for WWI.

Excerpts from The Great Madness:

The plutocracy welcomed the war not because it was a war, but because it meant a chance to get a stronger grip on the United States.

Things at home were in bad shape and promising to get worse. Millions of people were sore on the system which fed the owner and starved the worker; millions of casual laborers - men and women wandered from job to job; from city to city, discouraged, homeless, indifferent. People no longer asked, "Will there be a revolution?" but, "When will the revolution come?"

The plutocrats had lost public confidence. They realized that if they were to hold their position - public confidence must be regained.  How could the plutocracy - the discredited, vilified plutocracy - get public opinion? There was only one way: it must line up with some cause that would command public confidence. The cause that it chose was the "defense of the United States."

The plutocracy spread terror over the land!

"Patriotism" was the refrain of every speech and every article - a patriotism of their own particular brand.  The plutocratic brand of patriotism won the endorsement of the press, the pulpit, the college, and every other important channel of public information in the United States. The "educated," "cultured," "refined," "high-principled" editors, ministers, professors and lawyers accepted it and proclaimed it as though it were their own. Turning their backs upon principle, throwing morals and ideals to the winds, they tumbled over one another in a wild scramble to be the first to join the chorus of plutocratic patriotism.

The people were not consulted (on a declaration of war), their wishes were not considered.

And the American people stood for it. Emotionalized, dazed, stupefied, and blinded by the great madness that possessed their souls, nearly a hundred million people cast aside their most cherished principles, sacrificed their hard-won liberties, and began spreading brotherhood and democracy by the sword. The plutocracy had won everything for which it had been fighting - immunity, power, wealth. The people were war-mad, - at least, there was enough of the war madness in the country to enable the vested interests to put across anything that they wanted.

Beside and beyond this economic, political and social power the Plutocracy had millions of deluded people in its grip incapable of thinking because of the fearful war madness that possessed their souls.  They aroused the people, agitating and irritating them, until they were frantically repeating the blatant lie that the real enemy of American liberty lived in Berlin. Then they stung them with high prices, filched their liberty, plunged them into war, took a million of their brothers and husbands and sons to wage a war of aggression on the battlefields of king-ridden Europe, and because nothing happened at once, they believe that they had won. They had won victory and death.

The plutocracy and the democracy cannot exist side by side. If the plutocracy wins, dollars rule; if the democracy wins, people rule.

There can be no alternative and no compromise.