Retribalizing
Last year Congress did a rare GOOD thing when it opened the path for lawsuits against Saudi for attacking us on 9/11. Several such suits have been launched, including a big one yesterday.

Aside from bribery and corruption, there's a deep conceptual roadblock that prevents us from seeing the war accurately. In the 20th century we've been accustomed to conflict between nation-states. WW1 was the first big war among the nation-states of Europe that had crystallized in 1870. WW2 was even more purely based on nation-states, and the Cold War continued the pattern.

9/11 announced a return to TRIBAL war. Saudi has never been an 1800-style nation. It's a family enterprise. Some members of the royal family helped CIA to run and finance al-Qaeda and ISIS. Saudi as a national government was not involved, but that should be seen as irrelevant.

Now that the two big empires are breaking up, nations are quickly returning to natural tribal conditions. EU is trying to maintain its quasi-national status in order to keep the German nation-state together, but it will fail just like the Soviet and American quasi-national empires.

Overall a consistent tribal setup is better for ordinary people. The tribal wars of pre-1870 Europe were often long and locally brutal, but they were NOT TOTAL WARS. Royal families didn't want to own the world; they just wanted to kick out another small-scale family.

At the moment our stimulus-response mechanism is still locked into the total war mode. When some members of a royal family attack us, our only choice is digital. Obliterate the entire nation or do nothing. Earlier eras had more analog modes of responding to threats.

We have a similar mismatch in legal proceedings. Most local and state governments are run by tribes (ethnic mafias) now. Italian, Injun, Jew. The 1800s 'secular' worldview declares that genes do not exist, and thus prevents us from RECOGNIZING tribeforce. When we can't RECOGNIZE ethnic tribes, a tribe is free to operate without punishment. Tribes have grabbed this opportunity, leveraging a small influence into control of a vast area which is mostly occupied by other tribes. If we return to the older more 'commercial' legal system of Natural Law or Old English Common Law, monetary influence can be restricted and balanced by monetary recompense.

These Saudi lawsuits could be the camel's nose that tears down the Big Tent of nations and returns us to a more limited and less leveraged arrangement. OJ Simpson was able to use black tribeforce to halt 'digital' jail time but couldn't get away from 'analog' lawsuits for monetary recompense. Same here.

Labels: defensible spaces, Emersonian justice

  ¶ 2:13 AM