Unifying Unity in the Name of Unity

Dear George,

There is a simple sound bite that tells you all you need to know about holding on to power: unity, not community. On the surface they appear to be one and the same. In truth, they are mutually exclusive.

Community is able to deal with diversity; unity deplores it.

Community needs neither symbol nor slogan; unity needs both.

In community, people see things they’d rather not see, hear things they’d rather not hear and smell things they’d rather not smell; unity is scrubbed clean of all that is offensive.

Community is comfortable with debate and dissent; unity demands that we stay on message.

Community is consensus that ascends from the ground up; unity is ideology force-fed from above.

Under no circumstances must a gaggle of proles be allowed to coalesce into a community! Keep them fragmented; bombard them with wedge issues and with real and imaginary threats. Season these with empty platitudes about freedom.

Nothing fragments a community faster than angry patriots with their magnetic ribbons asking God to bless America as we rape, pillage and torture. Every flag flapping from a car antenna is a nail driven into democracy’s coffin.

Both symbol and slogan reduce life to the infantile question of who's with us and who’s against us. In doing so, they sound the death knell on the process of compromise and conciliation between conflicting groups in a pluralistic society that is the foundation of community. It is this pluralism hat must be crushed beneath the dead weight of unity.

One word of warning: Strength is grounded in humility; destruction is grounded in hubris. Since your Neocon handlers are leading you down the path of hubris, remember that your objective is not to achieve victory but to court disaster.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones