When, in a New York Times article assessing the Iraqi threat as a ramp-up to war, “a senior administration official” said, “The jewel in the crown is nuclear” it caught a number of readers by surprise. According to legend the jewel in the crown is the third eye. The power to rule, so the priests asserted, came from the gods. What distinguished the gods from mere mortals was their omniscience. Omnipotence was rooted in the idea of telepathy associated with the third eye. Such power was thought to come from an extra sense, which it was widely supposed resided in the pineal gland in the center of the forehead. Humans, according to these legends, had long since lost their sixth sense, their powers of telekinesis. In order to maintain the façade of their connection to the gods the lost third eye was symbolically represented by the crown jewel. For the neocon Busheviks to say that the “jewel” in the “crown” was “nuclear” was to say that the “third eye” is “nuclear”. It almost goes without saying that the total destructiveness of nuclear weapons is late capitalism’s symbol of power. The senior official, of course, only meant the “crown” as a metaphor for their case against Iraq, and the fabricated nuclear threat was supposed to be the final touch. As usual, however, it was just another example of the kinds of gross mixed metaphors scripted in the halls of power. It exemplifies our day and age that the “greatest threat that faces mankind,” as Warren Buffett recently put it in a TV interview is “loose nukes”. Buffett’s appearance was a plea to viewers to take the problem seriously. The second richest man in the country didn’t know where else to turn to solve the problem. By his own admission Buffet said he didn’t know “how to attack it with money.” Never mind that such an attitude perfectly expresses the U.S. idea of Democracy: the oligarchy makes the problem, believes it can solve every problem by throwing money at it, and always failing finally turns to the people to bail them out! What is far more significant is the grave reality that the Super Powers have for some time now no longer been the sole possessor of the nuclear third eye, which one might suppose is their symbolic claim to godliness, now loose in the world.
