I know that many progressives have come to the conclusion that electing Democrats won’t solve many of the problems we face in this country. And I agree. Although, I do think a case for incrementalism can be made…less people will die due to lack of health care, response to national disasters, etc, with a new Democratic administration. This is not something I am willing to dismiss easily. But I don’t see a Democratic administration being able to make the changes necessary to stop the continuing disaster of our foreign policy and how we treat the most vulnerable among us.
There are a lot of things that need to change in order for me to have much hope in this country. But, as I started to talk and think about in my last diary on authoritarianism, I’m most interested these days in what is wrong with our collective psyche (my therapist self just will NOT go away!!) that keeps us from even seeing these issues clearly, much less working together to demand the changes. I suppose its kind of like the difference between a “top-down” solution that would come from electing the right leader and the “bottom-up” solution of changing what people are looking for in leaders. I think the latter deserves much more attention than we have been giving to it.
There are many ways to look at this issue, but today I’m really interested in an article from Salon written by Gary Kamiya and titled Why Bush Hasn’t Been Impeached (h/t to TerranceDC). I’d recommend that everyone read the article, but I’ll just pull some of the more salient quotes to give you an idea of what he is saying:
Bush’s warmongering spoke to something deep in our national psyche. The emotional force behind America’s support for the Iraq war, the molten core of an angry, resentful patriotism, is still too hot for Congress, the media and even many Americans who oppose the war, to confront directly. It’s a national myth. It’s John Wayne. To impeach Bush would force us to directly confront our national core of violent self-righteousness — come to terms with it, understand it and reject it. And we’re not ready to do that.
Bush tapped into a deep American strain of fearful, reflexive bellicosity, which Congress and the media went along with for a long time and which has remained largely unexamined to this day. Congress, the media and most of the American people have yet to turn decisively against Bush because to do so would be to turn against some part of themselves.
To this day, the primitive feeling that in response to 9/11 we had to hit hard at “the enemy,” whoever that might be, is a sacred cow. America’s deference to the shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later approach is profound.
It is not just the law that America has turned away from, but what the law stands for — accountability, memory, history and logic itself.
A society without memory, driven by ephemeral emotions, which demands no consistency from its leaders but only gusty patriotism, is a society that is not about to engage in the painful self-examination that impeachment would mean.
This “violent self-righteousness” goes beyond just our policies about war, torture, rendition, and other crimes that our government has committed. Just take a look at other examples: We are coming dangerously close – and maybe even over the line at times – with wanting to punish people we (in all our wisdom, cough, cough) have decided MIGHT be capable of crimes (the one percent doctrine applied to the criminal justice system). And certainly rounding up and/or condemning brown people because we think they might be here illegally comes from the same place. Even our dialogue with those with whom we disagree is too often charactarized by (verbally) violent self-righteousness.
I agree with Kamiya that there is something seriously wrong with our collective psyche and until we can find a way out of the morass of violent self-righteousness, no election is ever going to change much. I wonder what would happen if we turned all the energy and money we currently spend on trying to find leaders who we think can get us out of this mess, and started using it to enact that age-old saying…”Physician, heal thyself,” might we finally begin to find what we’re looking for??
One thing that needs to change, or that would be an indication of change, would be if we could finally stop labelling everything as a “war,” ie, War on Terror, War on Drugs, War on Poverty. These labels just reek of violent self-righteousness!!
There is another word in this vein that needs to be changed. Conquer. Conquering Mt Everest, for example. Conquering space, and so on. Everything is a conquest instead of an understanding of a place, a people, an idea or complex equation.
Yeah Super, our language speaks volumes doesn’t it? Your pointing out our use of the word conquer reminds me of my experience just after college of volunteering with a youth group at an urban church. Some of the folks there were enamored with the idea of taking these inner city kids on trips to the wilderness for mountain climbing, canoeing, biking, rock climbing, etc. I could make a case for the idea of exposing inner city kids to the beauty of the wilderness. But ultimately, that was not the goal. They wanted to push these kids to the brink and test their coping skills. As if surviving as a kid in the inner city weren’t stressful enough. When I would go on these expeditions, I’d often ask if we could slow down and take in the scenery. But NOOOOO, we needed to push and test ourselves. So much wrong with this – but the conquer mentality was behind it all.
I grew up in a suburban family that occasionally hosted inner city underpriveleged (code word for black) kids as a so called escape from the rigors of their city lives. There’s something really arrogant and presumptuous about that whole idea, isn’t there? Truth is, they were more often than not kind of amused with our innocence (code word for ignorance) and our naivete. I think we all would have been better served and better educated if the roles had been reversed.
Those types of programs are a metaphor for American arrogance and self perceived preeminence. That we are somehow elevated above the rest of the world, who we have been attempting to conquer all along. The American Dream is a trap. It’s the cheese on the mouse trap. Our system, capitolism, needs constant feeding and is always in need of expanding (code word for exploiting) in order for it to perpetuate itself. Problem is that the world and it’s people, including it’s people’s capacity for tolerating gluttonous bullies, is a finite resource and we’re reaching the apex of those resources and the patience of the rest of the world is running thin. They see us for who we really are. Who we’ve been all along. Arrogant, dangerous exploiters. But they aren’t just amused and curious anymore. They’re fed up with us and our American Dream. I think our conquering days are rapidly nearing an end and this little dance theatre with the democrats in Washington is a thin salve for a gaping wound that’s become infected.
we need to get to a truth and reconciliation commission.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that many of the key players in this disaster have roots in the Nixon White House.
Kevin Phillips does an amazing job of outlining the historical roots of the Bush deceit.
Some of the juicest quotes from the Buzzflash interview are below. Phillips most recent books American Dynasty and American Theocracy even go so far as to posit a “disenlightenment” currently taking place across the globe and in particular the U.S.
Several thoughts northcountry:
First of all – yes, a truth and reconciliation commission. If we can’t get to impeachment before this criminal conspiracy leaves the White House – that might be our only hope for doing the work of facing all of this and finding a positive way forward.
Secondly – I’m not as schooled in all the different global transitions as I probably should be, but there do seem to be areas, including the US, where “disenlightenment” would be the appropriate term for what is happening. But I often wonder about Central and South America. I can see reason for hope in some of the developments there. And then, the more I try to pay attention the more I think that we really need a lot more information about what is happening in China – our lives may depend on it. And I really don’t have much of a clue.
Finally, our reaction to the whole Bush family saga seems to be a textbook case of the relationship between authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders as described by Altemeyer in his online book The Authoritarians.
there is a definite awakening going on there and human-centered move towards democracy and justice.
China is an interesting case. Are they engaging in resource explotiation on their periphery and in places like Africa or creating a new non-western “Third Way” along with India?
And of course Europe is still pretty enlightened despite corporatist gains in places like France and Sweden.
I remember seeing this a while back — here’s a link to the same article on commondreams.org for those without a Salon account.
There is a cultural mythology about war in American psyche, although it’s not limited to the US, either. It’s pervasive in our entertainment and storytelling – not just TV shows like CSI, but the whole underlying myth of the heroic warrior defending society or family against the dangers that beset them – dangers usually personified in other people, either of another nationality/ethnic group or economic class. That mythic archetype goes back a long, long way, to our cultural roots in Europe and Asia, to the earliest stories told by the Greeks, to the Old Testament of the Bible.
But in these mythic stories, the enemy is always “evil.” Frequently the enemy is not even recognizably human, and except for key leaders (who are more definitively “evil” personified), these enemies lack individual characteristics — they’re just the orcs. They’re zombies, they’re “savages,” they are faceless figures in identical Imperial uniforms or armor. Therefore there is no moral question on the part of the hero as to whether he can rightfully fight and kill these enemies — there is nothing redeeming or human about them, they are merely obstacles to be knocked down on the way to his final goal of eradicating the evil mastermind at the top.
But real wars, with real weapons, means that our “heroes” will be killing and maiming real people — not orcs, robots, or guys in white plastic armor who just fall over and leave no mourners behind.
Calling another nation, its people, or its leaders, “evil” is the first step to dehumanizing them… tying political or policy goals into this long tradition of heroic mythology in which OUR guys are the heroes Saving The World For Democracy, or Defending Our Freedoms, or Fighting Them There So They Won’t Fight Us Here…. etc. And it should be the first warning bell — because when a President or other leader has to resort to pulling the “Dark Lord Sauron” card out of the deck to support his policies, it means the cause he is promoting is likely fictional too.
Interesting reading on this topic: The Psychology of War: Comprehending its Mystique and its Madness by Laurence LeShan; also War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges.
A people are their myths. America’s predominant myth was best defined by Richard Slotkin some thirty years ago as Regeneration Through Violence It’s our oldest and most enduring self-definition. We redeem our society through killing the “bad guy.” Bush and Fox Television’s “24” have added torture to the mix. Every movie from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s that ends in a shootout or other orgy of violence and then cuts to the heroes standing arm in arm looking at the sunrise is an expression of this myth. Every cop show from some cheezy episode of Miami Vice to “art” like L.A. Confidential is an expression of the same redemptive quality of violence. So is Star Wars. It is the violent act that is regenerative and it doesn’t matter who gets whacked. It is who Americans are, and that’s why it was so easy for Bush to get to the beast after 9/11. The myth says we can regenerate ourselves through violence. The myth is a Big Lie. The Narragansetts were not redeemed, nor the Lakota, nor all the other native people who were exterminated; nor the Mandinka, or Masai who were kidnapped and brought here. But the majority myth is one of regeneration. We may feel superior to the Aztec who sacrificed 80,000 human beings in one continuous orgy of religious fervor. We too have our own pyramids of sacrifice.
I’d love to see a whole diary on this topic – and I think we know just the person who could do that (hint…hint).
Also, it is a society that is not planning to survive long.
Likely, following the time of transition, there will be humans living in North America.
What are WE doing NOW that will be relevant to what THEY will be doing THEN?
For good or ill, I represent no constituency. All I can do, it seems, is try to persuade my friends to think half of a step ahead of events instead of ten steps behind them.
Success is spotty.
I’m seething with anger this morning and thought I’d write something about it here – it seems to fit with the spirit of my diary.
This morning I heard for the first time about the case of Genarlow Wilson. Because I am seething and don’t trust myself to write about it, I’ll quote some of this NYT article about the case:
Apparently yesterday a judge voided the sentence. But the prosecutor is f***ing appealing the decision so Genarlow is still in jail. Need I point out to anyone that Genarlow is black?? WTF kind of crazy people do this??? And where are all the wingnutters who were so outraged at the treatment of the Duke lacrosse players??
Oh my god, my head, it’s expanding…..oh no, it’s going to explode.
Well, this reply looks stupid here. This is a reply to NLinStPaul’s nice comment that I thought I was replying to.
Absolution will be granted if you just write the diary.