Over the years, the GOP has effected a propaganda coup in its branding the Democrats as the party of out-of-touch, effete, quiche-eating elites who have nothing but disdain for red America's rednecks. This worked particularly well during the Bush years, but not as well for the Romney campaign because of his plutocratic image. For that reason alone, I thought it unlikely that Romney would win.
As with any negative stereotyping, there has to be an element of truth in it for it to work. And the really great thing about this particular piece of political propaganda is that it takes the political correctness of the so-called liberal elite and turns it on its head. One of the great mortal sins of multi-cultural political correctness is to think that some cultures are superior to others. But of course the one culture it's ok to sneer at is redneck culture.
Sneering is the affect of snobs, and snobbery is always repugnant. But that doesn't mean that you are therefore forbidden from judging whether something is better or worse. And insofar as redneck culture is a place in which Nietzsche's Last Man is a presence, it can, indeed, be judged as 'not good'. For the Last Man hates anyone who suggests that there is something better or higher than what he is capable of attaining. He celebrates mediocrity as the virtue of the common man, and despises as elites anyone who aspires to something more. He is too sensitive to slights to his dignity, and full of resentment toward those who do not see him as a fine fellow.
The Last Man is the lover of safety and security, the man or woman who cannot think for him or herself, who is always taking his cues from the "master," the strong, steady paternalistic leader. Romney's aggressiveness in the debates were meant as a strong signal that he is the alpha dog, and Obama's hesitant thoughtfulness made him look as though he was being dominated. That was the political meaning of that event–not debating points.
The Last Man follows the alpha dog, no matter where he leads. George Bush's image was largely manufactured to make him appear as the strong man precisely to exploit this slavishness in the Last Man type. And the argument that Romney is making about the 47%, the moochers and "gift getters", is that the Democrats' base is dominated by Last Men, but, alas, Last Men who will not follow him. But insofar as there is a culture of dependency, that is a Last Man characterisitic. The question is to what degreee people are dependent of their own choice or to what degree they have been forced into it.
The mentality of the Last Man, wherever it appears, is repugnant. And so are those people who embrace and defend that mentality. Such people talk about freedom with romantic fervor but haven't a clue what real freedom means. They give it up willingly to the strong man who asks it from them, and for this reason they make a great soldiers because they are so easy to command. Tell him to jump off a cliff and he'll do it without a doubt or a question. There is a kind of primitive idealism here that rulers love and praise as courage and loyalty, and for good reason, because without it they would be unable to perpetrate their crimes.
Am I being unfair in painting red-state rednecks with this Last Man broad brush. Probably. I realize that there are many fine people who come out of this subculture. James Webb has made something of a career of praising its postive attributes, and I get that. Nevertheless I think it's possible to critique the social psychology of the group, without judging its individuals. And while I'm sure that some would argue with it, most would agree that the need for values conformity is stronger among southern whites and among whites in the bible-belt evangelical churches than it is, for instance in the more cosmopolitan coastal subcultures. I don't think I'm asserting anything particularly controversial by saying that this conformist mentality is rooted in a fundamental cultural insecurity, and that as such it has been a key emotional driver in the areas that tend to vote red.
There are lots of nice, decent people in this American red-state subculture, but there is something fundamentally primitive, fearful, and regressive in the social attitudes that unite them as a group. These attitudes, of course are not restricted to this subculture–they are fairly common among the I'm-a-victim and the politically correct left. It's found among certain reactionary Catholic groups. But wherever the Last Man shows his face, you find a form of cultural leveling that is one of the chief symptoms of our current cultural decadence.
One of the canons of the politically correct left is that all cultures are equal, and that's just plain stupid. Cultures that value reasoned discourse, which promote and protect human rights, which are open to diverse opinions and cultural values, and which have strong spiritual and artistic traditions are superior to cultures that don't have these characteristics. Some cultures might have strengths in one or another of the elements on this list, but the most advanced societies are the ones in which all of them work robustly together.
There is an odd attitude abroad, associated with this leveling attitude about cultures, that holds all art is equal. It's all subjective judgment. What one person does or likes is no better than what another does or likes. But is there any question that Dostoyevski is better than Danielle Steele, that Bach is better than Lennon & McCartney? This isn't to say that Lennon and McCartney or Steele don't have value and cannot be enjoyed, but it's ridiculous to assert that one thing is better simply because you enjoy it more. There are standards, and these standards, while they may be subjective, are also transpersonal–they transcend one's personal likes and dislikes. The standard assumes that there are levels of spiritual aspiration which some attain and to which others aspire. To say that there are no standards is to say that there is nothing worthy of our aspiration. This is commonplace thinking in a culture that has become decadent.
The whole idea of a advances in civilization relies on the assumption that there are great souls who have broken new ground and that some of these may have gone beyond what the rest of us can understand or achieve. But that does not mean that because we don't understand or cannot replicate what they have done that we can dismiss it as "not for me."
This is essentially what the anti-elitists on the cultural and corporate right are saying. Science?–not my bag. Great art? Who needs it? Now the great propaganda achievement is to reduce to mere snobbery this aspiration to achieve greatness or to understand and appreciate it. Are there sneering snobs who look down on those who haven't reached their level of achievement? Certainly there are, and we would rightly describe their snobbery as a moral deficiency because we do have standards by which we can judge certain states of soul as morally deficient. So is it reason enough to describe all aspiration to higher levels of cultural achievement as elitism or snobbery? That would be moronic. And we can judge it moronic by standards that we have for judging it so.
The point is that if there are standards, there are ways of judging good and bad, better and worse. And the cultural right is correct to insist on preserving such standards. And they are correct in criticizing the soul-deadening qualities of contemporary American life. But as as I have argued elsewhere, the cultural right misdiagnoses the causes of our ailment. Our soul sickness is not the product of cultural elites–left-wing professors, Hollywood moguls, and nihilist artists; it's rather the product of the social adjustments made necessary by the creative/destructive forces released by freemarket consumer capitalism. The best intellectuals and artists are simply struggling honestly to understand what has happened to us in this neither-here-nor-there era that we call the postmodern that more than anything is the creation of consumer capitalism.
These forces have all but killed the living, vibrant, spiritual traditions of the West, and what we are left with are the empty forms which too often seem attractive primarily to personalities who have an emotional need for order and security and find it in an alienated, conformist, smiley-face Christianity. Such a Christianity is completely at odds with a Christianity that has any depth or authenticity. The symbol for the true Christianity is not a smiley face, but a man dying on a cross.
Death and Resurrection compose the essential rhythm of Christianity. Without the first the second is meaningless and impossible. And Christians who understand this should have the inner resources to live with steadfast hope through those times when death seems to be the main cultural theme. For we are living now in a period when the old thing has died, and we are waiting for the new to be born. We are in a cultural winter waiting for a springtime of the spirit. It will come, maybe not in my lifetime, but it will come. And our job now is to prepare for its coming rather than trying to resuscitate the corpses of old forms which are dead and gone. Resurrection is not resuscitation; it is the creation of something completely new by transforming that which was old. It's a movement forward, to a higher level, not backward to something that we have already left behind.
We are like the apostles in the upper room on the Saturday after Good Friday. We are dazed, confused, shocked at the seeming invincibility of the forces of death and evil, and we feel incapable of hoping that there is some other possibility. But there is, and we must not lose faith.
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