After the Future

May 21, 2007

Codependent with an Abusive Spouse

Gary Kamiya in Salon: The truth is that Bush’s high crimes and misdemeanors, far from being too small, are too great. What has saved Bush is the fact that his…

Gary Kamiya in Salon:

The truth is that Bush’s high crimes and misdemeanors, far from being too small, are too great. What has saved Bush is the fact that his lies were, literally, a matter of life and death. They were about war. And they were sanctified by 9/11. 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. This doesn’t mean we support Bush, simply that at some dim, half-conscious level we’re too confused — not least by our own complicity — to work up the cold, final anger we’d need to go through impeachment. We haven’t done the necessary work to separate ourselves from our abusive spouse. We need therapy — not to save this disastrous marriage, but to end it.

He might have turned out to be awful, but we were in love with him once and chose him to be ours. Got to keep looking the other way. Got to keep cutting him some slack. Hey, maybe he’ll change. Maybe if we don’t think about it too much it will all go away.

I remember one of the more interesting analyses concerning why Dean lost in Iowa in ’04 was because hardly anyone among the rank and file Dems participating in the caucuses then identified with Dean’s being right about Iraq from the beginning. They were more comfortable with a candidate like Kerry who had been wrong at the beginning and changed his mind later, because his changing attitude toward the war mirrored their own. These rank-and-file Democrats didn’t admire Dean because he was right when the other candidates were wrong. His being right was not a sign of his astuteness, but of his being too radical. Better to vote for someone whose attitudes are closer to those in the pack, no matter how dramatically wrong they have proven to be. At the end of the day, Dean didn’t seem presidential because he didn’t run with the pack.

Americans don’t feel comfortable a candidate who is right when they are wrong. They’d rather vote for someone who mirrors their own frailties. George Bush, whoever he might be underneath all the hype and the imagemaking, is someone whom many Americans see as someone who is a lot like them. Not too smart, but right attitudes and values. He’s a decent guy, and you don’t throw him off the bus no matter how bad he is for the country.

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9 responses

Mike McG…

May 22, 2007

“Americans don’t feel comfortable with people who are right when they are wrong. They’d rather vote for someone who mirrors their own frailties.”
I know we’re exasperating, Jack, but reminding us how callow…or is it stupid?…we are doesn’t seem to be a winning electoral strategy. If it were, my party would be eager to draft Paul Krugman for president.
It may be wise for Democrats to veil any hint of contempt for voters; we’ve had quite enough of contempt from the Republican party under Bush/Cheney.
Since…what?…70% of Americans disapprove of Bush/Cheney conceit, perhaps there is another way to interpret voter behavior: that we aren’t convinced that presidential politics pits those with frailties against those without them…that there are plenty of frailties to go around. Or that people who think they are without frailties are themselves pretty scary.

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Matt Zemek

May 22, 2007

Jack,
Dean lost because the media had it in for him, and because Democrats insisted on “electability,” which is another word for selling out.
With the war and the recent trade deal, the Democrats are STILL selling out. It’s as though, deep down, they don’t want to overturn the myth of American superiority or its many attendant themes and tones.
Disgusting.
I would add, Jack, that Americans like someone who’s right all the time if it’s emotionally easy to identify with the person being right all the time.
In other words, if a garden variety conservative is right all the time, that’s a much more acceptable rightness than a garden variety liberal’s constant correctness. Put another way, constant correctness in conservative clothing (violence, warmaking, tax cuts) is a winning rightness; correctness in support of nonviolent causes and liberal positions is not attractive.
And so we arrive at a supreme irony: so many liberals themselves have been subtly but genuinely intimidated into accepting the deeper narratives, talking points, and pressure points the GOP has perpetuated and disseminated into the cultural bloodstream over time, especially since 9/11.

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Jack Whelan

May 22, 2007

Mike–
I’m not running for anything, so I don’t have any electoral strategies; I’m just trying to get my arms around the enormity of what is happening to our society. I’m really profoundly alarmed by it. Understanding the problem is the first step toward developing a strategy toward solving it, and what’s going on right now truly, deeply frightening. I guess my goal is not to convince the extremists that they’re wrong, but moderates that the threat these extemists pose is far more serious that they are inclined to think.
I think where we differ is in our estimation of the seriousness of the threat. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you think that if we sit down and show these extremists a little respect, be reasonable and moderate in our tone, they will come around. I’m sure there are some people about whom that’s true, but by definition they’re moderates, and so they’re not the ones who pose a threat. Moderates never pose a threat. It’s the others who are in this impenetrable, self-reinforcing, right-wing echo chamber that worry me. My experience with the ones I know has taught me that nothing changes their minds. Not rational argument or factual evidence, not arguments based on the gospels if they are Christian. Nothing. All those arguments are trumped by fear of the Other. What’s alarming is the discovery that there are far more Americans with these crude, fear-soaked extremist attitudes than I believed possible.
Speaking of gospel ideals, did you see the poll where 21% of Catholics think that torture should be use often against terrorists and 35% think it should be done sometimes. That’s 56% of Catholics who condone the use of torture. (See this link http://bp3.blogger.com/_MnYI3_FRbbQ/RlNJnqGM05I/AAAAAAAAAAk/iPnS1bftTWo/s1600-h/torture.bmp
I find that so discouraging. It’s as if the faith provides no bulwark against the stupidity and crudity of the kind of thinking that Americans have sunk into since 9/11. What do you think will become of us if we are attacked again?

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Jack Whelan

May 23, 2007

Matt–
You’re right that the beltway media always disliked Dean, but they didn’t like Bill Clinton either in the early going. Clinton is a far more talented and charismatic pollitician than Dean and that in part accounts for his overcoming negative media depictions. But the Iowans voted Dean out rather dramatically in the weeks preceding the infamous scream, and I think it had ore to do with their discomfort with his having the mantle of being radical anti-war candidate. The activist core and the netroots always liked Dean, but the rank and file never felt that comfortable with him. If it did, I think it wouldn’t have mattered that much what the beltway media said about him.
Dean’s record is hardly radical. He’s about as centrist as any candidate can be in my way of locating people on the spectrum. I think he is far more qualified for the job than Bush was and has as much/little personal charm as Bush. The problem lies in that people didn’t identify with his attitudes. They felt more comfortable with a pack-runner like Kerry.

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Mike McG…

May 23, 2007

Jack:
First of all, please forgive my testy response. It says a great deal more about me than about you and your essay. I responded to what your words evoke in me about the possibilities of bringing forward a center that is *both* progressive *and* reconciling. Perhaps it is precisely because of the persuasive power of your arguments that I recoil from their logical conclusions and feel the need to defend against them.
I don’t believe we diverge with regard to principles nor with the estimation of the threat; I too regard the threat as serious and I recognize the risks of naïve optimism. But we are in very different places with regard to both perceptions and tactics.
Ah, perceptions. We’re all prisoners of our own perceptions; we regularly absorb data consistent with our preconceptions, distort them to fit our worldviews, and filter out data that is inconsistent. Perhaps it is willful ignorance on my part, but I simply do not experience people to the right of us as starkly as you do. I don’t perceive the extremists as quite so numerous nor the moderates as quite so numb. I wonder how we…you and I, but more importantly, the polity…can determine which set of perceptions is closer to the mark.
Survey data may help. In response to an essay you posted a couple of weeks ago, it occurred to me that there must be recent data replicating the classic Adorno study on the authoritarian personality. Were it possible to examine these data, we might learn whether authoritarian traits as measured over time are increasingly prevalent, as you might expect, or alternatively as stable or declining, as I would expect.
But even here we’re left with the task of interpreting the data; both of us could well find support for our preconceptions. Let’s take, for example, the Pew data you cite. I find the statistical portrayal of Catholics deeply disturbing and supportive of your position. The results among Protestants are also disturbing, albeit less so than the Catholic data, but the profile of White Mainline Protestants and White Evangelicals is remarkably similar and disconfirming to the Left’s Christofacist stereotype of evangelicals.
Which takes us to tactics. Even when the survey data are highly disturbing I wonder about the utility of seizing upon conclusions and thus freezing them in the public perception. Example: survey data suggest that a not insignificant number of African Americans view AIDS as deliberately introduced by the white community with genocidal intent. What is the real story here? The bald and stigmatizing conclusion that some people are radically out of touch with reality? Or the continuing experience of vulnerability that keeps such discourse in play? I submit it is the latter and that attending with emphasis to the former can have unintended consequences.
I am haunted, Jack, by your final sentence: “What do you think will become of us if we are attacked again?” I shudder to think how we will respond to a future attack. Both deeply discouraged and both in agreement that the threat is grave, how then do we proceed? First of all we proceed by attempting to empathetically understand why people feel vulnerable and by attempting to hear them out. Social psychologist Jon Haidt is spot on here: “It seems to be part of the nature of moral argument that one’s opponents are seen to be motivated by evil…But such moralization and demonization obscure the true nature of the conflict…It is more accurate, and certainly more conducive to cooperation, to acknowledge that both sides are driven by their moral commitments…The two sides differ in their conceptions of the good, not in the goodness of their motivations.”
Secondly it is essential to express solidarity rather than contempt. Recognizing that many of the most politically are indeed locked into contempt, a serious attempt must be made…and this is tough…to reserve some air time for a center that has the capacity to reach across the ideological divide. A broad national conversation, composed of a sea of individual conversations, must take place among those who can acknowledge fears and frailties, recognize that the world out there is scary and admit that they don’t have all the answers. People as interested in listening as in holding forth.
Such a process is inchoate and airy…which is why progressive policy types are so impatient with Obama. And perhaps it won’t work. But what is the alternative??? It has to be a better option than demonizing a broad swath of the American people, projecting all manner of evil onto them, and appropriating ‘smartest kid in the class’ disdain that practically forces them to discount our message.

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Matt Zemek

May 23, 2007

Mike,
Your words are so necessary, simply because they point out THE ultimate difficulty in the larger project that you, Jack and I all share: finding “the way out of the darkness.”
Here’s the trick: how to effectively combat nutjobs like Gonzalez, Cheney and Rove WITHOUT giving the outward appearance of demonizing them AND the red-meat base that still believes in them.
You and Jack are both right. The neocons are so entrenched in their delusional beliefs that they can’t be appeased.
(YET, THAT’S PRECISELY WHAT THE SPINELESS DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS IS DOING! Pure capitulation.)
Yet, in order to truly overturn all the crap that the neocons have pulled, and to restore what’s left of a republic fading into empire, the Bible Belt base and all other folks generally associated with Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” demographic need to be given a compelling (read: different in content and tone) narrative. This narrative obviously needs to rise to them and respect their intelligence and experience.
So it’s both mortal combat (Jack) and artful reconciliation (you).
We just have to find the stones (and give our candidates the stones) to be willing to advance the right argument with the right tones and policy planks.
Obama has the best positioning for this task, but the least experience. When November rolls around and the focus tightens in those cornfields and New Hampshire diners, he simply MUST be willing to step out of cautious comfort zones and speak powerfully to the whole of the American electorate.

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Jack Whelan

May 23, 2007

Mike–
Here’s how I think it works. Most movement conservatives or people leaning in that direction aren’t extremists, but they have a certain personality type that is fearful of Otherness. Under normal circumstances I would agree with you that they are not much of a threat. But there are a lot Muslims in Bosnia and other parts of the the Balkan Peninsula who probably thought the same thing about their Christian neighbors with whom they got along fine for generations.
They got along until the Christians were incited into violence and hatred by demagogues. I’m talking about a latency in the right-wing personality, and it’s not a question of my or anybody’s demonizing such people when that latency becomes active–it is genuinely demonic. You cannot deal with it on an individual basis; it is a collective form of possession, and it is capable of blind, crude, and ruthless violence. It has to be seen for what it is, and you can’t sit down and talk reasonably with a mob mentality.
The only thing I’m aware that works sometimes to disperse a mob is those in the mob to be shamed by an accepted moral authority. People who allow themselves to succumb to the mob mentality are like children who need to be scolded, and if there is no one to do it, they proceed without inhibition. The authoritarian personality by definition is a child who needs authority figures to tell him or her what to do or think, that’s what makes such a person so vulnerable to demagogues. The authoritarian personality runs with the pack, and when the pack turns vicious, such a person has no interior moral resources strong enough to resist.
These relatively normal-seeming people about whom you speak have throughout history become the enablers if not implementers of vicious extremist agendas. They do things and condone things they would never have done without the incitement extremist demagogues or on their own without being part of a vicious group consciousness. Nevertheless they do it.
The demagogues and their agendas are the more serious problem, but extremist demagogues thrive in the kind of paranoid social environment into which we have evolved since 9/11. I don’t think where we are now is that bad; it’s where I fear we are heading. And when I read stats like Catholic attitudes toward torture, it pushes me close to despair about our prospects. Maybe Obama or someone else can redirect things, but until there’s a real shift in direction, I will not be able to breathe easily.
The point I’ve been trying to argue is that while I agree with you completely that in one-on-one interactions with these people of the right, you engage with them as human beings who deserve our respect and our understanding. I’m not primarily concerned with the individual, but rather the potential for these individuals to become transformed into a crude, subhuman mob, the kind that we see doing horrors all over the world. I do not believe that Americans are exempt in any way from such behavior if the conditions for it are right.
We differ not in our perception of these individuals as decent people in themselves, but in the degree of their vulnerability to be transformed into one of these mobs. And everywhere I look these days, I’m seeing the infrastructure being laid in our legal framework and in our attitudinal framework to effect just this kind of transformation. What would never have been permissible ten years ago is now permissible. The polling data about which I’ve written lately is just the tip of the iceberg concerning attitudes.
And Matt’s right about the need to fight. We’re not there yet, but at a certain point, we have to take sides, and we have to stand our ground. The choices might not be attractive, but if in you’re in France after 1940, whose side are you on–the resistance or the collaborationists? Most of the French sided with the right-wing Petainists, and most Americans will do the same if they find themselves with a similar choice. We choose to resist cannot fight fire with fire, but we must nevertheless realize what we are dealing with and develop a principled strategy of resistance.
Again, we’re not there yet, but there’s a very good chance we will be if we’re attacked again before 1/20/09 or if one of this crop of torture-endorsing Republicans is elected in ’08.

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Matt Zemek

May 23, 2007

Mike and Jack,
The Democrats today showed that they want to appease instead of fight.
Jack in particular:
Edwards for president. Period.
He was the only one to immediately stand up and call the Dems on their bullshit.
The Obama moment has very sadly passed.
PS to Mike:
Keith Olbermann delivered a stemwinder of a commentary last night. Maybe Jack or someone else will have an archive, or you can Google.

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Jack Whelan

May 24, 2007

Here’s an interesting piece on Obama and the politics of realignment that’s right in Mike’s wheelhouse. The argument is for a Gore/Obama ticket that could possibly turn things around: http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/specialguests/2007/may/24/gore_obama_and_a_coalition_against_the_politics_of_fear
An excerpt:
“A really interesting answer is developing here at TPM Café. Yesterday Andrew Golis contrasted Barack Obama’s claim, “I have the capacity to get people to recognize themselves in each other,” with what he called the Right’s “dehumanization of some Other… on nearly every policy” – on immigrants, gays, Muslims, and, liberals, for instance.
The left has done that, too, I would add, in its overemphasis of diversity and in the more virulent of its racial and sexual identity politics. (Remember mau-mauing? The Weathermen? Rioting? Various kinds of sex police? Heterophobia?) Andrew commends Obama’s “new kind of politics,” which would work to end the “active demonization of political opponents” by doing more to “cultivate social empathy.”
Some respondents think Obama’s politics a bit naïve. Sphealey observes that the playground code of his pick-up basketball days — “a fundamental allegiance to getting along, and specifically to handling losses without developing longstanding grudges” – could have been undermined “if a small group had ever gotten together and made an agreement to subvert the system and behave destructively in a coordinated manner.” By the time “the rest of us figured out what was happening, our only alternative would have been to terminate the system. If trust had been destroyed it could not have been replaced.
“Strong as our Constitutional system is,” he concludes, “I don’t think it was ever intended to resist a large-scale, long-term, tightly-organized effort to subvert it from within. Obama thinks he can wave a magic wand of charisma and everyone (including the [conservative] Radicals’ base) will fall under the spell and agree to play nice again. I don’t see it happening.”
If sphealey is right, then my “Make it right” slogan is wrong: Who can still appeal seriously to an American sense of fairness? But respondent stevelu reasons that “an idealistic campaign” could “stand against the agit-prop and brass knuckles of the Right… by calling it out for what it is, loudly and clearly and repeatedly in terms so unmistakable that they slice through the media filters and reach into the culture. That means controversy, riding it out, getting beyond it, and changing the terms of the debate.”

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Codependent with an Abusive Spouse

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