After the Future

May 27, 2006

Normal USA

There is no normal anymore. But it doesn’t matter because people want what they can’t have, anyway. People long for normal as unrequited lovers long for what they cannot have. …

There is no normal anymore. But it doesn’t matter because people want what they can’t have, anyway. People long for normal as unrequited lovers long for what they cannot have. And so they vote in the hopes that those who say they can deliver normal will do so. They won’t.

Is what passes for normal these days really normal? One of the peculiar characteristics of the time in which we live is that on one level everything seems to be normal. Life goes on pretty much the way it always has for the last fifty years—adults go to work, children go to school, we get around in cars and watch a lot of TV—there are continuities, for sure. But something is different. Things don’t feel quite right. There’s relative calm on the outside, but there’s barely controlled panic on the inside. People are scared, and they don’t quite know about what. It’s not just the heightened level of anxiety that the nation feels following 9/11. It’s been going on longer than that—at least since the sixties, because that’s when we Americans began to have a palpable sense that we were no longer who we thought we were.

I think it comes from a feeling of the country having lost its anchor. There’s a directionless drift that makes people very anxious, and it comes from a sense that there’s no "normal" anymore. This sense of the country losing its norms has accelerated in the last forty years, and much has been written about just getting used to a world where normal means constant change. All kinds of self-help books have come on to the scene instructing their readers how to thrive in chaos or how to ride the rapids of change. And that’s all well and good, but it doesn’t really cut to the heart of the matter, which is that living with constant change is stressful. People need stability. They need to have a feeling of some control over their lives, and when they don’t, they cannot help but feel that they are lost and that their lives are spinning out of control.

So they vote Republican. The Democrats have become identified with the forces of normless chaos, the Republicans with the forces of what used to be thought of as "normal." For many people it’s that simple and that primitive. It has hardly anything to do with the specific issues. It’s all a matter of who they believe at an unconscious level will be more effective at maintaining and promoting the feeling of order and security that comes if only the world were normal again.

But as I’ve been arguing for some time now, voting Republican doesn’t slow down the change–the laisser faire capitalism that is at the center of their agenda is the one of the greatest promoters of social destabilization in human history. So voting Republican just gives people the illusion of control. It gives people a feeling that their vote is all about trying to bring back the old, normal America. This is a politics of nostalgia and it’s just shot through with delusion. It’s a politics that refuses to deal with the world as it is. But the GOP understands this dynamic and exploits it to spectacular effect.

The fact is that change and social chaos will continue to be the norm no matter whom we elect. But at least the Democrats have been the party which has historically tried to mitigate the harsher consequences of modernity. And so the kind of people we need in political leadership positions are not those who promise to make the anxiety and discomfort go away, but those who will help us to develop the skills that will enable us to adapt. A lot of people I know would say: Well that’s what the GOP stands for. The Dems are for giving everybody a fish, to use the old cliche, and the GOP is for teaching every body how to catch his own fish. What’s wrong with that? Well that’s what they say, but that’s not what they do. Unfunded mandates are not policy.

As I have said before, and I will no doubt say again, a vote for the GOP appears to be a conservative vote, but it is anything but that. Conservative means to conserve what exists, and what exists is the social democratic system we associate with the New Deal. But insofar as the Democrats have been the custodians for this system, and insofar as they have allowed themselves to be branded as the party of chaos and normlessness, they have given the GOP the means to advance not a conservative agenda, but an agenda which is bent on destroying the system. I think that
this has been catastrophic for the party and for the country because is
has provided an opening for the most predatory elements in American
society–these wolves in traditional-values sheep’s clothing–to get
into the Beltway henhouse and make the mess of things that they have.

That’s the irony. It’s the Democrats that in fact represent a basic belief in the common good and which has provided us with some modicum of stability and security; it the GOP which seeks to destabilize the system by unfettering the forces that will return us to brutal conditions more typical of the laisser faire late 19th century. Believe me, that’s not a "normal" we want to go back to. The Democrats are the real conservatives. Voting for Democrats is in fact the more conservative vote because its a vote to protect and conserve what’s left of the the much eroded New Deal system without which there is very little protection from the predators.

A vote for the Democrats is simply a vote to apply the brakes. It’s a vote to return to the social democracy mainstream. There’s nothing particularly exciting about that or about Democrats. They should be the party most Americans feel comfortable with in a time of disorienting change, but they don’t. The Dems have allowed themselves to become branded in such a way that many Americans who should be the natural constituency for the Dems no longer are. Why? Because these Americans have a mostly traditional sense about what is right or wrong, what is normal and what is weird, and they no longer feel comfortable with what the Democrats have come to represent. Even if they agree with specific Democratic policy proposals, their support is tepid because they no longer identify with the team which has proposed them.

Having good ideas is not enough. The Socialist Party a hundred years ago proposed labor laws that most Americans thought were a good idea. Does that mean that Americans voted Socialists into office? Locally in a few places, but not nationally–a party does not get voted into office unless people can identify with it. Most Americans need to be able to look at the party and say, "The people in that party are ‘normal’ folk like me." The Democrats are no longer perceived that way by what had been their white, working-class base. In the longer run, they are very much in danger of becoming a political irrelevancy unless they shore up their support among that constituency. It might be too late for them to do that. Team loyalties have gelled, and people don’t change their fundamental political identities easily.

The GOP realizes that this is an image game, that the game is being played in the cultural values arena where people form their team loyalties, and it will do everything it can to keep the game there, because as long as they do, they win. The substance or reality doesn’t matter; only the image does, for except for the relatively few truly independent minded, most people form their allegiances superficially on the basis of who’s saying what they want to hear. The GOP understands this in a way the Dems have not been able yet to grasp. And so the Dems lose the image game in the cultural values arena time and time again. I don’t see how that’s going to change, at least any time soon. Their only hope is to change the game.

Because even if the Democrats are successful in November (and I’m not convinced yet they will be), it will not be because these ‘normal’ Americans identify with them; it will have more to do with their rejecting the corruption, incompetence, and facetious overreaching of the GOP. It will be at best a temporary respite while the predators regroup.

Comments

8 responses

Marshall

May 27, 2006

It kind of seems like, in the paridigm you present, that “normal” is some kind of white 50’s patriarchy. You know the 50’s? When negroes knew their place; and so did women for that matter. Yuck.
In this model, the problem with the Democrat Party, is that they represent the minorities, weaklings, and losers.
In a lot of ways you are right about how this is how the choice is branded by the Republicans, but I would be careful about perpetuating stereotypes about what’s “normal”, and the “good old days” before the sixties and “change”.

Reply
Jack Whelan

May 27, 2006

Marshall–
I think you’re misunderstanding my point. It’s not about perpetuating anything; it’s about describing how people do in fact think. I have no nostalgia for normal, but it’s a reality that is shaping the way the game is being played. Just saying that it’s stupid or stereotypical that people think that way doesn’t change the fact that they do.
Most normal people need to feel a sense of order and comfort, and until the Dems come up with a better way of presenting it, the Republicans are the comfort party. They understand how to play that game and the Dems have not yet figured it out, and I don’t know if they can.
Their attempts to play the normal game have been pathetic and transparent. Remember Kerry’s hunting expedition. And now look at how Hillary is inauthentic pandering. It’s just so obvious that what is normal to normal America is not normal to Dems. Everybody seems to get that except the Dems themselves.
As has been pointed out here before, it’s the Republicans who realize how stupid and gullible the American stereotypical way of thinking is. They are the ones who have the real disdain for normal Americans and for the Democratic process. But they are the ones who have been winning more consistently at the ballot box because they are more cynical than Dems who think that reasoned discourse still has a place in the political process.

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Mike McG…

May 27, 2006

Seems to me that the sort of disenchanted folks that Jack describes are exquisitely sensitive to the disdain for them held by influential Democratic players. Actually, I think Marshall did a good job describing a prevalent caricature of their sensibilities even if he does buy into it. Their response to the ‘yuck’ caricature with which they’re tarred: vote Republican.
I regret their decision. I regret that they don’t catch on to the more subtle contempt in which they are held by Republican players. Until we learn that they will not be reduced to their economic interests (contra Tom Frank) and we come to understand their cultural sensibilities, we will continue to lose their crucial votes.

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Matt Zemek

May 28, 2006

Mike McG:
It’s not disdain. It’s a tone-deafness mixed with timidity. Democrats are guilty of trying to play the traditional political money game along with the Republicans, which makes any “normal” policies and positions in support of the lower-middle class suddenly hollow and/or hypocritical on the surface. That’s the timidity.
The tone-deafness is found in a paralyzing inability to talk seamlessly and (see Hillary here) naturally about faith, values and principle in ways that Mr. and Mrs. Normal can identify with. Hillary and, in the House, Nancy Pelosi represent the big-money elitism (combined with naked pandering) that instantly turns off voters. What’s so tragic about those two figures, though, is that they really aren’t terribly liberal to begin with, yet are branded with that word anyway.
I keep waiting for the Democrats to do a lot more retail, on-the-ground politics. It sounds cliche or way too obvious (or both), but Democrats have to connect with individuals and get out of their Beltway location (and Beltway M.O.) if they really want to create a seismic shift in the political landscape.
Think Russ Feingold’s ethics and virtue combined with John McCain’s straight-talk patina in a real person unafraid to talk about faith as a driving force in one’s personal and political experiences. That is the kind of candidate the Dems should be producing/seeking, but aren’t.
Hillary’s attempts to “talk values” are incredibly painful to watch, and her corporate whoring with Rupert only exposes her very phoniness all the more.
But to re-emphasize the conclusion, it’s not disdain the Dems are showing. It’s tone-deafness and timidity, which only come about when one is out of touch with the people and too drunk on money and power.
Ironic, isn’t it, that the very hunger for power held by the Dems is what’s keeping them from having power in the first place. People see the Republicans as genuinely motivated and passionate as protectors of the American people, while the Dems are seen as chameleon-like shifting opportunists without backbone or vision. In truth, the Dems–while hardly covered in dust and glory–represent a much more fundamental path toward some degree of safety and stability for America, but they’re so tone-deaf that they don’t know how to let Americans see as much. They talk at or past Americans, while Republicans know how to push people’s buttons and choose the right images.

Reply
Jack Whelan

May 28, 2006

I think Mike and Matt are both right. The tone deafness comes from a sense of being “more evolved”, and it’s this that traditional normal people pick up on and makes them want to puke. But it’s this smug sense that they are more evolved that leads them to be tone deaf to the values and concerns of those whom they left behind.
I think that the cosmopolitan attitudes of the cultural left are more adaptive than the rigid traditionalist attitudes, and yet I would be a traditionalist if a “living” tradition had survived. I’ve written a lot about the zombie traditionalism that is the mode of the cultural right at this time. It’s not healthful to be a zombie traditionalist, but the challenge is not to indulge in a feeling of disdain for them, but to understand what they need (overcome the tonedeafness) and to find a more healthful way to provide it. Both parties are failing miserably to meet this challenge.

Reply
Marshall

May 28, 2006

Is it really just a “sense of being more evolved” or is it actually being more evolved? I think that’s a fair question when you consider things like civil rights, equal rights for women, environmental regulations, social safety nets, etc. It seems to me that the Democrat Party, for all it’s faults, represents a progressive movement. The Republicans on the other hand are of course overwhelmingly regressive, not to mention repressive and hypocritical.

Reply
Jack Whelan

May 28, 2006

Marshall– It’s not just about the issues. It’s about the underlying attitude, and I’m as guilty of it as any one every time I want to call people who voted for Bush morons because they were stupid enough to be conned by GOP propaganda. I try not to say it, but I’m thinking it, and I’m trying to understand why because I’m so angry at them because witting or unwitting they have enabled policies that are so destructive.
So that’s the challenge–to speak the truth about what’s really happening, but not in a controlled, respectful way that avoids making people feel stupid for being conned. I think it starts with separating the people from the political leaders they have supported and to reveal these leaders for what they are.
All but a third of the country seems open to seeing these thugs for what they are, but the problem is that there is no alternative for them to turn to. They might see that their GOP leaders are corrupt, incompetent hypocrites, but they think the Dems are worse. And the Dems are largely responsible for their credibility problems in this regard. And it makes them powerless and ineffectual to exploit the amazing opportunity the GOP is now giving them.
Mike’s point is that traditionalist types are unlikely to turn to the Dems because they feel that they are not respected by them. Matt’s point is that it comes so natural to liberals to condescend to the traditionalist, they don’t even know they are doing it. That’s the cause of the tone deafness–liberals don’t realize how their smugness causes a resentment-driven backlash by people who feel confused, insecure, and anxious because the world doesn’t reflect the way they were brought up to understand it. They don’t see Liberals as offering a solution–they see them as the problem.
The challenge therefore for liberals is to understand that their solutions, insofar as they are perceived as part of a values matrix that traditionalists feel allergic to, will never gain any traction with them. That’s what I mean by saying that the Dems have to change the fundamental narrative. I’m not saying that they pander to traditionalists, but they have to understand traditionalist anxieties and to understand why they have good reason to find liberal democrats so nauseating. And then they have to find the common ground, which is the striving for a just society in which we’re all in this together. Isn’t that what we all want, principled liberals and principled traditionalists alike?
P.S. Check out this piece by Paul Waldman here: http://gadflyer.com/flytrap/index.php?Week=200621#2746
I think Waldman is right to a certain. It’s about adults speaking to one another as adults. It’s not about pandering nor is it about condescending, of course. But at a certain level it’s about the underlying values matrix.

Reply
Matt Zemek

May 29, 2006

Marshall,
Are the Dems really an authentic progressive movement?
If they want to win the people who SHOULD vote for them based on their economic fortunes–the people Thomas Frank looks at in his important political book, “WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS?”–they need to do so with actions that are so courageous and bold as to make their virtues unmistakably clear and visible to everyone.
Democrats need to forsake corporate money, run candidates who have conviction, pay personally for flights and meals (and show people that they are footing the bill themselves, not taxpayers), not denigrate their opposition, and do a truckload of retail politics.
They don’t do these things now.
Hillary? Pelosi? DNC wonks?
These people are out of touch. If they’d only have the guts to first admit that they don’t have the gut-level trust or respect of most Americans, and then make radical actions that, deep down, really do square with people’s values (across ideological spectra; it’s within the worldview of Dems to do this, but not their political subculture), they won’t win.
Dems have to make strong and very intimate connections with voters on the ground–connections so strong that no MSM wurlitzer or meme can disrupt it.
If Dems go outside the box, they’ll find themselves inside the winner’s circle. They need to risk big in order to reap the rewards. Safe, conventional Bob Shrum, consultant-based crap won’t do it.
The Dems aren’t a movement; they need to become one.

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Normal USA

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