Tagged: conservatism
Days of plague 2
Anti-government conservatism, which has systematically weakened the left hand of the state since the Reagan presidency, is finally reaping its true benefits: chaos, incompetence, and an inability to govern.
And death.
Tea Party redux
The year of reading tea leaves VII: violent tea
01 October 2010
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It would be interesting to know whether, and how deeply, the FBI has infiltrated the Tea Party organizations.
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Lacking moderate voices among their membership, the Republican party has only one option as long as it is out of power: total, absolute, non-cooperation. That is understandable, even rational. However, the way in which it pursues non-cooperation is curious, especially the use of slogans and distortions of reality that only invigorate the less emotionally stable segments of its political base. Republicans only paint themselves into a corner. It’s been said many times before: if Republican legislators insist on describing the Affordable Health Care for America Act as a threat to American democracy and values, as a government takeover, and as socialist, then there’s no way these legislators can contribute positively to such a piece of legislation, and the rhetoric will be impelled further into loon land. And the loons will come out to play.
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Also curious is the way the once staid, emotionally controlled presentation of the Republican Party has morphed into an uninhibited expression of feelings and a political style that exhibits the characteristics of a new form of secondary narcissism. In The Culture of Narcissism, Christopher Lasch described the shift in the type of patient who presented him/herself for psychoanalytic treatment: “Psychoanalysis, a therapy that grew out of experience with severely repressed and morally rigid individuals who needed to come to terms with a rigorous inner ‘censor,’ today finds itself confronted more and more often with a ‘chaotic and impulse-ridden character.’ It must deal with patients who ‘act out’ their conflicts instead of repressing or sublimating them.” Today’s Republican politician, no less than the Tea Partysan that is her de facto mirror-image, now presents similar characteristics. The Republican politician reacts impulsively to disappointments, and “acts out” against the agency (whichever one is found to be handy at any given moment: “liberals,” Obama, ACORN, unions, Pelosi, “Hollywood,” “illegal immigrants,” the “mainstream media,” etc.) that is perceived to be the source of disappointment through the use of disparaging language that reaches for the worst metaphors of political degradation. The emocons of today are no longer able to sublimate frustrations and anger, and their rage boils over on the floor of the House (“baby killer”), in town hall meetings, at Tea Partysan gatherings, and on voice mail left for members of Congress (“I hope you bleed … (get) cancer and die”). None of this is new, of course: paranoid style rage against the changing political cultural circumstances is older than McCarthyism, the clinic bombings, and Tim McVeigh. What is new is the open embrace of a discourse of victimhood, of victimization, from the conservative milieu. The fear of victimization is the emotional anchor of conservative politics today, a sense of victimization conservatives enable through their refusal to participate in the political process like responsible legislators and citizens.
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Individuals identifiable with the Tea Party-Patriot tendency now feel entitled to attack governmental authority using symbolic and physical violence (if necessary). This new violence entitlement, often claimed in the name of Jesus, the Second Amendment, or Ayn Rand, has, unfortunately, been given comfort by mainline Republicans (who should know better) and by rogue conservatives (who don’t know any better).
Cultural decline
Some cultures don’t survive the onslaught of historical change, apart from museum displays.
I’m persuaded there’s a “liberal” predisposition in most of the major US institutions (to describe it as “left-wing” is hyperbolic though). What I’m not persuaded about is that this is bad thing. The problem of persuasion for conservatives (a truly deep and serious problem) is the fact that the Enlightenment Genie can’t be jammed back into the lamp of history and the displacement of a “conservative” cultural tradition by a “liberal” one is not reversed by elections, talk radio, or Federalist Society position papers. Imagined cultural atrocities such as the “War on Christmas,” the abject horror of Spongebob’s “gay pants,” and other media gimmicks are purely defensive measures. They are mostly effective in lining the pockets of the cultural entrepreneurs — from Palin to Limbaugh to the self-publishing network of self-defining “intellectuals” — who benefit from such atrocities and horrors. After all, Michelle Malkin is more easily marketed than Hans-Georg Gadamer or Harvey Mansfield.
In the marketplace of ideas, there are winners and losers. The stronger arguments drive out the weaker ones (at least according to Oliver Wendell Holmes). Culture is not democratic.