In Dependence

Most Madamest M:

I will decline to point out the irony of “Independence” Day, and just wish everyone a happy one.

I also wish this intellectual endeavor (Our blog!) a Happy Anniversary!  Two years ago today, it was launched, and still so much to talk about!

The “news” (although I usually forget, I need to use quotation marks around it to denote its pseudo aspects) reports that fireworks sales have been the lowest in many decades.  The consumers of those fireworks, the lower and middle classes, just don’t have the financial room anymore, it would seem.

Our featured author keeps making our points for us (and in my case at least, saying them better).  His latest, http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10107-chris-hedges-time-to-get-crazy, is superb, and will perhaps surprise you a bit Madame.

You said it extremely well about the communities that post-disaster or post-system collapse will foment.  “A community of gardeners, carpenters, people who keep chickens and bees, the tinkerer who can fix nearly anything, the nurse, the ham radio enthusiast, seamstress, teacher, owner of a large library, and a talented cook.”  To those I might add healer, herbalist, and wellness sustainer, hunters and gatherers, food preservers, and of course storyteller/historian! :)

Your excellent piece about the brain on fear: I think most historians would agree that the vast majority of what was a conservative German population disliked and distrusted those who were different, those who espoused radical ideas about justice, fairness, equality, compassion.  They were more than glad to have the police repress them, often brutally. The Nazis appealed to those who were, yes, fearful, but more to the point, the Nazis channeled that fear in the directions they wanted.  They stoked resentment, making simple, easily identifiable scapegoats (one after another, from “traitors” who had chosen peace in WW1, to Communists, Socialists, homosexuals, union members, and a great host of those people that today would be called “liberals,” and then, of course, the Jews) for Germany’s loss of power and prestige.   Simple answers.  And of course, the desire for Germany to be “strong again, and respected.”  How often we humans, especially when confronted with continual change, are seduced by manipulators who promise us a restoration to a rose-colored version of the past.  Combine all these, and only emotions matter; facts can be ignored at will, except for the “facts” that support your emotions.  In Germany, in the minds of the largely conservative populace, the country had gone to hell because of weaklings and traitors and other “diseases” that needed to be eradicated from the population.  And other countries needed to be dealt with until they showed Germany respect.  In service to those general feelings, facts came to mean nothing outside the functions of the workplace and perhaps the home—the greater German community ran on the desire to be strong again, to feel proud again, to be superior.

I sincerely hope that all those who say the American character is too different to ever be Nazi-like are correct.  I am disturbed, as are those still alive who have memories of that dark Nazi period, to hear too much of the same general Nazi-era emotional talk from too many segments of the largely conservative American population AND THAT THE REST OF THAT CONSERVATIVE POPULATION DO NOT CENSURE IT IN ANY WAY.  One could hope that the very variable ethnic composition could provide a buffer against this this poisonous trend, but it is uncertain.

For instance, sure, I hear mindless, knee-jerk reactions from people on “the left” about Romney, but they are low-tone and rarely threatening.  On “the right,” I hear shrill tones, much more frequent, much more emotional, and much more menacing in tone about his opponent.  And Obama is not even a true liberal; he is barely even a pseudo-one.  In a setting where they believe the country is falling apart at every turn because the liberals are dragging it into a fiscal, cultural, and economic abyss, the low-informed or the no-informed are willing to believe ANYTHING without checking if it is fact.  Even when confronted with undeniable evidence that it ISN’T fact, they still persist that the general overview is true, and that a vast liberal plot is about to sink the country.  They are hyper-emotional, with such hatred, frustration, and general anger lurking barely beneath the surface, that blame gets ascribed in ways that are fantastically implausible.   It becomes such a dizzying phantasmagoria that even the confusion doesn’t matter—plow on in sheer emotion alone!  Evaluation becomes completely discarded.  Support anyone who promises a way there, or more importantly, a way AWAY from their perception of a weak, liberal, mess.

And way too many churches, far from being bulwarks against un-Christian behavior, often condone it or even encourage it.   Their peoples are conservative, and the views and policies they support and espouse reflect it.  The “second greatest commandment” (love your neighbor as yourself) is ignored, or conveniently interpreted to mean only the neighbor that looks and acts and thinks like you do.

THAT’S why the descent to fascism is not a long step.

A people with little or no awareness of actual history—nay, even have disdain—are prey and prone to the same horrible mistakes, to keep the human race cycled in this ever-repeating destructive pattern.  The greed, fear, and paranoia of the strong-willed few can only succeed because the dimly informed, emotional, weak-willed many are more than okay with it.  “Fine, fine, fine,” those many say, “do that if you want, so we can get back to our lives.” 

And then later, they are muttering, “But they said they were going to…” or “but they said they weren’t going to…”

It’s just that easy.

“Articulate disappointment.” I like that phrase, Madame.   Jeff Daniel’s character in Newsroom exhibited that.    How to get people to WANT the truth more than they want to be right?  Find the answer to that, and you can name your price! :)

I’m presently reading “That Used To Be Us,” by Friedman and Mandelbaum.  It starts out scathing about America’s delusion that it’s so great anymore.   An America that can’t even REPAIR its infrastructure (and certainly not in any reasonable time frame), while China CREATES a truly impressive, pride-infusing infrastructure, in record time.

This quote from Eric R. in the book is instructive and echoes Newsroom: “We used to embrace challenges, endure privatation, throttle our fear and strike out into the (unknown) wilderness.  In this mode we rallied to span the continent with railroads, construct a national highway system, defeated monstrous dictators, cured polio and landed men on the moon.  Now we text and put on makeup as we drive, spend more on video games than books, forswear exercise, demonize hunting, and are rapidly succumbing to obesity and diabetes.” (page 6 of the book)

I share Friedman’s and Mandelbaum’s positions as “frustrated optimists.” There is so much potential that could be built on, and so much progress that could be made in meeting our steep challenges, but we aren’t doing.  Indeed, the very idea of collective action is repeatedly discredited by those who advance and espouse the Cult of Hyperindividualism.

There are frustrated realists too.  My favorite realist political scientist is Stephen M. Walt of Yale.  Here is a piece from his “Is AmericaAddicted to War?” in Foreign Policy,4 April 2011:

"The truly exceptional thing about America today is not our values (and certainly not our dazzling infrastructure, high educational standards, rising middle-class prosperity, etc.)…Lurking underneath the Establishment consensus on foreign-policy activism is the most successful Jedi mind trick that the American right ever pulled. Since the mid-1960s, American conservatism has waged a relentless and successful campaign to convince U.S. voters that it is wasteful, foolish, and stupid to pay taxes to support domestic programs here at home, but it is our patriotic duty to pay taxes to support a military establishment that costs more than all other militaries put together and that is used not to defend American soil but to fight wars mostly on behalf of other people. In other words, Americans became convinced that it was wrong to spend tax revenues on things that would help their fellow citizens (like good schools, health care, roads, and bridges, high-speed rail, etc.), but it was perfectly OK to tax Americans (though of course not the richest Americans) and spend the money on foreign wars. And we bought it."

When people glance back briefly at history (which isn’t anywhere near often enough), while catching some History Channel presentation or some movie at the box office that has history in it,  they often say things like: “How could those people…” (fill in the blank: have been so cruel, so ignorant, so ruthless, so uninformed, so accepting, so crude, so blind, so meek, so obedient, so selfish, so greedy, so emotional, so mob-like, etc. etc. etc.).

It is the human limitation to rarely recognize the same traits in themselves.  The better question might be: “If they could be that way, my God, what if I could too, what if we all could?”

THAT question is one of the first fields of defense, for an attempt to question one’s feelings and one’s thoughts is one of the best armors that money can’t buy.

The time is fast slipping away where America can significantly shape its destiny.  The choices it makes—or doesn’t make—for itself will determine how much “Independence” Day has true meaning.