Note: I thought I had previously created a new thread when I wrote about the Tea Party going fascist, but it seems I did not. If I did, then kindly merge this with that thread.)
I have gone on the record now saying that the Tea Party has turned fascist—sympathizing with the terrorist who slaughtered people at a youth camp in Norway, and literally applauding Governor Perry’s record of over 200 executions in the State of Texas, to name just two of their many outrageous stances—and due to economic stagnation is closer than ever to grasping real power. I will emphasize here that the two major shortfalls holding the Tea Party back from becoming the kind of civil threat where the public will literally have to start taking sides are, first, the party’s lack of central organization and charismatic leadership, and, second, national unpopularity owing largely to the fact that American standards of living are still high enough for most people that they do not yet support the radicalism the Tea Party projects.
But what about the rest of us? There’s something more going on here.
Modern conservatism in America is dying. It doesn’t work. It ruins the economy and it makes individuals miserable. It enforces a warped view of reality under which many people groan. But America itself, as a whole nation, is having problems that are nearly as serious.
National cynicism has been building my whole lifetime and has not been higher than it is today. This nation isn’t moving toward anything. We’re running around in circles putting out the fires of the moment. We can’t seem to achieve anything grand. Individually the land is still rife with success stories, but our national ethos has degraded to the point where “the American people” are having an identity crisis. What is the nation all about? What are we for? Why can’t we get the big stuff done?
Our superpower has faded. We are not surpassing our parents. We’re mired in an endless war on terrorism. Many of us are hooked on popular fads and prescription drugs, with no inner reservoir of richness to anchor us and guide our aspirations. Much of our national infrastructure, both civil and social, is not working correctly.
And the government! Oh, don’t even mention the government. The government doesn’t seem to be able to do anything about our fading star. As the Tea Party grows in clout, and Democratic acquiescence persists, our government becomes more dysfunctional at a time when we sorely need strong political intervention. People expect the government not to work. The traditional media continue to paint a picture that government can’t do anything right, and the conservative propaganda machine insists that government is actively out to get us. These anti-government media narratives render invisible the significant legislative gains of the 111th Congress as well as the very good executive governance coming out of the Obama Administration, whose agencies are doing a lot of good work that goes almost completely unreported and unappreciated. But in other ways the government genuinely is dysfunctional. Corporations and banks are wielding increasingly naked power over the legislative process. Income disparities are rising. The rich have fully recovered from the recession even as the nation as a whole continues to suffer. Civil inequality persists, and is getting worse in some ways. People have less and less say over the direction of their socioeconomic environment, and elections are becoming a farcical choice between incompetence and evil.
The Tea Party is flourishing for two reasons. First, it’s full of stalwart conservatives who absolutely refuse to abandon their sinking ship. Second, the Tea Party offers religion and an epic battle between good and evil. Even if that narrative is a lie weaved of curses and blight, it’s an appealing offer to a nation filled with people who are looking for some grand passage into the future. (Whether that future is in this world or the “next” one doesn’t seem to matter to some folks.)
The hope and change that Obama won his election on promising to us have yet to be made real in the minds of the American people. People want reform. They want it badly. My point is, it’s not just the Tea Party that’s getting agitated. It’s the entire country. The plutocrats don’t seem to realize yet (or do realize, but think they can handle the fact) that this public is itching to rally around major reform, and will do so the instant that a credible movement arises. I’m talking about the kind of “major” reform where people’s excitement and zeal become so powerful that they will support stupid reforms as easily as good ones. This nation is poised to enter into a period of civil unrest and extremism. It’s looking more likely that we will get some kind of radical federal government before the decade is out. The question is: What kind of radical?
(An economic recovery would fizzle most of this restless energy out right away, without major reforms, lulling Americans back into their complacency and kicking the can of national economic sustainability down the road. But the Tea Party is hellbent on blocking anything that might improve economic conditions. They’ve already shown that they are not the type to offer concessions from a position of power. We have yet to see if they are the type to offer positions from a position of weakness. If the President maintains his new hard edge, we will find out in the next few months what fruit it might yield.)
But here’s the problem: Materially, the American way of life is pretty good even still. The recession has not broken the backs of more than a handful of people. For most it is merely an annoyance, a tightening of the belt and a reminder that we’re not going anywhere, let alone to a grand future. For most people, marginally lower credit card interest rates and slightly less outrageous health insurance premiums won’t make much of a difference. For that matter, neither will new bridges, faster Internet connections, cleaner air, and more “Made in America” labels on the stuff we buy. People say they want reform but they don’t really know what kind of reform. All they really know is that what we have now is not satisfying. They don’t realize that most of the problem is in their own heads.
This is exacerbated by the evolution of our mass media, which has become misanthropic and ubiquitous. Rather than using their power for good, the media seem to prefer to feed upon a demoralized and apathetic public. This also seems to be true of our large corporations in general. It doesn’t matter how neurotically the people in the advertisements are smiling about Product X. Few who buy it gets such a boost of happiness and relief. Our cereal box mascots are smiling at our kids like a bunch of asylum escapees, but when’s the last time they awoke an optimistic imaginative streak in any child?
Our society is still struggling with the grip of fundamentalist religion and has not yet achieved a secular cultural institution that provides a higher ideal quality of life (contrast with material quality of life) to the population at large. Religion is distracting us, distracting us, distracting us, but it doesn’t work and is long since obsolete, and today even right-wing fundamentalists are starting to identify paradoxically as deists—acknowledging their “personal relationship” with a god who created all things dull and ugly but is nowhere to be found to help clean up and provide solace and consolation to a wayward flock in these trying times.
What it all means for the political sphere is that the public is searching for an identity but only possesses enough self-awareness to express that as a desire for fundamental, major reform. We could use some fundamental, major reform, but not the kind that the public are yearning for, because they’re not yearning for anything other than anything but what we have now—and that’s dangerous. With the Tea Party around, it’s ten times more dangerous.
I think we will need to borrow a line from the Tea Party and adjust it slightly. We need to take back not our country, but our economy, and particularly our media—because the media are the enforcers who keep things the way they are. We need to get some fucking sane business practices back into the private sector, and reward entrepreneurship again rather than parasitic mega-corporations who refuse to be held accountable to any democratic authority. We need to drown out the people who set our national mood with stronger and more optimistic voices—voices that don’t preach religion but, rather, teach the appreciation of all the good things we already have, and encourage the pursuit of so much more that is just within our grasp.
Without extreme and widespread material suffering, there can be no grassroots genesis to a healthy uprising—if there ever could be such a thing as a “healthy” uprising. If there is an uprising, it will come from either the Tea Party crazies or else from people in my generation and the one below mine who resent their glorious heritage being squandered by the prevailing regime. Yet the people in my generation and the one below mine, though they seem to have internalized all the same Disney claptrap I did about being nice and all that, have also shown a dispiriting eagerness to sell out for their own personal advancement when there are bucks to be had.
If nothing else, my philosophy project is arriving on the scene just as it is most needed.
