| November 19, 2008 at 12:07:57 Headlined on 11/19/08: by Joe Bageant Page 1 of 3 page(s) |
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We just concluded an election in which both parties talked about hope, one more so than the other. Hope, that murky, undefined belief that some unknown force, perhaps Jesus or modern science or some great political leader, or other as yet unknown force will reverse our national or personal condition ... will deliver us from what every bit of evidence indicates is irreversible, if not politically, then ecologically: Decline and eventual collapse. There is quite a difference between hope and understanding the facts, then holding justified optimism. Hope is magical thinking, a sucker's game. Politicians the world round fully understand this.
Consequently, we go into a new year with millions of Americans still clinging to The Audacity of Hope. And we do so because we are victims of learned helplessness, learned from the cradle as it is rocked by the foot of the Capitalist consumer state. Sure we can hope for movement away from domination of the weak by the arrogant, away from ecocide and genocide toward a better world. What the hell, hope in one of the few free activities in this society. We don't even have to put down the remote and get off our asses to do it. In fact, its delivered through television.
But the fact is that when we encounter in-the-flesh examples of any merciful movement – even through television -- we blanch and erect a wall of denial and excuses for our refusal to support that thing. Consider how the American public and the media (is there a difference?) responded to Rachel Cory, who willingly died under the Israeli bulldozer protecting the home of a non-partisan Palestinian village doctor. The U.S. media all but ignored her. What small public knew of Cory's sacrifice was at first nonplussed, then deemed it a bizarre and stupid act. But even most Americans who did know joined the Larry Kings of the world in backhandedly mocking her. Moral conviction scares the hell out of us. Hope is effortless.
Thus, hope is still the order of the day. Obama's election will keep millions of American liberals and much of the world deliriously happy for time to come. And to some degree at least, Obama's victory is a national rejection of the phony and expensive war on terror. Which is not a step forward, but rather a partial recovery from the immense and spectral folly of our needless warmaking – recovery of one small bit of the immense ground we have lost. Or simply the next thing to do, now that we have tortured, terrified and leveled an entire people for the hell of it. Take your pick. But at some point we will have to cease thinking like children politically, grow up and personally accept responsibility, if we are to rescue our republic from ourselves.
Meanwhile, Obama takes charge of a bankrupt nation collapsing under late stage capitalism. "Not good, say Chief Thunderthud! White man manage to fuck up even under good presidents." Right chief. Indeed, there are many destructive forces far larger and more longstanding than a president and his powers. We can start with Congress. But our planetary ecocide probably trumps Congress.
Now if you will allow me a temporary lapse into theological seizure here: When it comes to those larger forces at play, none is larger and more enduring than the spirit, regardless of whether you call its presence God, the laws of physics, eternity, the Buddhist "great void," or the governing principle of the universe. And it is mature and ever greater truth seeking that connects us with that force. Not hoping someone else, an Obama perhaps, is connected to it, and will exercise it toward the common good.
Most Americans, regardless of their political leanings or religion, would not recognize the common good if it bit 'em in the ass. We have no genuine concept of common good. We really don't. Toqueville observed that 170 years ago. He said that in America, no man owes another man anything. Nor is he owed by any other man. Where does that leave any movement toward the common weal requiring the cooperative efforts of more than one man?
We all know the answer -- The gubbyment. Which leaves the common good to greaseball politicos, banking and mortgage sharks, and a private cartel of behind the scenes hustlers called the Fed. Nevertheless, we have lived under the myth of rugged individualism so long we think we are in charge of our destiny – which in our utterly monetized American system, means our financial fate. No matter that we let unseen elites own and manage our hard earned dough over quail and cognac on the 45th floor. They're of the sort who know what's best. You can tell them by their arrogance and their good looking trophy wives. And by their big limos. Americans know the superior man when they see it.
Meanwhile, thanks to the doctrine of no man owing another, this doctrine of not being our brother's keeper in any important way, we are left with the social ethic of "every man for himself. Damned all social taxes and collective effort, I'll claw down my own share, and let the devil take the hindmost. Hell, maybe I'll even end up there on the 45th floor among the quail eaters with a blonde waiting in the sack. Land of boundless opportunity, right? "
Or on a more mundane level, as countless Americans have told me, "Why should I pay for someone else's health care? Let them buy their own, just like I did." Consequently, we've not had universal health care for the common good. We have never enjoyed the benefit of universal higher education, because collectively we cannot agree that it is in the common good for all citizens to be equally free from ignorance. We pay the price of that at every turn ... in the lack of nuance in the national character, in the childlike and clichéd thinking of our electorate, in our satisfaction with a deluge of technological toys instead of meaningful work and leisure, or intellectual and spiritual substance. Nor is there assured food and shelter for the poorest among us, despite that it is in the common good that all children be raised in a secure environment ... because over generations that produces an ever nobler community and nation. "Each generation better than the last," as the saying goes.
Now, that is moreover a pretty good description of the American Dream, at least as it regards fairness and justice. And halting as it has been, we have made progress in fairness and justice-civil rights and women's suffrage being two examples. And we could have achieved more, had we been fixed upon the most fundamental sense of what is just. We did that collectively as American citizens.
But conceiving of one's self as a citizen of our republic is the poorest way to do so, given that it acknowledges us more as property of the state than of the planet. Especially considering that we have a far larger responsibility to our common planetary home, than to any armed and squabbling, ambitious nation state. That we managed to overcome such obvious inequities as slavery and the oppression of women is no great accomplishment at all. Just two small acknowledgements of justness. Yet we wallow in those small expressions of human and national decency as if the advancement of humanity were all but accomplished (one more civil rights documentary rammed down my throat and I'm gonna drive over to PBS offices in D.C. and shoot out their latte machine).
At any rate, once we made these advances, we felt free to haul off and kill as much of humanity as we deem necessary to keep the oil flowing and our capitalist masters in a permanent state of dominance and caviar flatulence. We'd banned slavery and let women vote for the same scallywags as men. Lettin' the queers get hitched however, is one we're gonna have to think over for a while Hoss, because there's still political mileage in being agin' it!
Still, despite our sorry-assed condition as a citizenry, not to mention so much outward evidence to the contrary, as individuals every one of us can recognize what is just and right. In fact, when it comes to the private, inward self, it is harder to avoid fairness than it is to justify unfairness, though we manage to. Regardless of our deformation by capitalism's relentlessness, and its accompanying materialistic mediocrity, we know there is such a thing as balance, such a thing as justness, and equity for all people, however much we refuse to acknowledge it. This, thanks to the "eternal scales" inside us all. And the fulcrum of these scales, this always-present, wordless inner preference, if not action, toward just balance, is, I believe, the spirit.
Scientists may yet reduce all human behavior, thought and emotion to neurochemistry. That's their bag -- reducing the universe to impressive displays of tinker toydom so The Discovery Channel will have grist. But the most sublime expression of humankind is nevertheless more than the sum of its parts and must be called spiritual. I don't have any lofty language to explain that. I'm as "ignernt as the next feller," as my old man used to say.
Either we can feel, or can learn to feel the common soul ... that essence coursing in all sentient things (and I for one, include trees, rivers, amoeba and the atmosphere in the count) and feel joy and unity in that, or we cannot. Either compassion enters our awareness and experiential reality through suffering and contemplation of the suffering of others ... or it does not. Either way, it would seem incumbent upon each of us to try to bring about a world in which that occurs for the maximum number of our fellow men. Given that we all share a common grave, compassionate action may well be the only human action of any value. Compassion for all living things on a living planet. In that resides the equilibrium of the world.
Joe Bageant is the author of a forthcoming book from Random House Crown about working class America, scheduled for Spring 2007 release. A complete archive of his online work, along with the thoughts of many working Americans on the subject of class may be found at www.joebageant.com. Feel free to contact him at: joebageant@joebageant.com. Copyright 2006 by Joe Bageant
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