Are You Feeling the Optimism?

I have to say that a remarkably intimate, yet expansive, community of thought seems to be forming across television, film, and the Internet. There's a rather quiet, yet intense, movement of thought and expression building. It focuses not so much on any particular ideology ("right" or "left"), but on a common, critical-mass thirst to dispel the deception, irrationality, and utter hubris that has been corroding our proud country for what seems like an eternity.

An undeniable intellectual and social confluence is rapidly gaining momentum and solidarity. This solidarity is amazingly organic, not hierarchical -- its only guide is the sixth sense of skepticism, outrage, and, yes, reason. It transcends party. It is oceanic, atmospheric. An intellectual, moral, societal, and psychological gestalt as ancient as humanity itself, kept underfoot by a long winter, but indelibly germinating once again with the thaw.

It is literally everywhere now. The voices of blindness and rage cannot shake me anymore. I haven't felt such hope in a very long time. Letter from DCLaw1 sent to Glenn Greenwald

Despite the pessimistic brooding that often characterizes my posts on this blog, I am ever hopeful.  I'm just not an optimist. Being an optimist means that you believe things always work out for the best, and I don't believe that. I believe that the good is not something that just happens or that truth is just there for the taking.  Both have to be striven for, that neither comes easily, and that complacency necessarily leads to regression and delusion.  You might describe that as a theological position backed by millennia of human experience.

So I, too, sense what DCLaw1 is talking about.  But is this developing consensus born of a saying No or a saying Yes?  I think it's the former, and out of a No there's not much to work with that helps you to move forward.   A No is only good for resisting being pulled backward.

I don't know that our age is better or worse than any other.  I think what makes it difficult is its end-of-an-age characteristics, which make it so difficult to frame a collective sense of future possibility to which sane people can all say Yes. And when the sane people in a society have nothing to which they can say Yes, their society is vulnerable to the forces of insanity and the Yes that comes so easily to them.

For while the forces of common sense and sanity at this time have no Yes to inspire and organize them, the forces of insanity do. That has always been the appeal of the far right in modern societies.  Fascism offers people the possibility of saying Yes that gives them a sense of meaning and purpose.  Yes to the nationalist identity embodied in the political state.  Yes to the strong Leader. Yes to traditionalist values. Yes to the struggle to crush the foe. The great strength of the fascist right is its celebration of the Will and of its love of power, its hatred for weakness. The enormous potency of the political right lies in its ability to tap into the fears and grandiosity of a confused citizenry. When the citizens feel lost, purposeless, adrift, they are attracted to anyone who will give them a sense of national purpose and meaning.

Every society is vulnerable to those factions within it that are in one way or another subsumed by the will to power. America is not immune from their influence.  Indeed, huge swaths of the American population are quite receptive to it.  If we have learned nothing in the last 6+ years, we should have learned that, and what counterforce have those who would oppose it?  What Yes do they have that will inspire them to resist it?  The insane right is organized and aroused; the forces of sanity and common sense are disorganized and complacent, and their democratic habits are being slowly eroded.

I think that there are also huge swaths of the American public that are attuned to the kind of thing that DCLaw1 points to. I think there is a growing consensus of revulsion about what the Bush administration represents and how much damage it has caused.  But is revulsion enough to counter it with an alternative?  It's one thing to say No to the kind of insanity that is the driving force behind this administration, but that force isn't going away.  It's part of the warp and woof of our national character, and it can be countered only by a Yes by that other part of our national soul that seeks to move forward together into a a positive future.  My pessimism at this moment lies in my inability to see how this consensus about a No can be organized into a Yes potent enough to counter the implacable forces that otherwise drive us to the right. 

These forces on the right evolve and adapt.  I don't think we'll be seeing brown shirts and swastikas, or the like.  Brian in a response to my previous post sent an interesting quote from Michael Lind that makes the point:

The United States may well experience episodes of authoritarian government in the future but these are unlikely to resemble the mobilizing, chauvinistic dictatorships of interwar Europe, all marching bands and banners. Dictatorship in the United States would most likely be demobilizing, seeking to keep people in their homes, rather than putting them on the streets or in uniform. An American dictatorship would clothe itself in constitutional and legal forms; it would cultivate an aura of nonpartisan technocracy and business expertise, not a feverish cult of the genius-leader and the masses. An American Fuehrer would not rant and strut, but crack jokes and adopt the relaxed, ironic, 'cool' style of a television host.

I believe in the long run all shall be well.  It's the short run that worries me. Nevertheless, I am willing to admit that my failure to see the counter in the short run to these rightwing forces could be due a lack of imagination or perceptiveness on my part.  Maybe something will emerge from the mood that DCLaw1 points to. I truly hope so. But in the meanwhile I think the prevailing attitude among Americans is that what Lind describes "can't happen here."  My attitude is the opposite--that it is inevitable that it will happen here unless we find the will and imagination to frame a Yes that will counter it. If readers can envision an alternative Yes scenario, please share it.  Saying No is easy.  Saying Yes is really hard.

Comments

[Mike Jones]

I don't think that envisioning and proffering a Yes will change anything. A Yes has to emerge in the field between the personal and social on a large scale. That is the only way it can take hold and maintain hold over reality. Given enough time a Yes will emerge on its own, and when it does it will be like an idea whose time has come. The big question for me is will a Yes emerge that is paradigmatic and long lasting, or will it just be a patch to cover our current problems? I certainly hope for the latter. I think a more productive conversation might begin by asking ourselves what can we do unblock the emergence of a Yes?

[Matt Zemek]

Jack,

I'm a raging pessimist myself, but I must admit that the two Bill Moyers programs this past week--not just Wednesday's expose, but Friday's stunning interview with Jon Stewart (a must-see for those who missed it... go to pbs.org, where a transcript is available...)---pointed the way toward a new dawn.

Halberstam, Moyers, Stewart. These three men remind us of the kinds of reporting/writing (Halberstam), documentary/public TV production (Moyers), and perceptive social observation (Stewart, through the lens of humor) that people can see as honest, principled and real, without the bullshit.

If fathers and mothers showed their sons and daughters the two Moyers programs from the past week, and really sit down and explain the bigger picture, I could see journalism and public service possibly being renewed from the ground up.

But in this country, I'd have to bet that such a development is not likely.

Prove me wrong, mothers and fathers in modest middle-class households. Will you educate your children about the nature of journalism and public involvement as they were meant to exist?

[Jack Whelan]

I agree that the Yes can't be a bandaid, and that's at the heart of my pessimism about Democrats and the so-called liberal left. They have their programs, but there is not the society-wide assent to them that's needed to make a difference when confronted with the more impassioned and organized agenda of the right.

I think there's definitely been a positive shift. The question is whether it's the beginning of something new or just an unsustainable revulsion about something old.

[Matt Zemek]

Jack,

Story today on tompaine.com about Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) and Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) doing some selfish, money-whoring stuff.

Link:

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/04/25/selling_out_to_k_street_is_a_lot_of_fun.php

Further proof of the Dems being very much part of the problem, not the solution.

[Jack Whelan]

Party affiliation is often a matter of aligning oneself with the local power establishment. If you are from Chicago, for instance, and you have any hopes of advancing your political career, you have to play by the rules set by the Democratic machine there, and it's not much different from political machines, Democratic or Republican, anywhere. It's not about ideology or ideals--that's just window dressing; it's simply about where the power lies, and people who are attracted to power become Democrats if that where the power lies or become Republicans if the Republicans dominate the system.

The same thing happened to so many labor unions. Why did the rank and file tolerate guys like Jimmy Hoffa and so many others who could care less about the ideals of the labor movement? These corrupt labor leaders got into power because they wanted power more than the next guy, and they did whatever it took to hold onto power once they got it. Karl Rove is just doing what people in power always do; he's just more imaginative and ruthless about it.

Power acquisition and maintenance is a rough game, and people with ideals, because they don't care about power that much, don't understand how it works, and are either outmaneuvered or crushed when they attempt to mount any kind of resistance to the bullies who do care about power understand how it works. And if the good guys say, "OK no more Mr. Nice Guy" and use the same methods as the bad guys to defeat them, they inevitably become the bad guys. That's what makes this so extraordinarily tough.

A solution has to come from outside the system, and some of the groundwork for that kind of out-side-the-system resistance was laid by Gandhi, MLK, and the liberation theologians. But it's unclear, at least to me, how that kind of movement could be catalyzed in our current situation. We don't have the cultural infrastructure to provide the framework within which such movements might develop.

But one way or the other, the only thing that will cause significant change is the development of an aroused popular consensus that puts enough people into office to effect significant changes in the political culture in Washington. If about thirty percent of the country is inclined toward right-wing authoritarianism and thirty percent of the country is in the Bill Moyers common sense camp, and thirty perccent could go either way depending on the political mood of the moment, then the Moyers thirty percent has to find a way to grab hold of the steering wheel and effect this change.

I think that's what Greenwald and DCLaw1 are talking about. I think that thirty percent is enough if the people who compose that thirty percent can develop will enough and imagination enough not just to say NO but also to say YES. I'm hopeful that the shift we're seeing is the beginning of the development of a YES. But it's not there yet, and nothing much will happen until it emerges.