Les Miserables, Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, et al.

I wanted to like Les Miserables because I am so sympathetic to the underlying Christian mythos of the original Hugo story, but it took all my control to stay in the theater after about a half hour of this musical version of it.

This film lacked emotional texture. It was the same song over and over and over and over again. It was going for big emotions, but it was unrelieved, uninterrupted, strident, cliche-soaked pathos that became in my viewing of it over-the-top, eye-rolling comical by the end.

I checked metacritics after watching, and I was genuinely surprised that it got generally positive reviews with a rating of 64. Maybe this worked better in some of its stage versions, but this film version was a wretched, silly bore.

Spielberg's Lincoln, on the other hand, did work for me. It was a marvel of cinematic historical imagination. Daniel Day-Lewis was crazy good in the title role. Tommy Lee Jones's Thaddeus Stevens was a hoot. The dialogue was crisp and riveting. 

Lincoln was our Bismarck. Both were all about blood and iron. This movie focuses mostly on the slavery theme, and it does so in a very compelling and interesting way, but the American Civil War was first and formost a war to maintain national unity. And Lincoln and Bismarck laid the foundation for their respective countries that insured that both would become superpowers in the next century. Was that really a good thing? I don't think so, and I wonder if a hundred years from now in a thoroughly browned U.S., when slavery and toxic racism become something read about in history books rather than experienced on a daily basis, whether Lincoln will be regarded in the same unambiguously postive light. 

The Civil War, it could be argued, resovled nothing except maintaining a forced national union. Remind me again--why was that so important? Was it worth killing 600,000 plus? Are we happy that laid the foundation for the beast that we have become? 

I've often wondered what would have happened the North just let the south go. Would the North have developed a less belligerent ethos and a greater kinship with Canada while the South became more third-world like with a greater kinship with Mexico? Would the North without the South have had a better chance of working through the contradictions of capitalism and evolved more easily toward European or Canadian style social democracy? Would the South have found it easier to confront the moral contradictions of slavery without the rigidifying resentment of its victim narrative?

I doubt the North would have handled the Indian issue any better--Europeans' 19th century record in dealing with aborigines the world over is pretty dismal--but I think that without the South more sane and humane policies would have been given a better chance.

Which brings us to Zero Dark Thirty. From everything I've read about it, it's about America at its worst. And for me everything that is bad about America right now is mostly about the way the mentality of the South distorts our national dialogue. The Southern narrative--its militarism, its racism, its faux Christian religiosity, its paranoia and sense of aggrieved victimhood--all of these represent what makes our politics so intractable right now. I know these are not just 'southern' characteristics, but they would play a more marginal role in our national discouse if the South were not a part of it. And if the North had evolved more along the lines of Canada, perhaps we would not have had a 9/11 and the national insanity that followed from it. 

Am I being unfair to the south? Tell me why I'm wrong. Remember, it's not about individuals; it's about ethos and the group mentality that undergirds a political narrative. That's what I'm attacking, and while I am by no means exonerating the North from its many sins, I would argue that its menatality has given it a narrative that is better adapted to the complexity of the world as it is, and dealilng with the real world, not some fantasy version of it, is a prerequisite for developing a sane politics. 

Comments

[JP]

"I've often wondered what would have happened the North just let the south go."

The wealth would have been pumped into Europe instead of the North.

[Jack Whelan]

Whose wealth?

[Jonathan]

Wouldn't this argument make more sense if it had been the North that tried to secede and the South that prevented it?

Anyhow, it's a popular premise for fiction of the alternative history variety. I don't deal with it much myself. But from what I know, authors tend to imagine that, assuming everything else stayed more or less the same, the Germans would have conquered Europe, either around 1942 or, more likely, around 1918. On the other hand, some people imagine that the North, in such a situation, far from becoming "like" Canada would have simply conquered or absorbed Canada, and the USA would have become the same super power it did anyway, just farther north, and perhaps on less cordial terms with Britain.

I see where you're going with your speculations about the South, Jack, but it doesn't work for me as a scapegoat. We have deeper, darker, more elusive problems in this country. Parts of California scare me more than most of Alabama. And bad as it is here, I wouldn't prefer to be living in Europe. They have their own problems -- problems which may look more benign right now, but time will tell.

[JP]

@Jack:

Wealth = fungible, transportable goods.

In the case of the South, cotton.

"The Confederate States of America had an agrarian-based economy that relied heavily on slave-worked plantations for the production of cotton for export to Europe and the northern US states. If ranked as an independent nation, it would have been the fourth richest country of the world in 1860.[1] When the Union blockaded its ports in summer 1861, exports of cotton fell 95 percent and the South had to restructure itself to emphasize food production and munitions production. After losing control of its main rivers and ports, it had to depend on a rickety railroad system that, with few repairs being made, no new equipment, and federal raids, crumbled away. The financial infrastructure collapsed during the war as inflation destroyed banks and forced a move toward a barter economy for civilians. The government seized needed supplies and livestock (paying with certificates that were supposed to be paid off after the war, but never were). By 1865 the economy was in ruins."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America

[JP]

@Jonathan:

"Parts of California scare me more than most of Alabama."

Well, if the United States disintegrates as a political entity in the next Great Power decision point, circa 2030, then you will get to see California transform into a Hispanic-Asian fusion culture.

Note: I'm not making a prediction, merely raising it as a possible outcome. I have no idea as to it's chance of occurring, but it's somewhere above zero.

[JP]

@Jonathan:

" And bad as it is here, I wouldn't prefer to be living in Europe. They have their own problems -- problems which may look more benign right now, but time will tell."

What specific European problems are you talking about?

[JP]

Also, the Germans could have become the leading power of the West.

However, they were headed by Kaiser Wilhelm II, a geopolitical moron.

When in doubt, be immature, throw a fit, and fire Bismark.

"Crowned in 1888, he dismissed the Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, in 1890 and launched Germany on a bellicose "New Course" in foreign affairs that culminated in his support for Austria-Hungary in the crisis of July 1914 that led to World War I. Bombastic and impetuous, he sometimes made tactless pronouncements on sensitive topics without consulting his ministers, culminating in a disastrous Daily Telegraph interview that cost him most of his power in 1908. His generals dictated policy during World War I with little regard for the civilian government. An ineffective war leader, he lost the support of the army, abdicated in November 1918, and fled to exile in the Netherlands."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_II,_German_Emperor

[janinedm]

What happens to the slaves in this thought experiment? Bear in mind the words of Alexander Stephens, the Vice president of the Confederacy: Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. (from Stephen's "Cornerstone Speech")

[JP]

"What happens to the slaves in this thought experiment? Bear in mind the words of Alexander Stephens, the Vice president of the Confederacy: Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition."

See South Africa for details.

[janinedm]

Yeaahhhh... Speaking as a Black person, I'm not hugely in favor of that timeline. Even when you take Jim Crow into account.

[Jonathan]

janinedm: Speaking as a Paleface, I also am not hugely in favor of the alternate timeline proposed here. I prefer the problems we do in fact have to face to the ones we might could have faced. Call it an irrational, instinctual bias for our own particular version of reality.

I find it interesting how extraordinarily unpopular alternative history is as a literary genre. I have to think most people share my bias, and are, like me, very untrustworthy of the "wisdom" that is supposed to lie in hindsight.

[Jack Whelan]

When it comes to American history, I don't think there is anything better or worse about Americans than any other people, but they had some advantages and disadvantages that made it possible for them to become who they are today. Among its advantages--their modern, democratic, innovative spirit unburdened by the suffocating irrelevancy of the crown-and-altar narratives that dominated Europe until WWI. Among its disadvantages a profound regional conflict defined by an irreconcilable vision of what it meant to be an American, or even a human being, a vision that was structurally embedded in their respective economies. Except in the Balkans, that's a disadvantage that Canada and Europe did not have. Even Germany and Italy didn't have that level of division to deal with.

I am not arguing that that the North didn't have significant structural problems of its own to deal with, but it's not hard to make the argument that the emergence of the labor and progressive movements in the North at the turn of the century showed that it had the resources to make critical adjustments. While a kind of economic populism had its moment in the South, southern oligarchs effectively used divide-and-conquer tactics to insure that whites and blacks would never work together, and pretty much quashed any worker organization in the South.

Neither Teddy or Franklin Roosevelt were by any means moral giants, but they were intelligent men who understood what it took to keep things in a relatively sane balance. I think that the Democrats have inherited that spirit of adaptive pragmatism, and a southern-dominated Republican Party is captured by a mentality that has it not even in the least degree. The South is captured by a spirit of resentment-fueled delusionism that is cult like in its rigidity.

There's plenty to criticize about Northern Democrats, but I still would argue that without the toxic influence of the South on American history, the North would have had a better chance at developing what I'm describing here as a relatively sane balance. With the South as part of any negotiation, even more so now than fifty years ago, we are always having to deal with a collective, delusional, reactionary craziness that does not exist in Canada and Europe except on the fringes.

Every country has its challenges, and certainly those in Europe have theirs, but I do think they have a greater chance of resolving their problems than we do. I just think we are irreparably divided in this country in a way that European countries are not, and we have become ungovernable as a result.

[Nick]

The Civil War was the epitome of foolishness. Not only did over 600,000 die, but the social and economic consequences were disastrous.

Slavery should have been left to die of its own volition. The freedmen ultimately paid the price in blood, misery and an additional century of degradation for the South being forced into a new economic and social situation for which it was not ready.

Look no further than Brazil for an analogous situation which was handled with more reason. Nothing remotely similar to the KKK or Jim Crow ever existed in any other post-slavery societies, nor did they have to here.