Those of you who have been reading my posts over the last two years know that I am no great defender of the Democrats. I want very badly to support a progressive politics, but I have a hard time seeing the Democrats as the vehicle for achieving that. They are deeply, deeply implicated in the big-money system that in my darkest moments I see as irreparable. And while I voted Green in 1996 and 2000, I hardly think that the Greens offer a realistic alternative. My vote for Kerry in 2004 was simply an anybody-but-bush vote.
In 2000 I saw Bush as an empty suit who was unlikely to do much harm if he won, and I really expected Gore to win anyway. Boy, was I wrong. But in those days the goings-on in Washington were only among the most rearward of the back-burner issues for me. I have always believed that politicians are not really leaders but reactors. And so five years ago I was more interested in what was going on in the culture because that's where the life is, where the "new" enters into our collective life.
The carnival house of mirrors, otherwise known as Beltway culture, is dominated by the power game, and nothing new ever comes of that. It's the same old story in which only the cast changes. I still believe that. Politicians are simply pimples on the backside of larger cultural impulses, and they are taken far too seriously. In our system they are simply gofers for big money interests. Some are better than that, of course. I'm talking more about the reality of national politics in relationship to the larger culture, and the larger culture in America is market driven.
And so since I was more focussed on trying to understand the dynamics of cultural transition as we move out of the modern era into whatever comes next. As a result I failed to take seriously enough the backlash forces that were about to make their play. I still believe the forces of reaction are in the long run historically unimportant. The world is moving against the backlashers. They are like frightened children digging in their heels when it's time to go to sleepaway summer camp for the first time. They can dig in their heels all they want, but they are going whether they like it or not.
But it is clearer to me now than it was in 2000 that these backlash forces have tremendous potential for making life miserable for the rest of us who are trying to find a sane way forward. They have to be taken seriously for that reason alone. They are like cornered animals whose adrenaline-soaked brains are in survival mode and see every unfamiliar thing as a threat. It would be nice if we could take a tranquilizer gun and put them asleep until things stabilize. But we can't, and it's also not possible to try to calm them down and tell them that eveything is going to be all right. It's not at all clear that everything is going to be all right.
It's as if we're on an airplane that has an engine out while trying to ride out a storm. It's hard enough for the pilot to do what he has to do to get everyone to safety, but his job is all the harder if he has to fight off the hysterical guy who is trying to break into the pilot's cabin. The troublemaker is a control-freak type who believes he knows better than everybody else what's needed, and he thinks we're doomed unless he's in charge. But he hasn't a clue. The religious right and the neocons make strange bedfellows in several respects, but they share in that peculiar hubris that has got us into the mess we're in right now.
So the backlash forces pose a real threat, and they have to be dealt with. And the best we can do is adopt a strategy of containment. The crazies and the arrogant fools need to be gagged and tied up somehow so the sane people can focus on figuring things out, and the only way to do tht is to get them out of office. Get them out of the pilot's cabin.
I would welcome an impeachment process if for no other reason it will paralyze this adminstration and restrain it from doing more harm. The only way we get there is by getting a Democrat majority in 2006. Do I think that's likely? No. But one way or the other, these foolish people must be hamstrung.
And so I would like to believe that the worst, most regressive elements in American society, which in the last forty years have worked through the Republican Party--through Nixon, Reagan/Bush, the insane anti-Clinton impeachment Congress, and now Bush2--have lost all credibility and are seen more clearly for what they are. I'd like to believe that. But what difference does it make if no sane grownups emerge now to take hold of the wheel and get this rig down safely? As much as I dislike what the Democrats have come to stand for, our chances are much better with them. It's time to put them back in the pilot's seat, and then exert as much pressure on them as we can to work for the best interests of ordinary Americans than for the interests of big money.
But we, out here in the culture, have to have some idea about what the right thing is, don't we?