I've been reading Somerby about the GOP strategy to feminize Democrats, and his withering criticism of Maureen Dowd whom he depicts as doing in a more sophisticated, NY Times kind of way the same work being done by Ann Coulter. I think he's right about this, and I think he's doing an important service in calling our attention to the distorting effects that it has on our political discourse. But I think he fails to address an underlying problem which is the persistent mythos of the Mommy Party and the Daddy Party. You know which is which. Without this narrative in the background, the feminizing scripts wouldn't stick.
It has been one of the marks of GOP branding brilliance to reinforce this mythos in their political strategy. It works because it resonates on levels we are not completely conscious about. The power of this kind of mythmaking trumps sterile facts. Facts are only useful insofar as they are dots that fit into the mythic pattern that connects them. In an ideologically heated argument, it is almost impossible to establish common ground in mutually agreed-upon facts. Facts that don't fit into one's opponent's mythos are easily dismissed or made to appear ambiguous or suspect. Politics is not a struggle on the level of facts; it's a struggle for the assertion of one's mythos over another. You win by out-narrating your opponent, not by trying to be reasonable. You have to come up with a more compelling mythos.
As I've written before, the GOP will have a political advantage so long as they understand the power of this kind of mythos and the Democrats keep insisting that they have the facts on their side. If we've learned anything in the last six years it's that facts are politically insignificant. The Democrats will fail until they find a way to out-narrate the GOP. But the narrative, if it is to work, has to resonate in the collective soul. It can't be merely a head trip. And I don't think Liberalism has the resources to provide such a counternarrative.
The problem with the Mommy/Daddy mythos lies in that our imaginations of masculinity and femininity are profoundly confused, and so we unconsciously fall back onto subliminal memories or archetypes which are deeply embedded in the human psyche, no matter what we consciously think to be the "correct" attitudes about gender. Most people are thoroughly confused when it comes to gender issues these days, and the right wing knows how to exploit that confusion in a way that Liberals find repugnant. But Liberals have nothing to counter it with except resorting to a moralistic political correctness, which is a head trip that in the long run has no real bite or staying power.
So while I think the macho ideal of masculinity is the coarsest way of imagining what it means to be a man, there are not very many alternative images that define for young men an ideal of masculine virtue to which they might aspire. And the result, at least in the mainstream collective consciousness, is either a choice between machismo or the mushy man that Nietzsche call the Last Man.
Nietzsche understood and hated the flattening effect of modernity on the human soul, and he tried to develop an alternative within the nihilistic ontology he felt intellectually compelled to embrace. But his solution failed miserably, because his uebermensh is too easily coopted by a fascistic mentality, and his will to power becomes a justification for the most abhorrent crimes. Despite all the rampant religiosity emanating from the right, our culture, particularly the culture embraced by the right, is nihilistic and crudely Nietzschean in ways we haven't fully grasped. It boils down to those who understand the will to power and embrace it, and those who are dominated. This is the mentality of the right. There are real men, and there are wimps, masters and slaves. And Coulter and Dowd buy into the primitive fantasy associated with this mentality which requires that men prove their strength in order to make themselves worthy of the woman's respect. The strongest, most violent bull, wins the prettiest cow. Last men are losers and worthy only of contempt.
Democrats in this fantasy usually come out as the losers but their behaviors reinforce the stereotype. The Dems surrendered the Presidency to the GOP in 2000 even though they won the election. The GOP put its foot on the Dems' throat, and took it from them. The GOP and the interests it represents are congregants in the cult of power, and they have no compunction about using power to take power from those whom they perceive to be weak. Insofar as the Democrats let them get away with it, they reinforce this underlying wimp narrative.
Last Men are the creation of modernity and Liberals too often fit the type. Again, it doesn't matter what the truth is about most Democrats or most Republicans; the important thing is the role they play in the larger narrative. It doesn't matter what individuals actually do or what they really believe. What matters is how they appear in the public's perception, and if they align themselves with the Daddy party, they are perceived as strong masculine figures; if they align with the Mommy party, they are perceived as feminized and wimpy.
Machismo attracts women like Coulter and Dowd because in the macho man there is a there there. Why do we celebrate the violently powerful man in our popular
cinema? Dirty Harry, Jack Bauer, and James Bond are real men, even
though they derive their charisma from a fascistic archetype. We celebrate them because they radiate a masculine energy that is so lacking in most men of our acquaintance in our everyday lives.
Fascists are unafraid to embrace a premodern machismo ideal of masculinity which they celebrate in the cult of power. The rule of law? That's for liberal wimps. Real men are not restricted by the rules. They do what they need to do to get the job done. Sound familiar? The Boland Amendment was for wimps. Getting wiretap warrants is for wimps. Sqeamishness about torture is for wimps. Civility is for wimps. Bi-partisanship is date rape. Politics is blood sport, and playing by the rules is for people who haven't the balls to play the game on its own terms, and they deserve to be squashed. Real men know what they want, and they take it. They don't let anyone stop them.
This narrative provides a very compelling alternative to the soullessness of modernity and to the liberal narrative associated with it. But is there an alternative to this odious choice between machismo and the Last Man? Is it possible to frame an ideal of masculinity that provides a third option? Is it possible to develop an ideal of masculine virtue that embraces strength without brutality, confidence without the need to dominate? Some people might be uncomfortable with the whole discussion, but unless we work out a counternarrative that celebrates masculine and feminine virtue that resonates within the collective psyche, we are doomed to play things out on this more primitive level. And as I suggested above, Liberalism doesn't have the spiritual resources from which such a counternarrative can be devloped.
Virtue obviously transcends gender. Courage, fidelity, honesty, integrity are obviously not gender based, but the politically correct left has to understand that gender confusion is one of the primary tools the authoritarian right is using to has to bludgeon its way into power. And I would argue that we are a society that has lost its soul to the degree that we have lost any deeply experienced sense of what it means to be a man or a woman. Liberalism seems to be ok with that loss.
American men and
women these days lack a robust masculinity or femininity; they have
become rather flat-souled and dull. They've become psychically unisex,
which is no sex. They lack what might be described as feminine virtue
or masculine virtue, which are qualities of soul--not physical
qualities or intellectual qualities, but soul qualities. And I've
wondered for several years now if the obsessive need for women and men
to achieve an ideal of physical feminine or masculine beauty and this
whole bizarre focus on sexual performance, with boob size and penis
length, isn't a compensation for a culture-wide loss of a soulful
masculinity and femininity. It's an attempt to manifest on a physical
level what is lacking on the soul level.
Men in contemporary American society have hypertrophied heads and genitals, and atrophied souls. I call it missing middle syndrome. Women suffer similarly, but not as badly. But women miss the point when they say that they want to be appreciated for their minds, not their bodies. That's the head part of the syndrome. Rather they should be appreciated for the quality of their souls, but we've almost lost any sense of what that means. So it's either heads or bodies. Where the soul should be there's an emptiness filled for the most part by anxiety, confusion, compulsive distraction, and depression.
Many men obsess about whether they are failing the women in their lives sexually, but if there is a failure in the bedroom it's rooted in a deeper failure to radiate a masculine spiritedness. They think they need to be bulls when in fact what they need to be is heroes, by which I mean exemplars of masculine virtue. And I would also argue that men once they reach adulthood haven't been helped much by the masculinization of women. For if women scorn their men for lacking a robust masculinity, the men also long for robust femininity, which has become almost as rare. They are too often soul-starved by their women who have in their own way lost their souls. It's what modernity does to human beings; it flattens them, leaches the spirit out of them, and leaves them soul-shriveled, spiritually disenfranchised, and bewildered.
And women are just as victimized by this mentality
insofar as they feel that they need to be cows with abundant udders to
be interesting to their men, but if they fail it's not a physical failure but because they lack a
feminine spiritedness. Their loss of femininity of soul has to be compensated by a hyperfeminizing of their bodies. Why this obsession with the vacuous Anna Nicole
Smith the last several weeks? What does she represent to our collective
consciousness? Isn't she an icon only because of her prodigious ability
to have made herself into an object of consumption so that she could
more effectively consume those around her? Isn't she in a sense the
symbolic ideal of late capitalist culture celebrated in the late
capitalist media?
But what have we
to offer our children that contrasts with this kind of creepiness. We
know what we see on every magazine cover that confronts us at the
supermarket checkout represents this sick obsession with bodies and
performance. We see how it affects our children. But we are hard
pressed to offer an alternative that has as much vigor. Virtue is
boring. I heard the nauseous Chris Matthews, while interviewing Libby
trial juror Ann Reddington, call Patrick Fitzgerald "virginal" in the
sense that there's something weird about such a straight shooter.
"Doesn't he know how to play the game?" Matthews seemed to be asking.
But
Fitzgerald is one public figure that has truly exhibited virtue. He is
incomprehensible to the late capitalist media types like Matthews who can only understand human motivation in terms of the lust for sex, power, and money.
To be virginal in respect to these is for such media types the worst
sin. Anna Nicole Smith they can understand and celebrate; Patrick Fitzgerald they
can't. A rabid ideologue like Ken Starr they can understand; a man
motivated by public service and pursuit of the truth, they can't.
Why is virtue so boring? Because it is so rarely encountered in a way that commands respect. People who seek to be winners in our culture are more in line with Chris Matthews in thinking that virtue is for the naive, for people who don't understand how life works. It's something that you're taught in school but give up once you enter the real world. Nevertheless, there is something in every spirited young man's soul that aspires to an ideal of virtue, but there are very few men in contemporary American society who can robustly model that for them. There are lots of nice, decent men, but few robustly virtuous men. Modernity doesn't provide a lot of opportunity for heroism. That's why the military is so attractive to a certain type of spirited young man who longs to achieve an ideal of nobility.
I have students, former soldiers, soldiers in training, in my classes who exhibit such a nobility. They are good kids, really good kids. There is a certain naive idealism in their attitudes, but there is a more important element, a noble element. They have a maturity and confidence that the more typical male or female student does not have. These kids are not bullies; they are heroes sent to do a bully's work. But when they come back from their tours to embrace normal life, they face the same problem other young men face, a system that seeks to redirect their energies toward objectives that are not worthy of them, and as R.W. Emerson said, "Every hero becomes a bore at last."
We have seen or heard of many extraordinary young men, who never ripened, or whose performance in actual life was not extraordinary. When we see their air and mien, when we hear them speak of society, of books, of religion, we admire their superiority, they seem to throw contempt on our entire polity and social state; theirs is the tone of a youthful giant, who is sent to work revolutions. But they enter an active profession, and the forming Colossus shrinks to the common size of man. The magic they used was the ideal tendencies, which always make the Actual ridiculous; but the tough world had its revenge the moment they put their horses of the sun to plough in its furrow. They found no example and no companion, and their heart fainted. (Emerson, "Heroism")
Our culture provides no trellis upon which these young souls can grow to realize the greatness that lies within them and which longs to be realized. Our young men can be heroes in the primitive context of war, but become Last Men in the modern context of career and family.
A lot of women are unhappy in their marriages because their husbands, despite their early promise, failed or shriveled in the way Emerson describes. And the men feel the shame of it, and yet don't quite know how it happened. But in Emerson's day, as now, there were precious few models for them to emulate or to inspire their aspiration. In other words, there is no living tradition in which young people grow up and in which they encounter living examples of virtue and heroism. That's why the machismo model is so attractive to so many. As crude as it is, it offers an answer to the question that modernity does not: What does it mean to be a man?
Carlyle, Emerson, Nietzsche were all 19th Century thinkers who hated how modernity shriveled the souls of men and women and drew on earlier ideas of virtue and heroism as a counterpoint for the leveling, materialistic forces that was making men into the spirit-challenged humans Nietzsche called the Last Men. Of course, Nietzsche blamed Christianity for promoting this slavish, weak-souled quality, and there is some merit in the accusation. But that's a theme I want to address in coming posts.
Because now more than ever we need an imagination of future possibility that has religious roots and which inspires in us, and perhaps more importantly inspires in the young, an aspiration toward robust virtue. Human beings are doomed to the flatness of the Last Man and the master/slave narrative associated with it so long as they imagine themselves as living in a materialistic, consumer-centric world. In order to retrieve a more vigorous imagination of virtue, we have to retrieve a more spiritually vigorous ontology. This is not a liberal project; it is a radical one.