American creativity has a long pedigree--there's always a new angle, and there always will be. There's a sucker born every minute--Mencken's scoundrels know it, and live by it. And for the last thirty years Americans have been suckered good with these scoundrels latest variation on their endlessly creative attempts to scam and exploit America's John Does.
Speaking of which, I saw Capra's "Meet John Doe" the other night. We tend to think of Capra as the Norman Rockwell of American moviemaking, but he's not. He sees clearly and understands the nature of America's underbelly, but unlike Mencken, he holds that perception of how America works in tension with his belief in the fundamental decency of the normal Americans--the John Does--who just want to live an ordinary life and are not smitten by greed or the will to power even if they are continuously vulnerable to exploitation by those who are smitten.
It's this tension between John Does and Mencken's scoundrels that defines the American experience, but earlier generations seemed to be able hold the two elements together better than we do now. They seemed savvier about the rogues while at the same time refusing cynicism. We now seem to be either one or the other--too naively optimistic like Rockwell or too cynically despondent like Mencken. What we need is to be more Capraesque--to be able to hold both aspects of the American character together.
We don't live in a Norman Rockwell World or a Walt Disney world; we live in a world that is defined by the Dick Cheneys and Ken Lays and John Thains. These are the rogues Mencken is talking about. These men are not aberrational; they set the tone and they shape the world we live in. You could argue that such men are a minority in America--most Americans are not like them. But they set the rules. They rise to the top because they are just better in the power and greed game than those they compete with. And when they reach the top, the set the rules that they live by and the quite different rules that the rest of us have to live by.
And John Doe tends to trust and admire them and to accept what they say at face value. John Doe, decent chap that he is, thinks everyone is a decent chap until he proves himself otherwise. And the bar for proving otherwise is set pretty high. Think about it: this country elected George Bush and Dick Cheney for a second term. So the task for these scoundrels, as it is for all con men, is to work hard to hide what they are really up to, to tell the John Does they are really John Does themselves, that they are thinking only about what is good for John Doe.
But who is the real John Doe but that nice kid down the block who you find out now has PTSD or even worse was one of those soldiers ordered to abuse prisoners in Abu Ghraib? He or she is the laid-off auto worker who becomes a Wal-Mart worker. John Doe for the Cheneys and Lays and Corkers of the world are just fodder to be exploited, and they always have been and always will be exploited except when they get savvy and fight back. That fight is what Capra represents in his films. The Baileys, Smiths, and Willoughbys are naive, decent folk who wake up and refuse to be exploited. Sure it's simplistic and sometimes sentimental--but he puts his finger on something that today's John Does don't seem to understand yet. Capra is not living in a Rockwell picture; he sees what Mencken sees, and he puts his hope, as I do, in the basic decency of John Doe, in his ability to figure things out, and then to fight.
Greed and the will to power are never decisively defeated; but they take over if they are not kept in check. That's been the difference the last thirty years or so. It's not that Mencken's scoundrels have been any less creative than they have always been; it's just that America's John Doe's have bought in to the scoundrels' latest scam, promoting Libertarianism and Friedmanite free market ideology as everybody's ticket to the good life. As I said, earlier generations had more savvy about such things. But maybe now or generation of John Does will begin to figure it out.