Where The Rubber Meets The Road

About a hundred and fifty years ago, our beloved country had a little dust-up over a few issues, not the least of which were slavery and whether or not states could secede from the U.S. (Despite the efforts of intellectual powerhouses Chuck Norris and Sarah Palin, most people agree that states should not secede.) Mostly, it was about rich people and their disagreement on how to stay rich, but that’s another post altogether. Had it not been for the abomination of one human being owning another, I’d almost rather the war not been fought at all; almost, that is, until it becomes obvious that the war which would have followed later would have been far bloodier. And that’s saying something.

Point being, there have been times in this country when we’ve been more divided than we are now. But they have been very few and far between.

There have always been those divisions, largely stemming from the seemingly juxtaposed ideas of uniqueness and sameness. That is, we’re supposed to cherish individuality (we don’t) while maintaining common cause (which we also don’t). These divisions have been expressed in a nearly infinite number of ways, and almost all of them are driven entirely by people who want to cling to their vastly disproportionate amount of wealth. How do you insure that the rabble never pays attention to just how shamelessly you’re robbing them? Give them something else to pay attention to. Like “race“, religion, education, lesser amounts of wealth, ideology, foreigners, American Idol, fad diets, O.J. Simpson, ad infinitum.

The divisions – which were variably wide and narrow throughout U.S. history – became chasms with the introduction of the (new) culture war. For their own reasons (possibly tired of a Democrat-dominated electoral history), the Republicans sold their souls for a winner. An alliance was struck between entrenched plutocrats and a particularly vicious and violent strain of Christian fundamentalists. This gave the Republicans even deeper pockets, but more importantly, a fanatically loyal “base” who would do anything – anything – to get their candidates elected. Unfortunately, it also gave a powerful voice (and the limp, halfhearted backing of the GOP) to a people who think that the Constitution shouldn’t apply to non-Christians, that mathematics is evil, that our President is an Arab Muslim, and that their god has the time and petty nature to actually hate individual people.
Culture Warriors like Pat Buchannan, Anne Coulter, and noted humanitarian Rush Limbaugh have done all in their considerable power to turn debate into hair-pulling and name-calling, make reprehensible and inexcusable behavior the norm, obfuscate fact and meaning to the point that all views (no matter how ludicrous) are equal, and generally glorify ignorance.
The collateral damage done by the Culture War is in evidence all around us. From the joke that journalism has become to the fact of an actual debate over whether we evolved or were spawned from two naked fruit junkies who talked to snakes six thousand years ago, we are awash in a dizzying flood of blatant stupidity, willful ignorance, and jaw-dropping brutality.

Is there hope? The very word has become near-synonymous with Barack Obama, the self-styled “skinny kid with a funny name.” Which is ridiculous, of course. Barack Obama isn’t a funny name. Barack Obama is an ethnic name. Anita Goodfinger is a funny name.
Anyway, the unifying message of Obama’s campaign has finally hit the wall everyone but Obama seemed to know was there. His enemies are not interested in unity. These are not Republicans, or even conservatives. They are the agents of the aforementioned unholy alliance between the neo-oligarchs and the theocrats. And they want nothing to do with Obama’s vision of a united – yet diverse – U.S. They want Their United States or No United States.

I, for one, think that President Obama can overcome this most stubborn obstacle. He has displayed an near-infinite well of calm and a savvy knack for burying his opponents with gentlemanly aplomb. This last is the antidote for the savagery of the theolithic plutogarchs (Yes – I despise them enough to make up words); when you’re fighting a war of public opinion, a calm denial in the face of raving lunacy is always a good move. Despite being an absolute clown while privately being the worst of the neocons, George W Bush understood this, and conducted himself with a transparent mummery of humility and aw-shuckery. A great and horrifying number of people fell for it, and we’ve paid the price. How, then, do you suppose a real gentleman will do?
To be sure, most of the heavy lifting for the President’s first term will be undoing the damage of his predecessors, but if we’re all very lucky, he may eventually get to do more then addition by subtraction.
And we will need luck. The enemies of freedom and democracy may also exist outside of our borders, but for now, there are plenty to be had in our own back yard. There is no reaching them. They can’t be bargained with. They can’t be reasoned with. They don’t feel pity or remorse, and they absolutely will not stop – okay, sorry for the quote, but you get the idea. The President has a vision that I do not share: that one day, these people will join us in our march toward the future. I disagree. They’d rather burn the house down than let a single shingle be moved. These are not the kind of people you find common cause with; they are the kind you destroy.

But perhaps in a polite, genteel way, that is the plan after all. The future envisioned by our President has no place for their kind. One way or another, we need to reach that future, and by default, that means the neocons have to be dealt with. Whether we leave them behind or pay them back in their own coin is simply a matter of style.

I, for one, don’t care which; I only need to see that said future is coming. I hope I do.

Tags: Criticism, Culture, Musings, News/Media, Politics, Religion

This entry was posted on Friday, March 13th, 2009 at 8:39 AM and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.