To the Vanquished Go the Spoils — Part I

In this series of posts, I will explore the State of the Union in the third decade of the 21^st century, with one goal in mind: To make clear to anyone who is listening that, although the one thing that all sides share is the belief that democracy is under threat in this country, the problem is that we have very different understandings of why that is so, what exactly that threat is. There is a theory, grounded in two generations of hooey and hucksterism, and promoted by Bad Actors posing as Patriots...and then there is Consensus Reality, grounded in the clear examination of demonstrable facts. On one side, the willingness to accept anything one is told, as long as it corresponds to one’s selfish desires and fundamental biases, and absolves one from any responsibility for the situation. And on the other, a desire to get to the bottom of the problem through studying the objective facts, wherever they may lead, and a willingness to take the situation in hand by first accepting the part one has played in it.

It is the incompatibility of these two perspectives, these two ways of understanding the world, that lies at the core of America’s troubles today. We are at an inflection point, a moment when the table is turning, but no one knows in which direction it is going. Democracy as it has been understood by the majority over the past two and a half centuries lies there on that table, awaiting its fate. 

If liberal democracy truly has failed, as more and more on the Right would have it (even those who have a very poor understanding of what democracy really means), it is not because it has “gone too far” but because it didn’t go far enough before the corrupting influences of wealth, selfishness and prosperity began to drown it. Historians speak of the "unfortunate success" of the Roman Empire. Much the same can be said of the United States of America.

How it will all work out is really immaterial to me. Truth to tell, I no longer care much, one way or another. America has long since forfeited any serious claim to being the Beacon of Democracy for the world, the City on a Hill defending what is Right and Just. Since the Road Ahead of me is now much shorter than the Road Behind, I am content to watch the show, and laugh and cry along with the protagonists. But ultimately, it is all external phenomena subordinate to the Reality I strive to honor. I am helpless to shape what is happening to this country, and I refuse to lose sleep over it.

Let me not therefore be Jeremiah, but rather Rather — a Dan Rather for the 21st century. I’m simply going to report upon what I see. It’s up to you to decide whether you want to do anything about it.

 

Part I: Bar the Shouting

It’s all over, bar the shouting.

- British aphorism*

If the recent history of the US makes anything abundantly clear, it is that despite the Minority Party’s recent insurgency, conservatives have already lost the Culture War. It’s all over, bar the shouting.

The evidence is plain to see all around you.

Look at American culture of the 1950s and compare it to 2023. In myriad ways, we’ve moved on: 

☞ Women are in the workforce to stay, not just in working-class families but across all social-economic levels. This is not to say that this has ever been on wholly equal terms — far from it — and many times it has come as much from economic necessity as from personal choice. But the idea of a woman working outside the home is no longer a problem of social propriety. Women today have options and visions that were scandalous in “proper” (i.e. whitemiddleclass) American society 70 years ago.

War heroes, all.

A soldier of a different sort.

Unheard-of 70 years ago

I don't mind, do you?

☞ Nobody much cares nowadays how a man wears his hair, nor whether he wears a beard, nor whether a woman wears a skirt or jeans, nor if she cuts her hair short or cuts it off entirely. Nobody is going to “talk” if you do. A few people may quack and gossip, but it doesn’t usually affect your job and needn’t dampen down your social life. Ripped blue jeans and black lipstick don’t shock anyone anymore. Likewise tattoos. If you wear the flag as a garment or as a protest, some people may get irritated and stare, but nobody is going to actually try to stop you, actually pick a fight with you. People have a lot more room for self-expression, freedom of taste, freedom of personality, freedom of orientation, freedom of political beliefs...the marvelous cacophony of individuality is now more on show than it has ever been in our history, despite the continuing efforts of the people who lost the War. This is a very good thing. (Not to mention profitable, which is a subject for another essay.)

☞ Your sexual behavior is no longer anybody’s business but your own. Except where it affects your work performance, you cannot be fired because of whom you have slept with. If that happens, you have legal recourses that simply did not exist in the 1950s. No one is allowed to touch you, make suggestive comments to you, treat you like a piece of meat, with impunity. It still happens, of course, but it is no longer considered acceptable behavior, and there are laws in place to discourage it. There is no longer a severe social stigma attaching to being pregnant “out of wedlock.” Certainly not to the extent it was true in bygone days. People no longer speak of “fallen women,” or your “reputation” as a defining social fact. To grasp how far we have come, contrast that with this quaint, middleclasswhite lyric from the Everly Brothers’ 1957 hit, “Wake Up Little Susie”

            The movie wasn’t so hot

            It didn’t have much of a plot

            We fell asleep, our goose is cooked

            Our reputation is shot

            Wake up little Susie, we gotta go home!

☞ Birth control of all kinds is readily available everywhere, and a woman does not need her husband’s permission to use it. Does pregnancy come with social and economic consequences? Of course. But for every person who wags a finger, not only are there ten who will support you, there are national organizations devoted to seeing that you have the support you need.

☞ And as with birth control, so too with abortion. It is very, very popular in this country. Depending upon how you ask the question, as many as two-thirds of Americans support the idea that a woman should have the right to control her own body and its functions. The role of the men in her life decisions — her husband, her father, her priest — has been sharply curtailed, both legally and in practice. The Minority Party had to violate accepted governing traditions, the letter of the Constitution, and widespread public opposition, in order to engineer a majority on the Supreme Court that could take this right away. Without cheating, they would never have been able to do it. And they knew it and they did it anyway! And for sure, they aren’t stopping there. 

☞ And while we’re at it, we can talk about protections for vulnerable women in general. A woman’s sexual behavior, or how she dresses, or how she talks, is no longer grounds for overlooking violence done to her. Husbands can be prosecuted for physical abuse, even rape — it’s against the law now, and police cannot simply look away. A woman in a bad situation now has options (in many places, anyway), and she is ever more likely to be viewed sympathetically than to be blamed for the situation. Is it perfect? No. But we’ve moved on from the days when she was universally treated with contempt as the cause of her own misery.

Is there a problem here?

☞ And much of that goes also for non-hetero sexual behavior, as well. It is no longer a crime to sleep with someone of the same sex, nor even the same gender. Society will no longer “look the other way” if you are abused or attacked because of your sexual orientation. And again, there are legal recourses in the event that happens. Is it perfect? No. Are there still pockets of hostility? Places where it is not safe to admit your truth? Certainly. There is still quite a bit of work to do. But the idea that such people deserve legal protection and social acceptance, that who they are is a matter of rights not religion, is now so widespread that the current backlash against them is generally seen for what it is: a desperate backlash, not a central trend in society. 

☞ It is now legal in all 50 states for people of different “races” to marry and have children. I suppose there are places where some people are scandalized by it. Lord knows there are contrarians everywhere. But the law is on your side now, and you cannot be arrested, lose your livelihood, have your marriage canceled, be denied housing, or be denied service in a bar because of it. The vast majority of people nowadays just don’t care that much one way or the other...as long as you’re happy, whose business is it, anyway? And children of such unions are not treated as outcastes by the larger society. I actually had to explain the drama that animates Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? to my 13-year-old daughter. It was outside her experience. And that's a very good thing.

Had something to do with it

☞ Nobody cares what your music sounds like, nor whether it was made by a Black or Brown person. Nobody cares how you dance, nor whom you dance with. In general, people just say, “Whatever. More power to ya.” 

Had a lot more to do with it!

☞ As long as you don’t hurt people or yourself, nobody really cares how you manipulate your brain chemistry. Smoking pot or experimenting with psychedelic substances is no longer regarded as either perversion or subversion. It may be criminalized by the government, but nobody regards it as criminal in and of itself. Most people just say, “Whatever.” And at the same time, being in the throes of addiction is no longer seen simply as a character fault. More and more people are coming to realize the fact that addiction is a terrible illness that needs treatment, rather than character assassination.

☞ Owning The Communist Manifesto or Capital is no longer a sign of being “a subversive.” The works of Henry Miller, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Charles Bukowski, Alan Ginsburg, Maya Angelou, William S. Burroughs, Alice Walker...you name it, you can have it and read it. Occasional, localized fits of book banning these days only underscore this triumph: It is possible today to get your hands on and read literally anything you want, including pornography, if that’s your thing. The days when the USPS would literally burn books it disliked are long gone.

☞ A slew of derogatory or defamatory words have been firmly ejected from public discourse...for the good of all. Racial and gendered slanders that once were common parlance in parts of this country are now seen for what they are: Despicable evidence of a deplorable past.

I'm fine with all of this, aren't you?

☞ And as with language, so also with images. Depictions of ethnic minorities (even Indians/Native Peoples) are nowadays broadly characterized by complexity, depth, sympathy and respect. Young children are no longer exposed in mass media to heinous stereotypes as if they were reality. Gone are the days when you could hire some white bloke to play a cardboard “Indian chief” or a Kung-fu artist without provoking criticism.**  It ain't perfect, yet, but we’ve moved on, and our culture is much richer because of it.

☞ What church you go to, what religion you belong to, or whether you are religious at all, is now nobody’s business but your own. You don’t have to hide your faith or lack thereof for fear of losing your home or your friends. You cannot be fired because of it. You cannot be denied public services because of it (although, to be honest, you probably cannot be elected POTUS if you do not at least make a show of being Christian). You will not have your character slandered in the Halls of Power because of your spiritual beliefs. No (sane) person seriously entertains ideas that were once common in America: Jews are greedy people who secretly control everything; Muslims are alien, woman-abusing terrorists; Catholics are drunken pagans beholden to the Pope. For every nitwit who espouses such a thing, there are a dozen communities of people who have decided to accept everyone as they are, to live and let live, to honor the social contract among folks of all religious and non-religious orientations.

☞ People care about the environment in ways that they never did before. Communities resist loosening of local ordinances that seek to empower capital to plunder resources for profit — once a hallmark of conservative practice. Such efforts still happen, of course, and especially at the state and national level. But more people than ever recognize that clean water and clean air are essential goods that have to be protected. We’re not doing enough in this area, obviously. Not nearly enough. But environmentalism is no longer a fringe attitude that provokes social umbrage. It’s not just for hippies any more.

A tragically failed comedian

In these and so many other ways, society has become freer, more accepting, more open and liberal and progressive over the past half-century or so. And the vast majority of people want it that way. These values and social orientations are terrifically popular. So popular in fact that people who openly challenge them sound like an out-of-tune flute in an orchestra. For 99% of the country, Margery Taylor Greene is a bad, tasteless joke, an object of justified derision. 

And has any of this progress come about because conservatives wanted it that way? Nope. On the contrary: Conservatives have resisted all the above tooth-and-nail, having to be dragged screaming into the 21^st century. By and large, the only thing that has brought them to heel has been their political candidates’ need to get elected in an increasingly liberal culture. What is so shocking about MTG is not so much that she exists, but that she can be so openly vicious and get away with it. That by itself speaks to the backwardness of the particular community that elected her.

Evidence of a failed agenda

The only reason we are even talking about any of this is because the “conservative party” in this country is also the Minority Party. They understand this very well. In fact, their most recent Occupant of the White House said as much: If Republicans were to tell the truth, they’d never get elected. Instead, they have to play smoke-and-mirrors while stirring up conservative outrage by refighting the Culture War they have already lost. And all that just to gin up enough energy to lose in the polls. In the past thirty years — eight presidential election cycles — the Minority Party has earned a majority of the popular vote exactly once (in 2004, for an incumbent president at the height of two wars he created). They routinely earn millions fewer votes overall for seats in Congress. Even when the Senate is split exactly in the middle as it is today, those 50 senators represent some 41 million fewer Americans.

It should be obvious to anyone who is paying attention: Conservatives still keep shouting about the Culture War, just to retain a grip on their waning power. In Consensus Reality, they have already lost.

 

Next time: A little history of the Big Lie

* The idea probably originated in the UK in the 19^th century. This site offers several examples of “all over except shouting” from horse racing newspapers in the early 1830s.

** The character Tonto in the Lone Ranger stories is rather oddly a contrary example that complicates the issue. The role on radio was voiced by the Irish-American actor, John Todd, between 1933 and 1954. Notably, he was replaced by a Native American actor for public appearances. Between 1949 and 1958, Tonto was played on TV by indigenous Canadian Jay Silverheels, a sign of at least some sensitivity to the racial issues involved. Although he was presented as intelligent and caring on both radio and TV, Tonto spoke with pathetically broken English, a dogwhistle demonstration of his Otherness in the face of white power. The film Little Big Man (1972), widely regarded by film critics as a positive milestone in the evolution of Hollywood's representations of Native Americans, would ideally have spelt the end of Tonto. But no, in 2013 Johnny Depp appeared as the "comically" wise Tonto, broken English and all, in a big-budget resurrection of the story. So, we're not quite there, yet.

Credits: time.com; rexfeatures; Jay Godwin, flickr.com; vocal.media.com; nationalgeographic.com; thewritelife61.com; hairstylefeed.com; fa_ellen; forbes.com; firewireblog.com; beat.co.au; YouTube via Pinterest; cardinalnews.org; vietnamartwork.files.wordpress.com; Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters; the Reverend Connie Tuttle.

Consensus Reality as an American Crisis

Note: I started this post way back in January of this year, a year after the insurrection that seemed to transform the political realities in this country. I abandoned it at that time when other circumstances in my life demanded attention. Also, I had begun to run out of steam for maintaining this blog. The weight of the rampant foolishness and patent disingenuousness in my country had become a burden to think about — not to mention live with.

But with Election Season in full swing once more, and with Consensus Reality once again on the ballot, I thought I'd crawl back to this and present it for your inspection. It ain't pretty, perhaps. But it is honest and, I hope, thought-provoking.

Here goes...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/04/next-us-civil-war-already-here-we-refuse-to-see-it

Well, that was alarming. 

 

But then again, so much of modern life, whether here or abroad, is alarming. It’s based on unrealistic and unsustainable understandings of the world. I have been saying for the last two years, in the face of the pandemic, that we are at a civilizational moment, a moment of reckoning for all the grotesquely unsustainable ways we in the developed world have tried to live our lives. More recent events, both here and abroad have only reinforced this in my mind.

We are indeed facing a national crisis of unprecedented implications, but it is rather different than what many, even most, American recognize.

 

What good is vaccinating 80% or 100% of American people, when there are a billion and a half human Petri dishes in Africa, victims of colonially produced and post-colonially maintained systems of inefficiency and inequality? The US has donated around 1 billion doses of vaccine. Well, that’s about 1/3 of the solution, but the real problem is getting those shots in people’s arms. Before they spoil. Do you wanna talk about a broken system?

 

And as with the pandemic, so too with the environment as a whole. It’s one big problem. Beside it, everything else pales. In the end, both fascist and progressive alike will have to bow before it, sooner or later. The only question is: How will we face the challenge of living with it?

 

While some Americans wring their hands about the possibility of a second civil war, and others openly cheerlead for it, and a few others actively prepare to initiate it, we are being called to reimagine human civilization itself, based not necessarily on technology and technological solutions (which seem at times to be feeding the cycle, not breaking it), but upon recognizing the supreme importance of the planet upon which we depend, and therefore upon the communities which we build. 

America, beside this, all our troubles and mutual hostilities pale.

 

It doesn’t seem to me that enough people on this side of the Atlantic are really, really listening. Am I worried about America's political future? Yeah, sure. What happens here always has an impact elsewhere. But I’m even more worried about the world that my daughter will live in.

 

To me the unreality of American life in all its forms — economic, political, cultural — is of a piece with the reckoning of which the pandemic is only the most obvious bellwether. This article may be correct: The US is probably facing a crisis of massive political proportions.

But to my mind that’s an epiphenomenon. One more way in which Americans are striving to live the American dream of exceptionalism. We don’t want the rules to apply to us.

 

Well guess what: the rules apply to everybody.

 

The author of this article, as perceptive as it is, calls for the left to get their act together and make changes that will repair the system. Fair enough.

But what changes are proposed here, except changes within the system? The only changes that will really make any difference for the long term to the planet, not simply to our nation, have to take place in the minds of the people. Only then can the Consensus Reality possibly penetrate beyond the jingoistic noise that dominates contemporary American public discourse.

 

Until that happens, whether or not we have a Second Civil War, whether or not we remain a single country or break up into four or six or 50, won’t really matter in the long term. Consensus Reality transcends left and right, woke and racist. And the outlook is looking pretty grim. Do I want freedom and a liberal democracy? Of course. But on what terms?

 

Another way to put it: While we’re busy fixing America's broken system, why don’t we really fix it?