Plus, the longstanding American pastime of kvetching about politicians and blaming them for just about everything under the sun—excepting, of course, their occasional accomplishments—has the sour-milk stench of populism about it. I've never much cared for populism; the word itself conjures images of wandering mobs—their wifebeaters gone sepia with day-old sweat, their damp, bulging flanks commingling in fraternal intimacy, their voices bent into hard rural accents... (If my consciousness were a material object, I'd give it a once-over with an antibacterial wipe right about now.)
Whenever a local newscaster draws the short straw and ends up with the unenviable assignment of speaking with the rabble about the state of American politics, Joe Average—like most of his political targets—usually trots out his set of shopworn talking points: indignant and toothless, he decries the partisan bickering, the pervasive ineffectualness, the corruption, the hypocrisy, the deceit, and—of course—the economy, the economy, the economy...
And there is no discernible trace of irony in his voice. Is he really unaware that these same deficiencies he identifies in political culture (vague and formless as they are) are derived from the greater American society itself—which he and his Hatfield or McCoy relations, in part, comprise? Does the learned constituency really suppose that their political representatives are sprung headlong from the cranium of Zeus or delivered beneficently from some hazy Platonic wonderland in the sky? (Of course, because this is American and because many voters actually believe—in this, the twenty-first fucking century—that the force of their prayers will summon up a religious messiah in a navy blue suit with a flag lapel pin to save us from the throes of moral decadence, these hypotheses are certainly not beyond the pale.)
As you may have noticed, the herd has a similar attitude toward 'Hollywood'—and by 'Hollywood' I don't mean a specific zip code, but rather the machinery of celebrity and entertainment culture, wherever it may reside. They regard Hollywood—with its insidious liberal politics, its moral decay, its godlessness, its greed, its cynicism—as a mutation within the otherwise healthy social body. They don't properly diagnose Hollywood as the terminal case of a disease that has spread its contagion on Main Street, U.S.A., since ever there was such a place. Before that even, the religious men of Medieval Europe craved power, wealth, and fame with a hypocrisy that reality television stars of today couldn't imagine—because at the very least their ambitions are transparent, not cloaked in the higher ideals of religion.
What I'm claiming here—again, not without some measure of obviousness—is that when Americans look to Washington (or to Hollywood) for heroes or saviors, what they always find instead are funhouse-mirror versions of themselves. And usually they fail to see any connection. To protect their piety or their self-esteem, they manufacture a crude fiction that these politicians and celebrities are anomalies rather than apples fallen near to the tree. The quaint argument they proffer—although it does not properly deserve the name 'argument'—is a raised arm, gesturing toward their simple lives: their foreclosed houses, their double shifts at the factory, their churchgoing, their humble, dirty-faced families, their moral clarity. In some exceptional cases, these people would always be this way, regardless of temptation—but in many, many more they've only lacked the opportunity for the extravagant vices of their Washington and Hollywood cousins. In other words, you have these presidents and senators and representatives because this is who you are. To hope (realistically) for very much more is to embark upon the religious course. Maybe, in this light, we shouldn't be surprised that so many Americans attach all their hopes to god; they want politicians who are descended from the clouds and who have renounced the very motives that have brought them here.
Whenever a local newscaster draws the short straw and ends up with the unenviable assignment of speaking with the rabble about the state of American politics, Joe Average—like most of his political targets—usually trots out his set of shopworn talking points: indignant and toothless, he decries the partisan bickering, the pervasive ineffectualness, the corruption, the hypocrisy, the deceit, and—of course—the economy, the economy, the economy...
And there is no discernible trace of irony in his voice. Is he really unaware that these same deficiencies he identifies in political culture (vague and formless as they are) are derived from the greater American society itself—which he and his Hatfield or McCoy relations, in part, comprise? Does the learned constituency really suppose that their political representatives are sprung headlong from the cranium of Zeus or delivered beneficently from some hazy Platonic wonderland in the sky? (Of course, because this is American and because many voters actually believe—in this, the twenty-first fucking century—that the force of their prayers will summon up a religious messiah in a navy blue suit with a flag lapel pin to save us from the throes of moral decadence, these hypotheses are certainly not beyond the pale.)
As you may have noticed, the herd has a similar attitude toward 'Hollywood'—and by 'Hollywood' I don't mean a specific zip code, but rather the machinery of celebrity and entertainment culture, wherever it may reside. They regard Hollywood—with its insidious liberal politics, its moral decay, its godlessness, its greed, its cynicism—as a mutation within the otherwise healthy social body. They don't properly diagnose Hollywood as the terminal case of a disease that has spread its contagion on Main Street, U.S.A., since ever there was such a place. Before that even, the religious men of Medieval Europe craved power, wealth, and fame with a hypocrisy that reality television stars of today couldn't imagine—because at the very least their ambitions are transparent, not cloaked in the higher ideals of religion.
What I'm claiming here—again, not without some measure of obviousness—is that when Americans look to Washington (or to Hollywood) for heroes or saviors, what they always find instead are funhouse-mirror versions of themselves. And usually they fail to see any connection. To protect their piety or their self-esteem, they manufacture a crude fiction that these politicians and celebrities are anomalies rather than apples fallen near to the tree. The quaint argument they proffer—although it does not properly deserve the name 'argument'—is a raised arm, gesturing toward their simple lives: their foreclosed houses, their double shifts at the factory, their churchgoing, their humble, dirty-faced families, their moral clarity. In some exceptional cases, these people would always be this way, regardless of temptation—but in many, many more they've only lacked the opportunity for the extravagant vices of their Washington and Hollywood cousins. In other words, you have these presidents and senators and representatives because this is who you are. To hope (realistically) for very much more is to embark upon the religious course. Maybe, in this light, we shouldn't be surprised that so many Americans attach all their hopes to god; they want politicians who are descended from the clouds and who have renounced the very motives that have brought them here.
You know, I've been thinking about this a bit lately myself. I finished Anatomy of Fascism last night and one thing I think Saxton overlooks is the degree to which the basic tenets of Nazism (and, to a lesser degree Mussolini's Fascism [Mussolinism?]) already permeated the culture before the "ideology" asserted its political hegemony (again, Germany in particular -- if the Nazis hadn't shown up, I'm certain Mussolini would just be a curious footnote). There's a far less well-known book, Fronstsoldaten, in which a historian collects and analyzes the letters of Wehrmacht soldiers, many of whom weren't even Nazis themselves, and demonstrates how much sympathy there was with the every-German-man for racial purity. (Indeed, this sympathy was made evident to myself, no matter how anecdotally, when my friend's little brother brought home his German bride some 13-ish years ago and, after a few drinks, she confided her distaste for African American servicemen in very specific simianesque terms.)
ReplyDeleteEr, Paxton, not Saxton. I think I have trouble registering the name Paxton vis-a-vis fascism because I associate it with Bill Paxton's alarmingly prescient "Game over, man! Game over!"
DeleteThat Anatomy of Fascism is a damn fine book—and not all dry.
DeleteWhat is alarming to me is how many of the traits of nascent fascism—at least in a non-formalized sense—are present in modern-day American society. The Tea Party and other alarming bellwethers, like voting on civil rights (i.e., gay marriage) in California, are only mitigated in my mind (to some extent) by our essentially conservative, impassive, and tradition-bound society. Overturning the status quo requires too much passion and effort for the majority of Americans to get on board, I think.
It's a great book.
DeleteI do like how he breaks down the various stages of fascism. He pretty much concedes that all democracies wallow in the first stages to some degree or another. I have to agree with you on the point of dual American ambivalence and diffusion of fascist-like energies through traditional outlets. We probably won't deal with any sort of "real" fascism until they make a pill for it. And Paxton makes the case, quite convincingly, that Europeans are far more prone to act out fascistically (especially the French, of all people, which is perhaps the silver-lining of this particular historical moment: I think a legion of effeminate men on Vespas sneeringly lobbing croissants is pretty benign).
I HATE Chris Matthews. What a narrow minded idiot. His kind of show can ONLY work in a world as fast and as dumb as ours is today.
ReplyDeleteWait. Who mentioned Chris Matthews? Did I miss something?
DeleteBut Chris Matthews is only the political inverse of Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Bleck. Do you hate them too? They're also narrow-minded idiots.
Demagogues always have an audience. What makes Chris Matthews exceptional? That he's on the left instead of the right?
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