The Overpowering Angel
I hate to drag GFW down to the level of politics, but perhaps my fellow blogmates will indulge me if I give a few thoughts.
Possibly the strangest thing about America at the moment is the growing consciousness of a peculiar kind of drift. In the media, many complain automatically of an overabundance of ideology or "partisanship." Perhaps the pundits are right, at least on the latter: anyway it seems as though party loyalty is one of the few anchors left. Certainly the old issues remain very real: we social conservatives continue to rally around grassroots causes. Supreme Court appointments provide us with motivation to continue (for reasons of realpolitik if nothing else) supporting Bush, Rove, the GOP and apple pie.
But something else is in the air: here in particular I am speaking about the world stage. What is suprising is not how much ideology there is concerning Iraq, Afganistan, etc., but how little the existing political diction seems to fit the situation. Old words such as "hawk," or new(er) ones such as "neoconservative" make an admirable effort, but in the end are still too vague to prove convincing. America is usually genuinely able to sum up everything in a few sound bites: it can be a liability, but its also the way we get things accomplished. Language is meant to "map" onto reality, to reduce complexity while communicating dividing lines and important content: but now our political dialect seems thin, like (if I can borrow from what I consider an auspicious source [Tolkein]) "butter spread over too much bread."
What I increasingly wonder is if there is any driving ideology, whether anyone or anything at all is in the drivers seat. By now its a very old story, cited in a number of blogs--- still, when thinking about these things, I always come back to the Ron Suskin (of the nytimes) anecdote about his conversation with Bush's aide:
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
The story, of course, (I am sure) does not capture the full spectrum of reasons and rationales. anyway, I find many neoconservative ideas intriguing, even admirable. But I also find myself wondering where a philosophy of action will take us. What wills when the will alone triumphs? Some of us observed the fact that responsibility for a certain decision can travel up and down a hierarchy: all might be responsible, and no one (one example being Abu Ghraib). Hans Freyer, in his "Revolution from the Right" (1931) declared that (and here I quote from memory) "what unites us... [the revolutionary right] is that [we all] have a guilty conscience." Something is drumming on our blinders from the outside: for us, as well as for Freyer, reality is reforming itself. The possibilities and the dangers of this new freedom have, at the moment, overwhelmed conventional rules and rationales. Who can blame the anti-Bush lobby for their conspiracy theories, or their hatred? They are looking for something familiar to cling to. [Paul Weyrich has, for similar reasons, begun a series of posts on the substance and direction of conservative policy: they are titled "The Next Conservatism," and are available on the Free Congress website.] In the face of terrorism, war, and the new conservatism, all we can do is remain open-minded, alert and wary.
Possibly the strangest thing about America at the moment is the growing consciousness of a peculiar kind of drift. In the media, many complain automatically of an overabundance of ideology or "partisanship." Perhaps the pundits are right, at least on the latter: anyway it seems as though party loyalty is one of the few anchors left. Certainly the old issues remain very real: we social conservatives continue to rally around grassroots causes. Supreme Court appointments provide us with motivation to continue (for reasons of realpolitik if nothing else) supporting Bush, Rove, the GOP and apple pie.
But something else is in the air: here in particular I am speaking about the world stage. What is suprising is not how much ideology there is concerning Iraq, Afganistan, etc., but how little the existing political diction seems to fit the situation. Old words such as "hawk," or new(er) ones such as "neoconservative" make an admirable effort, but in the end are still too vague to prove convincing. America is usually genuinely able to sum up everything in a few sound bites: it can be a liability, but its also the way we get things accomplished. Language is meant to "map" onto reality, to reduce complexity while communicating dividing lines and important content: but now our political dialect seems thin, like (if I can borrow from what I consider an auspicious source [Tolkein]) "butter spread over too much bread."
What I increasingly wonder is if there is any driving ideology, whether anyone or anything at all is in the drivers seat. By now its a very old story, cited in a number of blogs--- still, when thinking about these things, I always come back to the Ron Suskin (of the nytimes) anecdote about his conversation with Bush's aide:
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
The story, of course, (I am sure) does not capture the full spectrum of reasons and rationales. anyway, I find many neoconservative ideas intriguing, even admirable. But I also find myself wondering where a philosophy of action will take us. What wills when the will alone triumphs? Some of us observed the fact that responsibility for a certain decision can travel up and down a hierarchy: all might be responsible, and no one (one example being Abu Ghraib). Hans Freyer, in his "Revolution from the Right" (1931) declared that (and here I quote from memory) "what unites us... [the revolutionary right] is that [we all] have a guilty conscience." Something is drumming on our blinders from the outside: for us, as well as for Freyer, reality is reforming itself. The possibilities and the dangers of this new freedom have, at the moment, overwhelmed conventional rules and rationales. Who can blame the anti-Bush lobby for their conspiracy theories, or their hatred? They are looking for something familiar to cling to. [Paul Weyrich has, for similar reasons, begun a series of posts on the substance and direction of conservative policy: they are titled "The Next Conservatism," and are available on the Free Congress website.] In the face of terrorism, war, and the new conservatism, all we can do is remain open-minded, alert and wary.
posted by J.S. at 11:19 AM
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