Digby is a well known, and justly celebrated, blogger. Her take off point for ‘ressentimental-journey-part-one specifically cites a Washington Post Op-Ed by Rick Pearlstein. In order to place in context what I write here as Irrationality/Passion the links are provided.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/01/AR2008020102827_pf.html
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/ressentimental-journey-part-one
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/ressentimental-journey-part-deux
What is the basis for the PASSION of today’s right?
The passions that preceded the Civil War, were, and are, all too understandable. A whole way of life was based on keeping one race of human beings as chattel slaves to another. To the force of an overwhelming and defining economic interest were added the ancient division of tribe and, in turn, an effectively a more elemental division of race. (1) The Civil War was hardly an unexpected response to a wrackingly difficult situation. Your point here, however, is a descent into sheer irrationality as a component of the slide towards war.
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(1)Understand both those latter divisions are artificial, essentially phantoms. But it doesn’t matter. Ethnicity and race are fundamental identifiers, and we NEED to identify. We are social creatures and cooperate together in the business of life. Some basis for identification will be sought, and race (although a later genetic artifact) is literally an all too obvious one. Our first identifier, however, was ethnicity – the tribe - and cooperativity was organized around the ‘wisdom of the ancestors’, and the laws and customs of the tribe. An injunction to be part of a ‘tribe’ must be understood to lie very, very deep.
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The Americans of the antebellum south were in denial over the simple reality that the logic of the Declaration, which they (rightly) reverenced, was in direct contradiction to a harsh reality they could not separate themselves from - separate emotionally psychologically, economically or practically. At the same time, their opponents in the north were driving forward with little or no acknowledgement of the difficulties redress of what was a monstrous injustice would certainly entail for the both the white and black populations of the south.
That the situation held great difficulty was the reason it was side stepped by our founders. As things evolved (THE COTTON GIN!) the matter grew steadily more intractable, and eventually broke beyond what has, otherwise, proven to be great powers of political reconciliation. One sign, and in the event, one driver of the process, was the passion of a group that came to be known as the ‘fire eaters’. In the instance of the American Civil War, it is all too understandable.
I must confess to some bemusement with Perlstein’s characterization of the Great Depression as a period of great polarization. “Tens of millions of Americans hated tens of millions of other Americans, sometimes murderously so.” Huh? I will concede the Veteran’s March on Washington fairly early on, but as the misery become pervasive we were ‘all in this together’, ‘there but for the grace of God go I’. No, later in the Great Depression the ‘other tribe’ were the Banker Potters of this world; the rest of us were Jimmy Stewart.
Let’s step back for a moment. I hold the essential factor behind that particular complex of things to which we apply the label ‘fascist’ to be protection of the ‘sacred tradition’, i.e. what holds us together against the world, what under girds the cooperativity trough we function and survive. The fundamental impulse behind that complex of things one might term ‘revolutionary’ (Political Liberal/Libertarian), socio-economic(Marxist) is a simple truth that no society that requires a broad consensus can function indefinitely against the perception that it is substantially unfair. The crisis of the modern world lies in the fact that by far the most economically productive societies do indeed require exactly that broad consensus. Curiously, in the modern world to fail to be at least open to change fails what is an essentially (even profoundly) communitarian need, a NEED for a fair society. Nevertheless, REVOLUTION is in air. Revolution is in the air, while most of the world is still enmeshed in traditional tribal or top down authoritarian structures of governance. Structures with little, if any, history of venting, let alone accommodating, revolutionary pressures.
We got Trouble right here in River City!
Change is coming; it is even understood to be needed, either because it represents a reassertion of fairness, of simple justice, or because it is seen as a practical necessity, but change will disrupt the fabric of stability that ‘holds us together against the world’, it threatens what ‘under girds the cooperativity through which we function and survive’.
The Conservative case is that Liberals will smash everything to produce change, with too little attention the consequences that change may entail, and with little or no regard for who gets hurt. The Liberal case is that Conservatism stands in the way of NEEDED change, helping to perpetuate injustice and inequity.
Are those sufficient causes for passion either way?
I think so!
It is the passion of today’s right that is a puzzle. Consider, nearly anyone in the history of this planet would have given their eye teeth to have been a part of the American reality over the past 75 years. Yet incontestably there is a significant portion of Americans who seem to believe they are on the verge of being engulfed by a liberal hell hole.
Might irrationality (on either the liberal or conservative side) emerge from some unacknowledged dissonance in the minds of the parties to that irrationality.
As observed above, the Americans of the antebellum south were in denial over the fundamental contradiction of our founding - caught ever more deeply in a reality they could not separate themselves from, and could not, would not, resolve. The thesis would be that strains were generated leading to the irrational extremes and attendant passions of the ‘fire eaters’ – which Lincoln remarked - and eventually gave way to a commitment to Civil War.
Conversely, the irrationality of the ‘fire eaters’ had a precedent incarnation in the Abolitionist movement. Although morally right, all too often, and all too insistently, abolitionists appeared to think they had only to pronounce their anathema, and all would, and should fall before them. The irrationality of this position was brushed aside by the abolitionists, but noted by large majorities of Americans in the north. ‘Bloody Kansas’ and, ultimately, John Brown, became passionate irrationality incarnate.
We struggled though a long confrontation with this matter from the Compromise of 1820, to the Compromise of 1850, and the Kansas/Nebraska Act of 1854. The center piece of the latter was the doctrine of popular sovereignty, the cognitive dissonances of which aroused Lincoln, and led to his increasing emergence on the national scene. Ultimately we failed the test of finding useful resolutions, and the bloodiest war in our history was the result..
So then, what are the mind sets of today’s Americans that can give rise to unacknowledged contradictions?
I have proposed there is one built into the liberal agenda by the rapidity of change in the modern world, a consistent need for a broad societal consensus, and a concomitant need for, at least, peaceful revolutions. But historically, barring the real excesses of Vietnam era emotional flights, peaceful resolutions are what American liberals have sought, and largely proven willing to work through, for last the last 75 years.
The lineaments of today’s Conservative agenda are: (1) Get the government out of the economy – indeed out of as much of the economic aspects of our lives as can be accomplished. In theory, this maximizes the ‘freedom’ to innovate, and the creation of new enterprises.); and (2) Protect (Champion!) the ‘sacred traditions’ that promote stability and order in all other things.
The modern Conservative movement is, arguably, schizophrenic. Conservatives exalt the freedom of the individual to innovate (economically!), and the traditions of stability that are threatened by innovation, and they do not address that contradiction. They want to ‘buccaneer’ economically, overturning or ignoring all sorts of social bonds, and then enact fits of allegiance over ‘other’ bases for social cohesion in defense the ‘sacred tradition’ One can, of course, be far more cynical. Propose it is all a pose on the part of the ‘buccaneers’ in which they exploit the need of all people to defend the ‘sacred tradition’, while selectively (and effectively!) pursuing their ‘buccaneering’. But a substantial component of self delusion is all that would be needed to explain PASSION. Do we believe Grover Norquist really buys into it all?
While the Grover Norquists of this world may not be truly convinced zealots, the rank and file Conservatives, the Rush Limbaugh crowd, have been enthusiastically lobbied to value ‘freedom’ in economic matters, and to resist the destabilizations of ‘freedom’, of change, in all other matters. Liberals are cast as feckless enemies of the principles and traditions we hold most deeply, and which define and keep us together as working societies: in the name of ‘justice’ and ‘fairness’ they would overturn it all, and the consequences be damned.
With respect to today’s conservatives, the thesis would be that the strain of exalting destabilizing ‘economic’ freedom, while being persuaded to a fierce defense of all other bases of stabilization, ignites the irrationalities cited by Pearlstein, and by Digby in Ressentiment. Closed to resolution, matters are open all to readily to passion.
One more reflection:
Ultimately, a consideration of the history of the last few hundred years sees all too many examples of near colossal irrationality. Most of these can be associated with such cognitive dissonances as are proposed above, acting at least as accelerants toward upheaval. The depth and extent of difficulty to which these cognitive dissonances incline, the extremes such irrationalities contribute to, MUST not be ignored.
The liberal inclination towards revolution provides an active, participatory basis for being in the world. From Lenin and Mao to Pol Pot, we all know the worst to which that can lead.
The quintessential conservative mind set ‘preserve the sacred tradition’ leads to a kind of semi-permanent defensive crouch. Is it all too surprising to find that, from time to time, there appears an urge to stand up and strike back? When, as in the 1930’s, it extended to an aggressive ‘defense’ beyond the boarders of the sacred traditions’ polity, we were visited by the Fascist nightmare.
The following considers one irrationality we are confronted with at the moment:
For the moment, the threat of ‘terrorism’ lies with its most immediate and pressing incarnation through radical Islam. Ultimately this can only be dealt with by a great, continuing cooperative effort on the part of the whole world, but most especially the developed world. Its resources, moral, intellectual, economic, and military are overwhelming. There is no way radical Islam can hope bring these societies down. Only the developed world itself can bestow such power upon a mere faction, by making repeated poor, foolish, and even catastrophic choices. That faction is lethal to the very people they seek to enlist and enflame – and those people know it. Radical Islam has nothing to offer but pyrotechnic nihilism and stagnation in life closed to all of the opportunities that open to people in the modern world. The societies of the developed world enjoy the free and deep commitment of the vast majority of their people, people of enormous cultivated talents and abilities. Does any one propose that such societies, with such vast resources, both human and material, will simply fold their tents and go away when challenged? Anyone who does propose it – and it is a core Neocon propaganda fixation - should be made to defend it.
