So I know I'm checking in late with this, but I've been thinking about the experience of watching the two national conventions. Watching the RNC crystallized something, something scary: let me see if I can recreate the moment of unpleasant "ah-ha!" that I had.
The Republican speeches, unsurprisingly, didn't target me as a listener (which might have made the phenomenon I'm about to mention easier for me to pinpoint than it was during the DNC). To me, they seemed manipulative, dishonest, just plain wrong, all the usual things that one tends to feel about the other guy's presentation. I started to notice that there were certain themes that were pretty much guaranteed to set off a huge audience response. Among them was this: even the most boring speaker could get a little sting out of expressing the basic message "Kick the asses of our enemies, kick 'em hard, and kick 'em before they get a chance to kick us."
Pretty unremarkable so far - the Bush administration makes no secret of its hawkish intent. What I did find disturbing was the feverish joy with which these comments were, to my outsider's perspective, received by the audience. There was yelling, there was cheering, there was chanting - and though my initial reaction was to write it off as gruesome blood thirst, there was a certain additional quality to the response which was naggingly familiar.
Then it hit me. I had not only heard the reaction, but felt it myself - during the DNC. Except that there, different kinds of statements elicited a case of the Hell Yeah's. It's what I felt when I heard people say, in a sort of coded way, "Can you believe this fucking maroon is actually our president?" And it's what I felt when I heard things to the effect of "We need, oh how desperately we need, to bring an end to this burning anger. We need to get past the thirst for revenge that grew out of September 11, and find a way to solve our problems without this escalating violence."
What I felt when I heard things like this, however cynical I am about them actually coming true, was relief. Relief that someone was saying it out loud, relief that I wasn't the only one who thought that way, relief for a break from what I perceived as the dominance of the other side's message of push, push, push, onward to the deaths of our enemies, keep the hate alive no matter what the cost, keep poking that wound. The relief came from the feeling that my side has been woefully under-represented, that there hasn't been enough talk of peace, that there is a concerted and successful effort being waged to keep people angry and scared and hungry for blood. The relief comes from finally feeling like someone is standing up and saying what desperately needs to be said, because there hasn't been enough of that.
Now let's go back to the Republican side for a moment. I am quite sure that the cheering over the "kick their asses" comments came from exactly the same kind of relief, and was every bit as genuine. The people cheering those statements felt just as strongly as I do, except they feel that there hasn't been a strong enough statement of anger and resolve to beat a fearsome enemy, that their expression of the rage and sorrow of September 11 has been repressed by the other guy, and that only in the society of their fellows could they finally let it out.
Because there hasn't been enough of that.
Watching the two conventions forced me to realize that I have a lot more in common with those on the red side of the aisle than I might like to believe: a sense of disenfranchisement, the belief that all those assholes on the other team are hampering any real progress, the feeling that out-of-whack priorities are threatening our nation and our very safety, the fear that while once there was, there might no longer be room in this country for my views and cherished beliefs. Is there anyone left in the country who doesn't think that one or the other of the major political parties is out to destroy the United States, with good intentions or without? Because I haven't met them recently.
I don't know how sophisticated the thinking was of the people who planned the 9/11 attacks, but accidentally or not, they pulled off one hell of a blow. Somehow, the two fairly mainstream political groups with which the majority of Americans identify, two groups which often seem more similar than they are different, have both been maneuvered into the position of extremist camps. I don't even know if anyone could plan anything like this - piggybacking off the culture wars and the hijacking of the Republicans by the religious right and the ineffectual political machine of the Democratic party, perfectly timed to coincide with the tenure of a polarizing president who could be counted on to continually piss off those opposed to him, 9/11 was just the kind of horrifying emotional wedge we needed to become a country who can't even talk to each other anymore.
The fact remains that looking as objectively as I can at the last four years, I still think George W. Bush is a dangerously incompetent moron who I wouldn't hire to lick stamps. So my choice in November is still clear, if depressing. I guess my real question is: what next? People keep saying that a lot hangs in the balance in this election, but I wonder if we've actually missed the deadline and someday we'll look back on these last three years as the slower, subtler demarcation of "when things got bad."
Now I am only one person, one person who pretty much coasted through all her history classes. I know this country has weathered a civil war, Viet Nam and a million other crises that must have seemed just as grim at the time as this does to me. Not only that, but we're a nation pretty much in the bumbling adolescent stage, compared to others. So I guess I am asking for some perspective: are things as bad as I fear? Can we recover? And where should we look to figure out how?
Posted by hilatron at September 16, 2004 11:04 AM | TrackBackIt's all about compensation.
You know how you sometimes will start arguing something kinda mildly with someone, except they believe a little stronger in their side than you do in yours, but you don't back down? As the conversation goes on, you find yourself more and more investing yourself in what it is you're arguing about, and whoever it is you're arguing with is naturally responding in kind. Eventually you end up just trying so desperately to convince the other one that you're right, you begin sincerely believing that if you are unable to FORCE the other person to accept the superiority of Chunky peanut butter to Smooth, you will have somehow failed as a human being and will not deserve to go on living.
This is kinda like that...except the issues at stake actually genuinely ARE important - but just as in that example, the left has been becoming more left and the right has been becoming more right...hell, since Clinton won in '92.
Think about it, it's been swinging back and forth since then...Clinton in '92, the Republican Takeover of congress in '94, Clinton's re-election in '96, The impeachment in '98, and its subsuquent failure, Bush in 2000, Jeffords in 2001.
What 9/11 did to the political climate was to give us both something to be REALLY pissy about at the same time. We, as a society, seem to have lost the ability to think in shades of grey. I am a Democrat (well...technically I'm an independant, but whatever) and therefore I do sincerely believe that ALL Republicans are 100% WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING THEY DO. And even though I know this is not only a stupid way to look at life, I can't help it, because I know that's how they look at me.
What can we do about it? I have no friggin' idea. If you look back at our culture around the two World Wars, we were a frighteningly conservative people. By Vietnam, the left had grown to be about maybe 20%-25% of the populace...but now we're pretty much split down the middle. My hope is that in the grand scheme of things, we'll all grow up and have children and educate them about compassion and empathy and the dangers of an absolutist philosophy - Even a Leftist one. And just as the hippies' kids have now grown and are fighting for what they believe, so will ours. And as the old fat men die off, there will be nobody to back the Neocons, and America will finally become a truly compassionate and peaceful nation.
And then we'll be invaded and occupied by Belize.
Posted by: aaron at September 16, 2004 11:58 AMi wonder the same thing - if every generation felt their world was as fucked as ours, or if we've really plumbed new depths.
Posted by: jenni at September 16, 2004 07:42 PMi think it's one of those coming of age things where you see the big picture, look at the trends, forsee a little of the future, and start wishing for the 'good old days' because the feeling is that the nation is spinning out of control.
maybe it is, maybe it isn't. i am hoping not. maybe we're just poised for a pendulum swing?
To be honest, I'd like to believe the Dems are out to better the lives of the populace, whereas the good ol' boys of the GOP are simply out to devour the poor—who're just the "enemies" of their social/financial class—in the name of profit. I don't, however. Rather, I don't see any real hope in either party, even when the faults of the respective candidates are ignored, and that's a lot of shit to just put out of your mind right now. The thing is, while I'm staunchly anti-Republican, I still feel incredibly detached from the political leanings of the Dems. While Aaron might see the left as becoming ever more left, while the right digs itself a cozy hole under a rock—from which it can launch billion-dollar warheads at foreign nations—I see the DNC as playing the moderate card, willingly compromising on various issues in an effort to keep from once again getting their asses handed to them by Bush II, Inc. It's nice to know they're there to look out for the interests of their voters now, but where were they for the last four(-ish) years? Picking their nose and fiddling with their stock portfolio?
I don't know that this is the best time to be reading 1984 again, as it's a bit hard not to draw comparisons between the current system(s) of governing the masses in the US and those laid out in the novel. It's all a bit depressing—and I find it very unfortunate that the notion of some sort of modern-day Big Brother is so cliche as not to be taken seriously. Shall we all laugh about the Thought Police now, while some neo-con think tank is drafting the bigger, scarier version of the Patriot Act?
Har-de-fuckin'-har, kids! C'mon all, let's join The Party.
*dread*
Posted by: Josh at September 22, 2004 12:33 AM