WHAT ROUGH BEAST? America sits of the edge

I'd agree with the "but" and not with the "not" part of your last sentence, Dys. I believe we're seeing the death throes of Christianity, but the lashing of the serpent's tail is sure doing damage to our society.

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Craven said:

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I also think the concerns about the erosion of rights is exagerrated as well. The one thing I think is not, is the foreign policy agenda. That is my main qualm with this administration.

I totally agree.
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Georgeob1 said:

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Similarly an argument, interpretation, or program put forward by people of an avowedly religious frame of mind, and even associated with certain religious values, does not necessarily mean the legal interpretation or program is either invalid, harmful, or antithetical to our basic constitutional values. In both cases it is the content of the law or program that counts, not the motives of its proponents.

This, to me, makes good sense in two ways:
1. there is a polarization between left and right that is harmful--as harmful to the left as it is to the right.
2. True, we need to be skeptical of motives (left or right), but the content of the law, and its constitutionality are all that count.

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Tartarin said:

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But the important factor lies in the "higher authority." I hold that the highest political authority in America is the will of the people. Advocate of a political position should not be granted higher status because they get their "authority"
from the Bible or the Koran or Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Of course (Well, I would give Jacques Pepin my complete attention). I think this is considered true by most Americans. Could you be so far to the left that you can't see that this isn't really a serious problem; rather, that it might be the kind of thinking that is contributing to the dangerous polarization of the left and the right?
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Dys said:

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Protestantism itself has the built-in secterian fatal flaw of continuing to divide into more and more ineffectual splintering of trite dogma in its quest for
salvation. the focus on the family is being defocused by questing for more and more political events that render its motives questionable. What I see happening is not a danger to the secular society but, rather a greater danger to the moderate mainstream of christian thought and principles.

Absolutely. As the fundamentalist right is going after political power, they are also forming more sects that are losing sight of true Christianity. They are blinded by their total belief that they are the only ones who know what is good for everyone else.

Tartarin, your response about Christianity being in its death throes is wishful thinking, IMO. Also, the last sentece of Dys's post doesn't deny that secular society is in danger, but that the moderate Christians are in more danger because they are losing their voice to the loud bleating of the fundamentalist right.

Actually, those fundamentalists will probably be the source of Christianity's death throes.

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"those fundamentalists will probably be the source of Christianity's death throes."

My very point, Diane. But I think you're doing the wishful thinking about the erosion of rights.

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Tartarin, I'm as worried as anyone else about the erosion of our rights, but I don't think people like Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, et al (dubya just follows orders, so I didn't include him) are the ones eroding our rights and they aren't part of the fundaamentalist right. Boykin, on the other hand...

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Here's Paul Krugman, in an NYRB review of the latest Ivins/Dubose and Conason books on Bush&Co:

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...Why is the public so easily manipulated? One answer is the supineness of much of the press, radio, and television, a fact documented by Conason. But that just pushes the question back a step. What is it about today's right that lets it bully the press so easily, that creates such an effective machine of propaganda, intimidation, and base mobilization?
Money is surely part of the story. Recent statistics confirm that income inequality in the United States has returned to Gilded Age levels; maybe, then, our newly empowered rich are in a position to buy themselves a return to Gilded Age politics.

Emphasis on a comment about trade-offs that I found interesting.

Diane: But Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz have together and separately conspired to keep information from Congress and the American people. That's not only a major erosion of specific rights at a specific time, but manages to set up a situation in which rights are set against "security" -- and in a couple of cases "executive privilege" -- thus guaranteeing a further erosion.

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Tartarin, I don't think you read my post--I am most certainly concerned about the erosion of our rights, but not by the fundamentalist right.

A quote from the link you provided, talking about Griles and his career with the extractive industries shrouding him with conflict of interest:

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Griles isn't likely to be disciplined, even when he brazenly supports industry interests over the judgments of government experts. After all, just about every other senior official at Interior, including Secretary Gale Norton, has a similar résumé.

These are the most dangerous people in this administration. The fundamentalist right scares me because they are quite often psychotic, but the real power holders are not fundamentalists.

This is pure speculation, so please stay with me--I think the far right will begin to see the pendulum swing back to a more centrist position as it does with every movement, whether it is civil rights, women's rights, etc. But real power and the huge amounts of money it brings in will not fall by the wayside. They will find a way to remain on the sidelines even if Bush doesn't win the election (probably holing up in think tanks). They have a tight hold and the seductive properties of power and money will keep them hanging on in any way they can. They are like a metastasizing cancer.

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You're right. I was interrupted while typing that last paragraph and lost the thread to the Christian right!

I thought Krugman's remark about the deal the Christians have struck interesting. That deal may turn out to be a nail in the coffin...

Locally, there is a whole group of Christian Right who are also (I kid you not) environmentalists, very anti-Bush (except Jeb, who "saved" Terry Schiavo), forming up groups to get W out of office, etc. etc. I've seen nothing written about them (except by me, perhaps too much!)

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Hello, this is Cassandra speaking......... Laughing

I have a unique view into the fundamentalist camp and the fundamentalists do indeed pose a threat to our freedom. If GW is not an evangelical fundamentalist, he's a better, more consistent actor that I can give him credit for. According to GW's own report, (according to Didion in the assigned article for this thread) he saw the light beginning with a walk with Billy Graham on a beach in Kennebunkport in the summer of 1985 in which "the mustard seed of faith" was implanted within him by the Reverend Graham. However GW had such a problem with alcohol addiction he back slid frequently until the:

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"famous birthday party at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs where everyone ended up too hung over to visit the Air Force Academy Chapel and the President's son quit drinking."

There are numerous incidents of obvious black slidings like the one reported by Didion in the article:

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According to Christopher Andersen's George and Laura: Portrait of an American Marriage, he once in a Mexican restaurant in Dallas launched a rabid attack on Al Hunt, the Washington bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal, colliding with other diners as he made his way to the table where Hunt was sitting with his wife, the television correspondent Judy Woodruff, and their four-year-old son. When he reached the Hunts, "red-faced" and "clearly intoxicated," he pointed a finger and began shouting.

"You no good ******* son of a bitch!" George W. screamed while other diners looked on in shock. "I will never ******* forget what you wrote!" For the next minute or so, W. stayed at the table, continuing his diatribe against the story [a story about the 1988 campaign in which Hunt had been quoted] in the Washingtonian. But Hunt could not imagine what could have provoked such rage. He had not even mentioned the elder Bush in the Washingtonian article, much less criticized him. With that, W. weaved his way through the restaurant and out to the parking lot.

And another:

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Again according to Andersen, Bush's only response to a late-night kitchen-table ultimatum from his own wife ("either their marriage or the bottle") was to study her for a beat, get up, walk over to the kitchen counter, and pour himself another bourbon.

Both these incidents took place in 1986.

(I've heard more stories which are consistent with these above and personally know of others.)

Until, as the story goes, GW,

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the not-yet president, then soon to begin his second term as governor of Texas, heard the pastor of the Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas [the late Rev. Clayton Bell] deliver a sermon about the reluctance Moses felt when chosen by God to lead his people out of Egypt, experienced a "defining moment" from which he drew the conclusion, as he put it in A Charge to Keep, the campaign autobiography he began with Mickey Herskowitz and finished with Karen Hughes, that people are "starved for leadership," and decided to run for president. "I believe God wants me to be president, but if that doesn't happen, it's OK," he was reported to have told a group in Texas in 1999.

Didion makes the following point:

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However, I don't entirely agree with Didion on this point. The additive personality, so clearly evident in GW for years since his childhood, is entirely consistent with the addiction of a born again fundamentalist evangelical. The addiction is for a simple, black or white answer, the "stubborn certainty" to which Didion refers. If he were merely a clever politician, I would not be as worried as I am by my belief that he is indeed a full fledged fundy. GW, Tom DeLay, John Ashcroft (our Attorney General, no less) and likely Karl Rove (as well as many others in Congress and those waiting in the wings to be appointed judges if GW is reelected) have an obsessive compulsive need for easy, grossly over simplified solutions to highly complicated world problems. A true believer is much more dangerous than a shrew politician. (Isn't it difficult to think of GW as shrew?)

george,

These folks are not like Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King or members of the NAACP which you see as "bullies". Tartarin has already aptly spoken to this point . These people intend, and see it as entirely reasonable, to diminish the personal freedoms we have come to confidently take for granted all these many years. They are not only organized. They not only have the intent. But they are already highly successful. The combined strength of the evangelicals with the neocons, presents an imminent threat to our democratic freedoms.

I am very frustrated with you, that you persist in believing, as apparently Richard Dawkins does as well, that they are innocuous "nutters." Nutters they are, but innocuous they are not.

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The Christian Right/ The Taliban
"The combined strength of the evangelicals with the neocons, presents an imminent threat to our democratic freedoms."

Zealots are the most dangerous people on the planet because they believe that the means justifies the ends.

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From the Krugman quotation posted by Tartarin above:

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But the success of today's right, despite its manifest greediness and irresponsibility, remains a puzzle.

This is very much less a mystery that many believe. The method used was easy. The gaps in the Republican party for local leadership have made it possible for these fanatically dedicated fundamentalists to suceed beyond anyone's wildest expectations.

It will take equal dedication on the part of others to take the control back. If only the Republicans would do it.

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You got that right, Legs. If only the Republicans would do it.

There are Republicans, of course, and probably a goodly number, who are dismayed and disgusted by Bush, but the ones I know seem to have decided to sit this one out, are being wusses, people who are very generous with their time at community level but are (apparently) too comfortable to feel any urgent responsibility for the future of the country. I say that realizing that I thought better of them. But the truth is, they're backing off. I get the impression that they are retreating, simply won't vote unless there's an alternative to Bush.

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Lola,

My reaction to the Didon piece you quoted is "How could she possibly know the truth of the personal details she has reported?' On what basis should you or anyone believe her?

My reaction to all the remote psychoanalysis is that it is entirely conjecture and speculation.

I wonder how Winston Churchill would have fared under such remote scrutiny. He was certainly single minded and focused. He certainly did not see all the nuance that so clouded Chamberlain's mind at Munich. He was also very likely an alcoholic.

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Remote scrutiny is all we have george. That other george ain't inviting me over for dinner and a buddy chat. And Winston gets a pass just for being so god damned funny, which that other george isn't.

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george,

Trust me, I'm not depending on Didion. I'm telling you it's so. I know Didion has it right because it fits with my own experience. Some things are known by those who are in closer proximity than you are to the subject. What Didion talks about are all documented events. There were many witnesses to the event in the mexican food restaurant. And these events fit exactly with my experience and knowledge.

And I should wash your mouth out with soap for mentioning Churchill in the same sentence, in comparasion to Bush. Excuse me while I control myself. Barely.

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My reaction to the Didon piece you quoted is "How could she possibly know the truth of the personal details she has reported?' On what basis should you or anyone believe her?

george

Actually, george, you have this question pointed the wrong way.

Didion has gained a stature as a writer on American culture and politics which is probably unsurpassed in modern American letters. Her work is commonly anthologized along with Twain and Trillin and Keillor, and it deserves to keep that company. It deserves that company in no small part because she doesn't fake it...she works hard at research and she has integrity. The sort of writer she is, the publications who hire her, and the audience whom she writes for, all demand a level of accuracy in reporting which your rhetorical question above doesn't acknowledge. If you read more of her(best option), or just do some research on her career and accomplishments, you'll find I don't exaggerate.

Second-hand and third-hand reports are how we gain a large portion of our knowledge of the world. Have you seen a nucleus? Do you think the Pope is a kind man? Have you read accounts of Churhill which you thought likely very close to the truth?

So, the question might better be swung this way...how is it you are so unwilling to accept that the accounts referred to are, with no small probability, true?

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Tartarin,

To try to see it from their perspective, I suppose it might be tempting to remain blind if you're in power and you have the perception that you're getting what you want. Still, you'd think eventually those who can see, would.

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Diane wrote:

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But real power and the huge amounts of money it brings in will not fall by the wayside. They will find a way to remain on the sidelines even if Bush doesn't win the election (probably holing up in think tanks). They have a tight hold and the seductive properties of power and money will keep them hanging on in any way they can. They are like a metastasizing cancer.

I agree with this, Diane. That's why the neocons and the fundmentalists are co-operating. Neither fanatical and obsessive group can do it alone. But they'll be working, as they were for the eight years Clinton was in office to pull whatever dirty trick they can, no matter if it violates basic ethics.

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I had a little laugh early (damn puppy) this morning reading an article about Alfred Barr, founding director of MOMA, in the NYRB... He fought for art exposition and education in the days when there were politicians who seriously thought modern art was a communist plot. (Some still do...)

So there really is a recurring genetic flaw in the American character and the proof is all around us -- in A2K as elsewhere. You can see it in the self-satisfied know-nothings who have bubbled up from hell once again into American life. Some come in the form of a "christian coalition." This deformity of soul suits very nicely another exploding bubble from hell, untamed capitalism. Join those two up with the multigenerational group called the "me generation" and it accounts for why we are suffering (as Krugman and others point out) from a "Gilded Age" in which having and grabbing and out-shouting and willful ignorance rule.

So although I agree with the need to point out the danger of the fundamentalists, I think the coalition of me-firsties covers a much wider ground. I don't think we should focus on the fundies without keeping an eye on what fuels them (in every sense) and that's capitalism in its rawest form. Pure capitalism, one has to remember, is no less erosive, fierce and relentless than the distortions of communism politicians in the fifties were so exercised about.

Take a look at the "US economy" discussion in A2K, at the idiom of greed used by those who, bowing to the modern era, delete "communist plot" and replace it with "liberal whining" or "welfare queens" or use statistics as a shield. All of this is their way of distancing themselves from the visible breakdown of our society while justifying their own rapaciousness in precisely the way the fundamentalists distance themselves. Didion, that most articulate and intelligent of "liberal whiners," isn't going to make a dent on the determined alienation of these folks. They have chosen amorality as a cloak and will defend it hotly as "realism" or "pragmatism," squealing like little piggies when one of those liberal whiners holds up a mirror to their ugliness.

The explanation for all this when I was in college (in the fifties) was as follows: America is a big, diverse country and the way one ties it together is by creating a unifying social and political culture. Unfortunately (the explanation went), there will always be those who take advantage of this unifying urge to further their own ambitions, using scare tactics to create, not a loosely knit diverse nation but a tightly knit exclusionary one. They operate by creating enemies.

By the way, Canada was often used as an example of a huge expanse of sparsely populated territory (as we once were) which operated successfully as a federation. Canada is an interesting example of a fairly successful federation with fewer tendencies towards authoritarianism.

Contrast and compare?

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Blatham, Lola,

Once long ago in a dusty corner of the library in Mahan Hall, while perusing a stack of early and mid nineteenth century literary and political journals from the US and Britain, I noted that, to a remarkable extent, the personalities being touted and lionized in them were largely forgotten today or at most present in only the footnotes of history, while figures which today mark the nature of that age were often relegated to a secondary or tertiary position. I decided that in general we are poor judges of the contemporary scene, and that I would instead use the test of time to aid me in selecting materials for my personal reading and education. Like all such rules it is sometimes wrong, however, it has been a good guide and has led me to some wonderful discoveries and a certain point of view about things. I'm still finding things to admire in Stendahl, Burke, Paschal, Balzac, Dostoievski, and Conrad, while I'll confess that I am only dimly aware of the writings of Didon, Trillin, and Keillor ( the Lake Woebegone guy?).

The referenced piece from Didon certainly did not strike me as an objective and balanced piece of analysis or even reporting. The evident point of view and prefabricated conclusions were everywhere to be seen. (What is the possible source for Bush's private conversations with Billy Graham or with his wife?) Certainly entertaining, self-consistent, and engaging, but is it true? Someone here earlier pointed out that history is often biased by the prevailing currents of the day and by the tendency of established voices to dominate the early analysis. The objective picture often doesn't emerge until the third revisionist version. I believe that principle is very well illustrated by Didon.

Lola scolds me for the reference to Churchill, and Blatham evades the very apt point in a witty reference to his humor. However, my point stands. It wouldn't be difficult to dig out some rather scathing contemporary, Didon-like analysis of the intellectual and personality pathologies of the man written during the late twenties and early thirties, while he was very much out of fashion. He was given to bouts of severe depression and he was, by today's standards, an alcoholic. His ideas about empire and other matters were rather retrograde, and it isn't difficult to imagine what a motivated Didon could do with the material he offers. It would, of curse,entirely miss the point of his contributions at a key moment in the history of his country. I'm not suggesting that George Bush ranks next to the iconic figure of Churchill, but rather that the Didon piece and others like it don't mean much.

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Sheesh! Comparing Didion, Trillin and Keillor (Keillor??) with Stendahl, Pascal and the others!!

Where you make discussion difficult, George, is in the straw-man approach which is first cousin of the binary argument. You don't have to like Didion or think Trillin is brilliant. They don't have to be an improvement over Dostoevsky. All they do have to be able to do is separate fact from fiction and do so knowledgeably and articulately.

The points Blatham wants to address in this discussion have been well-outlined by Didion (whatever you think of her) so perhaps we should be talking about the messages, not the messengers!

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WHAT ROUGH BEAST? America sits of the edge

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