The (Im)perfect Storm

"Flash in the Pan" is the archaic phrase that comes most to my mind when I consider the history of the American republic and its latter-day, very short-lived empire. As an American historian, I have sometimes questioned my choice to teach and do research in the subject of American history. After all, many of the so-called "founders" of the nation thought they had failed at conception. And, the America that properly emerged victorious and confident after World War II did not last for more than a brief moment. Cold War insecurity led to dominance over mainly second and third-world nations (e.g., Vietnam) who in turn became surrogate client states that prove the adage: "the tail that wags the dog." Now the great nation -- and it was a great nation -- slips away with little effort to preserve itself as a nation, let alone as a nation with pretensions to lead the world in public morality and goodness.

Three elements have converged to guarantee the rack-and-ruin of the U. S.A. They have combined to form a "perfect storm" from which Americans and, alas, perhaps the rest of us, cannot easily escape. Only one of these elements can claim any pretense to virtue.

1. Libertarianism -- The American ideal of "liberty," born in the colonial period and brought forward in the American Revolution was truly revolutionary for its age. Without going through a discourse on the history of liberty in the last two hundred odd years, let's just say that it was a grand idea. But at least in the last thirty years that idea has suffered from distention. It has become a coarse and grotesque corruption of itself. Liberty has now become libertarianism. "Leave me alone, I want to be completely free!" In other words, I have no obligations other than to myself. Government is not just a necessary evil (as many in the 18th century would admit) but a complete evil. Regulations of any sort (other than traffic regulations) are anathema to being American, or so these ill-educated, myopic ethnocentrists contend.

2. The Public Interest -- No one in the U.S.A. dares any longer to argue that there is a "public interest" to be considered and protected. The U.S. Supreme Court proved recently in the Citizens United case that even "THEY" no longer identify a "public interest." No appeals to the needs of society or the needs of the nation, let alone the needs of the world and humanity, have any cache with Americans. There is "my" interest and nothing else.

3. Ethnocentrism -- Americans are a self-referential people. They look in the mirror and gage the rest of the world by what they see. Many of them may be"tourists" but most of them are not travelers. A small and significant number of Americans understand the "outer world" or what most Americans call the "overseas" world (even "overseas" when they are talking about Canada and Mexico). But that minority does not count at all in terms of developing a national consciousness. Instead, most Americans are ignorant of the rest of the world or fearful of the rest of the world. All but the traveling minority are scornful of the rest of the world. But it is worse than that. Most observers and commentators on the American nation (well, most since Alexis de Toqueville) assume there is a spirit of national unity in the U.S. There was, but it has largely disappeared. Americans see themselves as Virginians or Californians more than they see themselves as Americans. Few yet see themselves as "citizens of the world," as Thomas Paine declared himself to be. (Paine made a big mistake in that. Although he was an American citizen, and obviously did much to further the success of the American revolution, George Washington -- yeh, the big guy himself -- refused to retrieve Paine from a French prison during the French Revolution because, in Washington's opinion, Paine had relinquished his American citizenship by going to France and becoming a representative in their National Convention. Washington's refusal to save Paine was a harbinger of all things to come in American ethnocentrism). Narrow-minded, parochial, ignorant of and fearful of the rest of the world, Americans have imprisoned themselves in their own country.

So, what does this have to do with a perfect storm? Well, it helps to explain a lot about the tepid, almost ho-hum, attitude of Americans to the Katrina disaster and now to the Gulf of Mexico oil surge disaster. If we all want to just be ourselves, and if we have never heard of the idea of a public interest, and if everyone who lives outside our region is considered an outlander, then how can there be any response? Katrina and the oil disaster (which will probably be far, far worse than even the most negative experts claim) are just chapters in many "perfect storms" to come. The Americans have no means at their disposal to deal with any of them. Libertarianism is their individual refusal of responsibility. A lack of a sense of a public interest means that no agencies, government or otherwise, can intervene in disaster unless they do so completely on their own, without public support. Ethnocentrism leads to a sense that disaster can never touch "my" region or my home; no hurricanes or tornadoes or earthquakes will deprive me of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

There are reformists impulses in American society, and many Americans would like to change many things. But the prospects for this happening in the foreseeable future are dim.

What “Freedom” are we Talking About?

The reductio ad absurdum of “freedom” and “liberty” that has become the mantra and entire ideological “argument” of the right-winger movement in the U. S. A. (usually but not exclusively known as the Republican Party) needs more examination. Since the right-wing will not be addressing or defining what they mean by “freedom,” I will volunteer some definitions.

Most people probably assume that freedom is a pretty simple concept, and that everyone shares their definition of freedom and what freedom encompasses. But starting with John Stuart Mill and moving on with Isaiah Berlin in the mid-twentieth century and then Charles Taylor and others more recently, freedom has been increasingly seen as meaning at least one of two things: 1) freedom as a removal of shackles or restraints, and 2) freedom as permission and opportunity to create something, do something, to take positive action in some regard. The first – known as negative liberty or negative freedom – has an illustrious history in things like the end of slavery or the end of a censured press. The second – known as positive liberty or positive freedom – has an illustrious history in things like society or state-driven economic reforms or social justice reforms.

Paradox and irony do not begin to describe how the modern right-wing has twisted the concepts of negative and positive freedoms into comical parodies of all real freedom. First, the right-wing refuses to see any positive liberty because they refuse to see any role for the state, and ipso facto, with no state there are no social and economic reforms and justices to be addressed. Some question whether there is such a thing as society at all, following the famous dictum attributed to Margaret Thacher that “there are no societies, there are only individuals and families.” The right-wing’s world of besieged families resisting outside influences as if they were defenders of the Alamo, and their Ayn Rand world of bizarre fictional individuals who robustly and egoistically fashion their lives with little social assistance, defy the realities of a real world of mass populations and that world’s vast historical accomplishments in everything from health to education to economic well being that have been produced through the collective efforts of societies. Thomas Paine, a friend of free market ideas and an opponent of strong governments, nevertheless believed that human beings naturally formed societies, and that society was the fundamental basis for both public and individual good. In short, ignoring historical realities and real modern needs, the right-wing does not recognize positive the legitimacy of positive freedom at all.

Oddly, the right-wing now seems to outdo itself in idiocy when it comes to distending its natural penchant for negative freedom. The thirty-year revolution that began with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thacher seemed grounded, at first, in old (some would also say respectable) ideas about laissez-faire capitalism, low taxes, and a minimal state. Those ideas, which admitted some idea of limitations, have now taken on an unlimited character: capitalism should be left entirely unfettered; no taxes should be passed (well, unless you are fighting a war for the empire somewhere); and the state should wither and disappear altogether (they seem to know little about their ultimate affinity with Karl Marx). Many who advocate such things as unregulated capitalism are the unknowing (and sometimes knowing) stooges of big corporations and investment banking. But lately, this extension of “pure” freedom has had some very strange consequences (one would say amusing if one did not give a damn for the world and human life in general):

1. Tea Party members and other right wingers demanding lower taxes, despite the fact that some 40+% of Tea Party advocates, under new tax breaks for the middle and lower classes, do not need to pay any tax at all. In fact, some 45% or more of American households do not need to pay any federal income tax. See Gail Collins amusing blog in the NYTimes “Celebrating the Joys of April 15” (April, 15, 2010) for other interesting statistics on a tax regimen that angers the right because those with big incomes (one can hardly call them “earners”) pay most of the bill.

2. A Supreme Court which in its “supreme wisdom” has declared corporations of all sorts eligible for First Amendment free speech protections. Not only did the Court overrule a lot of impressive precedent, they gave a new, rightist, purist definition to “person” which defies reason and the Constitution. (I have said more on this elsewhere and could say much more, but it would not matter. Citizens United is the Dred Scott case of the 21^st century; it has the same apparent logic and the same catastrophic unreality).

3. An oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that will have long term effects, and begs the question as to whether deep off-shore drilling can be done at all. Yet, several Republican right wingers have used this “opportunity” to ask for more off-shore drilling, in complete defiance of what has just happened and of reason itself.

4. A terrorist attempt in Times Square in NYC that has right wingers falling over themselves to proclaim their full attachment to the Second Amendment to the U. S. Constitution (wrongly interpreted as it is), and pledging their troth to the practice of even those on a terrorist watch list having the “right” to bear arms.

So, what do we have here? On one level, we have people so uneducated (in what we used to call “Civics”) and so simple-minded as to demand an absolutist interpretation of freedom. On another level, we have people living in fictive worlds of their own, very strange, imaginations. “Avatar,” the movie, is not much ahead of the curve. Many right wingers have in fact made themselves into “avatars.” They live in a world they imagine, or think they want. Reality plays a very small role in this exercise of freedom.

In the end, I think of the words from “Me and Bobby McGhee” – “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” Total negative freedom is total alienation, and the right wing is certainly alienated from society, and perhaps now from themselves.