"Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear." Alan Paton
Aparthood. It is the American translation of the South African, Afrikaaner apartheid. It is a good word to describe the fundamental mission of the Right: the creation of a minority class of privileged rulers over a politically disenfranchised and economically subjugated majority. Among the tools of aparthood are barriers to voting, destruction of the civil justice and public education systems, and the "legal" theft of the nation’s wealth.
The Right has used the election of Barack Obama to once again light the skies with its cross of fire. Suddenly, the terms "states’ rights" and "secession" are current. Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court has Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Tancredo and others hurling charges of "reverse racism." Somehow, they want us to believe Obama was bused to the White House.
Issues of race are deeply implicated, but the agents of aparthood also exploit a great tension in America’s collective psyche. On the one side is the drive to stand apart as sturdy, self-reliant individualists. On the other side lives the love of neighbors, the recognition of our common humanity, the understanding that the self is made whole by relations with others.
This mighty struggle was expressed at the very dawn of European culture’s arrival in North America. John Winthrop, in his speech to the colonists aboard the ship Arbella in 1630, urged his followers to understand that "that every man might have need of others, and from hence they might be all knit more nearly together in the bonds of brotherly affection." But he also said God ranked us naturally in a hierarchy of rich and poor, noting that acceptance of the divine will guarantees that "the rich and mighty should not eat up the poor, nor the poor and despised rise up against and shake off their yoke."
Winthrop helps us see how the contemporary Right reconciles a contradiction alive in its midst. How is it that Creationists can preach the tenets of Social Darwinism? All is resolved through the divine will, they say. A common view of authority and morality unites what seem like contradictory views.
The Right believes humankind is sorted naturally upon a ladder. The Left believes we walk together upon a bridge.
For the Right, freedom means the recognition of a natural, hierarchical order. By "democracy" the Right means a system that makes sure the "poor and despised" do not usurp the power of those above them on the ladder. The Right says it does not seek to "eat up the poor," though the enforced euthanasia of our health care system puts the lie to that claim.
The Right’s worldview is not just an ad hoc, cynical justification of selfishness. It is a meaningful, if destructive, worldview, a worldview that produces aparthood as a reasoned solution to the unpredictable dangers of our lives together in a hostile universe.
As we run up against the resource limits that betray the pacifying illusion of movement up their ladder of life, the Right is panicking. That is why their more subtle tactics of deregulation and anti-tax demagoguery must give way to increasingly aggressive enforcement of their natural order: voter suppression through regressive identification requirements; the privatization of public education; the dramatic rise in public university tuition; the trashing of the civil justice system; the privileging of basic health care.
The Right presents all these tactical advances toward aparthood as efforts to protect the sanctity of the self-reliant individual. That is why they call Obama a socialist. When Texas Gov. Rick Perry speaks of secession, he is signaling the fearful that the natural order is threatened, that extreme steps might be necessary to restore it. For many, the security of a place on the ladder, the reinforcement of worldview, is much more emotionally powerful than superficial measurements of material self-interest.
The Right has a powerful message. We shouldn’t be lulled to sleep by Americans’ apparent rejection of the message today. The collective deprivations of a deep, worldwide recession have temporarily put the Right at a disadvantage, much as happened during the Great Depression. A soup line is shaped more like a bridge than a ladder.
But the Right has history on its side. The agents of aparthood have long had the advantage over the bridge-builders, in part because the Left is reluctant to burn bridges, even bridges to the Right. The Right’s misleading language of freedom and democracy, the "individualist" tug many of us feel in our hearts, the media’s legitimizing of absolutist hierarchies, the persistence of racism and the wishful thinking that racism is somehow a disease of the past – all combine to hide the drive for institutionalized aparthood.
The alternative to absolutist hierarchy is not anarchy, as the Right claims. Authority and solidarity are not mutually exclusive. Take human empathy, which allows us to see through the eyes of others. Recent studies in cognition and emotion show us that even individually we have the ability to over-ride empathy. We don’t automatically empathize and empower abusers. We possess an inner-authority that guards against abuse. Together, we possess an outer-authority to guard us against collective abuse. We don’t oppose authority. We oppose abusive authority. Solidarity in the face of abusive authority, made possible by empathy, is the authoritarian’s greatest fear. That’s why the Right attack’s Obama’s mention of empathy, of course. George Lakoff explains in more detail here.
Human sociality is full of ladders and bridges. The theoretical genius of American democracy lies in this recognition. The Right shares the Framers’ skepticism of the masses, but rejects the Framers’ much more alarmed skepticism of unchecked authority. The Framers understood that human nature was not an unchanging thing, that humans could not be fixed to permanent, isolated places on a ladder the powerful lower from above.
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Thank you glenn!
This is how the Right settles disputes in America.
Thanks. Sometimes I fear that Dems miss the big picture on the GOP agenda, focused passionately as we are on areas of individual concern. When we struggle over health care etc. we are struggling against a GOP mission to forever alter the shape of government — distorting it to the point that the term “democracy” would simply no longer apply.
Changing Images of Man:The full title seems to be: “Societal Consequences of Changing Images of Man” and I’ve seen notes that Joseph Campbell was one of the authors of it. …
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/200…..es-of-man/ – 42k – Cached – Similar pages
“Changing Images of Man” in PDF -
http://www.breakingopenthehead.com/fo…..php?t=3926 – 149k – Cached – Similar pages
The planned collapse of AmericaDec 7, 2007 … Their final report was released as the Changing Images of Man. … Changing Images of Man predicts an American economic collapse and a …
http://www.onlinejournal.com/artman/p…..2715.shtml – 33k – Cached – Similar pages
Note—This Stanford Research Institute template was commisssioned by the Government in the ’60s,and intends to restructure both man’s nature and our society.
Definitely worth acquainting oneself with,imho.
WOW ! What a great post. Beautifully written. Thanks
Twain, thanks so much!
Republicans love chutes and ladders. Golden parachutes for Wall Streeters and Dumpster chutes for the rest of us.
I almost referred to chutes and ladders, then I discovered it’s sometimes snakes and ladders, and it developed from a Hindu game in which “ladders” represented the path to enlightenment and “snakes” backsliding. Metaphorical confusion would have ensued!! But I like your golden parachute bit.
Great use of metaphors!
I wish they weren’t true. I wish the Right didn’t fit the metaphor so well.
Thank you for this powerful commentary, Glenn. Surely the greatest shame of too many in the media these days–and the “moderate” Republicans–is that they stand mute, and thus facilitate, the hatemongering of the radical right.
It is a great shame. Do these media facilitators have any idea of the future? Of how their grandchildren and great-grandchildren are going to look upon their complicity? History (assuming democracy prevails) will look upon them as selfish cowards.
It’s hard to say what goopers really think- and there are a lot of different opinions out there in gooperland- so it’s difficult to generalize, but at the heart of gooperism is the belief that given an opportunity, humans are shiftless and lazy and will settle for a minimal hand out rather than goin for the gold- so it’s up to goopers to make sure that the balance of consequences always favors WORK rather than handouts.
It is not necessary to believe in social darwinism to embrace this view- only to believe in the slovenly characteristics of humankind.
I heard one of Bush’s education gurus at conference say that children are born evil. That parental discipline was necessary to make the good. I’m not making that up, but I can’t remember the guy’s name.
It is, however, the underlying belief that the strongest will survive and the weak deserve to perish that makes it possible to punish poverty.
The right’s willingness to demonize empathy has become overt. They have obviously spent too much time reading Ayn Rand.
Major correlation there with Christian-Fundy dogma. Since a child is born into sin, he is sinful, ergo, he is more closely related to Satan than to god. Not until a child becomes born again (by inviting Jesus into his heart) can he redeem himself from Satan’s (God of this earth) grip.
Of course, a child is usually protected from Satan (evil) by virtue of the faith of his parents or a single parent or a guardian. God can protect children too on his own merit, even with evil parents, in case the first case does not apply.
The point is that Humankind is sinful and more closely aligned with satan than with God.
Lots of Christians believe this tripe.
Permit me to reaffirm the statement posited by Twain at 5.
And further, let me express myself relative to a political ‘tangent’ that you have yet to touch on, and which is Nationalism in America, as it still continues apace.
Back in the politically toxic 1960’s, the Plan de Aztlan was crafted as a counter-measure and done in the form of a nationalistic document. And equivalent to the the John Bircher mentality. By way of background, the crafters of this document was led primarily by a later-outed FBI informant, and who is still recognized for historical purposes, as a ‘leader’. From this perspective, J.Edgar Hoover had his “five fingers” in almost any meeting or political movement that pertained to Chicanos and Native Americans.
Upon my discharge from the military, I had the opportunity to meet and discuss this subject with a variety of the writers of this document, and almost to the last person, they felt the need to ‘attack’ the John Birchers in a like-minded manner with a dose of political vitriol. To wit, the political attack being targeted at Judge Sotomayor, is one of a John Bircher behavior and done accordingly.
And do not be confused, when the issue of “aztlan” is raised, Chicanos and Native Americans recognize that the “joke” is on its political proponents such as Pat Buchanan, among the many. Consequently, our quiet chuckle.
And in closing, as a Democrat, it would behoove us all to give consideration to the notion that we should elevate the ACLU, Maldef or the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, and the NAACP, to a ‘centrist’ status, and for in doing so, we shift the debate while simultaneously, collapsing the final remnants of the GOP’s Platform For Moral Epithets.
Jaango
You are so right. It’s a very dangerous thing, this demonization of empathy. It is, after all, critical to being human. But there’s no underestimating the threat power feels at bonds between those they wield power over. It happens in businesses, it happens in volunteer associations, it happens in churches. There is a kind of power-driven leader who spends a lot of time and energy destroying bonds of affection among those beneath them.
Rand’s wigged out, illogical philosophy is so completely uninformed about what it really means to be human it is mind-blowing that “serious” people still follow it. The average Marvel super-hero story contains a more nuanced and accurate picture of humanity than does Rand.
Yes, they do. Notice how it empowers their ministers. But for church authority, all would fall into hell. Salvation means worshiping an all-too-human authority.
I am not familiar with the Plan de Aztlan. There is an element in nationalisms of all types that makes certain a person’s first allegiance is to the abstract nation, replacing natural bonds among one another.
Got to maintain that fellowship, worship and tithe. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of god (dispensed by church leaders. Somebody’s got to do it!).
And whadya know, it’s by giving “me” money that your salvation is guaranteed.
Consider it… an investment in divinity.
Like a derivative?
The authoritarians on the right-old white men all-are afraid, not only of minority men, but especially of all women, white, brown or black. They are afraid that they will become a minority group shortly. The WASP minority is coming NLT 2040. As a second generation american all I can say is WHOOPIE. About damn time. Perhaps 50 or more years ago there were some white men who deserved to be leaders. However that was many years ago. All I see now are mental midgets whining about how people are not respecting them. They really want to go back to the days when the white male ruled while the wife stayed home and took care of the kids-all 2.5 of them-Personally, I think that they believed the TV shows of the 50s reflected real life. All the conservatives are scared, the brown people are taking over. They have no idea how to act to get all that (now) minority support that they desperately need to get reelected. Sure they have the 1 or 2 people who really want to be noticed by the white majority. Steele, Thomas, Martinez. Very few. Those who are associating with the thugs must hate themselves because they belong to a party that hates their race and all those in it.
Lets bring on the new majority, lets crush the rethugs like the roaches that they have become. Bring on the new masters, the Latinos, the Asians, the African Americans. After all, it was the white males that got us into this mess, so they should be the ones who get kicked out of power. Let them see how life is in the minority lane. Good bye and good riddance. Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.
The credit default swap, insured to make the investor feel better, but guaranteeing nothing.
Leveraging people’s fear of going to Hell is a growth industry.
That is what Authoritarianiosm is.
And “you” don’t have to pay any taxes on any of it.
The whole Dijongate flap had the subtext that as an inferior Negro, Obama was only pretending to be sophisticated because naturally he couldn’t be – i.e. he was acting uppity and would have been happier eating watermelon.
Thus any white guy eating a baloney and yellow mustard on white sandwich was still superior to Obama.
Blue Texan has the latest installment of Krugman!
On “This Week”, Paul Krugman Dispatches 3 Wingnut Talking Points on Auto Industry in 2 Minutes
Yes, these not-so-subtle narrative subtexts are present, though by and large the mainstream media won’t go there. To them, racism isn’t racism unless it’s so obvious it can’t be ignored.
To me a conversation about legitimate authority would be interesting. Life without authority wouldn’t even work, but when is authority wholesome and when is it dysfunctional?
I don’t say that because I have any regard for authority per se, but because I wonder if cultivating and disseminating representations of healthy authority might not be an effective rhetorical antidote to authoritarian memes.