Dubya: the President we deserve
Frank Rich wrote a typically powerful, scathing editorial in the Arts sections of today's Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/05/arts/05RICH.html) excoriating John Kerry's poor campaign...Rich of course is no sympathizer to Bush, but he recognizes that Dubya seems to have been able to control the tenor of the national debate thus far, and to parse the article to its most basic...he's reduced Kerry the war hero to defensive, waffling, Frenchy-gay girlie man.
It's a strong piece of writing, it's intellectually smart, and I don't think it's terribly exaggerated. And it's not, of course, going to do one bit of good, not change anyone's mind or even get anything more than the typical pro/con letters that any Rich/Krugman/Dowd etc leftist rant gets. And that's to be expected, that's fine even, because the Times itself has gotten more leftwing (if not much more penetrating into Bush's malfeasances) over the past year or so and has solidified its position as the organ of elitist NE liberals that the neocons so love to hate.
But it irritates me that the Times (with only rare exceptions) and everyone else seem unwilling to put the blame for our current situation, even a very large part of it, in the place where it so richly belongs:
The stupid American public.
Michael Moore has made some derisive comments about his fellow countrymen, and gotten heavy criticism for them of course. Both Republicans and Democrats bend over backwards to tell us how much they love this country and all of its citizens (except, perhaps, rich people or Christians or Jews or Muslims, or environmentalists or oilmen, or gays or traditional families, or welfare moms...depending on who's speaking), how much "faith" they have in the American people to do "what's right."
I don't have that faith, and I think that most politicians, if they were really being honest, wouldn't either. For all of our vaunted wealth, natural resources, our history of fighting injustice and being the shining beacon of hope...we have created a nation of morons. Even those who admit this to be the case often want to blame TV, pot, booze, pop music, redneck culture, fundamentalist Christianity, etc; but these are all symptoms, not the problems themselves. This is an intensely anti-intellectual nation and has been for a very long time, and it's a nation that seems to have a profound distrust of any concepts that can't be broken down into the most simplistic good vs evil terms. The dialogue may vary according to genre, medium, and the people calling the shots, but Americans always seem to want simple answers, simple villains, neatly wrapped up at the end of...a 50 minute TV drama, a 22 page comic book, a 120-minute action movie.
Our lack of national nuance and intellectual curiosity seems tied in quite tightly with our utter apathy about what happens to us. Many younger people, myself included, seem to be just going through the motions of life, sleepwalking through dull jobs and duller social lives, wasting our hours away on Internet porn, MTV, soporific drugs and superficial friendships. There's a place for all of these things, of course, but not at the very center of our national culture...if this is all that people are doing with their time, how are they going to understand the intricacies of the "war on terror" or the national economy, the decaying environment and the quest for renewable energy? Most importantly, how are we going to really understand other peoples and cultures which we most assuredly are going to have to interact with more in the near future than we've been called on to do in our isolationist past? We have a president who hasn't the slightest clue as to what Islamic culture is about claiming first to be fighting a new Crusade, and next minute to hating only the terrorists, not Muslims. I suspect that, to this day, he has no idea just what kind of spark that word "crusade" is. If this is the best we can do in this rich, spoiled country, what does that say to everyone else in the world?
I sat and read the Times for over three hours this morning, and when I walked out into the world of twentysomething hungover SUV-filled Burlington it was like entering a different world. For a few moments I felt imbued with the spirit of the variegated worlds I'd been exploring, if only so briefly and cursorily, in the paper of record; then I knew where I was, and knew that I only like to think that I transcend it all, when I'm as stuck in the mire as anyone.
But I know that, and so I have hope of escape...and so does everyone reading this, I suspect, and so do most educated people (especially those living in big cities). But they don't vote, not any more than the NASCAR dads and the Christian fundamentalist moms. If I, if they, starting using those more-developed brains maybe we'd have a chance against the Dubyas, the Rupert Murdochs, the Paris Hiltons of this small-minded country. Oh and, less this sounds elitist to anyone, well, it is. I'm sick of living in a world that panders to Britney Spears and hasn't the vaguest notion who Beethoven is, sick of the word "telegenic" and the concept of "family values." America is just as much Manhattan, Chicago, Austin and San Francisco as it is rural Tennessee, the Florida panhandle and Dallas. We need to love and honor our past, our literature, our jazz and our movies (the greatest native American cultural contributions) while we're eating those occasional Twinkies and drinking Bud...the latter without the former just shows us as consuming animals, not wide-awake humans.
It's going to be a lonely battle, and it won't end on election day no matter what the outcome.
It's a strong piece of writing, it's intellectually smart, and I don't think it's terribly exaggerated. And it's not, of course, going to do one bit of good, not change anyone's mind or even get anything more than the typical pro/con letters that any Rich/Krugman/Dowd etc leftist rant gets. And that's to be expected, that's fine even, because the Times itself has gotten more leftwing (if not much more penetrating into Bush's malfeasances) over the past year or so and has solidified its position as the organ of elitist NE liberals that the neocons so love to hate.
But it irritates me that the Times (with only rare exceptions) and everyone else seem unwilling to put the blame for our current situation, even a very large part of it, in the place where it so richly belongs:
The stupid American public.
Michael Moore has made some derisive comments about his fellow countrymen, and gotten heavy criticism for them of course. Both Republicans and Democrats bend over backwards to tell us how much they love this country and all of its citizens (except, perhaps, rich people or Christians or Jews or Muslims, or environmentalists or oilmen, or gays or traditional families, or welfare moms...depending on who's speaking), how much "faith" they have in the American people to do "what's right."
I don't have that faith, and I think that most politicians, if they were really being honest, wouldn't either. For all of our vaunted wealth, natural resources, our history of fighting injustice and being the shining beacon of hope...we have created a nation of morons. Even those who admit this to be the case often want to blame TV, pot, booze, pop music, redneck culture, fundamentalist Christianity, etc; but these are all symptoms, not the problems themselves. This is an intensely anti-intellectual nation and has been for a very long time, and it's a nation that seems to have a profound distrust of any concepts that can't be broken down into the most simplistic good vs evil terms. The dialogue may vary according to genre, medium, and the people calling the shots, but Americans always seem to want simple answers, simple villains, neatly wrapped up at the end of...a 50 minute TV drama, a 22 page comic book, a 120-minute action movie.
Our lack of national nuance and intellectual curiosity seems tied in quite tightly with our utter apathy about what happens to us. Many younger people, myself included, seem to be just going through the motions of life, sleepwalking through dull jobs and duller social lives, wasting our hours away on Internet porn, MTV, soporific drugs and superficial friendships. There's a place for all of these things, of course, but not at the very center of our national culture...if this is all that people are doing with their time, how are they going to understand the intricacies of the "war on terror" or the national economy, the decaying environment and the quest for renewable energy? Most importantly, how are we going to really understand other peoples and cultures which we most assuredly are going to have to interact with more in the near future than we've been called on to do in our isolationist past? We have a president who hasn't the slightest clue as to what Islamic culture is about claiming first to be fighting a new Crusade, and next minute to hating only the terrorists, not Muslims. I suspect that, to this day, he has no idea just what kind of spark that word "crusade" is. If this is the best we can do in this rich, spoiled country, what does that say to everyone else in the world?
I sat and read the Times for over three hours this morning, and when I walked out into the world of twentysomething hungover SUV-filled Burlington it was like entering a different world. For a few moments I felt imbued with the spirit of the variegated worlds I'd been exploring, if only so briefly and cursorily, in the paper of record; then I knew where I was, and knew that I only like to think that I transcend it all, when I'm as stuck in the mire as anyone.
But I know that, and so I have hope of escape...and so does everyone reading this, I suspect, and so do most educated people (especially those living in big cities). But they don't vote, not any more than the NASCAR dads and the Christian fundamentalist moms. If I, if they, starting using those more-developed brains maybe we'd have a chance against the Dubyas, the Rupert Murdochs, the Paris Hiltons of this small-minded country. Oh and, less this sounds elitist to anyone, well, it is. I'm sick of living in a world that panders to Britney Spears and hasn't the vaguest notion who Beethoven is, sick of the word "telegenic" and the concept of "family values." America is just as much Manhattan, Chicago, Austin and San Francisco as it is rural Tennessee, the Florida panhandle and Dallas. We need to love and honor our past, our literature, our jazz and our movies (the greatest native American cultural contributions) while we're eating those occasional Twinkies and drinking Bud...the latter without the former just shows us as consuming animals, not wide-awake humans.
It's going to be a lonely battle, and it won't end on election day no matter what the outcome.