A Wretch Like Me

In the Weekend Journal, Lee Siegel gave a much more dignified and historical view of the U.S. 'culture wars' than I ever do, blinded as I am by the undignified results of the historical process he outlines. In his piece Siegel asserts that part of the communication gap is the product not solely of the two sides' differential weighting of 'culture' in their political reckonings, but their distinct ways of defining it. For Liberals, culture is a Vermeer or a Mahler symphony, while today's Conservative cannot but view culture, as Siegel says, in the anthropological manner, as 'the practice of getting through life.' Culture is thus what you do with your season tickets for Liberals, and how you live your life for Conservatives. While the Left has long asserted that 'everything is political,' it might now be equally true to claim that for the Right 'everything is cultural.' I'd say the two mean the same thing, but I can't hear myself think over the blaring Shostakovich or the stream of messages from church about the fundraising.

I suspect I agree with Mr. Siegel's view of the two sides' perception, or definition, of culture, but disagree with any hint that culture, however construed, does not markedly influence our political stance or voting decisions. For example, liberal or conservative, 21st century or 18th, certain values are implicit in Western culture. Those values then condition not merely our decisions, but what questions we are even capable of asking en route to taking decisions on one issue or candidate. If this is true, not knowing who Mahler is does not invalidate the many shared assumptions, or cultural inheritance, the non-Mahler-knowing individual has in common with his operagoing, Irigaray-reading, International-Herald-subscribing counterpart.

And this brings me to a post I aborted when it went off in so many directions. One of my points was going to be about the insipidity of the Left's unceasing plaint that the Right always want to 'legislate morality.' In the name of all that is Magna Carta, children, that's what laws do! We may believe that a given legislation legislated morality wrong, or that a candidate poses a threat to what we believe is right, but to the extent that we are not in fact discrete, isolated monads but rather members of a polity - a culture, perhaps, even - with assets, concerns, needs, streetlights, highways, and social institutions (and whatever else you want to throw in there) in common, proscribing first-degree murder or grand larceny has rather more in common with the Decalogue than with a text on descriptive economics.

Laws against murder, theft, rape, and child abuse reflect legislators' and governments' (and, we hope, under a representational system, their constituents') moral stances on those issues. (Yes, they are also expedients toward a society's stability, security, and continuity, and it wasn't in hopes of cultivating a God-fearing, Republican citizenry that Hammurabi promulgated his set of suggestions) but when Liberals assert that single, low-income mothers should have access to social services, medical care, parenting resources and financial assistance, they are as much taking a moral stand about a society's responsibility toward bettering mothers', poor peoples', and childrens' lives as are religious Conservatives with regard to the same society's responsibility toward embryos and fetuses when they argue that we as a society have some responsibility for the unborn. Either is an attempt to 'legislate morality' just as is enacting laws against domestic violence or armed robbery.

Obviously the Left has come to grasp this to a greater extent than Siegel gives them credit for: in many states as fully as at the national level, a candidate from either major party with any hope of winning must, for example, trot out his religious credentials and attempt to convincingly portray his personal friendship with Jesus Christ as the most important and influential relationship in his life (I don't remember sola φιλíα from any theology I've ever studied, but that's politics for you!). He must conjure up a spiritual rags-to-riches story to entrench the narrative of the relationship in voters' minds not only as the bedrock of his views, obviously, and as guarantor of good, clean, ethical behavior if elected (his party represents God, after all, and he is the current incarnation of his party), not to mention proof of his just-like-us faith, falls, and redemption (literally, too, for those of you somehow outside the reach of American media), but also as an arc that will be replicated in his saving us and the country, as well, just as he through grace was able to save himself. Religion becomes theatre, however heartfelt it might actually be in some candidates, and we end up with a bunch of agnostic aspirants and speech-writers falteringly inserting Martin Luther alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. into word-heavy but content-free campaignspeak.

...like spires above some group of edifices, firm-footed on the earth, yet scaling space and heaven

'Other states indicate themselves in their deputies, but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors; - but always most in the common people. Their manners, speech, dress, friendships; - the freshness and candor of their physiognomy, the picturesque looseness of their carriage, their deathless attachment to freedom, their aversion to everything indecorous or soft or mean, the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one State by the citizens of all other States, the fierceness of their roused resentment, their curiosity and welcome of novelty, their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy, their susceptibility to a slight, the air they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors, the fluency of their speech, their delight in music (the sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of soul), their good temper and open-handedness, the terrible significance of their elections, the President's taking off his hat to them, not they to him, - these too are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it.' --Walt Whitman

I am seeing less and less unrhymed poetry in this terribly significant election as it continues. I admit that for a while I was almost excited; it felt not unlike a sporting event, albeit with rather grave stakes: so many strong candidates, shoo-ins Giuliani and Clinton toppled or well-matched by underdogs, a seeming unusually rich diversity of candidates, all in the midst of two wars, a nascent recession, raging global anti-American sentiment, a tormented and much-reviled administration, and the mortgage crisis and falling housing prices simultaneous with soaring fuel and heating costs.

Not to be glum, but the fact is I don't think anyone is up to the task. Not the candidates we have, nor anyone else. However, the enormity and variety of these and other problems at least serve to illustrate the scope and difficulty of the challenges awaiting the next sworn defender of the Constitution, while the risible pettiness of so many campaigns thus far demonstrate how little suited to the task are the candidates, the two viable political parties, and the campaign system.

To begin with, apart from Ron Paul and John Edwards (and may God bless both of them and grant us a future in which we will have more Candidates with Individual Platforms), and bracketing John McCain for the moment, the nature of the system, or process, has ensured that our selection at this stage of the campaign consists of candidates trying to prove that they are the most Republican of the Republicans, or the most Democrat of the Democrats, as those terms have come to be understood in recent years. Not only does this result in exhausting recitations of party platitudes, but we are also subjected to brain-numbing internecine schoolyard taunts as candidates for this insanely demanding position attempt to persuade us not that they are agile of mind and able to rise to new challenges with brave, fresh ideas or established, proven strategies (knowledge of which gleaned from long immersion in world and American history and political science) -- but that whatever fresh hell emerges during their tenure they will not be blinded by global or domestic realities and instead reliably make decisions based on what most conforms to current Party ideology, and damn the torpedoes.

Kim Jong-Il would be proud.

This does not solely result in a lack of choice (who are these candidates? what do they really stand for? what would they say were they allowed to be candidates, rather than merely apparatchiks? alright, fine, I guess I'll vote for the one with better hair), but as well an acculturation to it, a (tragic, really) resigned sense of This is how it is, then, I suppose...

And therefore we just live with it, and sooner or later we won't know any better. We listen to the Democrats one by one say universal health care is nice, and we let each Republican in turn assert that his respect for life is greater than that of all his fellows. And neither getting inner-city children liver transplants nor preventing suburban pregnancies from terminating has anything to do with the other 9,000 components of the job.

And this is a job, after all (megalomania and messiah complexes notwithstanding), and one that, moreover, involves a great deal more than thumping a pulpit. One that, indeed, will necessarily involve a great deal of ratiocination, negotiation, argumentation, and diplomacy. That we have a Constitution as well as separation of powers and a great big elected legislative branch means that this country cannot be run by the Old Testament, or Sharia, or the Klingon code. Some acknowledgment of this fact, a nod here and there to the (political?) realities of politics and governance, not to mention the nature of a republican state, would go a long way toward lessening the resemblance of most candidates to lip-synching monkeys.


But this stultifying sameness, this need for all serious contenders to prove themselves the most rigid Party Man, stifles true debate. The sole perceptible difference between Clinton and Obama at this point appears to be that Clinton is a white woman and Obama is a black man. Under ideal circumstances, that would be a less than convincing pitch in either case. Sadly, however, because it is all that we have, that means we get to base our Democratic-candidate analysis and decision upon which hairstyle we would prefer to look at for four to eight years. Clinton's has more room for variety, and not merely in terms of cut but potentially color, as well, so that is well to bear in mind. As for the Republicans struggling to convince us that the one time they casually dropped the the word 'choice' in 1972 they were really referring to the embarras de richesse at Baskin-Robbins, the one-upsmanship is equally otiose.

Two results come to mind: one is that due to all the ludicrous ideological sniping and personal insults we are confronted with a constructed antagonism between all same-party candidates until the end of the Primaries, at which point two of these hitherto (radically, as we were told incessantly) incompatible individuals will alter their rhetoric entirely and embrace each other as long-lost clan brothers, devoted adherents to the same glorious cause momentarily blinded by other concerns now forgotten.

The second nausea-inducing consequence of this doctrinaire, blindly party-centric approach to promulgating and maintaining a 'platform' is the apotheosis of rigidity. Any candidate who has reconsidered, moderated, or changed a position is lambasted - regardless of issue or consequence - as alternately traitorous (to the Party) or (the lesser charge) weak-willed, a 'flip-flopper,' insufficiently prophetic or, more accurately, too willing to take changing circumstances into account. In other words, circumstance, fact, geopolitical knowledge, the Constitution, wisdom, and the long- and short-term good of the country should not determine policy: Party doctrine must.

To my mind, however, the ability to consider new facts and developments is an asset; what comes of utilizing this skill can be good or bad, but of itself and independent of consequence it is a virtue and a blessing. Certainly changing course radically is not always the best option, but neither is sticking to a course of action or a mode of thought when it is patently not working. What does work is being able to choose among various options, and that possibility is predicated on being able to think, consider, analyze -- something apparatchiks are not paid to do. I used to believe in Santa Claus, and I used to wear footed pyjamas. I long ago changed my position on both, and I have never since awakened of a morning filled with regret or self-loathing over being weak willed, reckless, or capricious from having altered my stance. In the best of all possible worlds, political candidates and elected officials would be granted similar permission to evaluate, assimilate, contemplate, and apply new information as they see fit --and be adjudged on the consequences of their decisions rather than being pilloried for the audacity of daring to think.