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The Violent U.S. Character
It’s quite short of historic perspective as it keeps up a tale of "good Americans" before GWB, but the piece hits a nail which, to my utter shame, even I usually avoid to hit directly:
[T]here’s a deeper reason why the popular impeachment movement has never taken off — and it has to do not with Bush but with the American people. Bush’s warmongering spoke to something deep in our national psyche. The emotional force behind America’s support for the Iraq war, the molten core of an angry, resentful patriotism, is still too hot for Congress, the media and even many Americans who oppose the war, to confront directly. It’s a national myth. It’s John Wayne. To impeach Bush would force us to directly confront our national core of violent self-righteousness — come to terms with it, understand it and reject it. And we’re not ready to do that.
[…]
Bush tapped into a deep American strain of fearful, reflexive bellicosity, which Congress and the media went along with for a long time and which has remained largely unexamined to this day. Congress, the media and most of the American people have yet to turn decisively against Bush because to do so would be to turn against some part of themselves.
Why Bush hasn’t been impeached
On national character: French speaking Switzerland is an acute example of arbitrary borders, a border that makes no sense under whatever angle one views it, even though it was negotiated by the two parties, F and CH (fallout of the treaty of Versailles, article 435 and ff) It has been necessary to set up a mad sprawl of legislation to, in effect, circumvent the treaty.
On the one hand, you have a region, with its roots: shared values, a shared history, geography, agriculture, and, in previous times, tight trade. Still, the border is there, an inalterable fact, not amenable to change, except insofar as the Swiss parts of it could secede, become independent and then join the EU, thereby becoming French without being subject to French legislation, a state of affairs seen as highly favorable by many (it is regularly proposed but cannot pass in the voting booth.) So around here, from after ww1, when the frontier became progressively more important (setting previous history aside..) it is possible to experience, or at least feel, partly understand, the impact of political structure and national belonging. The people themselves never chose to be divided in the way they are, except when viewing the matter as necessary within the larger scope of things.
National character has been shaped by the political structure largely thru the arm of universal, free, public education. Until 10 years ago, your Savoyard peasant (a dying breed!), your inhabitant of St. Gingolph (the village is bi-sected by the border!) was either French – smart, voluble, with a tendency to philosophise, nationalistic, individualistic, showy, pig-headed, attached to the good life and the proper way of doing things, and confrontational. Or Swiss: rooted in a region, not a nation, laconic, prudent, thorough, more modest, more insecure, and conducting his life in a spirit of negotiation and compromise, in a canny and sometimes tiresome way.
In St. Gingolph the French Mairie sports a french flag, a bust of Marianne, and soon, a ‘people’s president portrait’ of Sarkozy. You are in the presence of authority, faded pomp, you must mind your ps and qs. The Swiss authorities are invisible, and should you find anybody in – the door will be open – you will be offered coffee or white wine and asked to sing a few bars, and then be begged to join the local (Swiss) choir.
In this somewhat narrow sense one can speak of national character, molded from the top down. The US has managed its history and its internal divisions (slavery, immigrants, class, etc.) by creating a very strong national identity, based on values of freedom and equality – all that is missing is the ‘fraternité’ – which shows us that the US values are seen as attributed to the individual (liberalism) rather than, as in France, being a property of the collective body. The shaky democratic structure, which really doesn’t work too well, a ‘weak’ central Gvmt. coupled with the strong national values (individuals nevertheless cohere in groups according, of course, to their own ‘choices’), have seen to it that authority seeps away into the hands of interest groups (corps, think tanks, gvmt. agencies rather than central gov. itself, media, military industrial complex, etc. etc.) thereby, paradoxically, creating a socio-political culture that is sharply hierarchical and in effect, authoritarian, in its expression of unwritten power relations. We may note that Bush, but also Clinton before him (to go only that far back) have tried, and succeeded in part in formalizing the authoritarian structure in various ways (“King George”, etc.) By definition, that kind of transfer or consolidation of power (bottom-up, from the group to the nation, rendering the informal into law..) creates relations that are oppressive, occult, arbitrary, frightening (eg. no fly lists) as they are based on control and not participation. At the same time, this process must be veiled, and it must be ignored, as it is in contradiction to the core values that hold the country together. The only way around the contradiction is allegiance … The result is that the ‘people’ have lost their power, and are called on to adhere and believe in their “Government” or “leaders” in a blind way. And this, for the most part, they do, at least publically, preserving only the right to replace one leader with another…Turning their face away is too difficult; and private opposition is in any case allowed…Tackling complicity and consent plus imperialism would take another 3 chunky paragraphs..
My pen ran away with me..this is only one facet of course, even a minor one, there are many others, and I wasn’t trying to reify (sp?) national stereotypes, but I suppose that is clear…
Posted by: Noirette | May 24 2007 10:26 utc | 51
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