Two Cups of Tea

With just a couple of days remaining before the midterm elections many people, including me, are bemoaning what appears to be a new low in political discourse that suggests a complete abandonment of America’s position as the standard-bearer of liberal democracy.  If the evidence of yelling, screaming, head stomping, and complete disregard for the truth is any indication, on Wednesday, November 3, we could be facing a new Congress that is likely to turn the rotunda of the Capitol into a cage-fighting ring to settle petty political scores.  And to be fair, neither party is innocent here.  There are nasty people on all sides.  It bears remembering, however, that American democracy has always been a messy and chaotic business and extremism is nothing new.  Furthermore, extremism, like that which marks much of today’s Tea Party rhetoric, has a way of becoming diluted over time while offering new leaders a springboard to interpret underlying principles in more attractive ways.

           

            Princeton historian, Sean Wilentz provides evidence of this phenomenon in his recent article “Confounding Fathers” (The New Yorker, October 18, 2010).  He details an historical review of the John Birch Society and its tight parallels with today’s Tea Party.  Wilentz argues that the extreme rhetoric of Beck, Palin, Limbaugh, and their many followers/imitators, is simply an update of the 1960s incendiary fodder produced by Robert Welch (founder of the John Birch Society) and Willard Cleon Skousen (founder of the All-American Society and philosophical mentor of Glenn Beck).  In essence, today’s tea is Birch Tea. As the 60s moved forward, the Birchers experienced a straightening and redirecting of their principles by cooler and more astute minds like that of William F. Buckley, Jr.  As Wilentz points out, Buckley’s biographer John J. Judis, observed, “Buckley was beginning to worry that with the John Birch Society growing so rapidly, the right-wing upsurge in the country would take an ugly, even Fascist turn rather than leading toward the kind of conservatism [his] National Review had promoted.” 

            Buckley and other more practical conservatives asserted the principles of right-wing extremism sans the bombastic bravado.  I can still hear Buckley intoning his arguments on Public Television with sharp wit and rhythmic cadence without bludgeoning his political adversaries.  He had a sense of decorum absent in the practices of Beck, et al.  In time, he also had a candidate for president in the governor of California, Ronald Reagan.  Reagan’s brilliance resided in his profound interpersonal intelligence.  Historians have roundly criticized him for his lack of analytical skills and interests, but one thing he knew was how to connect with people.  He used soaring rhetoric to be sure, but it was always a shade or two less hot than the Birchers.  He also knew the difference between rhetoric and policy.  He invited the support of social conservatives by embracing their passion against abortion and for school prayer, but knew better than to use his power as president to assert government control over what he viewed as personal liberties.  He was a rhetorical conservative and a pragmatic libertarian.

            In a recent interview I completed with Reagan’s son, Ron, he suggested his father would be a poor fit in the Republican party of 2010.  Ron believes his father would be barely conservative enough on today’s scale to make “center-right.”   What is also clear, however, given this reading of history, is that our concerns of the day shall pass.  Brighter and more reasonable minds will prevail.  The rough and garish will realize that enduring power, like that which Reagan enjoyed, is won not just through coercion and fear, but also optimism and yes, hope.  Reagan believed in American exceptionalism more than any politician in contemporary history.  While it did not always serve him well, it did allow him to favor inclusion over division, and optimism over fear.  He was a compassionate exceptionalist, able to condemn communism as an “evil empire” while befriending its leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.  Together, they set the stage for the end of the Cold War and an unprecedented period of economic prosperity.

            Birch Tea won’t last, but it will provide elements to cull from its leftover leaves, which, when combined with more mild herbs, will offer a less bitter cup of tea.  Perhaps it will be called Reagan Tea.

The Age of Apaté

In the last fifty years, the American experience has hurtled forward from Kennedy’s Age of Camelot, to the Age of Aquarius, and now the Age of Apaté (a-pat'-ay), named for the Greek goddess of deceit whose evil spirit was released once Pandora opened her box.  The lid on Pandora’s mythical box (actually a jar) was loosened by the alchemy of Ronald Reagan and the ambition of Mikhail Gorbachev that ended the Cold War.  When Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika-styled reforms slipped perilously toward revolution the Soviet model imploded.  However, what was once widely considered a great victory over godless communism – the collapse of the Soviet Union – quickly became affected, or perhaps more accurately infected, by the spirit of Apaté.  Hubris and deceit were easier and, let’s face it, more fun than humility and honesty.  With the Soviets out of the way, we Americans were free to assume a wide berth of exceptionalism to expand our reach and reign.  And, we did it on the wings of Apaté.

            Today, many debate today whether we have entered another Great Depression, or just a Great Recession, but it may be more accurately considered a Great Deception.  From WMD, to credit default swaps, to non-reform reforms and unreal reality shows, we Americans have elevated the art of deception from a hapless wizard deceiving a dream-addled girl from Kansas, to a metastasized algorithmic ethos denominated in fraud.  We face unimaginable deficits while we continue to ignore their obvious causes lest a noisy constituency or moneyed lobbyist objects.  We wage war without a clear objective and no exit strategy to, among other things, protect our access to a source of energy that compromises our health and security while slowly but surely killing the planet on which we live.  We are re-writing our history books to expunge our liberal heritage in favor of Christian nationalism – a crown of thorns to replace Uncle Sam’s top hat – as we elbow both reason and tolerance out of the public square.  Bigger lies and more hate are essential ingredients in contemporary narrative.           

            Jonathan Franzen’s new book, Freedom, may indeed be the defining period piece of the era.  As Charles Baxter aptly points out in his review of Freedom in The New York Review of Books (9/30/10), “the noble lie serves as the pivot point around which almost everything in Freedom turns.”  Alas, at least all elements of American culture, including politics, economics, religion, literature, and entertainment are aligned – albeit around an axis of deceit.

            Fear not, we will find our way out of this sticky web of deception; or perhaps more likely hurled into the stubborn certainty of a reality based in truth.  The fanciful altered state of the last twenty years is coming to a painful end.  As with most empires that vanquish their enemies, the last and greatest challenge is in facing itself.  This too is America’s final imperial test.  Our future rises or falls on our capacity to see things as they are under the blinding light of truth.  We may or may not be different than the fallen empires that preceded us, but we will most certainly fail if we continue to indulge Apaté’s nefarious ways.