The Dismal Tide

My nomination for quote of the week – or maybe the month – is this, from Thomas Fleming, editor of Chronicles (in the January issue): “The true American character was forged in danger and hardship and bitter necessity, but that character has been diluted by mass immigration and weakened by the very success it achieved. The weakness of our character was revealed by the number of people who, against all reason, voted for Barack Obama, because they were afraid. The majority of mankind, however, is always made up of weak and frightened people. It has always been an elite... who have defined the real America.” And by “the elite”, he clearly means the strong, independent, and self-sufficient – not to be confused with the “elite” of our time, who are just the biggest, most bloated parasites.

And it's true, I suppose, that the ruling “feeling tone” of most people in most societies at most times in history has been fear – and that fear has been directed at their own rulers as often as at any external threat. If you accept the model of societies being formed from the ground up for mutual protection, then it would seem that fear of “the other” came first – fear of the tribe in the next valley, the raiders from the next village, the pirates showing up on the shore. But once a society is organized, vested interests develop in its staying organized, and with the same power structure. I.e., once the crisis has passed, whatever serves as the “government” will not wither away as some might like; it will stay in place, supposedly as insurance against subsequent threats, but mainly because the people in charge want it that way, and they are able to influence sufficient numbers of others to cooperate and support their position. So you get the “chief” or warlord, sitting on a hand-carved wooden throne surrounded by his retainers – i.e. goons. And if he's doing his job, he is indeed protecting the tribe, group, or village against invaders. But the price he exacts is that, when there are no threats from without, he stays in office – thus “domestic fear” -- fear of the government – is substituted for fear of the invader. And as societies develop, one can expect that this alternation of sources of fear will eventually be replaced by a hybrid system of all fear, all the time -- perpetual fear of invaders (whether justified or not) combined with perpetual fear of the government.

And this is, lo and behold, precisely what we have today. We certainly have fear of invaders – AKA “terrorists” -- to justify any and all military activity anywhere in the world (not to mention the economic and social consequences). And as for fear of the government, seek no further than the IRS. Of course, domestic fear, American style, is not a simple affair; it's cloaked in many layers of deceit and dissimulation. And yet, behind every government program, regulation, or law, there's an “or else” -- either explicit or implied. The hypocrisy comes in when the program, regulation, or law is presented as being “for your own good” -- i.e. for the good of the citizenry, either as individuals or as part of some arbitrarily defined group. But one always has to ask, if this provision is such a good idea, and if any reasonable person will agree that it is, why does there always have to be an “or else”? And the reason is that most of these programs, regulations, and laws are _not_ good ideas; they serve the interests of a select few, and harm the interests of the many. But under our system of rotating bribes, every once in a while you get to grab at the golden ring – i.e. it's your turn to be bribed, and one of the conditions of the bribe is that you have to shut up about everyone else's bribes. And then the propaganda apparatus broadcasts the myth that everyone has come out ahead on the deal -- even when we see that the government itself winds up with the lion's share -- and the deception is complete.

But none of this would work if it weren't for the basic groundwork of fear. And as much as people talk about “freedom”, no one wants to accept the downside of freedom, which is risk. So our freedoms gradually turn into dross, for the simple reason that, in the process of eliminating all risk, we have to eliminate all real freedom; this is an iron law of both politics and economics, although very few people are willing to admit it. So regardless of the government's motives for restricting freedom – which are almost always malevolent, even when they include a patina of “progressivism” -- the end result is always the same, and what I call “domestic fear” is one of the main factors holding the system in place. And this, in turn, is why “education” and the media, are so important to the program – because, in our time, fear is rarely of the bonafide, primitive, adrenalin-laden type; it resides primarily in the world of ideas. And who is in charge of the planting and nurturing of ideas in the skulls of the citizenry? Why, the public schools and the media, of course. So this is why a goodly proportion of any public school curriculum, or media programming, will have a high fear content; the citizenry must be made to feel both threatened and helpless so that it will continue to run to government and lay its few remaining freedoms at the feet of its “leaders”. And, by the same token, any upstarts who start preaching about liberty, or the need for independent thinking, have to be suppressed without mercy.

But Fleming clearly does not imagine that the American character has always been this corroded, corrupted, and degenerate. He clearly believes that what served as the foundation of this country, and what sustained it for a good period of time, was rugged independence – a historically rare thing, apparently. Well, when you think about it, how much “rugged individualism” do we see, or read about, in history? There are plenty of heroes – but a hero is not necessarily an individualist, any more than a military leader or politician is. A hero may simply be the one who is at the front of the band at a given time – the most aggressive, the loudest, the strongest, the most ruthless. But his power is derived mainly, if not entirely, from his position in the group; he might not fare any better going off on his own than any of his followers. Think of the true individualist in the American tradition – the “lone gun”, the homesteader, the trapper, the desert rat of song and story. That is a true American type, and a type rarely to be found anywhere else, at any other time in history. What was it about this place, and this time, that gave rise to, and rewarded, individuals of this type? That would be the topic for a few good books, which I'm not prepared to write just now. But suffice it to say that that rare window in time which was open for a few generations now seems to be closed again – slammed shut, in fact, by the powers that be – the government and the ruling elite. They are, as I've said before, reaping what they did not sow – the last fruits, if you will, of the true American character and his works... his legacy.

But what he built up has been corrupted and distorted beyond recognition. If one knew nothing of American history, one could not even begin to guess as to its chief features by surveying the America of today. Oh, I suppose that one could listen to the propaganda spewed forth by politicians and by speakers at Memorial Day ceremonies, or fed to schoolchildren... but if all one did was observe, one would never guess. What one would see would be a lazy, sensual, decadent, spendthrift, impulsive, delusional, short-tempered, warlike people who use up resources far more rapidly than they can be replaced, and who think that it's their business to interfere with the affairs of every other nation on earth -- who think, in fact, that despite their manifest character flaws, they possess some sort of moral superiority. One would see a bizarre form of nationalism based on a concept of “nation” that is ill-defined, fragmented, divorced from history, and has little or no basis in reality. One would see a political process by which every man is trying to gain an advantage over all others, and, as a result, winds up being exploited by those who are in control – and who, in fact, winds up further behind than if he'd just minded his own business.

And if one were told that the mythical Founding Fathers – with all of their immortal thoughts, speeches, and writings – were still considered our direct forebears, politically and philosophically... well, the only proper response to that would be uproarious laughter. It would be clear that what intervened between them and us, between then and now, was plain old human nature and concupiscence – that the best plan, the best-designed government on earth could not insulate people against their own weaknesses, foolishness, and greed... and that while America might, in fact, have been the most noble experiment in government of all time, even it had its limits, and those limits are long past.

And this is, I suppose, the issue when it comes to responding to idea like Fleming's. Was “the true American character” a happy accident – a flash in the pan – the product of a specific time and place, never to be repeated? And is what we have now – drearily like most other societies down through history – the “normal”, the baseline? In other words, which is the figure, and which is the ground? Fleming, who I would never accuse of being an optimist, nonetheless seems to feel that as long as there is a remnant – a few righteous men – America and the American spirit can never be wholly annihilated. Well, it's true that ideas can survive as a thin, underground stream for many generations without ever appearing on the surface of a society or having any impact on it... but I'm not convinced that that's inevitable. For one thing, how do we know how many “lost ideas” there have been down through history? (If we knew, they wouldn't be lost, would they?) We know that much of what civilization has produced has been lost over time; history is full of references to great works of which no trace remains. And when it comes to political ideas – I say again, can any of them ever stand up, indefinitely, to the corrosive effects of human nature? Won't we always be regressing to the primitive, tribal baseline, where the strong man and his goons rule over everyone else? (Isn't that what we have come back to in our own time?) Won't fear always be the default setting? We see in our current system, as complex and convoluted as it is, that it ultimately all boils down to fear – fear that is generated and manipulated by the ruling elite, and felt by the masses.

There might have been one brief moment in American history – the so-called Progressive Era – when fear was not the main political medium of exchange. For a while there it seemed as if government could actually do some good – albeit in an extra-Constitutional sense – in areas like public health, food safety, drug safety, workplace safety, fair wages... you know, all those great old causes that blossomed in the pre-World War I era. Now granted, there was, arguably, a basis in fear for all of these programs as well; I'm talking about a matter of emphasis. The operational definition of a “progressive” might be found in a quote by Robert Kennedy -- “I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” This is, let's admit, an optimistic point of view – one looks at the status quo and imagines that things could be better... that improvements could be made. And, if one is “progressively” inclined, one imagines that the government is the most fitting agent to make those improvements. It's not that things are all that bad now... but they could be better.

But is this the attitude of the government at present? Is this the “feeling tone” that is being projected? No – it's more like, “Things are terrible now, and we're all helpless and doomed, and government is our only hope... and still, we'll be lucky just to survive, and even luckier if all we do is break even.” In other words, you lower expectations to the point that no one can ever be disappointed. Compared to the sunny, cheerful message of the progressives, this sounds like some black-robed figure ringing the chimes of doom with bats flitting overhead against a stormy sky. In other words, the “fear dial” has been turned up to a high volume, and it just keeps getting higher with each passing day – and not without reason! Things really are getting worse on almost all counts – but the main culprit in all of this is not "the other" -- not terrorism or global warming or any of the other boogeymen du jour -- but government itself. Can you think of a single current “crisis” on any front that did not originate in – or was not at least aggravated by -- some cynical or ill-conceived government policy, regulation, or law? And yet it's always government that is called in – by unanimous plea of the citizenry – to fix what government wrought in the first place... and thus the poison is concentrated to the point where it has to become fatal. And so we have a gradual evolution from government being, at most, part of the solution to its becoming part of the problem, to its becoming _the_ problem. But again, none of this would have been possible without a corresponding, parallel degeneration of the American character. A free people would never have put up with a fraction of the high-jinks that government has been committing down through the years. But what has eroded that freedom more than anything else? Not the law, not oppression, and not plagues, wars, and disasters, but fear. And that, in turn, counts as a bloodless victory for the forces of totalitarianism – to render an entire population afraid of its own shadow, even in the midst of, arguably, plenty of residual prosperity and token freedoms – this is, truly, a prodigious feat. And yet it has been carried off, and with remarkable efficiency – since each succeeding generation has a much lower “fear threshold” than the one before. People of my parents' generation would have scoffed in disgust at what now passes as a “crisis”, or as “poverty”, for example. And yet, I imagine that we're tougher – in all of our cry-baby self-pity – than the generations to follow. I would like to know just how weak Americans can become before they cease to exist at all! I suppose that eventually they will all turn into benumbed slaves whose only source of energy is sheer biological survival instinct – not unlike concentration camp inmates (and even there, inner strength was a powerful predictor of survival). And this, of course... or so one would think... would be a fate to be feared much more than anything that is now causing us to give up our freedoms. I mean, there really are some things worse then death, aren't there? Like death of the spirit, for example? And yet, to see the trends in current events, that seems to be the least of our worries.