The US conflagration in the oil well of the globe was ignited without attention to history, which is why it flares out of control. But that war, fought by GIs, mercenaries, and proxies, will continue indefinitely, because, under the martial law that implicitly governs the United States, history can never be invoked except for its celebrity value -- not even history in the making. Therefore, it is certain that the staggering failures of Washington's current policy, so evident today, will be forgotten tomorrow, even as that policy is reaffirmed. Or, as they say, what's the dif?
That is the final graph of an op ed in the Boston Globe by James Carroll entitled The peril of valuing celebrity over history. The title, and what is supposed to be the main focus, is not the reason it caught my attention. The final paragraph, and several others, were. Please keep reading so I can explain.
The occasion for the piece was Carroll's visiting a house owned by someone who could't remember whether it had been owned by Upton Sinclair or Sinclair Lewis. Carroll acknowledges his own occasional confusion abut authors {admitting to having confused Joyce Kilmer and James Joyce!) especially those with overlapping names. But when the owner seemingly does not care about the confusions between the two aforementioned authors . .
His shrug said "What's the dif?"
. . that bothers Carroll, who notes despite his own sometimes difficulties, Carroll opines
What my host was displaying, though, went beyond such thickheadedness. He loved his house precisely for its association with a generalized celebrity, not a particular authorial achievement. Fame, detached from what generates it, is its own value. An obsessive deference to such fame, and an all-consuming preoccupation with it, has become the defining mark of our culture. But why?
He then embarks upon an excursus upon the similarities between the two men with Sinclair in their name. We might learn that not only did the elder, Upton Sinclair, help kick off the muckraking movement with The Jungle in 1906, but that he
- won the Pulitzer Prize for Dragon's Teeth in 1943
- founded a utopian community in 1907 which Sinclair Lewis later joined
- was satirized as a political nutcase in Sinclair Lewis's It Can 't Happen Here
Carroll rightly describes Sinclair (last name) as a socialist who was a frequent candidate for office (although he does not tell us he almost won the governorship of California in 1934) and Lewis as an "omni-directional satirist" and notes he was the first American author to win the Nobel Prize. His portrayals of American bourgeois mentality and similar patterns still carry an edge to them, as I discovered in high school more than 4 decades ago.
It is in the final four paragraphs of the piece, of which I have already quoted the last, that Carroll's writing shook me up. Let me explain. I have read Carroll for a number of years, not only his columns, but books like Constantine's Sword and House of War. I usually view his analysis as cogent, to the point, and thus take seriously what he has to offer. Let me offer the first two of those last four paragraphs to illustrate why I reacted as I did.
It was my host's house that "had history," but not my host. The shallowness of contemporary public discourse, devoid of history, is everywhere visible -- from the "eternal now" of celebrity journalism to the absurdity of an "antiwar" rhetoric that assumes, in fact, a permanent US war machine in Iraq. In the emerging Democratic consensus, forged by Congressional leaders and presidential front-runners, supposedly in opposition to Bush's war, "out now" is becoming "out when conditions permit" -- which is, of course, Bush's exact position. Such conditions will never come; therefore -- Garrison Forever.
Yet, speaking of history, this conjuring of the appearance of opposition where none actually exists has been mandated by the American political system since the onset of the Cold War. The quadrennial political puppet show, highlighting not opposition but its appearance, is essential to keeping the captive-taking war machine running and to inoculating the American people from the viral knowledge that they themselves were first to be captured.
"Garrison forever." Is it possible that the Democratic nominee will acquiesce to an ongoing American presence in the tens of thousands in Iraq? Several of the candidates who will be in Chicago at Yearlykos seem to imply that. And certainly Joe Lieberman is not the only non-presidential aspirant on the Democratic side who would insist on at least such a position.
It was the expression of "quadrennial political puppet show" that really caught my attention. This is almost parallel to the rhetoric of a Ralph Nader, that when push comes to shove it seems almost like a choice between Tweedledee and Tweedledumber - or as Nader puts it, that there's not a dime's worth of difference between the two parties. Certainly when I read as I did today in the NY Times that Schumer is promising Wall Street that he won't let taxes be significantly raised upon aspect of their business, I wonder whether the distinction between the two parties cannot at times be reduced to which corporate interests get to predominate. For the Republicans we have clearly seen the influence of oil and other energy interests. We should remember for the Democrats that many in Congress think that Bob Rubin, former head of Goldman Sachs, was the best Treasury Secretary ever, and that high tech interests (remember, Al Gore's connection with both Google and Apple) has had out-sized influence on Democratic party policy in Washington.
To stay within fair use, I will use ellipses to offer two complete and two partial sentences from the penultimate paragraph that cut to the heart of the matter:
A minimal acquaintance with history, including dissections of American culture already performed by both Sinclairs, would undermine our national complacency. . . . the profit-worshipping economy to this day eludes controls that would protect majorities of citizens in this country and across the world. . . .the simultaneously banalizing methods of capitalist enterprise (false advertising, consumerism, pieties of affluence, amoral bureaucracy) are exactly what that enterprise created to keep from being criticized. Then inhale the crack cocaine of celebrity.
We are obsessed with celebrity. So much of our political coverage, when it manages to get beyond horse-race numbers, tends to focus on celebrity aspects: Romney's shoulders, McCain's so-called "straight talk," Edwards' haircut, Hillary's "cleavage" and so on. We idolize wealth: anyone remember Robin Leach and his Lifestyles TV show? And far too often we are complacent.
My reaction in reading this peace by Carroll is that he is discouraged, thinks that there would be little difference in the general drift of our national politics even if a total change of the labels of the party in control of the executive branch were to occur.
If I agreed with Carroll, I would be tempted to withdraw from the political process, at least at the national level, viewing it as a futile endeavor. I do not agree, but because I have so valued his previous insights, it should not be surprising that this column upset and perhaps even disoriented me.
Thus I offer it for your consideration. How would you counter his points? Please do not express it in terms of voices that he would, probably rightly, say have no choice of making a difference, even if their policies are radically different: in other words, Kucinich supporters need not advocate on behalf of their candidate. Carroll is describing the overall thrust of the current presidential campaign and the tendencies in Congress. And even if polling data that holds Congress in low esteem will, when those polled are pushed, show that there is a preference for Democrats over Republicans, that does not belie the main thrust of his argument. The continued "centrism" of major media figures like Cokie Roberts and David Broder helps perpetuate the problem that Carroll describes.
So offer me some hope. Explain where his reasoning is wrong. I am anxious to hear your thoughts.
Peace.