Sullivan's Mythology: Obama needs more Cowboy
Sat Mar 22, 2008 at 05:00:03 PM PDT
Andy, Andy. You've been dreaming and droning about Obama Republicans, and they are there. But you've taken the Reagan Democrat mythology and spackled it onto the man from Illinois without understanding, I think, how mythology works.
Peggy Noonan, semi-admiring Obama's Wright Speech here, channels Ronnie as is her custom, teeing it up for Sullivan. Andy then attempts a heroic bank shot off the gnome, the fiberglass rhino, and into the door of the windmill:
[Some Kant, some Campbell, some Christopher Robin, some totally unfair shrinkifying of Hillary and Andy, a lion's front, a goat's middle, a snake's tail, and a magical pony, after the jump...]
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan: That's why I think Pennsylvania is an opportunity for him. The most tired element, and the least refreshing aspect, of his message so far is a resort to left bromides about the grim facts of American life in the last twenty years or so. There are problems, real problems. Inequality, fostered by globalization, has left many Americans treading water at best. But the vitality of the economy, the astonishing creativity of American industry, especially in tech and pharmaceuticals, the miracle of the Internet, the relative cheapness of items like food and clothing that once consumed far more of the average American's expenses - these are also integral to the picture. Obama hasn't conveyed this complicated picture - perhaps because of the primary season. But he should. America needs hope. But it is not currently hopeless. And its recent past, despite the disasters of the past eight years, has had as many highs as lows.
Yes, the "left bromides about the grim facts of American life" are, well, grim, aren't they? But "if you can't say anything nice..." only goes so far here. A big part of slaying dragons and earning the hand of the fair maiden requires actually being in the company of, well, dragons. If dragon-breath, dragon-wreckage, and dragon-droppings make you queasy, maybe you've picked the wrong gig?
Andy is an unenviable position. Several really. He's actually trying to reconcile some of the metastatic misjudgments he's made in the last 8 or so years, most based on supremely magical thinking and mythic projection (Go to this Slate post of his look into the abyss.)
But, with his support of Obama, he's in a double bind. On the face of it, a vote for Obama offers psychic atonement and a public display of--what?--Hope? Practical open-mindedness? Atypical-white-personness? Probably some of each. But, and big but here, the Democrat's appeal to and via Kantian Intrinsic Goods such as Hope and Courage, Prudence and Charity have direct opposites in the concepts of Wrath and Fear, Sloth and Avarice. As Lakoff is noted for pointing out, orientational metaphors and concepts are meaningless without their opposites. Down needs an Up. Wrath demands Justice. Avarice evokes and revivifies Charity.
In a way, that's what this fight is about--Hillary versus Obama, I mean. He is tuned to Intrinsic and immutable concepts, she is aligned with the tired professional toolkit of "I'm about solutions™," otherwise known as Instrumental Goods. He compels others to consider self-sacrifice and Hope, she offers her time and energy and body as a Warrior, a sacrifice for our good - We Can versus I Will. Hers is truly a Martyr archetype versus his Sage or transforming Magician. Think about that for a moment. Hillary freaks over his ascendence because she, like certain others, can't hear the frequency of Obama's tune; can't understand how "words, just words" deserve any respect in a world of Men and Women of Action--in a world framed and formed by "Leaders" like her, each proud of their formulae and instruments. "Leaders" who misunderstand their job and turn it instead into "management," forgetting or never learning that actual leaders don't so much inspire others as they seek to catalyze those others to self-inspire. The reason this latter, truer definition makes sense is supremely practical -- you can't really do it alone, despite your admiration for Die Hard's John McClane or GE's Jack Welch. Leadership is a sort of 50 State Strategy for the heart and mind where everybody gets to fill their own big chair in ways large and small.
So, Andy, like a surprising (to some) cross-section of Americans are responding viscerally and behaviorally to their idealised self being reflected back at them by Obama. Andy likes liking Andy and believing the best of himself, as do we all. But, as guys like Jung and Boree tell us, the "Self"we're talking about here is the transcendence of opposites--the accommodation of higher and base elements within our psyches--not the banishment of the less savory bits. And there's the problem. Okay, the problems...
There are problems, real problems. Inequality, fostered by globalization, has left many Americans treading water at best.
Damn, "treading water" is what you do while waiting to be rescued, Andy. Or, while waiting for your asshole brother in law to come back around with the boat. It's hard to be charitable and philosophical when you're snorting in water every couple of breaths. Reports from the field suggest most are praying the lifeguard gets to them quick. But I digress. What advantages should diminish the impact of Sullivan's tiring cultural swim test?
the vitality of the economy, the astonishing creativity of American industry, especially in tech and pharmaceuticals, the miracle of the Internet, the relative cheapness of items like food and clothing that once consumed far more of the average American's expenses
Do you see it, or is it just me? A vital economy that has many treading water. A sleek American socio-economic clipper deserving of awe from its "many" citizens, who, while treading water should find the time to admire it's astonishingly creative form as it glides past them on its weekly jaunt to Asia. (Their dream jobs in it's cargo hold one way and returning with those "relatively cheap items" that they tread some extra-more to afford.)
Now, I'm just a stupid business consultant, so take this for what it's worth, but there aren't many middle managers I've met who can muster sustained interest, never mind bliss, when asked to contemplate the trails blazed by pharma science and process materials patentry. Most are consumed with their own variety of dog paddle.
I'll stop parsing with "recent disasters" equaling some imagined "highs" since my overworked prose doesn't do justice to such easy sport as Andy presents. He does deserve some credit for tiptoeing up to that abyss: Sullivan's trying where others remain soulless and unapologetic cowards, armchair dragon-slayers, pretend warriors. But Andy's not going to find his absolution, his clarity (and nor would others), until he lets go of the a la carte method of characterizing the dragons he's really trying to slay.
The mythology here is really the truest way to explain Andy's temporal battle. Myths are gathered collections of meaning holding immutable lessons played out by people with funny names doing alarming things. They are fantasy or fabrications on the outside, true and sustaining in some way at their core. But it's easy to get them muxed. Noonan's and Andy's Reagan, as history shows, was less their beautiful Achilles and more the mythical three-part Chimera defined - A persona that said one thing, an ego that did another, and a self that believed there was no dissonance between the two.
REAGAN (3/4/87): A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true. But the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.
And so it goes; archetypes need not observe gravity and other laws if they feed some latent or damaged need in those who have the mass, the mouth or the money to sustain them.
Still, the Reagan Chimera, draped over the country as a whole, offends the sensibilities of people who are asked to agree that it is, in fact, a beautiful Pegasus-like steed at all times. It offends people whose mythology and reality are equally alarming: 20 year-old men hanging from trees and set afire is unbelievably horrible imagery fresh in the minds of now-70 year-old men who escaped alive that particular chapter of American White-Horse Exceptionalism. Likewise, 35 year-old workers told to get tech jobs to replace their disappearing factory ones now find, at 50, that the shiny economy they're to be so proud of rewards market sentiment and derivatives--a tea leaves-reading priesthood--not guilds of crafting or coding.
As a self-described clear-eyed man, Sullivan continues to take Myth to childish extremes. And to twist it's utility. He looks for the Perfect Hero, ignoring Achilles' heel, ignoring the flaws of the actor-president he adores; ignoring the necessary qualifications of "Hero." Andy wants Obama to heavy up on the Greek, and go easy on the Tragedy. He wants fantasy within the fantasy, a Gyro, not a Hero.
But, left to their own interpretive devices, grown-up Americans seem quite game to accept the truth within their ideal, to attempt an honest, unvarnished appraisal of at least one national dragon.
CBS/NYTimes National Poll: 70% Approved of Obama's Speech
by rashomon
And so, in order that Andy's cosmology can suffer least damage, Andy prescribes that Obama contort himself to the wrong kind of fantastical storytelling, falsifying the depth of lesson-learning and fact-acknowledging that underlies Obama's outward appeal. Andy wants Obama to make it all better by ignoring what made it "worse." But that is a recipe for another fabled tale, the continued Sisyphean boulder-pushing many sense of life in these 21st Century times that were supposed to be "better."
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