While reading Benedict Anderson’s “The Nation and the Origins of National Consciousness” I was reminded that we humans have communicated our ideas, traditions and history primarily through a culture of the spoken word. That is, the advent of the print medium, and all that it has spawned, is a relatively recent thing. Before Guttenberg, Before William Caxton before Martin Luther’s audacity, what we learned and believed was communicated through stories, myths and parables that were passed on orally.
It has been my contention that this oral tradition is one of the things that set us apart from the beasts: we are liars. We love to lie and, more importantly, we love being lied to. Nowadays, every story, song, TV show or play is, like religion, based on the suspension of disbelief. And like religion, we rarely let the facts get in the way.
I bring this up in relation to Shawn Russell’s excellent excerpt from Salon Magazine’s article on Michelle Bachmann’s recommendation of a biography of Robert E. Lee by J. Steven Wilkins. In it is this quote:
“Slavery, as it operated in the pervasively Christian society which was the old South, was not an adversarial relationship founded upon racial animosity. In fact, it bred on the whole, not contempt, but, over time, mutual respect. This produced a mutual esteem of the sort that always results when men give themselves to a common cause. The credit for this startling reality must go to the Christian faith. . . . The unity and companionship that existed between the races in the South prior to the war was the fruit of a common faith.”
Thus, according to this biography, slavery was based in mutual respect and a common faith: Christianity. The apologist and revisionist tone of this excerpt cannot be denied; it is ludicrous. But, it is a fact that it is a lie and someone wants to believe it.
And one of the reasons someone wants to believe it rests in another lie that captivated the American imagination in 1936 culminating in a movie in 1939: “Gone With The Wind.” It is no exaggeration that the revisionist and apologist sentiments (lies) of the book and film are accepted above and beyond the facts as a true representation of the Old South. It’s the romance of the whole thing. It’s not that people disregard the facts, yes slavery was bad, yes people were harmed, but god-damn it, it was a more genteel time, more chivalry and, according to Margaret Mitchell and now Mr. Wilkins, it was a time of mutual respect in Jesus and all would have been ok except for the meddling of those pesky Northerners.
This is the danger of Michelle Bachmann (as well as the rest of us): she is capable of this kind of double-think without any pause for reflection. She is capable of suspension of disbelief in the face of hard facts when it is to her own advantage.
A friend was telling me how stupid Ms. Bachmann was. I disagree heartily. Ms. Bachmann is not stupid she is very smart and knows that it is necessary to suspend disbelief when such suspension is needed. That is what makes her so dangerous.