from The Boston Globe
What is uniquely alarming in the United States today, among all the democracies and in our own history, is that a president of the United States is explicitly on the side of antimodernism. Never before has an American chief executive worked deliberately to foment a fundamentalist absolutism that is ultimately tribal, theocratic, antiscientific, and incompatible with pluralist democracy.
4 comments:
I am beginning to wonder if there was a brief, shining moment of multicultural harmony that I missed in this country. It seems to me that almost at the exact moment that people started embracing the notions that they could have multiple identities, they were once again shoved into a dualist world view that demanded they make a choice. The Cold War ended in 1989; even before it did, however, the fundamentalists in this country had begun amassing their forces. Pat Robertson won the Republican presidential caucuses in Washington state in the early 1980s, an ominous sign that some of us noted then. But I agree with the editorial--Bush is the first president to openly embrace a world view in which a person is either is or isn't part of the "elected."
Lorraine,
Interesting point.
My feeling is that simplistic people always have needed scapegoats in order to vent their hostilities. For years Americans chose to hate "the communists." Then when all that crumbled, a lot these hate addicts turned inward and hated the government. So we had things like the Branch Davidian stockpiling weapons and Timothy McVeigh blowing up the federal building.
Bush just redirected the anger, so that the same folks who were hating the government are now hating the "terrorists." And they are the same folks who hated the "communists."
If these people could just learn to deal with their feelings of powerlessness in a constructive way, then they wouldn't have to hate "the communists," the government, or "the terrorists."
It's very easy to see a demon around every corner when people need excuses for feeling irrelevant. It's a need to feel superior and is based in associating ones self worth with group classifications, such as "American." Because if you can hide behind the group, then you don't have to worry about your own irrelevance. As long as your team wins the game, then you can feel victorious.
And don't get me wrong. I believe in nurturing society and the importance of community and was just discussing with a friend about how important it is that we take care of each other and cooperate more to achieve our wants in life. But there is a difference between nurturing the collective good and using associations with group identities to mask ones own insecurities about being an individual.
I agree. It is a simplistic world view, but I think ultimately, people want what's simple. As someone who used to be an historian, I'm fascinated with the continuing problem of how people define who they are. Most often, it's by identifying with a group or a community, and at the same time, people often understand who they are specifically by understanding who they are not. And Bush just feeds right into that primitive part of our brains that wants desperately to belong to something that validates who we are.
I agree thoroughly, Lorraine.
It got me thinking about the "New World Order." I had always related the concept to conservatives afraid of the United Nations, and then I met a liberal who identified the term more with corporate fascism.
I had always associated internationalism with diversity and more choices, so the whole idea of globalism being a threat to multiculturalism was sort of weird.
But while the conservatives were yelling "New World Order" and complaining about the UN, I guess they were also devising their plans to Americanize the planet. Which probably fits in with what you are saying about preferring simplicity. Things are also less complicated if everyone is like you. :(
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