The Civil WarS
Wherein our narrator, trapped in a Kafka-esque
limbo, between hither and yon, meditates on the Shape of Things.
Here we are, 2 days before the Election. And
it's forced some issues into the spotlight that might otherwise not be seen
clearly. Because this is an accidental election, because it could not be recast
into any of the normal modes which causes reality to be obscured by rhetoric,
some things have become clear. Rage. Fear. The desire, above all, for
change.
What change remains to be seen.
Because of the collapse of consensus that began in the late 1970s, with the rise
of the evangelical Right wing in American politics - which equates liberalism
with Satanism - the center has not held. It may well be that Bill Clinton was
the last centrist leader this country will ever be able to elect. And he was
impeached by that same "vast right-wing conspiracy" which thought his own
indiscretions clearly highlighted the importance of moral, Christian leadership.
That led to the furious battle of election 2000, decided by a handful of votes
in a single state. The Florida recount illustrated how broad the divide in
politics had become - that it had become an uncrossable chasm, not of politics,
but of world-views. One half believes the other half is on its way to hell.
The other half believes that the right-wing is creating that hell, immenatizing
the Eschaton, to bring the Rapture, Apocalypse and
Judgment.
All righty. Yes, that's
definitely the reductio ad
absurdum of the argument, but that's the point
- there is no longer any middle ground. All that's left are the end
points.
So where does that leave
us?
Politics has finally been caught up
in Singularity. Although Toffler pointed out the increasing desynchronization
between our democratic institutions and our technical capabilities (which in
turn influence language and thought) a quarter of a century ago in
The Third
Wave, it's only been in the past few years -
probably when 9/11 woke us from single vision and Clinton's Sleep - that the
great mass of the body politic have begun to sense the horror (and terror) of
the situation. It's still an inchoate feeling. No one has been able to put
voice to it, and no one knows where it is all going. Right now, political
leaders are going on as if nothing has changed, bravely whistling past the
graveyard, for fear of giving away the game: that there is no governor,
anywhere.
We've entered the Thelemic
era, naked, cross-eyed and painless, completely without a
clue.
One of my friends - working for
the Kusinich campaign - tells me that I need to work for progressive change,
that the tide can be turned back, that we can return to a liberal America which,
as near as I can tell, never really existed. Of course, she tells me that we've
got to work to make that dream a reality, but I think that the part of America
who equates liberalism with Satanism will, when threatened by liberalism,
agressively move into invoking their own Apocalypse, something that will seem
more like real civil war than anything that happened 140 years
ago.
I know why the Europeans consider
us a young country, why they consider us innocent. It has nothing to do with
the fact that no major wars have been fought on our soil (other than at our own
hands, of course). It has to do with the fact that we've had no religious wars.
Consider the 30 years war in Germany. At the end, the population of Germany was
less than when it started. Consider the Dutch, who fought a hundred years of
wars, Catholic versus Protestant, before they finally emerged into pluralism.
Or the Swiss, who fought wars for half a millennium. And the Spanish, and the
French, and the English, and on and on and on. All of Western Europe fought the
battles between faith and governance long before the Modern
Era.
Only America and the Islamic world
are fighting this battle today. And it's tearing both civilizations
apart.
Is there any way out of this
mess? I keep on telling folks that I want to go spend some time in Australia -
particularly if W. wins next November - because I think America
has
to go through this process. It needs to fight this war, grapple with the full
dimension of the horror of killing your brother because of his beliefs, before
this will finally be excised from our political systems. It needs to be beaten
into us with a rod, because the carrot of the Constitution hasn't worked. And
since I've already gotten the message, I don't think I need to stick around for
the Stark Fist of Removal.
I've been to
the end; I don't need to see an instant replay.
Posted: Sun - October 5, 2003 at 12:32 PM