Revelation No. 9
Wherein our narrator has a flash of
understanding.
Just now, watching
Nightline
- entirely about tomorrow's recall election (or more accurately, today's recall
election) - I realized that the battle of Davis vs. Schwartzenegger is the age
old battle of routine versus charisma. Gray Davis is the embodiment of
routinized power, the faceless bureaucrat who works behind the scenes, doing his
best to close the gaps in the functioning of
power.
For that reason alone I should
hate him, and vote YES on the recall. But, but,
but...
Then there is Ahnold, the very
embodiment of charisma. Movie stardom is the modern concretization of charisma,
and Ahnold has been a household name - far beyond his box office, actually - for
nearly two decades. He's played semi-divine heroes (Conan), avenging angels
(T2), demons (Terminator), and so on and so forth. Movies are mythic vehicles,
and it's all too easy to conflate the actor with the myth. (Expect a cult of
Keanu/Neo to spring up before too
long.)
Just a month ago I penned
"McBurners," a polemic which argued for the charismatic over the routinized,
argued (perhaps romantically) that a return to original values was what Burning
Man earnestly needed to recover it authenticity. And now Ahnold is using the
same argument: a return to the authenticity of government by throwing the
bastards out, and electing him, their hero, to highest office. He is doing
battle - against Davis, the LA Times, ABC News, et. alia, - fighting the heroic
uphill struggle to inevitable, eventual, total victory. A struggle. In
Ahnold's native tongue, Ein
Kampf. Or, in Arabic,
jihad.
It's
one of the oldest stories in the world - bubbling up from
Gilgamesh
and before - and touches deeply at the core of each of us, the eternal inner
struggle between the anarchist, who rules only himself, and the mommy-daddy
complex, who wants to comply with the dictates of an external
authority.
Because charisma has mostly
been abandoned in American politics - at least, since the assassination of
Kennedy - we rarely see this bright star shining in the political firmament.
Charisma is dangerous, it's inconstant, uncontrollable. And politics is all
about control, so politics have driven charisma away - and given us its logical
compliment in Gray Davis.
I don't know
how the election is going to go, but I have a feeling in my gut, similar to the
one I had in November 1980. I was a month too young to vote in the general
election, and though I would have voted for independent candidate John Anderson,
I secretly wanted Reagan to triumph over Jimmy Carter, because Reagan had at
least a touch of the charisma that Carter, the archetype of the routinized
technocrat, so visibly lacked. I hungered in my gut for some sort of great
change.
And so Carter was swept aside,
and so the world did change. I believe I will see it happen again, tomorrow.
Today.
Posted: Tue - October 7, 2003 at 12:59 AM