Philosophy and Politics in the Age of Anxiety: postscript
Continued from pt. 1
For that matter, and I have not said enough about this, it is clear that much of the Obama mania of 2008 was also an anxiety reaction. In the chaos brought on by Republican economic dogmatism, many people were looking for a messiah, a miracle man who would change everything by his mere presence and our faith in him. I listened to Obama’s speeches, and I heard a call to action; but I for one never thought it would be easy. Clearly, judging from the profound disappointment of many, there were a lot of people who were literally expecting miracles. I think giving him the Nobel Peace Prize may have been a bit of magical thinking, although even more it represented the profound relief of the rest of the world that the U.S.A. would not be led by a party publicly committed to imposing its own will rather than working cooperatively. Heck, if I lived in another country, and I understood that the Republican Party is dominated by Christian apocalyptic teachings that the United Nations was or soon would become the Antichrist and try to take over the U.S. I’d be more than relieved to see any Democrat take over. White anxiety, fear marketing and a patently flawed interpretation of the Gospel into the “Left Behind” Christian Zionist/Prosperity Gospel/Doomsday cult amalgam that is Corporate Evangelicalism may be a toxic brew for American politics; but for American foreign policy, it is Angel Dust, a euphoric to be sure but also a potentially psychosis-inducing, rage inducing poison. Would YOU want to live next door to a heavily-armed, extremely wealthy PCP abuser, who was convinced of his own invulnerability and immortality as well as of your essential evil? That is how the U.S.A. appeared to much of the world from the time of the Iraq invasion until 2008. They saw Obama, by contrast, as the healing angel (or fairy or whatever) who would immediately cure America’s blood-madness and end all conflicts. Instead, he turned out to be merely a pragmatic, rational human, quite willing to kill his nation’s enemies, and lacking the omnipotence to end injustice and conflict everywhere.
So the disappointment some foreigners and many Americans feel about Obama is testimony to the irrational expectations they had. These expectations are furthermore testimony to the anxiety that drove them. Pragmatism would say that it took nearly a decade to inflate the housing bubble, and that it will likely take about that long to fix the problems its bursting exposed. Anxiety, by contrast, says only that before it was at peace, now it is in turmoil, and something needs to happen right away make everything feel right again. Anxiety says, just do something, anything!
If this is right (and I wouldn’t be a very good Kierkegaardian if I didn’t admit that nothing is certain, including my pronouncements), then November will bring one of two outcomes. If Obama wins, it most likely won’t be with the desperate, magical hopes that carried him to victory, but rather with the pragmatic (if not grim) realization that there’s a lot of work to do. After all, “Change” is something magical; “Forward” is something you say to an army moving towards a decisive challenge. In the meantime, the fear merchants and anxiety demagogues are already predicting armed civil war when Obama opens up the death camps he’s been secretly building (this from elected Republican officials and candidates, as well as prominent spokespersons and leaders of the conservative movement today). They will either retreat back into their echo chambers to shout doom to one another some more, or strike out preemptively against the evil Feds. Anyone remember Oklahoma City?
On the other hand, if Romney wins, it will be largely because of the same anxiety-fueled faith that originally propelled Obama to victory. The people who wanted America to return to the stable, powerful status quo they remember from childhood will feel victorious. But America can’t go back. Those “illegals” are actually, in many cases, legal American citizens. Minority births outpaced white births, according to the most recent census estimates.[1] That means that America will continue to change. Mosques will continue to open where they weren’t before, and to expand where they are already. Spanish will be spoken aloud on streets and in workplaces. Technology will lead to new social patterns. The heroes of your youth will die. And people will question your settled values and certainties, just by existing as your neighbors and holding different views. Anxiety is not going away. And pragmatically, rationally speaking, there is significant empirical evidence that the Obama stimulus plan worked, and that at least some jobs were saved or created, which most of the jobs that were lost disappeared before he took office or before the stimulus bill was passed. Also, there is significant reason to believe that returning to the economic philosophies that caused the economic meltdown are unlikely to solve it. Kevin Phillips has been saying for a decade that wealth gaps like we have are unsustainable; and he started saying that when the wealth gap was much smaller.[2] That is the same Kevin Phillips who was the chief economist for President Richard Nixon, and the one who predicted the Republican Revolution that propelled Reagan into power. This is no commie-come-lately; this is a bona fide conservative economist, once one of the esteemed inner circle, now cast out of favor because he began predicting that just as Democrats lost power for breaking faith with the middle class, so too would Republicans soon lose power for the same reason. Romney’s professed intentions (and God alone knows what he’ll actually do) are to exacerbate the wealth gap, accelerate the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few plutocrats, and shift more of the tax burden to the poor and middle classes. In fact, a Republican shibboleth these days is that we need to “broaden the tax base,” (which means we need to make poor people pay more in taxes) “so we can reduce the burden on the job creators” (which means cutting taxes for the wealthy). Economists estimate that we would have to seize 100% of everything the poor have to offset the tax cuts that have been planned for the 1%. That is not going to happen. Since that is not going to happen, the fact is that the numbers don’t add up, and Romney will not be able to deliver on the expectations his base have for him.
What Republican political strategists are saying is that, given the demographic shifts already occurring, the Republican Party will have to change. And “change” is anathema. When Sara Palin mockingly asked, “How’s that hopey-changey thing workin’ for y’ah?” a huge crowd cheered. Their hope was that there would not be any change. If only nothing had changed, then everything would be great today! But change was always inevitable. If Romney changes, the base will be livid. If he doesn’t, then the world will change and the base will be livid.
Ergo, as long as our politics is based on anxiety, we should expect wild political swings, political polarization, and rampant paranoia, on all sides.
[1] Hope Yen, “For First Time, Minorities Surpass Whites in US Births;” Associated Press 5/17/2012 (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47458196/ns/us_news-life/t/census-minorities-now-surpass-whites-us-births/#.UDeuRnC5hds)
[2] “Wealth and Democracy,” PBS Newshour, July 17, 2002, (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/wealth-and-democracy)
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