The Political Class

Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog points to Frank Rich's "The Good Germans" column and asks if Rich is blaming the victims. It's a good question, and I think he is.

It's easy enough to blame Americans for the actions of their government. We are, at least in theory, a representative democracy. If our elected leaders don't do what we want them to do, or worse do what we don't want them to do, we can put pressure on them using our various civil rights, and we can simply replace them.

In reality, it's more complicated that that. Exercising your civil rights may tend to get you thrown in jail, from which anything could happen. And corporate and lobbyist money so corrupts our system that voting out your elected officials is problematic at best. It can be done, but the odds of accomplishing it are depressingly low.

But even that overlooks the initial problem, which is the media. Frank Rich doesn't get a pass here, either. I'm sure he'd say he didn't suggest he was any less culpable than the rest of us, but if we're getting into collective responsibility, to what extent is he more culpable?

The free press is supposed to be serve the valuable function of anti-propaganda. It's supposed to give us the information we need to know when we're being lied to, and maybe even what we can do about it. But too much of it's been captured by propaganda, and now it lies to us about what's happening, and lies to our elected officials about what we believe and want.

I probably don't have to recount the NYT's specific faults leading up to the Iraq war. While Rich himself may not be individually at fault for their gullible reporting and their belligerent editorial stance, is it fair to ask exactly how responsible the average American is, as well?

I tend to think not so much. It's not that Americans don't care, it's that they don't know. And they don't know because they're not supposed to.

I'm sure they've heard about Abu Ghraib by now, but it's like global warming--they're deliberately being fed the sort of "fraternity prank" storyline that allows them to at the very least be uncertain as to what actually is going on. I can't even tell you how many people I know who honestly think no one died, so how bad could it have been? People did die, of course, but you wouldn't necessarily have known that if you weren't paying attention.

And that's what it comes down to. Americans, for the most part, are in a permanent state of exhaustion and panic. They're falling behind financially and they know it, and they know even more that this makes them moral failures. Because that's what they're told. The Frosts are freeloaders, and so must you be too if you need assistance with anything. The economy's going great, if your budget isn't stretching, it's your fault, you just need to work harder.

The news you get says the war is going fine, or it's not, there's horrible shit going on, but war is hell, right? and you have twenty minutes on the bus to sort out the actual story from the conflicting news on the way to your second job, while you're worrying about bills and the kid's cough and your boss who keeps grabbing your ass.

Personally, you'd rather be worrying like hell that you don't have decent childcare while you work, but apparently the terrorists might at any moment blow you to hell, or so the government keeps telling you.

And this isn't to mention all those other jangling-panic cues Americans are routinely fed: E. coli, pollution, global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, the housing market collapse, the possibility your kids will be shot at school or picked up by rapists online, and Jesus Christ, you'd better hope to God nobody gets seriously sick.

Meanwhile, you have no idea what you're even supposed to feel guilty about, but you know there's plenty. In addition to the war, there's hoping like hell your nephew doesn't enlist for the college money because all you know is people are getting killed over there. And there's other things like global warming, which you don't have time to understand, you've heard talk about genocide in some place you haven't heard mentioned often enough to remember, and now they're talking about war with Iran, or was it Syria, and what the hell is going on in Afghanistan still?

That's just global anxiety. The domestic situation is a mess, too, and it hits you on a lot of even more personal issues. There's work, and rent, and school's back in and all you can afford for your kid is Chinese-made clothes from Wal-Mart, and you know that's not good on so many levels, but your options are? So you buy the probably-sweatshop-produced shit at Wal-Mart and you feel guilty and worried, on top of everything else, including how much gas it took to get there and you realize the kids are getting fatter and that apparently makes you a failure as a parent, at least according to the story you heard on the radio as you were late to work again through the worsening commute.

On top of that, so many of us are literally sick all the time. We don't have insurance, we don't have good insurance, we can't afford the out of pocket or the time off and it's impossible to get an appointment and getting to the doctor's is a pain too, so we just suck it up.

I don't think guys like Rich realize how desperate most of his fellow citizens are from day to day. They're exhausted. They're nearly frantic about the future. They're constantly in pain, and you'd better believe that takes a toll. And then they're blamed for not carving out the sheer volume of time it would take to get through the propaganda they're deliberately being fed by Rich's employers.

Can you blame them for wanting not to have to think about it? Can you really even blame them for wanting to believe the reports that say nothing's wrong rather than the ones that say it's all an increasing disaster and there's nothing we can do about it?

It's really, really hard to care about something so remote you can't imagine it, and that you really have no clear idea what's going on through all the conflicting reports. It's even harder to care when you have no idea what you can do about it and your own life is awash in disasters and near-disasters you have at least some idea how to solve, even if it's not working very well.

So, yeah, as Steve observes, we care more about dead American soldiers--because we knew them, we know their parents or friends or wives.

The Iraqis? Aren't they terrorists who blew up the Towers? Weren't they going to use nuclear bombs on us? Didn't we want them dead?

I really don't mean to be a callous asshole, and I honestly cannot fathom people who voted for Bush in 2004, knowing what we did at that point. But I also know that we have made it very difficult to pay attention, let alone to figure out the truth, not to mention figure out what to do about it. And calling those people "good Germans" is not helpful, nor is it especially fair. What the fuck does Rich expect them to be doing? Get arrested in massive numbers? Is he going to take care of their kids and pay their bills and explain it to their bosses?

None of this is as awful as what's happening to victims of our invasions. But the less power you have, the less right anyone has to call you a "good German" over not fixing it. Especially when you have no power by design, by the design at least in part of the people who pay Rich.

There really is a political class in this country. It consists of people who have the time and the resources to figure out what's going on and what to do about it. The average American does not belong to the political class, but people like Rich do. Even people like me do, and that's a pretty scary thought. I'm unemployed, and have plenty of time to sort through the lies Rich's industry feeds us, and even I don't know what the hell is happening most days let alone do I know what to do about it. And if even our Congresspeople can't stop what's going on in Iraq, is it remotely reasonable to blame people who barely have time to even vote?

And if you got the Frost reference, you belong to our political class too, and what are you doing about it? And why aren't you doing more, why haven't you gotten it stopped yet? Frank Rich wants to know.

Absolutely we should all be trying harder, but working-class Americans are not exactly the top of the blame list, and Rich's industry needs to stop making it harder for them to get the facts and get involved before he or anybody else gets to blame them.

Yes, people who ignore this stuff, or even support it, make me mad. but when you talk to them, you realize they're largely not bad people who want others to suffer. They're mostly decent people who have been told so many lies they don't know where to look for the truth. We have to fix that before we can expect more from them, let alone blame them for it.