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?
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.
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.
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.
12 comments:
Thank you. I'm going to post an excerpt soon.
Thank you. This is pretty brilliant stuff. Frank Rich and millions of other folks should be reading it.
I'd like to add one thing. People and/or pundits have been bemoaning the increasing lack of civility in everyday life. There are a lot of reasons (as well as the problem of so many people being enthralled by an imaginary past of hard-workin', cheerful folks who always helped each other and never said mean things, which mystical past came to an abrupt and possibly demonically-inspired halt around 1965), like more work for less income, health care worries, etc.
But I think there's another thing fueling the road rage, the trolling - on-line and in general - and that is a pervasive, ill-defined consciousness of collective guilt.
We know we're not being the type of nation, the sort of people we're supposed to be. We know we're supposed to be better than this. We're supposed to be the kind of people who welcome huddled masses (not that it hasn't always been messy and contentious), who save suffering nations from cruel dictatorship, who quell violence, who rescue people from torturing secret police, who drop rescue packages containing food and blankets.
And we all know that we've really messed it up this time. Even if you're not informed of or inclined to take positions on our history with Nicaragua, Chile, Vietnam, United Fruit, et cetera, what's happening in Iraq, what's happening with returning veterans - we know. And it feels icky on an epic scale.
So for some of us, it means holding on to the lie even harder, because if we admit to it, everything shifts and we'd be forced to see a world we cannot bear to look at. For those of us who have rejected the lie, well, nothing seems to work. Not our votes, not our marginalized demonstrations (and personally I'm deathly tired of anti-war activities, scant as they are, getting co-opted by the ever-present little band of semi-pro Socialist/anarchist types. Notice they never seem to age? Is our whole country on a Hellmouth?), not our blogging or letters to the editor.
For many, many Americans, there's the sense that if we look at it (our presence in the world) full in its face, the rickety edifice is going to shatter. Turned to stone? Pillars of salt? Or just sharp, acid-like misery and shame?
It's not surprising that the freepers and wingnuts get shriller. That way they deflect it, and don't have to think so much about hell.
Larkspur
Great post. I read Frank Rich every week, and I admire him, but this particular column really hit me hard, and you've written a welcome corrective. Not that he's entirely wrong -- and you do make that clear too -- but that there's more to it than just what he wrote. Well, I'm tired and this isn't very clear, but thanks.
Let me add another thank you. It's refreshing when someone scratches below the surface and writes about what's there in such a lucid way.
Found you thru Newshoggers but will be back again often.
Thanks for the excellent analysis about Rich's column this week. I like Frank Rich, but I thought he missed the mark this time too.
It seems I am in a minority here but I really disagree with your thesis. I can understand your frustration at Frank Rich and in levels of culpability he is definitely at a much higher level than most of us. But I don't understand your annoyance at his comparison with "Good Germans." Couldn't what you said about us:
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?
be just as easily be said about the "Good Germans?" I doubt if the "Good Germans" had any more say over over their government than we do over ours. And they certainly faced greater threats to themselves if they spoke out.
Yes, I agree with you, people are mostly decent. But they are still culpable for what is done in their names. In the early seventies I recall meeting Brits who had kind of heard what their government was doing in Northern Ireland, Iranians who were vaguely aware of the SAVAK, Pakistani's who had heard that there might be something bad being done by their army in what was then East Pakistan, and on and on. Very rarely was the person I talking to a bad person, and each time when pushed their reaction was about what you give here. Life is hard, the government lies but so does everyone else. Who are we to believe etc. etc. But by not making more of an effort to get information and not doing whatever little they could to help I think they became, however marginally, culpable. I think if Rich's article makes more people aware of their culpability, it is a very good thing. Being basically decent does not give you a free pass when evil is done around you and you close your eyes.
What can we do? In most cases very little. But it is our responsibility to do that very little we can do.
A lot of new voices, welcome. Poke around, follow the links, make some nice paper models, snicker at the zombies, try not to cook anything.
empty, I have to say that I don't disagree with you. And I don't mean that in my usual of-200-minds-about-everything way.
The thoughts I had on this column are scattered across at least three blogs by now, so it's probably even more difficult to nail down what I was getting at anyway, but my point wasn't that we're not collectively responsible for this war, and the other things our government is doing in our name. We are. All of us.
But it's not quite that simple. Steve made what is probably the best possible point on this one, that our president and other elected officials have already demonstrated a complete lack of interest in the opinions of the citizenry.
So while I agree with your point that it's our responsibility to do whatever we can, I don't know, and I suspect Rich doesn't know, what that would be. Protests, even those on a massive scale, haven't worked. Voting the bums out hasn't worked. Letter campaigns, petitions, city council resolutions supporting withdrawal or impeachment, none of this has worked.
How do we make them listen to us? At this point the only things I can think of are to replace them all--repubs and dems--with new grass roots anti-war activists; a nationwide work stoppage; a widespread refusal to pay taxes; and mass arrests in addition to mass protests. It might get their attention.
I don't see any of it as very practical for most people. Are people *more* culpable because they won't get arrested, knowing that their kids will end up in foster care and they may never get them back? Because they won't lose their jobs and the attendant health insurance by striking?
They are, to some extent, responsible. Our government is us, for better or worse. But they are not, to my mind, more responsible for stopping this than those of us who have more time to be more involved. That's you, and me, and everyone else who reads blogs. If you have the time to read blogs, you have the time to do more than do the people I described.
Rich seems to be assigning guilt wholesale, without any attempt to distinguish between actions and passivity, nor to determine motives. That's what I'm objecting to. There's an incredibly long list of people who are more responsible for this mess than what Rich is referring to as "the good Germans", and I have the impression from his column that he blames equally everyone who is not actively for the war.
I'll take my share of the blame. But I have a great deal of free time and I don't have major financial worries, so my share of the blame is significantly more than that of a lot of other people who aren't actively supporting the war but who simply have no time to sort through the propaganda Rich's industry feeds them.
You say:
What can we do? In most cases very little. But it is our responsibility to do that very little we can do.
That's exactly right. But an awful lot of people already are doing the most they can, even if that's almost nothing. It's not right to lump them in with those, including me, who can do more but aren't.
That may not clarify my point much, and you may very well reject it anyway. But I appreciate your comments as they help me to sort out better what I was trying to say.
In a way, people in other countries did make this distinction ("I like Americans, I just don't like their government"). Although it was harder to do this after the 2004 election.
Sidhe: Thanks for engaging. I read your comments at No More Mister Nice Blog as well and I do understand where you are coming from. I have two major problems with your viewpoint. Before I go into them let me apologize in advance if the tone of what I say seems harsh and self righteous - it is my clumsiness with the medium rather than any intent. I am an old dog learning new tricks, and not doing it very well. I hope you will make allowances. So here we go.
1. There is an implicit distinction in what you say between "us" and "the public." I do not see the distinction. I am middle aged middle IQ individual with kids, a mortgage, elders needing care, worries about college for the kids, and other things that are more specific to my condition just like any other member of the public. If I can pay attention and figure things out anyone can. To think otherwise would be granting myself a degree of self-regard which seems somewhat narcissistic. More importantly it leads to isolation from my fellows and that in turn leads to a feeling of powerlessness. It is a self emasculating way of thinking. One outcome of indulging in this way of thinking is that this feeling of powerlessness then justifies inaction. It becomes alright to sit around and bemoan the situation without taking the next logical step and taking action.
2. Which brings me to my second point. Historical accounts are very selective. When you see accounts of struggles such as the civil rights movement you see the actions which in turn led to others which led to success and you have a feeling of inevitability. From the point of view of the people involved success was not inevitable and actions were often futile. In fact, many, many, many, of the actions did not result in any success and a great deal of heartbreak. The problem with understandably selective historical accounts is that it makes it seem that a path existed to the goal and all the participants had to do was to find that path. In fact actions sometimes create openings along which we move, and most actions do not result in much movement. In matters of politics, unless you have recently pissed of Apollo you cannot know for certain what the future holds and whether your actions will get you to your goal. To ask for a non-existent map then becomes another excuse for inaction. And finally, history, elevates the action of "leaders." I have a great deal of fondness for Dr. King but I don't confuse him with the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement was a large number of people each doing his or her little thing the totality of which was the movement. So, you do your little thing. Whether it be a letter to the editor or an interjection in a conversation, working within your limitations. I know I have neither the intellectual strength nor the courage to be a "leader." But within my limitations I can do the best possible. And I can only do that if I recognize my culpability and my duty to uphold what I believe to be right and true. By not making excuses (for others and therefore for myself) I make sure I do not evade even the little things that are possible to me.
I am not responsible for what I cannot do but I am responsible for what I can do. All of us operate under restrictions, moral, physical, and intellectual. Personally, I cannot envision denying a person their humanity. That then limits the actions I can take - violence, physical or intellectual, becomes a non-option. I won't go into my intellectual and physical limitations - but you can see how each "limitation" restricts the kinds of actions one can take. But in the end one has some freedom, however circumscribed, and it is ones responsibility to use that freedom to do what one thinks is right. Whether that will in the end lead to the desired goal becomes in some sense a secondary concern. That is why the "Good German" analogy is an apt one. It is within the ability of most people to know what is being done in their name. By actively avoiding knowing they are culpable of exactly that action of avoidance.
I don't know if you will return to read this. It has been some time since you posted. But if you do, I hope this will make some sense.
Regards.
Headed back to the vet in a bit, but I did want to make a couple of points before I forget them. (An ever-present probability with the migraine I've got.)
I do read every comment. They come to my email. It lets me keep an eye out for spam or other antisocial behavior, and it also reminds me people are there, which I'm currently *just this side* of thinking that may be a good thing. So, if you post it, I'll read it. I may or may not have anything worth saying about it, but that's more a reflection on me than anyone else.
I very rarely take things personally. This will undoubtedly annoy you when I aggravate you into telling me to fuck off, but I haven't gotten to where that's enough of a problem for people who aren't me to be willing to ease it by making it a problem for people who are.
I can't help thinking, empty, that you and I are just shy of missing each other's point. Like one of those stupid sitcoms where people keep leaving the room to look for someone just before the someone comes back from looking for them, you know?
This is more than likely my fault, and I can possibly help by noting that I object to the idiomatic use of "the good Germans" more than the comparison, which standing alone is probably valid. I tend to feel the phrase is demeaning and facile when applied to the original targets as well, for the same sorts of reasons. I read something at Orcinus the other day that I intended to link to, which may help explain why I'm inclined to be sympathetic, or it may not. In any event, Orcinus is well worth reading no matter what the subject, so your link is here.
Again, though, I do believe we all bear responsibility. If nothing else, this is being done in our name. But I believe that responsibility is not a matter of "guilty" or "innocent" but a matter of degree. And the people Rich seemed to be trying to shame strike me as among the least responsible for the mess. That was, more or less, my major and possibly only point. I know I expressed it poorly, I express everything poorly these days.
Beyond that, and this is entirely a matter of personal opinion where there's no right or wrong, I've come to the conclusion after some years of believing the opposite that there is something counter-intuitively self-righteous about believing oneself to be the pass/fail baseline of humanity.
I've mostly come to this view as a result of diet commercials in which people say things like "If *I* can lose weight, *anybody* can!" Which is transparently stupid. Nobody knows everyone else's circumstances, and while there logically must be a baseline person for any given issue, there's only one of them out of the seven billion of us, and odds are strongly against it being me, or you, or anyone we know.
And while I agree that most people could have, for example, sacrificed the parent teacher conference in order to learn that people died in Abu Ghraib, I personally can't blame them for not having done so. History may well, but I personally won't.
That said, you're right, I have an us and them mentality on a lot of things. In some ways I'm a them--average Americans dealing with hailstorms of shit every hour--in the majority of ways at this point in my life I'm an us. I'm one of the fortunate ones who doesn't have to worry about how to pay the mortgage, to take care of the kids, to run myself ragged at work. That understanding, that I'm comparatively blessed, colors a lot of how I think.
When I was working, I was a motel maid. With a couple of college-bound summer-job exceptions, all of my co-workers were very much them. They were working two and three jobs, commuting by bus, caring for extended families, sending money home to even less fortunate family members, hoping like hell they'd die before they were too badly messed up physically from the backbreaking labor to collect a paycheck anymore.
It's impossible for me to believe that any of those people could have done something about the current political climate, assuming they're still alive, which in some cases I'd rate as a "maybe" at best. So reading Rich's column, I thought of them, and that made me angry. They deserve some blame, perhaps. We all do. But they don't deserve to be singled out in the pages of a paper that spent years lying to them in the first place. Of course, they don't read the paper (or often much English) and they are nowhere near "middle class" anyway, so maybe I shouldn't have thought of them. Rich may have been talking about the middle class, but I tend not to consider them the political class, either. That, for me, requires resources and leisure the middle class largely lacks.
Anyway, stick around, empty. You're welcome here, assuming you're want to be, and I am glad for your thoughts on this or anything else.
But it may be worth keeping in mind that the bulk of my posts here are about hallucinated zombies, and considering whether there are more rational people to attempt to persuade of serious concepts. I'm impressed by your efforts, but constantly bemused when people take me seriously. I *am* serious, but that's only "serious for a given value of rational".
I hope you, the critter, and the zombies are all doing well.
thebewilderness
...and anyway, D.Sidhe, hell, yes. I check your blog regularly. For, like, months. I'm not saying you have to post, because you don't have to do anything you don't feel like doing.
But I lurve you. Hey! How about an Open Thread? Come on. It'd be fun.
Larkspur
Post a Comment