An expose on the Left
April 09, 2002 ~ 10:22 p.m.
We arrived back from sunny Mallorca, Spain last night. Not to brag (yeah, right!), but the weather, scenery and most of the people were lovely. My Spanish came back to me after only a few hours there�I managed to impress a couple from Manchester when I ordered the bill at a seaside restaurant. It was a load of fun and just what I needed to recharge my batteries before starting my new day job tomorrow.
Well, here, at long last, is Andrew Sullivan�s column from The Times that I promised earlier. Whenever I am depressed about all the blame and other assorted crap that gets dished out to my homeland and my people on a regular basis, a good thorough read of The Times (along with the rambunctious but conservative-minded tabloid The Sun ) never fails to cheer me up and restore my faith in Great Britain. Without doubt, this paper is the only one I trust and the only representative of true objective journalism that exists in this land. The following review of Michael Moore�s newest book proves the point.
The column is very long, so I�ve had to truncate it. However, the main points are all here:
America�s left surrenders itself to the giant sulkby ANDREW SULLIVAN, originally published by The Times, March 31, 2002
The need to rebel is something most of us have felt at one or more points in our lives. There are, indeed, moments when a country or society become so oppressively of one mind that a feisty individualist feels hard put not to start screaming in the streets. So you have to feel at least a little sympathy for the American left in the wake of September 11. This has been a very, very hard period, and the strains are beginning to show.
Sure, thousands of people were killed, but the tragedy didn�t stop there. After all, the loathed President George W. Bush performed quite well in the aftermath, overthrew the Taliban and saw his ratings jump. Patriotism�the display of which nauseates the left-wing intelligentsia�proliferated from suburb to inner city. Military budgets went up and presidential speeches became rallying cries again. And all this happened just when the left was licking its chops at the prospect of eviscerating a man it regarded as an illegitimate, unelected, moronic puppet of evil corporate interests.
Some left-wingers went undercover; others blurted out what they truly felt (that America deserved to get bloodied) only to find public derision so intense they retreated to their bunkers. And then a happy few decided�what the hell?�that with little to lose, they might as well go further and not only call Bush illegitimate, but the war on terror a convenient excuse to ratchet up defence spending, rape the environment and give Donald Rumsfeld the political version of Viagra.
Exhibit A in the latter category is one Michael Moore. His new book, Stupid White Men, has soared to the top of The New York Times bestseller list. Moore is best known as the director of a documentary about redundancies, Roger and Me. The film mocked both corporate leaders and the ordinary Americans na�ve enough to believe that hard work might bring them financial rewards and a leg up the social hierarchy.
This general belief in the inherent iniquity of American capitalism, the evil of all corporations and the elite conspiracies to defraud ordinary Americans are all classic tropes of the paranoid American left. And Moore endorses every single one of them. There�s almost a beauty in the way he backs up every left-wing prejudice, from hatred of successful white people, to hostility to car owners, the ability to drop Sweden into every argument about the welfare state, and the notion that capitalism is a zero-sum game in which every gain for the rich is always a loss for the poor.
Alongside this theological zeal goes a general belief in the idiocy and indolence of most Americans, and the stupidity and malevolence of their leaders. If you�re a Guardian reader, this book�s for you.
There�s no point in seeking a coherent thread through Moore�s book�it�s a rant, a series of rhetorical explosions, fantasies and occasional facts that build upon each other through repetition rather than logic. The notions that evil corporations, for example, actually employ and help people, or that shares in them enrich others, are nowhere entertained. It is also a given in Moore�s universe that, despite exhaustive media recounts that have found no such thing, Bush lost the election and his presidency is illegitimate.
But Moore is equally furious at the Democrats. He describes Bill Clinton as one of the most successful Republican presidents in recent years. His contempt for Al Gore, despite believing in his election victory, is arguably more intense than his antipathy to Bush.
�Friends,� he [Moore] belabours, �when are we going to stop kidding ourselves? Clinton, and most other contemporary Democrats, did not and will not do what is best for us or the world we live in. We don�t pay their bill�the top 10 percent do, and it is their will that will always be done. I know you already know this; it�s just hard to say it because the alternative looks so much like ... Dick Cheney.�
Moore�s argument, like that of most purist class-war leftists, is therefore oddly disempowering. He�s always calling for some sort of mass revolution, but there is no institution capable of delivering it that isn�t already corrupted by Moore�s exacting standards.
He supported a purist left-wing candidate in 2000, Ralph Nader, who took enough votes from Al Gore to hand George Bush the Oval Office. His desire to turn the United States into the Netherlands overnight makes his politics more than a little quixotic. So his politics become a little like the politics of the far right under Bill Clinton�an endless tirade designed to appeal solely to those who already agree, offering no tangible alternative to the current system. Moore�s politics are, in the words of Philip Roth, �the combination of embitterment and not thinking.�
There is also barely a mention in Moore�s book about the current war on terrorism. You can understand why. It raises questions the left simply doesn�t want to answer. Was the American intervention in Afghanistan, which many leftists opposed, a liberating mission after all? How can leftists bemoan the removal of an oppressive, sexist, homophobic tyranny? But how at the same time could they support a war conducted by a president inimical to their beliefs and interests?
On the opposite side of the spectrum between reason and unreason, the eminent liberal political theorist Michael Walzer has just written an essay worrying about exactly this kind of leftist surrealism. Unlike Moore, he�s less concerned with a form of purist performance art than how the left can actually change America, if it hates her so.
�The truth is,� Walzer writes, �the guilt produced by living in such a country and enjoying its privileges makes it impossible to sustain a decent ... politics. Maybe festering resentment, ingrown anger and self-hate are the inevitable result of the long years spent in fruitless opposition to the global reach of American power. Certainly, all those emotions were plain to see in the left�s reaction to September 11, in the failure to recognize the horror of the attack, the barely concealed glee that the imperial state had finally got what it deserved.�
This anti-American nihilism is exactly what some parts of the left sought refuge in as terrorists killed thousands of their fellow citizens. In one gesture, such leftists both showed how far gone they were and also how unhinged from most Americans they had become.
Walzer sees the deeper problem as an inheritance from the new left of the 1960s, a left that still cannot see religious motives for terror, for example, preferring to view Islamo-fascism with some kind of Marxist subtext, to the point of misreading the nature of the terrorist threat altogether. And he sees the endless legacy of defeat for the American left as a debilitatingly alienating experience: �Many left intellectuals live in America like internal aliens, refusing to identify with their fellow citizens, regarding any hint of patriotic feeling as a surrender to jingoism. That�s why they had such difficulty responding emotionally to the attacks of September 11 or joining in the expressions of solidarity that followed.�
Walzer is surely right. If the congressional Democrats are offering now mere opportunism, then the intellectual left has failed to come up with anything more persuasive. So the market is left to the subliterate bitter-mongers such as Moore, men of the left for whom cynicism, rather than decency, is almost instinctual. But cynicism and alienation do not make for a coherent liberal critique of the current administration or the war. And American democracy�and the world�is poorer for the lack of that debate.�
� M.E.M.
|
[Sign My Guestbook]
[View My Guestbook]
|
Copyright � 2001-2007 by M.E. Manning. All material is written by me, unless explicitly stated otherwise by use of footnotes or bylines. Do not copy or redistribute without my permission.
AMERICA FOR TRUE AMERICANS!