This is what politics have come down to in my house.
America is a collapsing nation, there is no hiding that fact; the credit bubble and ballooning housing market have made unsustainable inflation commonplace and healthcare unaffordable, a Middle Eastern war has blurred the line between anti-terrorism and anti-OPEC, and bi-partisan politics have made legislation nearly impossible. And yet, in the midst of this great upheaval, my forerunning political query is not how officials will fix our nation, but how long they’ve received the Denny’s senior citizen discount.
It is truly a sad day for American politics. However it is said that all republics, all empires, all civilizations eventually have to die. In the twentieth century alone, the Austro-Hungarian, German, Russian and Ottoman empires all perished in the Great War; the British empire vanished within a quarter century of its finest hour; and the Soviet empire succumbed to a collapse in faith following the Cold War. (Buchanan 2-3). And as for America, maybe it’s our time; at least the total deterioration of public political knowledge puts us next in line.
Joe Bageant is the author of the recent enlightened commentary on conservative-sector demise in America, Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War. As a staunch liberal, he principally blames Republican involvement in, what he calls, the American hologram for our impending political doom.
Bageant grew up with conservative values. His people; the Scots-Irish of Winchester, Virginia, have always been a hard-working, self-sufficient group. However, over the years they have become economically and politically dominated by local business owners, mired in debt by unscrupulous mortgage agents, and crippled by a lack of education and healthcare. Furthermore, their primary means of understanding their oppression came from the lips of Rush Limbaugh, internet urban myths and local prayer revival; all which placed the blame for their problems squarely on the shoulders of the liberal elite.
All of these factors comprised the American hologram. This Matrix-like construct of media-protected corporate misdirection, wherein average Joes become trapped in a rigged economy that treats them as nothing more than ashtray-scented hillbillies who deserve to live in disintegrating double-wide trailers, is said, by Bageant, to be the root of all evil.
Anyone who thinks that these white conservatives, both working class and small business class, don’t care about anything outside their own zone of ignorance is only half right. The fact is that many of them cannot see outside that zone at all. They are too uneducated, too conditioned to the idea that being a consumer is the same thing as being a citizen. (Bageant 252)
It was not always like this, though; in fact, Republicans have been the favored, most forward-thinking party for the majority of American history. They burst into popular politics in 1856 as a third party with presidential candidate John C. Fremont under the platform “Free soil, free labor, free speech, free men, Fremont” (“The Republican Party-- GOP History” 2).
Although initially defeated in campaigns, the party’s founding principle, the need to restrict the expansion of human slavery, was unquestionably sound (Gould 484). Four years later, in 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the first Republican to snag the presidency. And ever since, for the majority of their time as a formal party, Republicans have been progressives.
The rightist reign continued through most of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, under notable names such as Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Regan and Bush. It was during these years that America became a true superpower (“The Republican Party-- GOP History” 5). Under conservative rule came an end to the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and victory in the Gulf War (Gould 446).
However, the elections of 2000 and 2004 resulted in partial demise of the Republican party. The 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, was the first since Eisenhower to enjoy a majority in both houses of Congress. He was elected based off of his strong belief system, which was a stark contrast to public views of the adulterer Bill Clinton, whose career had been tainted in the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
After the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, which spurred a national fear of organized terror groups, such as Al Qaeda, President Bush declared it to be U.S. policy to launch preemptive war on any rogue regime that sought weapons of mass destruction. The infamous “Bush Doctrine” was implemented on the neoconservative ideal that the U.S. should go to war to prevent any other nation from acquiring the power to challenge American hegemony in any region of the world (Buchanan 6). And thus has resulted a widespread distain for the warped views of the nation’s rightist elites:
Republicans honestly tell the world: “Listen in on my phone calls, piss-test me until I’m blind, kill and eat all of my neighbors right in front of my eyes, but show me the money! Let me escape with every cent I can kick out of the suckers, the taxpayers, and anybody else I can get a headlock on, legally or otherwise.” (Bageant 260)
George W. Bush left his post as President with a 34 percent approval rating, up five percent from his average Gallup Poll scores in the last quarter of his presidency. These scores were the third worst in history, just above Harry Truman’s 32 percent (after botching the Korean War and creating a tax meltdown) and Richard Nixon’s 24 percent (following his resignation due to the Watergate scandal). And while his approval rating has risen since Election Day, the vast majority of Democrats and independents disapproved of how he was handling the job, up until President Obama’s inauguration. (“Bush Presidency Closes With 34% Approval, 61% Disapproval” 2).
Conservative ignorance is not to be totally blamed for the impending collapse of the American empire, though. “[Conservatives are] cautious and traditional enough to vote for the man who looks strong enough to keep housing values up, to destroy [their] unseen enemies abroad, and to give God a voice in national affairs” (Bageant 8) Conservatives just want what they see as right for the nation, no matter how radical or imperialistic it may seem.
These ideas, in themselves, are not what threaten the country, though-- it is the passion behind them that does. The virtual political cataclysm that resulted from the last election, it is said, will cause it to be virtually impossible for the left to ignore the resentment among those in heartland, conservative America. Furthermore, the liberal mantra of hope and change is clearly motivating Republicans to “take a stand for their sake of the country” (Adamo 1).
This revolution is no bluff either; Republicans across the nation are calling for their own type of change.
Truly conservative Republicans are [now] presented with a golden opportunity to reclaim their party form their insipid “establishment” counterparts, and rework it into a vibrant and inspiring political force that can reassert the greatness of America, both in its international relations and in its domestic culture. This possibility is real, but it cannot be pursued by a political class that maintains its strategy of sitting the fence, and responding to every ensuing outrage from the Democrats by countering with watered down versions of the same abhorrent things. (Adamo 8)
When all is said and one, though, the fate of the Republican party will not hang on the balance of conservative moves, but rather on President Obama’s actions, no matter how fiercely rightists will dispute this statement. The new administration has already passed up a chance to assert the Bush Doctrine in North Korea, which may substantially weaken the strength of neoconservative values-- if it works. Furthermore, the success of Obama’s withdrawal program from the Middle East will either make or break Republican followings.
Yet, if Bageant professes one point, it is the notion that political unity can only be achieved through increased education, on both sides of the political divide.
No Democrat or leftie seems to grasp that much of working-class theocrats’ eagerness to join the corporatists at putting the liberal yuppies in their place is revenge based. Working-class people can perceive the upper-middle-class snobbery toward them. But that snobbery emerges only when the rough edges of the two worlds rub against each other. Most of the time the true middle and upper classes are scarcely aware that real working people exist. (Bageant 14)
And if the two halves do not recognize each other, they can never fully function in a codependent manner.
Ultimately though, American demise cannot be viewed in an overly-negative manner. The downfall of many of the twentieth century empires have, in fact, sparked favorable revolution and change-- the very thing Americans are looking for today. And although it is a sad day for politics when the basis for opinion comes in the form of “Old as fuck!” comments, it is a signal that change is needed. If the two parties don’t recognize their problems and break free of the American hologram now, they will forever become carcasses, hidden in history textbooks.
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