Now, it seems the Tea Party and its truly whacky members are gaining more and more clout and power with Christine O'Donnell winning the primary in Delaware (apparently the Republicans aren't right-wing enough). Coupled with Pastor Terry Jones' planned 'Burn a Koran Day' and the almost inevitable arrival of strong and vocal anti-Islam movements in the US, it seems that the USA are going through a development that is not merely standard American difference and eccentricity.
The economic crisis, the increasing power of fundamentalists and extremists, and ethnic tensions in the southern-western states of the country bode ill for a country that was founded both on violence (the legacy may return) but also on openness and frontier thinking. The possibility of serious civil strife suddenly seems less of a fantasy and more of a possibility.
While some are interpreting the rise of the Tea Party as a way of splitting the right-wing vote (this may be true in the very short-term), I would see it as further evidence for a real inward turn and signs of an implosion within American society. The USA are becoming disunited, which may be funny for about half a second, but in reality places 300 million with lots of weapons and diverse and transnational agendas in a dangerous position of disunity and tension.
Perhaps this sounds melodramatic, but one cannot underestimate the toxic mix of real economic hardship, ethnic and social tensions, and fundamentalism (that and a lot of guns, as mentioned). The primaries will be interesting indeed.
26 comments:
You're not wrong olching. I think the bubble has well and truly burst and the splatter will be internal strife.
I not over there, living their lives, so as an outsider I imagine that the American desire to impose ideals externally has lost its foothold and no doubt they'll turn inwards with gusto(its genesis embedded in a civil war which extrapolated into the political division of the country in the mismatch of internal opinion since Vietnam).
But *they* are not faceless, and not without internal reflection - (Movies: American Beauty 1999, Elephant 2003, Novel: DeLillo - Dangling Man 2007 - dozens of great reflective works to choose from). I just hope that innovative Americans (as opposed to the greedy) can imagine a way to help the *downtrodden* (aka people that aren't successful no matter how hard they try when the system sets out to defeat them) and find a way that doesn't say if you're poor you're a loser - rather find more ways that allow an idea that if you're interested in me then I'm interested in you.
Yeah - and fuck the whole religion aspect - big ask for a major chunk of US society.
Apropos - have you seen 'The Blind Side'? I'd be interested to know what other people think - I'm ambivalent about the message conveyed.
cheers parallax
The always interesting and antagonistic Walter Chaw reviews The Blindside here: http://filmfreakcentral.net/screenreviews/blindside.htm
Chaw is probably the best single critic dealing with racial subtext in American movie.
Thanks Arlvy - so it's not just me imagining a freaky sub-text: 'Better to be a white, ultra-conservative Christian asshole than a black anything.'
And yet it was showered with awards - like it was a feel-better 'this is how *we* (Americans) display our *christian* nature - ergo: we are true socialists'.
Hmmm - there's a lot more shifting of perspective required if this is perceived as the cultural pinnacle of realignment in US society.
Hi Parallax,
You are right - of course Americans have agency. Films are one way of expressing this, but don't forget that films are themselves part of a Hollywood industry that has done very little in terms of intellectual or social advancement (for want of a better expression).
And, as Arlvy points out, even those films designed to be critical are in fact smug or self-fulfilling prophecies. The other dreadful one that springs to mind is Avatar - a dangerous racist fantasy, as Zizek put it.
I'll still have to watch The Blind Side though, just so I've seen it.
Whatever the case, the situation in the US is frightening indeed, and it's as you say: Even those sections that should be natural allies of European leftists are in fact decidedly dodgy themselves, let alone the nutty anti-masturbationists winning primaries.
Olching, I don't doubt your oracle of despair when it comes to America's immediate domestic future.
Films, as you say, are one way of expressing this; but dissident voices do exist - both as film-makers and as critics in response to films/poems/literature.
To say: 'but don't forget that films are themselves part of a Hollywood industry that has done very little in terms of intellectual or social advancement' is, in a way, a blanket dismissal of the role interpretative literature has to play in understanding how people react for and against the way in which their lives/society is portrayed.
It's a bit like saying: 'journalism is in itself part of the Murdoch industry that has done very little in terms of intellectual or social advancement.'
Both statements are true in a sense that there's a load of dross being sprayed around - but we shouldn't tar all film-makers or journalists with the same brush - and we shouldn't imagine a mass of viewers and readers taken-in by the dross. If we do (imagine that) then we're no different to/from the purveyors of crap that think that the bulk of people are a blind mass waiting to be mesmerised by fancy words and images. It's an insult to anyone/everyone getting on with their lives.
But - I do understand the deft art of persuasion through images and words and I think we should be on the backs of greed/spin/power merchants ripping off their sheep's clothing to expose the voracious wolf beneath - at every opportunity.
Avatar - yes, indeed. I remember that you'd already exposed your discomfort about this film in your Jan blog. It wasn't until March that Zizek was proclaiming, in the New Statesman, that 'Avatar's fidelity to the old formula of creating a couple, its full trust in fantasy, and its story of a white man marrying the aboriginal princess and becoming king, make it ideologically a rather conservative, old-fashioned film.'
I think in your blog we'd already decided that Avatar was a dangerous racist fantasy without my mate Slavoj pointing the way. Zizek - a master at cultural interpretation - is not always in front of the queue, pointing the way.
Yes, do watch 'The Blind Side' - if only to despair at the blatant manipulation of what is *good* and by default what is *damaged*.
cheers, parallax
Parallax,
You are too kind to give me primacy over Slavoj.
I suppose my point about films being part of the problem is this: Most films that are referred to in the US are Hollywood based, so probably are part of the 'system'. But perhaps you are right: It is an easy way of transmitting any ideas or images. Maybe, however, it's worth exploring these outside of Hollywood but within the US (i.e. independent yet established)...but then these don't have quite the reach either...
I will watch The Blind Side at some point (and am bracing myself).
Hi guys - I've only seen the trailer for the Blind Side. It's enough - the black man is saved by becoming a sports star, not a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher or entrepreneur. I've often seen black writers and community workers saying this sort of thing is a major part of the problem - black boys are diverted away from study to seek excellence in a field in which very, very few can ever succeed. So the Blind Side is part of the problem - a big part of the problem.
Another excellent posting Olching, many thanks
Thanks Edwin. Just read your piece on CiF. There really are a lot of arseholes out there when you read the comments.
Many thanks for your support Olching - was heartening! Some Cif regulars are blaming Times paywall refugees for the upsurge in quite nasty posters - I doubt that myself, but whatever the explanation god it's depressing.
Off-topic, but I thought that this might amuse you, olching. Top Cif poster and political analyst brusselsexpats has given you a very complimentary namecheck on the current YouTellUs thread.
He is one of the most intelligent of posters on here and has come on wonderfully in the past few years.
Well done! You should be very proud. :0)
and has come on wonderfully in the past few years
A well-deserved compliment! Even though one might make the same with regard to a shrub :)
Well, my ego is exploding.
Dead right about Cif. I haven't been there in a long time. Each time I sneak a look the comments are depressing. Really depressing.
What has always interested me about American politics is the rapid decline of the critical mass of socialists and communists in the first half of the 20th centiry. In the 1904 elections Eugene Debs's socialist party was a strong contender. The decline of the US communist party correlates with the revelations of Stalinist terror in the 1930s, but the decline of socialism correlates with the rise of the Hollywood film industry, radio, TV and marketing. I often think that liberal intellectual culture, now obsessed with discourse, micro-power and identity politics, underestimates the raw neo-sovereign power of mass-mediated ideology; in fact one could argue that these new and emonently recuperable forms of pseudo-radicalism are themselves the product of the triumph of that ideology.
- questionnaire
... that's eminently, of course.
'In the 1904 elections Eugene Debs's socialist party was a strong contender. '
Didn't San Francisco have a socialist mayor around this time?
Re Cif its not just Bru saying nice things about Olching - Oz and others are adding their praise on whaddaya (with Oz maybe a bit restrained but then he also likes Peter Bracken).
Fascinating comments here from a guy who edits the Socialist Party of America wiki page -
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:eopjSYD8_WkJ:www.politicaldog101.com/%3Fp%3D14300+san+francisco+socialist+mayor&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&client=safari
Quote
'Frank Zeidler, recently departed and the first Presidential candidate (1972) of the revived but tiny Socialist Party USA, was Mayor of Milwaukee until 1960.
There were also Socialist mayors, at least briefly, of Berkeley, California (Rev. J. Stitt Wilson who put much needed storm-sewers into the working-class West Berkeley flatlands by San Francisco Bay, giving rise to the phrase “Sewer Socialism”) and Schenectady, New York (Rev. George Lunn, who left the Socialist Party after losing a bid for reelection and later became a progressive Democratic Congressman).
For an account of Schenectady’s socialist mayor, see:
http://www.cresswellslist.com/ballots2/lunn.htm
When I sent this to a Providence City Councilman who grew up in Schenectady, he replied
The socialist mayor period was legendary in Schenectady when I was growing up there. In the Italian neighborhood where I spent my early childhood the older folks used to refer to is as “the time when the trash men would come
endquote
I visited the US for the first time in my life this year, and the first thing that struck me, was just how "foreign" it was. You think that just because they speak English, and you've seen all the movies, that the US is somehow familiar, so it's a bit of an eye-opener when you get there. They're different, and they're not particularly interested in "us" either (it's easy to dismiss this lack of curiosity as "ignorance" but in reality there are a whole host of complex geographical and historical reasons why this should be so).
I wouldn't be so worried about the US tendency towards insularity were it not for the fact that it would leave a vacancy for the position of global hegemon. When all is said and done, I count myself fairly lucky to be alive at a time when the US is the most powerful nation on earth (especially when you consider the other contenders that "civilized" Europe gave us in the 20th Century were Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany), and when I look at who might be waiting in the wings I don't feel particularly reassured.
The thing is, that the world evolves, but not necessarily in the way that Right-Thinking Euro-centric Liberal Progressives think that it ought...
Oh Pat, honestly, there you go again with your least-worst, best-of-a-bad-bunch Burkeian-Churchillian relativism measured against the symbolic 'absolute evil' of long-gone forms of ugly enforced nationalist-collectivism.
You Tories are the original pragmatic utilitarian relativists. No hopes, no standards and no ideals, with any lingering romanticism firmly entrenched in the past.
Come on, you can do better than this.
- Q
Q: "Come on, you can do better than this."
I rather doubt that, actually....
However, I'll willingly concede your "relativistic" (although I'm not sure how this fits in with your "absolute evil"), and "pragmatic", but I'll baulk at "utilitarian" which is way to geeky and rationalistic for your "proper" conservative.
Indeed, if I'm honest, the only thing that really holds us back from the precipice of nihilism abyss is a certain reverence for tradition and custom.
But I'm quite comfortable with that.
Oh, and for what it's worth, I think CiF has become pretty rubbish of late too, and I seldom post there. I'm not so bothered by an influx of "right-wingers" (I wouldn't be, would I?), but I have noticed that the terms on which the "debate" is carried out has gone into steep decline.
This can to my mind when I recently dug out an article by Olching's chum Neil Clark (in which he was bigging up Viktor Orban, of all people), and what struck me about the responses was how measured and considered they were, and how there was a real attempt to engage.
Now, all we seem to get are posters typing to outdo each with their overblown rhetoric, with very little genuine at dialogue.
My own pet theory is that all this started when they introduced the "recommend" function. This has subtly altered (nudged ?!?) posting behaviour insofar as, either consciously and consciously, people post with the aim of garnering as much kudos (in the form of "recommends") as possible, and a bit of hyperbolic invective, it seems, sadly, is the best way of achieving this.
@Questionnaire:
Thanks and I largely agree. What is also interesting is that US socialists of the Twentieth century are also airbrushed out of the US canon (e.g. Theodore Dreiser who wasn't even that radical).
@Pat:
Yes, a similar retort to you as Questionnaire...it rests on that horrible assumption that there are merely two inevitable outcomes, which is of course fatalistic and somewhat depressing.
On CiF: It is a joke. I very rarely comment and when I do, the level of debate always leads me to hit out, so I should probably leave it. Maybe it was the recommend button, maybe the flood of articles, maybe the Matt Seaton attitude to make it a click-happy site; in any case, there is little mileage in posting there anymore.
As someone who lurks on CIF (I in no way feel knowledgeable enough to get involved in the debates unless it's in the film section of the culture blogs) I have to say I really enjoy reading the words of commentators like Olching, Edwin Moore, Lester Jones, Peter Guillam etc and also of people like Pat Davers and Derek Bloom even though I don't agree politically with the last two. It'd be a great shame if those kinds of people left the site entirely.
Arlvy,
Thanks for your comment. But CiF really isn't worthwhile anymore. There are very few potentially interesting debates, merely loud idiotic claims with no substance.
///
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