US Public Looking for Exits at Bush Melodrama

There are some signs that the American public is tired of the three-year run of the grand Either/Or Order/Chaos melodrama staged by the present "government." A morality play with spectacular special effects -- the Shock and Awe sequence hasn't been equaled -- it appears that the public has finally seen through creaky good vs. evil, either/or dramaturgy and is finally heading for the exits. With more than half of Americans expressing doubts about the reasons given for going to war in Iraq, with more than six in 10 saying that we need to leave Iraq, and with similar numbers saying they disapprove of how Bush is doing his job, it appears that the curtain may be coming down on the latest conservative coup de theatre.

As a kid growing up in Southern California in the late 50s and early 60s I experienced some of the earliest productions of this Either/Or theatrical troupe. It was during the high water mark of American liberalism, when the first blooms of the "red state" tide that since has come to infect American political discourse were beginning to become manifest.

Within shouting distance of my neighborhood in Pasadena was that breeding ground of anti-liberalism, Orange County, teeming with pro-Goldwaterites, hell and damnation religionists, and John Birchers. My father, whose own father was a railroad man and supporter of Eugene Debs, was particularly irritated by the John Birchers. Having grown up in a company town in upstate New York, where to be anything but a Republican was to be nearly inconceivable, my father thought that when he moved us to Southern California he would at last find like-minded neighbors. California, then under the stewardship of Democrat Edmund Brown was a showcase for Democratic liberal government. The economy was still enjoying the post-war boom, a boom in California fueled in large measure by federal defense spending. My father's long-term plan was to send me, my brothers and sister to the excellent state universities, free to qualified state residents.

While most of our neighbors were indeed on the liberal side of the political spectrum, close by in Orange County we could heard raised voices of Birchites shouting about a Communist conspiracy overtaking a weak, liberal America. My father was particularly annoyed by the furor the Birchites whipped up over the fluoridation of tap water. Water fluoridation, according to the Birchites, was part of the worldwide Communist conspiracy to poison Americans. And not just our minds as McCarthy and Nixon warned, but our actual American minds and actual American bodies. My father, who as a dentist had seen the positive effects of fluoride on his patients' teeth, could not believe that a policy which had clear, visible and demonstrable benefits, could be opposed on the clearly irrelevant grounds that it was a Communist plot. It was just plain crazy, he thought, but in fact, under the pressure of the Birchites' pamphleteering and local publicity stunts, a number of my father's patients became worried enough about it to ask about the dangers of fluoride in the drinking water.

Looking back on it now, I can see with the benefit of hindsight that water fluoridation is a good example of a highly effective right-wing wedge issue. And this is instructive because we can see in it many aspects of the right-wing mentality and right-wing theater which has now come to infect the American mind / body politic. A collection of resentments against science, modernity, "liberal secularism," the welfare state, liberal experts and elites, this early form of Orange County conservatism identified all of these entities as contributing to the rising tide of rising tide of Godless Communism. It occurs to me that one can see in its nascent form how this collection of resentments were crafted into a powerful scare campaign that called into question whose side the government was really on, and, in so doing, drew together people with disparate beliefs into the same anti-liberal, anti-democratic tent for a satisfying Either/Or Good vs. Evil melodrama.

The libertarian conservatives were perhaps drawn in because fluoride was introduced into the water supply by what they would call "government fiat." Religious conservatives were perhaps drawn in because putting fluoride into the water was something that only socialist liberals, dupes of Godless communists, would do. Others were undoubtedly drawn in on the politics of class resentment, rejecting fluoridation under the belief that liberal elites and experts and scientists were always trying to force something down their throats of solid American citizens (in this case literally) just like Communists did to those brainwashed people in Russia. What was particularly powerful about the scare politics of anti-fluoridation was that water, drinking water, the very basis of life had been altered from its pristine American state by a stealthy, implacable Communist-Liberal-Socialistic-Elitist-Scientistic conspiracy. So cunning was this evil conspiracy that it had already succeeded in penetrating the bodies of right-thinking Americans!

In retrospect we can see in this campaign how right-wing scare campaigns target the body to induce maximum terror and obedience. How many times have you heard this justification for the war in Iraq: "We've got to fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here." Justifications like this get to people on the visceral level, short-circuiting any kind of commonsense thinking about what the chances really are of having to "fight them over here." Pretty darn low, I'd say. The Weapons of Mass Destruction justification for the war in Iraq targeted the body, too, of course. The horrific effects of chemical weapons were invoked first as teaser, then for the first scene in the first act of the main feature, we were told a tale of a nuclear attack on America coordinated by the stealthy, anti-Christian agents of Al Queda.

Other right-wing wedge issues that target the body are the anti-gay rights crusade which exclaims with a mixture of revulsion and prurient interest: "how could people do that with their God-given bodies!"; the pro-life rights of brain-dead people issue which at its core asks: "would you want to soulless technicians and liberal judges and other people who aren't your family and don't believe in miracles to have the right to kill you if you were in a hospital like Terry Schiavo was." There's the anti-evolutionist / Intelligent Design wedge: "you secular humanists can't tell me that I 'evolved' out of cosmic soups and monkeys, because my body is made in God's image by God Himself." Then, of course, there's the WMD of wedge issues, abortion: "your body is God's property, and you must not do anything with your body that God wouldn't like, because property rights are sacred rights."

All of these wedge issues also rely on what Richard J. Bernstein in "THE ABUSE OF EVIL, The Corruption of Politics and Religion since 9/11" (Polity, 2005) calls "the Cartesian Anxiety." The Cartesian Anxiety is, according to Bernstein the "quest for some fixed ground, some stable rock upon which we can secure our lives against the vicissitudes that constantly threaten us." (page 27) He goes on to say "…that those today who claim religious or moral certainty for dividing the world into the forces of good and the forces of evil are shaped by this Cartesian Anxiety." (page 28). The Cartesian anxiety is "premised on what [the philosopher Descartes] took to be the grand Either/Or that we confront: Either solid foundations and indubitable knowledge Or a swamp of unfounded and ungrounded opinion." (page 27).

Our current president, "The President of Good and Evil" according to philosopher Peter Singer, exploits the Cartesian Anxiety to pander to his more credulous supporters, and to assail his many critics. This is a president who is infallible, remember: he cannot recall any mistakes that he has made while president. It is a point of pride with this president that once he makes a decision, the decision stays made no matter what, regardless of changing circumstances, new evidence, and especially not shifting or evolving public opinion. To "cut and run" from the mess he and his cronies have made in Iraq would be to make the mistake that others made in Vietnam: not having enough backbone. This is a president whose heart is the ultimate arbiter when it comes to making decisions about whom to appoint to political office: i.e., Harriet Meiers and so many others. And once he's listened to his heart, his backbone takes over.

This government consistently frames every debate with the grand Either/Or. It also makes constant reference to the body. In this case, it goes something like this: We know what's right. Because we are right, people who doubt we are evil because doubters' doubts call into question the entire enterprise of freedom and democracy and life and God's will and all the bedrock American values we stand for. Further, doubters are evil because they promote unfreedom and tyranny, just like Hitler and Saddam Hussein and liberal elites who think too much. Doubters are weak and effeminate and think too much. Their doubt prevents them from taking decisive action when the chips are down. Doubters think so much that they can't make a decision, especially the "tough decisions." On the other hand, we shining exemplars of manly virtue, unstained by doubt, are strong-hearted, heavily backboned men of action, who because, we have no doubts, never vacillate, never question our hearts, because our cause is God's cause, are right and true and virtuous, etc., etc.

The favorite narrative structure of the Birchers and Bushies and all their kin, is the melodrama, a narrative strategy perfectly fitted to the Cartesian Anxiety. Here's the melodrama schema they often use: a virtuous heroine (God-fearing Christians, America, etc.) has been tied to the railroad track by a mustachioed villain (Commies, commie sympathizers, socialists, unionists, terrorists, liberals, gays, liberal elites, killer doctors). A massive, snorting, smoking train engine (filled with fluoride, chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, abortions, evil union bosses, non-heterosexual sex, stem cells etc.) is bearing down on her (America, remember). Right-thinking hero appears (e.g., concerned parent, Christian, Ronald Reagan, George W., Jessica Smith), plucks her from what was certain death, and vanquishes foe.

Fox Cable is a never-ending melodrama in which viewers are enjoined to hiss and boo the bad guys (liberals, mostly), and cheer the heroes (Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, etc., all of whom are stand-ins for George W. and his associates). Roger Ailes, who runs the Fox melodrama, is a long-time Republican operative. As such, he is both teacher and student of the long tradition of right-wing melodrama. He and his brothers and sisters know how to cast a compelling melodrama with simple, memorable characters, e.g., ass-grabbing murdering liberals, (Teddy Kennedy, Bill Clinton, etc.), ungrateful rich guys who hate America and bite America's invisible economic hand even though it made them rich (George Soros, Michael Moore, etc.), vicious, power-mad men-hating women of questionable sexual orientation (Hilary Clinton, Gloria Steinem, the president of NOW), out-of-touch with reality African Americans who have the gall to insist there is still racial discrimination in this country (Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton), when the real racial discrimination emanates from affirmative action policies.

Nixon, whom my father also despised during those years, was a master melodramatist. Maybe the allure of Hollywood rubbed off on him growing up in Whittier, California. He had tremendous range, sometimes casting himself in the role of spurned suitor (the Checkers speech), sometimes as hero triumphant (the trip to China), or the elder statesman (his post-Watergate years). He would nearly always cast his opponents in the role of commies or commie sympathizers, Ivy League elites and/or commie sympathizers, limousine liberals and peaceniks out of touch with the Moral Majority. Reagan was a master at melodrama, too, but his range was narrower. This was probably due to his actual experience in Hollywood, where he perhaps came to understand the parts he could most successfully play. Raised up by the denizens of Orange County to the national stage, Reagan set up a dualistic good and evil world in which he challenged his foes to accept that they were evil and America was good. These were mostly communist sympathizers, and unionists and liberal communist sympathizers, and Arab terrorists. He asked some of these evil enemies, like the Iranians, to give him money for weapons so he could give the money to right -wing death squads in Nicaragua because communism, especially in South America, was especially evil.

It does appear this latest troupe of actors has run out of ideas for scenes in their Either/Or Order/Chaos melodrama. George W. keeps making the same speech over and over again to the same enlistees, Dick Cheney keeps making the same liberal baiting, mud-slinging speech over and over again to various right wing think tanks. The theater of war in Iraq is not contributing anything new to the overall production. Clearly, as David Brooks says, they need new blood in this production. Some new ideas, a new Either/Or dilemma, a new conservative coup de theatre. Or maybe an old chestnut from the past.

The Perils of Fluoride, anyone?