Remember existential angst? Neither do I. OK, maybe once in a while I experience a vague yearning for meaning, but then I read some Frege and feel better right away.
But seriously, folks, there's a new distinctively political angst in town (and I'm not just talking about that uneasy feeling you get when you hear Bush try to speak) that is associated with scandal overload and which more specifically reflects the past five years' bearing witness to a continuing series of crimes and scandals that we are evidently powerless either to prevent or to prosecute. None of the usual conduits of resistance, change, justice are working. As Burbules notes, elected Democrats aren't trying to stop (or even slow down) the criminals in office. And nothing individuals do---including vote---seems to be making much difference. Every day a new outrage (or several) with the now-predictably-tiny half-life. It's getting even Digby down:
I'm feeling down right now. I know I shouldn't. The fact that Tom DeLay has stepped down is such a huge victory for humanity all by itself that I should be dancing a jig for the next six months. But, I'm down in the dumps, mostly because I am watching George W. Bush repeat his patented mantra for the 514,346th time. It's filled with lies, mischaracterizations and simple-minded gibberish, as always, and I'm watching it go out unfiltered, in its entirety, unchallenged by the media, no Democrats in sight, on every cable channel. I think they are personally trying to drive me crazy. [...]
They are going to the 9/11 well again. They say that Democrats are sending talking points to Osama and giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Rove says we don't believe that the government should monitor al Qaeda's telephone calls. The next several months will be spent fending off accusations that if we don't let the president do anything he damned well pleases we are all going to die.
I don't know if it will work again. But I also don't know if I can take this campaign one more time. Five years of hearing the same thing over and over again and watching American sheeple fall for it over and over again is just too depressing. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to January 20, 2009 (and I'm of an age where rushing the future is no longer wise.) The day I no longer have to listen to one more word from this immoral, dishonest, incompetent, delusional prick will be the best day of my life.
Of course it worked again.
A few of the comments on Digby's post are of the "buck up, have courage" variety, but I was struck by how many echoed Digby's angst:
Digby, this country is becoming fascist. No doubt about it. Look, its time to start planning an escape - a life somewhere else. America is dead.
Well, the death of a democratic society is never pretty. Our country has become incapable of self governance and will, like all countries that lose that capacity, soon lose that privilege, if it has not been lost already. Our press has become a complicit player in the deceptions of a secretive, autocratic government. Our populace has become conditioned to accept as credible anything presented to it with high enough production values. High barriers to entry preclude the high-risk game of speaking truth to power. We have blogs, that's about all.
I, too, know how you feel. The nausea and shame I feel when I watch George W. Bush speak in public has become almost unbearable. Lately I have found it harder than ever to fight the notion that he understands my country better than I do: that America has truly become the small-minded, ignorant place he seems to believe it is, a place that no longer values either democracy, republican government, or the truth.
[T]he United States of America, as it was historically conceived and developed, is deader than a squashed armadillo...
I'm in the same boat. Without a functioning press and opposition party, I don't know what to do...
I'm really sorry to read this post and the comments, because I've been feeling exactly the same lately. I was hoping it was just a case of the wintertime blues for me and not that everyone who actually cares about our country is becoming exhausted. [...] Our country is sick, and it seems like there is no cure.
...if we haven't made a dent in this tragi-comic farce of the last five years it seems like we never will ... no matter how much truth we have on our side.
Does anyone actually believe, since [the U.S.] has gone this far already, it can possibly right itself? What kind of a country could even have "elected" him in the first place? "America is dead."
Agreed. But in the death throes it will take everyone down with it. There are no countervailing institutions operating in American society to halt the inexorable fascism. Legitimation crisis? My ass. They don't need no stinking badges.
I agree with every single word in this post [...] You've said exactly what I've been feeling. And I am depressed, resigned. These guys have got a lock, and there's nothing -- not corruption, not blatant lying, not Katrina screwups, not kiling and maiming in Iraq -- that makes a difference. Fascism is on the march. I really feel that. AAGh.
One more "me too." All well and good to hear that the country is with us, we're in the mainstream, 36% approval rating... But what difference does it make? We're still sitting ducks for these ass-clowns; our voices are still drowned out by money interests; we still have no opposition party. Get a Democrat in office in 2009? Which war-supporting, non-filibustering, bankruptcy-bill supporting, couldn't find his spine with both hands, a flashlight and a blinking neon sign Democrat is that going to be? And how do you begin to rebuild all that's been destroyed over the past several years? Sorry -- I hope the optimists here are right; I really do. Me, I'm curling up with a Garbo movie tonight and dreaming of Sweden.
Most succinct of all:
Oh god. We're fucked.
These people aren't just having a bad day. They're expressing a
deep-seated and perfectly understandable resignation born of the fact
that nothing they do seems to matter to the course of terrible events.
Of course, maybe our efforts are not entirely inefficacious, in that without them things would be (god forbid) even worse. Even so, given how little positive effect we are having, it is irrational to keep on doing (only) what we're doing. What we're doing isn't good enough.
We need as a community to come up with a better strategy.
To start (as I've previously discussed here) progressives need to stop (only) describing the symptoms of U.S. decay in however brilliant analytic detail and start talking, plainly and simply, about the disease. The larger part of the disease is, of course, corporate capitalism, and it explains not only the symptoms but the fact that we have been unable to cure them via the usual treatments. Prominent liberal bloggers could do some good here, by contextualizing their criticism.
Speaking from experience, it goes some distance towards dealing with political angst to realize that our inefficacy has a comprehensible, relatively straightforward institutional explanation. And while identifying the inherent failures and dangers of corporate capitalism as the basis for social and economic policy need not imply the embracing of any of the standard alternatives, it wouldn't be such a bad idea if "socialism" reentered the lexicon as an alternative with comparatively positive valence.
That's the easy part, I think.
The hard part will be figuring out how to cure the disease. In lieu of palace revolution, I'm inclined to suggest radical surgery: we need to cut ourselves off from the Democratic party. If they haven't risen to the occasion by this time and in response to these pressures, they aren't ever going to do so. We need a real live opposition party -- why not call it the Progressive Party? -- capable of taking our outrage and anger and turning it into action of the sort that can make a difference.
I can see the leading lights of the party now... Steve Gilliard as Prez, Jane Hamsher as Vice-prez, Juan Cole as Secretary of State, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga as Secretary of Defense, Glenn Glenwald as Attorney General, Brad Delong as Secretary of the Treasury, Duncan Black as Secretary of Commerce, Nathan Newman as Secretary of Labor, PZ Meyers as Secretary of Health and Human Services, Jerome a Paris as Secretary of Energy, Bob Whitson as Secretary of the Interior, and (of course) Brian Leiter as Secretary of Education. Me, I'll settle for a diplomatic post.
Ah. I feel better already.
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