The Poverty of Electoral Politics
A difference between you and me that transcends right vs. left is that you
take electoral politics more seriously than I. Democrats vs. Republicans is a
politics of small differences at this point. The country is basically being run
by global corporations that, aside from their direct economic influence on who
gets elected and what they do when they get elected (a large aside), control
economic policy by essentially saying to politicians on all levels, federal,
state, and local, give us fiscal austerity, low taxes, and less regulation or
we a) will take our jobs elsewhere and b) won't lend you money. In general I
prefer Democrats because they're not beholden to the Christian right and the
anti-abortion movement, they're less likely to make totally Neanderthal court
appointments, etc. But even on social issues, there's more convergence than
not. Clinton is one of the more anti-civil-libertarian presidents in modern
history. Both parties support the drug war and its attendant police-state
apparatus--no-knock raids, forfeiture of property of people who haven't been
convicted of anything, Draconian sentences, peeing on command as a requirement
for getting or holding jobs, etc.--the latest thing is they want to inflict on
Florida a genetically engineered fungus that's supposed to kill marijuana
plants, although no one can guarantee it won't be an ecological disaster; these
people are crazy! Both parties want to censor the media. The don't-ask,
don't-tell approach to gays in the military has only encouraged sexual witch
hunts. Then there's welfare reform, whose two basic assumptions are that
endless work at wages too meager to live on is morally uplifting and that
single mothers are causing all of society's problems.
The bottom line (probably not my best metaphor in this context) is the
success of the corporate elite and free-market ideologues in pushing the "end
of history" idea--that in a post-Communist world there is no alternative to our
present economic and social system, like it or not. This is a colossal failure
of imagination. It's true enough that it's very difficult right now to envision
what that alternative might be. I certainly have no blueprints to offer. But
there have always been people who argued that change is impossible, or
unnecessary, or both, and they have always been wrong.
It seems to me that this idea that what is simply is , period, is
paralyzing on a cultural as well as a political level. I didn't mean to imply
that there is really a "counterculture" now, in the sense of any conscious
collective opposition. You're right, there's nothing comparable to the cultural
radicalism of the '60s and '70s. And certainly not much interest in politics--I
think most people these days see politics as pretty trivial and irrelevant to
their lives. What I see in, among other things, techno, is a countercultural
impulse--an implicit desire for something different. (Am I sounding too much
like Greil again?) Mostly, I don't see that young people have any sense that
things can be different, so the desire stays under the surface. I think
school massacres and teen-age girls killing their infants are ultimately about
despair and fatalism. Keeping kids out of R-rated movies is not going to help.
What did you think about the Columbine shooting and the public reaction? I'd be
interested in your take.
OK, onto somewhat less grim terrain. Magazines. You have to understand that
my standards for a really good magazine are still New York and
Esquire in the '60s and Rolling Stone in the '70s. This is a
recipe for total frustration on the contemporary magazine front. Never mind
"favorite." What are the magazines I look forward to reading? First, I guess,
would be Commentary , believe it or not--especially the letters section.
Then Atlantic --I like to read the cover essays. I like Lingua
Franca , but for whatever reason I let my subscription lapse. So I guess it
comes down to the Nation , which provides much of my material for all my
arguments with the mainstream left.
