Monday, December 22, 2008
Phony Nixon
I heard and partially saw a promo for this phony film "Frost-Nixon." What a joke. I lived through (the final) part of the Nixon era, and while I have no fondness for Nixon, this film sounds like a cartoon. I don't know how anyone can take this thing seriously. They make him sound like some madman ogre, in a cartoonish sense.
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History is written by the victors, Churchill said. And frankly, for the foreseeable future, the victors in our national culture war (and a real war it is) are left-wing ideologues who despise everything about what makes America great . . . and good.
While the left may not always triumph at the ballot box (although I believe they will do so with increasing frequency), they don't have to: they control every single aspect of the culture: the academy, the great foundations, the media and entertainment industries, the judiciary and the main line churches. If you look at the politics of the new breed of great entrepreneurs, they are of the hard left as well. The left is creating the national narrative that will define how our children and our children's children think of us. The Frost/Nixon movie is one very small manifestation of this.
Please explain to me how the right will retake control of the institutions of this country. I'd really like to know. For I see nothing but a disintegration of the society, a disintegration that has been actively accelerated by the left through its control - and undermining - of our precious institutions.
Let me answer my own question. It wasn't rhetorical, by the way. When I asked how the right is going to reclaim the insititutions in this country, I was quite serious.
I think I know the answer. For a lot of years now, perhaps since the Clinton election, this nation has not been serious about anything. There has grown up around the culture this idea that America and its liberties, its prosperity, and its energy are somehow the normal state of things.
There's this idea that we can dismantle our institutions, disregard the experience of thousands of years of recorded history, and do whatever we please whenever we please however we please. All without consequence.
But there is nothing inevitable about America. It is, in fact, an exceptional society, unlike anything in history. It exists, though, not outside of history but as a sort of fulfillment of history's lessons. It was built upon the close and wise reading of human nature by a handful of men more than 200 years ago. As long as their wisdom was honored, we have prospered. To the extent that we disregard their wisdom, even ridicule it, we will fail.
That is where we are now, a self-destructing society, where, as Yeats put it, "The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
So, can we agree that we need to get serious again? We need to believe, viscerally, that our nation is unique, that we cannot take for granted the blessings that have been bestowed upon us.
9/11 very briefly focused our minds. (As Samuel Johnson put it: "Nothing focuses the mind like a hanging.") Well, the hangman quite literally swooped in and we paused from our diversions for a few weeks to pay heed. But our attention has wandered; we're back to our unserious ways. How unserious? Look at the past two election cycles and tell me with a straight face that we're a serious people.
So, as we enter into a replay - as farce (for we're not capable of seriousness) - of the 1930s (with an empty suit playing the part of FDR and a 7 percent unemployment rate standing in for the 30 percent that prevailed at the height of the depression) will we end at the same place: a world where well-armed tyrant states vie for land, resources, prestige, power, and dominion?
I certainly think it's possible that we will end much as the 30s ended; we'll look back, as Auden did in his poem September 1939, and reflect on "a low dishonest decade" that led to WWII. When that turn of events comes to pass, perhaps -- perhaps - we'll get serious.
Bill, there are a few things in our nation different from the 1930s. Back then we were a nation of rugged farmboys; today we are a nation of videoized couch potatoes. Back then we cared for the weak and innocent and executed cold-blooded killers; today we have the blood of 50 million unborn babies on our collective conscience and we allow killers to sit in comfortable prisons and watch TV (I recently read that Mark Chapman, killer of John Lennon, gets conjugal visits with a woman he married after going to prison). Back then we learned about our candidates for public office through the newspapers and radio; today we learn about them in highly polished, professionally produced visual images. The list could go on and on. My only point is, would a catastrophe such as WWII bring about the same result it did a generation ago? We, as a society, are such a fundamentally different kind of people. I guess I wonder if we would really rise up in collective indignation and reclain our heritage.
Good points, Dave. We certainly are a different people and I think it's a fair question whether we're up to the demands that history will place upon us. I'm far from convinced that we are.
On the other hand, it's worth remembering that neither Hitler nor japan took us seriously at the outset of World War II; both thought we were decadent, too rich to have the grit it takes to fight and win a sustained war. They were wrong.
Perhaps - and this is the issue - perhaps when the chips are down we will once again find our souls, understand what is at stake and fight to preserve it.
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