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Class War And Violence Belie Obama’s Tattered Unity Myths

By Robert S. Becker

21 January, 2011
Countercurrents.org

America snubs “wealth, or status, or power, or fame” for goodness. Riiight!

Had the president politicized his Tucson memorial, say, by implicating reckless gun sellers, he’d have faced his own media crosshairs, even uncivil crossfire. Taking no chances, however, meant Mr. Bipartisanship missed a big teaching moment about the complex world of a very violent America. That omission offset what was done well.

Hello! What about crime, robberies, murders, drug wars, 2.4 million in prison (excluding secret ones), inequality of wealth, education and opportunity, and negligence towards the mentally unhinged? And more hostility: two endless, costly wars, permanent incarcerations, citizen assassination programs, and one trillion dollars spent annually on violent “defense” -- peace dividends, anyone?

How do I know this speech was safe to a fault, defying every glimmer of controversy? Because loopy John McCain loved it -- and rightwing pundits cheered. Millions of gun fetishists bought more Glocks, doubtless relieved to have dodged bullets from presidential scolding -- pardon the gun metaphor.

Yet Obama’s avoidance of central issues hardly explains the rampant puffery, nor invocations of American mythology that slight the slaughter in Tucson. Obama sermonized as if the last two decades never quite happened, as if one party didn’t leverage the rhetoric of extremism to scare the bejesus out of vulnerable rightwing know-nothings (and drive gun sales).

The Myths That Don’t Help

Must presidents display their own insular sunshine, even at funerals honoring the slaughter of innocents? Obama Utopian Myth No. 1: America remains the cohesive, tolerant, melting pot, just one “American family, 300 hundred million strong”? Well, except for Muslims, Pakistanis, Mexicans, new immigrants, gays, blacks, and presidents born in Kenya, among others. Leading to Myth #2: more unites us than divides us, so let’s not dwell on real-world, searing economic conflicts or growing systemic contradictions. Just talk nicer, and we’d get along better.

Third, Curiously Invoked Myth: America brims with “decency and goodness,” with patriots favoring “not wealth, or status, or power, or fame” but “how well we have loved . . . bettering the lives of others.” Homage to charity, along with a familiar fantasy, government "of and by and for the people.” For Obama, the Tucson gathering was a “quintessentially American scene shattered by a gunman’s bullets.” The quintessential America is a huge mess, far more tangled than this dreamscape.

Incivility the Symptom, Not Cause

Incivility, in my book, expresses schisms, rather than causing them, a symptom, not the disease. Paul Krugman is right: opposition extends far beyond words, informing "differences in those very moral imaginations Mr. Obama urges us to expand, about divergent beliefs over what constitutes justice.” What I question is whether irreconcilable conflict is a “relatively recent development,” as he claims, or the recurring engine that drives our history.

No doubt idyllic fables comfort the afflicted, but why ignore the context of violence, studded with class warfare, racial discrimination, ethnic prejudice, street violence and insurgent threats? Further, as if to channel M. L. King, don’t contradictions at home (on jobs, abuse and bigotry) relate to abusive empire and militarism aboard, like two endless, remote Asian wars against non-industrial, non-technological, non-Christian tribes in the non-west? Vietnam related to racial discrimination for King, our activist paragon of justice.

What Generation Escaped Rancor?

By my reading, American history boasts barely one 30-year long generation since 1776 NOT having to face down some frenzied minority throwing a disruptive hissy fit. Moreover, history repeats itself, as Tea Party battles over regional “states rights” echo slave owners’ defiance of early federalists -- when that southern minority likewise demanded majority veto power. Early on, politics was a vicious, pitched battle, spanning divisions over taxation, commerce, foreign affairs, work conditions, then children’s, women’s and labor rights as well as state-church separation.

The core, paramount American tension hasn’t changed, in my view -- whether the real majority ever gets to rule -- or whether elites and/or minorities demand undue control over elections, power, and thus government. Notable for most of our history are two bulwarks against progress; extremely conservative Supreme Courts (exceptions note) and the backward, elitist Senate, religiously impeding racial, women’s, voting, immigration and gay rights.

The Joys of Insurgencies

Quick Review: born in violent revolution (by landed, white, elitist men suspicious of the masses), early America endured extreme rancor (Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson et al) which barely ended before the truculent Age of Jackson arrived, with nasty class struggles over money, banking, and land development. One generation later, slavery unresolved, came the devastating Civil War -- and universal discord, death and outrage reigned, dividing families, towns, classes and religions. With bizarre veneration of the noble “lost cause,” racist schisms still ripple forth.

Then for decades, the nation endured acerbic debates over rebuilding the south while NOT resolving what to do with four million freed slaves. Jim Crow abuses took over the “slave problem,” with lynchings and Klan violence. Simultaneously, decades of huge Robber Baron wealth initiated tumultuous, violent labor battles, capped off by the severe 1890’s depression. Teddy Roosevelt achieved post-Gilded Age reforms but every victory was scarring, and class war flourished. Beside war, lynchings and union massacres, 19th C. America also marched with genocidal might (guns and diseases) against Native Americans, whose main crime was inhabiting ancestral land settlers demanded. Yes, our first 100 years, the story of just one peaceful, united family.

Wars Abroad, Calamities At Home

After that, the devastating WWI, no slam dunk for isolationists, then the Prohibition blunder (no unifier there), then the systemic meltdown of the Great Depression, with uprisings on the left and socio-economic turmoil unseen in our history. Fat cats sorely maligned FDR, too stupid to realize he was saving capitalism from their excesses and for their heirs. No saint himself, FDR erred by approving state-sanctioned abuse when incarcerating loyal Japanese, among our worst rights violations against peaceable patriots.

WWII came and ended, in fact unifying the country, and for two decades calm reigned, only to be shattered by the conflict-ridden ‘60’s -- with nightmarish anti-war-student shootings-civil unrest-political assassinations and fierce civil rights battles -- still rippling when criminal Nixon was forced to resign. Then 20 years later, another Constitutional crisis as extremist GOP hysteria misused impeachment for political gain (which worked, getting W. elected). Yes, a second American century of fun-filled cultural togetherness, filled with malice towards none and charity for all.

The unholy spawn of vile impeachment polluted the 2000 campaign, our most disruptive modern election, capped off when five, politicized justices outlandishly appointed our soon-to-be worst president. Way to go, Supremes. And that coup d’état, extended by Bush-Cheney bunker-busting Constitutional assaults, naturally resulted in today’s rancorous climate of discord. Permanent shock and awe, courtesy of the Bush clan. Sorry, but evidence America is or has ever been a unified family, a model of cohesive togetherness, is harder to find than principles Obama holds sacred.

The Union Wobbles, Again

America was and remains an implausible experiment. We brashly assumed our man-made government could magically integrate all sorts of divergent, “huddled masses yearning to be free,” with or without millions of slaves. With or without anti-authority rugged individualism backed by 300 million guns. Were new groups offered equal schooling and life experiences, or instead given work no one else would do, then shuffled into ghettos? On top of the Great Recession, no wonder America is divided, with sky-high skepticism about government, even the legitimacy of presidents, whether dubiously-elected (W.) or duly-elected (Obama).

If we are far more united than separated, why in the world is U.S. mortality from weapons ten times more than Canada and 100 times more than England or Australia? Why have over one million of us been killed by guns (and “my fellow Americans”) in four decades? Why do our prison populations dwarf all others? And why, even after this Tucson slaughter, does our president shy away from confronting the full cultural and economic reality, well beyond gun sales or this individual horror show?

Either we are flawed people, or betrayed by misleading national promises, documents and myths; perhaps chance or destiny or some malevolent divinity intervened. More visibly at work today are political and corporate powers that leverage divisiveness, to shame opponents and win elections (and it works). No besieged president seeking re-election, like Obama, allows himself the luxury of confronting painful realities when facile, feel-good myths garner such universal praise. I understand the trade-off, even the punting, but the hugely missed opportunities , too.





 


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