Political Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Jun. 8th, 2004 07:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
barking_iguanaNice bits from Alterman over the past couple of days. Yesterday he wrote
My memory, individual and therefore unreliable as it may be, says that the political timidity that inhibited both the media and the opposition from challenging Republican extremism and lies dates to a very specific time: The Spring of 1981.
During the 1980 Presidential campaign, the media was often calling Reagan on his 'misstatements'. It didn't dominate the coverage, but for anyone who cared, it was reported and available.
When Reagan took office, both Carter and the horserace disappeared and Reagan became proportionately more of the story. So his lies/fantasies did, too. And as he continued to use those lies/fantasies as arguments for policies that were no longer just campaign rhetoric but now actual proposals before Congress, the media paid more attention yet to the truth gap.
But, unlike with Iran/Contra later, the public really was on Reagan's side. Sure, that was partly due to the then-new and unrecognized orchestration of the perception of opinion through talk radio. But it wasn't just the noisemakers talking to themselves. The poll numbers at the time showed Reagan's popularity as high as when he was elected while public attitudes toward the press became more and more negative. "Negative" isn't even the word. Hostile. As in would-somebody-throw-things-at-you-today hostile.
Perhaps the media could have done better. Perhaps if they weren't owned by the corporate class that Reagan was representing, they would have done better. But what drove them into submission was the sense that nobody cared. Nobody but us fringe lefties cared about whether Reagan was telling the truth. He was telling people what they wanted to hear, and that was good enough.
The Democrats, who had just been badly beaten in the 1978 Congressional elections and in 1980, also took that as a signal to hibernate. "Progressive" became a euphemism for "liberal" because nobody was willing to go head to head with Reagan and the nascent Fascism (and I use the word advisedly) then on talk radio in claiming the honor of liberalism. To fight was to lose.
In retrospect, it's clear that losing in the short term would have been far better than silently letting the perceived center of debate be steadily shifted to the right for twenty years. But it's asking a lot to expect politicians and news executives to take positions that will cost them their jobs. Especially when it's clear in the short run that doing so won't even prevent the ill-advised policies that are being debated.
So for almost a quarter century now, Republicans have been given an unconscionably wide berth. Neither their lies (all parties lie when they can get away with it) nor the implications of their extremist positions (all parties gravitate toward the extreme when they're not called on it) have been subject to regular scrutiny.
The reason such timidity has lasted so long (aside from the corporate influence over the news stream) is the culture of fear that was bred into both the Democratic Party and newsrooms. Most people committed to either truth and/or liberalism came to see themselves as living in a hostile world -- one in which they must remain closeted if they were to survive.
Fire-breathing youngsters were even less welcome than usual, because they would just bring down the wrath of the establishment on everyone. (It didn't help, of course, that those youngsters usually lacked the wisdom to connect with people on common ground first, and only then to show how those common values lead inexorably to unconventional truths.) So now we have a generation filling leadership positions who are in fact more liberal in personal beliefs than almost any generation before them, but who have been cowed into near-silence. They are devoted to managing a disaster by hunkering down and hoping their true, honorable selves will remain invisible.
The Old Testament had a solution for such a damaged generation: Wander around the desert for forty years until they all die off. We don’t have that option. Millions of people, quite possibly billions around the world, will die early and/or suffer horribly if we allow the world’s greatest power to spend the next twenty years leading in the destruction of the environment. So we must do the best we can with the politicians we have.
One possibility is to take people whose political activism dates from after 1981. That describes three of the four major candidates for the Democratic nomination. But all three had their serious flaws. The stalwart of the four, John Kerry, does indeed show the symptoms of Political Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but he seems to have a milder case of it than many. Perhaps that’s because he had many much more fundamentally stressful situations several years earlier.
For the remainder of the election, I think Kerry’s boldness/timidity balance will be managed well by his own strategic sense and by the savvy people around him. I’m more concerned about how he will govern. Or, more precisely, how he will lead from the bully pulpit. I believe Kerry has the ability to be a great teacher. He’s already much better at getting to the point than he used to be. But what points will he choose to make? I’m eagerly awaiting his acceptance speech at the convention. Because even through the filter of the campaign, I think that will give a good hint as to how he will use the stage once he has it.
To me the most astounding thing about Reagan was his ability to convince the many members of the media and much of the country that his fantasies mattered more than reality did. In this regard, I think we can point to his presidency as the moment the country went off the rails in terms of a willingness to address its real problems, rather than the ones we wish we had.And today he quotes from the book When Presidents Lie about Congressional and media handling of Oliver North
The irony of this situation is that the reported reaction of the country to North’s testimony was actually at odds with most Americans’ profound disapproval of both his methods and his aims. The committee’s unwillingness to prosecute North proved less a reaction to the genuine beliefs of the American people than to a phony ‘Potemkin’ pretense of a public reaction created by administration supporters and other conservative movement figures. Most of the media fell for it as well. Time, for instance, reported that “The Boy Scout and patriot had the nation rooting for him,” while Newsweek subtitled its cover story “The ‘Fall Guy’ Becomes a Folk Hero.” Its attendant coverage argued that North “somehow embodied Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper and John Wayne in one bemedaled uniform.” The coverage in both newsweeklies was directly contradicted by published polls at the time, including their own. Time’s own poll showed that 61 percent believed that the term “national hero” did not describe North. According to Newsweek’s polls, 45 percent of respondents believed North was a patriot and a hero, while 48 percent did not. On July 9, 1987 “The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather” reported, without evidence, that “ninety-six percent of you back North up, saying you approve of his actions.” The broadcast went on to compare North to Rambo and Dirty Harry. Overall, in four separate polls taken in June and July of 1987, between 68 and 81 percent of Americans questioned disagreed with the appellation “hero” when applied to Oliver North. The labels “villain,” “victim,” “dangerous,” “fanatic,” and “can be bought” proved considerably more popular.But I think Eric's wrong when he introduces the North business with "But it has ever been this way."
My memory, individual and therefore unreliable as it may be, says that the political timidity that inhibited both the media and the opposition from challenging Republican extremism and lies dates to a very specific time: The Spring of 1981.
During the 1980 Presidential campaign, the media was often calling Reagan on his 'misstatements'. It didn't dominate the coverage, but for anyone who cared, it was reported and available.
When Reagan took office, both Carter and the horserace disappeared and Reagan became proportionately more of the story. So his lies/fantasies did, too. And as he continued to use those lies/fantasies as arguments for policies that were no longer just campaign rhetoric but now actual proposals before Congress, the media paid more attention yet to the truth gap.
But, unlike with Iran/Contra later, the public really was on Reagan's side. Sure, that was partly due to the then-new and unrecognized orchestration of the perception of opinion through talk radio. But it wasn't just the noisemakers talking to themselves. The poll numbers at the time showed Reagan's popularity as high as when he was elected while public attitudes toward the press became more and more negative. "Negative" isn't even the word. Hostile. As in would-somebody-throw-things-at-you-today hostile.
Perhaps the media could have done better. Perhaps if they weren't owned by the corporate class that Reagan was representing, they would have done better. But what drove them into submission was the sense that nobody cared. Nobody but us fringe lefties cared about whether Reagan was telling the truth. He was telling people what they wanted to hear, and that was good enough.
The Democrats, who had just been badly beaten in the 1978 Congressional elections and in 1980, also took that as a signal to hibernate. "Progressive" became a euphemism for "liberal" because nobody was willing to go head to head with Reagan and the nascent Fascism (and I use the word advisedly) then on talk radio in claiming the honor of liberalism. To fight was to lose.
In retrospect, it's clear that losing in the short term would have been far better than silently letting the perceived center of debate be steadily shifted to the right for twenty years. But it's asking a lot to expect politicians and news executives to take positions that will cost them their jobs. Especially when it's clear in the short run that doing so won't even prevent the ill-advised policies that are being debated.
So for almost a quarter century now, Republicans have been given an unconscionably wide berth. Neither their lies (all parties lie when they can get away with it) nor the implications of their extremist positions (all parties gravitate toward the extreme when they're not called on it) have been subject to regular scrutiny.
The reason such timidity has lasted so long (aside from the corporate influence over the news stream) is the culture of fear that was bred into both the Democratic Party and newsrooms. Most people committed to either truth and/or liberalism came to see themselves as living in a hostile world -- one in which they must remain closeted if they were to survive.
Fire-breathing youngsters were even less welcome than usual, because they would just bring down the wrath of the establishment on everyone. (It didn't help, of course, that those youngsters usually lacked the wisdom to connect with people on common ground first, and only then to show how those common values lead inexorably to unconventional truths.) So now we have a generation filling leadership positions who are in fact more liberal in personal beliefs than almost any generation before them, but who have been cowed into near-silence. They are devoted to managing a disaster by hunkering down and hoping their true, honorable selves will remain invisible.
The Old Testament had a solution for such a damaged generation: Wander around the desert for forty years until they all die off. We don’t have that option. Millions of people, quite possibly billions around the world, will die early and/or suffer horribly if we allow the world’s greatest power to spend the next twenty years leading in the destruction of the environment. So we must do the best we can with the politicians we have.
One possibility is to take people whose political activism dates from after 1981. That describes three of the four major candidates for the Democratic nomination. But all three had their serious flaws. The stalwart of the four, John Kerry, does indeed show the symptoms of Political Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but he seems to have a milder case of it than many. Perhaps that’s because he had many much more fundamentally stressful situations several years earlier.
For the remainder of the election, I think Kerry’s boldness/timidity balance will be managed well by his own strategic sense and by the savvy people around him. I’m more concerned about how he will govern. Or, more precisely, how he will lead from the bully pulpit. I believe Kerry has the ability to be a great teacher. He’s already much better at getting to the point than he used to be. But what points will he choose to make? I’m eagerly awaiting his acceptance speech at the convention. Because even through the filter of the campaign, I think that will give a good hint as to how he will use the stage once he has it.
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no subject
Date: 2004-06-09 02:56 pm (UTC)I remember feeling like some kind of a political leper during the '80s, because I found nothing inspiring in the "Reagan revolution." Sometimes I thought that the public just needed more information--about AIDS, about global warming, about Salvadoran death squads, about Iran-Contra--but none of it ever stuck to the teflon. By '88, the "L-word" had become essentially an insult, & many of us did sometimes feel pressured to hide our political lights under a bushel.
Two election cycles later, I had a little twinge of recognition as I watched the relatively-moderate Bob Dole complain "Where's the outrage?" against fellow-moderate Bill Clinton. I recognized the feeling; it was exactly how a lot of us had felt about Reagan. I took comfort from the fact that Dole, like many a liberal in the '80s, was essentially conceding that he wasn't connecting with the public, that he would lose the election. But the Clinton interregnum didn't seem to do much to alter the overall rightward drift of our politics, since the '80s.
The relative credulity with which the public & press have tended to greet the "misstatements" of conservative leaders like Reagan & the current president suggest that much of the country really has come to prefer fantasies to reality--& to violently resent people who try to "confuse them with facts." & the vehemence of that resentment has driven too much of the opposition, too many of the press, into the "closet," as you say. Sam Donaldson for example recently recounted on "This Week" how he learned to stop worrying & live with Reagan's "misstatements" during the '80s. He said that, after a while, he came to realize that it "didn't matter." George & Cokie laughed, while the ghosts of H. L. Mencken & Upton Sinclair writhed in pain, somewhere ...
Political Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, indeed.
BTW, I nominate the above for posting on NNNOp-Ed (http://www.livejournal.com/community/nnnop_ed/) ; it deserves the wider exposure.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-09 07:38 pm (UTC)You're welcome to link to the post there, if you think it should be more widely read. But until I see if Eric Alterman publiches it as correspondance, I'm reluctant to actually have it appear somewhere more public than my own journal. If Eric doesn't publish it by Friday, I'll assume he won't.