Goodbye, Cruel World

The world would be a better place if the American right wing had never existed. Thousands of Americans and Iraqis would still be alive, tens of thousands or Iraqis would still be living in their own homes. The American economy would not have hopped from bubble to bubble if the right wing had not put all of their faith in deregulation, and American jobs would not have been sent abroad. Our tax dollars would not have flowed upward into the coffers of the rich, and the war machine would not comprise such a large part of our economy. We would have retained the respect of other nations, and not aroused the absolute hatred of those we have attempted to bomb into submission. We would get along better with one another if the right wing had not used tribal hatreds to arouse their base against black people, immigrants, liberals, and the well-educated. Our infrastructure, health care, and schools would be better if the billions spent on futile wars had been spent on domestic needs. The planet would be a better place if our addiction to oil had been broken 25 years ago.

But the issue goes deeper even that these practical matters. We would, in fact, be happier people if the right wing had not terrorized us with their horror-filled systems of belief. The Friedmanites are bad enough -- in their world, there are only winners and losers. Everyone deserves what they get, and if a child who gets melamine in his milk is a victim of "creative destruction", well, too bad, because some rich person is getting a little bit more money. In the capitalist world, you are not just supposed to starve, you are supposed to deserve starving -- insult added to injury, humiliation added pain. Of course, as Naomi Klein has shown, the "free market" is never free at all, it is fixed, by dictators and armies and oligarchs. But the thrust of the propaganda stands. We may call this the "Phil Gramm Position".

As bad as this is, far worse has been the effect of religious fundamentalism on the individual spirit and the national mood. By now, we all know some child (or former child) who has been terrorized by "the Rapture" -- who has come home after school to an empty house, only to panic because he or she is convinced that everyone else has been "raptured up." The left behind one has to reckon with the idea that not only is everyone he or she loves gone, he or she has done something wrong according to Jesus, and failed to deserve salvation. I call this child abuse. The religious right has been determined to enforce the unhappiness of others, no doubt so that that unhappiness will match their own. After all, they want to make sure that gay people understand that no matter how much they pay in taxes, they are second class citizens. They also want to make sure that every woman in the world understands that her interests are secondary to those of any embryo, any man, even, indeed, any sperm cell. This would be the "James Dobson Position".

The God of the right wing, and of the Bible, is a pretty arbitrary guy. He lays down the rules, but you can get those boils or those locusts even if you didn't knowingly do anything wrong, in fact, even if you didn't do anything wrong at all. Your personal God could punish you for something someone else did, as in the Bible he frequently punishes the enemies of Israel, men, women, children, dogs, cats, goats, etc., just for being the enemies of Israel. I love how right wing preachers pray away hurricanes, sending them to places like Bermuda. If your God is arbitrary, then of course you are always anxious and depressed -- your adrenaline is always pumping. And you are never motivated to understand how the world works. But locusts and boils and hurricanes have causes -- physical, medical, and ecological. Society can avoid locusts and boils and even mitigate the effects of hurricanes if it understands cause and effect, but if your God is an arbitrary authoritarian, and your father was an arbitrary authoritarian, then you never truly understand cause and effect in the world we live in. As we all know, no religion has ever successfully answered the problems raised by the issue of an omnipotent God. The best they offer is to forbid questioning, and to punish those who do. Because the right wing experiences the world as cruel and arbitrary, they have no inhibitions about enhancing that cruelty -- as in "Hurricane Katrina", as in "Iraq War", and in "Abu Ghraib".

This is the world we have been living in for the past thirty years.

In a week, we have a chance to leave this world behind. If we look at our two candidates, the differences between them are stark. John McCain, who was raised by and accepts the authoritarian model, is evidently never at peace. He is hot-headed, erratic, and has been remarkably cruel. He claims to have principles, but his principles change every time he loses his cool. The more he is pushed, the more it becomes evident that he lives by his own selfish desires -- for money, for power, for women. He's is a classic avoider, who can't even answer the simplest question -- if something "unpleasant" comes up, he changes the subject. Barack Obama rarely changes the subject, because he is fully capable of looking at an issue and considering it. He seems to have been reared in a non-authoritarian household, by a loving mother and loving grandparents. He thinks that the world is a rational place that can be understood and modified. His own family seems happy and loving. Right wingers think he is shallow, but he isn't shallow -- he's well-adjusted. And we've had two whole years to poke him and prod him and discover this. Obama has grown through campaigning because he has learned from it. McCain gets ever smaller and more weird as he campaigns because he doesn't understand what is happening to him. When we choose between these two men, we are choosing between two worlds -- the world of ignorance, fear, manipulation, and cruelty, and the world of rational investigation, weighing of options, and planning. This world is a world where sexual preference is not such a big deal, salvation is not an eternal mystery, and life goes on. It's a world where bad things happen, but there is no malign Godly intention behind them. It is world that understands the temptations of human nature and attempts to deal with them rationally and systematically. Some of these attempts will fail, but on balance, not as many as have failed in the last twenty-five years.

Most of my friends see the coming election as the most important we have known. The right wing has damaged our country, our livelihoods, our national honor, and our planet, but not yet fatally. If McCain gets elected, that could change.

Comments

[Pkarm]

Odd I was thinking the same thing about the lest and how millions of babies would not have been murdered by the left.

[Cyndala]

Yes, fear is what drives these people -- and their faith. I grew up in a Catholic neighborhood, in the '60s, where the neighborhood kids told me I was going to hell simply because I wasn't Catholic. Needless to add, that planted the seed of resentment toward "religious" people that I still harbor today. And now, in my conservative Republican (predominantly Christian) neighborhood, I have been criticized for my Obama lawn signs -- and have received ridiculous and divisive e-mails from several of these neighbors stating that "Obama" is the anti-Christ.

This election brings out the very worst in people who claim to be "Christian". It scares me. And I deeply resent how the "Christian Right" has hijacked Christianity and the GOP. If you're not a conservative Catholic or a Protestant evangelical, you're not a real Republican these days. Few people are talking about how anti-Semitic these "believers" tend to be. McCain/Palin have captured so much of the Jewish vote. I'd be worried.

[Mason]

I was an only child raised by authoritarian, right-wing, but loving parents -- in their own restricted way. As far back as I can remember, I asked questions and pointed out their hypocrisy before I knew the word existed. They've passed on and I'm still asking questions and always will. I've accepted and learned to enjoy not knowing all the answers. If I knew all the answers, my life would be dreadfully boring and to a considerable extent my sense of well-being is directly proportional to the number of questions I have and the mysteries I desire to solve.

My parents and all the authoritarian right-wing people that I've known have a compulsive desire to live inside a bubble where no one questions anything because there already is an answer for every question. No wonder they are dull, boring, and Borg-like.

I believe fear is the primary energy that drives them to construct their fanciful bubbles, however, fear separates, divides, and destroys. Following the Golden Rule unites and bridges the differences between us. Rabbi Hillel once said that religious doctrine is just the Golden Rule. Everything else is commentary.

[ECJLA]

Jane Smiley writes of Barack Obama: "Right wingers think he is shallow, but he isn't shallow -- he's well-adjusted. And we've had two whole years to poke him and prod him and discover this. ..."

What the right thinks of Obama is beyond irrelevant. From the left, Martin Luther King, Jr. (and Erich Fromm before him) famously pointed out the problem of being "well adjusted". We should all be "maladjusted" -- to Pax Americanism, to power abuse (in all its forms), to grotesque inequality, to cultural vapidity, to the smugness of elites, to lifestyle uber alles, to ethnocentrism and financial elite supremacy, to inappropriate military solutions abroad and punitive policing solutions at home, to the fall of rehabilita­tion-based corrections and the rise of American Gulag -- what one law review writer calls Houses of the Dead. Being "well adjusted" means tolerating the morally intolerable in the name of practicality. You go along to get along.

True, Obama is a man of reason and formidable intellect. That is a necessary but insufficient attribute for leadership adequacy (never mind greatness) in these times. To put it kindly: to date Obama has gotten too much (if not all) of his political mojo and staying power from his "well-adjusted" acceptance of the fundamentals of the rightist project, rebranded in moderate form and delivered with a human face.

Eric C. Jacobson
Public Interest Lawyer
Culver City, California

[waitforme]

"If your God is arbitrary, then of course you are always anxious and depressed -- your adrenaline is always pumping. And you are never motivated to understand how the world works. ....., but if your God is an arbitrary authoritarian, and your father was an arbitrary authoritarian, then you never truly understand cause and effect in the world we live in."

Finally, someone who understands that a politician, any leader, operates the way they were taught; they lead the way their parents modeled leading.

Thanks.

[Marcantm]

Amen.

[knerd]

Smiley, you're onto it!

Obama seems to come from a home where true emotion was accepted. His very smile seems to light up his entire face. When McCain smiles, there is almost a visage of a face at war with itself.

Bring back early childhood education, parenting classes, critical thinking and Socratic teaching. Stress mediation, problem-solving and nonviolent communication.

If we keep doing what we're doing we're going to wind up where we're headed.

It's common sense, isn't it?

[GrainOSand]

“Goodbye Cruel World” -- I hear you. Pink Floyd stated that years ago and I find their musical statement compliments your treatise. They asked a question in song after making that statement in song -- “Is there anybody out there?” Let us hope enough of us, out here, on the landscape of life lived, are, “out there”, for hope and change to turn back the tide…on Dopey dopes and Mickey the mopes who drain the potential and the pride. Let us hope that this is not “Goodbye Blue Skies”. May we “Tear down the Walls” of fear and disunity and maximize on the potential of our “Time”, before each of us move on to that “Great gig in the sky”. We must say no more “Us and Them”; no more war by nefarious and devious whim of hubris, malice, and miscalculation unchecked. May we reject, years of loss, sadness, and tears; embrace a new day, a new way, and a new direction without fear. May there be widespread detection of a will to reach higher for the best versus the base, which is reported to be Palin’s dominion. Palin now controls the base, not the GOP base, but the base mentality of divide, despair, and debauchery -- witness the rise of a demagogue.

May the reasonable, loving, and kind, forever find they are distant from the lowly base. May the lowly base be an ever-shrinking minority of a universally rejected fringe mentality. May Palin rule over an empty kingdom.

[ld]

Great writing, Jane! Wonderful description of right wing/authoritarian world views. The worst part is that that type of people exists in all countries, in all religions, and all ethnic groups, so between them they make the world work in the horrible, painful way they allegedly fear. They have no use for the alternatives.

[ciarequital]

Spot on. Somehow, I also see a power struggle going on between the puppet masters behind the scenes. The old guard has lost, and the new ones are getting power. Will they make Obama an offer he can't refuse ala John Perkins? GW was a "classic" pawn, as was Reagan. Both were "made men" by George Schultz. GW did an economic hit job internally on this country, It seems to me that the religious right and all the rest are just window dressing in the manipulation of the American people for their power struggle. or... maybe I'm just reading too much into this.

[iamriversong]

Thank you for these words - it feels so good to see someone else saying what I (and many others) have been saying for years. I swear you're not reading too much into this.
anyone believe the movie, "Zeitgeist"?

[Subversive]

What an honor to meet you again Ms. Smiley. I first met you as an undergraduate at Iowa State in Ames, Iowa, during '83-'85. I was an idealistic, yet hopeful English major at the time--truly the lowest of the low on campus. (I went to see Gloria Steinem when she came to speak against the burgeoning conservatism enveloping the country; she foresaw many of the things you just mentioned.) You weren't as well known back then, but I knew you were special. When "Moo" came out, and put your name on the lips of the literary world, I smiled knowingly.
I agree with your assessment. The Liberals must clean up the Conservative mess yet again, just like the Thirties.
Keep writing--maybe one day my book will be sitting next to yours on bookstore shelves.

[Johnagain]

Great article. As always, Jane Smiley is dead on correct.

Check out this Obama video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V4ni_an3MI

[weg203]

BRAVO!!!!

[shirleen01]

That's right tell the truth. Put it all out there. McCain you may as well change the way you look at the world for now on!

[JohnnyKong]

"The world would be a better place if the American right wing had never existed."

Jane, no truer words have been written. History will make it clearer that the American right wing appealed to the worst in humanity - fear, hate, discrimination, sexism, racism, corruption and greed, lust for power, religious fervor. They will be looked back upon by a future society that has moved far beyond the current state, as an anti-progressive, dangerously shortsighted, self-serving group that had the potential to do far more, permanent damage to the country.

Politicians who subscribe to this ideology have no place in the government. In my opinion, their ideas have proven to be a national security threat. In an ideal political atmosphere, a presidential decree would make right wing ideology a national security threat and appropriate action would be taken to permanently remove its influence from any future political discourse and policy.

[iamriversong]

JohnnyKong - WELL SAID! thank you!!