“Paranoia
strikes deep
Into
your life it will creep
It
starts when you’re always afraid
Step
out of line, the man come
And
take you away”
----Buffalo Springfield “For What It’s Worth”
Historians have long observed the American
propensity to be deeply paranoid (1).
Indeed, from the “Great Awakenings” of the late 18th and
early 19th centuries to the “Know-Nothing” movement of the mid and
late nineteenth century, to the “Palmer Raids” in the immediate aftermath of
World War One to the McCarthy era and the hysteria that permeated much of the
cold war, paranoia has often—all-too-often it seems— come to define the
political landscape.
Americans have always been a deeply paranoid
lot but the paranoia that currently holds the conservative movement in its grip
is a most peculiar strain and a uniquely modern phenomenon.
I have written previously (2) citing the
works of Corey Robin of the deep sense of persecution felt by what I call “the
victims of property and standing”, dating back at least to the French
Revolution. Here is an excerpt of that
post from 2008, a long segment of which bears repeating:
Corey
Robin in an essay entitled “Out of Place” quotes the opening statement of
Ronald Story and Bruce Laurie's “The Rise of Conservatism in America,
1945-2000” that 'the central story of American politics since World War II is
the emergence of the conservative movement'.
“Yet”, writes Robin, “for some reason Will still feels that the travails
of his political kinsmen are insufficiently appreciated and recognized”. Robin continues: “Will is not the first
conservative to believe himself an exile in his own country. A sense of exclusion has haunted conservatism
from the beginning when emigres fled the French Revolution and Edmund Burke and
Joseph de Maistre took up their cause.
Born in the shadow of loss—of property, standing, memory, inheritance, a
place in the sun—conservatism remains a gathering of fugitives (emphasis
added). (3) Buckley and his cohorts saw themselves at
“out of place” with their badge of exclusion making them just about the
“hottest thing in town” (3)
“Plato's
guardians were wise”, writes Robin, “Aquinas's king was good; Hobbes's
sovereign was, well, sovereign. But the
best defense of monarchy that Maistre could muster in “Considerations on
France” (1787) was that his aspiring king had attended the 'terrible school of
adversity”. Similarly, Edmund Burke in
his “Reflections on the Revolution in France” (1790) would describe Marie Antoinette
“dragged 'almost naked' by 'the furies of hell' from her bedroom in Versailles
and marched to 'a Bastille for kings' in Paris'. “Marie Antoinette”, Robin continues, “was a
particular kind of loser, a person with everything who finds herself utterly
and at once dispossessed. Burke saw in
her fall an archetype of classical tragedy, the great person laid low by
fortune. But in tragedy, the most any
hero can achieve is an understanding of his fate: the wheel of time cannot be
reversed; suffering cannot be undone.
Conservatives, however, are not content with illumination or wisdom. They want restoration.” (3)
What
we have here, according to Robin, is the truly “bizarre” nature of modern
Conservatism: a ruling class that for the first time rests its claim to power
upon its sense of victimhood asking “us not to obey them but to feel sorry for
them—or to obey them because we feel sorry for them.” Whereas other political
movements must persuade “the disenfranchised that they have rights and power”,
the modern conservative poses a novel justification: “they are aggrieved and
entitled—aggrieved because entitled—and already convinced of the righteousness
of their cause and the inevitability of its triumph. They can play victim and victor with a
conviction and dexterity the subaltern can only imagine, making them formidable
claimants on our allegiance and affection.” (3)
A deep sense of paranoia, born of an abiding
persecution complex, inhabits the conservative mind, and colors the political
landscape.
But, alas, Corey Robin hasn’t entirely mapped
the extent of it. Beginning in the
immediate wake of the Supreme Court Decision Roe v. Wade, forces already breaking loose from established
main-line protestant denominations began to organize; forces already at war
with the federal government’s efforts to integrate the public schools; forces
representing strains of Protestantism deeply at war with reason, science and
natural history; forces deeply suspicious, deeply intolerant, and deeply
paranoid. First falling under the
banner, at the presidential level, of one James Earl Carter Jr, and later
switching to Ronald Reagan they have become the foot soldiers of the emerging
conservative crusade, willing to man the phones, pound on doors, stuff
envelopes and attend rallies. What
distinguishes them from typical congregants and parishioners is their loose or
non-existent connections with some greater presbytery (answerable to no higher
church authority), their unparalleled intolerance fueled by a deep and abiding
paranoia. I am here speaking largely of
the so-called “evangelicals” but also the free-lance non-denominational
hucksters like Robertson, Hagee, Olsteen, and Dollar.
What has brought these disparate elements of
the conservative coalition together is not taxation, monetary or economic
policy, certainly not the legalization of abortion by the Supreme Court. What they have in common is a deep and
abiding paranoia, born of real but mostly imagined persecution: in the case of
the intellectual lights and financial scions of the movement it is government
regulation and taxation and the refusals of academics to give credence to their
demonstrable nonsense; in the case of the religious zealots it is alleged
persecution at the hands of virtually everyone who doesn’t follow their version
of the gospels. And, by degrees, it is
variously held that the wealthy deserve the
lion’s share just as the true Christian has a prior claim on the fruits of the
planet and the governance thereof.
To accomplish this, we are continually
reminded of persecutions real or imagined from unspecified burdensome
regulation to tales of Christian persecution despite a church standing on every
other street corner of America. For this purpose, tales of Muslim conquest
although centuries ago and far less draconian than our collective memory has it
color a deep suspicion in these quarters of anyone hailing from the
region. For this purpose, the Crusades
keep re-emerging as a template ignorant of the fact that we lost the
Crusades. For this purpose, a strain of
anti-Catholicism colors the political wrong as the inquisition is
rehashed. It is a persecution complex as
old as Christianity itself dating back to Roman times, embroidered by time into
a full-fledged tapestry deeply coloring how the assembled view the world.
On this point one must consult, briefly, the
historical record. The historian Gibbon
in his “Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire”, estimated, after consulting contemporary records, that perhaps
1,800 persons were put to death in the 400 years before Christianity became the
state religion noting that subsequent persecutions by Christians far
outnumbered the original sin. Never
mind, for Rome had become the first Anti-Christ, a trend that has continued
down to our time to include our own government.
The fact is that these people have always
been in control, only now a much more virulent strain of the disease that is
American Conservatism has taken the palace exhibiting a much more deranged,
delusional and far more deeply paranoid behavior. Convinced now that they are being
“sandbagged” by a “deep state”, tRUMP and his associates—foremost advisor Steve
Bannon lately of Breitbart “News”—have balked at staffing high government
positions, refusing to refill vacancies left from the previous administration
thereby destroying institutional memory.
They have moved to cut funding of the State Department hampering
intelligence gathering worldwide thereby insuring that this country will be
blindsided in some upcoming international crisis. They have even cut funding for NASA
satellites monitoring global warming.
Deeply suspicious, deeply intolerant of opposing points of view, deeply
paranoid, tRUMP and associates spend their time “tweeting” away the presidency
engaging themselves only is uneven attempts to expunge Obama from the
historical record and getting revenge upon “enemies” real and imagined.
This is what unchecked paranoia can do to a
body politic, and this too is a legacy of the ever delusional “Generation of
Swine.”
___
(1).
See, for instance, Hofstadter, Richard. “Anti-Intellectualism in America
American Life”
Op.cit.
(2).
See my post dated October 2, 2008: A Question of Will, Exile on Main
Street, Victims of Property and Standing.
(3). Robin,
Corey. “Out of Place” The Nation June 23, 2008 pages 25-33
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