Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; . . .
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.[63]
We are rapidly approaching the point at which we no longer will be able to govern ourselves; we barely are dong so now. For the worst among us, who are full of passionate intensity, that is the desired result. Republicans in Congress oppose any attempt to assist those in need, or even to put the economy back in order. In no small part they are following the lead of their corporate masters, for whom government is the enemy: the enemy, that is, of profits undiluted by wages or taxes. They dream of the "free market," an imaginary state of unregulated activity. Being good conservatives, they are part of a tradition: "The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all."[64]
Ideology also enters into the anti-statist attitude. Tenthers, nullifiers, Tea Partiers, conspiracy nuts and "patriots" claim that the federal government is an engine of tyranny which must be destroyed. In their disdain for the state, reactionary conservatives are, ironically, in agreement with communists, although Grover Norquist’s fantasy of drowning the government in a bathtub is a bit more violent than the Marxist notion of the state’s withering away. Actually, they are more in step with the movement known as collectivist anarchism; they concur with its philosopher Michael Bakunin, for whom "the term ‘state’ epitomized all the evil which must be banished from the world."[65]
As to the dithering best, we have a prime example in our President. He has ready access to the media and through them to the people, but he rarely uses his opportunities. The fallacy of many right-wing positions could be exposed if only he would say something but, whether through lack of conviction or timidity, he lets the nonsense pass unchallenged. Not even our modified, shifted-to-the-right center can hold if all of the pull is from one side.
__________________
63. Yeats, The Second Coming
64.Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday, p. 132
65. Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, p. 204
No comments:
Post a Comment