the year of reading tea leaves VI: Republicans

The Republicans' main recommendation for reducing deficits is to ban earmarks. However, they did talk a good game about cutting government spending, making government smaller, etc., when they had control of the White House and Congress. This has earned them the reputation as being the party of small government. Or was that just Ron Paul? Anyway, the Department of Homeland Security wasn't created on their watch.

Tea Partysans use this apparent hypocrisy of the establishment Republicans as a rallying cry and allegedly this is a sign that they are not simply the shock troops of the Republican Party (although they welcome establishment Republicans to their rallies and national conventions and pay at least one of them – the prodigal, former Rogue-Governor – handsomely). They would happily rid the nation of the FDA, FBI, CIA, Social Security Administration, Medicare (although it seems most of the Tea Partysans are receiving it), Homeland Security, FCC (because they don't care whether porn films are shown at 7pm on all networks), etc. Back to 1790, when a muzzleloader and the Bible were all the government one needed.

*

I think coherence (such as it is) will come in the form of votes for Republican Party candidates. Now these Republican candidates, running as "rogues", will appeal to already existing incoherent Tea Partysan "ideals". Once in office, these rogue Republicans will make symbolic gestures towards this new base fraction, such as speeches about succession, the introduction of Constitutional amendments that have no chance of passage (for example, one that would abolish the IRS or abolish the 17th amendment) and the like; the same sort of thing Reagan did to appease his social conservative base (i.e., support a pro-life amendment in words, but not in deeds). But they'll vote with the establishment Republican bloc, will attach earmarks for their districts and states. Business as usual, American democracy in action.

*

The following passage in Steinfels's old book on The Neoconservatives seems apt as a description of the present state of contemporary American conservatism (as it is manifested by the Republican Party and its Tea Partysan allies).

In our time the classic statement of the benefits to be secured in taking one's political adversaries seriously -- and in having political adversaries worthy of being taken seriously in the first place -- is found in Lionel Trilling's preface to The Liberal Imagination. Trilling begins with the observation that has since become the commonplace we already noted: 'In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition.' Such a situation poses two dangers. First, the absence of conservative or reactionary ideas 'does not mean, of course, that there is no impulse to conservatism or to reaction.' It simply means that such impulses do not 'express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.' They may do worse, for 'it is just when a movement despairs of having ideas that it turns to force.'

Trilling’s vision of the character of opposition to the dominant liberal tradition captures almost exactly the current reaction to the liberal political order of the moment: "irritable mental gestures” which only vaguely resemble ideas sums up the Tea Party movement. However, one should notice an additional element in the current reaction against the liberal tradition (or, rather, the reaction within the liberal tradition). The motive force behind these gestures is religious, not in the sense of organized religion or any particular body of faith, but rather in the structural sense of actions motivated by the force of a collective idea that is not susceptible to the test of (its) reality. Today's conservative and/or Republican political vision is fundamentally chiliastic. And even if the predicted doomsday never arrives, the fundamental faith in fear is not shaken. The Tea Party charivari blithely staggers on.

the year of reading tea leaves V: political style

What I think distinguishes my analysis from that of Hofstadter and Lipset (but primarily Hofstadter) is that I think there is a reasonable element in economic and social status anxiety. One is not a kook, a paranoiac, or an extremist for worrying about one's present and future in economic and social terms. Where the Hofstadterian analysis is useful, I think, is in characterizing the modality through which these otherwise rational concerns are articulated. And, hence, the lack of interest in genuine debate is a telling sign of something like a paranoid style. The demonization of political opponents is also a sign of this style.

*

So whereas randomly sampled Republicans may identify with some of the opinions expressed by the Tea Party, they are not necessarily likely to turn up at a rally with a poster that refers to the President by a racial slur. However, the activists in the Tea Party (and some segment of its rank and file), who may not be identical demographically with the individuals sampled by the NY Times poll, appear to be more extreme, open to expressing their concerns in extremist images and words. And more disturbing to me is the presence of Republican politicians who also seem willing to engage in (if not incite) the same mode of symbolic violence that pops up during Tea Partysan events.

*

Why does the anxious, white, middle-class college-educated male not argue in favor of an expansion of Medicare, a peace dividend dedicated to funding library construction, and amnesty for the immigrant underclass that services his comfortable lifestyle? I think the key factor here is that not all individuals of this sort react in this manner or hold these views. However, those who do also have a party identification that is Republican. They have an ideological framework (a justice frame) within which to make sense of their predicament: government is to blame. This has been the conservative mantra since Reagan. Government is given faces: Pelosi, Reid, Obama. These three individuals by themselves have created all sorts of problems, some of which will arrive on a Day of Reckoning, the national domesday that will occur at some unspecific point in the distant future. Why is this happening? Because Pelosi, Reid, and Obama are socialists.

Continue a bit further down this rabbit hole and one winds up at a Tea Party event, cheering Palin, Bachmann and Beck, wearing a silly hat, and holding a poster with a misspelled, uncivil message.

*

The Tea Party is clearly more than a tax rebellion, given the Partysans' obsession with birth certificates and other symbolic phenomena that reach far beyond the vagaries of deficit spending and the income tax. It is part poujadisme, and part classic American paranoid style, the latter of which is manifested in the Chicken Little Syndrome that infuses Tea Partysan and Teapublican rhetoric. If one were to turn over some of the Partysans, old-fashioned Dixiecrats would crawl out.

the year of reading tea leaves IV: tea-mography

I wonder if it's true that wealthy, well-educated Republicans are the ones seen at Tea Partysan events bearing signs equating Obama with Hitler, etc. On the one hand, if it is true, then we should be very afraid, because it would show that such extremist forms of political expression are now part of the mainstream Republican thinking of mainstream (i.e., wealthier, better educated) Republican voters. On the other hand, one might be encouraged by the profile of the average person who is an adherent of Tea Partysan activism: it means people who are not male, not identified as a Republican, and who are under age 45 (which would be the majority of all Americans) are not now and are unlikely to be persuaded to drink the Tea.

*

"Better educated" usually translates into a measurement of years of schooling (i.e., educational attainment), which does correlate with (but which does not mean causes) different levels of wealth attainment. The Statistical Abstracts of the United States shows this pattern descriptively. The less interesting statistical analysis involves the relationship between educational attainment and wealth (which typically means income, not assets). The more interesting statistical analysis would involve the relationship between educational attainment, wealth, and ideological disposition. In this particular case, the research questions would be: (1) are individuals with higher levels of educational attainment and income more likely to identify with the ideology (inasmuch as one exists) of the Tea Party than individuals with lower levels of educational attainment and income? And: (2) are identification with the Republican party, being a male, being "white," and being over 40 years old, the most significant variables in a statistical model that includes educational attainment, income, and Tea Party ideology? A reasonable guess is that Republican Party identification, being male, being "white", and being over 40 carry more weight than educational attainment and income as a predictor of identification with Tea Party ideology.

*

Despite all of the claims that the Tea Party is comprised of political independents, the Tea Partysans have always pursued their prey on the happy hunting grounds of the Republican tribe. It is no accident that the Tea Partysans target Democratic politicians for defeat and support candidates whose platform is indistinguishable from Republicans or candidates who are Republicans. The Tea Party demographic is basically Republican voters of a certain age, gender, race, educational attainment level, and income level who are facing a decline in their economic status (due to macro-economic trends and the financial crisis of 2008), which has implications for their social status. This reasonable economic and social status anxiety is exaggerated (i.e., raised to a fever pitch) by the presence of a liberal President with a strange name and a democratically-elected Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress. Hence, despite Ross Douthat’s fantasies, the Tea Party activists are nothing more than the shock troops of the Republican party, a new set of shock troops who will replace deployments of aging, economically less successful and less educated social conservative shock troops who have manned the barricades against secular liberalism (read godless socialism) since the mid-1970s. In other words: the Tea Party phenomenon is the Newest New Right, following in the footsteps of McCarthyite Anti-Communism, Goldwater Conservatism, and Moral Majoritarianism.

zwischenbetrachtung: the seduction of Ross Douthat

In an Op-Ed “The Seduction of the Tea Partiers,” Ross Douthat complains that “House Republicans have adopted the atmospherics of the Tea Party movement, but they’ve evaded its most admirable substance.” He describes the Tea Partysans as follows:

The Tea Party is a grass-roots movement — wild, woolly and chaotic — which sometimes makes it hard to figure out exactly what it stands for. But to the extent that the movement boasts a single animating idea, it’s the conviction that the Republicans as much as the Democrats have been an accessory to the growth of spending and deficits, and that the Republican establishment needs to be punished for straying from fiscal rectitude.

The Tea Partiers have a point. Officially, the Republican Party stands for low taxes and limited government. But save during the gridlocked 1990s, Republican majorities and Republican presidents have tended to pass tax cuts while putting off spending cuts till a tomorrow that never comes.

Douthat asserts that “Conservatives have justified this failure with two incompatible theories. One is the “starve the beast” conceit, which holds that cutting taxes will force government spending downward. The other is the happy idea that tax cuts actually increase government revenue, making deficit anxieties irrelevant.” He expends a fair amount of newsprint attacking the case Republicans make for tax cuts. In his view, they are simply coopting the Tea Partysan message for political gain that will not bring about reduced government spending.

But having maligned Republican arguments for tax cuts, what does he offer in support of the Tea Partysans?

Their eccentric elements notwithstanding, the Tea Parties have something vital to offer the country: a vocal, activist constituency for spending cuts at a time when politicians desperately need to have their spines stiffened on the issue. But it’s all too easy to imagine the movement (which, after all, includes a lot of Social Security and Medicare recipients!) being seduced with rhetorical nods to the Constitution, and general promises of spending discipline that never get specific.

So far so good. But Douthat never gets around to explaining the Tea Partysan’s case for spending cuts. For good reason: they have none. It seems that the absence of a rationale for spending cuts is preferable to having a rationale, even if a failed one, for tax cuts. The Tea Partysans have no political theory to back their position. Douthat has been seduced by the mere gestures of a movement that lacks substance. The eccentric wheel gets Douthat’s journalistic grease.

the year of reading tea leaves III: love and hate

The German language is unfairly maligned when the worst phrases are said to sound better in it. Certainly "We need to purge the weaklings" (said Tea Party Express 3 Chairman Mark Williams of the RINOs: Republicans In Name Only) would have sounded better in the original Blubo (Blut und Boden) German of the NS-Zeit. But if we are not bound to the pessimism of Adorno concerning the fascist debasement of language, and the barbarism of writing poetry after Auschwitz, one could just as easily say the obsession with weaklings or others said to undermine the community or nation is as American as apple pie and Father Joseph Coughlin. Nonetheless, the integrity of language can be restored (albeit with difficulty) no matter how debased it becomes in the hands of the political entrepreneurs du jour.

*

Perhaps one should not hold the neue Tee-Patrioten up to standards they can never meet, such as honesty, ethical consistency, and echt constitutional patriotism. Of course, they can be charged with being self-serving, with representing a false claim of universality, or wilfully neglecting the fact that the political process remains legitimate even when one's side "loses" and loses badly (perhaps they were cutting class during the lesson on "majority rule" in 10th grade civics). This self-serving rationalization of failure elevates personal loss to the level of national crisis: one needs look no further than the Hatepalooza tours of Governor Palin for an object lesson in projection. There is no impending Chicken Little Moment as much as people like Cheney wish for one (i.e., wish for an attack on the USA to prove that enhanced interrogation techniques were necessary). Republicans warn of a divided nation, which only proves they can help bring about their own self-fulfilling prophecy through the use of Us-versus-Them rhetoric pitched in the delusional terms we have grown accustomed to hearing: death panels, government takeovers, and, Armageddon (thanks to Republican National Committee Chairperson Michael Steele for that one). What goes hand in hand with the disaster movie plot structure of the political imagination of the conservative base is a pathological view of the most ordinary, mundane political action: the idea of compromise in the course of the legislative process sends our Tea Partysans into convulsive spasms that are becalmed only by amassing a stockpile of ammunition. All of this makes me long for simpler days, when the lunacy that found its way into common political discourse centered around the benign figure of Joe the Plumber, a wondrous P. T. Barnum exhibit for the 21st century. Where have you gone Joe the Plumber, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you...

Well of course he lent his voice to various gatherings of conservatives around the country, including the Tea Partysans. He's also adopted the discourse of victimhood that is so familiar among conservatives (from Palin upward) to account for his relationship to John McCain.

"I don’t owe him s—. He really screwed my life up, is how I look at it," Joe -- aka Samuel Wurzelbacher -- said of John McCain in an interview with Pennsylvania public radio correspondent Scott Detrow.

"McCain was trying to use me. I happened to be the face of middle Americans. It was a ploy."

the year of reading tea leaves II: political theory?

Some random thoughts: what does "government" mean? From the standpoint of "liberty," I could be quite happy to be unburdened of certain tasks so that I have more free time to do what I want. That would be a justification for such "government" as a standing army, or police and fire department, or FDA/USDA. I don't feel I'm giving up any "right" to make decisions for myself when I trust others to do things (like inspect/monitor the quality of the produce I eat). So here "government" are institutions that unburden ordinary citizens of a lot of tasks that would impinge on their liberty.

*

That's not the only meaning government could have. "Government" can mean a set of procedures that (ideally) bring about an orderly, rational, and fair decision making process. Government here means "governing." Roberts Rules of Order is a procedure for "governing" meetings or a parliamentary body. Insofar as individuals must enter in cooperative relations with others to achieve collective and individual ends, this notion of "government" is unavoidable.

*

Compared to these simple propositions, the Tea Partysans have an anemic political philosophy. They seem to react to random problems associated with "government" without offering any vision of what "government" should be. To assert that government should be "small" or "limited" doesn't cut it.

*

Another matter: if government is to shrink, what are the criteria for deciding what should stay and what should go. You are ok with the military but not ok with HUD or the Dept of Education. What are the criteria for this distinction? Do Tea Partysans make any distinctions on what should stay or go? One person's idea of "excessive government intrusion" is another person's idea of a "necessary function."

*

Corporations and government: yes, there is a "problem" (for some people) with the influence of corporations on legislative outcomes. But what is the solution here: get rid of government or contain corporate influence? If one argues that the growth of government (and its intrusiveness) goes hand in hand with the increase of corporate lobbyists, then one would have a more robust analysis of the situation and a better platform with which to support criticism of government.

*

Finally, there is an interesting situation for some (maybe not all) Tea Partysans that they respond to the electoral results of last fall as if it were illegitimate; they are then rejecting the democratic rights of the majority and holding their own view up as not only superior but also non-negotiable. Here I find a fundamental disrespect for democratic processes, a disrespect that could be labeled "un-American" or "unpatriotic" (but I won't do that). If they don't like majority rule (with respect going to minority rights), then they should do some homework on constitutional design and come up with an alternative deliberative and electoral procedure as opposed to ranting about socialism or depicting the President as Hitler or engaging in some other ridiculous and regressive street agitprop. I believe there is a streak of Leninism in the Tea Partysans, they seem to believe they are a vanguard party that knows better what America is and what America needs and are unwilling to subject their ideas and principles to a democratic process in which their ideas may "lose."

progress?

I think it makes sense to think of "progress" as a relative term and to define it, in the first instance, within the boundaries (however conceptualized) of a "society"; in the second instance, one might talk about "progress" across societies. I'm comfortable with a "Weberian" (Max Weber) conception: each historical case is unique; it makes no sense to look for universal laws (such as a universal law of progress) that would apply to all cases; however, comparison is possible using "ideal types." The idea of "progress" might be an ideal type that has significance within a particular case, which, under particular circumstances, could come to have significance across many cases. But this ideal type should not be defined by the standards of any particular case.

I think Weber articulates this perspective well in the “introduction” to his essays on the sociology of religion (two of which are the essays that comprise The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. (NB. The translation of this introduction was appended to the Routledge translation by Parsons, but actually post-dates the original publication of the essays on protestantism).

"A product of modern European civilization, studying any problem of universal history, is bound to ask himself to what combination of circumstances the fact should be attributed that in Western civilization, and in Western civilization only, cultural phenomena have appeared which (as we like to think) lie in a line of development having universal significance and value." (2001: xxviii)

(Universalgeschichtliche Probleme wird der Sohn der modernen europäischen Kulturwelt unvermeidlicher- und berechtigerweise unter der Fragestellung behandeln: welche Verkettung von Umstanden hat dazu gefürht, daß gerade auf dem Boden des Okzidents, und nur hier, Kulturerscheinungen auftraten, welche doch – wie wenigstens wir uns gern vorstellen – in einer Entwicklungsrichtung von univeseller Bedeutung und Gültigkeit lagen? Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, p. 1)

Weber's interest is in the "universal significance" of "Occidental rationalism", represented in his time by the stage of development of science, rational techniques employed in the production of art and music, and, especially, capitalism ("the pursuit of profit, and forever renewed profit, by means of continuous rational, capitalistic enterprise.” (2001: xxxi) (”…mit dem Streben nach Gewinn, im kontinuierlichen, rationalen kapitalistischen Betrieb: nach immer erneuntem Gewinn: nach ‘Rentabilität.’” p. 4)

*

The idea of progress is complicated in two ways: (a) by the fact that whatever is defined as progress is highly susceptible to partiality derived from one’s particular standpoint in time and space; (b) by the fact that progress bears a distinct, and not necessarily universal, sense of historical time. The first point (the partiality of any definition of what progress is or means) is obvious; the second point, perhaps less so. Koselleck’s discussion of time consciousness is relevant regarding point (b). He argues that between 1500 and 1800 “there occurs a temporalization (Verzeitlichung) of history, at the end of which there is the peculiar form of acceleration which characterizes modernity.” Taking Altdorfer’s splendid Alexanderschlacht (1529) as a point of departure, Koselleck comments on the peculiar representation of temporality in the painting.

“Let us try to regard the picture with the eye of one of his contemporaries. For a Christian, the victory of Alexander over the Persians signifies the transition from the second to the third world empire, whereby the Holy Roman Empire constitutes the fourth and last… The battle, in which the Persian army was destined for defeat, was no ordinary one; rather, it was one of the few events between the beginning of the world and its end that also prefigured the fall of the Holy Roman Empire. Analogous events were expected to occur with the coming of the End of the World. Altdorfer’s image had, in other words, an eschatological status. The Alexanderschlacht was as timeless the prelude, figure, or archetype of the final struggle between Christ and Antichrist; those participating in it were contemporaries of those who lived in expectation of the Last Judgment.

Until well into the sixteenth century, the history of Christianity is a history of expectations, or more exactly, the constant anticipation of the End of the world on the one hand and the continual deferment of the End on the other.” (“Modernity and the planes of historicity,” Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, pp. 5-6).

In light of this sense of time, of timeless time, what would be called “progress”?

**

Finally, I’ll mention briefly a discussion by Koselleck of the historicity of the concept of revolution (a concept that might intersect in ways with the idea of progress). Regarding the concept of revolution, which he argues is “a linguistic product of our modernity,” Koselleck makes the following point: “In 1842, a French scholar made a historically enlightening observation. Haréau recalled what had been forgotten at the time: that our expression actually signified a turning over, a return of the movement to the point of departure, as in the original Latin usage. A revolution initially signified, in keeping with its lexical sense, circulation. Haréau added that in the political sphere, this was understood as the circulation of constitutions taught by Aristotle, Polybius, and their successors but which since 1789 and through Condorcet’s influence was hardly comprehensible. According to ancient doctrine, there was only a limited number of constitutional forms, which dissolved and replaced each other but could not naturally be transgressed. These are the constitutional forms, together with their corruptions, which are still current today, succeeding each other with a certain inevitability. Haréau cited a forgotten principal witness of this past world, Louis LeRoy, who had argued that the first of all natural forms of rule was that of monarchy, which was replaced by aristocracy as soon as the former degenerated into tyranny. Then followed the well-known schema in which aristocracy was transformed into oligarchy, which was in turn displaced by democracy, which degenerated ultimately into ochlocracy, or mass rule. Here, in fact, no one ruled any longer, and the way to individual rule was open once more.” (“Historical criteria of the modern concept of revolution,” Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, p. 41).

What idea of progress, which is commonly ingrained in our affirmative understanding of “revolution,” is imaginable with this cyclical understanding of political events? Or consider the first two sentences of Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, which indicate a “repetitive” (and pessimistic) idea of the “progress” of historical events: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”

My point here is this: “progress” is a temporal sensibility that is, arguably, a product of historical consciousness as much as it is something “tangible”, that is, something measurable by things such as “quality of life” or level of technological development, etc.