The New Barbarism
In November of 1992, Lewis H. Lapham, who lost his brilliant, discerning mind in the first term of the Presidency of Bush the Younger, wrote an enduringly insightful piece in his “Notebook” section of Harper’s magazine. He called it, “Deus ex machina”, a literary device defined this way in C. Hugh Holman’s A Handbook to Literature:
In the ancient Greek theater when gods appeared in plays they were lowered to the stage from the “machine” or the stage structure above. The abrupt but timely appearance of a god in this fashion, when used to extricate the mortal characters of the drama from a situation so perplexing that the solution seemed beyond mortal powers, was referred to in Latin as the deus ex machina (”god from the machine”) … the employment of the deus ex machina is commonly recognized as evidence of … an uncritical willingness to disregard the probabilities.
In “Deus ex machina”, Mr. Lapham was commenting on the effect of mass media on the political process in general – and on perceptions of individuals therein, in particular. He was, of course, writing during the Presidential election season that pitted Bush the Elder against Clinton the Shameless. He might just as well have been writing about – and warning us against – our present Deity-in-Chief:
The authors of the American Constitution recognized in themselves and in their fellow citizens the familiar vices of vanity and greed, but they preferred the risks of freedom to the assurances of monarchy … the mechanism of checks and balances preserved the principle of liberty against the promise of miracles and the comforts of despotism. The proposition was as courageous as it was optimistic, but it doesn’t meet the expectations of an age the worships celebrity and defines itself as the sum of its fears … the rising levels of perceived risk lower the levels of tolerance for the norm of human fallibility … Authority invested in institutions gives way to authority vested in persons, and the less that people understand of what it is that politicians do, the more urgent the desire to appoint them to the ranks of the immortals …
The primitive vocabulary of the mass media doesn’t lend itself to the discussion of complicated political issues, much less to moral ambiguity or moments of doubt. The television camera demands prophetic certainty and a sentimental script … The rule of love supplants the rule of law, and instead of attracting voters the postmodern politician recruits fans … The sentiment is profoundly anti-democratic, but then so is the trend of the news. If the hope of civilization defines itself and an advance toward impersonality – toward an idea of justice that doesn’t depend on the whim of a judge or the favor of the White House – the pagan worship of rock singers or movie directors, like the pagan worship of stones and trees, implies the joyous return to the what the history books of the moment still describe as barbarism – a word that the new political dictionaries certainly will amend or delete.
At the time, Lapham was describing a dawning phenomenon, an evolution of perception precipitated by the advent of mass media, of 24-hour news, of the indiscriminate informational onslaught of the Internet. He imagined his words might be a wake-up call, an invitation to critical thinking, a peeling away of the superficial critieria of personal popularity, rousing rhetoric, endless repetition, false promises, falser gods, and our uncritical willingness to disregard the probabilities of giving ourselves over to such promises, such false gods. He could have had no idea that just 16 years after writing them, his words would come to be proven literal by a nation, this nation – would come to a life of mindless adulation in yet another Presidential election, would come to be embodied by a a false god who would seduce a nation and anesthetize a national consciousness. But it happened. And so it is that authoritative institutions – the Executive branch of the federal government, the auto industry, the banking industry, the healthcare industry, the Supreme Court – fall under the rule of the one and the power of the popular.
When Neville Chamberlain returned from signing The Munich Agreement in 1938, Winston Churchill said to him, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.” Likewise, we had the choice between taking care and being taken care of. We chose to be taken care of and we had better take care. We have seen fit to forgo our risks of freedom, choosing to embrace, instead, the assurances – and the promises of miracles – of Obama the Omnipotent. As a result, we have consented to despotism. Because it’s been packaged as compassionate, protective generosity (it always is), we’ll never see it coming. Universal healthcare. New jobs. Clean energy. Friendly foreign relations. Handouts instead of hands out. Don’t we wonder how and why all of these Utopian ends haven’t been achieved before now? We’re right to be afraid of living in a world without all those things. But we’ll never be delivered from our fears until we confront them and take back the responsibility for overcoming them. There’s a difference between a showman and a shaman. Barack the Entrancer is the former; although, he managed to convince a majority of us he’s the latter.
What King Barack the Bewilderer calls “the audacity of hope” is, in fact, the sham of the new barbarism, the promise of miracles and the comforts of despotism. We will deny it. But we will not regain the right to call ourselves civilized, independent, and at liberty until we defy it.
If we don’t determine to do so today – 233 years after the first Independence Day – we should prepare to fight for the next one.