Conventional press script from a surprising source

TomDispatch for 09/20/07 features Glued to Our Seats in the Theater of War: Tall Tales from the Annals of the Bush Administration by Ira Chernus, with an introduction by Tom Engelhardt. (The titles at that site can be confusing, because Engelhardt puts a title at the top before his introductions that are often different than on the main article.)

Engelhardt has researched what he calls American "victory culture" extensively. And his introduction is good. For instance:

Here's something I suspect goes with the above. With rare exceptions, the fiercest post-9/11 "warriors" of this administration were never in the military. They had, in the Vice President's words, "other priorities in the ‘60s." Hence that old (and not very useful) term "chickenhawks." On the other hand, a surprising number of Democrats in Congress had actually served in the military - not that, from Senators Max Cleland to Jack Reed, it did them much political good. Americans have preferred, it seems, to hear their war stories from the men who sat out the wars.

The reason, I suspect, is simple enough. I'm about George Bush's age. My father, like his, fought in Asia in World War II. In the 1950s, my childhood years, that generation of fathers - the ones I knew, anyway - were remarkably silent on their actual war experiences, but to us kids that made no difference. All we had to do was walk to the nearest neighborhood movie theater, catch Merrill's Marauders, or some other war flick, and it was obvious enough just what heroic things they had accomplished. George Bush and I both sat in the dark, enveloped in the same American mythic tradition - already then a couple of hundred years old - that I've called "victory culture"; we knew Americans deserved to, and would, triumph against savage enemies out on some distant frontier; we both thrilled to the sound of the bugle as the blue coats charged; we both felt the chills run up our spine as, with the Marine Hymn welling up, the Marines advanced victoriously while "The End" flashed on the screen.

Here's the difference: I left that movie theater in the Vietnam era. Much of the Bush administration seems to have remained in the dark.

I'm always dubious about arguments that wander onto the turf of "national character", a concept that historians largely abandoned decades ago. But Engelhardt is careful, and in what I've read of his work, he seems to stop short of "national character" assumptions.

Still, I worry whenever someone starts talking about the movies as somehow a symptom of the national Zeitgeist or something along those lines that it sounds convincing because it's an attractive literary device used in service of some argument with which I'm inclined to agree.

Chernus' piece, though, I found to be uncharacteristic of TomDispatch articles because it's essentially yet another version of conventional Establishment press corps assumptions about American politics. At first glance, it sounds like a "left" argument, referring early on to antiwar "activists who despair of the spineless Democrats". And he seems to argue that Democrats and Republicans have reached some kind of secret pact on the Iraq War. Which lets him smugly pronounce how foolish it is for those rubes known as voters (sometimes even as "citizens") to think that anything they do or say can make a difference.

For example, he writes:

All theater, all storytelling, rests on the power of illusion and the willing suspension of disbelief. ... the Democrats have given millions of doubters a chance to suspend their disbelief that the will of the people can make any difference whatsoever.

Short version: dumb-ass voters, they think their opinion is worth considering.

Chernus is not exactly what I would call a Jacksonian Democrat. In fact, that sounds more like High Federalism to me. (High Federalism being the 1820s version of robber baron rule.)

Despite the "left' posturing, he actually argues a slight variant on Big Pundit Conventional Wisdom: that no matter how much public opinion has shifted or will shift against the Iraq War, It's good for the Republicans!

It's really a weird perception. It's one thing to marvel at the phenomenon of the Democrats falling for a petty stunt like the anti-MoveOn.org Senate resolution. But Chernus seems to think that no matter what happens, deep down all red-blooded Americans secretly sympathize with Cheneyist militarism. And that no matter what the Democrats do in the future, It's good for the Republicans!

Apparently oblivious to the polls and past experience of wars that the public has rejected, he declares that "opposition to the war is spread wide but not necessarily deep". His main argument is that Bush's appeals to heroic wartime rhetoric will trump the Democrats' arguments for withdrawal every time. Using Sen. Jack Reed's response to Bush's big address on the Iraq War endorsing the "Petraeus plan" as an example, he says that no matter what the Dems say or do, they're really just a bunch of dirty hippies and losers:

But like so many Democrats, including legless former Senator Max Cleland and Vietnam veteran John Kerry, he found himself mysteriously unable to turn his real-life experience into an effective post-9/11 narrative. A powerful drama creates a world of its own, one that can easily feel more real than reality. Even after so many years of disaster and so much repetition, against Bush's rich drama, Reed could still offer only a thin script with feeble characters, little if any plot, and no sense of direction. Mostly he carped at the commander-in-chief of what the Democrats themselves acclaim to be the finest fighting force in the world. So he left his party open to the same criticism thrown at Sixties radicals: "You only know what you're against. You don't know what you're for." (my emphasis)

I though Reed's response was pretty darn good, myself. I was actually pleasantly surprised. I would never have known that Reed was just another dirty filthy hippie if Chernus hadn't explained it. Oh, and even the manliest of Democrats is always going to come off looking and sounding wimpy, confused and flip-floppy ("feeble characters, little if any plot, and no sense of direction").

Nor would I have realized the higher truth that our betters obviously know, that Bush's "narrative" for the war present "rich drama". Here's what Chernus cites as "rich drama":

Bush put on yet another performance of that morality play on September 13th, ending with the almost obligatory tragic message from grieving parents: "We believe this is a war of good and evil and we must win. ... even if it cost the life of our own son. Freedom is not free." That sums up the essence of the drama. Coming from people whose child is dead, it's seems like a show stopper. What else can you say?

Gee, I thought it came off as a cheaply exploitive attempt to use the words of a grieving parent - who happens to share the Republicans' unpopular view of the Iraq War policy - to make his own point. Hiding behind a bereaved woman's skirts, as it were.

And, you know, there's also the polls that show he and Saviour-General Petraeus essentially didn't change anyone minds about the Iraq War. How was I to know that this was "rich drama" that inevitably came off better than any girly-man, wiffle-waffling, hippie pot-smoking Democrat could ever do?

Chernus' article is a good example of regurgitated conventional wisdom that sometimes gets interpreted as "left". Why? I'm not sure. I guess because he affects a "been there, done that" cynicism - but, no, that's the Republican posture, isn't it? Heck, I guess I don't know why. Because it reads like the stock GOP-friendly press script to me.

The bottom line is, whatever happens: It's good for the Republicans!

Tags: establishment press, ira chernus, mainstream media, mainstream press, tom engelhardt