[Peace-discuss] Fwd: The Evangelical Rebellion by Chris Hedges

[David Green]

I suppose that Social Darwinism broadly construed did define American political thought at least until World War I, but wouldn't one also make a distinction between conservative Social Darwinists and the Social Gospel? I realize that the latter also facilitated the rise of the corporate state, but at least there was room at one end of their tent for John Dewey, etc., however futile his efforts turned out to be.

"C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:  I don't think it's clear that the people whose reading of Origin of 
Species and Genesis you disagree with are necessarily stupid or ignorant 
(and I don't agree with them either).

Bryan, e.g., who's been made a figure of fun so that his politics could 
be forgotten, saw that evolution was being used in the early 20th 
century to justify rapacious capitalist practices -- what we tend to 
isolate as "social Darwinism" but was part of the progressive view a 
century ago. It was for example the basis of the eugenics movement in 
America, which the Nazis acknowledged showed them the way. (A cousin of 
mine was a principal figure in the movement.) Bryan's politics are 
certainly to be preferred to those of his president, Woodrow Wilson.

Cockburn is disturbed I think primarily by the gap between the 
pretensions of the American political system and anything like real 
democracy (which American liberals fear, because they think that the 
people are stupid and ignorant). --CGE

Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> Some value intelligence and knowledge among other qualities, even for 
> leaders in government, and abjure stupidity and ignorance. Necessary, if 
> not sufficient, reasons to govern wisely. In their disgust and 
> abhorrence at current (and past) politics and policies, some are ready 
> to turn to anything and anybody different, or perhaps nothing--nihilism. 
> An example is,sadly, the truly disturbed Cockburn.
> 
> --mkb
> 
> 
> 
> On Dec 30, 2007, at 7:16 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> 
>> Seems pretty sober to me. The Left that Cockburn has in mind is the 
>> sad American version, synonymous with liberals, and represented by, 
>> say, the Nation magazine (and, indeed, Chris Hedges).
>>
>> The American version is of course only a simulacrum of a Left as the 
>> term has been used for two centuries, because it's abandoned the 
>> Left's defining characteristic, attention to class struggle.
>>
>> The Left in the US has been reduced to a matter of thinking the right 
>> thoughts and using the right language (what used to be called 
>> "identity politics," until it became the norm). It's all a matter of 
>> symbolic analysis, in Robert Reich's term: you can't diss Darwin or 
>> believe in resurrection, altho' it's a bit hard to see what those 
>> terms have to do with politics. (In fact, I think the latter does, 
>> but probably not in Evangelicalism, which seems to me a relatively 
>> simple material heresy.)
>>
>> American politics have to be bumped over into the symbolic arena 
>> because there's no real contestation over policy. The presidential 
>> campaign means very little because all the "serious" candidates 
>> (Republican and Democrat) support the same policy -- on the war, 
>> health care, the economy, etc. It doesn't matter which of the actual 
>> candidates is elected because policy is doubly insulated from politics 
>> -- the policy is not under debate and political discussion is about 
>> irrelevancies (cf. Darwin).
>>
>> Americans (outside of the ideological institutions -- universities and 
>> the media) recognize this and conclude correctly that the presidential 
>> campaign has little or nothing to do with them. It's a game played by 
>> those designated -- show-business for ugly people. As a result, the 
>> actual policies of both parties -- essentially two business parties -- 
>> are substantially to the right of the views of most Americans. (E.g., 
>> 80% of Americans say big business has too much influence in the USG.)
>>
>> Alex I think would buy most of this, and it's in that context that he 
>> discusses Huckabee (and Paul). Remember he started as a political 
>> reporter and is here simply assessing the chances of candidates, 
>> without the moralistic fury against a Baptist minister who dares to 
>> run. (A fury incidentally not shown to M. L. King, another Baptist 
>> minister.) He considers the possibility, over against the monoglot 
>> media, that Huckabee could be a "genuinely interesting candidate," 
>> even a "wild man" terrifying the political establishment like Bryan (a 
>> rather admirable figure although "another implacable foe of Darwin") 
>> or Wallace (certainly less admirable).
>>
>> Surveying the US presidents from Reagan to Bush, can you seriously 
>> doubt that "any imbecile could be head of state" (or government)? But 
>> the problem is not that they're stupid -- in some ways they aren't -- 
>> but that they do vicious things.
>>
>> I don't agree that "lack of experience and knowledge about the rest of 
>> the world is one of the principal problems right now in American 
>> government." Liberal critics of the Vietnam War used to say that the 
>> US had stupidly blundered into a situation there (a "quagmire") that 
>> it didn't understand. There was no blunder -- it was just hard for US 
>> Liberals in their naivety to believe that that people they went to 
>> school with would kill 3-4 million people to teach the Third World a 
>> lesson. But they did (successfully), just as Clinton and Bush have 
>> killed millions in order successfully to maintain US hegemony over ME 
>> energy resources. And Clinton-Obama-Edwards-Romney-Giuliani-Huckabee 
>> will do the same. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme *pose*...
>>
>> Regards, CGE
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