Cowboy letters
How deep is the jingoist consensus?
A friend (Jonathan) sent an email saying: "Okay, got this from my brother. I think we do well to remember that for each self-satisfied leftist e-mail making the rounds there is at least one of these". (Please use your back button to return here after viewing the cowboy email.)
A series of exchanges I found fascinating ensued. I emerge as the optimist in this group.
The original email is one that circulates amongst the God & country crowd. It's basically a tribute to the cowboy images and old-west, white-hat justice of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. The justice meted out throughout the world by the sheriffs led by these men rarely is just. Yet that does not prevent a mythology of justice from holding with a death grip on some quarters of our population. The question is, how strong is that grip? Does September 11 cinch the eventuality of a spiral of death in a struggle with the new bear, er, wolf of "Islamic fanaticism"??
Clearly, Deep Blade Journal sees the US administration with the same concern that is palpable in 80% of the world's population. The Mad Cowboy has become an international symbol of Bush-inspired fear. Let us vote down that symbol next Tuesday November 2! That act, for at least a moment, will help us show the world that the American people are a good people with good hearts. It is a small yet powerful minority in our country that makes peace impossible.
Removal of Bush will hint at an emergence of an alternate power within the American public that Patrick Tyler writing in the New York Times described as the "the second superpower" -- a global protest against war.
Tyler wrote: "...the huge anti-war demonstrations around the world [February 15, 2003] are reminders that there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion."
John Kerry is an imperfect carrier of the message. But the Mad Cowboy must go before any further peace can be achieved. I hope that the American voters see fit to make this choice.
Here are our exchanges on the Cowboy meme:
| Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2004 22:16:14 -0400
From: Jeff Subject: Re: WE NEED MORE COWBOYS!! |
I think I know where your letter was going. I know I keep making a pest out of myself by saying "I told you so," but the sooner we leftists really understand the unflinching desire to win that is held by the right wingers, the sooner we can begin to grapple with it. The right sees communism in the hearts of Clinton (both Clintons), Gore, Kerry, even Lieberman and Clark and others.
Nader is right about one thing -- his actions in the last two elections will undermine the Democrats by keeping them out of power and forcing them to redesign the party. He hopes it will bring about a more liberal party that will unite the people of this country. I think he's on crack. The more I look at this country and the electorate the more I see a very conservative thinking people who are having trouble with Kerry let alone the real radicals of the left. God love them, the people of this country do love their cowboys .... however stupid they happen to be.
Jeff
| Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2004 00:13:15 -0400
From: Eric Subject: Re: WE NEED MORE COWBOYS!! |
I think the problem is with mad cowboys, not cowboys in general. And it has to be diseased, not a healthy cowboy.
Furthermore, did you guys see the "reality-based election" polling report that came out. Given beliefs of Bush supporters concerning Bush's positions, about 60% of 'em ought to be voting for Kerry, or Nader if they couldn't stomach that. Check this out.
The really reactionary stuff your brother distributes clearly is out there. But the political engagement here is along emotional lines. A lot of the people who might connect with this for a moment emotionally would be a lot more liberal if they had more information about the issues and a way to act on that information. Both the Republican and Democratic top echelons would be in trouble if they did. We preach to a choir, one that's getting bigger all the time.
Oh, and on "freedom isn't free"; yeah right, that supposed to be comfort to those who die for a lie? The left knows the true struggle for freedom a whole lot better than the right does.
Eric
| Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2004 09:30:17 -0400
From: Jeff Subject: Re: WE NEED MORE COWBOYS!! |
Hi Guys,
I'm not so sure about all this. Most people in this country are conservative for several legitimate reasons. Many--see the recent article in the Nation about Missouri -- are religious people who won't vote for a pro-choice candidate no mater what. Most Midwesterners, Southerners, and Blacks are religious people who are honestly concerned with the idea of gay marriage -- that issue can only hurt us in the short run -- abortion, and liberal education policies that have not brought about quality schools. I know there are very good arguments against all of these positions and I hold those feelings myself, but these concerns are not -- if we can say this about religion -- irrational or misguided.
Jonathan wrote yesterday that liberals are helping many working class people but they are not supporting liberal causes. He's right, of course. But we only want to help working class people on our terms. We want to help blacks live without discrimination but won't help them get public funds for private schools, something polls show over and over again many want. We want to help factory workers -- the proletariat -- keep their high-paying jobs but we don't want them to make gas-guzzling cars, dirty coal, or denuded forests to keep those jobs.
The liberal coalition is so weak that the only way to keep it viable in the presidential election is to ignore liberals publicly and hope they stay on board anyway. Republicans are able to do this -- Bush almost never has to throw DeLay a bone to keep his minions marching in line -- but Democrats have troubles doing it. That is why I think we have to assume Kerry will look out for our interests even when he says otherwise.
Jeff
| Date: Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2004 15:41 -0400
From: Eric Subject: Re: WE NEED MORE COWBOYS!! |
Jeff, your points are well taken. But I'd propose that on issue after issue, from regulation of clean air/water, to neo-liberal trade agreements, to support for international law, the public, to the extent they know enough about how to answer, are to the left of either major party. Now, the Thomas Frank thing is very interesting. For insight, I'd recommend an installment of WBEZ/Chicago's This American Life, Ep. 272, 9/10/2004 "Big Tent". Go to http://www.thislife.org/ and scroll through the 2004 archive and listen to it.
The basic finding in this report is that the Democrats do NOT welcome dissenting views! That turns away the Kansans who want at least to be heard on pro-life, prayer in schools, other "conservative" hot buttons. I don't know how you solve this, but I think that in the south at least, the Democrats have collapsed over it. Partly, it's taking more than four or five decades for civil rights to become a settled facet of society, especially with the Limbaugh-esque provocateers out there. The jobs picture does not help this one bit.
I think there is a better politics that gets beyond all this and starts uniting people with common interests, while letting debates on these social issues rage. Ironically, I think Bush makes this all the more possible, because the "un-reality" required to support him is tenuous and is breaking down all over the place.
Eric
| Date: Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2004 22:37 -0500
From: Jonathan Subject: Cowboys continued |
Okay, guys, the part of this exchange I find most interesting is the part that you didn't comment on. What I thought was the most important section in my notes was my description of the death dance between us and the Islamic fundamentalists. I'll put it back in here for emphasis. Actually, I'm notsure if I forwarded it to Eric.
The scary thing though is that the damn cowboy mentality is totally non-functional for this world, if it ever really was. It's a myth, and it is not one that serves us well now. The black hat-white hat stuff will have us end up just like the Israelis and Palestinians - total war, forever. Bush seems to understand that, hence his recent comments about never really winning, and he's actually okay with it. He's just fine with us going on like this forever. I am enough of a romantic to hope that many Americans would turn their backs on what he proposes if they realized the cost. But in reality I doubt it. The lack of reaction to Abu Ghirab tells me that we have our white hats pulled down so tightly over our foreheads that we can't see.
I fear that we are in a death dance with the Islamic fundamentalists. Middle America is just as ignorant, and now just as filled with hate and fear. Just like the Israeilis and Palestinians, each fresh atrocity justifies us being that much worse. Look how terrible they are, we must exterminate them. I don't know if I've ever been so pessimistic about the future. I see perpetual war as far as the eye can see. We spiral down with each other into the black pit of hell.
The choices in Iraq are to leave or escalate. Which will it be? To tell truth, I'm not at all sure which is worse. They are both terrible options. From where I sit, we've already lost in Iraq. It's only a matter of what shape that loss takes. But unlike Vietnam, we can't just call it quits and go home, game over. This loss has deep consequences we will be paying for for perhaps generations, both geostrategically and in the psyche of this country.
| Date: Date: Tue 26 Oct 2004 01:50 -0400
From: Eric Subject: Cowboys continued |
Was watching CSPAN yesterday. Sometimes they show these focus groups run by public opinion analyst Peter Hart. One woman said she knew she could not vote for Bush after she saw a film showing children injured by US bombs. (Guess: It may have been Hijacking Catastrophe, a fine film that's been making the rounds lately.)
Jonathan, the existence of jingoism, even to the extent it's a jingoist concensus, is not indicative of a death spiral just yet. Okay, there exists a victim mentality that is a mark of protofascism. Our leaders have trashed international law and conquered another country. We may eventually totally lose our country and the world to these impulses. But we're not even at the Vietnam-era level yet. We are far more civilized with many, many more tools of peace than existed then.
The war against Islam is promoted to the hilt, but despite 911, it's still a hard long-term sell. These are invisible stateless actors! Despite Wolfie's efforts for transference of NSC-68 to an anti-Islam Cold War, the public is not yet biting that the threat in the Terror War is the same as the Soviet threat.
There's a hell of a lot we can do right now -- go get a copy of Hijacking Catastrophe and show it to as many people as you can, for example.
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I reserved the last word in the post body for myself, but I'd sure like to hear what anyone else has to say. Please click on Comments to continue the discussion....
