Lefties Really Need to Get a Clue

Watching the expressions of shock and dismay as the country veer to one-party hegemony both from a governmental and media perspective, I have to wonder what liberals (and particularly the left blogosphere) are expecting to happen in the future. Is the expectation there will be some kind of a progressive efflorescence, after conditions become so bad that millions of voters turn from the failed right? That could be dangerously delusional thinking.

An example of this diagnosis of the problem of one-party rule is Jonathan Schell’s final essay in his “Lessons from Ground Zero” series:

. . . today the many disparate crises of the past have combined into one general systemic crisis, placing the basic structure of the Republic at mortal risk. At the forefront of concern must be the question: Will the Constitution of the United States survive? Is the American state now in the midst of a transmutation in which the 217-year-old provisions for a balance of powers and popular freedoms are being overridden and canceled? Or will defenders of the Constitution step forward, as has happened in constitutional crises of the past, to save the system and restore its integrity?

The obvious precedent is Watergate. Then as now, the presidency became "imperial." Then as now, a misconceived and misbegotten war led to presidential law-breaking at home. Then as now, a quixotic crusade for freedom abroad really menaced freedom at home. Then as now, the law-breaking President was re-elected to a second term. Then as now, the systemic rot went so deep that only a drastic cure could be effectual. Then as now, opposition at the outset consisted not of any great public outrage but the lonely courage of a few bureaucrats, legislators, and reporters. Then it was the war in Vietnam; now it is the war in Iraq and the wider and more lasting "war on terror." Then it was secret break-ins and illegal wiretapping; now it is arbitrary imprisonment, torture and, again, illegal wiretapping. Then it was presidential assertion of "executive privilege"; now it is a full-scale reinterpretation of the Constitution to give the "unitary executive" power to do anything it likes in "wartime."

Arguments such as these have a disquieting touch of liberal smugness – “we’ve tried to protect the Republic from itself, and at least we aren’t sociopaths threatening peoples’ liberties” – that misses the real problem. I’ll quote from James Howard Kunstler as I like how he frames this real problem:

Practically everyone I know spends hours each day wringing his hands over George W. Bush becoming a fascist despot. But Bush is not the one to worry about as far as that goes -- anymore than Louis XVI was capable of acting like Napoleon Bonaparte. What they had in common was something different. Their regimes ushered in a loss of legitimacy.

Legitimacy is the quality that society vests in the individuals and institutions who run things, the belief that their authority is credible and deserved. Legitimacy can slip out from under authority all of a sudden, as a critical mass of the public loses faith at a deep level in the people in charge. Sometimes the result is the overthrow of government. Sometimes cultural authority goes out the window, too, as happened in the aftermath of the First World War in Europe, which produced a kind of nervous breakdown in the arts as well as the death of three dynasties (the Hohenzollerns, the Hapsburgs, and the Romanovs).

The last loss of legitimacy in American political life climaxed in Richard Nixon's resignation. It was an orderly process, enabled by the ingenious framework of the US Constitution, but the institution of the presidency suffered, too -- and that is one of the reasons why Baby Boomers who lived through it are among the greatest hand-wringers over Bush. To many of us over fifty, all presidents after JFK are to some degree assholes.

It is easy to see the potential loss of legitimacy among all the authorities in American life today. In government, it is the astounding denial of such obvious dangers as global warming, recklessness in finance, and the gathering permanent energy crisis. The news media also fritters away its legitimacy, as when CBS's "60 Minutes" show broadcast a mendacious segment telling the public that the tar sands of Alberta would immunize us from a global energy shock. The arts lost their legitimacy decades ago, leaving little besides irony over their failings.

Kunstler doesn’t see us pulling back from the brink, either:

But if the American public becomes subject to political despotism in the years ahead, it will come from somebody other than Bush and it will come because the public will demand it. The American public itself has been so grossly passive, complacent, and irresponsible in its raptures of credit-card shopping, infotainment, and easy motoring, that when our society runs into trouble due to the things we have ignored, the public will beg to be pushed around, they will crave to be directed toward some purposeful action to save their asses.

That's why I think it's ridiculous to waste time wringing our hands over Bush. One day, very soon, for instance, we will find ourselves in a gasoline crisis that will not end. We will not be able to transport people and the goods they need around our country. Our railroad system will be a shambles because leaders like John Kerry were too busy wringing their hands over other things -- so we'll be stuck with no alternative to the interstate highway system. Likewise when the housing bubble implodes and the public discovers that an economy based on cheap oil suburbs and credit for the uncreditworthy can't continue, and nobody warned them about it.

At some point not far away, we'll have a president who puts children in uniforms because their parents will have been scared to death by their own lifetime of slovenliness. It may not get us anything, except the illusion that we can regain what has been lost forever. And it may not last long, as the illusions finally fall away and we are left with only what we can do for ourselves locally. But it will not come from George W. Bush. It will come because of our own fantastic inattention to the things that really matter.

Severe economic and social disruption from the next energy crisis. More Category 5 hurricanes in the Southeastern U.S. Water riots in the densely populated Southwestern U.S. The worst-case flu pandemic. As some point in our future, we will see ourselves being herded about and told what to do, not just because conditions are bad enough that despotic measures are needed, but also because we have become accustomed to them.

And the despots probably will be the Democrats.