This past week I've been writing a series of essays for Open Source Politics on Why America Is Screwed Up. Most of these essays borrow heavily from stuff already written on The Mahablog so I didn't post them here, but this last one is mostly new, so here it is. This is a second draft of what should run in OSP on Monday or Tuesday. I welcome questions, suggestions, and corrections.

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Throughout this series I’ve harped on the connections between the Great American Psyche and politics. Part I discusses our common masculinity memes and electability. Part II argues that George Bush’s unresolved Oedipal conflicts are driving his policies. Part III and Part IV explore the way Republicans make use of mythos and imagery to personify the unheroic Bush as a hero (so far, successfully).

We liberals can talk about policy and present data to support our ideas until we turn purple. Conservatives wave a flag, or a Bible, and win elections. Right-wingers make a mockery of democracy and pass laws that weaken, not strengthen, our nation, yet voters cannot see it. What is it in our collective unconscious that makes We, the People so screwed up?

Daddy Dearest. George Lakoff writes that conservative and progressive worldviews can be compared to “strict father” families and “nurturing parent” families. While the “nurturing parent” state values empathy, responsibility, and freedom, the conservative “strict father” state thinks citizens must be protected and controlled. The “strict father” state sees the world as a hard and dangerous place. It values success, and believes those who are not successful are not properly disciplined (or moral, or hard working) and must not be coddled. Pursuit of self-interest is moral, and worldly success is an indicator of moral strength.

This means (among other things) favoring those who control corporate wealth and power (those seen as the best people) over those who are victims (those seen as morally weak). It means removing government regulations, which get in the way of those who are disciplined. Nature is seen as a resource to be exploited. One-way communication translates into government secrecy. The highest moral value is to preserve and extend the domain of strict morality itself, which translates into bringing the values of strict father morality into every aspect of life, both public and private, domestic and foreign. [George Lakoff, "Framing the Dems," The American Prospect vol. 14 no. 8, September 1, 2003 ]

It seems to me that conservative “values” are a throwback to feudalism. The feudal nobility believed they had a God-given entitlement to wealth and privilege and a right to exploit common people. Today’s corporate lords see themselves as entitled to wealth and the protection of government without the obligation of paying taxes, and they think government exists to provide them with cheap labor.

It's important to understand that the corporate lords don’t think they are doing anything wrong. Most of them are not so much hypocrites as unconscious. In the neo-feudalistic view, wealth confers grace, and the blessed few are entitled by grace to more wealth any way they can get it. People who are poor; people who face long-term unemployment because their jobs moved to India; must not be as virtuous and as deserving as those who are rich. If the “serfs” suffer, it’s God’s will.

Disturbing, yes, but what’s even more frightening is the extent to which the “serfs” have bought into this rubbish. Working class Americans continue to vote for politicians who are on the side of the feudal lords, not the workers. We saw this in last month’s elections, particularly in the South. White working class people in particular deliver themselves “into the hands of Republican leaders who malign the federal government and are closely allied with giant corporations,” writes Sam Parry in Consortium News.

Fathers of Fear.  This is not new. I’ve observed my whole life how Americans can be frightened into stampeding off cliffs. Fear of Communism gave birth to McCarthyism, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and the War in Vietnam. Today the Republicans are using fears of terrorism, foreigners, ethnic minorities, and various aspects of sexuality to keep the serfs in line.

Consider also the Religious Right. In her magnificent book The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism, Karen Armstrong demonstrates that fundamentalism arose in response to modernity, especially to scientific rationalism. "Fear is at the heart of fundamentalism,” she writes. “The fear of losing yourself." This is true of Islamic fundamentalists like Osama bin Laden as well as our homegrown types. Liberals cherish tolerance, democracy, pluralism, and civil liberties; fundamentalists fear these values as weapons of (their) annihilation.

…It is important to recognize that these theologies and ideologies are rooted in fear. The desire to define doctrines, erect barriers, establish borders, and segregate the faithful in a sacred enclave where the law is stringently observed springs from that terror of extinction which has made all fundamentalists, at once time or another, believe that the secularists were about to wipe them out. The modern world, which seems so exciting to a liberal, seems Godless, drained of meaning and even satanic to a fundamentalist. [Armstrong, The Battle for God (Ballantine, 2000), p. 368]

I postulate that existential fear is at the heart of most “isms.” And although there’s no objective measure of angst that I know of, the world may seem scarier to We, the People,  than it used to, and not just because of terrorism. Collectively, our props are falling away. Compared to fifty years ago (as far back as I can remember), communities are fragmented, families are scattered, jobs are ephemeral. Across rural and small town America, communities that were once homogenous are becoming multiracial and multiethnic. “Givens” about God and Man and Sex and other big issues are being openly challenged.

Bad Dreams. Although the world must seem to be shifting beneath their feet, many people are so out of touch with themselves they may not be fully aware of their fear or capable of understanding what they are afraid of. We in America have grown a culture that discourages introspection. As Sam Keen wrote in Fire in the Belly (which is right up there with Iron John as an excellent piece of early male movement lit),

Men, in our culture, have carried a special burden of unconsciousness, of ignorance of the self. The unexamined life has been worth quite a lot in economic terms. It has enabled us to increase the gross national product yearly. It may not be necessary to be a compulsive extrovert to be financially successful, but it helps. Especially for men, ours is an outer-directed culture that rewards us for remaining strangers to ourselves, unacquainted with feeling, intuition, or the subtleties of sensation and dreams. [Sam Keen, Fire in the Belly (Bantam, 1991), p. 65]

My quarrel with this passage is that it leaves out women. But Keen corrects this mistake in later a paragraph:

The difference between the sexes is being eroded as both sexes become defined by work. … Economic man, the creature who defines itself within the horizons of work and consumption, is not man in any full sense of the word, but a being who has been neutralized, degendered, rendered subservient to the laws of the market. The danger of economics is not that it turns women into men but that it destroys the fullness of both manhood and womanhood. [Keen, ibid.]

In America today, the Economy defines us. It tells us who we are and gives us a place in society. We work and consume, therefore we Are. But such an identity gives us no context to understand or even acknowledge the un-ease gnawing inside us. So, we look outside ourselves for solace. We work harder and buy more stuff. We medicate ourselves with alcohol and other diversions. Even American-style religion is outer-directed, fixated on a God who is Out There instead of the Buddha who is In Here. And we allow propagandists to tell us that what we really fear are terrorists, or atheists, or liberals, or some other shadowy thing Out There, and our salvation lies in God and guns and George W. Bush.

And, in our fear, we give more and more power to the corporate monsters eating our souls.

Taking back America. The challenge for liberals is to break through the fear and denial and communicate our vision of America to all American citizens. And that won’t be easy, since the corporations own the media. Most of the “pundits” of the news media are just as lost and unconscious as the rest of America, and some are out-and-out corporate whores. I can offer only a few suggestions.

1. We need to understand what "our vision" is. And I'm not talking about policy. What is America? Where do we want to go as a nation? How do we see our place in the world? What is the proper relationship between government and citizens?
2. Defeat George W. Bush and as many Neocons as possible in the 2004 election. The Bush Administration is like an open, bleeding wound. America won’t begin to heal until the wound is closed and bandaged.
3. The new Democratic administration must continue to investigate and make public the corruption of the Bush Administration. At least the Bushies must be brought to public disgrace, as Nixon was.
4. Please don’t come to New York City during the Republican National Convention next year hoping to start a riot. We won’t win hearts and minds by being obnoxious and alarming.
5. Although policy details are important, Democratic leaders need to speak in ways that touch our hearts and quiet our fears. Franklin Delano Roosevelt comes to mind.