Chris hedges AND george Monbiot ON THE IGNORANcE - ColdType

what next?
what politicians
like reagan
and bush were
masterful at was
making those
importunings from
our darker angels
seem legitimate.
it was okay to feel
like America was
better than the
rest of the world,
and we should
go out there and
kick some ass
on inconvenient
brown people who
happened to be
sitting on top of
our oil
16 thereader | November 2008
W. Bush for that, above all.
For this reason, and several others, I had
a Michelle moment during election week.
For the first time in a very long time, I felt a
little pride about what my country was doing.
This election felt to me like nothing so
much as a reclaiming of our country from
some truly evil predators who had hijacked
it, and a restoration of democracy – and,
really, sanity – to our political sphere. Of
course, those notions can be overstated.
There are still a lot of adherents to regressive
politics in the mix. Quite a lot, actually,
and many of them have big microphones,
and many more listen to what those bloviators
say. But the same notions can also be
understated, as well. This is not likely to be
a victory of just a single election.
The more subtle but also more powerful
effects of a successful Obama presidency
– and I have very high confidence that it
will be the most successful presidency since
FDR – will be to renormalize American political
culture around a mix of classic and
contemporary values of genuine virtue,
and to bury forever the toxic ideological
experiment in regressivism we’ve endured
these last thirty years. The skill and dignity
and seriousness of purpose that Obama
will bring to the White House will quietly
but massively enhance the damage to the
right’s reputation that they’ve already well
begun inflicting upon themselves. People
will look back on this Cringe Decade and
wonder – just as the rest of the world has
been doing all through it – “What the hell
were we thinking?”
The answer, of course, is that we weren’t.
We were feeling, instead, and what we
were feeling was frightened and selfish and
small-minded. And what politicians like
Reagan and Bush were masterful at was
making those importunings from our darker
angels seem legitimate. It was okay to feel
like America was better than the rest of the
world, and we should go out there and kick
some ass on inconvenient brown people
who happened to be sitting on top of our
oil. It was okay to put a little chump change
in our pockets, even if it meant handing
over massive debts from our little party today
for our children to deal with tomorrow.
It was okay to kill even pathetically small
efforts at remediation for less privileged
members of the society so that the middle
class could put a few extra pennies in their
pockets. And, worst of all, it was okay to
remain willfully ignorant about what we
were doing, its impacts, and why we were
really doing these things. What’s more pathetic
than a complicit marionette?
Perhaps that is finally all behind us. This
election was not a landslide, but it was
nevertheless absolutely a watershed. And,
in fact, if you combine it with the results
from the last election, in 2006, it does represent
a landslide. However, not one favoring
Democrats so much as rejecting Republicans.
Not one favoring Obama so much
as rejecting Bush. And not one favoring
progressivism so much as rejecting regressivism.
These are huge developments, especially
for all of us now emerging from the
desiccated wasteland, the carnage-strewn
battlefield, the scorched earth landscape
that has been eight years worth of Bush.
But it is important not to over-interpret,
and therefore misinterpret, what just happened.
To begin with, consider that even
in 2008, even in just about the worst year
imaginable for the GOP, even with a charismatic
leader like Obama running a letterperfect
campaign, even with an lousy opponent
like McCain running a strategically
inept campaign, even with Sarah Palin
dragging down the ticket, and even with a
once-in-a-century economic meltdown hitting
right before the election – even with
all that, Obama won with only a five to six
percent margin of the popular vote. I’m sad
to say it, but if we’re honest we’ll recognize
that the second most astonishing thing
about his victory – apart from a black man
winning the American presidency – was
how big it wasn’t.
That’s a sobering conclusion, which is
just what it should be if we are to succeed
going forward. The rest of the journey to a