It always amuses me when people look to pols to lead us to tolerance. Pols reflect America. And when pols see tolerance as in their electoral interests, then they are for tolerance. And vice versa. (Harry Reid wanted to eliminate birthright citizenship in 1993 and now of course he ridicules anyone who suggests it. This is purely a political calculation.) We get the government and policies that largely reflect who we are.
Longtime readers know that a touchstone work for me is Richard Hofstader's The Paranoid Style In American Politics:
The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms — he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization... he does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated — if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes. [. . .]
[T]he idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to men with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant. Of course this term is pejorative, and it is meant to be; the paranoid style has a greater affinity for bad causes than good. But nothing really prevents a sound program or demand from being advocated in the paranoid style. Style has more to do with the way in which ideas are believed than with the truth or falsity of their content. I am interested here in getting at our political psychology through our political rhetoric. The paranoid style is an old and recurrent phenomenon in our public life which has been frequently linked with movements of suspicious discontent.
Sound like any country you know? How do we define The Other? More Hofstader:
The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman—sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced. The paranoid’s interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone’s will. Very often the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power: he controls the press; he has unlimited funds; he has a new secret for influencing the mind (brainwashing); he has a special technique for seduction (the Catholic confessional)
Riffing off of Hofstader, Umberto Eco wrote a great book on paranoia called Foucalt's Pendulum. I wrote this 2005 post about it. I quoted from an interview with Eco:
Why is the notion of conspiracy and plotting so important to Foucault's Pendulum?
In some ways, my novel is the story of paranoia, interpretive paranoia. I have always been fascinated by the idea of conspiracy, which doesn't hold only in the political world but also sometimes in literary interpretation. There are forms of hermeneutics, for example, that try to find a secret meaning in a text. So we have always the obsession for a supplement of meaning that can lead to pure paranoia or to intolerance. That's why the early Christians were thrown to the lions; the Roman empire needed to find a conspiracy in order to justify certain social troubles. . . . But you can have a conspiracy syndrome anywhere. I am not saying that there are no plans, that there are no secret conspiracies. But it's not by chance that every dictatorship, when it cannot face a difficult internal situation, looks for an external enemy who is responsible. I am terrorized and frightened by this conspiracy syndrome. Somebody said to me," But you are a semiotician, you are a critic! You are always trying to uncover, to unmask meaning." True, but I am not against the act of interpretation. I am against the paranoia of interpretation, which is different.
(Emphasis supplied.) Eco amplifies this impulse of intolerance and paranoia to the entire human condition. And America is hardly immune from them. And these impulses are intensified in times of economic hardship. Overcoming this impulse, listening to the better angels of our nature, is difficult at any time. And it usually happens when the political reality is conducive to such tolerance, such as it is. Who changes political reality? Very rarely is it politicians. For pols are pols and do what they do.
Regarding the Cordoba Center issue, I did not expect leadership from our political class. Indeed, my argument about not paying attention to politicians, less than 3 months from an election, was that their contributions to the debate would harm, not help. Better a studied silence. Now it was important to hear from activists, intellectuals and opinion makers. And in this, Fareed Zakaria was a stalwart in defending tolerance. It seemed to me the battle was being won.
President Obama's impulse to speak out on the first day of Ramadan was admirable, but ultimately counterproductive. He "clarified" his remarks two days later, weakening the moral impact of his statements (as a pol, it is not surprising that he did so.) And then Dems in tough races started making statements against the location of the mosque. This was as predictable as the sun rising. Once the issue entered the arena of mainstream politics, this outcome was inevitable.
For we are, as all humans are, basically intolerant. And our politics reflects this. The struggle against intolerance is difficult and unending. But it does not start with the politicians. It ends with them.
Speaking for me only
