(This is a corrected version, containing the paragraphs that were inadvertently omitted in the earlier piece.)
"How does the Bush Administration get away with it?" And: "How come, no matter what scandal or embarrassment or disaster Bush&Co. get enmeshed in, one third of the population still supports them?"
The answers to those oft-expressed questions are complex, to be sure, but with the publication of former White House Counsel John W. Dean's compelling new book "Conservatives Without Conscience," we now have more of a framework for understanding what drives the Busheviks and why so many continue to stand behind them.
Dean, whose insider testimony helped bring down President Nixon during the Watergate scandal, is a Goldwater-style conservative Republican. Like so many such "old-style" conservatives -- believers in small government, maximizing freedom of the individual, balanced budgets, caution in foreign affairs, etc. -- Dean is appalled by the extremists who now run the party, turning all the traditional conservative beliefs upside-down.
These so-called "conservatives" have taken the country down the slippery slope of extra-Constitutional rule, at the bottom of which, unless the situation changes, lies the reality of fascism.
"It would not take much more misguided authoritarian leadership, or thoughtless following of such leaders, to find ourselves there," Dean writes.
IMPACT OF FUNDAMENTALIST THOUGHT
And here is the heart of Dean's intelligently-reasoned volume. In his 2004 book "Worse Than Watergate," Dean excoriated the CheneyBush presidency for its secrecy, unconstitutional over-reaching, and in-your-face nastiness. But, aside from revealing its dastardly governance, Dean didn't have an over-arching theory of why the Administration and their followers behaved that way. Here, in "Conservatives Without Conscience," he has come up with a believable explanation as to why those traits are so prevalent in rightwing circles.
So how did America wind up on the freeway heading toward the exit marked fascism? Dean finds a good share of the answer in the pulling power of authoritarianism, both as practiced by demagogic officials and as accepted by the third of Americans who, without much thought, permit themselves to be swayed so easily by those leaders.
But what explains the willingness of so many millions of American citizens to blindly follow such leaders?
Dean points to the power of fundamentalist religious thought, both in this country and in other areas of the world as well, no matter what the religious preference.
Dean keeps digging: What has led to the resurgence of fundamentalist belief systems?
In America, he notes, fundamentalist/evangelical Christians had political reasons for their renewed activism, including reacting strenously to attempts to tax their schools, for example, or to Roe vs. Wade. But there is something much deeper, which is true as much in Afghanistan as it is in the U.S. of A.
HARD-WIRED FOR AUTHORITARIANISM
To put it simply (in my words, not Dean's) there are those who are reasonably comfortable with major social changes, or at least can adapt to them, and there are those who find rapid changes off-putting, disorienting, even frightening. To the latter group, the world is a scary place, with so many conflicting options and alternatives, so much freedom and so many temptations. Many find psychic safety in returning to the old verities, the simple prescriptions for behavior, the clear reasons for acting this way and not that way.
Not having to think for themselves, or about themselves, provides a secure "container" for their anxiety. Conservatives have a "heightened psychological need to manage uncertainty," notes one social researcher quoted by Dean.
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).
Over the last couple hundred years, beginning with Mary Wollenstencraft, hundreds of women have written millions of words explaining the ills of patriarchal dominance and submission but let one old, white man get an half-assed epiphany that took him a decade to "get" and, whoa, late breaking new concept. Call it "authoritarianism" instead of patriarchy and, once again, men can be let off the hook and given permission to forget and ignore several thousand years of their vile treatment of women, logically culminating in the present situation of men willing to blow Earth to smithereens rather than share power with women.
To paraphrase the woman reporter on the Clarence Thomas hearings, They not only do not get it, they don't even know what "it" is. Come on boys. Face your glorious history for what it is, the loony lie of male superiority.
You might think you'll die from the shame and guilt of facing up to it, but you won't. Face yourselves so we can begin to evolve, ending the violence and aggression that necessarily follows sexual repression and the segregation of women into the narrow rolls required by patriarchy, the ultimate pollutant.
by
Mar (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 155 comments)
on Saturday, August 12, 2006 at 9:16:48 AM
Of course there's some truth to what you say (but how do you fit female authoritarians into this hypothesis?). But who on earth cares what we call this multi-faceted disease? The point is what do we do to combat authoritarianism, male chauvinism, sugarism, or whatever? I suggest that it might be more effective to stop our circular firing squad and unite our energies to take aim at the real enemies of democracy, those who would use fear and terror and police-state tactics to control and dominate.
by
Bernard Weiner (141 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 6 comments)
on Saturday, August 12, 2006 at 11:45:31 AM
