Since 2007, I've been wrestling, at periodic intervals, with the necessity of America's having to "muddle through" this time of national crisis. That necessity, as I saw and see it, is the result of the failure of the American body politic to deal with the Bushite evil --the lawless and usurpatious presidency-- as our Founders had in mind. Now we have a different kind of president, but with the battle still to be won.

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Back in April of 2008, while the campaign for the Democratic nomination was still raging, I wrote the following piece which was itself a look back at an earlier piece I'd posted on my website the previous December (2007).

The first piece --"The Muddle Through Scenario" (at www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=1020) -- gave my thoughts about where America was heading in the wake of its failure to confront the Bushite evil.

Between the two "Muddle Through" pieces, I wrote about a potential I saw in Obama to repair the evil using his non-confrontational approach.

Then in the second "Muddle" piece --first published here 13 months ago, and pasted here now, below-- I felt less encouraged, believing that Obama's deftness might not be adequate to address the challenge that arises out of the evil forces that have hold America in its grip.

Now, it seems pertinent to look at all this again in the context of the issues I've been discussing in the series, "Questioning Obama's Strategy Against Evil." The installment subtitled "The Correlation of Forces" seems especially relevant.

Obama's approach seems predicated on the fact which I stressed in the original "Muddle Through Scenario" piece, namely that America had failed to attack the evil when it arose, as our Founders had in mind for the Congress, the press, and the people to do in the face of such lawless and usurpatious presidential power.

As a consequence of that failure, we still must deal with the forces --which I regard as best understood in spiritual terms-- that expressed themselves through that Bushite regime, but are now finding outlets elsewhere, mostly through the increasingly mad, negativistic and (self-) destructive Republican Party, and through the damaged people who respond to such strife-loving, lie-ridden messages as come out of the mouths of the likes of Limbaugh and Cheney.

And now Obama has come to power, with the war against this dark spirit still needing to be fought. Either wisely, or out of an excessive sense of caution, he is acting as if America were still not ready to --or cannot be trusted to-- engage in that confrontation.

Thus Obama embarks upon a repair mission that is incremental, that picks its points for advance while avoiding all-out assault across the battle-lines.

It is, in a sense, a "muddle through" scenario. And while it is not ideal --one's dream of the vanquishing of evil-- it is perhaps an ideal version of the muddle through, inasmuch as the most powerful office is now occupied by an ally of the Good, and one with a keen, long-term strategic sense.

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Revisiting the Muddle Through Scenario

[first published on www.NoneSoBlind.org on April 26, 2008]

I thought it might be useful to go back to how things looked to me late last year, when I saw no hope that anything of significance could come out of this round of presidential elections. It might be useful because, with the present destructiveness of the Democratic campaign, my more recent hopes are being threatened, and if they are dashed then, as I see it, we go back to how things looked to me then.

My sober view of things was expressed first in the piece, "The Lament of a True Patriot," published here last October (at http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=919). America had failed, I said, to confront the evils that had risen to power. (That remains, I believe, essentially true.)

Because of that, as I wrote in a piece in December, entitled "The Muddle Through Scenario" (at http://www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=1020), the struggle against those evil forces was going to go on for years to come, with the outcome uncertain. But I did not share the pessimism of one of our more articulate and engaged readers, I wrote. Rather, my observations of human affairs --at both the macro and micro levels-- suggested to me that sometimes even in the absence of the confrontations that are called for, systems manage to put themselves back together over time.

Here's a passage from "The Muddle Through Scenario":

I've seen families --and marriages-- go through crises, too, in which --after a time of great evil-- things somehow turn around and work themselves out, at least enough to get back into a more viable form. A kind of acceptable state gets restored withouth the dark realities that had surfaced ever really being worked through, without understanding having been achieved, without any dramatic experiences of personal transformation and enlightenment ever taking place.

And if I had to bet, this is what I would bet will happen in America in the aftermath of this Bushite regime. We'll never as a nation face the dark truth about this time, but the music from our part of the world --i.e. from places like NoneSoBlind, and other parts of America where the dark truth is being openly discussed-- will continue to play into people's minds and will to some degree get integrated into how people sense the meaning of this time. Some of the issues people like us have been raising will continue to operate on the national psyche, sometimes visibly and sometimes beneath the level that we can see.

Since the evils are still out there, not nearly so confronted and defeated and discredited as I would so dearly love to see, the possibility remains that America's flabby defenses against fascism might still end up collapsing before the next onslaught.

But meanwhile, through a kind of muddling through, it is also possible that the forces of the good and the true and the beautiful will gradually reconstitute themselves in the American order, and that the heart and soul of America will gradually heal. Assuming we can get the fascists out of power next year, the longer the basic, pre-Bushite American order can keep on muddling without being overrun by the evil, the more chance the level of goodness has to rise.

It's like a well that's been pumped dry. (The American spirit and order represent the well, the water is the structures of goodness that are part of those things, and the pump is the evil Bushite regime that has been disposing of goodness in America as fast as it can.) If you stop the pump, by a gradual process of the groundwater seeping back into the well, the level of the water gradually rises to the level of the enduring water table.

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That's where I remained until late January, when I gradually came to see another way in which the forces of goodness might truly triumph over the forces of evil. It was a less confrontational way than the one that suited me best, the prophetic one that speaks moral truth to and about amoral power.

In a comment I posted on the late February thread of "Schmookler is Available for Conversation," I wrote about how Obama's way of dealing with the darkness attacking him might be not only a workable alternative, but possibly also --in view of the condition of the American body politic-- a more effective way than the one I'd been looking for in the presidential campaign, and had despaired when I didn't find it.

I wrote there, a propos how I would have responded to Hillary's mockery of Obama and how, by contrast, Obama himself had actually responded:

In some respects, I like my response better. But I suspect that his is more effective for this time and place...

Here's the essential point: I BELIEVE THAT AMERICA IS AFRAID TO GO TO BATTLE against the Bushites. That's what I think is behind the Lament of a True Patriot" panorama of failure in the American body politic that I described last fall. I don't really understand the fear, but I believe that IT IS POSSIBLE that Obama recognizes that fear, or perhaps that he's just by chance well-matched to the moment.

Americans, at any rate, are flocking to Obama, I am venturing, because he is doing two things: a) he's saying that the Good can win ("Yes We Can") and that b) we do not need to enter into the arena of battle for that victory.

Americans yearn for something better, and they are afraid to confront evil in order to achieve it. Hence, Obama taps into the yearning while calming the fears.

That's why his pattern of deflecting --his akido, his agreeableness, his willingness to find humor and good performance in Hillary's mocking of his inspirational summoning forth of hope-- is so well suited to the needs of this moment. And why he appears to be heading toward the presidency.


But of course, the workings of the darkness have continued unabated --a collaboration of sorts among the Hillary campaign, the media (e.g. the ABC fiasco), and the right wing-- and Obama's deftness in dealing with them has, with the exception of his speech on race in response to the Rev. Wright bruhaha, has been insufficient for the escalating assault on him and, equally important, on the foundations he was building for creating a transformative presidency with the powers behind it (popular, on one level, and spiritual, on another) to enable him to squeeze out the evil from its position athwart our political system.

I've by no means given up on that hopeful scenario, by which he becomes president and is able to inspire and enlist the American people in sufficient numbers and with sufficient intensity to overpower the dark forces.

But, even while maintaining such hopes, I'm looking once again at the alternative scenario, the "Muddle Through Scenario," with its regrettable but not altogether hopeless implications for the future of our country.

 

Authors Bio:
Andy Schmookler, an award-winning author, political commentator, radio talk-show host, and teacher, was the Democratic nominee for Congress from Virginia's 6th District. His new book -- written to have an impact on the central political battle of our time -- is WHAT WE'RE UP AGAINST. His previous books include The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution, for which he was awarded the Erik H. Erikson prize by the International Society for Political Psychology.