Thinking about the current political and social polarity in America as a fight for innocence, or more precisely for a veil of innocence, modulates many of the oppositional motifs into comprehensible themes. What I mean by the "veil of innocence" is a blanket denial of any guilt or responsibility for complex social phenomena in which one plays a part, large or miniscule, even to the point of denying responsibility for one's own feelings of discomfort. This allows an individual to be free of the need to think or act in a way that might relieve the outer problem in any sustained way. A donation to the Katrina relief fund and they return to their carapace content that Americans are generous and America is doing all it can for New Orleans. It is sacrificing reality for inner harmony. When people are willing to sacrifice others to maintain their self-image, this is the definition of evil. (Scott Peck, The People of the Lie)
Looking at the actions of our government and at all the books written about why Americans vote against their self-interests, one sees a larger self-interest in the average person's investment in his or her own innocence of all the wrongs that swirl about in this Great Experiment called the United States. "I am not prejudiced" or "I am not greedy" or "I am not hypocritical" are, for most people, basic tenets of their lives. When the country has institutionalized prejudice, rewards greed and hypocricy, the "we the people" are the people who want to think well of themselves. They do not want the bad news. Great leaders take social wrongs and get us to mobilize from the position that " we are a good people who do the right thing" allowing us to think well of ourselves as we address the problem. Tyrants mobilize their people by embodying and projecting an absolute innocence that a populace in difficult times thankfully embraces and then accumulating power and wealth dishonestly while the masses, who have made their Devil's bargain for absolute innocence, cannot afford to let themselves see the evil in their leaders for fear of taking back their old guilt, along with the pile of new responsibilities their abdication to the tyrant permitted.
Thus Clinton was almost impeached, not for actions inimical to the Constitution, but for actions that caused most people to abandon their association with his innocence. Bush, although directly attacking the Constitution, has so far survived assaults on the co-dependence of innocence that binds his constituency to him. Caught red-handed time and again, he stonewalls - as Clinton did. If the equivalent of the blue dress is found, I believe the rejection will be just as absolute.
Other social trends, such as the anti-intellectualism of Christian Coalition and the anger at liberals, if seen in the light of innocence, is about another veil, the veil of necessity. If a person derives his or her innocence from an unquestioning faith in the Church, then unquestioning faith becomes a prerequisite for innocence. Thus the cost of unquestioning faith goes unremarked. But a person without such faith who claims the same level of innocence is anathema, because the ever greater cost of unquestioning suddenly becomes visible and intolerable. The unbearable is thrown off on the 'other' and blissful innocence returns.
The dangers of a profit-driven press and educational system becomes evident. Certain institutions are all about un-veiling, and the more invested a population is in veiling itself from its own existential responsibilities, the more the press and the schools will be limited. In Kansas, is not the institutions of government that seek to modulate Science with Faith, but the citizenry itself that can't let itself know anything objecting for fear of knowing terrible truths about itself.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Maintaining Innocence
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