Why We Always Wight
By John Dolan
Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism
By William Bennett
Doubleday, 2002
 William
Bennett, former Drug Tsar, specializes in teaching moral lessons
of the nastier sort. His last book, The Death of Outrage,
was a 200-page scolding of America for not being sufficiently
scandalized by Clinton's blow-job. Bennett's own outrage never
falters. He once denounced from the podium a child wearing
a Bart Simpson T-shirt. Bennett's first claim to fame was
informing on his Harvard roommates for using pot. They went
to prison to be raped, and Bill was instantly a made guy with
the Nixonians, quoting and quoted by every other sclerotic
Phalangist on the far-right Op-Ed list.
Why
We Fight, his latest book-length scold, steals the title
of WWII propaganda shorts, and claims the same purpose: steeling
American resolve for the great battle with Osama. But a better
title would be Why We Iz Wight--and anybody who doesn't think
so is just wong as wong can be.
These naysayers are the villains of the book: those "elite"
Americans who won't put flags in their windows. The "elites"
Bennett names are always academics from snotty Bohemian trust-fund
schools like Brown. God knows there's nothing wrong with hating
those people. I hate 'em myself, and I have cause, real, personal
cause far stronger than Bennett's.
But let's introduce a little reality here: a professor making
$65,000 a year may be many things--a nuisance, a noisy pompous
ass--but part of an "elite"? That's a lie. Nobody with an
income like that makes it into the American elite. And it's
not just a matter of money; American academics, by comparison
with those of any other Western culture, are utterly excluded
from political as well as economic power. The present Prime
Minister of New Zealand is a former Sociology professor; half
her advisors are academics too. You get that kind of crossover
in many cultures--but never in America.
That's why American academics sulk and whine about the regime
so endlessly and boringly. Nobody even listens to their jilted
grumbling--except rightwing propagandists like Bennett, who
must subscribe to an online clipping service called "Obnoxious
Remarks by Leftist Professors." This dry old rhetorical dung
is useful to him in the same way it was to the prairie pioneers:
he uses it as fuel. After stringing together dozens of unpatriotic
utterances by people like Susan Sontag (shit, is she still
alive?) and Stanley Fish, Bennett spends the second half of
the book reassuring the reader of the "superior goodness"
of American culture.
By the way, that overloaded phrase "superior goodness" is
typical of the appalling prose produced by this self-appointed
cultural guardian. Redundancies are something of a specialty
for Bennett, who informs us that our enemies may employ "fake
facades." For the most part, he wisely abstains from any attempt
at humor; but when he gives in to, er, mirth, the results
are painful--as when he says the US has been "...a mecca [sic],
if I may be permitted, for [Muslims]." Droll, eh? His wit
is matched only by his modesty; he describes the "sheer effrontery"
of those who disagree with him, and reports in disbelief that
one liberal had the nerve to disagree "to my face."
Bennett's purpose in writing this odd little book isn't nearly
as clear as he asserts. Why should it be necessary to convince
patriotic Americans (the only sort likely to buy a Bennett
book) to feel patriotic? But here's Bennett, working away
as hard as an Alabama cheerleader to whip the crowd into a
red-white-and-blue grand-mal seizure.
To adapt another WWII slogan: Is this rant necessary? After
all, humans quickly come to worship whatever little clique
we form. As Brendan Behan said, most groups are "...very popular
with themselves." And if you were going to pick a nation which
didn't love itself sufficiently, would America be your first
choice? Americans are nationalists to the core, far more than
any other western people. But their patriotic fervor went
far beyond normal levels after the WTC disaster, which led
to a frenzy of hysterical patriotism: flags, anthems, the
disgusting Kid Rock in red-white-and-blue videos....
Yet Bennett writes in worry and frustration, as if his readers
were far too lukewarm and needed massive injections of staunch
love of country. It's as if all Bennett heard, in the roar
of patriotic chants after September 11, were the scattered,
frightened grumbles and half-hearted cavils of a few old professors.
He constantly warns his readers that "We are under attack,
and have been for some time." And he doesn't mean attacks
of the WTC sort; he means attack from within, by seditious
whisperers.
The question which interests me is this: is he just using
the Leftie quotes to stir up his readers, or is he really
so frightened that Americans will lose their nerve?
I suspect he really does fear this. And I think this strange
partial deafness, in which only one's enemies, only bad news,
can be heard, is a fundamental characteristic of American
right-wingers. Even when they're winning by a landslide, they're
wretchedly unhappy, convinced that their enemies are only
laying low, planning something terrible. Nixon's paranoia
was by no means a mere individual pathology; it's the occupational
disease of his span of the ideological spectrum. He was leading
McGovern by the biggest margin ever recorded in a presidential
election when his goons got busted at Watergate. All he had
to do was coast, but he couldn't see it; he felt only terror
and vindictive rage.
That's why the rightwing crazies loved having Reagan around
to front for the cameras: because he was the only one who
didn't wear fear and hatred on his face. He simply lacked
the attention span a paranoiac requires, and that vacancy
made for a lovable canine smile.
Bennett is one of the bedrock nutcases; it's never enough,
for people like him. September 11, and the week that followed,
were clearly bliss for him:
"In
the wake of September 11, the doubts and questions that had
only recently plagued Americans about their nation seemed
to fade into insignificance. Good was distinguished from evil,
truth from falsehood. We were firm, dedicated, unified. It
was, in short, a moment of moral clarity...."
Do you hear the longing, the desperate nostalgia in that paragraph?
If only there could be a mass slaughter every day! Then that
"moral clarity" might last a bit longer, and give Mister Bennett
the high he obviously craves. But the high never lasts. Sooner
or later, people start arguing--and for all Bennett's lip
service to "democracy," dissent is something that drives him
into a genuinely pathological rage.
It's unbearable to him that a handful of tenure-hungry jargon-mongers
are saying snide things about America. Theirs are the only
voices which really come through to him. To any sane listener,
the sound of America after the attacks was one huge roar of
outrage--but for Bennett, there is only "the Death of Outrage."
In the middle of an 80,000-seat stadium roaring out the anthem,
Bennett would scan the crowd for the one or two cranks who
refuse to rise from their seats--and he would follow them,
collect their bitter grumbles, paste them together, and use
them to make himself and his readers even angrier and more
wretched, as he has here.
It's madness, of course. But it's a very adaptive madness.
After all, Ladies and Gentlemen, who won the war? Bennett
and his like are the true elite now. Their imaginary "liberal"
enemies are a demoralized remnant, useful only to whip the
victors into new kill frenzies.
This book is the rhetorical equivalent of a rock wielded by
a paranoid schizophrenic. The imagined "enemy" has been ambushed,
knocked down, battered to a pulp. He's already dead, his head
smashed--but the madman goes on battering the crushed skull,
moaning, "Leave--me--aLONE! just--leave--me--aLONE!"
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