Or, why a sustained, national commitment to mental health will do wonders for our constitution. As prompted by this post on Metafilter.
Richard Hofstader writing in 1954 with my changes in brackets:
The restlessness, suspicion and fear manifested in various phases of the [Tea Party] revolt give evidence of the real suffering which the [Tea Party member] experiences in his capacity as a citizen. He believes himself to be living in a world in which he is spied upon, plotted against, betrayed, and very likely destined for total ruin. He feels that his liberties have been arbitrarily and outrageously invaded. He is opposed to almost everything that has happened in American politics for the past twenty years. He hates the very thought of [Bill Clinton]. He is disturbed deeply by American participation in the United Nations, which he can see only as a sinister organization. He sees his own country as being so weak that it is constantly about to fall victim to subversion; and yet he feels that it is so all-powerful that any failure it may experience in getting its way in the world — for instance, in the [Middle East] — cannot possibly be due to its limitations but must be attributed to its having been betrayed. He is the most bitter of all our citizens about our involvement in the wars of the past, but seems the least concerned about avoiding the next one. While he naturally does not like [Islamic fundamentalism], what distinguishes him from the rest of us who also dislike it is that he shows little interest in, is often indeed bitterly hostile to such realistic measures as might actually strengthen the United States vis-à-vis [Islamic fundamentalists]. He would much rather concern himself with the domestic scene, where [Islamic fundamentalism] is weak, than with those areas of the world where it is really strong and threatening. He wants to have nothing to do with the democratic nations of Western Europe, which seem to draw more of his ire than the [Middle East], and he is opposed to all “give-away programs” designed to aid and strengthen these nations. Indeed, he is likely to be antagonistic to most of the operations of our federal government except Congressional investigations, and to almost all of its expenditures. Not always, however, does he go so far as the speaker at the [Tea Party convention] who attributed the greater part of our national difficulties to “this nasty, stinking 16th {income tax} Amendment.”
Nothing of consequence has changed between now and then, between their revolt and ours.
What role has this political movement played over the last half-century? Is it even a political movement, at all, Hofstader channeling Adorno wonders, or rather a way of avoiding politics; a nihilism disguised even from its own adherents as conservatism.
Is it a way of thinking or simply a way of feeling? A feeling which expresses itself in rhetoric that does not wish to change the status quo – which provokes it – but instead wishes only to amplify its own feelingness? Is this process a way of prolonging a pain (and/or anger) that has become meaningful and helpful?
Toxic feelings are intoxicating. As anyone who has ever escaped from the vicious cycle of a domestic dispute can attest, strong feelings can become pleasurable, however perverse this may seem from the outside or after the fact.
We “nurse” grudges. Strong feelings protect themselves by steering their subjects away from resolution. They are a flame that does not want to be extinguished, that would rather burn down its entire world than be put out.
People participate in politics out of a sense of shared responsibility as well as self interest. But self-interest need not be strictly rational. The process of politics can also satisfy emotional needs. A political movement which satisfies primarily emotional needs is not concerned with real change. In fact, it’s not strictly speaking a political movement but rather a social one. It is motivated not by ideas but by feelings.
From a political standpoint, it might thus be counterproductive to engage an an emotionally-driven, social movement as if it were primarily an ideologically-driven political one.
This does not mean ignoring its political import as that would mean abandoning the political process. Rather, it requires that the political response be complemented with a cultural strategy. In addition to addressing the political claims made by such movements – precisely because they are incoherent and/or inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution (created as it was to “establish Justice”) – we must also address the “real suffering” these positions mask.
Even if these are self-inflicted wounds (e.g., the cognitive dissonance and thus real discomfort a racist feels upon having to accept a mixed-race President), they are wounds, nonetheless. In fact, I hazard that these are often proxy wounds.
I believe that such movements provide a socially acceptable cover for expressing deep personal pain: “I hurt.” They are additionally appealing because they allow such expressions without requiring of the injured party that she or he examine their own role in their discomfort.
They provide a public alibi for private distress. By immersing themselves in a broader social narrative – thin and convoluted as it may be – the participants avoid reckoning with their own personal narrative.
The incoherence of the Tea Party is thus not a bug, it’s a feature. Its members are not looking for integration, they are avoiding it. Such movements have more in common with the romanticism of religious revivals than with the realism of political organizations.
In the essay cited above, Hofstader goes on to ask if this isn’t a distinctly American condition, “a product of the rootlessness and heterogeneity of American life, and above all, of its peculiar scramble for status and its peculiar search for secure identity.” But I suggest this is a universal condition, a response to the insecurity of identity. The less noble face of the religious impulse.