Dear Chez,
I have been noticing your descent from simple grumpiness to downright tongue-tied furiosity on the Bubble Genius show lately and wanted to express a parallel to maybe help or at least provide some small measure of comfort during this time of crisis. Yes, the republic is in peril. Yes, the spectacle of brain-damaged conservatives pulling off stunt after stunt is disheartening. And yes, there is plenty of reason to believe this is the final plunge. Perhaps someone calling himself "The Gloomy Historian" is not the wellspring of hope to reassure you or your readers that all is not lost, but hear me out because this is certainly not the first time our country and democracy has so brazenly embraced self-destruction. "Darkest before dawn" may be a tired cliché, but in the story to follow it turned out to be the truth and dawn held for a half century, until we forgot the lessons of that dark time.
A while back I sent you a message comparing Bob Cesca and yourself to the subjects of my MA thesis, Arthur Schlesinger jr. and Reinhold Niebuhr respectively. While I certainly do not consider myself an expert in the conventional sense on any of you, I believe there are enough similarities to make a convincing comparison. I know Bob loves history in the same way Schlesinger did and both combine that love with their advocacy of the pragmatic liberal position and pursuit of truth. You, Chez, on the other hand run from the religious faith that gave Niebuhr strength despite your regularly voicing the realist view Niebuhr developed and even quoting his Serenity Prayer. I am not suggesting you slide on down to the Triple Rock and catch Rev. Cleophus James for some churching up (YES! YES! JESUS H. TAP-DANCING CHRIST... I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT!). In fact, your secularism provides evidence that religion is not required to find an ethical and moral code to live by.
It was the 1920s and conservative regression and reaction were ascendant and practically unchallenged. After beating back the war preparedness measures of the Wilson Administration and defeating America's entry into the League of Nations, Republicans unleashed and enabled corporate power beyond their wildest dreams. Reinhold Niebuhr was on the outside looking in. After a stint as a four minute man, selling a war he did not fully believe in and turning his back on his German ancestry, Niebuhr was deeply disillusioned by a trip to war-ravaged Europe that humanity really was doomed. The theologian abandoned many of his Christian convictions of pacifism in the belief that democracy and liberty were ideas worth fighting and sacrificing for, and suffered the disappointment of being alone on a weak branch. Niebuhr felt the Great War was the chance for America to live up to its ideals at home and finally exercise a responsible involvement among the community of nations. Instead, we abandoned the world and turned inward for profit and "normalcy." It was a horrible time to be a reformer and Niebuhr's writings of the time reflect his deep cynicism of opportunity lost and the incredible selfishness of American elites. I hope Chez, that you can see parallels. America has a tendency to let us down.
America of the 1920s was the jazz and automobile wonderland talked about in too many textbooks, but it was also a land of vast inequality in wealth and power. Labor was practically a spent force, workers scrambled on their own for scraps. Radio allowed news and entertainment to enter American homes, but it also gave a platform to venomous preachers of hate such as Charles Coughlin and Aimee Semple McPherson if that sounds familiar. Debt lost its traditional stigma as materialism and marketing, those twin banes of the American reform spirit, became a metaphorical plague of locusts. And the dark shades of speculation were rearing their voracious mouths to consume and destabilize the economy years before the crash in another familiar refrain. Henry Ford famously remarked that "history is bunk" but his outlook was not shared by the neo-confederate revisionists in the academy and the KKK. Lynching, intimidation, hate over the airwaves, and all against the backdrop of "entrepreneurial" con jobs and snake oil salesmen running roughshod over the quaint ideas of freedom and democracy chasing that almighty dollar.
The big difference today seems to be that the crash did not slap people out of this crassness, nor did Americans become "good neighbors" or find solidarity in shared privation against uncaring power. As a prominent writer, speaker, and thinker Niebuhr played a role in turning the tide after unbridled capitalism vomited all over the city on a hill. It is not easy to pinpoint when the change from "untamed cynic" to Christian Realist occurred in Niebuhr during America's great crisis. But after preaching the folly of 1920s vices that culminated in Moral Man and Immoral Society he was able to channel the revelations about human nature into an ideology of leftist reform that eschewed idealism for pragmatism. Niebuhr even had a nemesis on the left that you, Chez and Bob, could easily understand. The feud between Christian Realists and the followers of John Dewey's philosophy may be largely forgotten today, but it had much of the intensity (though not the venom) of rivalry between Greenwaldian emoprogs and the Daily Banter today.
It may be a long shot from our contemporary point of view, but Niebuhr's frustration and triumph (his ideas influenced everything from the New Deal to the Civil Rights movement) give evidence for hope that the confused and divided Children of Light will eventually get their act together and prevail over the moneyed interests and Children of Darkness that know no law beyond their own self-interest. Or we can give up and follow your prescriptions for dealing with the NRA, but you'd be on your own for that one. I have no stomach for force anymore.
Sincerely,
The Kraken
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