Posted by Aaron
 

For the last few days, I’ve been ruminating over Michael Chabon’s op-ed in the Washington Post about fear and its role in American media and politics—specifically with regard to Barack Obama.  Not surprisingly, some readers found the piece a tad hysterical (“Whoa! Novelist Michael Chabon… hits us with a little dose of crazy about Obama…” declares Gawker), and I do agree that Chabon pins too much of his excitement and hope on the person of Barack Obama, and too much of the onus of fear on Clinton supporters.  This is bound to be a little alienating for anyone who genuinely likes Hillary—and also to those of us who would be happy to vote for anyone running on a meaningfully progressive platform.

But I do think that, in singling out fear as the culprit for political cynicism, Chabon has tapped into something essential about American politics in general—something that, indeed, the Obama candidacy is forcefully addressing in a way that no one but RFK has in the last half-century.  Fear is perhaps the single biggest factor behind the ascendancy of movement conservatism in this country—not only in its contemporary incarnation, but throughout our history.  And it’s something we’re going to have to acknowledge and face down as a society if any new administration is going to effect real change.

This undercurrent sometimes emerges in the amusing tendency of reactionaries to paint themselves as victims.  Earlier this week, William Kristol returned to his native planet of Mongo-Pongo-3, writing

It’s not easy being a conservative movement in a modern liberal democracy.  It’s not easy to rally a comfortable and commercial people to assume the responsibilities of a great power.  It’s not easy to defend excellence in an egalitarian age.  It’s not easy to encourage self-reliance in the era of the welfare state.  It’s not easy to make the case for the traditional virtues in the face of the seductions of liberation, or to speak of duties in a world of rights and of honor in a nation pursuing pleasure.

Now, I could devote several columns to repudiating the false assumptions and equivocations in this brief paragraph (for one thing, “the responsibilities of a great power” sounds an awful lot like “The White Man’s Burden”).  My main point is that I used to think that this was mere strategy—a ruse to get people to vote against their own interests—but lately I’ve begun to think that neoconservatism is not just about greed, or even contempt; it’s fundamentally about terror.

Essentially, conservatives are afraid of the dark.

It sounds funny until you consider how this worldview has influenced American history.  Movement conservatives would love to have us believe that they were present at the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, then went into dormancy until the horrors of the New Deal urged them to fight back against the socialists who want to tear apart the nation’s moral fabric.  But when you look at their stated values—“[making] the case for the traditional virtues in the face of the seductions of liberation,” as Kristol puts it— it’s not a very great leap to see that the essential mindset that survives today was at the bottom of the right’s resistance to every single example of social progress in this country.  No mainstream conservative would now admit admiration for human slavery or Apartheid; but the character of their core arguments is the same as it’s been for ages: Change is bad.  Leave us alone.  “This is an assault on our traditional values,” they cry— and reiterate until the world changes around them and they’re forced to designate some new hobgoblin of the moment.

Naturally, most conservatives would disagree with my assessment of both their essential ideology and their place in American history.  They will argue that they are not against progress, only government intervention; that they are not against the poor, only against self-fulfilling prophesies of victimhood.  They will claim that social progress has been a function of a free market working as it should.  The problem with these arguments is not only that they’re wrong, but that such beliefs have never helped anybody but the well-off; and worse, the most strident conservatives seem not to care that they don’t help.

It’s a terrible mistake to believe in the inevitability of human progress, let alone American ascendancy.  Even survival should not be assumed.  We’re a single species on a tiny planet of limited resources.  As individuals, we’re poorly equipped to deal with the vicissitudes of the world; indeed, we’ve only made it this far because of our capacity for communication and cooperation.  It is reactionary ideologues’ tendency to mock these very survival traits that continually frustrates and outrages me.  Historically, societies that do not adapt to changing circumstances are doomed to fragmentation, decline, and even destruction (see Guns, Germs and Steel or The March of Folly).

Now, some might argue that, by my own argument, I am myself falling victim to fear.  To this I answer: it is not fear that makes you jump out of the way of an oncoming truck.  Fear is what makes you freeze.  That is the irony of the right’s attempts to paint real policy-makers as alarmists or fearmongers; we’re pointing to avoidable perils and suggesting action, while the neocons scoff, drag their heels, then alternately tremble and lash out over threats to “moral fabric.”  I think the current mood in this country shows that, on some level, many Americans believe some kind of fundamental adjustment, not only in policy or style of management, but in our basic willingness to change—to confront the dark, as it were— is long overdue.

This is not an argument about Republicans or Democrats, Obama or Clinton, the Good Guys or the Bad Guys.  It’s about the character of the debate over this nation’s destiny.  One of the tragedies of our political evolution is that there ought to be a place for authentic conservatism in rational discourse—a prudent counterbalance against the over-idealization of real challenges and their problematic, constantly evolving solutions.  It would act as a safeguard against the kind of radicalism that wants to raze the house every time it gets a little dirty.  But we shouldn’t mistake this (largely hypothetical) model for the darker, more insistent conservatism that has dominated much of our history— one, importantly, that is not the sole domain of Republicans— the kind that tells us, Never mind that the roof is collapsing, there’s a monster outside!