(This article is reposted from Earthlight Books, at www.earthlightbooks.blogspot.com.)
If
you want a flabbergasting blast from the past, check out the town-hall
meeting between Perot, Bush 1.0, and W.J. Clinton from 1992 here.
This
debate is frankly creepy, because it shows how much things have and
haven't changed in the past two decade. The '92 debate contrasts with
the more recent Romney/Obama town hall debate in style: Perot, Clinton,
and Bush each speak slowly and calmly, with obvious courtesy, whereas
Obama and Romney are obliged, via pundits and polls (and blogsters like
yours truly), to strut and squawk like fighting cocks to show how
'strong' they are. Obama's 'lackluster' performance from the first '12
debate resembled the '92 candidates' deference and good manners. This is
where we're at: civility is a sign of weakness.
On
the other hand, the substantive issues discussed in the '92 debate are
nearly identical to the substantive issues discussed this year: in both
debates, every candidate jumps on the importance of creating jobs by
enervating the economy; in both debates, every candidate preaches the
praises of globalism (except Perot, who's basically my dad's version Ron
Paul); in both debates, health care is an urgent issue which everyone's
worried about and no one can address; in both debates, school reform
(via free market principles) is widely vaunted.
There
are a few differences. In '92, "gun control" connoted gang violence
associated with inner-city drug trade; today, it connotes random
shootings in the style of Columbine and Aurora. And the early nineties,
American hubris in the wake of the Cold War was at its height, whereas
today the War on Terror defines our military outlook.
Still,
the overall shapes of the debates are disturbingly, creepily, weirdly
similar. Despite a difference of twenty years (and the respective
presence/absence of populist creeper Ross Perot), not much has changed
in the American political landscape: Immigration policy is bemoaned, but
remains substantially the same; a polite version of
American-Exceptionalist rhetoric is brought to bear on virtually every
subject, simultaneously mirroring and reinforcing Americans'
sub-rational belief that we are not just one nation among many but in
fact the nation, God's nation, the predestined leader of
humankind; economic growth is presumed to be both vitally important and
infinitely sustainable; China is cast as the perennial big-bully against
whom we define our Western liberalism and from whom we defend our
freedom and pocketbooks; government and corporations are forever
bemoaned as too powerful, the ever-elusive People too controlled;
business is said to have too much influence on government; government is
said to be too inefficient, and needs to be run like a business; the
environment is said to be important, but not as important as present
economic concerns; health care is said to be vitally important, but
(like immigration reform) nobody does anything about it. And so on.
All
of this suggest to yours truly that, as much as style has changed in
the past two decades, substance hasn't. Whether the candidates politely
say "You wanna field this question, Bill, or should I?" or shout each
other down, they're still representing the same positions on the same
subjects. Not to say that nothing has changed: queer rights, for
example, have rocketed forward in my lifetime. And queer rights are
important. But integrating an oppressed caste into the ruling mainstream
(as has happened with LGBT people) is a whole different kettle of fish
from changing or disassembling the ruling mainstream itself. In the
twenty-first century, people come out of the closet in middle school;
but the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex, the
healthcare-industrial complex are all still solidly in place.
A lot has changed in the past twenty years, but not the essential form of power in America and the world.
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