Twilight of the American Century

by Andrew J Bacevich

  At best, money helped prop up the pretense that in America Christianity was alive and kicking. Were not pious plutocrats like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller even then engaged in their mammoth philanthropies, endowing churches and concert halls, universities and libraries, hospitals and art museums? Meanwhile, at Sunday services from one week to the next, droves of ordinary citizens dutifully dropped their nickels into the collection basket. By such measures, fin de siècle Christianity seemed to be thriving.

  Adams intuited that this was mostly hokum, a tacit collaboration of the powerful and the largely powerless distracting attention from the havoc then bearing down on the world. Christianity as a personal ethic or as a medium through which to seek individual salvation might survive, but Christianity as a formula for ordering human affairs had breathed its last.

  Adams lived long enough to glimpse what was in store as a consequence. By the time of his death in March 1918, Christendom (as it had once been known) was tearing itself apart in a war that produced unspeakable carnage. At the various places that made the twentieth century such a horror—Katyn, Auschwitz, Dresden, Hiroshima, and so on—worse was to come. The dynamo had been merely a portent. With World War II, the furies that Adams had presciently detected slipped their leash.

  Scripture no longer provided an adequate explanation of these events—even to consider situating the Holocaust in what Christians called salvation history seemed obscene. Unwilling to own up to their own complicity in all that had gone awry—unwilling, that is, to acknowledge the implications of opting for dynamo over Virgin—nominally Christian Americans sought refuge in ideology. Framing the twentieth century as a contest between fascism, communism, and a third camp variously described as liberal, democratic, or simply free restored clear-cut boundaries between good and evil. That the Free World, alone among the three competitors, refrained from open hostility toward religion further clarified the apparent issue. The tattered remnants of Christendom found sanctuary under the protection of the Free World’s acknowledged leader, the United States. Here, it seemed, was moral order restored.

  Defining the issue in ideological terms allowed Cold War–era American statesmen to play dirty without compromising the righteousness of their cause. Of greater significance, however, was the way that ideology dulled sensibilities and narrowed choice, making it unnecessary (perhaps even unpatriotic) to assess critically the moral implications of the dynamo’s offspring. Americans saw—or had been persuaded to see—flying machines, radio, motion pictures, television, nuclear power, guided missiles, computers, and all sorts of other gadgets and gewgaws as conducive to the exercise of authentic freedom.

  In his all-but-forgotten “Kitchen Debate” with Nikita Khrushchev in 1959, Richard Nixon made the point with clumsy effectiveness: real freedom implied access to whatever was the latest in the material world. “American houses last for more than twenty years,” Nixon told the Soviet leader, but “after twenty years, many Americans want a new house or a new kitchen. . . . The American system is designed to take advantage of new inventions and new techniques.”

  As long as the Cold War persisted, thinking critically about the freedom provided by this American system remained difficult. Giving credence to warnings that Adams had issued decades before was nearly impossible.

  In 1989, the ideological twentieth century came to an abrupt and happy conclusion. Freedom had seemingly prevailed. The United States, freedom’s chief exemplar, reigned supreme. Yet if Americans felt any sense of vindication, it proved surprisingly short-lived. Although much had seemed to hinge on the outcome of the Cold War, that outcome settled remarkably little.

  The “end of history”—the triumph of liberal democratic capitalism—did not restore moral consensus. Adams for one would not have been surprised. The forces actually driving history—their power measured now not in kilowatts or megatons but in gigabytes—were no closer to being harnessed than when he had taken their measure a hundred years earlier. Carnegie Steel and Standard Oil might not rule the roost, but Microsoft, Apple, and Google appeared in their place. In their pursuit of profit, corporate leviathans continued to call the tune.

  As successor to the Machine Age, the so-called Information Age promises to empower humanity as never before and therefore to complete our liberation. Taking the form of a wireless handheld device, the dynamo of our time has truly become, as Adams wrote, “a symbol of infinity.” Rather than spewing masses of stone and steam, it offers instant access to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

  The Information Age does something else as well, however: it displays in stark terms our propensity to bow down before freedom’s reputed source. Anyone who today works with or near young people cannot fail to see this: for members of the present generation, the smartphone has become an amulet. It is a sacred object to be held and caressed and constantly attended to. Previous generations fell in love with their cars or became addicted to TV, but this one elevates devotion to material objects to an altogether different level. In the guise of exercising freedom, its members engage in a form of idolatry. Small wonder that aficionados of Apple’s iPhone call it the Jesus Phone.

  So the frantic pursuit of self-liberation that Adams identified and warned against enters yet another cycle, with little sign of anything having been learned from past failures. If the God of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament exists, then it must be that he wills this. Yet his purposes remain inscrutable.

  Ever the cool observer, Adams might have posited two possible explanations: either humankind’s quest for freedom in the here and now, achieved through human effort and ingenuity, represents the ultimate heresy and offense against God—in which case we invite his continuing punishment; or belief in God’s existence represents the ultimate illusion—in which case the chaos humanity has inflicted on itself as it careens from one dynamo to the next may be merely a foretaste of what is to come.

  14

  Christopher Lasch

  Family Man

  (2010)

  It is a recurring story of American politics: From the heartland, anger erupts, directed at Wall Street for fattening itself at the people’s expense and at Washington for endemic corruption and endless shenanigans. Moneychangers have occupied the temple, comes the charge, and no alternative exists but to sweep the place clean.

  Yet no sooner do the plain folk raise their pitchforks than a great tut-tutting is heard from on high. The problem, it turns out, lies not with Wall Street or Washington but with the people themselves. Populism—synonymous with bigotry and ignorance—has once again raised its ugly head. The good of the Republic requires that order be restored. The people must return to their places. If they have complaints to make, they should express them quietly and respectfully. Suggestions that the whole game is rigged against them are inappropriate and not to be entertained.

  The popularity of Sarah Palin and other right-wing firebrands, the rise of the Tea Party, and perhaps above all, the temerity of voters in Massachusetts who awarded the Kennedy family’s Senate seat to a pickup truck–driving nonentity named Scott Brown have persuaded observers that populists are once again on the march. As if on cue, sophisticates unable to differentiate between a pitchfork and a honey spreader explain why this latest version of populism gets things all wrong and why it doesn’t deserve to be treated seriously.

  Here is David Brooks, peering down from his perch at the New York Times, offering a tutorial on why ordinary citizens, as opposed to well-heeled newspaper columnists living in the nation’s capital, just don’t understand what makes America tick. Populists, writes Brooks, mistakenly view the country through the lens of social class. Convinced that “economics is a struggle over finite spoils,” they betray an “Us versus Them mentality.” They see politics as a “struggle between the enlightened and the corrupt, the pure and the betrayers.” Brooks wants it known that such heresies (which are, of course, daily fare within the Beltway) possess not even the slightest legitimacy when voiced by ordinary citizens f
rom Indiana or Kansas.

  Indeed, whatever slight problems the country may be facing—take the recession, for example—it’s populist carping that prevents their solution. If the rubes “continue their random attacks on enterprise and capital,” Brooks warns, “they will only increase the pervasive feeling of uncertainty, which is now the single biggest factor in holding back investment, job creation and growth.” Still, Brooks finds consolation in knowing that uppitiness coming from the hinterland never really amounts to much. The verdict of history is clear: “dynamic optimism”—that’s what real Americans believe in—“always wins,” whereas “combative divisiveness”—that’s what populism signifies—“always loses.”

  Such condescension tells us less about populism than about the fears and prejudices of those who presume to police American political discourse lest it become tainted by unwelcome demands or expectations. The truth about American politics is this: disguised by the theatrics of squabbling Democrats and Republicans, Washington governs according to limits prescribed by a fixed and narrow consensus. The two main parties collaborate in preserving that consensus. Doing so requires declaring out-of-bounds anything even remotely resembling a fundamental critique of how power gets exercised or wealth distributed. Populism poses a challenge to that consensus—hence, the hostility with which it is treated by those purporting to express respectable opinion.

  When it comes to political choice, devotees of the existing two-party system contend that Americans already have all they need or can handle. Folks inhabiting the middle of the country (while occupying the lower reaches of the socioeconomic ladder) don’t necessarily see it that way. So radicalism persists. What Brooks and other enforcers of ideological discipline deride as populism is radicalism in the American grain, expressing itself in an authentically American, if less than genteel, voice.

  Populism frightens the fat cats and the defenders of the status quo, and with good reason. Yet for observers who find the status quo intolerable, the populist critique contains elements worthy of empathy and respect.

  One such observer was the late Christopher Lasch (1932–94), historian, cultural critic, contrarian, and wayfarer.1 A son of the Middle Border, born and raised in Nebraska before his parents moved to Chicago, Lasch, writes Eric Miller, “was a surveyor, taking the measure of the wilderness.” The wilderness was modern America. What Lasch discovered there were pathologies advertised as “progress,” promoted by elites for their own benefit with little regard for the common good.

  Miller, who teaches history at Geneva College, has written a biography of Lasch, with the evocative title Hope in a Scattering Time. A fine, thoughtful, and even moving book, its appearance could hardly be more opportune.

  In our own day, the politics of progress have passed the point of exhaustion. Were there any lingering doubts on that score, the vast disparity between the expectations raised by President Obama’s election and the dispiriting reality of the Obama Era has dispelled them once and for all. Only knaves and fools will look to Washington to devise solutions to the problems afflicting American society today. Indeed, further deference to established centers of power, on issues domestic or foreign, will surely perpetuate and even exacerbate those problems.

  So the times call for a searching reassessment of the American condition. Neither left nor right—especially in the adulterated form found in the actually existing Democratic and Republican parties—possesses the capacity to render such an assessment. To reconsider first principles requires an altogether different vantage point, firmly grounded in the American experience yet offering something other than the recitation of clichés and posturing in front of cameras.

  Lasch occupied and speaks from such a vantage point. Through a series of books, chief among them Haven in a Heartless World (1977), The Culture of Narcissism (1979), and The True and Only Heaven (1991), he sought, in Miller’s words, “to convince and persuade Americans of the true nature of their circumstance.” Like some prophet from the Hebrew Bible transported to an America at the very height of its power, Lasch “moved in the spirit of reckoning, freely casting judgment on all.” His countrymen could choose to listen or to turn a deaf ear: that was not his to decide. His calling was simply to speak the truth and offer it for their consideration. This he was determined to do, however harsh or unwelcome others might find the verdicts he handed down.

  Begin with the issue of progress itself. Conservatives and liberals pretend to differ on how to define it and on how best to achieve it. Yet both camps subscribe to this common baseline: the progress they promote is quantitative. It entails amassing more choice, abundance, access, autonomy, and clout.

  So defined, progress incrementally enhances American life, making it more democratic and enabling Americans in ever greater numbers to exercise freedom. Lasch rejected this proposition. Progress, he believed, was converting America into a spiritual wasteland. “The question for serious historians,” he wrote in 1975, “is not whether progress exacts a price but whether the history of modern society can be considered progress in the first place.” His own answer to that question was a resounding “No.”

  Where others saw progress, Lasch saw destruction. His own interpretation of the nation’s past, according to Miller, “was centered not on grand, heroic movement from authoritarian control to freedom, as most Americans supposed, but rather on the shift from one form of overweening social control to another.” A nefarious collaboration between market and state was transforming citizens into consumers, while intruding into the most intimate spheres of human existence. Rootlessness and chronic anxiety increasingly defined everyday American life, and individuals sought to fill the resulting void through compulsive efforts to satisfy unappeasable appetites. The marketplace proffered an array of solutions, usually chemical or technological, to “age-old discontents” such as “loneliness, sickness, weariness, [and] lack of sexual satisfaction.” Others pursued a different route of escape, attaching themselves, however tenuously or even vicariously, “to those who radiate celebrity, power, and charisma.”

  Seeking relief, ordinary Americans instead purchased dependence. The “modern obsession with personal liberation” was, in Lasch’s view, “itself a symptom of pervasive spiritual disorder.”

  A bit over the top? Watch some network TV tonight and don’t leave the room when the commercials come on. Hang out awhile at your local Wal-Mart (“Save money. Live better.”). Leaf through one of those glossy celebrity mags the next time you’re stuck waiting in the checkout line. Consider how teenagers obsessively caress their cell phones and iPods as if cradling in their hands something sacred. Ask yourself why movies like George Clooney’s recent Up in the Air—wherein a man defines fulfillment as gaining entry into American Airlines’ “Ten Million Mile Club”—strike a chord.

  This process of cultural debasement was not the product of spontaneous combustion. It occurred because it served the interests of large institutions and of individuals directing their fortunes. Writing in 1958, while still a graduate student, Lasch accurately discerned the implications: “The greatest rewards will fall to those whose job it is to keep consumers consuming.” Those rewards included money, status, and power and were by no means restricted to the private sector. Once members of Congress figured out that the distribution of largesse held the key to perpetual incumbency, keeping consumers consuming—cash for clunkers!—became a key component of their job description as well.

  As they accumulated cars, gadgets, and brand-name clothes, filled their bathroom cabinets with potions promising to make them look and feel good, and dragged their kids off to theme parks, Americans were told that life itself was getting better and better. Indeed, during the Cold War (and again, after September 11), government agencies promoted American-style freedom as the model to which the rest of the world was destined to conform. As interpreted by Washington, such was the will of Providence.

  According to Lasch, however, all of this was bogus. Americans were being played for chumps. By defining prog
ress as acquiring more stuff combined with the shedding of self-restraint, they were not gaining greater freedom. Instead, they were donning a strait jacket. “Beneath the appearance of contractual freedom, individual autonomy, and the rule of reason,” he insisted, “domination still continued as the motor of history, class rule as the basis of wealth and economic power, and force as the basis of justice.”

  Individual Americans were forfeiting control over their own destinies. Lasch railed against “the pathology of domination, the growing influence of organizations (economic as well as military) that operate without regard to any rational objectives except their own aggrandizement.” He decried “the powerlessness of individuals in the face of these giant agglomerations and the arrogance of those ostensibly in charge of them.”

  The upheaval of the 1960s briefly persuaded Lasch that a New Left might constitute the counterweight needed to reverse these trends. The antics of the counterculture soon disabused him of this expectation, however. “Hedonism, self-expression, doing your own thing, dancing in the streets, drugs, and sex are a formula for political impotence and a new despotism,” he wrote with characteristic severity. The New Left contained its own elitist and authoritarian tendencies. “Mastery of the technological secrets of a modern society,” Lasch believed, would enable the savvy few to “rule over an indolent population which has traded self-government for self-expression”—a prediction finding eventual fulfillment (of a sort) amidst the mindlessness of social networking and manufactured celebrity.

  So the forces of revolution, such as they were, turned out to be fraudulent. Lasch soon forswore further political activism and thereafter remained apart, unleashing his thunderbolts, in Miller’s words, “from a place well above, or below, the usual ideological perches.” Lasch defied categorization. As a consequence, although his books and other writings commanded attention and attracted admirers, he had few real allies. Lasch was his own drummer. His was a lonely movement of one.