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Conservative politics aims to support and preserve the status quo. Reactionary politics aims to restore a bygone status quo. Ever since the early days of the New Deal, leading so-called "conservative" politicians have actually been reactionaries, wanting to take us backwards. The only question is: How far? With the emergence of torture and the repeal of habeas corpus under the Bush Administration, the answer seemed fairly clear: at least as far back as the late medieval period, when no one would even think of challenging such actions. But American conservatives aren't the only medievalists around. They have plenty of company on the international stage. At least that's what one must conclude from a careful reading of El País's explanation of why it is publishing the WikiLeaks dump of State Department cables, which digby quoted at some length on Sunday.
Reading the original, what jumped out at me in particular was this passage:
Political classes on both sides of the Atlantic convey a simple message that is tailored to their advantage: trust us, don't try to reveal our secrets; in exchange, we offer you security.
But just how much security do they really offer in exchange for this moral blackmail? Little or none, since we face the sad paradox that this is the same political elite that was incapable of properly supervising the international financial system, whose implosion triggered the biggest crisis since 1929, ruining entire countries and condemning millions of workers to unemployment and poverty. These are the same people responsible for the deteriorating quality of life of their populations, the uncertain future of the euro, the lack of a viable European project and the global governance crisis that has gripped the world in recent years, and which elites in Washington and Brussels are not oblivious to. I doubt that keeping embassy secrets under wraps is any kind of guarantee of better diplomacy or that such an approach offers us better answers to the problems we face.
The incompetence of Western governments, and their inability to deal with the economic crisis, climate change, corruption, or the illegal war in Iraq and other countries has been eloquently exposed in recent years. Now, thanks to WikiLeaks, we also know that our leaders are all too aware of their shameful fallibility....
In the medieval era, all that mattered was elite power: the Church and the feudal order, tightly intertwined with one another. The poor had no power at all, and the tiny middle classes were but a handful of retainers serving specific elite needs. Gradually, the growth of cities and the urban bourgeoisie began to change this, and the industrial revolution and the rise of an organized working class changed things further still. The 20th Century welfare state, in which all citizens had basic social, economic and political rights, represented a culmination of a millenium of progress, whereby the power of extremely tiny elites had been increasingly restricted by the growing power of society as a whole.
And yet, it should now be clear how fragile that millenium of progress actually was. A mere 70 years ago, the German Nazis sought to wipe all that away, and replace it with their own 1000-year vision: The 1000-year Reich. They came remarkably close to succeeding. Then followed the Cold War, which in the West was portrayed as a struggle of freedom against an "evil empire". But once that war was ended, something very different emerged: without the threat of "actually existing socialism", however bogus it may have been, the Western elites felt increasingly free to begin walking away from their commitments to the broad common good. The old medieval yearnings to shape the world with only their own petty needs in mind began to reassert themselves in increasingly naked forms--although, even before the Cold War ended, the cyberpunk authors foresaw this development in their neo-feudal near-future social landscapes. This is the background against which we should see El País's description of the failure of Western elites. So long as there is no credible alternative, there is no limit to how badly they can fail, and yet still hold power. For as long as they hold power, there is no failure, so far as they are concerned.
Such is the logic of medievalism. And this is the logic that their retainers now trumpet, not least when they condemn the exposure of elite folly, dishonesty and misrule, as seen in the WikiLeaks documents. When members of the press itself attack the press for printing these revalations, they show themselves to be part of the reactionary medievalist camp. They are court reporters, taking elite dictation, not popular reporters, seeking out the truth on behalf of the people. They are not journalists in any modern sense. They are, in fact, propagandists for a return to the medieval world.
That is the battle that is now joined, not just in America, but across the globe. WikiLeaks and its revelations are a flashpoint, bringing things into focus, but the deeper story is the underlying structures of unaccountable elite power, which do not even concern themselves with the wanton destruction they sow, which see the Great Recession as a feature, not a bug: a great opportunity to roll back welfare states across the globe, and further plunge the vast majority of people into a much more precarious state of existence, much less able to challenge or check their own reckless misrule.
p.s. I don't write about stuff overtly from this long-term perspective very often. But it is where I live, it's a background influence on what I write, and is also responsible, I believe, for a good deal of disagreement with others, say about interpreting Obama's behavior. Things look different through a telephoto lens. And you tend to remember that, even when you move in for a close-up.
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