Paul Krugman had a typically restrained response to a profile by one of the dumbest Versailles scribes around. In fact, it was more than just restrained, it took the opportunity to make a very telling point... or two:
One thing I'd note, however: there's a hint in Kurtz's article of an attitude one sees all the time - namely, that there's something inauthentic about people who complain about current policies and the state of the economy when they are personally doing well.
This brings to mind a review I once read of a bad movie in which Mel Gibson played a Revolutionary War patriot. The film made a point of showing the Gibson character as being apolitical - until the British did him personal harm; that's when he got involved. As the reviewer pointed out, this gets the notion of patriotism all wrong - you're supposed to care about the cause regardless of your personal interests. In fact, there's something especially laudable if you oppose a regime even though you were doing fine under that regime.
Of course the fact that conservative icon Mel Gibson has no idea what patriotism is about should hardly be surprising, much less shocking. But what is distressing is how dimly even most liberals are aware of what's wrong with it. However, it's actually part of a much wider phenomena, which Salon's Heather Havrilesky mused upon in a recent column, "Will 'The Event' just get 'Lost'?", where she writes:
In a country where many viewers don't have a lot of thoughtful or idealistic notions outside of a "love of family" -- worthy though this love obviously is -- this is what passes for character development and premise, over and over again. Even on the most popular TV shows and movies out there, this is often the one humanizing factor, the one guiding principle, the one very simple central thrust of the entire narrative. Even in a smart psychological thriller like "Inception," what do you ever know about Leo DiCaprio's character, other than that he loves his wife and wants to get back to his kids? What should merely be a character's motive stands in for almost everything else, so that all we get is an enormous layer cake of action, all balancing on the faces of two young children. By the time we see the kids' faces, I half expect them to be hideous monsters or extraterrestrials. (If only.)
What Havrileskyis describing is the minimal self of neo-liberalism, for whom all higher things have either been commodofied, or reduced to single-minded love of family. Given this, there simple is no possible foundaiton for a truly democratic politics of any sort, much less for actual patriotism.
And that realization adds a much deeper level of resonance and pathos to Krugman's conclusion:
So: I support tax increases that will reduce my own after-tax income; I worry greatly about unemployment, even though my own living is secure; I warn about growing inequality, even though I'm of the class that has gained from rising disparities; I'm upset about the direction this country is going, even though my own life is comfortable. And this is supposed to cast doubt on my motives?
Yes, Paul. It casts doubt on your motives, because Versailles simply can't comprehend anything outside the framework of the neo-liberal minimalist self that Havilesky so accurately picks out. Your grounding in good old-fashioned patriotism renders you an alien creature to them.
One more twist. Havrilesky goes on to indicate something about the function of minimalist post-modernism, in which endless cross-textual appropriation substitutes for all internal lack of substance:
Despite a promising and popular premiere -- almost 11 million viewers tuned in last Monday night to watch -- not only does "The Event" strain credulity over and over again in the next two episodes, but we don't learn anything new about the characters themselves. In fact, they appear to be lifted whole-cloth from other sources and plopped down in the middle of the action without any extra flourishes or quirks.
In retrospect, isn't this just what Obama did so well during his campaign? And hasn't lifting inspiration, motivation and explanation whole cloth from other sources just about run its course, when it comes to actual governing?
