Glenn Beck’s ideal America, as shown in this illustration from his children’s book The Christmas Sweater.
Culture » September 1, 2010
Once Upon a Time, in America…
The right has one fundamental advantage over its opponents: storytelling.
Not so long ago, in a typical conniption fit, Glenn Beck blubbered to his TV audience about the loss of America’s greatness. No one faklempts like Beck, and on this October evening he was very moist. He was mourning the America best represented, he thought, by several 1970s network TV ads, including one for Kodak (children, butterflies) and one for Coke (game-losing Mean Joe Green accepting a conciliatory cola from a grade-school boy). Beck whined and moaned and waxed reactionary, choking back saline, pleading with us to remember “what life used to be like!” and “how it felt!”
It was not an unusual performance. Watching the clip is like watching a clinical video of a beleaguered schizophrenic.
Beck seems aware that his constituency has lost the capacity to discern TV fantasy from what’s real. And we can overlook, for now, the fact that if America “used to be united!” as he cried, it was united over unchallenged racism, women’s subjugation and the presumption of a white president.
The substance of Beck & Co.’s discourse is odious trash, of course. But the question remains why it has gained such audience share. Theories abound, most of them unkind to a big chunk of American voters. But watch Beck spin a fable about the glory days of America by way of something as transparently disingenuous as a TV commercial, and you begin to see the structural trump card–story.
The right has long been adept at spinning yarns, at limning fictions. Storytelling is as old in human culture as parts of our frontal lobe. Scores of psychological studies have suggested that we have an innate capacity to understand life via stories, to use storytelling as an evolutionary advantage (learning decision-making skills, avoiding danger), and to adapt socially using empathy.
Novelist Michael Chabon writes in Manhood for Amateurs about how, although he is a Jew and a pretty irreligious one at that, he’s never felt slighted by the social predominance of the Jesus-birth story at Christmas–not even in the form of the school Nativity plays in which his kids take part. In fact, he loves it. What he loves is the story itself, which tells the truth “about the hope and the promise that ought to attend to the birth of every child, however mean or difficult the conditions of that birth,” and “about the dangerous and woefully unredeemed state of the world and the potential that all children have to redeem it.”
It does him no harm, as a non-believer. “[O]n the contrary, it breaks my heart every time,” he writes.
Chabon’s point is that his seduction is fictional–that stories have valuable meaning to us. His observations speak volumes about taletelling’s ability to forge significance in lives that may otherwise seem aimless or unpurposed.
Storytelling is a codified, public strategy. It is often used opportunistically, as a psycho-social trope aimed toward a predetermined result–a schema selling a product or a pitch or a persona, a therapeutic process, a technique to persuade the public to favor a politician’s hairball agenda. Television conservatives, amply backed by parties and think tanks and strategists, don’t do anything by accident–unless it’s a mistake. Crafting their ideology as narrative is a studious marketing ploy. How best to sell this agenda, this tax cut, this Democrat demonization?
Tell a tale. Campfire stories about Commie boogeyman and welfare cheats, bedtime stories about how things used to be, once upon a time. To dip even your littlest toe into the river of conservative media is to hear stories, stories of evil homosexuals, beatific soldiers, heroic Republican presidents, and halcyon days of law, order, authority and traditional values.
The problem is, leftists do not tell stories–whether true or fabricated–that involve the past. Progressives opine for the practical future, a future that they aim to create free of turmoil or injustice. That is, a future without stories. Stories require conflict, emotional desire, heroes and villains.
What kind of story could a liberal tell about an unconflicted and equitable tomorrow? Unless you are able to invoke an idealized past, which you can mythify as narrative, your hands will be tied.For progressives, the past, as a tale told, is not on the docket.
We’re talking about presentation, not laws and rights and actions. As long as American politics remain a matter of simulacra–of rhetoric and persona–the storytellers will dominate the discussion, doing what myth has always done–supply order in place of chaos and uncertainty. This is our modern tragedy: Recent history offers a parade of evil fabulists, from Hitler to Karl Rove to Kim Jong-Il, all of them bewitching storytellers.
The Tea Party movement is nothing more than a cycle of antique fictions told over and over again, distorting themselves as they go.
Progressives can use storytelling. Michael Moore’s instinct for sardonic fable and punchline juice has proven effective, though troubling, and the voices that rose in counterpoint to the Bush II administration certainly experimented with the mode. But these attempts have been reaction–without rightist evil in power, liberals don’t have a story to tell. The question may be, should we? Should we stoop to Beckian depths? Is it a compromise of responsible social politics? (Obama, a proficient yarn-spinner, is nothing if not The Great Compromiser.) Leftists find storytelling uncomfortable, understandably, because it’s not reality. We may never quite win–but at least we’ll have our souls.
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Michael Atkinson has written or edited many books, including Exile Cinema: Filmmakers at Work Beyond Hollywood (2008) and the mystery novels Hemingway Deadlights (2009) and Hemingway Cutthroat (2010). He blogs at Zero For Conduct.
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Reader Comments
I never watch Glenn Beck.
Oh, I have watched enough to know his style is not for me, but I must admit this article makes me think he is on to something with a ring of truth, My problem is with his ranting and raving delivery.
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“...the fact that if America “used to be united!” as he cried, it was united over unchallenged racism, women’s subjugation and the presumption of a white president.
The substance of Beck & Co.’s discourse is odious trash, of course. But the question remains why it has gained such audience share.”
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All I hear from the media — local, state, national — is a “need for more diversity”.
Nonsense! Diversity is, and always has been, a given. We all know “We are a nation of immigrants.”
What made the USA unique was the ability to unify. Over time, religious freedom, disregard for net worth and national heritage and working toward the goals of the Declaration and Constitution created a strong middle class.
A common language allowed us to communicate with each other more clearly.
What have we gained since the 1964 Civil Rights Act by introducing quotas on race, gender and sexual preference?
This became a call like “Don’t think of a PINK ELEPHANT!”
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The author asks, “...why has [Beck] gained such audience share?”
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Because many of us who hoped for real prevention of discrimination in 1964 are now feeling it ourselves.
People who work and save are being bled to support those who milk the system — not just the individuals getting the checks — mostly the politicians after their votes.
“Illegals” get free medical care, (I paid every penny out of pocket), their kids get state residency tuition discounts (mine did not). The word “black” is proudly attached to phone directories, TV channels, political groups — the same goes for gender or homosexual labeled groups.
If “white”, “male” or “straight” were the adjectives — the media and politicians would storm against them.
Perhaps I should grit my teeth and listen to Beck’s content.
I can identify with it as presented here.
Posted by whattheheck on Sep 1, 2010 at 5:34 AM
Fables have always been used by the moneyed elites to control US. Manifest destiny justified taking this continent away from its native peoples; the “surprise” attack at Pearl Harbor thrust us into WWII; the Golf of Tonkin incident justified 2 million dead Vietnamese; 9/11… it’s amazing how fast the official conspiracy theory of what happened on that day entered the national mythos, within hours. What’s next?
Posted by Thomas Carlson on Sep 1, 2010 at 3:10 PM
Atkinson -
Well, that is one way of looking at it, I suppose. A simpler, and therefore more accurate (Occam) way is to view liberal, Constiutional, rule-of-law, free-market voters as true to our founding principles (that created the best and strongest nation in the world), and your so-called “Liberals” as promoting a Marxist, elitist, inefficient, corrupt new version of America.
You are utterly incorrect in stating that leftists have no fables:
“Liberal” - According to you, George Washington was an extreme right-wing radical; after all, he clung to guns and bible. But the Constitutional rule that Washington initiated was the result of hundreds of years of liberal philosophic development. The Bill of Rights to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution itself are the culmination and glory of liberal thought, most particularly the right to keep and bear arms, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion.
So, why did you leftists try to steal the liberal label when you are so anti-liberal and anti- American? I do note with satisfaction that, having subverted the entire meaning and value of the term “liberal” in your left-wing, ding-ling context, you have now reverted to calling yourself “progressives”, another stolen term, but not as contemptuous as your theft of the term “liberal”.
History - Comparing Zinn’s version af America to the contemporary reality makes Zinn look ridiculous.
The European model - Krugman advocates an America like Europe, which has been mired in stagnation, unemployment, and corruption for twenty years.
Social justice - The poverty rate is now higher than when LBJ passed the War on Poverty that utterly wasted $6.6 trillion. At the end of the War on Poverty, the national debt stood at $5.9 trillion.
And you know how the Democrats’ Unaffordable Housing Project worked out.
Posted by scorp on Sep 2, 2010 at 6:11 AM
Scorp,
This week a friend, formerly director of the local state mental facility, sent me local data on what was in a George Will article, “Grim Data Persist On The Black Condition”.
The specific concern of my friend, who now volunteers in mentoring black grade school kids, is the increase in single parent families which in our city is 80% of black mothers.
He reminded me of the study done by Sen. Moynihan in 1976 which showed the counter productive results of government attempts to deal en masse with social issues.
Anyone old enough may remember the movement of blacks (colored back then) to the northern factories during and following WW2. This enabled families to remain together and begin to improve their own lives.
To me it is apparent that the globalization process which has gradually removed these jobs has far out done the ability of any program to do for people what they had been doing themselves. AS all are affected — they are more so.
The arrogance in thinking “government can do it better” is unbelievable.
The result of forty years of micro-managing the lives of individuals has be amazing. Families have been destroyed, jobs sold off and crime is on the rise.
And it continues to increase with forced health care insurance, accepting millions of illegals, and “nation building”.
Posted by whattheheck on Sep 4, 2010 at 6:21 AM
WTH -
If you have been paying attention, I have explained in detail on this site numerous times the social and financial costs and bad effects of LBJ’s War on Poverty and the way LBJ ignored Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s predictions of doom.
Moynihan was the wisest political philosopher and practitioner in the USA around the 1960s. (Now it is Thomas Sowell.) Moynihan told LBJ not to pass the War on Poverty because it would destroy black families by paying mothers to get rid of the men in their lives. LBJ ignored Moynihan’s input and men went on the street and into crime and drugs, children were left fatherless, and massive corruption resulted from gaming the system. The very best result of the War on Poverty was that it only wasted $6.6 trillion. The national debt at the end of the War on Poverty in 1995 was $5.9 trillion.
You are utterly mistaken. All wealth is created by the efforts of individuals. There are two basic options on the expenditure of wealth: consumption and investment. Investment creates new jobs. But programs like LBJ’s War on Poverty takes wealth away from investment and job creation and gives it to a consuming bureaucracy and the consuming “poor” in this case, neither of whom produce anything of value.
Globalization does not “remove jobs”, the War on Poverty and other Marxist schemes remove people from jobs.and replace the jobs with taxpayer money.
Posted by scorp on Sep 4, 2010 at 12:51 PM
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