> Look, I just don't buy the idea that this whole thing was about
> "moral values."
Of course "the whole thing" was not about "moral values." One would have to be pretty stupid to be that reductionist. But too many leftists, who have been raised, like their mother's milk, on the Marxist dogma that moral concepts are mere superstructural consequences of the real, underlying economic factors, tend to snicker when the subject of morality comes up. Far too bourgeois a matter for those really in the know, don't ya know?
But these days, we should always keep in mind, "moral values" is a code word for "keep people of color, uppity women, gays, 'liberal elites,' and anyone else who is not with the radical right program under our thumbs." If you think "moral values" in this sense has not be a potent factor in the country's politics since the backlash to the movements of the '60s, I don't know where you've been hiding yourself.
The "terrorism" business, which is simply the panic induced by 9/11 and kept on the boil by the Shrub administration, is in a sense an extension of the "moral values" thing. After all, the worst betrayal of "moral values" is to fail to keep the women and children of your country safe from the horrible menaces prowling out there in the world beyond the seas (the "wolf" commercial of the Bush campaign was an attempt to portray this metaphor, with a female voice-over no less, which didn't quite come off). This also goes back to the '60s, when opponents of the war were portrayed as lily-livered cowards who would let the Commies win until they were invading the shores of California. In fact, it goes back even further, to the whole anti-Communist scare which started in 1917. And in the larger sense, it is the basic mythic thrust of any reactionary movement. If a progressive movement can't come up with an effective therapy against this reactionary bacterial strain -- and the U.S. Left has been struggling to find one since the backlash of the '60s -- it's in bad trouble, because it is a very potent mental infection. It's high time we stopped pretending that this "moral values" stuff is too far beneath our dignity for us to deal with, and started dealing with it.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ When I was a little boy, I had but a little wit, 'Tis a long time ago, and I have no more yet; Nor ever ever shall, until that I die, For the longer I live the more fool am I. -- Wit and Mirth, an Antidote against Melancholy (1684)