Pen-Elayne on the Web

Same As It Never Was

Ever since I was old enough to understand the concept, I've been dealing with misplaced nostalgia - the idea that the world was better in a far-off yesteryear and if we could only somehow get back to that dimly-remembered past Everything Would Be Okay. Of course, the truth of the matter is that there's a reason such a past is dimly-remembered; by and large, it didn't exist. Oh sure, the recollection of individual comfort zones is a very real thing; as someone once said regarding comics, but which I think can be applied to just about anything, "The Golden Age is 12 years old," rather than a specific date one can pinpoint. But expanding it to include a whole range of people, each of whom looks back with fondness on different things, is a little trickier.

Thus it is with politics, an endeavor pretty much designed to appeal to voters via misplaced nostalgia for a Morning in America that never existed. The history of this country, as in so many, has been a constant struggle (to put it in the most basic terms) between people who have power and want to keep it and people who think that power should be shared for the common good. We've never lived up to the ideals upon which the United States was founded, but that hasn't stopped true patriots from continuing to try, and false patriots from attempting to circumvent those efforts. Appeals to a mythic America come from all ends of the political spectrum, but the difference between progressives and reactionaries is that progressives' idealized version looks toward a future America to which we should strive, and reactionaries' idealized version looks backwards at an America that never existed but which they may be able to convince enough people once did.

As eRobin Stelly notes, this "Hypothetical America" was identified in last night's Daily Show by a spot-on observation from Rob Corddry, regarding "how the America that tortures prisoners isn't the America that BushCo wants Iraqis to know" and that Bush, indeed, claims to know himself. His knowledge is, of course, hypothetical and based on false nostalgia, likely having much to do with being raised in privilege and never knowing want. In reality, Bush's America is a country where your rich daddy and his friends will hand you everything on a silver platter, a country where anything unpleasant is hidden from your incurious eyes behind walls of class and circumstance. But in theory, Bush's America is heroic and never does anything wrong. And, as Corddry observed, actions don't actually matter; this hypothetical America is all that counts in this image-over-substance presidency. Said he, "Don't judge us by our actions, judge us by our ideals" (shades of the old Mom standard "do as I say, not as I do"?) and "just because we did torture prisoners it doesn't mean that it's something we would do."