Democracy Matters (4 page)

There are a number of white lovers of the blues who have a tragicomic sensibility, but for too many in white America the blues remains a kind of exotic source of amusement, a kind of primitivistic occasion for entertainment only. The blues is not simply a music to titillate; it is a hard-fought way of life, and as such it should unsettle and unnerve whites about the legacy of white supremacy. The blues is relevant today because when we look down through the corridors of time, the black American interpretation of tragicomic hope in the face of dehumanizing hate and oppression will be seen as the only kind of hope that has any kind of maturity in a world of overwhelming barbarity and bestiality. That barbarity is found not just in the form of terrorism but in the form of the emptiness of our lives—in terms of the wasted human potential that we see around the world. In this sense, the blues is a great democratic contribution of black people to world history.

The ugly terrorist attacks on innocent civilians on 9/11 plunged the whole country into the blues. Never before have Americans of
all
classes, colors, regions, religions, genders, and sexual orientations felt unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence, and hated. Yet to have been designated and treated as a nigger in America for over 350 years has been to feel unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence, and hated. The high point of the black response to American terrorism (or niggerization) is found in the compassionate and courageous voice of Emmett Till’s mother, who stepped up to the lectern at Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago in
1955 at the funeral of her fourteen-year-old son, after his murder by American terrorists, and said: “I don’t have a minute to hate. I’ll pursue justice for the rest of my life.” And that is precisely what Mamie Till Mobley did until her death in 2003. Her commitment to justice had nothing to do with naïveté. When Mississippi officials tried to keep any images of Emmett’s brutalized body out of the press—his head had swollen to five times its normal size—Mamie Till Mobley held an open-casket service for all the world to see. That is the essence of the blues: to stare painful truths in the face and persevere without cynicism or pessimism.

Much of the future of democracy in America and the world hangs on grasping and preserving the rich democratic tradition that produced the Douglasses, Kings, Coltranes, and Mobleys in the face of terrorist attacks and cowardly assaults. Since 9/11 we have experienced the niggerization of America, and as we struggle against the imperialistic arrogance of the us-versus-them, revenge-driven policies of the Bush administration, we as a blues nation must learn from a blues people how to keep alive our deep democratic energies in dark times rather than resort to the tempting and easier response of militarism and authoritarianism.

No democracy can flourish against the corruptions of plutocratic, imperial forces—or withstand the temptations of militarism in the face of terrorist hate—without a citizenry girded by these three moral pillars of Socratic questioning, prophetic witness, and tragicomic hope. The hawks and proselytizers of the Bush administration have professed themselves to be the guardians of American democracy, but there is a deep democratic tradition in this country that speaks powerfully against their nihilistic, antidemocratic
abuse of power and that can fortify genuine democrats today in the fight against imperialism. That democratic fervor is found in the beacon calls for imaginative self-creation in Ralph Waldo Emerson, in the dark warnings of imminent self-destruction in Herman Melville, in the impassioned odes to democratic possibility in Walt Whitman. It is found most urgently and poignantly in the prophetic and powerful voices of the long black freedom struggle—from the democratic eloquence of Frederick Douglass to the soaring civic sermons of Martin Luther King Jr., in the wrenching artistic honesty of James Baldwin and Toni Morrison, and in the expressive force and improvisatory genius of the blues/jazz tradition, all forged in the night side of America and defying the demeaning strictures of white supremacy. The greatest intellectual, moral, political, and spiritual resources in America that may renew the soul and preserve the future of American democracy reside in this multiracial, rich democratic heritage.

Let us not be deceived: the great dramatic battle of the twenty-first century is the dismantling of empire and the deepening of democracy. This is as much or more a colossal fight over visions and ideas as a catastrophic struggle over profits and missiles. Globalization is inescapable—the question is whether it will be a democratic globalization or a U.S.-led corporate globalization (with thin democratic rhetoric). This is why what we think, how we care, and the way we fight mean so much now in democracy matters. We live in a propitious yet perilous moment in which it has become fashionable to celebrate the benefits of imperial rule and acceptable to condone the decline of democratic governance. The pervasive climate of opinion and the prevailing culture of consumption
make it difficult for us to even imagine the revival of the deep democratizing energies of our past and conceive of making real progress in the fight against imperialism.

But we must remember that the basis of democratic leadership is ordinary citizens’ desire to take their country back from the hands of corrupted plutocratic and imperial elites. This desire is predicated on an awakening among the populace from the seductive lies and comforting illusions that sedate them and a moral channeling of new political energy that constitutes a formidable threat to the status quo. This is what happened in the 1860s, 1890s, 1930s, and 1960s in American history. Just as it looked as if we were about to lose the American democratic experiment—in the face of civil war, imperial greed, economic depression, and racial upheaval—in each of these periods a democratic awakening and activistic energy emerged to keep our democratic project afloat. We must work and hope for such an awakening once again.

The most frightening feature of imperial America is neither the myopic mendaciousness of the Republican Party nor the pathetic spinelessness of the Democratic Party (though the Democratic spine has been stiffening in response to the egregious excesses of Bush). Instead, what is most terrifying—including the perennial threat of cowardly terrorists—is the insidious growth of
deadening nihilisms
across political lines, nihilisms that have been suffocating the deep democratic energies in America. In
Race Matters
, I examined the increasing nihilism in black America as the “lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness, and (most important) lovelessness.” This monumental collapse of meaning, hope, and love primarily resulted from “the saturation of market forces and market moralities in black life and the present crisis of black leadership.” Families bereft of resources and communities devoid of webs of care yield thin cultural armor against the demons of despair, dread, and disappointment. Nihilistic criminal thugs often step into the void and rule a brutal underground economy and frightened community, and timid black leaders offer no energizing vision to perishing people.

Needless to say, nihilism is not confined to black America. Psychic depression, personal worthlessness, and social despair are widespread in America as a whole. The vast majority of citizens—struggling to preserve a livelihood, raise children, and live decent
lives—are disillusioned with social forces that seem beyond their control. Just as in the black community, the saturation of market forces in American life generates a market morality that undermines a sense of meaning and larger purpose. The dogma of free-market fundamentalism has run amok, and the pursuit of profits by any legal (or illegal) means—with little or no public accountability—guides the behavior of the most powerful and influential institutions in our lives: transnational corporations. And yet corporate elites are not fully in control of market forces even as they try to bend them to their own benefit. Their frantic race to the bottom line indeed lifts some boats yet it often pollutes the water and empties out the democratic energies necessary to guide the ship of state. In fact, it leaves the ship of state devoid of vital public trust and a common sense of destiny.

The perception of pervasive corruption at the top seems to many to justify the unprincipled quest to succeed at any cost in their own lives, and the widespread cheating in our culture reflects this sad truth. The oppressive effect of the prevailing market moralities leads to a form of sleepwalking from womb to tomb, with the majority of citizens content to focus on private careers and be distracted with stimulating amusements. They have given up any real hope of shaping the collective destiny of the nation. Sour cynicism, political apathy, and cultural escapism become the pervasive options.

The public has good cause for disillusionment with the American democratic system. The saturation of market forces and market moralities has indeed corrupted our system all the way up. Our leadership elite have themselves lost faith in the efficacy of adhering to democratic principles in the face of the overwhelming
power of those market forces. They are caught up in the corrupting influences of market morality. Our politicians have sacrificed their principles on the altar of special interests; our corporate leaders have sacrificed their integrity on the altar of profits; and our media watchdogs have sacrificed the voice of dissent on the altar of audience competition.

Our leadership elite may still
want
to believe in democratic principles—they certainly profess that they do—but in practice they have shown themselves all too willing to violate those principles in order to gain or retain power. The flip side of the nihilism of despair is this nihilism of the unprincipled abuse of power. When the lack of belief in the power of principles prevails, the void is filled by the will to power of the market, by the drive to succeed at the cost of others rather than the drive to decency and integrity. In the poverty-stricken inner cities, this nihilism leads to street gangsterism, and in the halls of elite power it leads to elite gangsterism, which I will call
political
nihilism.

Despite their religious rhetoric and patriotic utterances—habitual gestures they enact ad nauseam—most American politicians have succumbed to what they deem the necessary evils of market corruptions. Serious commitment to truth, integrity, and principle gives way to mendacity, manipulation, and misinformation in the increasingly unprincipled political marketplace. Political nihilism now sets the tone for public discourse, and market moralities now dictate the landscape of a stifled American democracy. Market research (polling) all too often takes the place of principled problem solving; appealing lies take the place of uncomfortable truths; backroom deals take the place of public debate.
The broad array of citizens’ voices is channeled through a narrow tunnel of market-driven mass-media outlets, grossly limiting the public presentation of popular sentiment. There are in fact impassioned voices of dissent, often expressed with special fervor through the marvelously democratic medium of the Web. There has been a massive outpouring of moral outrage at Bush, which is a promising sign of the renewal of the spirit of democratic discourse. But the censorship of the market is insidious.

American democracy has always been premised on a capitalist, market-driven economy of prosperity, and just as our capitalism has always been subject to antidemocratic corruptions and has shut out so many from the fruits of prosperity, our political system has in turn been subject to capitalist corruptions. The hallmark of political nihilism is the public appeal to fear and greed, and too much of American politics today has been reduced to such vulgar appeals. Just so, Bush promoted his irresponsible tax cuts by offering the largely chimerical promise of a child-tax rebate, and promoted his repressive Patriot Act by appealing to the fear of terrorism. A political nihilist is one who is not simply intoxicated with the exercise of power but also obsessed with stifling any criticism of that exercise of power. He will use clever arguments to rationalize his will to power and deploy skillful strategies, denying the pain and suffering he may cause, in order to shape the world and control history in light of the pursuit of power. The word
nihilism
may seem strong, but we saw President Johnson do this with claims about the Gulf of Tonkin for the Vietnam War and President Bush do this with claims about weapons of mass destruction in the invasion of Iraq.