The arch duke’s murder was seized upon by the military aristocrats at the top of the Austrian and German empires to launch what they hoped would be a splendid little war, a war they felt they needed to push back the ever-growing forces of middle-class democracy and nationalism. Their splendid little war quickly metabolized, but they pushed on anyway. Better a splendid big war than no war at all.
Similarly, the Bush Administration seized upon 9/11 as a way to settle scores in the Middle East, in a splendid little war that would give the U.S. a whole new empire to run, with an unending series of profound but manageable crises, allowing us to return to the salutary discipline of the Cold War, and end America’s decades-long descent into mindless Democratic hedonism, a mud wallow of the spirit that seemed to grow deeper, wider, and more viscous with each passing moment.
Over the past decade, we have stumbled a short way away from war. In 1914, women did not vote. Today, they do. In 1914, it was not unusual for a woman to have three or four sons, and many had more. Today, it is unusual for a woman to have more than two sons, and many have only one. That makes an enormous difference.
We have crawled half-way back from the precipice, the false choices manufactured by the Bush Administration’s lies and incompetence. We do not make war, very much, though we do make murder. We have not been destroyed, but we have been made ugly. Many Americans, it is clear, still want to “get” someone. Republicans applaud a governor on the basis of the number of men and women he has executed—the more you kill, the more a man you are!—and Mitt Romney tells a crowd that we must honor our war dead by waging more war, as though the only solution for the great mistakes of the past is to make greater ones in the future.
The Great Economic Malaise that we are currently enduring—a global edition of the Japanese disease—is only tangentially related to the Osama’s ugly triumph. If the Bush Administration had not wasted a trillion dollars in Iraq, our response to the massive economic dislocations of 2008 might have been more sure-footed. But the combination of profound, persistent economic distress and a persistent corruption of the spirit is not pleasant to contemplate. Rick Perry is the most upsetting presidential candidate I can remember. Although his stated policy is that the federal government should do as little as possible, if elected he will be driven to do as much as possible. With all their talk of “constitutional” government, limited government, the right wing is lurching towards a plebiscitary dictatorship, placing all power in the hands of the President, who has the authority to do “what is right” as defined by himself. I miss the nineties so much. I hate living in interesting times.
Afterwords
Felix Salmon explains why both the U.S. and Europe have the Japanese disease here. Long-time Senate Republican staffer Mike Lofgren explains why the GOP is determined to destroy all that they cannot control here. Read them and weep.
