Posted on 12/28/2002 4:17:55 PM PST by MadIvan
JRR Tolkien was adamant that his fantasy novels not be misconstrued as political parables. But there was something uncanny about sitting down this Christmas in Manhattan for the second instalment of The Lord of the Rings.
Second parts of trilogies are often difficult. The audience is left hanging at the beginning and at the end. Suspense is built and released but has to be built again. Like real wars, therefore, Tolkien’s epic of good against evil has its lulls, its protagonists beset by self-doubt or fear or exhaustion. There is a modest relief at having survived much but also deepening fear of what might still lie ahead.
In America the last year felt like just such a bridge. War in Afghanistan ended more than a year ago; preparation for war against Saddam has filled the entire interlude. Only once did real terror strike at the heart of the country, as a sniper — a radical Muslim convert — murdered one citizen after another in and around the capital.
But the blast in Bali was also felt nearer home, a timely reminder of the depravity of the enemy, and its long memory and reach. The rest of the time, anticipation was the rule. From George W Bush’s “axis of evil” speech in January to his September speech to the UN, he attempted to make the case for a real war against the terror masters and their state allies.
Some are still unpersuaded. But if 2002 has been a test for the president in his stewardship of the war — bringing the American public, the allies, the UN and Congress towards endorsing the next step — even his harshest critics would be hard put to argue he failed. His unprecedented election victory in November was the clincher. Now he must fight the war. But sometimes in divided, democratic politics, making a necessary war possible is as hard as waging it.
Domestically, two deep shifts occurred. The first was the implosion of the American Catholic church. It’s hard to overestimate the damage done to what is the largest single denomination in the wealthiest and most powerful religious country on the planet.
Last January The Boston Globe began aggressive reporting on the Boston archdiocese’s record in tolerating sexual abuse of children. Within a year the most powerful and respected cardinal in America, Bernard Law, had resigned. In the meantime the rotten core of America’s Catholic hierarchy had been exposed. Cardinals, we discovered, routinely put the reputation of the church above the protection of children from statutory rape.
The hierarchy behaved less like servants of Christ than hapless politicians, alternately unable to understand what the fuss was about and sickened to their stomach by what they knew was true. By the time the Catholic bishops got around to opposing war against Iraq they had about as much moral authority with the public as Ozzy Osbourne.
Painful reality was implanted in every American’s head. Vocations to the priesthood had collapsed,the church’s negligence was leading to financial crisis, up to a third of Catholic priests were gay, a few found sex satisfying only with children, and knowledge of this went right to the top, to the Vatican.
There was no sign that Rome would address even minimal steps to repair the harm — allowing married clergy, talking about the possibility of women priests, or initiating a dialogue on the role of homosexuals in the church.
The church will endure, of course. But it is hard to see how the American church can reform itself, maintain the commitment of its laity and remain loyal to Rome. A year ago, hitting that treble would have seemed unlikely. Now it seems all but impossible.
And then there was a subtle but profound cultural shift on the matter of race. Some of this doubtless had to do with September 11, as the threat from outside the borders helped erase racial animosity within. But something else was also happening. A new generation of Americans, those who do not think in the black-and-white paradigm of their baby boomer parents and pre-civil-rights grandparents, began to make their presence felt.
The biggest entertainment success was Marshall Mathers, aka Eminem. His extraordinary movie, 8 Mile, will one day be seen as a cultural watershed. In one way it was a classic, almost conservative morality tale: poor boy struggles to get out of the ghetto, both of class and of race. It was also a brilliant exposition of how race is now a far more complicated factor in America’s social and political landscape than it once was.
As Eminem yells on his latest album: “White America, I could be one of your kids!” And, yes, he is one of their kids. But is he really white or really black? Some deride him as yet another Elvis rip-off, a white boy purloining black culture. They forget that Mathers really is a part of black hip-hop culture. In his generation class trumped race, as it does increasingly at the very bottom and the top of American society. He is to his circle what Condi Rice is to hers.
You only have to think about this for a minute to realise why Trent Lott had to resign as Senate majority leader. Lott had made a jovial, offhand remark at Senator Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party, to the effect that he wished Thurmond had won the presidential election of 1948 when he had run on an explicitly segregationist platform.
That kind of sentiment is not only repulsive but almost culturally absurd to those who grew up after the civil rights era. Once the story got real play in the media, the country gave what might be called a nervous collective gasp and it became clear that nobody who made such a joke could actually govern in contemporary America.
Like Cardinal Law, Lott lived posthumously for a while but eventually succumbed to reality. Both men had been left behind by history. Law grew up at a time when nobody ever criticised the Catholic church and got away with it, while Lott grew up in a South where segregation was not the slightest bit controversial among most whites. By 2002 the culture’s tectonic plates had shifted and two of the most powerful men in the country fell, humiliated, into a quake.
No doubt next year will be as cruel to others as 2002 was to these old men. But these shifts struck me as mere cultural and social adjustments compared with the terrorist trauma of the year before. We obsessed over them not simply because they were riveting and revealing but because they helped us ignore the gathering storm beyond the borders. Just as we were at the beginning of the year, we are still waiting in this bridge to the 21st century, glancing nervously at the sky. The next phase cannot be forestalled much longer. And in this brief holiday respite, most Americans sense it.
:^)
*L*..Nope, couldn't. Yer a Canuck, it's not in yer breed! ;-)
You could be right. Thirty years ago an Irish girl gave me a shillelagh (as a gift, not the way you'd like to give one to me, snicker!).
I've since lost it.
Oh, well, as they supposedly say in the gay bars, bottoms up, Irish!
:^)
Thank you for the lovely wish!
*LOL* Ye sarcastic git! *L* Love it though! :-)
I think you spend too much time hanging out with cynical guys like that slob Argh over at Free Republic. :^)
Hey!! You could be right. Should I see a therapist? *L*
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