Good Guys and Bad Guys
We Democrats are often told that our narratives are faulty.
You know what I mean by narratives — our "frames," our big-picture presentation, the story we tell about ourselves. We hear that the GOP, and especially the Bush administration, has outstripped us in this area, even though our policies are better, our values more true and our implementation more effective. Despite these superior qualities, we get bogged down in particulars, in nuance, and as a result paint ourselves as boring, unmanly and undesirable. The other guys have just told a better story, and in the realm of politics, it's the story that sells.
Well, have I got a story for you.
The stories we tell ourselves as a culture are invariably fables. They reaffirm what we wish were true, and help us make some kind of meaning from a confusing, chaotic and compromised world. Looking at our films, our TV shows, our books — at all our most enduring narratives — we see stories of good guys and bad guys. This elemental realm of moral mythmaking has been the preferred tableau for Republican rhetoric. The President and his loyal followers have (often successfully) painted themselves as the good guys, standing up for America—whether against shadowy terrorists, tax-happy bureaucrats or corrupt, omnisexual, occult-worshipping cultural forces. Democrats have turned their noses up at such simplicity, but their caviling about nuance, we're told, cuts no ice in the moral heartland.
But the Foley episode has led us to a timeless narrative twist, one that virtually everyone seems to understand: the apparent good guy who turns out to be a bad guy. This is not merely a great scandal facing the GOP this week. It is a hook on which to hang the party's every last move for the past five-and-a-half years.
Just as Foley, who himself pushed legislation to make soliciting sex with minors online a federal crime, was overseeing a realm in which he himself was a wrongdoer, the Republicans have put foxes in charge of every American henhouse.
The bottom line: Republican politicians are bad guys who talk like good guys. They thump on a Bible in public, but their actions prove they worship Satan. When they say they've got your back it just means they know where they're going to stab you. Their only motives, like those of bad guys since the earliest melodramas, are increasing and maintaining their own power and wealth. They will kill anyone, steal anything, betray whomever or whatever is necessary to further empower and enrich them. No crime is too great, no lie too bald, no scapegoating or buck-passing too craven.
The Democrats, by contrast, are good guys who've been slandered by the bad guys. You know the part of the story I mean: the middle part, where the bad guy tells a bunch of lies and turns the town against the good guy. The good guy has made the mistake of trusting the bad guy, or of underestimating him, and now must clear his name. Despite his anger, though, he knows that the truth is on his side, and waits for his moment.
That moment has come. The bad guy is cornered. He's got a bullet in his ass and has dragged himself behind the saloon, using a child as a human shield. He's desperate, wild; he sounds, by turns, like a cackling maniac and a self-pitying loser. The good guy must aim carefully. What's more, the good guy will need help from the whole town — the town that once found his capable, thoughtful manner boring and unmanly. He'll need them at his side. They're ashamed, now, that they chose the word of a vicious charlatan over their true defender. But they understand, at last: the bad guy must go down.
This is the narrative, however crude, that is emerging like blades of grass through concrete. It is the story of our redemption as a country. To contribute to some good guys, head for Blue Notes, my ActBlue page, or your nearest candidate site.
THE END
You know what I mean by narratives — our "frames," our big-picture presentation, the story we tell about ourselves. We hear that the GOP, and especially the Bush administration, has outstripped us in this area, even though our policies are better, our values more true and our implementation more effective. Despite these superior qualities, we get bogged down in particulars, in nuance, and as a result paint ourselves as boring, unmanly and undesirable. The other guys have just told a better story, and in the realm of politics, it's the story that sells.
Well, have I got a story for you.
The stories we tell ourselves as a culture are invariably fables. They reaffirm what we wish were true, and help us make some kind of meaning from a confusing, chaotic and compromised world. Looking at our films, our TV shows, our books — at all our most enduring narratives — we see stories of good guys and bad guys. This elemental realm of moral mythmaking has been the preferred tableau for Republican rhetoric. The President and his loyal followers have (often successfully) painted themselves as the good guys, standing up for America—whether against shadowy terrorists, tax-happy bureaucrats or corrupt, omnisexual, occult-worshipping cultural forces. Democrats have turned their noses up at such simplicity, but their caviling about nuance, we're told, cuts no ice in the moral heartland.
But the Foley episode has led us to a timeless narrative twist, one that virtually everyone seems to understand: the apparent good guy who turns out to be a bad guy. This is not merely a great scandal facing the GOP this week. It is a hook on which to hang the party's every last move for the past five-and-a-half years.
Just as Foley, who himself pushed legislation to make soliciting sex with minors online a federal crime, was overseeing a realm in which he himself was a wrongdoer, the Republicans have put foxes in charge of every American henhouse.
- They bungled, and bagged on, the hunt for bin Laden, whether out of anti-Clinton policy pique, Saudi beholdenness or mere incapability.
- They lied to get us into the Iraq war, giving the terrorists they were supposed to be fighting a way into a country they'd previously been shut out of.
- They lied about how badly the war was going, allowed civilians to be murdered and tortured, stood by while sectarian violence got worse and the whole country fell apart, and devoted their time to public-relations efforts to paint a rosy picture of the nightmare they'd created.
- Their desire to subject unspecified enemies to unsupervised torture and unlimited detention is so great that they gave the President extra-Constitutional powers, regardless of the consequences for our own troops.
- They spy on Americans based on the vaguest whisper of suspicion, often targeting peaceful groups who are guilty only of criticizing the administration.
- They use technology, intimidation and every other tactic at their disposal to prevent those who oppose them from voting.
- They sought (and still seek) to privatize social security and give massive tax breaks to the 8,000 or so richest folks in America (to be paid for by everyone else).
- They riled up lynch mobs with scary fictions about gay marriage.
- They betrayed our kids by stepping on science at every turn, denying the existence of global warming and pushing anti-evolution nonsense.
- Their energy policy is written by the oil companies who pick our pockets and dictate our disastrous foreign policy.
- The FDA is run by anti-regulatory extremists who slept at the switch while Americans died from eating spinach.
- They gave their blessing to the relentless, unregulated pollution of our air, water and public discourse.
- And shall we talk about FEMA and the lax, churlish, racist response to the devastation wrought by Katrina? Heckuva job, indeed.
The bottom line: Republican politicians are bad guys who talk like good guys. They thump on a Bible in public, but their actions prove they worship Satan. When they say they've got your back it just means they know where they're going to stab you. Their only motives, like those of bad guys since the earliest melodramas, are increasing and maintaining their own power and wealth. They will kill anyone, steal anything, betray whomever or whatever is necessary to further empower and enrich them. No crime is too great, no lie too bald, no scapegoating or buck-passing too craven.
The Democrats, by contrast, are good guys who've been slandered by the bad guys. You know the part of the story I mean: the middle part, where the bad guy tells a bunch of lies and turns the town against the good guy. The good guy has made the mistake of trusting the bad guy, or of underestimating him, and now must clear his name. Despite his anger, though, he knows that the truth is on his side, and waits for his moment.
That moment has come. The bad guy is cornered. He's got a bullet in his ass and has dragged himself behind the saloon, using a child as a human shield. He's desperate, wild; he sounds, by turns, like a cackling maniac and a self-pitying loser. The good guy must aim carefully. What's more, the good guy will need help from the whole town — the town that once found his capable, thoughtful manner boring and unmanly. He'll need them at his side. They're ashamed, now, that they chose the word of a vicious charlatan over their true defender. But they understand, at last: the bad guy must go down.
This is the narrative, however crude, that is emerging like blades of grass through concrete. It is the story of our redemption as a country. To contribute to some good guys, head for Blue Notes, my ActBlue page, or your nearest candidate site.
THE END
posted by Simon Glickman at 3:52 PM
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