by Mark Gardner
illustration by Jenny Schmid
Living involves choice. Not everything can be chosen, but how we act and what we value sculpts our identity, and sets out our relationship with the world. Choice has a personal dimension but also determines what kind of society we live in. These choices are especially important in times of upheaval. Current geopolitical and economic uncertainties weigh on all of us. A stable cultural order has been replaced by a world of fluid values. We seem to have lost control of our future. Such conditions breed fear, and fear breeds resentment. Who allowed our verities to erode? Who is destroying our culture? Who is taking our jobs, or terrorizing our neighborhoods? Who is the enemy? Can we exact retribution?
We are forced to confront the primordial elements of our nature. Should we coalesce to attack the cancer in our midst, to restore order, to eliminate the alien - a descent into tribalism and violence? Or do we choose thinking, civility, some sacrifice and a commitment to community? Can we work to find a solution to the problems we confront?
Primitive winds are sweeping this nation. David Duke, Patrick Buchanan, Pat Robertson. Neo-Nazis resurgent, gay bashers growing bolder and more carnal, anti-abortionists with a God-given license to kill. But wait - these people aren't like us. They are uneducated, or unattractive, or irrational; they are crackers, rednecks, white trash.
They are here in the Northwest - Washington state as a prime recruiting ground for the John Birch Society; 1992, "Bo Gritz for President" signs sprout like mushrooms in rural King County; Lon Mabon feverishly organizing across the border. But we don't know these people. They are not our friends. Clinton and Lowry won our vote. Here, we sup lattˇs, we are queer friendly, we like diversity. We do not kill, or maim, or segregate.
Think again. What do "we" read? Just like the rest of the nation, we read Rush Limbaugh, author of the biggest hardback bestseller since the Bible. Not you, but perhaps your neighbor. The acceptable face of backlash, "reaction lite." Oh, I disagree with him, but he's funny. Makes liberals take themselves less seriously, says Kathryn Robinson of the Seattle Weekly.
Local "liberal" business owners seem to have lost their patience and public spirit. KING-AM owners Harriet Bullitt and Patsy Collins, locked in a ratings battle with Rush's program, don't choose a principled firebrand to throw some sparks back at Limbaugh. Instead they decide to outflank him from the right, with G. Gordon Liddy. Unlike Rush, he doesn't just talk about it, he's actually done it. Collins tells the P-I she's disturbed by "[Liddy's] obsession with guns. His love of war. His derogatory remarks about gays and gratuitous insults about all kinds of people including those who didn't serve in the military. And he must not think much of women." Their solution? Send a letter of complaint to the producer of the show. Best to forget that Liddy's views will encourage those with a taste for blood.
Look closer still. Socioeconomic cleansing has become an acceptable option in Seattle. The Seatown drunks, the Native American victims of cultural destruction. They caused The Recession, they caused I. Magnin and Frederick's to go under. Seattle's economic slowdown has nothing to do with national policies which weakened our industries and buried the economy under mounds of debt. Forget also the Bundesbank's high interest rates which are throttling global recovery. Don't think about the poor marketing decisions of major retailers. Global overcapacity in the airline industry? No, the drunk on the street did it. Seattle City Attorney Mark Sidran says they are taking advantage of us. And what an advantaged life they have: mental illness, cirrhotic livers, cold and hard beds, filthy clothes, the disdain and hatred of the populace, police harassment.
The "liberal" editorial boards of the daily newspapers, still smitten by business boosterism, react swiftly in support of a policy of institutionalized harassment of the homeless. David Brewster, publisher of the now neo-conservative Weekly, thinks we have been way too generous. We need to be vigilant to ensure that those who appear homeless actually are. Perhaps they really have suites in the Four Seasons. Says Brewster: we must reduce rather than expand inexpensive single-room occupancy housing. No matter that "the market" has done that for us, with SROs in the city dropping by half in the past 10 years.
Proposals and measures that are curiouser and curiouser are evidence of a growing intellectual and political decadence. Eliminate most public benches in parks and at bus stops, and then wonder why so many people sit on the sidewalks. Better pass a law against sitting. Reduce the homeless problem by destroying cheap housing and making it more difficult to get admitted to a shelter. Send a letter to Liddy complaining about his retrograde views while using his viciousness to enhance your own profits. Criminalize public peeing without providing places for legal voiding. War is peace. We must destroy this village in order to save it.
Those who disagree with these measures are "politically correct," the latter-day equivalent of communists. Their arguments need not be engaged. They are ragtag bands of activists. They are the usual advocates. They are not numerous, although they swamp hearings. They are not properly educated, although they may have degrees. They are not tough-minded. They are bleeding hearts. They evince what Nietzsche called slave mentality, the tendency to identify with the weak rather than the strong.
But wait, this is the progressive state of Washington. We do things differently here. Do we? We have the highest tax burden for the poor of any state. We refuse to countenance prison reform for minor offenders, ensuring that these people are further schooled in advanced criminality. We are in danger of embracing the politics of tax backlash. This and our taste for retribution will make prisons our most enduring public legacy.
We have no minimum wage for farmworkers. We allow large corporations to have virtual veto power over the state Legislature. Our liberal elites hate the homeless but embrace G. Gordon Liddy. We pride ourselves on our "gentle" politics, but ensure that those who deviate too much from the happy mainstream are ignored or insulted. Our slow slide into scapegoating is being masked by a conspiracy of blandness.
Here in Seattle, we are three-quarters of the way from small town to metropolis. Just a few years ago, hardly anyone lived here who didn't know someone who made their living off the land. It was a port town, a blue-collar place with direct connections to vast forests and fisheries. Years of decimation of natural resources, and the growth of knowledge-based and service industries have changed all that. And this is of course not all bad. The new upscale Seattle is beginning to make a real contribution to the cultural and intellectual life of the nation.
But we are in a panic over the consequent growth of big city ills and are embracing "solutions" guaranteed to make things worse. Urban sophistication can go hand-in-hand with a degraded politics, as New York and L.A. attest. Will we too decide to hide behind private bunkers, shrink from public life and elect politicians who promise to harass, banish or warehouse the inevitable human wreckage which results? There is some hint we will move down this road.
It is time to choose. The spirit of the Northwest is beginning to look like politics as usual. Will we choose the politics of backlash, either because it brings psychological solace, or political or financial gain?
The late scholar and activist Irving Howe, speaking some years ago, claimed that in such a situation there can be only one response: "Stand up and say No!, in thunder."
Mark Gardner is a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Washington. He has worked with the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
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Contents on this page were published in the October/November, 1993 edition of the Washington Free Press.
WFP, 1463 E. Republican #178, Seattle, WA -USA, 98112. -- WAfreepress@gmail.com
Copyright (c) 1993 WFP Collective, Inc.