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MARVIN MANDELL is professor emeritus at Curry College and a member of the NEW POLITICS editorial board.
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
"Thoughts on Various Subjects"
Jonathan SwiftAnd thus I clothe my naked villainy
With odd old ends stol'n forth of holy writ...
Richard, duke of Gloucester in William Shakespeare
NO, HE DIDN'T INHALE, AND NO, HE DIDN'T PENETRATE, but, for radical fundamentalists, the now-impeached William Jefferson Clinton has become everything they hate and fear, the very embodiment of the 60s Dr. Spock-poisoned generation, those counter-culture baby boomers whose permissive upbringing can only lead to moral rot.
Who are these fundies? Well, for starters, let us look at some cornerstones of their beliefs and modi operandi.
...[T]here is a vital difference between the paranoid spokesman in politics and the clinical paranoid: although they both tend to be overheated, oversuspicious, overaggressive, grandiose, and apocalyptic in expression, the clinical paranoid sees the hostile and conspiratorial world in which he feels himself to be living as directed specifically against him; whereas the spokesman of the paranoid style finds it directed against a nation, a culture, a way of life whose fate affects not himself alone but millions of others.1According to Hofstadter, in times of depression, dissent usually takes the form of reformist programs (viz. legislative proposals), whereas in times of relative prosperity -- his examples are the 20s and the 60s -- dissent becomes grousing.2 The rage of the radical fundies is probably always there, I might add, but, during prosperous times, finds public support significant enough for national expression. (The McCarthyite madness of the early 50s might be another example. In January, 1954, 50% of Americans polled approved of Joe McCarthy, although McCarthyism was a phenomenon of much broader significance than the far right.)
Hofstadter also points out that movements employing the paranoid style are not constant, but come in successive waves, and "this suggests that the paranoid disposition is mobilized into action chiefly by social conflicts that involve ultimate schemes of values and that bring fundamental fears and hatreds, rather than negotiable interests, into political action."3
Are there such conflicts? Abortion, gay rights, and affirmative action, surely, but I think we should cast a wider net.
Just as the geographical frontiers were closed some time ago, the frontiers of rage have been constricted, especially sine the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Sure, there are external enemies who feel the force of it (Cuba, Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan), but for radical fundies the main rage is directed at the internal enemy, that product of the 60s, Bill Clinton.
I shall not forget a network news program I saw during the 1972 McGovern vs. Nixon election. Exiting a poll booth, a man from my own former union, the U. A. W., told a reporter, "Never did I think I would vote for a Richard Nixon, but I did because the kids and the blacks need a kick in the ass." And this following the Chicago police riot in 1968 and the killing of four and wounding of nine Kent State kids in 1970. Clearly integration and the counter-culture had become major targets.
IN THE SUMMER ISSUE OF New Politics, I pondered the mystery of why Clinton is so despised by the radical right, since he has become such an effective activist for much of their agenda (e. g. the derailing of single payer health plan, GATT, NAFTA, and welfare "reform"). While I offered some conclusions, it seems to me that subsequent developments in the Starr inquisition point to the single overriding factor of radical fundies' hatred of the '60s counter-culture. Over 35 years ago, Daniel Bell pointed out that the modern right wing feels dispossessed: America has been taken away from them and they are determined to repossess it and prevent the final act of subversion.4
The foot troops of the right wing's conquest of power in the 1994 Congressional election were spearheaded by radical fundies. Imagine the frustration of the Republican leadership when, after capturing Congress, they could not smash the advancing feminist, gay rights, counter-culture movement. They could not deliver to their best troops. Gays and abortion doctors have been murdered, yet abortion rights and gay rights remain, as do separation of Church and State in the classroom, contraception, clean needle exchange, provocative dress, divorce, single parenthood, rock and roll's fist in the face of the bourgeoisie, etc., etc. Modernism is here to stay ... and to push forward to depths of depravity which even Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell cannot imagine.
For Hofstadter, much of the radical right rage has to do with the rootlessness of American life, "the scramble for status and secure identity."5
He makes much of status politics: there are those who are sliding down the social ladder and those who are climbing up and both are susceptible to reactionary politics. It is true that for some, prestige in their community depends on combating sexual freedom. It seems obvious that they are mainly worried about their own family: what Hofstadter and other historians seemed to have missed is the extent that radical fundies are concerned for their children. (One of the first anxieties raised in the Lewinsky affair was that of "How do I explain this to my child?" and that surely suggests a wider anxiety.) When one looks at the drugs, the crime, the pornography, the media's sexual titillation, the insecurity of modern marriage, one can feel something beyond scorn for the anti-modernists, perhaps even sympathy. Unfortunately, they arm themselves with "Thou Shalt Nots" and with William Bennett's Book of Virtues, and neither offers any understanding of modernism.
IN THE MIDDLE OF The Battleship Potemkin, Sergei Eisenstein confronts his audience with the word "SUDDENLY," and perhaps this is the moment to use it. Suddenly, the '98 election collapsed the radical right like a punctured Thanksgiving Day float. Newt Gingrich is overthrown and politicians, like Rep. Joe Scarborough (FL), who yesterday foamed at the mouth, are now conciliators. The leaders, scampering for survival, have cut adrift their radical fundies.
They are down, but they are by no means out. Some of their grousing resonated -- and probably still resonates -- with many Americans. Recall the success George Bush had with the Willie Horton scare in the 1988 election. In 1995, 62% of the American people approved imprisonment for flag desecration; in 1996, 79% declared themselves in favor of capital punishment, even though the leading proponents no longer claim it s a deterrent and quite frankly just want revenge. By now, everyone knows that the drug war has failed utterly, yet a majority of American people support it and apparently approve of the fact that the number of people now doing prison terms of more than a year is over a million, and over half of them (overwhelmingly black and Hispanic) are in for possession or sale of drugs. And there have been no great popular outcries against those maximum security prisons that do not pretend to rehabilitate, but aim to drive men crazy (e. g. Pelican Bay, CA, Marion, IL, the Departmental Disciplinary Unit at Walpole, MA). Eric Sterling, the former Congressional lawyer who wrote the federal minimum sentencing legislation in 1986, now acknowledges that the law was a mistake,"a complete failure."6
Can Clinton be faulted by radical fundies in this domain? Hardly. As Arkansas governor, in January, 1992, just when he was poised to run for the presidential primary, he refused to stay the execution of a retarded man (Ricky Ray Rector). In 1996, he signed the Sex Offender Law requiring authorities to notify a community when a sex offender has been released. He has continued the drug war in earnest. Despite his rhetoric about racial harmony, he has done his share in locking up black men. African-American men stand a one out of three chance of being jailed at some point in their lives.7 Those sentenced for crack -- 90% of them African-American -- face sentences 100 times longer than those guilty of powder cocaine offenses. And thanks to the Welfare "Reform" law that Clinton signed in 1996, thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of women and children -- predominantly black and Hispanic -- will be out on the streets when their time limits run out and they find themselves unable to find work that pays enough for daycare, housing, and food.
Nor can Clinton be faulted by fundies in his international actions. Clinton has not blocked funding of Reagan's pet Star Wars project which continues to show zero results, as expected. Clinton has continued the embargo on Cuba, which has now gone on for 38 years and has succeeded only in bringing misery to the people and in consolidating the Communists in power. And the sanctions in Iraq have been equally ineffective in removing Saddam Hussein and have killed over a half million children to date. Where in the world has Clinton's line been less hard or less ineffective (in terms of achievement of stated goals) than Reagan's or Bush's?
A strange convergence: Clinton may act in accordance with most radical fundie desires, but in their hearts they know he is the Enemy lurking; conversely, Clinton's actions may be contrary to many liberal desires, but in their hearts they know he is their Friend who is prevented from doing what they (and he) want. He is Zelig for all times and places, but an extremely shrewd one. To paraphrase Shakespeare's Hamlet, he is a politician who would circumvent God.
THE FACT THAT CLINTON'S PROGRAMS AND POLITICS -- with a few exceptions such as pro-choice -- are similar to those of the radical fundies points again to their hatred of the 60s counter-culture, their irrational resistance to modernism. What has caused their great anxiety and mobilized their politics? To look at the milieu of this anxiety, let us date the beginning in 1973. Defeat in Vietnam, the oil "crisis," then wild inflation, frustration during the Iran hostage taking, all culminating in Reaganism and eventually Savings and Loan scandals, junk bonds, hostile takeovers, downsizing and our current globalization problems. These past 25 years have seen mass anxiety reactions:
How strong are the radical fundies? Southern Baptists have increased from a little over two million in 1936 to over 16 million today. Needless to say, not all Southern Baptists are right-wing fundies, or even political, and not all right fundies are Southern Baptists. Even William Kristol shares many of their views and has been vehement in expressing both the needs to impeach Clinton and to make abortion illegal. (Those of us who remember his father long before Irving Kristol's sharp turn to the right may weep in silence.) Perhaps the 1968 election offers the best gauge of their national political strength (at least at that time): George Wallace then polled 13.5%. Of the 27 million who voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964, about one-fourth (5.4 million, 9.6% of the national total vote) could be counted as hard-core Goldwater enthusiasts.9 Some historians reassure us by reminding us that the Ku Klux Klan numbered between four to four and one-half million in the 1920s and have since dwindled considerably. In France, as a general rule of thumb, a far right vote of anything over 15% nationwide would be a danger point, so one Socialist politician maintained to me. Hitler received nearly 38% of the national vote just before being appointed chancellor. Of course I do not mean to paint the religious right with the brush of either the KKK or the Nazis, although their similarities to LePen's National Front are evident.
For people on the Left to support Clinton's impeachment or forced resignation should be unthinkable: they cannot depoliticize impeachment or resignation, for such an act would be a powerful victory for radical fundies; and after the 1998 election it would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Just as strongly as we oppose most of Clinton's policies, we must condemn his impeachment and oppose his forced resignation; as John K. Galbraith and others have pointed out, the far right is attempting a coup and must be stopped. Those who are trying to oust him are not doing so because he is mostly responsible for the death of a half-million Iraqi children. They are doing so because they are out to get all of us.