God, Guns, Marx and Dieter

You know it's a sad day for the leading Democratic presidential candidate when Maureen Dowd -- Maureen Dowd! -- has to explain something basic about the American people to him:

I’m not bitter.

I’m not writing this just because I grew up in a house with a gun, a strong Catholic faith, an immigrant father, brothers with anti-illegal immigrant sentiments and a passion for bowling. (My bowling trophy was one of my most cherished possessions.)

My family morphed from Kennedy Democrats into Reagan Republicans not because they were angry, but because they felt more comfortable with conservative values. Members of my clan sometimes were overly cloistered. But they weren’t bitter; they were bonding.

They went to church every Sunday because it was part of their identity, not because they needed a security blanket.

Dowd's fellow Times op-ed columnist Bill Kristol nailed it when he cited the Marxism inherent in Obama's remark explaining the enthusiasm of the white working class for guns and God as an opiate for economic pain. Kristol concludes:

What does this mean for Obama’s presidential prospects? He’s disdainful of small-town America — one might say, of bourgeois America. He’s usually good at disguising this. But in San Francisco the mask slipped. And it’s not so easy to get elected by a citizenry you patronize.

True. But the best thing I've seen said about this thing so far was Patrick Deneen's observation that explains why the GOP is captive to the same 19th-century vision of Progress. He says implicit in Obama's gaffe is the view that if the benighted God-and-gun nuts of rural and small-town America were making more money, they wouldn't have to make life bearable by clinging to such retrograde enthusiasms, and "would no longer need the limiting old verities amid the enjoyment of limitless opportunity." This is a worldview that interprets reality solely in materialistic terms -- and it's surprisingly popular, no matter what people may say. As Deneen puts it:

All of our candidates, regardless of party or purported ideology, are proponents of the basic narrative of progress. In this fact, our Republicans are no different than our Democrats - and, thus, why you will find none of our candidates raising questions about the reasonableness and logic of endless "growth." (Meanwhile, we can read articles like one appearing on the front page of today's New York Times, which reports the resentments of leaders of impoverished nations toward the developed West's precipitous decision to make food into fuel, thus leading to starvation and food riots around the world.) Our ignorance of the cost of growth is a necessary underpinning for the narrative, and it's an ignorance that we all share - whether in San Francisco or Latrobe - because we all want to "cling" to the narrative.

The Nobel economics laureate Joseph Stiglitz told the Wall Street Journal recently that the crushing pressures present and to come from skyrocketing global consumer demand may force economists to rethink how they measure economic progress -- that is, may make them rethink whether measuring it in terms of production and consumption is meaningful, given the deeper and broader costs exacted by the demand curve.

While I believe Obama's elitist comments will cost him bigtime at the polls, I find it hard to disagree with Deneen's line putting down his own proposed speech that candidate Obama deliver in Latrobe, Pa. --

"You go to these big liberal cities in California, and like a lot of cosmopolitan centers of libertarian lifestyle individualism, they have benefited from the wrenching displacements you've experienced. They benefited immensely from free-trade and globalizing policies of previous Administrations - Democratic and Republican alike - and they've been told that they have earned their status and they owe nothing to anyone.

"And it's not surprising that they get optimistic, they believe that they can dispense with religion or borders or community as a way to remake the world in exactly their image."

-- on the basis of the likelihood that the people of Latrobe actually share, in a roundabout way, the idea that they would be better off if they had the same opportunities for relatively limitless consumption that the wealthy coastal elite does. Says Deneen:

My version of Obama's speech is finally laughable not only because it's one he would never consider delivering, but it's one that I wager the people of Latrobe would not demand that he make.

Which puts people like Deneen and me in the position of telling people what they want is not good for them, and they shouldn't want it. Which may be true -- indeed, I believe it is true -- but which is not exactly a winning political position, as it is, among other things, elitist. We are to some degree like Dieter, the old Mike Myers SNL character who hosted the German TV program "Sprockets," and who, in an episode in which he interviewed an East German avant garde film director (Woody Harrelson) who'd just come over after the wall fell, and discovered the consumerist paradise of West Berlin. On screen, we see the director gone totally and unironically Homer Simpson, and wearing a hat with two beers on either side, and straws leading to his mouth. Excerpt from the transcript:

Gregor Voss: Look at this, look at this, Dieter, I've got great stuff here. Mountain Dew! A Remington Microscreen! They tell me it shaves as close as a blade.

Dieter: I see genius. By seemingly embracing the cliches of the West, he is underscoring its excruciating banality.

[Later, Dieter realizes that Voss is not being ironic, but really digs Western consumerism.]

Gregor Voss: Hey, just a minute guys. Dieter, do you want to come along with us? We rented a LeBaron.

Dieter: Excuse me Gregor, but you have disturbed me almost to the point of insanity. There, I am insane now. Gregor, you were the greatest altar of emptiness ... And now I watch you drink beer from a hat.

Gregor Voss: That's easy for you to say Dieter, you grew up with this stuff.

Will no one touch ze crunchy-con monkey? Heh.