Mitch McConnell, Barack Obama
2010 in Review
Politically speaking, 2010 was a loud year for the United States, with many partisan voices in full throttle for much of it. There was also some substance. Here’s a look back.
The most cataclysmic event was the January 14 Haitian earthquake, which prompted me to reflect on how literature is always inadequate in the face of suffering. It does, however, provide us a means of looking for meaning within tragedy.
Another tragedy was the death of 29 West Virginia coal miners, thanks to lax safety regulations and mine owner irresponsibility. The event got me thinking about the plight of the Oakies in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.
Another mining accident, this one with a happier ending, occurred towards the end of the year in Chile. Once again, however, it appears that mine owners did not take proper precautions, leading to this post on Charles Dickens’ Hard Times.
In fact, Dickens’ novel seemed particularly relevant this year as unemployment continued to hover close to 10 percent. Here’s a second post on what Hard Times tells us about our situation today.
Although the U.S. pulled its combat forces from Iraq, it continued to fight in Afghanistan, and there were several war posts, including this one, a Memorial Day commemoration of our fallen. In one post I speculated that Conrad’s Heart of Darkness may have played a role in getting the U.S. out of Iraq and may help getting it out of Afghanistan. I used Philip Roth’s novel The Human Stain to talk about the mental health problems, especially Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, suffered by returning soldiers. I also hoped that a young Marine, one of my students, might be able to benefit in the future from having read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
In other world news, our border problems with Mexico (illegal immigration, gun and drug running, violence spilling over) led me to Robert Frost’s “Mending Well,” a profound meditation on boundaries.
When I heard that Goldman Sachs had been illegally bundling securities, I was “shocked, shocked” as I recalled the French commander’s “discovery” that there is gambling underway in Rick’s casino. The fact that many very rich people have been trying to claim victimhood during our economic hard times led me to write about the wealthy acting similarly in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.
The most important piece of legislation passed was comprehensive health care. Fully in support of it myself, I used Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle to show what happens when people don’t have such care (or other safety net programs). ) When Obama finally got health care passed after it had been left for dead, I compared him, tongue in cheek, to young Lochinvar who rides in from the west.
Following Elena Kagan’s nomination for the Supreme Court, I meditated on what it means that she is a fan of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Obama’s end of the year tax compromises with the Republicans (including the extension of the Bush tax cuts) led me to compromises Lincoln had made (as well as a fictional version of those compromises by Ishmael Reed). That struck me as showing some hope for collective problem solving. On the other hand, I was very upset at the immigrant bashing that we have seen, including righwing pundits talking about mothers sneaking across the border to “drop” babies for citizenship purposes (this led to a post on Jonathan Swift’s “Modest Proposal”).
I was also distressed to see defeated an act that would have provided a path to citizenship for children of illegal immigrants who served in the military or completed college. (This prompted a reflection on human migration in Grapes of Wrath.)
The increasing polarization in our politics drew a lot of comment. I compared Sarah Palin to Willie Stark in All the King’s Men, to Goldilocks, and to Chaucer’s Wife of Bath.
The libertarian streak within the Tea Party movement led to a post on the novels of Ayn Rand. I used Dickens to challenge the notion (put forward by Bounderby) that we can pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. I worried about the purity tests that right wingers were administering to Republicans and cited Hawthrone’s warning in “The Birthmark” (where the blemish is removed but the patient dies).
I looked at Leslie Marmon Silko’s prescription for dealing with the rage at the core of the Tea Party Movement (let it consume itself, she would say). When Ginni Thomas, wife of the Supreme Court Justice, joined the Tea Party attack on elites, I warned (using the science fiction dystopia A Canticle for Leibowitz) that such attacks can take on a life of their own.
When the Tea Party started having some electoral success, I wondered whether they could rise to the occasion and responsibly govern, as does scoundrel hero of Rudyard Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King.” (To be sure, he gets thrown into a chasm when he does so.) When purists cost Republicans a chance of winning the Senate, I compared the Tea Party to Lewis Carroll’s mad tea party.
I was critical of pundits, on the left as well as on the right, who wielded irresponsible rhetoric. I compared such people to Shadwell and the dunces, targets of Dryden and Pope in the 17th and 18th centuries. I imagined what William Blake would say about Glenn Beck’s disregard for the poor. I warned National Public Radio commentator Juan Williams that, when he threw his lot in with Fox “News,” he was making a Faustian deal with the devil.
I noted that the right doesn’t have exclusive ownership to the American Revolution and cited two poems (here and here) that draw on those events to make a leftist commentary on today’s politics.
Since racism continues to be play a role in our politics (despite claims that those who say so are racist), I looked at what Mark Twain and Harper Lee would have to say about the war that refuses to go away—by which I mean not the Afghanistan war but the American Civil War.
Moving from the Tea Party to the Congress, I compared the Senate leadership to King Hrothgar, beset by monsters. I also saw Democrat Harry Reid and Republican Mitch McConnell as Beowulfian dragons and wondered where was to be found the hero who could restore order. I talked about those who, acting like Lear, wanted merely to complain without taking responsibility for governing. Would Republicans benefit from having a fool to keep them grounded, I asked in another post.
I devoted several posts to the election in which the Republicans “shellacked” the Democrats. In the days leading up to it, I looked at it through the lens of various passages in Shakespeare. I urged voters to follow Samuel Johnson’s advice and not get either too high or too low about the results. I discussed how “unbearably light” much of the campaign rhetoric had been. In fact, impoverished political rhetoric was a frequent target of mine throughout the year. When the Democrats lost, I compared them to the charge of the Light Brigade.
Dan Bates, a moderate conservative and my favorite cousin, complains that I “bash Republicans” in my posts, and looking back at a year of my political writing helps me see better what he sees. I am aware that I interpret literature through my political lens. Although I try to use the classics to step beyond my own prejudices, I am not always successful.
Luckily, when I reduce a literary work to my own political agenda, another interpreter can come along and point to dimensions of the work that I am ignoring or downplaying. The dialogue between interpretation and counter interpretation reveals that humans and their politics are always more complex than any one person can articulate.
In the end, the ideal interpretive community is like the ideal political community. By providing us with shared texts, something we have in common, literature gives us an opportunity to have collective conversations about things that really matter. Our job is both to speak as honestly as we can and to listen–really listen–to each other. A great society is built on people who, while disagreeing, nevertheless accord each other mutual respect. I resolve to work on becoming a better interlocutor in the upcoming year.
