The 'Right' Side Of History: Every Knee Shall Bow

It's an idol worth examining. It's the idol of history.

Not long before the U.S. general election in 2008, a reader of this blog emailed me, in light of my opposition to Barack Obama, to ask if I was "afraid of being on the wrong side of history." Another email came shortly after the posting of my essay in which I confessed the election of Barack Obama did not FEEL all that special to me: "Time will prove you are on the wrong side of history," I was told (I could feel the finger wagging). 

A blogging friend, one who supported Mr. Obama, rebuked me at his/her website with similar censorious vigor: I, Bill Gnade, would be stuck on the wrong side of history voting against Mr. Obama (I wrote a poem that partially replied to that rebuke).

But such love of history's good side is not limited to my friends or readers of this blog. Such love reaches high places. For example, regarding Republican opposition to Democratic health care reform projects, U.S. Senator and Democrat Harry Reid had this to say last December:

Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, 'slow down, stop everything, let’s start over.'

After it was revealed earlier this year in Game Change that Harry Reid had used racially-charged language in 2008 describing then-presidential candidate Barack Obama, Mr. Obama came to his defense:

[Reid] is a good man who has always been on the right side of history.

What is it about being on history's good side that is so important? What does being on the "right side of history" even mean?

____________________

THE DEIFICATION OF HISTORY

In one sense, this adoration of history is about vanity, even envy. Certain people, Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi not least among them, have an obvious existential need to be remembered in the history books: their apparent anxieties about death -- of being forgotten among the riff-raff -- clearly motivate them to get attention, to seek approval; to be remembered as special. After all, at least according to the old progressive adage, history is written by the victors. Mr. Obama and company need to be on the side of history's approving stenographers, not for political but spiritual and psychological reasons: they are desperate to be thought wonderful, good, consequential. This is about the limelight in perpetuity. It's about living an enviable life. It's about leaving an obituary that others will envy.

But it is more than vanity at play, it's religion. Atheist, agnostic, theist -- it matters not. In the secular arena there is the cult of history, where history is divinized and adored (as long as it flows according to progressive ideals). History is spiritual. History is a force, a will: time ALWAYS progresses towards a happy end. It has a plan; progress is God's goal, at least the goal of the idealist's god. Hegel comes to mind here, as do other idealists who believed that the universe was driven by an unfolding self-consciousness that moves ONLY in one purposive direction: more order, more justice, more approval of progressive golden calves in a cheery dialectic. Change, progress, an increase in justice -- these are irresistible and inevitable. To go with the tide of change, to flow with history's wondrous ends in mind, is the essence of being on history's "right side." To stand in the way, to walk against the tide; to deny that history is Spirit unfolding in blessed clarity, is to be on the wrong side of history, where the gods wag their fingers in your face, shaming you for recalcitrance. It's to where history's stenographers condemn you -- "YOU! You are on the wrong side of HISTORY! We are in charge of the narrative now." 

And note that the "right side of history," which is the only authentic side of history, is always infallible, inerrant. It is the place of the always correct idea, deed, policy. It is indeed the place where the gods reside, happily, given to great applause. 

But there is something odd, really, about it all. No doubt there is Darwin to consider. His genius was in seeing that things seemingly change without purpose, without a guiding hand from Spirit or the gods or history. But the heretics who adore him who've corrupted his vision with ideas of progress fail to see their mistake: they've imposed a meaning on the world the world does not provide. No one can say that the human species is more progressed or more advanced than an amoeba. Darwin surely can't. But the tendency toward narcissism, and the apotheosis of history, results in this religious idea that time and evolution and progress are all connected, and that the future is a land of undeniable bliss promised us by the mechanics of Darwin's theory. Humans are more advanced than an amoeba, or so the heretics declare, unaware that they've invented that value out of nothing but their own conceit. Evolution tells us nothing about worth, value, advancement, status -- or sophistication. 

But the odd thing is that no one knows exactly where we are going. We are on a journey toward some progressive end -- some telos -- that is apparently akin to perfection, nirvana. But no one knows what the end looks like, or where it lies. As G. K. Chesterton so wonderfully pointed out, the confidence in progress is thus insane. If we do not know where we are going, then how do we know we've gotten any closer to arriving at our destination? If we don't know our destination, how can we tell our travels are not leading us further from our goals? 

Undeniably and predictably, progressives will scoff at such talk. Of course we know where we are going, they will assert in question-begging confidence. 

We do? Who says? 

Peace.

©2010/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

I WOULD LIKE TO ACKNOWLEDGE MY INDEBTEDNESS TO HERBERT SCHLOSSBERG, AUTHOR OF IDOLS FOR DESTRUCTION: THE CONFLICT OF CHRISTIAN FAITH AND AMERICAN CULTURE  AND ROGER LUNDIN, AUTHOR OF BELIEVING AGAIN: DOUBT AND FAITH IN A SECULAR AGE. BOTH AUTHORS HAVE CRAFTED EXCELLENT CHAPTERS REGARDING THE IDOL OF HISTORY. 

I Know But Do Not Feel

I was born in 1961 in the Garden State, only a few miles from New York City. My mother was born in Manhattan; my father was a first-generation American born in north Jersey.

For the first 7 years of my life I traveled in and around such places as Paterson (the town outside Manhattan most closely connected to 9/11), Newark, and Jersey City. Readers familiar with these cities know their racial composition well; I understood the idea of "projects" from travelling to my aunt's apartment in Jersey City and our forays around the Bronx (where my mother had been raised). Most of my father's extended family, after a deep and profound tragedy fell on the Gnades eight weeks before my birth, moved to New Hampshire soon after I was born; my immediate family would enjoy summer holidays in New Hampshire's Monadnock region until my father moved us all to that fine enclave 40 years ago this coming Wednesday.

I share all this as a prelude to a confession, and that confession is that while I intellectually understand the historical dimension of the election of Barack Obama to the White House -- he being an African-American -- his election did not feel historical in the least. Of course, I am talking as a 47-year-old white man raised mostly in snow-white southwestern New Hampshire. I am too young to have witnessed racial discrimination in any meaningful way, and I was raised, largely, in a culture and in a family at war with racism. I came of age, after all, in the 1960s and 1970s, where my cohort was trained by family and school, and even TV and Hollywood, not to see skin color as ontologically important. Perhaps my favorite childhood novels were Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn; I am glad to say that I was one of Twain's readers (he used to summer in my New Hampshire home town) who never once felt that he hated dear, sweet Jim, the runaway slave.

I recall the countless black figures I adored, and even imitated, as a child and teenager. On TV, who did not like Linc from "The Mod Squad"? Who didn't howl at the antics of Flip Wilson, Nipsy Russell, Redd Foxx, or Sammy Davis, Jr. (I loved Wilson, Foxx and Davis)? Who didn't love the tales of Bill Cosby's "Fat Albert" or Cosby's role on "I Spy?" What boy did not find Teresa Graves fantastically desirable on "Laugh-In" or the short-lived "Get Christy Love"?

I remember clearly claiming as a youngster that Sidney Poitier was my favorite actor, as he embodied (cinematically, at least) the sort of conviction and resolve that were quintessentially masculine and heroic.

And what child was not moved by the voice of Martin Luther King; who can forget the pall over the land, and in one's own living room, when that great man was killed?

My dad was an ardent boxing fan; I was weened, as were countless American boys, on Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Joe Frasier, and the sculpted Ken Norton (and this skinny boy thought Sugar Ray Leonard the very epitome of stealth and swiftness). Many of my playmates would scream out the names of favorite basketball players -- claiming to be their sudden incarnations on the playground -- as they nailed a shot from downtown. Lew Al Cinder (Kareem Abdul Jabbar), Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and a young Dr. J: these were the names young white boys were gleefully and proudly invoking as their patron saints. I wanted to play first base in Little League -- and I did -- because I wanted to be the Red Sox' George Scott; I wanted to be a centerfielder (and I was) because of Willie Mays; I wanted to be Willie Stargell because he could play both fields. I remember watching through tears when Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's longstanding home run record; I sat with my father, who was also profoundly moved.

I recall having an Arthur Ashe tennis racket (I confess that I may have stolen it); I remember telling friends that I wanted to be the next Mercury Morris (and boy, am I glad to learn that not all dreams should come true). And though Pelé was Brazilian, he looked every bit as African as any white American boys could know, as they blithely invoked his name when attempting a bicycle kick on the backyard pitch.

As some of us found ourselves drawn toward the counter-culture, many of my cohort (myself included) adored the virtuosity of Jimi Hendrix, naming him, with all due air-guitar fanfare and much pot smoke-enshrouded authority, the "Greatest Guitarist in the World"; my sister wanted to be Diana Ross.

My generation has been raised as witnesses to black mayors, governors, senators, and Supreme Court justices. I've seen a black astronaut; I've seen a black secretary of state. I've seen Nelson Mandela hailed as president of the world; I've seen black bishops speak on truth and reconciliation. Many of us have read Hughes and Baldwin and Morrison and Walker; we're the grade-schoolers who huddled around TVs to watch "Roots."

Mine is the generation to first hear (as we all did in high school in the late 1970s and college in the early 1980s) the power of rap; we are, really, the first hip-hop generation.

In short, I am a child of arguably the first generation taught, from birth, to be blind of color. We're the Magic Johnson-Larry Bird children; we're the siblings of Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Arsenio Hall, and yes, Barack Obama.

Hence, it was not an emotionally charged moment for me to witness Barack Obama's ascendancy to the White House. I am not saying it was anti-climactic, but merely non-climactic. It was not at all unexpected: many of us are incredibly used to seeing African-Americans in positions attained by excellence and dignity. An African-American president almost feels like it has been done before: the idea, followed by the reality, is not particularly surprising.

Maybe I would feel differently if Barack Obama's story was not what it is. His is not even remotely typical of the American black experience; there is nary a hint of his life's narrative wherein we hear of his being oppressed and trammeled for his race. Perhaps had he been a true descendant of African-American slaves; perhaps if his story began with his maternal and paternal great-grandparents being branded by hot irons in the deep cotton south; perhaps if his struggle was from roots planted in the deepest pain of American segregation; perhaps had he finished college at Howard University, I might have felt differently the night of November 4, 2008. I cannot know.

But I do know that I can recognize what his achievement -- which is also the country's achievement -- means to many of my older fellow citizens who can still feel the pain of racism in America. I also know that it is foolish of me to believe my northern exposure to race is identical with my southern and black peers'; Condoleezza Rice knows first-hand the pain of race in a way I cannot, though we are nearly the same age, separated by only 7 years. In the end, I find that I can intellectually appreciate what Barack Obama's story means to many of my fellow citizens, but I cannot find within me any emotional comparison to the relief and gratitude they are so clearly experiencing. I have to remind myself that Barack Obama is a "person of color"; to me, and my several peers to whom I've spoken about this, the election of Barack Obama to the White House feels utterly familiar. A black man? Who really noticed?

In a very real way, I am a composite of a human being: I am Twain's Jim; I am Flip and Linc and Jimi and Michael and Magic; I am Tiger (I think of him EVERY time I tee up, which is probably a big mistake); I am Willie Mays and Langston Hughes and Martin Luther King and Arthur Ashe and Carl Lewis and Sidney Poitier and Alice Walker and Kunta Kinte. I hurdled as Edwin Moses or O.J. Simpson over the hedge in my neighbor's yard; I threw to home as Reggie Smith. I am a mix, a mongrel, a pure American mutt.

Barack Obama. His story is history. But it is not just his, and when you truly know your own, none of it is really much of a surprise.

Peace.

BG

Barack Obama Faces Fox News' Tough Guy, Part 1

Two nights ago I mentioned that Barack Obama was going to meet face-to-face with Fox News bad guy, Bill O'Reilly; I watched the interview, at least part 1 of it, and this is what I think: I think Barack Obama is eminently likable; as I have said before, I find him delightful in many ways. I don't agree with him on many issues, and I think he has hurt his campaign by his soaring grandiosity and by aiming too high. But I like him, at least the "him" he presents in public. I also think that Bill O'Reilly is truly far more bark than bite; I imagine that he, too, is a very decent fellow. But these thoughts do not matter, really. What matters is what I thought of the interview.

Bill O'Reilly was tough, not pulling punches. In fact, he may have been too tough; I often squirm when I watch him do his thing. And by "too tough" I am not necessarily referring to the actual questions; it's his interruptions, sighs, sneers (though slight) and turnings of the head, and his little incredulous, impatient, skeptical snickers and gestures that come across as too belligerent. But O'Reilly put forward legitimately challenging questions on this segment's theme of national security, and while I loathe his manner (at times) and his presumptuous interruptions in his "I-got-it!" anticipation of his guest's explications, he did his job better than I expected.

And Barack Obama did far better than I expected, too. Perhaps this is success for both men via my low expectations, but I don't think so. I was struck by Sen. Obama's confidence, decency and command. He seemed more amused than flustered. He sounded convinced and convincing.

Yet, he also had his share of unnecessary hand gestures, reaching toward Mr. O'Reilly like a supplicant reaching for alms. But Sen. Obama need not reach out in "listen-to-me-Bill" supplication. And Sen. Obama is a powerfully interesting figure without playing a challenged Bill Clinton to another skeptical Fox journalist, Chris Wallace; those of us familiar with that infamous "Wipe that smirk off your face" interview remember Mr. Clinton's finger wagging and leg-poking as he denied culpability for playing politics with Osama bin Laden, politics that proved fatal. Mr. Obama might not want even to get into Bill O'Reilly's habit† of leaning too far forward, invading people's space in a show of conviction and machismo.

But really it was a great show, and Sen. Obama was very much the star, in a good way. Yes, he did seem to squirm a bit about the effects of the so-called Iraq "surge;" I don't think he'd hurt himself if he would sincerely admit his fallibility about that issue. In fact, I think a direct admission that he was wrong would actually help him. Nevertheless, he was a compelling and composed figure.

I wish, maybe, that Mr. O'Reilly had not done two things. First, I wish he had not backed off so easily on one or two points; he abbreviated a conversation that I thought could have been more fully developed had he edited his own opinions a bit. Second, I believe he was foolish to preface a question about Iraq with the insanity that he thinks -- who cares, Bill? -- that "history" will show the military action of the last 5 years was taken against the "wrong country." This effort to find "common ground" with his guest came across as sycophancy. The preface was also a bit leading, giving Sen. Obama some room to wiggle more comfortably into his "Factor" hot seat. There is no need here to explore Mr. O'Reilly's confidence in history's benevolent verdict on both men's prescience. Suffice it to say the preface seemed gratuitous, precious and very self-adoring.

All in all, both men did very well. I think this episode (the rest of the interview will air over three nights starting Monday) showed that Barack Obama remains a formidable threat to Republican aspirations this fall. I am eager to see how both men fare in subsequent installments.

†Readers familiar with Mr. O'Reilly's show know that he often brings in a "body-language" specialist to help analyze various celebrities' and politicans' postures and gestures. If you click on the image above, you'll see Sen. Obama raising his right hand, which is not necessarily interesting; what IS interesting is Mr. O'Reilly's posture and countenance. Does he look like someone who believes the senator is interesting, or does he look like he believes the senator is full of crap? I think the latter; it was this that made me uncomfortable. And if it makes me, a viewer, uncomfortable, what does it do to a guest? I admit I am no body-language expert, but O'Reilly's posture clearly evokes in me the sense he thinks Sen. Obama is a lightweight. Moreover, we all know that Sen. Obama was prepped by his handlers before appearing with O'Reilly. Surely they knew Mr. O'Reilly loves to analyze body language. Is it reasonable to assume then that Sen. Obama's body movements are not at all native to him; is he leaning forward in a coached manner solely to do well under the body language microscope? "What say you?"

Peace.

©Contratimes/2008. All Rights Reserved.