The best takedown I've read so far of the Joe Paterno/Penn State crime comes from Jim Kunstler. He ends with something I have pondered more than once: "Every new day that dawns lately gives further proof that we are a wicked people who deserve to be punished." As someone who grew up on the razzle-dazzle years of Frank Kush's Sun Devils, playing in the disrespected Western Athletic Conference and having teams such as Penn State, Michigan and Ohio State get all the attention, I never bought into the deification of Paterno. But who would have thought the fall would come from this. Child rape, a cover-up that lasted for years and more rotting shoes left to drop. As I wrote about Bishop O'Brien, he of the hit-and-run should-have-been vehicular homicide, crisis reveals character. The revelations continue to redefine disillusionment.
The study of history makes one wary of claiming something new or unprecedented. Monsters have always roamed in our midst. But the rotting corruption in nearly every important national institution is unlike anything I've come across in our history. In the American exceptionalism argument, I tend to come down on the side of exceptionalism, but today what makes us extraordinary is our criminality, ignorance and decadence. D.H. Lawrence wrote, "The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer." Maybe so. But it was once capable of grand and good things, especially through the collective institutions it built. No more.
Look anywhere. The Air Force can't be trusted to handle the remains of dead soldiers brought home, from wars our leaders lied us into and maintain and expand for the profit of defense contractors, as well as to lock up oil supplies because they won't come clean with us about future scarcity. The Great Recession is a product of corruption taken to stratospheric levels.
Government of, by, and for the people has become a creature of the oligarchs to a degree that would make a Rockefeller or Carnegie of the Gilded Age red with progressive rage. The corruption is out in the open. The people don't care, or not enough people. It doesn't help that the media are corrupt, owned by a concentrated few dedicated to the right-wing agenda and to trivial or salacious "news" to keep the boobs in Peoria distracted. The remains of the press have had to fight its own corruption by big, compromised newspaper chains, suicidal fads and intimidation by today's brown shirts.
One of our two mass political parties has been so warped as to be unrecognizable. Captured by extremist reactionaries, end-timers and corporate money, it bears no resemblance to the party of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt or even Ronald Reagan. The conservatism built so painstakingly by William F. Buckley, Russell Kirk, et al, has become a combination of madness and proto-theofascism. The most insane pronouncements or proposals are dutifully reported by the media as if they were serious efforts at statecraft. The Democrats, meanwhile, are for the most part both bought off by the oligarchs and cowardly. They think we of a progressive bent have nowhere else to go. They think we're as stupid as Billy Bob in his double-wide voting against his self-interest for a corrupt Republican Party.
Some readers have questioned whether this is any different from Watergate and Vietnam. They also played off a moronic David Brooks column on Paterno. My response: David Brooks is an idiot and a tool. Every time he tut-tuts, I want to remind him that the loss of virtue he laments was brought on by the very law-of-the-jungle "conservatism" he has spent his career tooling for.
Men and women are not angels. The framers knew this, and understood that self-government depended on certain checks and balances, a careful separation of powers, as well as an informed citizenry. They created a clockwork that was intended to be self-correcting, and this has been lost, as Franklin feared it would be.
Nixon's crimes in Watergate pale in comparison with those of the George W. Bush administration. And yet it was the elder statesmen of his own party, including John Rhodes and Barry Goldwater, who forced Nixon to quit. Can one even imagine such a thing happening now? The Congress finally refused to fund further adventures in Vietnam. The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, and the Washington Post published the misdeeds of Watergate — and enough of the electorate changed its mind. Before that, Dwight Eisenhower spent eight years keeping America out of direct foreign adventures and left with a warning against the Military Industrial Complex. Again, can one even imagine such a thing today?
Well into the late 1970s, Wall Street was a sober place where capital was assembled for productive purposes. Now it is a casino dedicated to killing American jobs. Banking was sober, dull and highly regulated.
The GOP has become a party standing for one thing: Nihilism. This is unprecedented, as is the corporate control of politics and the courts.
A delicate balance has been destroyed. There was never a time of perfection or perfect virtue. But, aside perhaps from the run-up to the Civil War, this is uncharted territory, and we will bear its consequences even as some of us continue to fight against it.
There was never an age of purity. The abuses of the Roman Catholic Church were going on at America's zenith. But something has changed in recent years. We face an almost total crisis of institutional legitimacy. It couldn't come at a worse time.
The current legitimacy crisis may feel particularly acute this week, but it's not new. It really began in the late 60's/early 70s with Vietnam, Watergate, etc. If you're not familiar with it already, I recommend Nye's "Why People Don't Trust Government."
Posted by: Linda | November 14, 2011 at 02:35 PM
"It couldn't come at a worse time."
Hard to say. The word "cusp," with all its promise, comes to mind.
Posted by: Petro | November 14, 2011 at 03:37 PM
Oh, and thanks for the Kunstler link. He's always a good read, and I don't visit there as much as I should...
Posted by: Petro | November 14, 2011 at 03:39 PM
Institutions were never meant to be eternal. They reflect us, their flawed inventors, all too perfectly. The Roman Catholic Church is mostly a pale shadow of its former self. It couldn't reinvent itself despite Vatican II because its core dogmas had become irrelevant. It was probably inevitable, given this decay, that pathetic men would use the shell of institutional authority to run wild.
Government is mostly a handmaiden to concentrated wealth, and held in general contempt by most people. But it's the one institution that must be reformed if it's going to serve us. Instead, it's hamstrung by the servants of that wealth who, in effect, tell us that government is so bad we better not do anything to make it better. Rather, starve it and let the "free market" decide everything.
The real scandal isn't that institutions have betrayed us. It's that we are so hypnotized by them that we stopped being even modestly skeptical of their more outrageous claims. How does a church imagine for itself the moral majesty to excuse pedophilia but condemn birth control? How does football, literally a brain-numbing exercise in mass entertainment, excite such loyalty to "traditions" that people are more than willing to overlook the criminality it encloses?
I lost my virginity, as it were, during Vietnam. I saw the lying and contempt for language that our government was capable of. I saw the nation divide itself against itself on behalf of the corrupt pride of our military power and its fellators in the media. They lied to us but we ended up hating the hippies more than them. That was a clue something was wrong. The sorry truth is that we love institutional authority when we perceive it to be on our side. Hence, the military, religion, and public safety workers, usually poll the highest when people are asked whom they trust.
The war we're fighting now is the same one that was going on during Vietnam. It's why we absolutely must never spend less on the military than we're currently spending (higher than the next 20 nations' spending combined). It's why a biracial cosmopolite like Barack Obama is forced to pretend he's a Christian. It's why science is of the devil, but the business interests of the Koch brothers must never be questioned.
Whenever I read a David Brooks column, I know why this war must be fought. I know the soothing lies on his side are opiates that keep us locked inside this fortress of delusion. When Brooks posits that the Penn State affair is an example how we no longer respect moral authority, I want to scream at him: no you fucking idiot, "moral authority" is the charade before which we cower to the point we're infantilized by it. When people are afraid to challenge malign power, it's because they've already internalized the opinions of people like Brooks. It's why decades passed before the victims of priests were taken seriously. Because if you understand evil as a tie-dyed T shirt or smoking grass, you're not going to do anything radical. Like think for yourself.
The revolution we left uncompleted will haunt our politics and institutions. We're a decadent empire doped up on bread and circuses. Occasionally, a stray victim breaks through the fog and we're SHOCKED (I tell you) that something wicked might have happened. But I'm not shocked at all. It came from the heart of our collective American delusion that we're the good people. It the "others" who are to blame. And we know who they are. Just ask David Brooks.
Posted by: soleri | November 14, 2011 at 04:41 PM
"When Brooks posits that the Penn State affair is an example how we no longer respect moral authority, I want to scream at him: no you fucking idiot, "moral authority" is the charade before which we cower to the point we're infantilized by it."
This is why despair is foreign to me. No matter how dark things get, someone says something brilliant, like this.
The watchers, the keepers, rustling through the opium den, shaking sleepy dreamers... and some wake up, and join in...
Posted by: Petro | November 14, 2011 at 05:30 PM
David Brooks is an idiot and a tool. Every time he tut-tuts, I want to remind him that the loss of virtue he laments was brought on by the very law-of-the-jungle "conservatism" he has spent his career tooling for.
Men and women are not angels. The framers knew this, and understood that self-government depended on certain checks and balances, a careful separation of powers, as well as an informed citizenry. They created a clockwork that was intended to be self-correcting, and this has been lost, as Franklin feared it would be.
Nixon's crimes in Watergate pale in comparison with those of the George W. Bush administration. And yet it was the elder statesmen of his own party, including John Rhodes and Barry Goldwater, who forced Nixon to quit. Can one even imagine such a thing happening now? The Congress finally refused to fund further adventures in Vietnam. The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers, and the Washington Post published the misdeeds of Watergate — and enough of the electorate **changed its mind**. Before that, Dwight Eisenhower spent eight years keeping America out of direct foreign adventures and left with a warning against the Military Industrial Complex. Again, can one even imagine such a thing today?
Well into the late 1970s, Wall Street was a sober place where capital was assembled for productive purposes. Now it is a casino dedicated to killing American jobs. Banking was sober, dull and highly regulated.
The GOP has become a party standing for one thing: Nihilism. This is unprecedented, as is the corporate control of politics and the courts.
A delicate balance has been destroyed. There was never a time of perfection or perfect virtue. But this is uncharted territory, and we will bear its consequences even as some of us continue to fight against it.
Posted by: Rogue Columnist | November 14, 2011 at 06:06 PM
"Nixon's crimes in Watergate pale in comparison with those of the George w. Bush administration."
"Well into the late 1970s, Wall Street was a sober place where capital was assembled for productive purposes. Now it is a casino dedicated to killing American jobs. Banking was sober, dull and highly regulated."
"The GOP has become a party standing for one thing: Nihilism. This is unprecedented, as is the corporate control of politics and the courts."
You, sir, are my hero. I salute you for writing these words.
Thank you for writing this.
Posted by: Mick | November 14, 2011 at 06:20 PM
As someone who worked with military leadership during the Bush administration, I can definitely say that the corruption of the Bush administration was beyond the wildest dreams of most Americans. George W. Bush is without any doubt the most extreme, vile traitor in the history of the world. George W. Bush makes Nixon look like a choirboy.
Bush is the embodiment of all that is evil. The soul of George Bush is a reflection of the deepest pits of Hell.
Posted by: Mick | November 14, 2011 at 06:24 PM
Today I saw several homeless men in military garb, pushing shopping carts full of blankets/junk down the street. They looked like they had been sleeping on the streets of Orlando. I can't prove that these guys were veterans, but even the VA will admit that there are lots of homeless veterans in Florida. You can verify this if you choose.
Meanwhile, the VA is building a new hospital in Orlando, and contractors are hiring illegal immigrants to do the construction work. You can verify this also if you choose to look.
This country is twisted and evil.
Posted by: Mick | November 14, 2011 at 06:29 PM
An American classroom:
http://imgur.com/3237i
Posted by: Rogue Columnist | November 14, 2011 at 06:31 PM
What about the deification of sports in general as a symptom of our societal ills? Texas high schools pay $10,000 for a halftime show, while we remove arts from public schools.
Millionaire tatted-up footballers with major dreadlocks are front and center on TV as our nation sits transfixed and elevates these folks to star status.
And so it goes. Howard Cosell had it right when he described pro sports as "life's candy store".
Posted by: morecleanair | November 14, 2011 at 10:01 PM
"And the holiday festivities at Fenway had another significance as well, one that extended beyond burnishing institutional reputations and boosting bottom lines. Here was America’s civic religion made manifest.
"In recent decades, an injunction to “support the troops” has emerged as a central tenet of that religion. Since 9/11 this imperative has become, if anything, even more binding. Indeed, as citizens, Americans today acknowledge no higher obligation.
"...The late German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a name for this unearned self-forgiveness and undeserved self-regard. He called it cheap grace. Were he alive today, Bonhoeffer might suggest that a taste for cheap grace, compounded by an appetite for false freedom, is leading Americans down the road to perdition."
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175423/tomgram%3A_andrew_bacevich%2C_playing_ball_with_the_pentagon
Cheap grace and cheap standards: cheap everything.
Posted by: AWinter | November 15, 2011 at 03:20 AM
I happened to read Kunstler's blog before I came here. If Mr. Talton has putatively "pondered" Kunstler's last sentence, perhaps he should have commented on the ones that preceded it in that last paragraph, especially the one that disparages the "Fine Arts". None of the commenters here nor any of those in Kunstler's blog appears to have picked up on Kunstler's cheap shot:
"Meanwhile the so-called fine arts branch of our culture valorizes "transgressive" behavior - as if there were any behavioral boundaries left to cross." [Ludicrous scenarios follow.]
This begs for elaboration and clarification. In fact, artists often have been at the forefront of criticizing corruption where it exists in our society. Thus, if we are "wicked" and deserving of punishment, is this not in part because we ignore or discount what artists are trying to communicate to us?
BTW Kunstler, while fun to read, is full of cheap shots. Mr. Talton is far more dignified and reasonable IMO.
Posted by: Gaylord | November 15, 2011 at 09:04 PM
Not to defend Kunstler too much but we did have a Jeffrey Dahmer movie.
Have the 'fine arts' -whatever that means- been at the forefront of telling it like it is? They have been somewhat better than the mainstream media which remains in denial. I think he singled out the self-referential gallery circuit of visual arts as a sector that doesn't have much to say about the world at large. Incomprehensible ('transgressive') stunts and money dominate that world. Mainstream entertainment is also mostly useless and generates callousness. The artistic voices that grasp the issue of decline are few and far between. Yes, we don't listen to them but more importantly we don't want to break away from the comfortable myths that contradict the reality right in front of us. How is that evil? James Baldwin:
“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”
Posted by: AWinter | November 16, 2011 at 04:19 AM
Yep, all of our institutions are collapsing, and deservedly so: humanity is about to take a giant socio-evolutionary leap forward to a better , though still undefined means of social organization. Several elderly, traditional Navajo of my acquaintance are saying we are about to move into the "next world." Some chaos is unavoidable, and we're seeing it and living it now (reptiles are controlling the Republican presidential primary's field of candidates, and the Democratic Party is so far to the right that it prefers to prosecute potheads rather than world-thrashing "bankers") but something new, and global, will replace it. When we become skeptical of literally every institution's motives, it's kind of like puking: ya don't really wanna, but afterwards you generally feel better.
Posted by: pbm | November 16, 2011 at 08:37 AM
Thank you PBM and AWINTER for your great comments.
May PBM be right but I wonder, what will be the cost?
Something that rivals the Black Plauge?
And James Baldwin has always been in my in my top 10 favorite authors list.
Not lot of comment here but all very perceptive and good for the thinking cap.
Posted by: cal lash | November 16, 2011 at 09:23 AM
“We face an almost total crisis of institutional legitimacy. It couldn’t come at a worse time?”
How, is it decided what is a “worst time.” To the 99 percent occupiers the good times might be around the corner. As soon as they topple the statues of institutions. It will be interesting to see if feeding Christians to the lions or as we say, Football, will go on or topple. Taking away a kids “candy store” can create a raging monster.
The road to perdition will exist as long as the human brain is wired to doubt. But is perdition hell or an evolutionary process of rise and decline, rise and decline. Would be interesting to know what an Einstein or Hawking in the year 2200 thinks of the words hell and perdition.
My readings of current America Indians is that the wise have retreated and are waiting until most of humanity destroys it’s self. But will the buffalo return and the waters once again turn sweet. Probably not but Maybe!
Not sure which definition of “cusp” Petro is referring to here but probably all apply. Maybe the most apt is the collision of two lines crossing?
Did Franklin and the founders “fear” a government of by King and thus divide the powers of self checking to keep the tyrants at bay? It seems the separations of power have been greatly institutionalized by a “party” and taken from the people. But most disturbing is that we have lost that one thing the founders counted on the most, “the people.” We have become a moving mass of idiots streaming towards the cliff. An informed and thinking public can bring about the infusion of structure changes needed. But outside of the 99 percenters and some great bloggers the rest of the 8 billion populations are watching Saturday night football or starving to death.
A great writer is like a second government how about a government of great writers.
Posted by: cal Lash | November 16, 2011 at 10:29 AM
I too, am appreciative of the perception of the comments here today - happily, not an unusual occurrence.
I find it all very heartening, in the face of the ubiquitous nastiness we find ourselves steeped in at this moment in history.
cal lash, I meant cusp in the sense of "a transitional point or time," but your take on it applies just as well.
Posted by: Petro | November 16, 2011 at 05:28 PM
Nice prose everyone. Very witty.
Now here is the nitty gritty.
In this world there are bullies and there are victims.
cal, more than any of the rest of us combined, spent a career trying to bring the bullies to justice and just plain standing up to bullies.
In a very small way, and I need to emphasize in a small way, I have spent my life putting bullies in their place. I was blessed with size and strength that allowed me the ability to do so.
Now I am a broken down 60 year old has been.
But I will tell you this, If I had been the one to walk in on an adult male raping a 10 year old boy, the adult in question would have died of blunt force trauma from a chair or bat or car keys or shoe or bench or anyting I could have gotten my hands on.
Please, please, please keep your cute prose to yourselves and tell me that you would have done the same.
I have two granddaughters and I need to know that you would step forward and help them in their time of need.
I know cal would. I know Eclectic would, I know soleri would, I know Jon would.
When the time comes, would you?
Posted by: azrebel | November 16, 2011 at 06:21 PM
azrebel - I have my own hypothetical feelings on the matter, and they may or may not align with yours, but I must say I am not inclined, given how the question was posed, to share such feelings. It sounds as though you are recruiting for The League of Extraordinary Not-So Gentlemen, and also as though those who choose not to respond are to be indicted for their silence (which is why I bothered to say anything at all.)
Sorry if that sounded at all "cute."
Posted by: Petro | November 16, 2011 at 08:14 PM
No Petro, it wasn't a trick question or anything like that it was just one of those rhetorical things. No response required. Just venting.
Posted by: azrebel | November 16, 2011 at 09:23 PM
Sorry for any misunderstanding, then, azrebel.
Posted by: Petro | November 16, 2011 at 09:28 PM
Azrebel, I share your visceral hatred for bullies. But that doesn't mean I can't be a bully myself - indeed, the opposite often applies since I'm so keen on searching out those places where power oppresses the powerless. Maybe I'm an anti-bully bully, or perhaps someone who senses danger in too much solidarity.
At any rate, I think one place to look at this phenomenon is in the iconic movie from 1943, The Ox-Bow Incident. A small Nevada town hears a report that a local rancher has been killed by cattle rustlers. They form a posse to hunt down the killers. The debate then rages what constitutes justice - swift revenge or due process under the law. The movie's viewpoint is obviously the latter since the plot is drawn to show us the consequence of the former.
Most of life is not so neatly demarcated. When a Qaddafi is murdered by Libyans, I'm hardly oppressed by the sense of injustice. The man was a despot and mass murderer after all. But the standard we relax under one circumstance can become dispositive for others, perhaps less obvious but equally gratifying.
The more we know, the more responsible we are forced to become. This is the burden and blessing of civilization. When we argue now about these things politically, it's a contest between knowing things empirically and knowing them viscerally. An everyday issue can be an Ox-Bow incident in that respect. I want to be sure I'm not sacrificing dull sobriety for the cheap thrill of tribal justice. There's a cost there, but it underwrites our flickering glory as a species.
Posted by: soleri | November 17, 2011 at 07:53 AM
Gaylord said:
"BTW Kunstler, while fun to read, is full of cheap shots. Mr. Talton is far more dignified and reasonable IMO."
It is wrong to criticize on the dimensions of 'dignity' and 'reason', an artist who titles his work, "Clusterfuck Nation", and then explains clearly why he wishes to disquiet us. Perhaps you should step a little further outside the crispy edges of your comfort zone before you condemn. I would argue that rather than "fun to read", it is *important* to read all his work. I do not find reading his work to be "fun". It is too disturbing and real to be "fun".
Posted by: JHK Admirer | November 17, 2011 at 08:29 AM
Thanks for the vote of confidence azrebel!
JHK Admirer -- I'm a fan of JHK. It's a good and thoughtful read, although his dismay at tatooed sloppy dressed youth and his poor track record of economic predictions are his weak points.
Posted by: eclecticdog | November 17, 2011 at 12:05 PM
I respect both JHK's particular dismay and many tatooed sloppy-dressed people of all ages. There is a time and place for all expressions. Dress does not preclude distinguished behavior. Too often, 'business dress' disguises abhorrent behavior.
Posted by: JHK Admirer | November 17, 2011 at 12:44 PM
"[JHK's] poor track record of economic predictions are his weak points" - eclecticdog
He seems to often disclaim that he makes predictions; with the obvious exception of an annual exercise for entertainment.
Posted by: JHK Admirer | November 17, 2011 at 12:47 PM