Theater of War, by Lewis Lapham (The New Press, 2002. $22.95, 202 pages).
A few weeks ago I was watching a Fox News morning show from Washington. The hosts were interviewing an east coast radio talk show personality who just happened to be ultra-conservative (big surprise, right). This radio personality was going on about the "outrageous" views of the Hollywood liberal crowd, one by one knocking down the likes of Susan Sarandon, Mike Farrell, Martin Sheen, and — God Help Us! — Sean Penn. The three hosts and their guest went on for a while pondering various deep questions, such as, what possibly could have been going on in Sean Penn’s mind to even think of going to Iraq? Finally, one of the Fox hosts asked, "Well, at what point are these views anti-American or is it just politics?"
I assume by "just politics" he meant legitimate differences of opinion among respectable people, or something like that. As opposed to "traitorous" views that have to be stomped and ground, Iron Heel-style, out of existence. Or something like that. It was hard to take any of these people seriously, but then what should we expect from the unofficial Ministry of State Propaganda otherwise known as Fox News.
In today’s political climate, war-mongering, arrogance, and intolerance of dissenting opinion seem to go increasingly in hand with moments of outright folly and stupidity. The other day I heard Michael Savage, now author of a best-seller — and one among the large, sorry litany of national radio embarrassments clogging the airwaves — screaming about why small cars should be banned and isn’t it outrageous that those conjoined twins from Guatemala got our public money for their operation. Oh! And did he mention that Jimmy Carter is a scoundrel who overthrew the Shah of Iran and how that was the best damn government those people could ever have hoped for anyway. And that was in just the first six-and-a-half minutes of his show!
Such is the state of much media culture these days. You know things are going downhill when you catch a CNN Crossfire debate on Iraq between TV host Jerry Springer and columnist Ann Coulter and you find yourself on Jerry’s side. But it’s understandable when Springer, who was raising objections to a war on Iraq, is debating the nutty, venomous Coulter, who likes to compare Katie Couric to Eva Braun and says things like how we should force hostile Muslims to convert to Christianity (after we’ve killed all their leaders, that is).
Locking in on Global Tunnel Vision
Into this ugly new world steps veteran columnist Lewis Lapham with his latest book, Theater of War. The long-time editor of Harper’s will undoubtedly put himself at risk here for further charges of seditious thinking from the cavalcade of self-described media patriots. To his credit, he seems unconcerned. In Theater of War, a collection of essays written over the last two years, Lapham is at his most erudite and contrary and also revealing himself to be among the few mainstream political writers willing to raise substantive concerns about the "War on Terror" and what it portends for the American future.
Lapham questions the global tunnel vision of our culture, asking why in the wake of 9/11, for example, the majority of media commentators could only repeat how "unbelievable" were the tragic events of that day. Why was it so unbelievable, he asks, in a world where 62 million civilians and 43 million military personnel died in the last century’s parade of wars? From London to Paris to Baghdad and Sarajevo and beyond, the world is on all too familiar terms with the language of bombs, violence, and tragedy. Why not New York City and Washington, D.C.?
"No sum of historical justification can excuse the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon," Lapham makes clear. "But neither can we excuse our own arrogance behind the scenes of shock and disbelief. Enthralled by an old script, we didn’t see the planes coming because we didn’t think we had to look." The "old script" Lapham refers to is our habit of thinking that the United States holds some "unilateral privilege" to write the world’s "blockbuster geopolitical scripts, hiring the cast and paying for the special effects." Unfortunately, the Washington studio executives "seldom take the trouble to look at the movie from the point of view of those who might be having trouble with the subtitles."
Lapham is well aware of what should be obvious, that a lot of ordinary people out there have trouble with our foreign policy. But what do we expect? By choosing to support oppressive governments in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and earlier, Iraq itself), "we give people reason to think of America not as the land of the free and the home of the brave — a democratic republic to which they might attach their own hopes of political freedom and economic growth — but as a corpulent empire content to place the administration of its justice in the hands of brutal surrogates."
All The President’s Dinosaurs
Lapham, who is also the author of Money and Class in America and other books, writes like a man neither impressed nor intimidated by the aura of wealth and power. As a critic, he has a certain advantage in this, having been born into privilege (his grandfather was mayor of San Francisco). Growing up, he hobnobbed with world leaders and dignitaries and he brings to his explorations of America’s political culture an insider’s feel for the ways and customs of the elite. He also operates with the healthy cynicism of the once true believer, the youthful partisan of American exceptionalism and our national virtue. He has come to understand that "national security" is a phrase as much prone to abuse by American policy-makers as in the hands of the worst, old-line Soviet bureaucrat.
As I was reading Theater of War, I was reminded of Nelson Mandela’s recent comment likening Vice-President Dick Cheney to a dinosaur, one whose political ideas deserved also to go the way of those extinct creatures. I’m not sure why Mandela singled out Cheney. Maybe it had something to with the Vice-President long opposing Mandela’s release from prison? Lapham doesn’t quite take us back that far, but he does reveal any number of political luminaries to be very much into the retro look, and they don’t exactly come out looking hip-cool. It is entertaining reading.
There’s Attorney General John Ashcroft, for example, a man who evokes all the forward thinking likely to be found on the Missouri frontier in 1851. Or Gale Norton, Secretary of the Interior, a woman who looks upon public lands like some modern-day Colonel Custer, seeing wilderness as hostile territory awaiting only the taming influence of cattle ranchers, timber merchants, and the U. S. Cavalry. Then there is the President himself, that "wooden lawn jockey" in the service of the plutocracy, a man who believes in democracy the way one might admire an old oil painting in a museum, suddenly transformed by the tragedy of 9/11 and the power of the hack media into flesh and blood of Lincolnesque proportions.
Lewis Lapham is a trenchant, witty observer of the culture of politics. He writes with a masterful sense of irony, comparable to that other great essayist, Gore Vidal. What you generally won’t find is in his writing is precise political formulas or a defined political agenda. Sometimes that’s a weakness. Yet if his larger purpose is to help us improve our powers of observation and strengthen our habits of dissent, as he suggests, then he succeeds admirably.
Now that we’re being bamboozled into a war that could cost tens of thousands of lives, Lapham’s purpose is a humane and noble one.
Mark Harris is a Chicago-based writer. Visit his Web site, A Writer’s Voice.