Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the current political thesis, the Nixon Thesis that has dominated our politics since 1968, and which we’re just now starting to shake off, is its use of the betrayal myth.
Students of European history are well aware of this myth. The betrayal myth was at the heart of the Hitler Thesis that plunged Europe into the fires of World War II.
In America a betrayal myth has been part of American politics since at least 1946, when Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, and dozens of others first used it against Democrats who they said were not sufficiently anti-communist. It has been the dominant theme of our politics since Nixon’s first election. It remains the dominant theme under George W. Bush.
The betrayal myth, for those who don’t know, is the idea that we would have won but someone stole the victory from us. The late, great Charles Schultz demonstrated this narrative, and its absurdity, whenever he did a strip about Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. It is just that mature.
But it is awesomely powerful.
In the case of the present time, the Iraq War is driven by a betrayal myth, and that narrative is repeated, like a mantra,
whenever war supporters are cornered. We would have won Vietnam but for
them. Iraq will show that we can win a land war in Asia, that we have beaten them. We can still win this thing, if (insert name here) didn’t embolden the terrorists. Terrorists become communists, Iraq becomes Vietnam.
The comic laughter coming from shows like The Daily Show over this
"logic" is absolutely essential to seeing it rejected within the larger
American culture. But it remains incredibly powerful among those who
believe in it.
Over the weekend I got a taste of just how powerful this narrative
remains. Someone with an MSN address posted the following on an August
post of The 1966 Game, when we asked "Who’s Jane Fonda Now?"
Were you in Vietnam?Anyone who supports the traitor fonda (not
deserving of a capital) is as bad and as ignorant as that piece of
trash is.As for Gibson,good for him as he only spoke mostly the truth.I
think he will survive quite well with out the support of the likes of
you.If fonda had pulled the antics she did as a Vietnam citizen she
would have been shot in quick order.Grandmother and still trash,it’s a
shame she didn’t learn anything from her father.
The
point is muddled by the fact that my post equated Mel Gibson today
with Fonda yesterday, noting that his politics were threatening his
position in Hollywood and making him into a polarizing figure.
But Fonda is an
important part of the betrayal myth. Somehow her stupid protest on a
Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun (for which she apologized repeatedly afterward) has
come to mean something much deeper, on a glandular lever. But it is meaningless to our time. Jane Fonda will turn 70 this year. She’s old enough now to do a remake of her father’s last film, On Golden Pond, perhaps with Paul Newman in her dad’s role.
What is important is
that Fonda is a handy stand-in for all sorts of other people — journalists, Democrats, academics, rock musicians, bloggers — whose names are associated by the right with the betrayal myth today. The reason it is vital for them to hate Fonda is that it props up the betrayal myth and, without that myth, supporters of today’s policies have nothing to stand on. They, in fact, become the enablers of war crimes, just as the Good Germans who followed Hitler’s betrayal myth became enablers in war crimes.
It is this betrayal myth which we must reject before we can move forward, as citizens of the world, into the 21st century.
It is not going to be easy. The last active "betrayal myth" on view
in our politics was that of the South in the Civil War. The Noble Cause
enslaved the vast majority of southern whites for 100 years, and still
keeps many in bondage. It kept the South from urbanizing until the rest
of the country was already suburban. We like to claim it was blacks who
were in bondage, but whites were equally so, throughout Slavery, into
Jim Crow, and some even today. Slaves to hate are still slaves in fact.
There were many who fought the Southern Betrayal Myth, and they
started work pretty early. Henry Grady, after whom my daughter’s high school is named, was an early leader in fighting this myth. The rise of Atlanta itself, under such leaders as
Robert Woodruff, was driven by business efforts to overcome this
betrayal myth, or to act in spite of it.
There’s really no good reason
for a city to be here in Atlanta — we have no navigable river, we’re
not on the seacoast. It was altitude and attitude, in the words of Ivan
Allen Sr. The only reason there is a great city here is because farsighted leaders fought the region’s betrayal myth, and eventually won.
The point is that the South’s betrayal myth still haunts the region, 140 years
after the fact. It will take enormous effort to rid the larger society
of the Vietnam Betrayal Myth, and those who understand this fact have
an important truth on their side.
We were not betrayed in Vietnam. We lost. We are not betrayed in Iraq. We have lost. The betrayers are those who led us into these disasters. Reject them, reject their works, teach this to your children, and save your soul.
