'Deskundigen' 111

Whitman’s essential message was the Open Road. The leaving of the soul free unto herself, the leaving of his fate to her and to the loom of the open road. Which is the braves doctrine man has ever proposed to himself… This is Whitman’s message of American democracy.

The true democracy, where soul meets soul, in the open road. Democracy… Democracy: a recognition of souls, all down the open road, and a great soul seen in its greatness, as it travels on foot among the rest, down the common way of the living… the exultance of his message still remains. Purified of Merging, purified of Myself, the exultant message of American Democracy, of souls in the Open Road, full of glad recognition, full of fierce readiness, full of the joy of worship, when one soul sees a greater soul. The only riches, the great souls.
D.H. Lawrence. Studies in Classic American Literature. 1923

Their ambitions were finally frustrated somewhat by their own misconceptions but rather more by irrational forces embodied in the ignorant generality of emigrants, who had the sense of moving out of a circumscribed life dominated by magistrate and priest into a largely unrestrained condition…

Frontier historians have commonly described the revolt from Europe in such a way as to conceal its grave implications and to exalt the pioneers for their temerity. Thus, Turner’s widely applauded interpretation, though true as far as it goes, is selective, uncritical, and lacking in rear vision: ‘The men of the “Western World” turned their backs upon the Atlantic Ocean, and with grim energy and self-reliance began to build up a society free from the dominance of ancient forms.’ This statement invites ironical contemplation, because it ignores the fact that the emigration, while in some measure a rational protest against the social, religious, and political forms of Europe and the East, was yet enacted in the context of the ancient paradisiacal myth, which is a structure of irrational expectations. Strongly influenced by romantic patterns imposed upon the West in the nineteenth century and by personal sympathies, Turner assumed that men in a state of nature could somehow create an adequate culture virtually from nothing. He tended to slight the continuing influence on the emigrants of some of the noblest concepts of the Enlightenment, and he took small account of the recrudescence of ancient and generally primitive modes of behavor in the West in consequence of the loss of a rational frame of reference. The ‘movement away from the influence of Europe’ unquestionably benefited the pioneers in some things, but it was nevertheless a retreat of sorts and as such entailed large and probably cultural losses.
Arthur K. Moore. The Frontier Mind. 1957

Rond 1880 lagen in Amerika meer kilometers aan spoorlijnen en telegraafverbindingen dan in heel Europa bij elkaar. Zoveel kracht, zoveel vitaliteit, dit was werkelijk een gezegend land, in de woorden van Abraham Lincoln ‘De laatste beste hoop van de aarde.’ […] Vooruitgang, vernieuwing, inclusief de bijbehorende risico’s, waren vanzelfsprekend: in zo’n overvloedig land wordt ondernemingslust maar al te vaak rijkelijk beloond.
Geert Mak. Reizen zonder John. Op zoek naar Amerika. 2012

De vaak opgewonden beschrijvingen van wat in de volksmond ‘Amerika’ heet doen geen recht aan de soms zelfs subtiele complexiteit van de Verenigde Staten. ‘Vooruitgang, vernieuwing, ondernemingslust, rijkelijk beloond,’ het zijn even grote platitudes als dat Coca Cola ‘The Real Thing’ is. Ze vertekenen de werkelijkheid, verhullen de keerzijde, in elk blikje Coca Cola zitten 7 klontjes suiker, ‘vooruitgang’ heeft de negatieve gevolgen van de klimaatverandering op gang gebracht, en ‘ondernemingslust’ zorgt ervoor dat de arbeid in het Westen naar de lage lonen landen verdwijnt, alleen de aandeelhouders en de managers worden ‘rijkelijk beloond.’ Kortom, ‘vitaliteit’ kan tot de vernietiging van de samenleving leiden en het onverzadigbare land dat doorging voor de ‘laatste hoop van de aarde’ is een bedreiging van de mensheid geworden.

The humanist concept of sustainable development and the Christian concept of stewardship are flawed by unconscious hubris. We have neither the knowledge nor the capacity to achieve them. We are no more qualified to be the stewards or developers of the Earth than are goats to be gardeners.
James Lovelock. The Revenge  of Gaia. Why the earth is fighting back – and how we can still save humanity. 2006

America My Country: last nation on earth to abolish human slavery; first of all nations to drop the nuclear bomb on our fellow human beings.
Edward Abbey. A Voice Crying In The Wilderness. 1989

Some discern a moral rot that ate at the vitals of society, a self-centered and divisive spirit that dispersed a once integrated community into warring component parts. The ruling class has come in for most of the criticism: narrow, selfish, and blind, they ignored the evils of their times; by hoarding their own privileges, they hastened catastrophe. Social upheaval is stressed by many: increased violence, the discontents of the urban masses and the rural poor, which splintered the Republic’s unity and destroyed confidence in its institutions. The Ciceronian period witnessed, so it has been said, an age of individualism: the sense of communal attachment dissolved, to be replaced by an adherence to powerful and ambitious individuals who cared naught for the Republic except as an object for manipulation. A political realm was transformed into a cockpit for armies and their commanders. The once sedate and stable society gave way to a revolutionary era, which shattered the mos maiorum and left divided populace grasping after a new structure. Finally, a glib pronouncement has condemned the Republic: the city-state was incapable of governing an empire. Imperial holdings had reached proportions that demanded a fundamental overhauling of government and society. The fall of the Republic was inevitable – and desirable.
Erich S. Gruen. The Last Generation Of The Roman Republic. 1974

De beschrijving van de Amerikaanse classicus en historicus van de oudheid Erich Gruen is uiterst actueel omdat het tegelijkertijd een analyse geeft van hetzelfde proces dat we in de Verenigde Staten zien, het begin van de ineenstorting van het Amerikaanse rijk, ondermeer vanwege het egocentrisme van de geprivilegieerden. Net als de ondergang van de Romeinse democratie blijkt ook de Amerikaanse democratie van korte duur te zijn en is de macht nu in handen van een kleine elite die de presidentskandidaten voordraagt en de politieke koers bepaalt. Hoewel de eerste Romeinse keizer een alleenheerser was, moest hij toch de elite te vriend houden en verschilde zijn positie niet wezenlijk van die van de huidige generatie Amerikaanse presidenten die alleen dankzij het geld van de rijken hun verkiezingscampagnes kunnen voeren. De grote Britse historicus Edward Gibbon schreef in de tweede helft van de achttiende eeuw in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire met betrekking tot de eerste Romeinse keizer:

The tender respect of Augustus for a free constitution which he had destroyed can only be explained by an attentive consideration of the character of that subtle tyrant. A cool head, an unfeeling heart, and a cowardly disposition prompted him at the age of nineteen to assume the mask of hypocrisy, which he never afterwards laid aside… His virtues, and even his vices, were artificial; and according to the various dictates of his interest, he was at first the enemy, and at last the father, of the Roman world. When he framed the artificial system of the Imperial authority, his moderation was inspired by fears. He wished to deceive the people by an image of civil liberty, and the armies by an image of civil government…

Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom. A feeble senate and enervated people cheerfully acquiesced in the pleasing illusion, as long as it was supported by the virtue, or by even the prudence, of the successors of Augustus. It was a motive of self-preservation, not a principle of liberty, that animated the conspirators against Caligula, Nero, and Domitian. They attacked the person of the tyrant, without aiming their blow at the authority of the emperor.

Ook dit proces komt bekend voor, zolang brood en spelen het volk tevreden houden, is de meerderheid niet wezenlijk geinteresseerd in de democratische praktijk, hooguit in de vorm ervan. Intussen wordt ook vandaag de dag de intelligentsia afgekocht zolang ze maar de macht blijft dienen, zo niet dan wordt de dissident indien hij volhardt gemarginaliseerd. Achter deze cynische façade gaat ondertussen de totalitaire economische werkelijkheid ongestoord door, met steeds absurdere rechtvaardigingen waarin feitelijk niemand meer echt gelooft. De Britse journalist/schrijver Chris Harman constateerde in 1999 in zijn 729 pagina’s tellende boek A People’s History of the World: ‘Mainstream economists had never been able to explain how the slump of the 1930s had happened, and none of them could be sure they were not facing a similar situation.’ Desondanks of misschien wel juist daarom verkondigen de laatste dertig jaar de spreekbuizen van de econmische macht de zogeheten 'vrije markt' ideologie. Harman:

Economists and political journalists switched overnight to a belief in the completely ‘free’ market, unconstrained by state intervention – a theory previously preached only by a few isolated prophets such as Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. Such a mass conversion of intellectuals had not been seen since the days when theologians changed their ‘beliefs’ on the say-so of princes.

Het resultaat van de neoliberale zogenaamde ‘no-nonsens aanpak’ bleek al snel:

Lower rates in the US in the late 1980s and late 1990s were driven by welfare cuts which forced people to take jobs at poverty wages – the poorest 10 percent earning 25 percent less than the equivalent group in Britain… instead of offering the mass of people improved lives, as in the long boom, it threatened to snatch what they had achieved in the past. Whole industries disappeared, and towns were reduced to wastelands…

This led a layer of working class activists to place their hopes once more in the promises of parliamentary politicians. It also encouraged left wing intellectuals to question further the very notions of class and class struggle. They embraced an intellectual fashion called ‘postmodernism’, which claimed any interpretation of reality was as valid as any other, that there was no objective basis for notions such as class, and that any attempt to change the way society operates would be ‘totalitarian’, since it involved trying to impose a total conception of the world on others. Postmodernists rejected notions of struggling to change society just as the dangerous instability of society became ever more pronounced…

The average American worked 164 hours longer in 1996 than they did in 1976 – the equivalent of one full month a year longer, with survey after survey reporting people feeling under increasing stress at work. Recurrent recessions and repeated ‘downsizing’ of workforces, even during periods of ‘recovery’, created levels of insecurity among people about their futures not known since the 1930s…

Hoewel volgens de westerse postmoderne intelligentsia er geen waarheid meer bestaat, weet bijna iedereen uit ervaring maar al te goed dat het een waarheid als een koe is dat de economische macht in toenemende mate de economische werkelijkheid en de politieke koers van miljarden mensen op aarde bepalen. Een mainstream-opiniemaker als Geert Mak mag dan wel beweren dat ‘Amerika er over een halve eeuw beter voor[staat] dan Europa,’ onder andere omdat ‘Amerikanen bereid [zijn] heel hard te werken,’  en ‘het land een grote hoeveelheid natuurlijke hulpbronnen [heeft],’ toch is het gemiddelde inkomen van de Amerikaan sinds 1978 niet gestegen, terwijl de armoede en het aantal daklozen blijven stijgen en ook de middenklasse financieel achteruit blijft gaan. Bovendien negeert de mainstream ook nog eens de volgende door Chris Harman in zijn geschiedenisboek aangevoerde feiten:

There was another side to the growing poverty of wide parts of the Third and former Communist worlds and the growing insecurity in the West. It was the growing concentration of wealth in the hands of the ruling classes. By the late 1990s some 348 billionaires enjoyed a total wealth equal to the income of half of humanity. In 1999 the United Nations Human Development Report could tell that the world’s richest 200 people had doubled their wealth in four years. At the end of the 1960s, the gap between the richest and poorest fifths of the world population stood at 30 to one, in 1990 at 60 to one, and in 1998 at 74 to one. Most of the very rich were concentrated in advanced countries. In 1980 the top managers of the 300 biggest US corporations had incomes 29 times larger than the avarege manufacturing worker – by 1990 their incomes were 93 times greater. But the same phenomenon was visible elsewhere in the world, where even in the poorest countries a thin ruling stratum expected to live the lifestyles of the world’s very rich, and to keep multi-million dollar deposits in Western banks as an insurance against social unrest at home. Everywhere their reaction to social crisis was to accumulate wealth in order to insulate themselves against its effects, not worrying over much; in the process, the basis fabric of society was undermined.

Deze feiten hebben geen enkele fundamentele verandering teweeg gebracht in de zogeheten ‘democratische’ politiek van zowel linkse als rechtse politieke partijen in het Westen, die wat economisch beleid betreft in niets wezenlijks van elkaar verschillen. En dit, tot op het bot gecorrumpeerde systeem, wordt elke dag weer door de commerciele massamedia verkocht als het enige alternatief voor de rest van de geschiedenis.

‘Whitman’s essential message was the Open Road,’ schreef lang geleden D.H. Lawrence. De ‘open road’ is een ‘dead-end street’ gebleken, een illusie. Welke weg de mens nu dient in te slaan weet niemand. Het enige dat we weten is dat de westerse ‘democratie’ tot nu toe een farce is geweest. Morgen meer.