Politics continues to reveal to me interesting things about people in general, but especially about my FOO.
For about the past decade, I’ve been truly mystified by the number of people who really, really WANT to run their lives and make decisions according to something other than facts and data.
Religion, astrology, tarot cards and palm reading, Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop thing. Mysticism. The Power of the Ancients. The Secret.
It’s all the same snake oil, and it’s all bullshit, but it keeps selling.
This post by Teri Kanefield discusses the difference between those who want Rule of Law (a rational system) in our country, and those who want a Charismatic Leader, and boy does it shed some light on that whole conundrum.
One way to understand U.S. politics is a clash between two kinds of authority:
- Rule of Law
- Charismatic Leader
The American right wing wants a charismatic leader… Most of us want Rule of Law (rational-law model). The “Rule of Law” and “Charismatic Leader” models are mutually exclusive. To exist, each must destroy the other.
- Rule of Law requires facts.
- Charismatic leader requires myth.
AND
- The way to undermine the Charismatic Leader is to prove the myth false.
- The way to kill Rule of Law is to undermine factuality.
The Charismatic Leader needs to undermine facts and law…
(note: This is the same as the form of abuse known as “gaslighting”.)
If the myth that props him up is shattered, the leader loses support.
(It’s okay if he lies. It’s not okay if the myth is shattered.)
Clearly this was my big sin, as seen by my FOO: destroying the myth.
Prof. Timothy Snyder explains that in the past, the ones who didn’t want to live under Rule of Law went west to the frontier, where there they could do as they pleased and create myth. In Europe, during the period of empire, they went to the colonies. Snyder says that our current crisis —liberal democracy in trouble worldwide— resulted from the fact that we ran out of places for them to go.
In my FOO, the timing was such that when the Rule of Law (Dad) showed back up to live at home full-time, the Triumvirate was on the way out the door to go to college anyway. Thus they were able to preserve their myth of our mother as a rational, loving parent, and our father as the source of all the problems.
One idea underlying liberal democracy is the “social contract,” which forms rule of law. The way to save the Constitution is for an overwhelming majority of people to reaffirm the social contract.
In my case, the obvious social contract that was broken is the one that says a family is a family, no matter what; that these are the people you can always count on.
But another one was also broken, the social contract between a mother and her children: the cultural idea that a mother is engaged and loving, and sacrifices willingly for her family.
The seduction of believing in myths is that they are glamorous and shiny.
The problem with believing in myths is that sooner or later, they run up against the Real World.
One example of how belief in a “harmless” myth affected my mother, and our family, is that she sincerely believed what she was told in her teens by a fortune teller at some fair: that she would give up a glamorous “stage career” that she could have had. In my mother’s head, this was a career as a concert pianist. Instead she became a non-glamorous wife and mother.
(I never heard my mother play one single note on a piano, ever. I have no idea if she was really that good, but I have my doubts.)
I heard this story dozens of times through my childhood. And plenty of mothers probably have similar stories about “what might have been”. But with my mother, she never followed it up with anything like, “But I have you, and that’s better than anything else I could have had!” and a hug.
No, my mother’s repeated telling of this story was an expression of how dissatisfied she was with her life choices.
If that’s the choice my mother wished she had made, she had no one but herself to blame for it – or possibly she could have blamed a competing myth, the Catholic Church.
But a career as a concert pianist takes a lot of fucking work and practice and grit, and a certain amount of luck. It isn’t glamorous except for maybe the 2 hours you’re on the stage. I imagine there are plenty of people who did try to make it as a pianist and failed. It’s not quite the same as the failure of not even trying, but it’s still a failure of the myth.
So what happens when the myth fails to deliver?
The believers look around for someone else to blame.
My mother chose to act the martyr and victim, and shift the blame instead, usually to my dad.
Just one small example of how belief in a harmless, entertaining myth can fuck up a decent reality.