The Wake

A little less ambiguous than the “wild beasts” and “true flames” predicted by Nostradamus, the predictions of 1930s-era writer Sinclair Lewis have caught the attention of writer, blogger and radio personality Joe Conason, without even needing to be translated into English and out of metaphor.

On Monday Mar. 5, Conason visited Coffman Union’s bookstore to discuss his new book, It Can Happen Here, a current analysis of the Big Brother-like scenario in Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here. Upon unearthing the mostly-forgotten book, Conason noticed a few parallels between the book’s distopian government and our current administration. The president in the book, a man named Buzz Windrip, gains public support by being a “regular guy,” with a dozen skims of the Bible under his belt and a “brain” for Vice-President. He advocates anti-intellectual, traditional values, all the while bankrupting the country and initiating a red-herring of a war with Mexico, due to a pre-emptive “conflict at the borders.”

Opening Joe Conason’s discussion was Al Franken, who spoke briefly and made sure to plug that he was running for senate. Then Conason read and discussed his book, opening himself up to questions from the audience. One audience member asked Conason if he believed that people “cling to an authoritarian impulse in times of fear,” proposing that a certain factor of our current political atmosphere creates a collective psyche similar to that of the 1930s. While Conason remained humble about his knowledge of psychological motivations, he did say that it was possible that citizens could “project their own desire for power onto their leaders,” thus making them gravitate toward power-hungry figures.

However, he believes that it is the regime that desires the authoritarian power rather than the citizens, because such power holds tremendous tax cuts for the rich and the ability to maintain control at the expense of civil liberties.

He was eager to point out that his fear was not a party distinction, but that authoritarianism can crop up in Republican and Democratic regimes alike. Instead of attacking one party, he advocated a system of checks and balances, making it impossible for a “Unitary Executive,” a spin term for dictator, to ever abolish the Senate and House’s power to overrule Presidential commands.

“Honest conservatives are disturbed about this too,” he says, claiming that many had called and agreed with the thesis of his book. He did qualify this, adding with a chuckle, “Not that many.”

The crowd was made up of mostly baby boomer couples, with a ratio of about four seasoned beards for every one audience member who looked like they couldn’t yet buy their own booze. The lack of college students bothered one crowd-member, who voiced his surprise and disappointment.

Conason hypothesized that the low turnout was due to high school curriculum teaching “to the test” rather than to the citizen. This not-so-subtle jab was at Bush’s “No Child Left Behind Policy,” and its tendency to initiate lessons about test-taking strategies while ignoring high school history curriculums that fail to cover events past the 1980s.

In addition to this fact, it could be that the two generations grew up exposed to different media. Our generation was raised with newscasts that try to scare us so commonly that a warning about Gatorade bottles on airplanes will get as much air-time as a suicide bombing overseas. As a recent South Park episode joked, the news must get our attention by constantly making us think we are going to die. Incessantly warned about loose hinges on dog doors and faulty airbags, the vulnerability of our generation is reinforced by exploitation. Although Conason’s book discusses a threat both relevant and preventable, it could be that younger liberals have become disenchanted by any idea that uses fear as an incentive to act.

As for the baby boomers, they have enough life experience to see both the effects of fascism and the reality of domestic danger, accumulating enough irate restlessness to trek out in 13 degree weather and lament about it. Not to mention they got to share in their particular sense of humor, laughing heartily at Conason’s subtle insinuation that Bush’s hijinx are making Nixon look good.

Finally, Conason insists that what every age shares in is what he calls “cultural memory.” Blogs and websites like Wikipedia give us so much information about daily happenings that we’ve created a sense of dissonance from what is most urgent, losing touch with the lessons of the past. Between constant coverage of Anna Nicole Smith and re-plays of Ann Coulter saying “faggot,” true wisdom may need to get the ratings in order to be found.