Two incidents of brawling, in radically different contexts, have hit the heavy media rotation this week. First was the fight at the Pistons-Pacers game in Detroit, in which Pacers player Ron Artest jumped into the stands and attacked a fan. Serious mayhem ensued, with various Pacers and Pistons players joining the fisticuffs to stand up for their teammates.
The other shoving match occurred during President Bush's visit to Chile. Chilean guards at first would not allow one of Bush's Secret Service agents to enter a dinner, and a fracas ensued. Bush, noticing the melee, pushed his way to the center of the hubbub and, asserting his alpha dog status, "rescued" the agent.
Majikthise writes about this incident, and her perceptive commenter jrc says:
People love this stuff. I don't remember who said it first, but shrub's voters weren't tricked into voting for him in spite of the fact he's an asshole. That's exactly why they voted for him. Getting into brawls in foreign countries only makes them like him better.Feeds right into the false perception that this is a man that fights his own battles.
The connection between these two incidents is simple: both were fueled by a tribal urge to defend your own "clan" against insult from outside. Not threat, but insult: in neither case was there a particular physical threat; at least, none that withstands scrutiny. No, both Artest and Bush plowed into crowds to earn back respect they felt had been taken from them.
In Salon, King Kaufman writes about the basketball incident:
So many people are at the boiling point when it comes to being dissed because they get dissed so often. It's not that we're living in a violent society, it's that we're living in a disrespectful one. Everyone's mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, and, in the sports world anyway, they're increasingly not taking it.
Self-respect is in a tenuous, threatened state for a variety of reasons. The climate of fear due to the ongoing and seemingly interminable "war on terror" is one major factor. Although their daily lives have minimal interruptions due to this "war", aside from occasional commuter-train announcements and longer lines at airports, citizens are feeling the unconscious pull of fear.
The second major threat to self-respect comes from nothing other than a crisis in selfhood. Although we are continually exhorted to "be our selves" and not to base our existence on the approval of others, we are simultaneously faced with a panoply of consumer goods that give us ways to be less ourselves. You can pick from an array of psychopharmaceuticals, edgy fashions, electronic gadgets, musical styles, automobiles, houses, pets, and hobbies. Even technologies of self-discovery are pitched in the vein of a quick fix: you just go on Dr. Phil's show, he tells you what's wrong with you, and you walk away a happier, healthier person, with sentimental music accompanying your exit.
The choice of consumables seems up to you, as long as it involves continued consumption. With a tacit understanding that any activity, however healthy it may be, can be addictive, the culture seems to have decided to give up on the idea of a healthy self-determination: instead, we get to make endless therapeutic purchasing decisions.
The lunging drive to consume, coupled with a culture and politics of terror, serve to create an increasingly isolated society in which no one feels safe going out or interacting beyond their clan boundaries. This isolation is not limited to the individual level. It works societally too, as Norman Birnbaum, writing on the diplomatic dustup in Chile, observes:
Of course, half the nation deplores our increasing isolation in the world community. There is method to the madness of the White House. By evoking systematic opposition abroad, it provides its most fervent supporters with tangible evidence of America's beleaguered state. That in turn serves as justification -- even without colored alerts -- for a perpetual state of domestic emergency. ... The attempt to extend abroad the unconstrained power of the American state is inextricably connected to the offensive against our liberties at home.
A dual tactic of fear and isolation fuels this campaign against the free self. Likewise, anxiety in the face of free selfhood propels people to embrace terror and loneliness. This dialectic makes for an explosive mixture when a threat, whether imagined or real, emerges. One is liable to lash out at anyone nearby who seems guilty, whether they are or not. We've seen this with Bush's redirection of rage from Al Qaeda to Iraq, and we saw it in Detroit too: according to Kaufman, Artest went after an innocent bystander, not the fan who threw the cup of beer at him.
Misdirection, explosive rages, living in a bubble protected from the truth: all logical outcomes of our encapsulation in consumer capitalism. Our leaders lash out at foreign security forces, and our athletes attack us in the stands. Or we respond not with explosive violence, but with a retreat to the comforts of machines. Regular citizens wrap themselves in cars or cell phones or iPods, and the Secretary of Defense and the President use signature machines to sign condolence letters to families of soldiers killed in Iraq.
By ceding this crucial symbol of their agency and their shared grief to the mechanical output of a machine, Rumsfeld and Bush sever themselves from the consequences of their free decision to go to war. And by blaming the brawl on "provocation", Artest and the other players, not to mention the sports commentators who have apologized on their behalf, manage the same evasion of consequences. Responsibility, in the sense of accepting the outcome of your choices, is an essential element in freedom. Without it, we are something less than free: we are animal-machines.
Posted by Chris at November 23, 2004 09:34 AM