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God, Guns, Gold and Glory: American Character and Its Discontents PDF

394 Pages·2016·1.626 MB·English
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God, Guns, Gold and Glory <UN> Studies in Critical Social Sciences Series Editor David Fasenfest (Wayne State University) Editorial Board Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (Duke University) Chris Chase-Dunn (University of California-Riverside) William Carroll (University of Victoria) Raewyn Connell (University of Sydney) Kimberlé W. Crenshaw (University of California, la, and Columbia University) Heidi Gottfried (Wayne State University) Karin Gottschall (University of Bremen) Mary Romero (Arizona State University) Alfredo Saad Filho (University of London) Chizuko Ueno (University of Tokyo) Sylvia Walby (Lancaster University) VOLUME 93 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/scss <UN> God, Guns, Gold and Glory American Character and its Discontents By Lauren Langman George Lundskow LEIDEN | BOSTON <UN> Cover illustration: Reinvention of the “American Gothic” painting of Grant Wood by Dino Favale. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/ Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1573-4234 isbn 978-90-04-32339-1 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-32863-1 (e-book) Copyright 2016 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. <UN> Contents Acknowledgments ix Preface: What’s the matter with the United States? xiii The Fault Lies within xvii Enter the Frankfurt School xxiii Changing American Social Character: The Prelude to Socialism xxvii Chapter Outline xxxii 1 Introduction 1 Erich Fromm and Social Character 4 The Social Character of Elites: Dominators and Destroyers 11 Character and Contradictions 14 The Origins and Rise of the Modern Social Character 16 The Mayflower Arrived and Its Legacy Endured 19 The Waning of Puritanical Sexuality 23 Commerce and the Colonies 25 The Polarities of Social Character 26 American Mythology 40 Social Character Today 45 Toward a New Character Typology 48 The Authoritarian-Dominance-Destructive Orientation 50 The Dynamics of Fear and Power 52 The Social Dominator 54 The Contradictions of Social Character 59 Summary 60 2 God and His Chosen People: Act ii 63 New England 67 Appalachia 71 The Deep South 77 Religion, Contradictions and Character 81 Religion and Culture 84 The Midwest 85 Religion and Culture Today 87 The Religious Right and Left 91 Religion and Social Character 94 Summary 102 <UN> vi contents 3 America: Chasing the Pot of Gold 104 Character and Political-Economy 104 Back to the Past 122 They’re Back! 128 The Pitchforks are Coming! 133 The Rise of Predatory Banksters 134 Too Big to Fail, Too Powerful to Jail 137 Spoiled by Success 138 Detroit Falls to the Bankster Hordes 142 Hostile Takeovers—The Social Dominators at Work 146 The Social Dominator 149 Summary 152 4 Guns: Violence, Gender and American Character 157 God, Guns and the Colonizer 160 From the Seaboard Colonies to the Western Frontier 162 In Real America, Real Men Shoot, Kill, and Destroy 167 Chris Kyle—Mass Killer and American Hero 169 Big Balls and the Phallus in American Sport 173 Work and Sport 177 Instrumental Aggression and Character 180 Pom-Poms and Male Power 182 Phallic Worship 183 God Bless American Violence 185 Summary 189 5 Glory: The Rise and Fall of American Exceptionalism 194 From Chosen to Exceptional 194 Puritan Co-existence? 196 De Tocqueville: On Americans as Exceptional 197 The Land of the Free-for White Males 199 Manifest Destiny—Exceptionalism as Political Doctrine 201 If They are not Willing … 204 Exceptional … How Exactly? 208 The Sorrows of American Exceptionalism 211 The Unwinding of Exceptionalism 214 American Exceptionalism is Really Authoritarianism 215 Cultural Narcissism 224 Summary 225 <UN> contents vii 6 The Sorrows of American Character 228 The Rise, Fall and Transformation of American Character 228 Genesis: The Rise of the American Character 228 The Fall 230 The Crises of Empire 234 Coming Soon: Election 2016: potus as American Character 235 It’s the Economy Stupid 241 It’s Not Just the Economy Stupid 245 Variations on a Theme 248 Battles Today 252 History, Social Change and Social Character 255 The Transforming of American Character 256 Dynamic Character Change 261 Sturm, Drang and the Bearers of Social Change 266 The Social Psychology of Social Movements 268 Needed: A War of Position 272 Social Movement Organizations 273 Summary 274 7 49 Shades of Social Character and One More on the Way 278 Can Reforms Reform? 278 The Return of the Repressed 280 Progressive Regression in the Service of Humanity 284 The Commune as Moral Regeneration 292 Toward a Sane Society: Step One-Transforming the Political Economy 293 Toward a Sane Society: Step 2-Democratizing Democracy 297 Toward a Sane Society: Step 3 After God What Comes Next? 300 On Being and Having 305 What is to be Done? 306 To the Barricades 307 Summary 308 8 Epilogue 316 Resurrecting the Frankfurt School 316 The Resurrection of Critical Theory 318 Toward a Better Future 322 Bibliography 325 Index 348 <UN> <UN> Acknowledgments Like most authors of a scholarly tract, we’re much indebted to many other peo- ple who informed our approach, all the friends and colleagues who encour- aged us to write this book and commented on many parts, and our families who supported us while we were much more engaged in writing. First, let’s acknowledge our indebtedness to the giants who provided sub- sequent generations with so much illumination. Marx talked about how po- litical economy alienates, warps, thwarts and distorts human potential in its unbridled quest for profits, based of course on the exploitation of workers. The immense prosperity of the capitalist era also causes a great deal of human misery—poverty, wars, and environmental despoliation. Marx also witnessed the contradictions of capitalism that created diametrically opposed groups that would eventually overthrow the system. We agree with his diagnosis and vision but feel that his timing was off. Max Weber provided us with an understanding of how the cultural and so- cial psychological factors that resulted from the rise of capitalism led to the transformation of class relations and religious domination of Europe and culminated in the Reformation and the rise of Protestantism and its many denominations. Not least of which, for our purposes, Puritanism was both a consequence of the changing nature of market society and a way of life that ex- panded modern capitalism. Weber was also quite critical of modern rationality that entrapped people in rational systems, so while bureaucratic organizations were much more efficient, the price of that efficiency was dehumanization. Finally, unlike many of our sociological colleagues, we openly celebrate Sigmund Freud. He was far from perfect of course. However dated his b iological theories of motivation, however limited some of his sociological observa- tions might have been, his work still helps us to understand how domination becomes internalized, how people quite often act contrary to their own self- interests and how strongly various defenses and denial mechanisms for indi- viduals, as well as for societies, prevent people from knowing themselves or understanding the world clearly. The most immediate influence on our work is Erich Fromm. Initally, he of- fered a synthesis of these perspectives to understand primarily how and why the Germans embraced Adolf Hitler and Nazism, which included a racist ideol- ogy that led to the systematic extermination of 12 million people, the slaughter of at least 20 million Russians, and many more millions of Europeans in war and its aftermath. Fromm makes us aware of the role of authoritarianism and <UN> x Acknowledgments its cousin, the nihilistic destructiveness he termed necrophilia—the love of death. Fromm was no bitter pessimist. On the contrary, he bequeathed a vi- sion, the notion of a “sane society” in which the transcendence of capitalism, commodification, domination, and the pathology of normality in a capitalist society, is possible. A better future is possible. As Critical Theorists ourselves, who work in the traditions of the early Frank- furt school and the entire career of Erich Fromm, so consequently, we don’t really fit into the neat categories of academia. Although we are both housed in Sociology, the mainstream of social theory rejects our type of work as philo- sophical, and perhaps far worse, biased. We offer an emancipatory theory that critiques domination, and we completely disavow the so-called “value free” and allegedly unbiased ideals of the mainstream that believes one’s personal values preclude the possibility of an objective, “scientific” analysis. At the same time our Marxist colleagues accuse us of abandoning social class and material factors and escape to the impressionistic and illusory areas of culture. Few see any value in associating the social world with the depths of the unconscious with all of its sexual and aggressive desires, defenses, ambivalences and anxiet- ies from which there is no escape. As the reader will see, such critiques entirely miss the point of what we are doing. Perhaps the most immediate appreciation should go to Professor Stephen Bronner who first encouraged us to integrate issues that we’ve worked on a long time and put them into a book. Given what we’ve said, matching our goals with a publisher was not easy and it was for this the reason we espe- cially appreciate the work and support of Professor David Fasenfest, who is not only the editor of Critical Sociology but of the Brill series that has published a number of critical sociological analyses and in this case, some may feel that Critical Theory is not truly a Marxist perspective. Given that much of our discussion is based on the political economy that is the basis for alienation, immiseration and dehumanization should dispel that notion. Moreover, when we speak of “discontents,” we begin with the economic con- sequences of growing economic inequality, hardships and a dysfunctional government owned and controlled by the capitalist elites. So perhaps more than anyone else we thank Professor Fasenfest for his support from the be- ginning to the end. A number of friends and colleagues have influenced and encouraged us, and in many cases have read parts of the manuscript or at least heard us ram- ble. A few intrepid colleagues read the entire manuscript and offered valuable comments. These are Professors Neil McLaughlin, Roger Salerno, and Michael Thompson. <UN>

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