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When did we turn things over to the mean people? And is there anything we can do to take things back, without becoming mean people ourselves?
Don’t get me wrong. There have always been mean people and, being what they are, some of them have always managed to claw and stab and manipulate and threaten their way into positions of power. A certain percentage of TPTB has always been comprised of mean people. Yet in the past, the percentage has seemed much lower. When I was a lot younger, the breakdown of People In Charge looked something like this:
10% Mean People
20% Well-Intentioned Incompetents
40% Totally Clueless Indifferent Morons
20% Barely Competent Timeserving Drones
10% Decent, Hard-Working Public Servants
It wasn’t optimal, but we managed to muddle along with the few public servants and timeserving drones, and the rest of the makeweight was at least benign and relatively non-toxic.
Lately it seems as though the percentages look more like this:
10% Well-Intentioned Incompetents
20% Totally Clueless Indifferent Morons
50% Mean People
10% Barely Competent Timeserving Drones
10% Decent, Hard-Working Public Servants
The difference is critical. As long as the mean people were a sufficiently minor component in the mix, their toxicity was diluted to the point where it couldn’t do too much damage. Unfortunately, like many toxic substances, their effects in large amounts are exponentially potentiated.
Mean people suddenly abound in government, in business, in the media, in religion, in the military, in entertainment— even in education! They’re transforming our society into a cruel, brutish, Darwinian environment where anyone not mean enough to hold their own has the choice of either becoming mean or becoming sidelined, irrelevant, or utterly destroyed. How did it happen? When did we cross the threshold?
Fairly recently, meanness was not generally socially acceptable, and the overtly mean were tolerated only so long as they channeled their meanness into outlets where it could be legitimately useful, like the military or law enforcement. Yet even in those institutions, meanness was seen only as an occasionally-useful tool, and one that had to be used sparingly and with much control and discipline.
Oh, like many socially-unacceptable characteristics, meanness had a measure of nonconformist subcultural appeal, a daring fly-in-the-face of conventionality that served to keep its societally-useful aspects alive. Yet even in the entertainment/media culture, the “Misunderstood Anti-hero” or “Heart of Gold” device usually alleviated meanness. It was understood that the flinty, seemingly-hardboiled ‘mean’ person might have been embittered by misfortune but, given a chance to demonstrate her/his essential character, ended up making significantly non-mean choices, even at the cost of personal hardship or death. To the truly mean were allocated the roles of villains and antagonists, portrayed as unamiable and unadmirable. Thus were the essential values that make a large, complex, heterogeneous society possible preserved.
Films, literature, and television back then could somehow explore complex issues of moral ambiguity and yet still clearly portray the social and ethical superiority of not being mean.
At some point, though, the anti-hero lost his heart of gold, and yet retained the glamour, the tacit approval, the admirability, of his protagonistic portrayal. Moral ambiguity became more ambiguous still, in the face of a “to the victor go the spoils” philosophy. Win-at-all-costs “heroes” were portrayed as more admirable for their cleverness in cheating, breaking the rules, taking the law into their own hands, or dominating others than sniveling, weak, vacillating but rule-abiding characters. The end began to justify the meanness, as it were. And from there it was all downhill.
Sports commentators and journalists lauded players who could be violent, brutal, and vindictive against opponents without actually breaking the rules— or at least, without getting caught. Gangsters, thugs and criminals became the icons of youth music. And Americans began believing that “mean” was the only way to be effective, powerful, and potent. No more quiet, principled heroes like Atticus Finch or George Bailey. They’re just too quaint, too sentimental, too antediluvian in their approach. They’d get totally pwned by the thugs and gangstas of today’s mean, violent entertainment, proving their essential pussiness. Now we have guys who dispense “justice” and “righteousness” with shoulder-mounted missile launchers and expensive special effects.
And somewhere along the way, the real damage began.
A few dacades ago, when mean was socially unacceptable, a mean politician or public bureaucrat did her or his best to hide their meanness, and pretend they weren’t mean at all. Exposure and confirmation of real meanness was tantamount to political suicide and virtually guaranteed a quick trip to history’s Dustbin of Oblivion and/or Odium. Oh, they could do mean things, but they had to figleaf them with protestations of nobility and good intentions, and do them in such a way as to keep the victims of their meanness under a very thick rug. They could stay in office only so long as they convinced enough voters that they weren’t actually mean, just making difficult choices where no good alternatives were available. Sophistry has never been entirely absent from public discourse.
But in the mean time of today’s America, it is no longer necessary to pretend not to be mean. A politician or bureaucrat can succeed brilliantly so long as she or he simply directs meanness in ways that appeal to an increasingly mean electorate. Public discourse descends from sophistry to invective, and the rant has become an art form. The only effective form of criticism, it seems, is intentionally cruel and biting satire, or hate-filled jeremiads. Do unto others what they’re doing to you, only do it faster and meaner.
“Civil” society hasn’t been so uncivil in years.
Just how many years? I thought about that in an effort to understand these mean times, to see whether there be any ray of hope in the cyclic pendulum of history. What does it take, I wondered, to get people who live in mean times to eschew the value of meanness in favor of civility, however insincere or artificial it may feel? When was the last time America lived in a stew of mutual recrimination, unabashed corruption, blatant predation, yellow journalism, purple prose, and fractured, factionated communities divided among themselves?
William Jennings Bryan’s famous “Cross of Gold” speech was given near the end of the last such period in American history. At the end of the nineteenth century, America was sharply divided between haves and have-nots, ruled by an oligarchy of monopolistic businessmen and corrupt Party bosses who made all the real decisions behind closed doors and barely troubled themselves to figleaf their voracious self-interest with pious public statements.
Reform efforts had been underway for decades, making little headway, but at some point the balance tipped, the pendulum passed its midpoint, and the have-nots began to assert themselves. Yet in the early days the fight for social and economic justice was pursued by the same methods that had been used to keep the balance of power with the oligarchs. Violence, corruption, cronyism, and all the trappings of meanness were appropriated to arm far too many of the warriors for a more equitable society, a tactical decision that certainly embittered and probably prolonged the struggle. As long as the oligarchs could point to the hateful rhetoric and thuggish tactics of their opponents, those opponents could be easily framed as the perpetrators of horrific bombings and public outrages that set their work back again and again. Nevertheless, they had real justice on their side and they made progress.
And then, the public discourse seemed to grow less mean. More hypocritical, perhaps, more insincere and cynical and even stultified, as the gray flannel suit, conformist tie, and measured, unemotional rationalism became the accepted currency of power. And meanness certainly persisted in many aspects of society and culture, cloaked in a moribund respectability that rendered it all the more noxious. Yet as meanness lost its sway, those struggling to reform society began to perceive that their struggle could be advanced, battles won and even victories grasped without resort to being mean. Martin Luther King was the exemplar, but there were dozens, even hundreds, of gentle warriors who firmly demanded change, progress, and justice. They opposed meanness without being mean, and this time many listened, abjured meanness, and profound changes slowly began.
What happened to bring about the change from a society that rewarded meanness to a society that penalized meanness? Doubtless there are dozens of factors, but what struck me vividly was rather discouraging for us today. Meanness seemed to take its first blows during the Depression, and to be really struck low during World War II. It suffered minor resurgences but was kept well in check during the early years of the Cold War, as America soberly faced the very real threat of Soviet nuclear weaponry. Only as the Cold War wound down in the face of the increasingly obvious collapse of the USSR, and the long nightmare of Viet Nam, did America seem to rediscover the attraction of meanness.
I sincerely hope that doesn’t mean we cannot overcome the current mean time without an economic collapse and sustained, broadbased misery on the scale of the Depression. I hope it doesn’t take shared national sacrifice on the scale of World War II, and existential threat to the degree of Soviet ICBMs aimed at US cities to make us give up the sick pleasures of viciously deriding and victimizing each other to achieve our political ends.
But I’m afraid nothing else will do the trick. I’d be grateful to anyone who could convince me otherwise.
pessimistically,
Bright
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