Terrifying Excess
I considered watching the playoff game between the Georgia Bulldogs and Alabama’s Crimson Tide, but changed my mind after viewing for a few seconds the President striding across the field flanked by young men in military uniform. I had forgotten. A nationally televised playoff game is not so much a sporting event but a video paean to God n’ Country with over the top flag waving, and probably a fly over by the air force. I cannot watch this any more.
Then there was the President’s speech to the Farm Bureau yesterday in Nashville. His opening statement was “Oh, you are so lucky I gave you that privilege.” “Oh, are you happy you voted for me…” What were his listeners supposed to say? The opener was not an invitation for a discussion.
What to make of this man who now occupies the White House; this man chosen to be an icon of our country for another three years? How does one address him as “Mr. President?” The term of address is a performative utterance. A performative utterance is a convention of speech that accomplishes, by the act of enunciation, the state of affairs that they declare. “The meeting will now come to order” is another example.
The performative utterance, “Mr. President,” is inoperative with this individual. Words of symbolic trust and engagement are null and void. If there is the slightest of disagreement, or if he is not obsequiously praised, the interlocutor is verbally eviscerated on twitter.
What fantasies lurk unknown within the psyche of each of us? What unknowable kernel channels our conscious thought about ourselves and our gestures toward others? It is language and the conventions of civil society that provide protections from these unaccountable fantasies within. These keep us at “proper” distance from one another.
And when language no longer functions to protect us, to guide our actions…….
2 thoughts on “Terrifying Excess”
In response to this post, it seems as if I have said this before (because I have) but the surreal quality of our lives in this era of mass dysfunction lends itself to pessimism. Our world has been turned upside down in ways that we could never have imagined just two years ago. Recently I watched one of the many videos of Neil DeGrasse-Tyson on the internet showing a man who is confused about how we could possibly have come to be here in the eighteenth year of the Twenty-First Century. Dr. Tyson rales against this place where science is relegated to “Fake News” and the threats towards our very existence are swept under the nearest carpet by the ignorance of dimwitted narcissism. So, as before, we have two basic choices. We can pretend this is not happening and hide our heads in the sand or we can throw ourselves into the fray and attempt to Save Our Souls … – – – … by becoming involved to the best of our ability. The old adage is that things are never as bad as we imagine them to be, but in this case I believe they are as bad (or worse) than we imagine them to be. It’s time for action.
I agree. The hour is late. Everyone that perceives what is happening — must do what he or she can to resist this darkness. By resistance what I have in mind is speaking, working, caring to make common cause to offer another way forward. This will be a enormous act of faith as the future by definition is unpredictable. But we Americans have been here before. The odds were unfavorable when Washington’s hungry, poorly sheltered army was camped at Valley Forge.