This American Strife

By Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet. Posted August 6, 2004.

Americans began a long, strange journey on the fateful day when George Bush scrambled his way into the White House and ushered in four years of color-coded hysteria, untrammeled corporate abuse, and a power-worshipping media. Welcome to "Bush World," as John Powers describes it in his new book, "Sore Winners."

But unlike the recent spate of president-bashing tomes, the LA Weekly columnist attempts the daring feat of taking on not just the man but also the cultural zeitgeist he both exemplifies and helped create. Who is better suited than Dubya to be president at a time when robbing grandmothers, invading distant foreign lands, and kissing up to The Donald is just business as usual? John Powers talked to AlterNet from his office in Los Angeles.

Unlike a lot of the anti-Bush books coming out these days, your book does not focus narrowly on him or his administration. You see him instead as a president of his times who exemplifies the larger culture we live in – the Bush World, as you call it. So did George Bush create this nasty culture we live in or is he a product of it?

Both. Initially, he was a creation of a particular time. Bush has been the beneficiary of the various cultural trends – advanced consumerism, the triumphant free market, the militarization of the country, the centralization but also the careerist bent of the media. And all of those things served his rise to power.

But after Sept. 11, a different kind of president could have created a very different climate in the country. When Bush told people to go shopping because otherwise the terrorists would win, there's an entire worldview in that statement. He didn't say we have to sacrifice or pull together. What he said instead was: We'll take care of it; your job is to go on with life as usual. It's a very paternalistic attitude.

This clear delineation between the elite and the masses seems to be a defining characteristic of Bush World.

We have a two-tiered society, though it is a lot more complex than one divided merely between rich and poor. There is a small group of people in both parties who make the big political and cultural decisions. Those people tend to be extremely well-paid, powerful, and celebrated in the media. These people are the "winners" in the society. And then there are the "rest of us" – ordinary people who are made to feel like losers.

It's not as tyrannical as being actually poor, but in a cultural sense, we feel that our lives are somehow irrelevant in a world dominated by the worship of power.

One of the characteristics of Bush World as you describe it is the return of "social Darwinism," which essentially justifies this winners/losers paradigm.

The crude version of social Darwinism is the idea that in economic life, as in biological life, the strongest prevail. The poor deserved to be poor and it is ordained by the very structure of the cosmos. This is an idea that is obviously very popular with people who are doing well.

The idea, which dates back to the 19th century, survived until the Great Depression, when it was discredited. Many of the New Deal programs were antithetical to this notion. But the paradoxical thing is that the very programs that created the safety net and prosperity for Americans made people question their value. In the Reagan years, we began to think that we're all entitled to and can be prosperous; social programs have nothing to do with it. The idea began to emerge – once again – that the rich should get more because they are worthy. Moreover, if the poor are poor, it's their own damn fault.

The current version of this doctrine is even more ruthless because it is now wrapped in populism. In Tom Frank's new book, "What's the Matter with Kansas," he does a very good job of showing how economic losers tend to transform their frustration into action not on economic but on cultural issues. The gist of that book is about the Right's success in casting itself as the populist party that is attacking cultural elites – when in fact there is an economic elite that is really running the country.

And yet, as you point out in your book, the popular culture mirrors these categories of winners and losers in the reality shows on television.

Here is where the cultural angle becomes interesting. At this point when you have the most naked celebration of winners in my lifetime – in economic terms – you also have TV shows that are about the survival. What's more Darwinian than "Survivor"! You put a bunch of people on an island, and week after week, all but one of them becomes extinct and who then wins a million dollars.

What really speaks to the brilliance of popular culture is that at the time that I was writing about the reality shows and Bush's economic policies, no one else had written about that connection. But even as I was writing about "Survivor" as subtext, the creator of that show (Mark Burnett) was turning it into text in "The Apprentice."

Lakshmi Chaudhry is senior editor of Alternet.

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