Yearning for the Mud @ AMERICAN DIGEST
The French have an idiomatic phrase nostalgie pour la boue which means, roughly, "yearning for the mud." "Yearning for the mud" in America is a compulsion that comes over people when they have, for complex reasons, a need to immerse themselves in self-degradation. It's usually a mix of drink, drugs, and weird sex until the soul is obliterated by the abused flesh. The obliteration of the soul and the abuse of the flesh is one of the central tenets in many of our post-modern, secular lifestyle religions.
Most people try this sort of thing a time in their youth, but soon grow out of it when time and experience get the upper hand. Others grow out of it via deep psychoanalysis and a few trips to the rehab clinic. Still others are simply killed by it, their lives bracketed by dates that are far too close together.
Many, however, never kick it and were, in the past, thought of as "perverts" but are now more kindly seen as "differently minded." They live in those urban cores of the soul we now esteem as "Alternative Lifestyles." Once there they busy themselves in making bad design, bad decisions, bad art and bad politics. We are rich and kindly as a culture so we generally let them be. Once comfortable in their redoubts they think it their duty to sally forth from time to time and infest the rest of the nation.
A minority of the last group make a career of nostalgie pour la boue and are generally known as "pundits," "media personalities, or "celebrities."
There's a lot of cross-over of all kinds between celebrity culture and media culture. Indeed, at a lot of levels, it is becoming hard to tell them apart. Both live, for the most part, in an insulated bubble that is impervious to personal moral, psychological, or political change and ruthlessly exacts the penalty of expulsion from the bubble in the event of such change.
I'd like to suggest that there's another kind nostalgie going around in this hybrid culture that glories in the mud:Nostalgie pour la defaite -- "yearning for defeat."
Nostalgie pour la dé¦aite is that state of the soul when an American, who either came of age in the Vietnam era, or who was taught and mentored by many leftists or liberals of that vintage, yearns for the defeat of America, and acts accordingly in word and deed. This compulsion is not only required to keep their residency in their subcultures, but to keep their status as well. The more virulent their articulations of hate, the higher their regard by their peers. Neither children nor even infants are safe from their depravities.
It is a perverted form of "confirmation bias." In a way, joining this group is like joining a gang -- once you're in, getting out is not an option unless you seek social and political death. Once articulated, this state is then seen as confirmation that his or her world view and social milieu is the correct view and correct milieu. To operate otherwise would throw not only all the professional views and actions of the last thirty years into question, but the entire structure of the afflicted personality as well. It is life in the lie and Palin, as an example and a symbol, puts the lie to this lifestyle.
An America that is ascendant rather than retiring, an America whose policies are aggressive and not apologetic, is an America the People of the Lie are simply unequipped to inhabit or report on. They have, quite frankly, an empty tool box when it comes to this task and no raw materials with which to build. The only America they can support is one that supports them without question. They want one thing and one thing only -- a blank check for money, means, unceasing regard and opportunity.
Our current infestation of American media personalities and American celebrities with Nostalgie pour la defaite rises from decades of beliefs in an America that is best as a "pitiful, helpless Giant;" a kind of "Nostalgie pour la jeunesse perdue" -- nostalgia for lost youth. It is literally the only America they know and their entire professional and personal lives, from the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times, from the Hamptons to Beverly Hills are based on this grand assumption. They've had Presidents and Presidential candidates that, commuting to and from these locales, have confirmed it to them. Their coworkers in their jobs confirm it to them. Their significant others, drawn from the same ranks, confirm it to them. The parties they attend, the awards they give and receive, the places they vacation, the books they read and the films they make and see, all confirm it to them over and over again. It is not only the only America they know, it is the only America they can know.
Anything that confirms the Nostalgie pour la defaite is news they can use. Anything that confirms American exceptionalism is not, by definition, news at all. Anything that actually represents American exceptionalism -- as the candidacy of Sarah Palin does -- is bad news and must be crushed by any means necessary.
These afflicted Americans are raised and trained to desire that, in all things, America should always lose and become less of an important force in the world. The results of a weaker America do not concern them. It is only important that America become and remain weak and hamstrung. Only then will Europeans and others say nice things about them as they flit about the world.
If America is to become weak, what do they propose in its place? The short form for their vision of the future is "an empowered United Nations."
At which point they step from their Nostalgie pour la dfaite back into nostalgie pour la boue -- the yearning for the mud. In the final analysis, it isn't that big a step. It's where they feel most at home.
Posted by Vanderleun at September 28, 2009 6:54 PM