Clinging to the Hegemonic Function
Governments, regardless of the form, dangle between the rhetoric of its high ideals and the reality of dark impulses. Rarely is the latter presented as a dark impulse, it usually cloaks itself in the garments of high ideals. For 250 years, America has presented dark impulses as the exception.
The present moment feels to many, myself included, that the nation has experienced a ferocious tilt toward the dark side.
Millions maintain what some consider America’s dark impulses as returning to the nation’s high ideals. To subscribe to this notion, one must normalize that the current president developed a list of “enemies” and has weaponized the Department of Justice. The indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, someone who the president considers an enemy, was 2 pages (doubled spaced). The flimsy nature of the charges against Comey erodes the established norms ratified by the Constitution.
The dark impulses justify themselves by portraying the existing situation as unprecedented, necessitating the need to extend beyond the guardrails established by the Constitution. Appealing to emotion, such as changes are granted legitimacy, as they seek what the Declaration of Independence defines as “transient causes.”
They are the basis for change when the people become ignorant of their creed. The ignorance is the result of the difficulty the American form of government presents to its citizenry. Therein lies the gateway by which dark impulses enter the American narrative.
America has always retained an influential faction who found political self-interest more appealing than the values of the Declaration and Constitution. Adherence to the Constitution requires at times to support issues that one may personally oppose. Personal opposition should never be the rationale whereby one adjudicates their constitutional understanding.
Dark impulses rely on the perception of having the solution that usually corresponds with how their supporters feel. They have no use for the words attributed to H.L. Mencken, “For every complex problem, there is an answer that’s clear, simple, and wrong.”
It is an anti-intellectual endeavor that’s allergic to judicious debate, critical thinking, and nuance. Little wonder the institutions that trade in currency such as education, journalism, legal institutions have drawn the ire of the current dark impulses.
It is understandable that one might ask: “How did we get here?” Though a reasonable inquiry, it reflects naivety about America’s historical narrative. Dark impulses have been most effective when their appearance is subtle.
When seeking to present itself in the best of the American tradition by reaching compromise, the Compromise of 1850 overtly placed the federal government on the side of the slaveholding gentry class. It labeled Reconstruction a failure for failing to change in 12 years what it took the government 89 years to erect. Subtle word changes to the G.I. Bill of Rights made it legal to discriminate against returning veterans of color after the Second World War.
The current iteration is the result of the systematic pushback in response to the expansion of civil liberties in the 1960s that culminated with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Though the latter consideration appears to be a non sequitur, the Berlin Wall was the tangible symbol of East West difference during the Cold War. It served to falsely prop up the better angels of American nature.
When the Wall fell, America no longer had a common enemy. The result was a brazen display of Americans turning on each other. No longer a contest between the Democratic and Republican Parties, the nation has morphed into the Donner Party, where cannibalization became normalized. Those whose worldview differed became an existential threat.
Those clinging to melancholy revisionism suggest, “This is not who we are!” Au contraire; it is exactly who we are. The inability to see America as it is, renders one part of the problem. They become apologists for the dark impulses.
No one knows definitively how the existing fissures can be remedied. The final answer is not found in a political solution, but one that includes the courage of the nation’s original creed.
The current dark impulses are buoyed by the diminishing hegemonic function. Hegemonic function occurs when the dominant culture establishes its ideology and values as normative. Once this has been hardwired into the culture, any change will likely receive pushback.
Then hegemonic function is not a tangible policy but closely related to an intangible feeling. The possibility of loss can fuel conspiracies such as replacement theory. The hegemonic function is exclusively from the perspective of the dominant culture. Protecting America’s hegemonic function is to willingly or unwillingly shield racism, sexism, homophobia, as well as other toxins from public scrutiny.
From the mid 20th century into the 21st, many basked in the direction the country was seemingly headed organically. Few noticed the gate that corralled the dark impulses had once again been left open.
Maybe it’s the high ideals rather than the dark impulses that are the aberration
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