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LOST AMIDST THE RESUSCITATED STYLINGS OF THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE
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by
Michael Terry
March 4 - 10, 2010 |
It was morning in America. That time of day that is blurred, half real in the half light of a sun that appears stuck, trying almost in vain, to rise. I climbed off an overnight bus half awake, striding nervously, jittery. I was looking, half directionless, for the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, where the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference was to be held. Two and a half days with 10,00 of America’s rightest. Turning off of Connecticut Avenue I looked upwards. There, partially blocking the half sun, stood the place that was to spend the weekend serving as the microcosmic phantasm of The Shining City On A Hill.
I entered the lobby after scaling the incline, sweating and disoriented. The opening keynote address was a few hours away and the luxurious digs were bustling with volunteers and exhibitors, hustling to prepare for the conservative amoebas that would soon wade through the halls. After checking in, I made a futile attempt to familiarize myself with the layout of the hotel. Having been assigned a room on the sixth floor, I entered a lobby elevator and tried to ascend. Something wasn’t right. The elevator stood, frozen, unsure of what I wanted from it. A member of the hotel staff walked in to join me, readying herself for what would be an awful day at work. Reacting to my confused look, she said, “What floor you on?” When I told her what was happening, she laughed.
“Yeah, this hotel don’t make sense. This isn’t the lobby, it’s the main floor, the eighth floor. The lobby is sort of the basement floor. I don’t know. You got to go down.” I replied, “Up is down?” She chuckled some more.
“Yeah, it’s funny. Up is down.” It was at that point that I bid farewell to my long–held relationship with time and space. Everything, even gravity it seemed, was to come into question.
I remember emerging from my room with my neck burning. A vicious shave with the shoddy razor provided by the hotel had left me bloodied but awake. The main floor was now buzzing with excitement. Everywhere hands were being shaken and people moved quickly. The light was fighting a valiant battle with the incredible amount of gel massaged through the hair of the men tooing and froing. Suits as far as the eye could see, women in tight dress skirts and the highest of heeled shoes. It all created a striking glimmer and gleam which worked in harmony with the radiated faces. Briefly, I thought I’d run into Ronald Reagan, before a slight focusing on his dimensions revealed only a lifesize cardboard cut out of the man.
There were ghosts throughout the place but none danced through the ceremony quite like the Gipper’s. He was referenced in reverence more often than all other conservative figures combined. His image, Mao–like in its omnipresence, hovered over the entire event as an example of all that was right about this great country. I was reminded repeatedly of his brilliance and humility by anyone who could find a microphone. With Reagan’s call for American greatness as the launching point, the contradictions came fast and fierce, piling up on one another with such consistency that it had a dulling, numbing effect on the mind. He was touted as the staunchest defender of the Constitution in modern times. No mention though, of the Iran Contra Scandal, when Reagan and his cronies scored an irreparable victory for national security over the consent of the governed. It was said that he knew that government was the problem and that it should get out of the way of the people. Nothing about his massive intensification of the war on drugs. His ghost is a powerful one, vested with the ability to spread collective Alzheimer's to his minions when it comes to all that is hideous about his legacy. The benefits of memory loss would show themselves time and time again.
Liz Cheney was just finishing up a paranoid diatribe about the undeniable, superhuman threat of Islamic terrorists when I was reminded that where there are ghosts, there is the possibility of a ressurection. In this particular case, calling it a resusciatation is probably more accurate. In her closing remarks, she said, “We’ve seen how much the White House dislikes being criticized and attacked...they’re gonna fight back against us, they’ll try to attack us and play dirty. They’ll try to silence us.” She then, to the blissful surprise of the crowd, introduced an unscheduled speaker: the mastermind of the greatest stonewalled administration in the nation’s history, her father Dick. Pandemonium. The thousands in attendance leapt from their seats. As he materialized from backstage, a booming cheer went out: some shrieked, others squealed. On top of the cacophony of adoration, the sweet, thumping sounds of the Jimi Hendrix Experience blared from the speakers. The surreality of it all made everything look wild but in slow motion. A perfectly Orwellian moment, a herd of followers screaming in adulation for a man who represented precisely what his own daughter had, mere seconds earlier, condemned. Fists were pumped, cameras flashed and away he waved. I sat, dumbed and frightened. I looked around, trying to find others reacting as I, but if there were any it was too late; they were searching for belltowers to hurl themselves off of.
My friend Norton arrived from Florida sometime later. Being of somewhat similar mind, I had hoped that we would help each other retain our sanity in this deluge of transparent hypocrisy. But instead, his presence had the opposite effect: a shared look, a synchronatic dropping of jaws only exacerbated the confusion, the nauseating shine of the place. Any attempt to refract the onslaught only increased the force of the beams. After a a few $9 shots of rum, we set off in an earnest attempt to find something redeeming somewhere in this byzantine conduit.
After being directed twice by staff members, we located the exhibit hall, a vast expanse of conservative special interests. Row upon row, not unlike a carnival. Within a few feet of each other, representatives of the anti–gay, pro–gay, anti–war, pro–war, anti–sin, pro–poker, neo–con, paleo–con. There was a degree of diversity represented that would surprise the most ardent of liberals. On many issues, there is an (albeit stunted) espousing of differences. On others, mainly abortion, the UN, guns and the environment, there is no such flexibility.
Hundreds of Ron Paul supporters who flooded the conference offered the semblance of an anti–war movement. But there was something offputting about them. It was as though they felt they deserved a trophy for being conservatives who were against wars of choice and torture, as if this notion was a revolutionary idea that they came up with and were now ready to share with the world. On top of that, there was a sort of inhumanity behind the words. As often as not, they derided the wars because of their financial implications. One showed the callousness behind his altruism, saying, “Look, if we have discretionary money, we can fight discretionary wars. But we don’t.” But there were many who did not look at it quite so crudely and actually did dare to suggest that America need not police the world. It’s not much, but we were deep in the shit, and there was something briefly comforting about straws and clinging. It is important to note that Ron Paul managed to win, with 31 per cent percent of the vote, a Straw Poll that asked attendees who they would most like to see run for president in 2012. But one must also register that the announcement was met by a strong majority choosing to boo their disapproval.
Our quick jolt of positivity was erased when we noticed a rather nice anti–war “constitutionalist” named Mike being yelled at by a youthful Aryan type. The issue at hand was waterboarding and he was disgusted by Mike’s “anti–American views”.
“If there’s even the possibility of getting information we should be waterboarding,” he declared. Mike could not hide his agitation.
“So you're saying that we can just waterboard anybody?” “I’ve never met a Muslim who was loyal to America.”
“What?” Mike was rattled by the bizarre leap of logic. Suddenly, the young American nazi felt under attack.
“You’re a nutjob. Get out of my face, asshole!” He walked away.
“You came up to my booth,” Mike retorted.
“Fuck you!” And off he went to find Eichmann, Goebbels or anyone else who would sympathize with him.
The incident sent us quickly to our room, where the promise of cheap alcohol and sanctuary beckoned. The spell was broken when over beers, Red Bull and Jaeger, we watched news of Joe The Terrorist, an anti–government crazy from Austin who torched his house and flew a plane into an IRS building. Where the hell were we? We headed for the lobby bar. The mood was not subdued and a spontaneous vigil for the now–dead employee of the IRS had not broken out. Instead, the well–manicured crowd drank as fast as they talked. Waiting for a drink, I asked a suit, no older than 17, about the events in Texas. “I’m not too broken up about it,” he said through laughter. A distinction had been made the best way these people knew how: quickly, wholly, and hypocritically. Why, I asked a woman nearby, was this not the terrorism you so detested?
“He ain’t an Islam, that’s why.” Unable to contain our delirium, its manifestation came strangely. A middle–aged lady behind us suddenly declared, “I want a bottle of water!” and we turned and laughed uncontrollably within inches of her offended, reddened face. A few men looked over at us like we might have explosive powder on our balls, so we made a hasty exit.
The hangover was worse than usual, largely due to the fever pitch of anti–Muslim rhetoric reached over a breakfast of stale cinnamon rolls and Pepsi. A panel of speakers lined up to rail against Islamic Jihad. A short, stumpy woman dressed in red, Wafa Sultan, was particularly virulent. A former Muslim, she sounded like the spirit of Joe McCarthy had entered her body. Like a converted Communist who moved from the USSR, she was allowed to speak with unquestioned authority. The results were much the same as when McCarthy was briefly given similar license. “Let’s deal with the evil of Islam right now. The infiltration of Islam in our society is of equal concern to 9/11.” After a rousing ovation, she was followed by the moderator. He produced this interesting phenomena, one which repeated itself throughout the weekend. He uttered a sentence that by itself seemed so apt. “We’re in this comic opera.” Yes! I thought to myself. We are! Thank you. Finally. But then, tragically, he continued. “Muslims are exempt from the body scanners they themselves make necessary!” It’s a cruel sort of cock tease, like getting tickled in the armpits and then bludgeoned in the face with a brick.
No surprise that in a building littered with ghosts, fantasy would be the order of the day. If Graham Greene was right when he said that reality in the 20th century was not something to be faced, many at this strange event had gone one better in the first Post–American century. Reality was something to be bitch slapped with a vigour previously only seen in Anime rape porn. Every idea of the left was a stone’s throw away from totalitarianism. Mitt Romney praised Wal–Mart as a great American corporation. At a pro–life booth, Norton asked a representative, “Don’t you think that even if abortions are made illegal, they’d continue and become more dangerous?” The response was simple and thwarting. “No.” Dick Armey claimed that the administration was “manufacturing a crisis in healthcare.” He was applauded upon declaring that America had the best healthcare system in the world. A college girl attending a panel on women admitted to dealing with date rape, and the advice from the expert on hand was, “Don’t be a victim”. Vietnam would have been won, but the politicians got in the way. The speakers on the panel, Saving Freedom From The Hoax of Global Warming, demanded to be heard, claiming that there were two sides of the science. They then spent the entire hour mocking outright their opponents. The environment is simply not a concern, be it climate change or any other issue. Any attempt to tell you otherwise is anti–American, an unjust assault of life as it is known. The world and its complexities are rejected or demonized; any evidence that runs resistance against the core principles and perceptions of the conservatives is attacked or laughed off.
Nowhere is this refute more acute than in the realm of American exceptionalism. This nation is simply superior to all others. It is spoken of primarily in the abstract, as a sort of Zion, a religious fervour behind discussion of their Bible (the Constitution) and their gods (the Founding Fathers). The greatest gift ever given to mankind. Signs of its decline cannot be a result of complex factors, but only the deliberate and malicious attempts by enemies domestic and foreign to breach the sanctity of American freedom. When a country is exceptional, apologies become morally repugnant. Republican Michelle Bachman lambasted the new President for apologizing for American arrogance, unilateralism, and dismisiveness. She ridiculed him for saying sorry about Hiroshima. No apologies, no matter what. She closed her speech by telling the story of four army chaplains aboard a ship in World War II. It was hit by a German torpedo and began to sink. As the young troops panicked, the chaplains gave away their lifejackets, hugged one another and plunged to their death. This story took its place in the pantheon of American heroism. It may be a nice story, but there are facts at hand as well. 674 of 904 men aboard died, the only ones saved were those on lifeboats. The jackets given away were rendered useless by the cold reality of icy water and hypothermia. This is American exceptionalism in the 21st century; the ship may be sinking, the preservers may be irrelevant, but America’s status as the great will have to be pried from the cold, dead hands of the drowned.
The day after the conference I was in Brooklyn. Alone, I smoked a cigarette and stared at the back wall of the Church of Universal Brotherhood, beginning to regain my senses. Grafittied pictures of the nation’s black leaders, including one of Malcolm X, adorned it. 45 years ago to the day, he was assassinated just north of Harlem. I was reminded of his fitting words: “You’re not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong no matter who says it.” The same is true today; blind patriotism should not allow for reality to be overtly disavowed. But that is the line drawn in the sand by many on the American Right. Scrawled atop the artwork was a thought from Jay–Z. “My intuition is there, even when my vision is impaired.” The weekend was baffling, a disorienting daze of despair, but above all, it felt wrong. The mirage of Shiny Hill was still in my mind . To borrow Serge Schmemann’s description of Leningrad, one of the hero cities of Soviet Russia, conservative America sits astride the Potomac, frozen in time, a haunting melange of pale hues, glorious façades and teeming ghosts.
MICHAEL TERRY
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