Politics as Ritual

...Politics as Ritual Anti-Politics in America: reflections on the anti-political temper and its distortions of the democratic processes, by John H. Bunzel...

...Once again, what matters is the style of dissent...

...You must weigh every course of action against the "national interest...

...When this kind of liberal talks about the "democratic process" (as he does ad nauseum), what he really means is that when you talk about politics you must observe a particular ritual...

...He never discusses the content of an issue, he merely lectures you about the proper mode of discussing it...

...I have in mind those radicals who are forever running on about revolution and the need for strong action, who confuse words with weakness, and who make a great show of their contempt for Senator J. W. Fulbright and other conservative critics of American policy...

...But the hard political facts of this matter were not questions of power but questions of prestige, questions of "face"—something that emerges quite clearly from the books by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr...

...In support of his position, Bunzel quotes an article of mine in which I criticized Paul Goodman for attacking power itself rather than the present inequitable distribution of power...

...You must first of all admit that political issues are complicated...

...What are you for...

...Whether this necessity is conceived as historical "law" (as in simplified Marxism), or as the destiny of the "folkish state" (fascism), or merely as the "democratic process," the result is the same—a crackpot realism which, far from banishing moral issues from politics, reintroduces them in the guise of a higher truth, in which virtue is identified, in effect, with the interests of particular classes of people...

...He does not tell us why he opposes the war...

...how the Quakers, in mixing politics and religion, fled political realities...

...The "end of ideology" is another ideology—a beguiling one, since it makes a special point of its lack of ideological content, its renunciation of ultimate objectives, and its great respect for individual freedom of choice...

...But his opposition to the war, like that of many "realists," strikes me as a token opposition which preserves the illusion of dissent without its substance...

...Not surprisingly, since he does not much care about the political "realities" he is always talking about, Bun-zel does not really understand why certain types of moral protest are apolitical...

...just as the object of pseudo-realism is to prove that you are a realist—tough, in the know...

...For these pseudo-radicals, as for pseudo-realists, political rectitude is measured against certain ceremonial requirements...

...He is not so much a political analyst as a linguist...

...The object of pseudo-radicalism is to show that you are a radical in good standing, not to achieve radical changes...

...But Bunzel himself—and this is the most interesting thing about his book —could not care less about alternatives, procedures, and consequences, except as words...

...Vulgar realism equates moralism with morality, treats politics as process, and sees every effort to insist on the moral content of politics as evidence of "utopianism...

...Those who demand immediate withdrawal, he says, are "moral zealots" and "more theological than political...

...If he cared as much about "realities" as he says he does, he would have seen that I was attacking the very things he holds dear...

...and Theodore Sorensen, which Bunzel apparently did not bother to consult...

...He claims, for instance, that he opposes the war in Vietnam and "our general posture toward China"—presumably on tough, practical grounds...

...We all agree about ends...

...You must remember to say that disagreements in a democracy involve means, not ends...

...BunzePs approach to politics is almost exclusively ritualistic, as is that of consensus liberalism in general...

...if you make a suggestion, it has to be "constructive...

...What distinguishes messianism—pol-itics-as-salvation—from realism is precisely the abdication of moral judgment, the appeal to some abstract and impersonal necessity which is supposed to make questions of right and wrong irrelevant...

...As in another reference to Irving Howe, Bunzel seizes on any statement, the general rhetoric of which appears to agree with his, without listening very closely to the substantive implications of what the other man is saying...

...In my essay I commended Goodman's diagnosis of American society (which hardly agrees with BunzePs easy optimism about the "democratic process") and went on explicitly to attack "an excessive respect for authority, a deference to 'experts,' a feeling that our problems are too complicated for ordinary people to deal with," which seemed to me then, and seem to me now, to pervade American society...

...He takes for granted, for instance, that Soviet missiles on Cuba altered the balance of power and threatened American security, and then argues that those moral absolutists who feared a nuclear war lacked the courage "to face hard political facts...

...You must talk about "alternatives...

...There is no talk of alternatives, no discussion of methods and procedures, no concern about consequences...

...What American "realists" do not understand is that their pseudo-realism, superficially so modest and so tolerant, serves to rationalize the status quo both within the United States and in the rest of the world and therefore justifies the measures, no matter how brutal, by which the American imperium is maintained...

...Genuine realism, on the other hand, holds that it is precisely in its moral confusion—and not in its remoteness from political "realities"—that every form of messianism, "consensus" liberalism included, stands condemned...

...how C. Wright Mills proposed a theory of power which was inherently untestable and therefore self-validating (but in that case why does Bunzel also criticize Mills for overlooking evidence that would have contradicted it...

...Reviewed by Christopher Lasch In the political discussions of the last twenty years, those who attack "anti-politics"—politics as the pursuit of ultimate truth—have usually ended up by celebrating the uend of ideology...

...Political questions are complex...

...What we need are books critical of political messianism but equally critical of "consensus...

...Any deviation from this routine is by definition undemocratic and "anti-political...

...instead he hastens to add that Vietnam is a complicated business which cannot be reduced to simple questions of right and wrong...

...its content signifies nothing...

...The dissenter is expected to wear the uniform of disaffection, to speak its dialect, to recognize its cabalistic symbols, and to make the right gestures at the right times...

...If you want to read once again how the Populists were proto-fascists...

...The real anti-politics, in 1962, was the politics of the Kennedy Administration, which was willing, it turned out later, to gamble everything on a question that had no military significance at all...

...When have questions of right and wrong ever been simple...

...It is precisely this rhetoric, as I have tried to show, that he confuses with realism...

...Just being against something is not enough...

...They are apolitical not, as he thinks, because they deal in moral categories, but because they are ritualistic, like "realism" itself...

...how the authors of Utopian novels are, well, Utopian—even, it seems, Aldous Huxley and George Orwell, though I may have misunderstood Bunzel's extremely garbled discussion of their books— this book is a bargain...

...Above all, never raise a moral issue...

...John H. Bunzel, a political scientist at San Francisco State College, would disagree with this last statement...

...They certainly pervade BunzePs book...

...Moral questions are simple or "simplistic") People who talk about moral questions, says the professor, are likely to become "wildly emotional...

...Repeatedly, these "realists" show themselves to be as abstract in their thinking as any of the people they attack...