A limp swing from the left.
Without doubt, the strangest thing in this book is the letter William Rivers Pitt wrote to Hunter S. Thompson, begging HST to advance "once more into the breach" by covering the 2000 election. The letter is essentially Pitt's admission of failure. He and his colleagues could never crack the Bush machine. Thompson never replied; Bush won; Pitt seems to know the war is lost.
Pitt's book attempts to denounce the Bush regime and the frightened silence it has imposed on America. He wants to reveal to his readers the terrible void where an opposition ought to be in our polity. And so he does-though not at all in the way he intended. What happens instead is pretty amusing, in a grim and ominous way. Pitt has to face the same dissent-damping climate he wishes to attack. He does this by attempting to personalize his polemic and interrupting his argument with an endless series of patriotic, digressive exclamations. By the time Pitt is ready to attack the Bush regime at full force, his book lies becalmed, a defensive preface to the intended attack rather than an actual strike
Pitt's defensive rhetoric, designed to fend off right-wing charges of "sedition," ends up swallowing the entire book. So the failed work becomes Exhibit A in Pitt's prosecution, proof positive that it is indeed almost impossible to mount an effective opposition in America these days.
Pitt can't even introduce himself as a liberal without digressing to reassure you that he's a good American. He thinks the very term "liberal" is enough to call down the wrath of Ashcroft; and he might be right. To deflect the charge, Pitt starts the book not with political argument, but with a bizarre sketch of himself at home filled with so much banal detail that we yawn, convinced beyond any doubt that this guy is truly, loyally, incredibly dull. Here, then, is the Author as a Regular Guy:
"I am sitting on my porch in Boston on a perfect summer day. My CD player has a guy named Robert Randolph spinning in it, recorded at a singularly wonderful show I saw last winter. My cat is curled up in the sunshine, there is a good pot of coffee warming in the kitchen, and I am engaged to be married next May to a truly extraordinary woman whom I have loved since first setting eyes on her in San Francisco back in 1995. In a month I will return to the joyful space that is my classroom, where I will teach English Literature, Journalism, and Writing to roomfuls of bright-eyed teenagers."
It's pretty awful, isn't it? There's a queasily patronizing, false tone to the whole sketch-it's maudlin and cliche and dull. Then I realize that the dullness is intentional, is in fact Pitt's whole aim. By inundating the reader with domestic blather, Pitt shows his readers that liberals can be just as bland as real Americans (that is to say, Republicans). We all know American high schools are coma warehouses, that they mean four years of torment for all but a few apex predators. Why insult the reader needlessly with this Sally Field blather about "joyful space" full of "bright-eyed teenagers"?
My guess is that in the new rhetorical climate of Fortress America, it's not enough just to avow one's patriotism. The author who wants to avoid being labeled a traitor must willingly help disseminate upbeat lies like these: the Potemkin High School with its alleged joy and brightness.
It was here that I first thought of the figure who haunts this book: Hunter S. Thompson. He never lied or groveled like this. If he could crank out dissent without wearing a tie, let alone calling high schools "joyful," why can't Pitt? Why can't the rest of them? Contrasting Thompson's courage with Pitt's caution, I was ready to dismiss Pitt as a mere coward. Then it occurred to me that this strategy of trying to mimick the rightwingers isn't Pitt's idea. He got it from the Democrats. For decades, the Democrats have been decking themselves out in suburban drab, just as Pitt does with this porch tableau. It worked for them about as well as it does for Pitt-not at all.
Reading Pitt's endless patriotic blather and populist cuddling with his reader began to feel degrading. As a fellow leftist, I got annoyed at the way Pitt virtually ignores his comrades in order to woo the right-wing inquisitor he fears.
To dismiss this book as feeble left-wing polemic would be a mistake; it's actually far stranger. It struck me that Pitt's fervid American nationalism isn't just a way of appeasing the right. He seems to believe it. Pitt is actually a messianic Protestant grounded in the belief that America is a unique, divinely blessed country. And "America" only matters as a concept: "The idea that was America?.is far more important than the land or the borders or the treasure, or even the people. Without the idea the nation is worthless." His quarrel with Bush's men is that they are unworthy of the "idea." In a mind more volatile than Pitt's, this would be a dangerous concept. It's one already in play, dropping bombs and bribing officials across the globe. It is, of course, a foolish idea. The continent of North America matters in its own right. The 280 million people living in the American "idea" each matter. For me, the land-the timber wolves, the grizzlies, the otters-matter most of all.
The clearest evidence of Pitt's Puritan ideology is his bizarre account of American history. Instead of the usual checklist of founding fathers, dates and battles, Pitt goes way into left field to find his key moment, his pick for the American Genesis: the so-called "Glorious [English] Revolution" of 1688. You're forgiven for a fuzzy recollection, if any, of the affair. For one thing, it has no clear connection with America. In the view of mainstream historians, it was a sleazy business. This far-from-glorious revolution which coincided with anti-Catholic pogroms, culminated in the ousting of a Catholic king who was replaced by the Protestant, William of Orange, now only remembered by the Grand Orange Lodge of Belfast. Pitt would no doubt be appalled to learn that his Messianic version of America shares so much with the slapstick fascism of the Orangemen.
Pitt, however, describes this sectarian coup as virtually divine. One tends to forget how deeply America's founding myths are rooted in a radical Protestant mythos that survives outside America only in east Belfast and Glasgow. America is the Lord's new Israel, and most Americans believe this with no suspicion of its origins. Pitt believes it quite literally. The conviction that America is different from and better than all other countries is something Pitt wouldn't dream of doubting.
Indeed, those patriotic exclamations I first dismissed as cynical conformism are absolutely sincere. Frighteningly sincere. They come in many forms, from simple assertion: "America is a great country" to clunky metaphors: "like the Phoenix, [America] can rise in glory from the ashes?" but they all diffuse the sense that this is God's chosen place. In these passages, Pitt delivers pulpit oratory, full of metonymy and anaphora, which echo the King James Bible: "The heart of this country still beats, and the soul of this country still glows with the optimism and strength that first birthed it."
This was the second point at which I thought of Hunter S. Thompson. How mercifully free of Godliness he was. How well his methamphetamine mumble has aged, and how restful it is to read him now, a short reading vacation from the God-and-America-lovers who bleat about the land.
At last, on page 129, the ghost of Thompson finally appears. It is here that Pitt reproduces the letter in which he begs HST to venture "once more unto the breach," all but admitting that Pitt and his colleagues are out of their depth. Here's a sample: "Beyond the milkfed sons of privelege carrying the banner for the Main Parties is a swirling morass of corporate overminds and a deteriorating environment." No wonder Thompson didn't answer. The man has a sensitive ear.
Though the book goes on for another 50 pages, Pitt's apostrophe to Thompson is its true ending, and a sad one at that. You don't get the impression that Pitt, for all his adoration of HST, would ever dream of emulating his hero. To borrow one of Charles Portis' great lines, "We are less than our fathers. We don't even look like them."