Steele:
Political correctness functions like a despotic regime. We resent it but we tolerate it.
The
current election—regardless of its outcome—reveals something tragic in the way
modern conservatism sits in American life. As an ideology—and certainly as a
political identity—conservatism is less popular than the very principles and
values it stands for. There is a presumption in the culture that heartlessness
and bigotry are somehow endemic to conservatism, that the rigors of freedom and
capitalism literally require exploitation and inequality—this despite the fact
that so many liberal policies since the 1960s have only worsened the
inequalities they sought to overcome.
In the
broader American culture—the mainstream media, the world of the arts and
entertainment, the high-tech world, and the entire enterprise of public and
private education—conservatism suffers a decided ill repute. Why?
The
answer begins in a certain fact of American life. As the late writer William
Styron once put it, slavery was “the great transforming circumstance of
American history.” Slavery, and also the diminishment of women and all
minorities, was especially tragic because America was otherwise the most
enlightened nation in the world. Here, in this instance of profound hypocrisy,
began the idea of America as a victimizing nation. And then came the inevitable
corollary: the nation’s moral indebtedness to its former victims: blacks
especially but all other put-upon peoples as well.
This
indebtedness became a cultural imperative, what Styron might call a
“transforming circumstance.” Today America must honor this indebtedness or lose
much of its moral authority and legitimacy as a democracy. America must show
itself redeemed of its oppressive past.
How to
do this? In a word: deference. Since the 1960s, when America finally became
fully accountable for its past, deference toward all groups with any claim to
past or present victimization became mandatory. The Great Society and the War
on Poverty were some of the first truly deferential policies. Since then
deference has become an almost universal marker of simple human decency that
asserts one’s innocence of the American past. Deference is, above all else, an
apology.
One
thing this means is that deference toward victimization has evolved into a means
to power. As deference acknowledges America’s indebtedness, it seems to redeem
the nation and to validate its exceptional status in the world. This brings
real power—the kind of power that puts people into office and that gives a
special shine to commercial ventures it attaches to.
Since
the ’60s the Democratic Party, and liberalism generally, have thrived on the
power of deference. When Hillary Clinton speaks of a “basket of deplorables,“
she follows with a basket of isms and phobias—racism, sexism, homophobia,
xenophobia and Islamaphobia. Each ism and phobia is an opportunity for her to
show deference toward a victimized group and to cast herself as America’s
redeemer. And, by implication, conservatism is bereft of deference. Donald
Trump supporters are cast as small grudging people, as haters who blindly love
America and long for its exclusionary past. Against this she is the very
archetype of American redemption. The term “progressive” is code for redemption
from a hate-driven America.
So
deference is a power to muscle with. And it works by stigmatization, by
threatening to label people as regressive bigots. Mrs. Clinton, Democrats and
liberals generally practice combat by stigma. And they have been fairly
successful in this so that many conservatives are at least a little embarrassed
to “come out” as it were. Conservatism is an insurgent point of view, while
liberalism is mainstream. And this is oppressive for conservatives because it
puts them in the position of being a bit embarrassed by who they really are and
what they really believe.
Deference
has been codified in American life as political correctness. And political
correctness functions like a despotic regime. It is an oppressiveness that
spreads its edicts further and further into the crevices of everyday life. We
resent it, yet for the most part we at least tolerate its demands. But it means
that we live in a society that is ever willing to cast judgment on us, to shame
us in the name of a politics we don’t really believe in. It means our decency
requires a degree of self-betrayal.
And
into all this steps Mr. Trump, a fundamentally limited man but a man with
overwhelming charisma, a man impossible to ignore. The moment he entered the
presidential contest America’s long simmering culture war rose to full boil.
Mr. Trump was a non-deferential candidate. He seemed at odds with every code of
decency. He invoked every possible stigma, and screechingly argued against them
all. He did much of the dirty work that millions of Americans wanted to do but
lacked the platform to do.
Thus
Mr. Trump’s extraordinary charisma has been far more about what he represents
than what he might actually do as the president. He stands to alter the culture
of deference itself. After all, the problem with deference is that it is never
more than superficial. We are polite. We don’t offend. But we don’t ever
transform people either. Out of deference we refuse to ask those we seek to
help to be primarily responsible for their own advancement. Yet only this level
of responsibility transforms people, no matter past or even present injustice.
Some 3,000 shootings in Chicago this year alone is the result of deference
camouflaging a lapse of personal responsibility with empty claims of systemic
racism.
As a
society we are so captive to our historical shame that we thoughtlessly rush to
deference simply to relieve the pressure. And yet every deferential gesture—the
war on poverty, affirmative action, ObamaCare, every kind of “diversity”
scheme—only weakens those who still suffer the legacy of our shameful history.
Deference is now the great enemy of those toward whom it gushes compassion.
Societies,
like individuals, have intuitions. Donald Trump is an intuition. At least on
the level of symbol, maybe he would push back against the hegemony of
deference—if not as a liberator then possibly as a reformer. Possibly he could
lift the word responsibility out of its somnambulant stigmatization as a
judgmental and bigoted request to make of people. This, added to a fundamental
respect for the capacity of people to lift themselves up, could go a long way
toward a fairer and better America.
