Junk Politics: The Trashing of the American Mind - Softcover

DeMott, Benjamin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 156025565X ISBN 13: 9781560255659

Publisher: Nation Books, 2004

Synopsis

When George Bush's inaugural address stressed civility, compassion, and character, he was continuing a decade-long trend of American politicians trying to get "touchy feely" with the American electorate. Who could forget Bill Clinton's "I-feel-your-pain" chatter from the 1992 election, or the party conventions of 2000 where delegates recounted tales of privations endured and overcome. What this amounts to is the growth of no-politics politics—or "Junk Politics," as Benjamin DeMott — one of America's leading cultural critics — names it. DeMott explains that lack of character, civility, and feeling, rather than inequality and injustice, is seen as the root cause of our "national woes." Great causes—like the civil rights movement—nourish themselves on firm awareness of the substance of injustice. But those causes, DeMott warns, are losing their voice as junk politics gains ascendance. Junk Politics looks at the cultural influences and political signals of the last half century that have stamped the apolitical style of those in power. He focuses on some of the lesser-known but defining elements of Bush-era antipolitics rhetoric and action; that poverty is a character problem, that "leadership" is first of all an emollient, as he digs deeper into the cultural soil that has nourished these views.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

These essays offer a refreshingly impious denunciation of the movement for "civility" in public life-a movement, DeMott says, toward nonpolitics, in which, for instance, presidential candidates talk about their personal lives instead of addressing large issues. DeMott, emeritus professor of humanities at Amherst College, says that celebrity, consumer culture and "touchy-feely" policy initiatives like faith-based social work and character education work to "personalize" and "moralize" political debate and deflect attention from addressing America's problems and the large-scale programs needed to solve them. Despite DeMott's connective essays, the argument doesn't always cohere across these disparate articles (originally published in the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's and elsewhere). He leaves loose ends, suggesting but never proving that the civility movement is a red herring concocted by "top dogs" to distract challengers to the status quo. He also lumps together too many unrelated trends under the term "junk politics." It's hard to see compassionate conservatives, the sexual revolution, management gurus, Dave Eggers, George Will and L.L. Bean catalogues as examples of a single phenomenon. Moreover, the notion that the post-Gingrich era is a time of excessive civility is questionable, and DeMott doesn't adequately explain how the trash-talking, ideological wing of the conservative movement relates to this mushy, apolitical "junk politics." In DeMott's defense, his critique is amorphous partly because his target is a sensibility. He is often effective at analyzing the national psychology, especially in his witty deconstructions of everyday culture. Junk Politics hints at a promising new approach to the well-worn topic of Americans' disengagement from democracy, but DeMott could have done more to synthesize and clarify the ideas in these disparate essays.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Nation Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 156025565X
• ISBN 13: 9781560255659
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304