the Hogarthian view
My
half-hearted attempt to keep atoe if not abreast of the daily news begins in
the wee hours with on-line surveys of the New
York Times and Real Clear Politics
and ends, after a substantial hiatus devoted to what might be called Real Life,
with the PBS “News Hour” at seven in the evening. Saying that the “News Hour” is the best television
program I know may mean little seeing that I know so few. But the morning survey of Real Clear Politics is probably the most
important for me. That is because
it offers a fairly generous and eclectic sampling of various more or less
influential politicians, pundits, talk-show hosts, Sunday gabfests, and edgy
comedians whom I never would encounter in undigested form.
I
don’t listen to speeches or interviews of Sarah Palin, for example. I have never viewed Martin Bashir’s
television program on MSNBC or listened to Mark Levin’s radio program. I am not a regular reader of the Washington Post and until yesterday was
unaware that somebody called Eric Wemple published a blog sometimes attached to
that paper. Hence without Real Clear Politics I should never have
known of the following sequence of events.
(1)
Sarah Palin, in a public utterance decrying the dangers for future generations
of Americans of a huge and rapidly growing public indebtedness, compared debt’s
possible constraints to slavery.
(2) Martin Bashir suggested
that for making such a verbal comparison Ms. Palin, “America’s residence
dunce,” should be punished with revolting torments of an appallingly obscene and
scatological nature. (3) Mark
Levin, without obscenity but in language otherwise hardly less violent than
Bashir’s own, attacked Bashir and other commentators on MSNBC. (4) At considerable length Bashir
apologized to Sarah Palin publicly, unreservedly, and so far as I can tell
sincerely. (5) The blogger Eric Wemple opined that
Bashir had made “towering mistakes” in his fashion of attacking Ms. Palin, even
though her comparison of debt and slavery “was idiotic on its face”.
I
am sure that many other events could be related to the five enumerated
above. My point is that a half
hour spent on one useful website can offer a kind of “casebook” entrée—happily
not always so depressing as this one—to an emblematic political episode or
debate so ephemeral that two or three days later it will be difficult to track
down the relevant links. Of course
in this instance I also have some interest in the substance buried deep beneath
the muck. I suppose I am a “fiscal
conservative”—perhaps even a “deficit scold”. I am also a grandfather, and at times a rather worried one,
as I ponder the America my grandchildren may know when they are my age. Add to that my profession: I am a
student of literature, so much of which is a matter of comparisons, especially
similes and metaphors. Is a
comparison of debt to slavery “idiotic on its face”?
“My
love is like a red, red rose,” writes Robbie Burns, “that’s newly sprung in
June.” Now I suppose that Eric
Wemple would judge that this comparison is idiotic on its face, or rather on
the girlfriend’s face, since no Scottish lass known to history has had skin of
a scarlet hue. Nor did one ever
sprout pinnate leaves or sharp spines.
Yet many a man seeking to express his sense of a woman’s beauty and
desirability has judged “My Luve’s Like a Red, Red Rose” to be a capital song. Now a partial list of the things to
which writers of repute have said that men and women are enslaved would include
the following: slaves of passion, of alcohol, of fame, of reputation, of
convention; slaves to the office, slaves to the telephone, slaves to blueberry
pie. Somerset Maugham’s great
novel Of Human Bondage extends the
metaphor over practically all of human social, sexual, and psychological life.
How
about indebtedness as slavery? Has
anyone of intellectual authority ever talked of such a thing? Before answering with the obvious and
required affirmative, it is worth noting that actual, historical slavery has
existed in many forms. The chattel
slavery of the ante-bellum South, which for obvious reasons is likely to leap
to the American mind, is actually something of an “outlier” in the history of
servitude. The racial dimension of
slavery has not been constant, but slaves have often been conquered
people. The Old English word for
slave, weahl, means a Celtic Briton (cf.
welsh); in a similar fashion slave itself reflects the fate on many
conquered Slavs in the pre-modern world.
Slavery
was both involuntary and voluntary, as in many places people could (and did) in
desperation sell themselves into servitude. Many white people came to the American colonies, and other
outposts of British Empire, under the scheme of indentured servitude. Here slavery was not merely like indebtedness, but coterminous with
it. There are probably a million
people in indentured servitude today.
Under these circumstances it would be odd indeed if slavery and
indebtedness were not frequently brought together in metaphor.
There
has been pretty ecumenical agreement across the political spectrum that
economic indenture is or might be “slavery”. Though we should not entirely neglect such right-wing gurus
as Hayek (The Road to Serfdom, 1944),
it has principally been the theoreticians of socialism who have made the
equation debt=slavery. One need
look no further than Marx in whose system the entire proletariat are “wage
slaves”. If the means of
production are in private hands those who have nothing to sell but their labor
(the workers) are doomed to de facto subsistence
slavery without the possibility of capital accumulation. Lots of people have disagreed with
Marxism, without however finding his metaphoric vocabulary “idiotic on its
face.” It has been a large
inspiration to writers of the greatest repute down to and including Tennessee
Ernie Ford:
You
load sixteen tons, and what do you get?
Another
day older and deeper in debt….
Saint
Peter, don’t you call me, cause I can’t go.
I
owe my soul to the company store.
I presume you understand the term company store?
racing against the clock
