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Father to Son: What I've Learned About Rage

JBM What happens if there’s a terrorist attack between now and the election?

NM I don’t know whether it’ll benefit Kerry or Bush. That’s hard to decide. Bush has been saying to America: “I’ve made America more secure. I’ve made America safer.” He could be hurt badly by a large attack. On the other hand, there is a knee-jerk reflex in Americans to rally behind the president when there’s a catastrophe. So, I can’t pretend to know the answer.

JBM Starting with the WTO protest in Seattle in ’99, a culture has formed around the anti-corporate, anti-globalization, anti-Bush movement. Where do you think it’s going? Where should it go?

NM A good many people of the right, not flag conservatives but true conservatives, can feel in accord with men and women on the left concerning one deep feeling. It is that the corporations are stifling our lives. Not only economically, where corporations can claim, arguably, that they bring prosperity (and frankly, I’m certainly not schooled enough in economics to argue that point pro or con), but I can say the corporation is bad for us aesthetically speaking, culturally speaking, spiritually speaking. Just contemplate their massive empty architecture, their massive emphasis on TV commercials, which are a seedbed for interrupting one’s conversation, and their massive complacency about their virtues. They tend to flatten everything. They are the Big Empty. One of the strengths of Michael Moore’s movie, if I can go back to it for a moment, is that you could see all the faces of the present administration, those empty faces, those handmaidens and bodyguards of the Big Empty. And then Moore contrasted them with all the faces of American soldiers over there: innocent, strong, idealistic, or ugly, but real faces, real people. Plus all those suffering Iraqis. Obviously, people in such torment are always dramatic and eloquent on film. Still, most of those Iraqis had different kinds of faces. That shade of alienation from natural existence had not yet gotten into their skin. They might be hard to live with, but they were alive. Whereas the people running this country are all—with the notable exception of one guy I’ll get into in a moment—kind of awful. They don’t look as human as thee and me. That’s a large remark, but I support it. The one exception, oddly enough, and by this I’ll probably antagonize a good many people, is Donald Rumsfeld. Of that whole gang, he’s the only one who seems real to me. In other words, I might not agree with him on anything, but he does believe in what he says. It isn’t as if he searches for the most useful response he can come up with at the moment to wield or save his power. He’s interested in his ideas first. The power is subservient to the ideas.

JBM What makes you say that?

NM Because he’s real. He reacts. He doesn’t weigh his words. If something makes him angry, he’s angry. If something pleases him, he smiles. If he has doubts about how the situation is going, he expresses those doubts. In that sense, he’s the only one of that coven I’d call an honorable man. Let me emphasize: I can disagree totally with people I consider honorable. But never have I seen an administration that has had, by that measure, so few honorable men.

JBM Back to Seattle. Where is the protest movement going? Because it is not going to stop after the convention.

NM It certainly won’t. After all, how much can we hope for from this election? If Kerry gets in, he can repair some of the boundless damage Bush wreaked on foreign opinion. But Kerry will still be essentially pro-corporation. No major American politician can afford not to be. In fact, if you outlawed the corporations tomorrow, America would have food famines, a frightening loss of jobs, name it. They are installed for decades to come, and we can’t look for quick results. The war against the corporation is profound, as it should be. They are deadening human existence. That, I think, is the buried core of the outrage people feel most generally. There is, after all, a profound difference between corporations and capitalism itself, at least so long as capitalism remains small business. The small businessman is always taking his chances. He leads an existential life. He’s gambling that his wit, his energy, and his ideas of what will work in the marketplace will be successful. He can be a sonofabitch, but at least he’s out there in the middle of life.

JBM He’s creating something as well.

NM He could be creating something that’s awful. But at least he’s taking chances. Whereas the corporation is the reverse. The corporation turns capitalism inside out. The majority of them no longer give their first concern to the quality of their product. Since they have the funds to advertise on a large scale, that diminishes their need for a good product. Marketing can take over by way of language and image. Over the years this has produced a general deterioration of the real value of products for the same real money.

JBM Well, I agree we’re fighting a spiritual war against the corporation. And what we’re missing right now is the ability to say, “We can provide for you, we can make sure you have jobs and food.” What they’re offering is stability. What we’re offering is a deeper quality of life.

Rumsfeld is the only one of that coven I’d call an honorable man. Of that whole gang, he’s the only one who seems real to me.

NM To win this war will take at least 50 years and a profound revolution in American values. We’d have to get away from manipulation. What we’ve got now is a species of economic, political, and spiritual brainwashing, vastly superior to the old Soviets, who were endlessly crude in their attempts. Our governmental and corporate leaders are much more subtle. Remember years ago, when you were around 15, you were wearing a shirt that said stüssy on it? And I said, “Not only do you spend money to buy the shirt, but you also advertise the company that sold it to you.” And you said, “Dad, you just don’t get it.” All right, you were right, I didn’t get it. But now, I notice, you don’t wear logos on your shirts.

JBM I try my best not to. It’s hard to find a shirt that doesn’t have a logo these days.

NM There’s one more point I’d like to make. I don’t sneer at people who enter protest movements. At the least, it can be good or even necessary for their personal development. But I would like these kids to disabuse themselves of the idea that they are going to have some immediate, exciting political effect. If they have any, it could be negative. And if Bush wins, we’re a most divided nation. Kerry can put it together better than Bush. Bush can’t solve any of our problems. He never was able to. That may be the main reason he looked to empire-building. He had nothing to offer but world conquest. So, if he’s reelected, what will he do if things remain bad in Iraq? You’ll look back on the Patriot Act as being liberal and gentle.

JBM I will never look back on the Patriot Act as being liberal and gentle. While the protests will not have a direct, political gain—

NM You agree with me on that?

JBM Yes, I feel confident in saying that given the parameters of how we will be allowed to protest, I don’t see any way it could have a direct political gain. However, I do feel that when you’re out there, and see all the different types of people who have come together—particularly now with the mixture of groups that will be there—you do get a sense that the spiritual revolution may be awakening. And that’s the only hope, I believe, against the total corporatization of America.

NM All right, but if we lose the election, it’s going to be a very expensive spiritual education. I would be much happier if the protest movements could spread their activities over the next four years. I don’t have a great deal of hope that most of the people involved are really thinking of this election so much as expressing the need to vent, to gain some self-therapy, and to express their outrage at what’s been done to them, plus their need to gain power in the counterculture. There’s all sorts of motives, some noble, some meretricious. But it’s a poor time to exercise our most dramatic democratic privileges. What we do have over all the years to come is the confidence that we breathe a cleaner spiritual air than the greedbags who run our country, and so it is not impossible that over decades to come, much that we believe in will yet come to be. But I do not wish to end on so sweet and positive a note. It is better to remind ourselves that wisdom is ready to reach us from the most unexpected quarters. Here, I quote from a man who became wise a little too late in life:

“Naturally, the common people don’t want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.”

That was Hermann Goering speaking at the Nuremberg trials after World War II. It is one thing to be forewarned. Will we ever be forearmed?

Norman Mailer is the author of, among other books, The Armies of the Night, about the 1967 march on the Pentagon. While executive editor of High Times magazine, John Buffalo Mailer worked on an issue about protesting the Republican National Convention in New York.