Chase Madar On American ‘Anti-Authority Posturing’

In The Passion of Bradley Manning: The Story Behind The Wikileaks Whistleblower (Verso Press, New York, 2013) Chase Madar quotes Ray McGovern, ‘a retired CIA analyst’ and admirer of Chelsea Manning, as saying that “he who isn’t angry [in the face of injustice and evil] has an ‘unreasoned patience [and] sows the seed of vice….Bradley Manning had the strength to be angry….But in America today we have far too much passive acceptance of injustice. We need more righteous anger.” Madar then goes on to make note of a curious feature of the American ‘character:’

We Americans can pride ourselves all we want on our anti-authority posturing, but a 2006 poll from the International Social Survey Programme of national attitudes towards individualism and authority tells a very different story.

In 2006, the ISSP asked the question “In general, would you say that people should obey the law without exception, or are there exceptional occasions on which people should follow their consciences even if it means breaking the law?” At 45 percent, Americans were the least likely out of nine nationalities to say that people should at least on occasion follow their consciences — far fewer than, for example, the Swedes (70 percent) and the French (78 percent). Similarly, in 2003, Americans turned out to be the most likely to embrace the statement “People should support their country even if the country is in the wrong.” [from: Claude Fischer, “Sweet Land of…Conformity? Americans Aren’t the Individuals We Think We Are,” Boston Globe, June 6 2010.)

This ‘curious feature’ is worth revisiting now as America hurtles toward its electoral encounter with Trumpism–and perhaps Clintonism–this November. One candidate promises to be authoritarian, to ride roughshod over the rights and civil liberties of fellow Americans, to eviscerate the US Constitution, to commit war crimes (like killing the noncombatant families of ‘terrorists’), all to ‘make America great again’–and he is cheered on by a squad that only grows louder. Another bids us be complacent, to reckon that America is already great and only needs tinkering around the edges, some incrementalist change perhaps–not the kind promised by raving old white-haired men who threaten to make college free and deliver universal single-payer health insurance. The former seems to have shut down the consciences of those who would support him, even if he is patently in the wrong; indeed, for him to be wrong is the new right. The latter appeals to the ‘unreasoned patience’ that induces ‘passive acceptance of injustice.’

Bizarrely enough then, even though Trump and Clinton appear radically dissimilar candidates, their successes in the primaries of the 2016 election season seems to find their groundings in their common resonance with the attitudes Madar points out above.  Both candidates seemingly rely and thrive on a keen understanding of this acceptance of authority by Americans (it is the authority of Clinton’s technocratic credentials and ‘experience’ after all that most effectively shushes the passion and energy of Sanders supporters, describing it as ‘unrealistic’ and ‘destructive.)

Chelsea Manning was perhaps trying to save a country that isn’t angry enough, or angry at the right things, to be saved by him.