Review: Spanking The Donkey, Matt Taibbi

“We’re cowards, afraid of admitting to being who we are, and we laugh at people on the margins to avoid being identified as outsiders by a remorseless center [sic].”

This is a review of a book I have just read for the second time.  It’s a sort of tour diary of the Democratic Party presidential nomination campaign “race” of 2004.  (Spoiler alert: John Kerry won it, before losing the big election to Bush II.)  As you will see from the above quote, it’s not your typical dispatches-from-the-campaign-trail shite.  In fact, most of the book is dedicated to eviscerating the bland, platitudinous, cliché-heavy copy of the author’s contemporaries and the US mainstream media in general.  It’s less of a gonzo tract than I remember from the first reading, but there is a hilarious bit where the reporter interviews the former head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy at a big campaign meeting.  Wearing a Viking costume (the author, not the former head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy).  And tripping (the author, not the former head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy). 

There is also a searing and hilarious dissection of John Kerry’s victory speech after he won the Democratic Party nomination.  The meaningless waffle of Kerry is picked apart by the outraged Taibbi, who later describes the Democratic Party as “an organisation which would be purified by fire on live television if we lived in a more just era.”  He really gets to the tension between “This is all shite and none of it matters” and “This is all shite but it should matter and we can do better and Why Aren’t We Doing MUCH Better?” which characterises how many of us feel about these shenanigans.  Again, it’s straight truth telling that hits the hardest.

After dealing with the Democratic nominee contest, the book moves on to more general conclusions about the electoral process after Bush’s decisive victory in the presidential election – calling the Bush-Kerry election a “long insult to the human race.”  I remember it well, and I can’t be any more generous about that monstrous spectacle than this book.  Kerry’s loss was utterly fucking abysmal, by any standards.  Completely unforgiveable, and yet, entirely predictable.  Which is the worst thing of all. 

“The American presidential election is a gigantic exercise in conventional thinking, in which, no matter what the numerical outcome, the real result is always a sea of slaves cheering the walloping defeat of originality at the hands of craven mediocrity.”

The book deals with unflinchingly with the anti-intellectualism of the media circus, the long hard slog of a campaign that most people are thoroughly sick of before it really gets going.  It’s like 5-day cricket match which all comes down to the last ball but is still a completely turgid ending that makes us all wonder why we bothered.  Given that this race was to decide who should manage the biggest war machine in human history and the most unequal “developed” country on the planet, the lack of any real alternative to extreme neoliberal violence is extremely dangerous for humans in general.  Presumably, they make it such a boring farce to obscure that fact.

“This is what our national elections are all about.  It’s a gladiatorial spectacle in which individual dignity is ritualistically destroyed over the course of more than a year of constant battering and television exposure.  Whether this is a trick of the elite to deliver a frightening object lesson , or whether it represents the actual emotional desire of an impressively mean and stupid citizenry, that’s hard to say.  Either way, it sucks.”

Well, quite…

There are a few surprising conclusions:

“Bush is our fault.  He’s our fault because too many of us found it easier to hate him than to find a way to love each other.”
But this is not a cynical book: “Because happiness and hope have a way of selling themselves.”

He probably meant that last bit to sound nice, but to me, it sounds bitterly ironic – hope and happiness do sell themselves, so the smartest and/or richest will always be happy to sell them.  Matt Taibbi mentions Barack Obama once, with impressive prescience: “The [Democratic Leadership Committtee] will spend the next four years trying to find a pious bomb-thrower to put up as the nominee – unless, of course, the poll numbers in a few years’ time show that Barack Obama is good-looking, black and charming enough to get the party over the hump using the same basic playbook that worked so swimmingly this time.”

It takes a special kind of political analyst to watch the US presidential election up close and conclude that Bush II is the fault of Americans not loving each other enough.  Incidentally, it’s the most convincing explanation I’ve heard. 

Bush was like a US Prince Harry: born into a powerful family, expensively educated, groomed for a position of fame and influence, and yet inexplicably inarticulate and bewildered – a barely reconstructed frat-boy figurehead who could drift aimlessly, out of harm’s way, but (especially in this media age of over-saturation) is looked to by the credulous for some sort of leadership.  At least the prince has only titular power; almost makes one glad for the royals, doesn’t it?  (NO? (You’ve got a heart of stone, you incorrigible cynic.))

This book is different and unexpected in that the writer, a typical leftie pinko New York intellectual who writes for a small independent New York paper….goes to work for the Bush campaign.  Undercover.  For weeks on end.  In a genuine attempt to understand the motivations of others who do so, and those who are inclined to vote that way.  There are not a whole lot of surprises in this chapter, but it’s admirable that he tried.  The two-party system in America polarises much of the population, even as the parties themselves on agree on most things that matter, so to investigate the “other side”, instead of just navel-gazing and wringing hands about the failure of “our side”, is another good antidote to the type of bullshit routinely spouted in print and on TV about all this nonsense.  Incidentally, the writer is actually not a Democrat.  (Or a Republican.)

I wonder now what Taibbi would make of the Trump campaign.  I’ve been thinking about it a lot while reading this book, in fact, because it seems like Trump is a clown put up by the same people who have been carefully weeding out from this whole process anyone with character – which is why we’ve ended up with a gobshite with verbal diarrhoea and billions of dollars in lieu of a personality.  Taibbi rails against those same media types dismissing as “hopeless” candidates like Dennis Kucinich, because he was “irresponsible” enough to call for peace.  Just using the word peace is utterly unacceptable for a presidential candidate.  Think about that for a second.

It seems to me that the Donald Trump campaign exists to make people care about the official democratic electoral process – whether by fear or anger.  So he can make some outrageous remarks, upset/delight the sanitized world of the campaign trail, without ever seriously challenging the ridiculously narrow parameters of debate.  Even though he’s only saying what ignorant boors/bores say in pubs all the time.  He’s exactly what the Republican Party have been loudly wishing for since the last time they got what they wished for and regretted it.  (That would be Bush II, filed under the category of Useful Idiot.)  They’ve been saying a Washington outsider, successful in business could really shake up blah blah blah.

Trump’s primary aim has been to get people interested in public politics again (as opposed to actual politics, the business of organising our lives).  And he’s been enormously successful in that.  He’s the electoral equivalent of Robbie Williams: his sole talent is getting people to look at him.  Once people look at him for any length of time, it is assumed he dematerialises under the scrutiny, because there is so little substance underneath the hype and shouting.  When people are still paying attention, even cheering him on, he has the potential to become quite dangerous.  Or extremely boring.  Or both.

US voters who are always interested in politics must now feel like football fans during the World Cup: yes, it’s (sort of) good that everyone is excited now, but a lot of the newly-interested are flag-waving simpletons with loud voices, ill-informed opinions and a penchant for xenophobia who will not be missed after the big event finishes and they stop giving a shit.

The other strikingly similar outcome of Trump’s campaign has been to make people pay attention to the USA again.  Identity is only serious discussed when under real or perceived threat.  US (“American”) identity –  the kind built on ruling the world whilst pretending not to – is crumbling, because American power is crumbling.  (Like lots of empires before it, assuming that what it wants is what everyone wants and therefore they’re just helping.)  As with all kinds of political/ideological identity, people become more isolated, embittered – and extremist – when the pre-eminence of their own tribe/religion/political system/military begins to fade.  This accounts (partly) for the rise in religious fundamentalism all over the world, as well as eh current trend for nationalist rhetoric in Europe.  And now the ramping up of inflammatory rhetoric in the mainstream US political process.

In short, Trump is the embarrassing, creepy Uncle of the Business Class.  He is very much part of it, but has managed to get some political capital out of being in it but not of it.  (ie, “I’m a successful businessman” (debatable), but “I’m not afraid to tell them what I think” (waffle).)  They will tear him to pieces as soon as he really steps out of line – like, if he actually could re-negotiate NAFTA or anything they really care about. 

In short(er), Donald Trump is the logical conclusion of the American political system.

Spanking The Donkey (presumably that title is a reference to the fact that the Democratic Party’s logo is a donkey.  The Republicans have got an elephant for theirs.  Go figure.  Cruel to both animals, isn’t it?) also has dissects modern protest movements and has some really incisive analysis about the efficacy of marching and protest in general.  Commenting that while it used to be subversive to grow one’s hair and smoke weed, when, “in the conformist atmosphere of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the individual was a threat”, the American empire is now “immune to the individual”, Taibbi goes on to point out:

“Three hundred thousand people banging bongos and dressed like extras in an Oliver Stone movie scare no one in America.  But 300,000 people in slacks and white button-down shirts, marching mute and angry to Your Town, would have instantly necessitated a new cabinet-level domestic security agency.

Why? Because 300,000 people who are capable of showing the unity and discipline to dress alike are also capable of doing more than just march.  Which is important, because marching, as we have seen in the last few years, has been rendered basically useless.”

So:  Think on.

Matt Taibbi may have sacrificed his mental health and his relationship to this campaign, but he came out of it with wit, insight and an impressive amount of humanity and understanding for his fellow Americans.  The denigration of the US electoral process has not led many to conclude that what is required is love, and neither has the mass of professional journalists produced as much insight on the whole sorry affair in endless hours and pages of reporting than this book delivers in a page or two.

Spanking The Donkey is a damning indictment of the Democratic Party, corporate media and the political culture and electoral system of the US.  As such, it’s really funny and entertaining.  You know, in a heart-breaking, infuriating sort of way.

Now that I’ve read it again, I’m sending this book to a young man of my acquaintance who is heading to the USA to study American politics – and campaign for Hillary Clinton.  I can’t think of a better preparation for that than to read this book.  Read it, T-Money.  You’re welcome.