Part One
Our first responsibility as mythological, archetypal thinkers is to take a step back from the dominant political and pop cultural issues to perceive the real stories that are being played out in our culture. The next step is to understand how we participate in those narratives through our own willing acceptance of their primary themes. How do we do this? One way is by being passive consumers of our national rituals. I’m not speaking about conscious, intentional, local, indigenous-based ritual, but mass, public ceremonies that reaffirm the nation-state and its (our) identity as savior of the world and Christ-like advocate for the good.
Public rituals enact and train us in our mythologies. The larger they are, the more influential they can be. 
Think of the Nuremberg rallies in Nazi Germany. But such rituals certainly don’t need to be so bellicose. In America, where we naively believe that we still have a functioning democracy, our public rituals, designed to reinforce our sense of innocence, are much subtler.
As I write in Chapter Five of my book (Madness at the Gates of the City: The Myth of American Innocence), Joseph Campbell taught that a living myth refers past itself to the ineffable, serving four distinct functions.
First of all, the mystical function introduces the individual to that which underlies all names and forms. It awakens religious awe, humility and respect. Second, the cosmological function explains how the universe works. Third, the pedagogical function defines a moral life in terms of the particular culture.
Fourth – and most pervasive – the social function validates the social order and integrates individuals within the community. Originally, it oriented people to the mystery by presenting noble figures at the center of the realm – or psyche – who radiated the blessings that flowed through them from the other world. These figures served this order and showed that everyone carried such potential within. If people still revere royalty, it is from vestigial memory of what the sacred King once meant.
“It is this sociological function of myth that has taken over,” wrote Campbell, “…and it is out of date.” Myth, however, shapes our values, organizes our experience, brings emotion to our festivals, sets the boundaries of dissent, names the children, sends them off to war and justifies their sacrifice. It is the most compelling story we tell ourselves about who we are. And frequently it is the story of who we are not – the Other.
In this context, I strongly recommend Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag, by Carolyn Marvin and David Ingle. You can find the whole book here. Or read a short summary here.
They – and I – reject the notion of “patriotism” in favor of the much more relevant term “nationalism,” which for the past 150 years has supplanted mass religion in most advanced countries. But it retains much religious symbolism. The familiar Christian God has long been replaced by the group, which is symbolized in the totem fetish – the flag.
A fundamental aspect of America’s civil religion is our unique cult of the flag. Curiously, we display it in our churches as well as in many places of business, as if to reinforce the notion that in America there is little difference between them. We worship it by pledging allegiance, and occasionally by kneeling and kissing it. And we are horrified at the thought of its desecration, because, they write, it is “the ritual instrument of group cohesion…the god of nationalism.” Such rituals nearly equate God with America, writes Robert Bellah. Often “…the most jingoistic identity of nation and church has come not from our political leaders but from the churches themselves.” And the flag is embodied in the totem leader,the President.
In this view, the purpose of ritual at the level of the large, national state is to sustain the group by repeating, at various levels of intensity, the act of group creation. Participants in such rituals – especially in our culture of radical individualism – achieve a kind of communion and learn that their God demands human sacrifice. Not the sacrifice of the defeated, which implies the preparedness to kill for one’s country, but willing sacrifice,the willingness to die for it. Or at the very least, the willingness to send one’s children – the best of the best – to die for it.
This willingness, we recall, was established in the two most foundational myths of Western culture. In the first, Abraham was willing to sacrifice his own son to glorify his God. It makes no difference that the son was spared; it was the willingness that counted. In the second, that same God did sacrifice his only son (the son of a father with no mother) to redeem the world.
American mythology updated this legacy with the idea of regeneration through violence. We regenerate our culture not by killing millions of people of color (although we do that in every generation), but by sacrificing our own young – and not the dregs of society, but, like the Aztecs and Hawaiians, the very best.
In this demythologized world, where all large public events serve the sociological function of myth, rituals may be contrived or opportunistic. The most powerful rituals of nation-group solidarity, say Marvin and Ingle, are opportunistic responses, to the perception of group threat, such as war. But opportunistic rituals are unreliable in their occurrence and expensive in their prosecution. Their magic is great precisely because they are risky and costly.
Contrived or pre-planned, seasonal rituals fill in the intervals between opportunistic group-forging rituals by rehearsing the drama of sacrifice and regeneration. American presidential elections are prototypic contrived rituals of sacrifice and regeneration.
Every American President has two functions: He plays the symbolic role of king-figure, embodying the nation-state and all that the group considers good about it. But, like the last kings of Mexico and Hawaii, he is also the primary spokesperson – a salesman, essentially – for a dying empire.
As spokesman, he must continue at all times to amplify our paranoid fear of “The Other” so as to justify military intervention abroad and repression at home. In other words, he must manipulate the traditional white American sense of being the innocent victim, or at least the potential victim, of some dark (and dark-skinned), irrational, violent, predatory outsider.
As King-figure, however, his job is to absorb the idealistic projections of millions of people and convince them that his intentions (and ours) are noble, protective and altruistic. To do that, he must play the exact opposite of the victim, the Hero. He must reassure Americans of his – and our – ability to meet the threat and defeat it, while simultaneously bringing the Good Word of our compassion to those evil ones who would – for no apparent reason – harm us. This double-bind, by the way, has been described as a long-term prescription for schizophrenia.
Anyone who has survived the long, drawn-out vetting process of satisfying the power brokers and achieving major-party nomination has proven his or her willingness to play by these rules. They have made a career of playing both spokesman and potential King for the cameras. And they are perfectly aware of the penalties for straying too far from the role.
The Democratic Party’s nomination of George McGovern in 1972 was an anomaly, never to be repeated.
Part Two
Viewing the Presidential debates – of any year – from this perspective, we look first not at what they say, but at how they look. It’s about who looks more relaxed, confidant, articulate, trustworthy, folksy or personable. But above all, their intention is, simply, to look “presidential.” Their smiles and calm demeanor (even as they attack each other) and their friendly banter afterwards, tell us that they are qualified to carry the essential Protestant virtue of repressed emotion. It’s about looking like the best example of a White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Barack Obama, by the way, was, except for his color, the best example since George Bush the Elder.
As I have argued in my book, the greatest sin in Puritanism is the inability to control one’s impulses. And this is precisely where we can identify our national shadow, when we project that impulsivity upon minorities, immigrants and terrorists. But presidential candidates are different. By restraining themselves, they – even Donald Trump – show us that they are not the Dionysian “Other.” They, and by extension, we are part of the club.
As Americans we are especially subject to being conned. So, although we know we have been burned before, we are likely (they are counting on this) to convince ourselves of their good intentions. More than anything, each of them appears sincere; he really cares about us; he could be a King.
Secondly, we observe their dual role of gatekeepers. I first wrote this essay during the Obama / Romney campaign, 
but it describes all “debates” that have followed. At that time, Glenn Greenwald and George Farah described “The lame rules for presidential debates: a perfect microcosm of US democracy”:
We have a private corporation that was created by the Republican and Democratic parties…Under this elaborate regime, the candidates aren’t permitted to ask each other questions, propose pledges to each other, or walk outside a predesignated area…the audience members posing questions aren’t allowed to ask follow-ups…every single question asked by the audience (must) be submitted in advance on an index card to the moderator, who can then throw out the ones he or she does not like…And this election cycle is the first time that the moderator herself is prohibited from asking follow-up questions…
… the Commission is run by lobbyists and funded by large corporations. Meanwhile, the moderators were selected to ensure that nothing unexpected is asked and that only the most staid and establishment views are heard.
In this context, the debate moderator (etymology: “modest, restrained,” past participle of moderari, “to regulate, mitigate, restrain, temper, set a measure, keep within measure”) – becomes a critical participant, quite literally the master of ceremonies. As such, he (usually it’s a he) must have a Television track record of appearing at least as restrained as the debaters in both demeanor and social views. Lester Holt, Anderson Cooper, Martha Raddatz, Chris Wallace, Jim Lehrer, Bob Schieffer, George Stephanopoulos, you get the picture. Greenwald and Farah continue:
In order to be considered as a candidate for moderator you have to be soaked in the sphere of consensus, likely to stay within the predictable inner rings of the sphere of legitimate controversy, and unlikely in the extreme to select any questions from the sphere of deviance.
Here then, within this one process of structuring the presidential debates, we have every active ingredient that typically defines, and degrades, U.S. democracy. The two parties collude in secret. The have the same interests and goals. Everything is done to ensure that the political process is completely scripted and devoid of any spontaneity or reality…All views that reside outside the narrow confines of the two parties are rigidly excluded. Anyone who might challenge or subvert the two-party duopoly is rendered invisible.
The media’s role is to keep the discourse as restrictive and unthreatening as possible while peddling the delusion that it’s all vibrant and free and independent and unrestrained…while wildly exaggerating the choices available to citizens and concealing the similarities between the two parties.
This last paragraph is a clear reference to Noam Chomsky’s insights into the role of the media in elections:
The public relations industry, which essentially runs the elections, is applying certain principles to undermine democracy which are the same as the principles that apply to undermine markets. The last thing that business wants is markets in the sense of economic theory. Take a course in economics, they tell you a market is based on informed consumers making rational choices. Anyone who’s ever looked at a TV ad knows that’s not true…The goal is to undermine markets by creating uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices…The same is true when the same industry, the PR industry, turns to undermining democracy. It wants to construct elections in which uninformed voters will make irrational choices…between the factions of the business party that amass sufficient support from concentrated private capital to enter the electoral arena, then to dominate campaign propaganda.
We fidget while the nominees confine their arguments to the thin range of opinion that their corporate handlers and focus-group research has shown to be of concern to the undecided (white) voters that they are actually competing for.
Watch them in a sea of American flags competing to be the one who is more willing to use military force – anywhere – to protect freedom. This, of course, is the ultimate gate-keeping role: to absolutely guarantee that any issues or persons that might call the function of the ritual – and therefore the function of our mythology – into question are safely confined to the margins, literally outside of the ritual space and outside of our awareness.
We notice whom they agree to exclude from the debate – the third-party candidates. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, was actually shackled for eight hours to ensure that she wouldn’t barge in on the ritual.
I’m afraid I have to point out, by the way, that had you been a peasant in Honduras or Somalia or the Philippines or a resident of Gaza watching the debates, you would have discerned almost no difference whatsoever between the candidates, or between Trump and Hilary Clinton four years later.
Part of the frustration that progressives feel when enduring these excuses for debates results from the fact that the vetting process is already over. It is an axiom of American political science that candidates typically attempt to motivate party activists during the primaries – people who are always more extreme in their views than the party insiders – and then “run to the center” after the (pre-)anointed one has won the nomination.
And, by speaking only of the white middle class and its concerns, they subtly reinforce the belief that the nation is defined only by these people, which, because we are watching, is us – those who read the New York Times and Washington Post, those who are already subject to the conservative to liberal version of the myth of American Innocence, the version which excludes all others. Therefore, we are not the “Other.”
Still, events of the years since November 22nd, 1963 have made us quite cynical. Few of us remain so naïve as to listen to their arguments in hopes of seeing any actual policy implemented. The Republican Ronald Reagan’s promises to reduce government were belied by a massively increased national debt and police state, and the Democrat Bill Clinton proudly destroyed welfare, condemning thousands to life on the streets.
It is useless to speculate whether any candidate who rises to this level is interested in significant change of any kind. We can, of course, never know their actual feelings, nor do such feelings matter. Even if an American President were truly interested in significant, positive change, he wouldn’t have the power to make it happen. We watch only to view the roles they are playing in the ritual.
By not addressing global warming, the military-industrial complex, mass poverty, race, corporate welfare, the police state, voter suppression and outright, massive corruption of the voting process itself, they invite us to collude in the fiction that such issues are simply beyond the pale of acceptable discussion. After all, if they won’t talk about these things, perhaps we needn’t either.
Most importantly, they won’t (will not be allowed to) address the ongoing sacrifice of young people to the furnace of war, because as Marvin and Ingle write:
Body sacrifice lies at the core of nationalism. Warfare is the most powerful enactment of the ritual of blood sacrifice…The creation of sentiments strong enough to hold the group together periodically requires the death of a significant portion of its members. In short, society depends upon the death of sacrificial victims at the hands of the group.
We, dear readers, are the group. Well, not really, since our children won’t be among the sacrificed, those who will die for capitalism. But in the broader sense, who could argue that our generation has not condemned them all to a collapsing ecosystem and polluted bodies?
Part Three
The cumulative, intended effect of the ritual is to revive our belief in the good intentions of our entire political class, and of our own innocence. Just as they ensure that we won’t be disturbed by outliers, they assure us that innocent Eden is both safe and honorable. Together, they reaffirm our denial with the implied message that nothing is wrong, that our fear – which they exploit at every possible opportunity – is ungrounded. “Whomever you vote for, the King will be here,” they seem to tell us, “…Everything is under control.”
Thus, they invite us to share the fiction that, despite our fears, democracy will survive, and there will be a peaceful, cooperative transition when the next king-figure is anointed.
Is the system broken or has it been working quite well? This is not an “either-or” choice; it’s both. However, the fact that fewer and fewer of us have been willing to expect anything more than flowery phrases from these con-men – only half of us vote at all, and many of the rest of us have been choosing the “lesser of two evils” our entire lives – is, I think, a source of concern to the kingmakers and gatekeepers. It indicates, in mythological terms, that the holes in the fabric of the myth of innocence are growing. All the more need, then, for them to create another opportunistic ritual: the next war to protect “freedom” in Iran or Venezuela.
Nicholas Maduro is only the latest in a long tradition of Third World leaders whom the U.S. has labeled as the face of evil. As I wrote in Chapter Eight of my book:
Around 1985, the Other became more personal when television identified many charismatic Third World villains. After the first generation (Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro) came Muammar Gadaffy, Idi Amin, Yasser Arafat, Ayatollah Khomeini, Manuel Noriega, Kim Il Sung, Slobodan Milosevic, Hugo Chavez, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden…
Note three themes here. First, U.S. propaganda attacks were often timed to impact (or obscure) domestic issues. Second, only Milosevic was white (but Slavic). Third, several of these men had previously worked for the U.S. Back in 1932, Roosevelt had said of Nicaragua’s Anastacio Somoza, “He’s an S.O.B., but he’s our S.O.B.!” It is as if the U.S. keeps them on ice, allowing them to quietly do their work until it needs to reveal them as the Devil’s latest incarnation. Then they become expendable, or, as with Bin Laden, even more valuable as fugitives, hiding in caves and bazaars, plotting more evil.
None of this is to advise you to stay home on Election Day 2020. If you choose to support the Democratic nominee, go ahead, especially if you live in a contested state. But do so with eyes wide open, as a practical decision to support the centrist (regardless of how he or she defines himself) over the outright fascist.
Idealization says more about our own psychological projections than it does about the candidates. When, after one of these debates, you hear yourself say (about either candidate), “He seems like a nice enough guy; I just don’t agree with his positions,” know that the ritual has been successful. The “nice guy” has proven that he can play the role if called upon; he has passed the audition.
That audition has been primarily for the edification of that part of the population that still holds to the naïve, liberal view that the debates might actually provide some input into a system with authentic choices. The Republican base, however, is not – and for a long time has not been – so innocent. They know perfectly well what scoundrels their leaders are, and they don’t care, as long as such leaders play the game of tweaking the noses of the east coast intelligentsia who have been telling them how to live. That Trump – He’s no racist, but he says what he means!
In 2016, Trump effectively reversed the “nice guy” rule. Apparently, quite a few people of the evangelical persuasion perceived quite correctly – they weren’t stupid – that he was a liar, braggart, misogynist and serial marriage cheat, and concluded that “He’s a bastard, but I agree with his policies.” For them, he passed the same audition, which had been defined primarily by fear, racism and xenophobia.
After two years of unparalleled corruption, scandals, contempt for the Constitution, war threats, climate denial, permission to hate, tax cuts for the mega-rich – and normalization by the media – they still support him. Indeed, in a mass epidemic of cognitive dissonance, many are convinced that he has been sent by God.
Is there any other explanation for their willingness to tolerate such a blatantly insincere gesture as his hugging of the sacred totem fetish? 
I mean, really, even this accomplished con-man couldn’t keep from smirking. Don’t matter none. He is their Divine King, and because of him, they – not unlike their liberal opponents with their Russiagate meta-narrative – can proclaim their innocence.
On the other hand, as Chomsky has said, “If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then everypost-war American president would have been hanged.” Amanda Marcotte suggests another explanation for Trump’s enduring popularity among his base:
In truth, Republicans have been priming their voters for decades to accept, defend and even adore a shameless criminal in the White House…First, Republicans normalized the idea that all politicians are corrupt by electing a series of deeply corrupt politicians themselves. Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush have all been warm-up acts to Trump…Second, (they) trained their base to think of investigations as bad-faith political power grabs…They are now thoroughly primed to interpret the investigations into Trump’s very real corruption as nothing more than Democrats seeking revenge…
That’s why polls that measure whether Republican voters “believe” Trump is telling the truth are somewhat beside the point. The real problem is that they don’t believe it matters whether Trump is a criminal…if it helps their team win.
So: in 2019-2020 we have a Republican base that isn’t simply unashamed but proud of its criminal leadership. We have a Democratic base that still thinks everyone is playing by the same rules, that logical argument will convince others. We have a Democratic leadership that participates in these rituals of innocence as long as the corporate money flow lasts. And we have the other fifty percent of the population who, like those Honduran peasants, don’t vote because they see no reason to. Finally, we have media – print and social – that serve the same wealthy class who fund these two political parties by marginalizing progressive voices.
In the next round of presidential debates – our seasonal, contrived rituals – watch as most Democrats studiously avoid any mention of the military budget and our imperial wars, especially in Venezuela and Palestine. For the time being, it will still be the children of other nations who are sacrificed. But the group – we – will remain vigilant, prepared for those conditions when the next opportunistic rituals of sacrifice and regeneration become necessary. Then, once again, it will be our children (well, not really ours, unless we live in the crossover states or in urban ghettos) who will be asked to enter the fire to glorify their parents.
Perhaps I’m being too cynical; I hope so. Perhaps it serves no purpose to simply point out our failures without offering an alternative vision. Perhaps it does serve a deeper purpose to point out that these are not failures; that the system continues to run smoothly for the one percent. And certainly, there has been much good news since the 2018 election, especially in the fact that Republicans are obsessed with demonizing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They just can’t stop talking about her, and the Green New Deal has become the kind of meme or positive frame that George Lakoff has been asking the Democrats to come up with for years.
But the fact that the Democratic leadership have dug in their heels to marginalize her, Bernie Sanders and other progressives indicates that the fix is still in, that the next election cycle will conclude with more rituals of denial and self-congratulation. In other words, the great shift in mythological thinking that is necessary for a transition to a sustainable world has yet to manifest.
What will it take to change things? Really change things? Certainly, the passing of the Mitch McConnells of the world – and the Diane Feinsteins – is absolutely necessary. Could this millionaire warmonger have stated the generational divide – not just that, but her absolute contempt for children – any more clearly? Let’s thank her for clarifying that, in case anyone thinks she has anything worthwhile to offer.
Significant demographic changes are right around the corner. America is getting darker and younger, less individualistic, more communitarian, more critical of this death culture. Death culture? Is that too strong a phrase? As I wrote in Chapter Eight, nearly fifty years ago the social critic Phillip Slater was appalled by the carnage Americans were inflicting upon the Vietnamese:
…obsession with the body count, rather than control of territory, became an end in itself. General Westmoreland set the tone when he smugly dismissed civilian casualties: “It does deprive the enemy of the population, doesn’t it?” With this kind of permission coming from the top, massacres became commonplace, as they had been in Korea and would continue to be, wherever the U.S. would oppose dark-skinned people. Phillip Slater argues, “This transfer of killing from a means to an end in itself constitutes a practical definition of genocide.” He asks, “Do Americans hate life? Has there ever been a people who have destroyed so many living things?”
The three great Athenian playwrights – Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides – were, after Homer, the storytellers of their culture. Sophocles said that he wrote about how people might be, while Euripides (author of The Bacchae) wrote about how people really are.
I don’t think that a culture can rebirth itself until it has fully acknowledged what has no longer been serving it, and what needs to die. We will not be fully able to imagine new stories until enough of us realize – like alcoholics – that we have hit bottom. This is why I must continue to write about who we are and leave the imagination of who we might be to more optimistic voices.
It may still be possible for significant change to occur through elections – may it be so. But without addressing a much more profound level, the causes of our condition – the vast well of grief and self-contempt at the core of the white American psyche – we condemn ourselves, and the Earth, to more of the same.
The new story of Who We Are is waiting for enough of us to call it forth. We are capable of creating new public rituals that affirm the values of community without sacrificing our children. The old knowledge is still in our bones. Our indigenous souls remember. At this point in history, perhaps only poets can write about who we might be. It might be about remembering who we once were:
The Ancient Ones
From the beginning, we have been with you.
We are the ancient ones and we remember.We remember the time when there was only Love,
The time when all breathing was one.
We remember the seed of your being
Planted in the belly of the vast, black night.
We remember the red cave of deep slumber.The time of forgetting,
The sound of your breath, the pulse of your heart.
We remember the force of your longing for life,
The cries of your birth bringing you forth.We are the Ancient Ones and we have waited and watched.
You say that you cannot remember that time
That you have no memory of us.
You say that you cannot hear our voices
That our touch no longer moves you.
You say there can be no return,
That something is lost, that there is only silence.We say the time of waiting is over.
We say the silence has been broken.
We say there can be no forgetting now.
We say listen.We are the bones of your grandmother’s grandmothers.
We have returned now.
We say you cannot forget us now
We say we are with you and you are us.Remember. Remember.
— Patricia Reis
