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Waiting for the Barbarians
After two centuries of experiment with the theories of the Enlightenment and the volatile substances of democracy, America’s leading citizens have come to believe that they have safely arrived at the end of history. Substituting the wonder of money for the work of politics, (a dirty business best left to the hired help), the owners of the nation’s capital take comfort in the rising Dow Jones average (up 2,500 points in the last three years) and complacently assume that the engines of immortal oligarchy require little else except the chores of routine maintenance.
Unhappily, the political servants of the corporate state find it increasingly difficult to keep their master’s house in order. Both the Republican and Democratic parties find themselves adrift in scandal, discredited by their means of raising campaign money, suspected of crimes against the common good, convicted of neglecting the poor, despoiling the environment, raffling off the prospects of the country’s long-term future for the promise of a short-term vote.
Lewis Lapham received the 1995 National Magazine Award for his essay writing, in which the judges discovered “an exhilarating point of view in an age of conformity”. With invective all the more deadly for its grace and wit, Lapham presents the portrait of a feckless American establishment gone large in the stomach and soft in the head. His acerbic remarks on the 1996 Presidential election take into account Steve Forbes’ primary campaign, the non-candidacy of General Colin Powell, the comings and goings of Dick Morris, Senator Bob Dole’s triumphant return to television as a pitchman for Air France, the building of Hilary Rodham Clinton’s Potemkin village in Iowa, and the sublime vacuity of President Clinton’s inaugural address. A previously unpublished and substantial concluding piece looks at the fate of indolent ruling classes through history.
“Our American political classes, being themselves complicit in the well-financed banditry at large in the world, come and go talking of Hilary Clinton’s astrologer and the sins of children’s television, about the wickedness of the National Arts Endowment and Bill Clinton’s Penis. Their insouciance unnerves me. The barbarism implicit in the restless energies of big-time, global capitalism requires some sort of check or balance, if not by a spiritual doctrine or impulse, then by a lively interest in (or practice of) democratic government. The collapse of communism at the end of the Cold War removed from the world’s political stage the last pretense of a principled opposition to the rule of money, and the pages of history suggest that oligarchies unhindered by conscience or common sense seldom take much interest in the cause of civil liberty.”
Unhappily, the political servants of the corporate state find it increasingly difficult to keep their master’s house in order. Both the Republican and Democratic parties find themselves adrift in scandal, discredited by their means of raising campaign money, suspected of crimes against the common good, convicted of neglecting the poor, despoiling the environment, raffling off the prospects of the country’s long-term future for the promise of a short-term vote.
Lewis Lapham received the 1995 National Magazine Award for his essay writing, in which the judges discovered “an exhilarating point of view in an age of conformity”. With invective all the more deadly for its grace and wit, Lapham presents the portrait of a feckless American establishment gone large in the stomach and soft in the head. His acerbic remarks on the 1996 Presidential election take into account Steve Forbes’ primary campaign, the non-candidacy of General Colin Powell, the comings and goings of Dick Morris, Senator Bob Dole’s triumphant return to television as a pitchman for Air France, the building of Hilary Rodham Clinton’s Potemkin village in Iowa, and the sublime vacuity of President Clinton’s inaugural address. A previously unpublished and substantial concluding piece looks at the fate of indolent ruling classes through history.
“Our American political classes, being themselves complicit in the well-financed banditry at large in the world, come and go talking of Hilary Clinton’s astrologer and the sins of children’s television, about the wickedness of the National Arts Endowment and Bill Clinton’s Penis. Their insouciance unnerves me. The barbarism implicit in the restless energies of big-time, global capitalism requires some sort of check or balance, if not by a spiritual doctrine or impulse, then by a lively interest in (or practice of) democratic government. The collapse of communism at the end of the Cold War removed from the world’s political stage the last pretense of a principled opposition to the rule of money, and the pages of history suggest that oligarchies unhindered by conscience or common sense seldom take much interest in the cause of civil liberty.”
230 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 1997
About the author
Lewis H. Lapham
181 books134 followersLewis Henry Lapham was the editor of Harper's Magazine from 1976 until 1981, and again from 1983 until 2006. He is the founder and current editor of Lapham's Quarterly, featuring a wide range of famous authors devoted to a single topic in each issue. Lapham has also written numerous books on politics and current affairs.
Lapham's Quarterly
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/
Lapham's Quarterly
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 26, 2014
Most everything by Lapham is worth reading, if only for his command of English, which I think might be unparalleled among living authors, at least in America. This collection from around the GWB era deals with many of the events of that time, and is a useful account of what transpired then. Worth having as a reminder of things that have long since fallen into the memory hole.
January 21, 2017
Searing, prescient political essays by the editor of Harper's from the 90's capture that time and this one in exquisite prose. "Given our American belief that money is the alpha and omega of human existence and the god from which all blessings flow, who better to serve as Pontifex Maximus and chief priest of the American civil religion than a figure already encased in gold?"
July 26, 2020
This book views the collapse of modern democratic governments as a repeat of the fall of Rome. Knowing that the outsiders, the "barbarians" (Huns, Goths) were a critical element of Rome's final collapse, Lapham questions where they will come from in a global civilization that has no "outside". His answer is clear: the barbarians will come from within. My book, Collapse 2020: Fall of the First Global Civilization explains the psychological factors, which Lapham only superficially mentions. These factors will create "barbarianism" within our society.
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June 22, 2009Read the STOP SMILING interview with author Lewis Lapham
Q&A: Lewis Lapham
By JC Gabel
(This interview originally appeared in STOP SMILING The Downfall of American Publishing Issue)
Stop Smiling: You started your career as a reporter at The San Francisco Examiner. Do you find it strange that going to journalism school has become such a prestigious accomplishment? When you were coming up, it was much more a trade profession where you learned on the job. Do you think that might be what's wrong with journalism today?
Lewis Lapham: Yes, I do. In 1957 when I went to work as a reporter of the lowest grade as a cub at the Examiner, I was the only Ivy League kid on the premises. I probably was the only college educated kid on the premises. It was a trade, a craft. By and large, the attitude of the city room was more in tune with the folks in the bleacher seats at the ballpark rather than with the folks in the box seats. I came to New York in the winter of 1960 and went to the Herald Tribune and that was still by and large the tone at the Herald Tribune. It was when Walter Lippmann was still writing for the paper, but by and large again, it was people that were in it for the hell of it and who did not take themselves or their profession too seriously. Nobody in New York in 1960, at least on the Tribune, would have identified himself as a journalist. Journalism was a word reserved for Englishmen. One was either a newspaperman or a reporter, and again the tendency was still to identify oneself with the have-nots rather than with the haves.
That all changes in the Sixties, and journalism becomes a glamorous profession. In 1960, before Kennedy's election, I am at an Upper East Side cocktail party and a very pretty young girl from Smith or Vassar or something says to me, “What do you do?” And I say, “I'm a newspaperman.” She looks at me with contempt and says, “Yes, but what are you going to do when you grow up?” That was the attitude. Journalists were below the salt. There were a few exceptions. There is still, at least on my part and on the part of a number of other people, a romance to it. The notion that the way that one learns to become a novelist is to spend a few years working for a newspaper, a la Ernest Hemingway or James Thurber or John O'Hara. There were a number of the writers who came out of the Twenties and Thirties that started as newspapermen. That all changes in the Sixties. It begins to change with the election of John Kennedy. Suddenly journalism becomes a high-end profession.
Read the complete interview...
Q&A: Lewis Lapham
By JC Gabel
(This interview originally appeared in STOP SMILING The Downfall of American Publishing Issue)
Stop Smiling: You started your career as a reporter at The San Francisco Examiner. Do you find it strange that going to journalism school has become such a prestigious accomplishment? When you were coming up, it was much more a trade profession where you learned on the job. Do you think that might be what's wrong with journalism today?
Lewis Lapham: Yes, I do. In 1957 when I went to work as a reporter of the lowest grade as a cub at the Examiner, I was the only Ivy League kid on the premises. I probably was the only college educated kid on the premises. It was a trade, a craft. By and large, the attitude of the city room was more in tune with the folks in the bleacher seats at the ballpark rather than with the folks in the box seats. I came to New York in the winter of 1960 and went to the Herald Tribune and that was still by and large the tone at the Herald Tribune. It was when Walter Lippmann was still writing for the paper, but by and large again, it was people that were in it for the hell of it and who did not take themselves or their profession too seriously. Nobody in New York in 1960, at least on the Tribune, would have identified himself as a journalist. Journalism was a word reserved for Englishmen. One was either a newspaperman or a reporter, and again the tendency was still to identify oneself with the have-nots rather than with the haves.
That all changes in the Sixties, and journalism becomes a glamorous profession. In 1960, before Kennedy's election, I am at an Upper East Side cocktail party and a very pretty young girl from Smith or Vassar or something says to me, “What do you do?” And I say, “I'm a newspaperman.” She looks at me with contempt and says, “Yes, but what are you going to do when you grow up?” That was the attitude. Journalists were below the salt. There were a few exceptions. There is still, at least on my part and on the part of a number of other people, a romance to it. The notion that the way that one learns to become a novelist is to spend a few years working for a newspaper, a la Ernest Hemingway or James Thurber or John O'Hara. There were a number of the writers who came out of the Twenties and Thirties that started as newspapermen. That all changes in the Sixties. It begins to change with the election of John Kennedy. Suddenly journalism becomes a high-end profession.
Read the complete interview...
September 3, 2013
If you're a politics nut, this is almost like a bathroom book. The essays are of a short(ish) length, and contain Lapham's trademark piercing insight into American culture. If there's anything negative about it, it's that it reads more like a pile of his old work with Harper's magazine than it does more robust pieces written for a book/edition. Take notice of the eponymous poem at the start of the book, by C.P. Cavafy. It's good.
November 9, 2011
I loved his essays in Harpers, but it is one thing to read them once a month and another to read them all back to back.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews