The great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.
It was years after college before I understood why a political science professor made us read “The Prince,” by Niccolo Machiavelli.
Now, hardly a week goes by that I don’t spot something in the news which confirms the cold-blooded wisdom of that Florentine philosopher-statesman.
One nugget from his 16th-Century manual-for-manipulators: If ever you go to war, make sure you kill your enemy or at least render him incapable of coming back to haunt you.
But no, this column isn’t about Saddam Hussein. It’s about the rise of symbol over substance in American political life, about how our obsession with the former leads to neglect of the latter.
Sounds a bit airy, I know, but consider last week’s story about the New Orleans school district where a majority-black school board has set out to rename all schools there which had been named for historical figures who once owned slaves.
Last month, in the 22nd name change there in five years, it was goodbye to old George Washington School and hello to Dr. Charles Richard Drew Elementary (Drew being a pioneering black surgeon and hematologist.)
No doubt this bit of symbolism brought great satisfaction to some. As one civil rights activist declared to The New York Times: “To African-Americans, George Washington has about as much meaning as David Duke.”
Sad to say, this sort of racial nose-thumbing has been going on across the South, where it’s payback time in jurisdictions where African-Americans have taken over the political apparatus. (Another example: The rash of multimillion-dollar liability awards ordered by black juries against white-owned corporations.) Then there’s the pride southern blacks can take in sending a record number of African-Americans to Congress (post-Reconstruction.) This thanks to another symbolic victory–the legal upholding of racially gerrymandered congressional districts.
All of which has produced, to my mind, one substantive result: The triumph of conservative Republicanism from Virginia to Texas.
Blacks can point with pride to the toppling of George Washington, but the practical effect of such stunts, combined with self-imposed political segregation, has been to drive blue-collar whites–yesterday’s Democrats–into the waiting arms of Sens. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.)
And blacks wonder why affirmative action is on the ropes.
But don’t get me wrong, the rise of symbol over substance isn’t confined to any one race or political cause.
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Fact is, Americans everywhere are being urged to focus on the half-time show rather than the ball game.
In Springfield last week, Illinois lawmakers put off debate on school funding and electricity deregulation to fight over the wording of prayers said at the beginning of each day’s legislative session.
“I think this is absolutely atrocious,” thundered House Minority Leader Lee Daniels (R-Elmhurst) about new, ecumenical guidelines which ask clergymen, out of respect for those of the Jewish or Islamic faiths, not to make references to Christ or the crucifixion in their invocations.
But that’s how it went during much of last week’s fall veto session. Matters of substance, such as adequate funding for the state’s transportation network or who’s supposed to control the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, were tabled or sloughed off. Matters with highly charged symbolic value, but over which the legislature has no constitutional power, were hotly debated and voted upon. We now know exactly where our politicians stand on partial-birth abortion and the death penalty . . . as if the U.S. Supreme Court were looking to Springfield for advice.
Elsewhere on the symbolic front, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops voted to study a return to the no-meat-on-Friday rule. This is what the bishops are worried about. One might have thought they’d be frantic about all the near-empty convents and seminaries. Or about reports of hard feelings between parishioners and foreign-born (i.e., imported) priests. Might it be time for a sermon or two on multiculturalism? Or maybe a little give on the ordination of women? Or letting priests marry?
Not on your life. Why tackle real issues when you can bring back fish and macaroni?
Even at Chicago’s City Hall, where money talks and symbols walk, Mayor Richard M. Daley last week was busy rearranging certain ornaments. Seems a lot of straight North Siders didn’t like his plan to redecorate a stretch of North Halsted Street with neon rainbows signifying gay and lesbian pride.
So the mayor’s planners scrapped the neon and the gateway arches and drew up a more restrained tribute to the area’s thriving homosexual community.
Which is fine. But the way things are going, if I were one of those North Halsted storekeepers, I’d make sure Daley still delivers on the concrete curbs, benches and tree planters he originally promised.
After all, you can’t sit on a symbol. Or walk your dog next to one.
Though that’s all some of them are good for.