The Right and Marilyn Manson Hold Counsel

Certain phrases have switches that can be flipped one way or the other, contrary to the avowed intention of the writer. from the simple exercise of turning a bully's taunts into an emblem of pride to appropriating curses as inspiration for further rage, the switch in words meant to deride and turn you from self-idolized image to focus of ridicule exposes the raw nerve of much of our psychology.

It's said that the pull of the profane can be bent to one's own purpose since derision and social alienation appeal on levels that lie deep within the apparatus of social margins. Those on the outside suffer insult and terror and have little choice but to fight back or accept ignominy and shame. What better way to fling back into the face of such social stigma the nettles that sting than to imbibe the poison and draw strength from weakness? ...

The appeal of what some ethnographers have called the liminal is well-attested in history and ethnographic studies. It is perhaps best exemplified by the ancient European ritual of all fool’s day. In this ceremony the person most dispossessed and the object of public ridicule was placed in the seat of power for a day; the leader was demoted to the lowest status. In the reversal of values, what used to be profane and disallowed became suddenly allowable. It's said that these rituals are the basis of well-known modern festivities like carnival as it is played out in Brazil and what used to be New Orleans.

While these secularized festivals have perhaps lost their religious nuances, the religious impulse behind them has gone underground and been subsumed beneath more rationalized practices. Yet, the impulse and psychological mechanisms that make these practices meaningful may still be part of what's called human nature. They do appear in numerous cultures around the world and they appear to be able to maintain their meaningfulness even within the meaning-draining maelstrom that is modern secularization.

Indeed, you could say that such mechanisms have become the wellspring for people within the desert of the real. That is, to maintain distinctness from the conformity required by the modern rationalized state, people seem driven to find a way to mark themselves off from the confines erected by that conformity. From Marilyn Manson to glam rock to other niches in popular culture, the pull of the outsider and the forbidden and profane draw on these psychological mechanisms.

It'd be a mistake, however, to limit the play of this psychological phenomenon to the cultural. For they seem also to marshal their emotional cargo in politics, thereby lending various political movements with a powerful reservoir of anger and rage. The modern image-makers known as political consultants can massage these emotions into whatever direction they wish. Indeed, it seems to me that the secret of much of the Rove-laden propaganda emanating from the bowels of the White House has discovered a way to exploit these emotions. Karl Rove has discovered how to take what is intended as a negative characterization and to turn it on its head to become badges of honor.

Given the proliferation of political correctness, those who find themselves the butt of jokes and called uncool are drawn to messages that exploit that very outsiderness and help them to glory in it. In this way, you can explain the popularity of such culture mavens as Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Anne Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh.

No doubt, there are social, political and economic sources for the anger of the so-called trailer riff-raff that liberals and Leftists love to despise. With the uncertainties promulgated by neoliberal economic models, the dissolution of traditional family structures and values, the attack by enlightenment values on religious institutions--all these promote a crisis environment in which those seeking stability grasp at any straw to maintain equilibrium.

In a world comprised of opposites, it's not so much that they attract each other (as the old cliché goes) as that one turns the image of the opposite into a positive source for motivation and meaning.

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