MARK JUDGE: JFK’s Death Split the American Psyche.
In his brilliant book Camelot and the Cultural Revolution, James Piereson argues that Kennedy’s death shattered American liberalism. Unable to face the fact that Kennedy was murdered by a communist, liberals became intolerant, prone to hysteria and conspiracy theories, and intent on punishing America for the sins of its past. Feminism transformed from a quest for quality to hating men, particularly the darker impulses of men. For fifty years conservatives have fought against this hostile cultural takeover by the left. But the right has also accepted a central premise of liberalism, which is the religion of progress. While liberals believe that happiness lies in ever-expanding rights, total sexual freedom, and the eradication of tradition, conservatives claim that if taxes are cut low enough consumption will increase and the economy will expand indefinitely. Ultimately, everyone—or at least most people—will be rich. When told that Richard Nixon argued that the West would win the Cold War because we had more color televisions, Kennedy replied that he “would prefer to have his TV be black and white.” We’re more than consumers. Difficult to imagine President Trump making the same argument.
In his book The True and Only Heaven: Progress and It’s Critics, Christopher Lasch noted that the fact that both left and right believe in the idea that societies move towards perfection would have been considered bizarre to the ancients. He also argued that people need more than progress. ”If humanity thrives on peace and prosperity,” Lasch wrote, “it also needs an occasional taste of battle. Men and women need to believe that ‘life is a critical affair,’ in Reinhold Niebuhr’s words.”
These words are an echo of Jung’s belief that to feel whole men need to feel that they are partaking in a “cosmic destiny.” To be equipped to partake in that destiny, men need to be not just procreators and providers, but warriors, poets and artists. They need to be empathetic, well-spoken, and wise leaders. They can’t just preach virtue and cut taxes. That have to be in touch with their shadow. Conservatives, while doing the long and hard work of beating back the punitive left and tying to maintain the institutions that had made civilization possible, and with the possible exception of Ronald Reagan, never really spoke to America’s soul. On the right there is a demand for a kind of plutonic perfection in men, who are expected to got to school, work, raise a family, then die. Any manifestations of the shadow, of lust, anger, and dangerous risk-taking that has been a part of the male psyche for millennia, and that was so much a part of Kennedy, is rejected. (An exception might be the alt-right, although theirs is a celebration rather than an acceptance of the shadow, resulting in screeds that lack Kennedy’s wit.) Conservatives often partake in what Jung called “shadow projection,” condemning another for your own darkness. Thus it was no surprise when several of the men who were leading the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton wound up being guilty of sexual misconduct. Sen. Robert Livingston and Newt Gingrich had extramarital affairs, and Speaker Dennis Hastert was found to be a “serial child molestor.” Shortly after, William Bennett, Dr. Virtue himself, got busted for a gambling problem.
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