Someone asked for it, so here it is, a follow up to my journal about Obama as Messiah. This one is about Edwards, and his mythic appeal. I guess I will do Hillary next. I am not doing any of the Republicans, because I do not find any of them appealing.
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you and me.
Says I "But Joe, you're ten years dead"
"I never died" said he,
"I never died" said he.
In her book about Haiti and Jamaica,
Tell My Horse Zora Neale Hurston describes the phenomenon in which the spirit Guede takes possession of or “mounts” a human subject. People of the lowest social classes suddenly begin to speak freely, criticizing their “betters” in the bluntest of terms, no matter what the danger or cost to themselves may be.
It seems to be his mission to expose and reveal. At any rate, Guede is a whimsical diety, and his revelations are often startlingly accurate and very cruel…Perhaps that is natural for the god of the poor to be akin to the god of the dead for there is something about poverty that smells of death.
Haiti, like the United States, is a land that is defined by the warring spirits of colonialism and revolution. Here, in the US,
we also have a tradition in which people from the lowest social classes dare to rise above their “place” in a way that would not be tolerated in Europe. Across the Atlantic Ocean, these upstarts would be firmly labeled as revolutionaries---Trotskys.
Here, they become American Saints.Some have compared Barack Obama to Abraham Lincoln. I am not sure why. Maybe it is because of their body type, tall and lean. Maybe it because Lincoln presided over the Civil War which freed the slaves, and Obama is half White, half Black. However, John Edwards is closer to the Abe Lincoln type.
What follows is not meant to be definitive history. These are American narratives: Lincoln was born in a single room cabin to two uneducated parents. He was self educated for the most part. He made his career and fortune as a lawyer, something he was extremely good at. Though he married a woman from a southern, slave owning family (a contradiction that would be exploited by his political enemies the way the contradiction between Edwards' wealth and populism is currently being exploited), his politics tended towards what we would today call the left—--anti-slavery, anti-imperialist, pro-working class. He was the underdog presidential candidate in 1860 of a new party that preached that “free labor” was better than the power wielded by slave owners. His election sparked the greatest divide the country had ever known. He was definitely a “divider” not a “uniter” regardless of what he may have hoped or intended. His assassination at the end of the war seems inevitable, if only because it is the logical ending to that way that the story of his life is framed.
He was, after all, the saintliest American president in the eyes of many, and saints end up martyrs. Obama is the child of educated parents. Despite the turbulence of his early years, he attended private middle school and high school in Hawaii, and he went on to Ivy League college and law school. He is a product of all that is best of the American educational system. His campaign rhetoric is full of unity and harmony and
can’t we all just get along. There is much to love in Obama and little to fear. A mentally ill individual might target him, because he is a celebrity, but he does not inspire antipathy.
John Edwards, on the other hand, is a lot like Lincoln. The son of a working class family in which no one before him had ever gone to college, he worked part time in a mill while in high school, then he went to a public college and law school. He made his fortune practicing as a plaintiff’s attorney for a couple of decades, before he decided to go into politics after the death of his son. His campaign rhetoric is 100% populist. He wants no part of “unity”. If Obama is the Messiah who comes to bring the people together in their time of adversity, John Edwards is St. Joan of Arc who comes to lead them into battle, irregardless of the cost to her/himself. Or, since I am writing about American saints, he is John Brown, that polarizing figure from the years before the Civil War, about whom Frederick Douglas wrote
"Did John Brown fail? John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic. His zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was as the taper light; his was as the burning sun. I could live for the slave; John Brown could die for him."
The main difference between the superman/messiah and the saint is the former is invulnerable. The superhero may choose to die for our sins, but he will always be reborn or survive the bullet. He was born under a blessed star. The trials of his early years can not diminish him. His kingly, heroic demeanor and gifts always shine through at a fairly early age, and he is revealed to be the chosen one—like Obama.
The saint, on the other hand, endures many trials. His children die. His wife gets cancer. He faces midlife crisis. His faith is tested. He is reviled by the press. His very life becomes disposable. Like John Henry, a machine appears that will take away his livelihood, and he ends up sacrificing his own existence in order to save the American worker. Like Joe Hill, he is framed for murder and executed to stop his activities as a union organizer. Like John Brown, he must become a murderer and then allow himself to die, in order to convince others that slavery is a form of intolerable violence. Even if he does not die a physical death, he lives like an ascetic, pushing himself beyond the limits of the flesh---36 hour marathon campaign stops fueled by pure passion.
Here is what Joseph Campbell said about the hero as saint in
The Hero With a Thousand Faces Should the feelings chance to become aware of the real import of the world’s act and thoughts, one would know what Oedipus knew; the flesh would suddenly appear to be an ocean of self-violation. This is the sense of the legend of Pope Gregory the Great, born of incest, living in incest, he flees to a rock in the sea, and there does penance for his very life.
John Edwards is a very rich man. Moreover, he made that money himself. Most Americans in his shoes would retire, secure in the knowledge that they have had successful careers in every way that matters as Americans---big house, lovely wife, fine children, cash in the bank, top of their profession. However,
John Edwards became aware of something ----maybe the same something that turned the prince Siddhartha away from his wealth and family----that made success no longer enough. This makes John Edwards a
very dangerous, very frightening man to those who seek to control the American masses through the narrative
America is a great land, because everyone here has an equal opportunity to get rich. . If the Great Game Show in which we live is not really enough, then what is?
I have always suspected that many journalists are failed writers of fiction, plays and screenplays. The sloppy way that the corporate media has handled the
St. John Edwards problem would tend to confirm this. Nietzsche wrote “What does not kill me, makes me stronger” This is oh so true when it comes to the trials of the saints. The more times they are dropped in vats of boiling oil or forced to walk through pits of poisonous vipers only to emerge unscathed, the greater their prestige as saints becomes. When the corporate media assigned John Solomon to pen his
Edwards is a Phony narrative for the Washington Post in advance of the presidential campaign season, it drew left wing voters’ eyes to the candidate. “Hmmm,” they thought. “The corporate media is attacking Edwards. Is he the real McCoy?” The studied way in which the mainstream media blacklisted him, the myth of the
Two Man Race between Hillary and Obama served to further cement Edwards’ reputation as a saint under attack by the nation’s corporations. And then, when he came in second in Iowa, and the press continued the
Two Man Race farce, suspicions were confirmed. John Edwards was a media martyr.
And only saints get martyred by the American press.
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