Skip to main contentLewis Lapham is the type of social critic who frightens members of the American ruling class, as, like Gore Vidal, he's one of them. His family helped found Texaco, and his grandfather was the mayor of San Francisco for many years. But as the longtime editor of Harper's Magazine, Lapham has become a trenchant chronicler of his times, creating a body of essays so piercingly critical of American governance and culture that he's been hailed as the H.L. Mencken of our age. He's also found himself recently on the conservatives' hit list, joining the likes of Vidal, Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer and Noam Chomsky as a potential "traitor." Lapham is in Portland to present his latest book of essays, Theater of War, in which he discusses, among other things, the "aggressive humanitarianism" of the Bush doctrine. WW spoke to Lapham by phone last Friday.
Willamette Week: Congratulations on making William Bennett's neoconservatives' hit list as a national menace.
Lewis Lapham: [laughs] Thank you.
With the events happening this week around the so-called "Iraq Debate"--Al Gore's critical speech in San Francisco, the Senate rebukes from Tom Daschle and Ted Kennedy--
do you think the Democrats are in danger of shaking off their torpor?
No. I think that they're safe in their torpor. They're so used to it that it would be hard to shed it.
What are your thoughts on the government's response to Gerhardt Schroeder's re-election in Germany, where there have been accusations of anti-Americanism?
I find the U.S.'s behavior petulant. It's all part of the "you're with us or against us" attitude.
And we're criticizing the Germans for being insufficiently martial, as well.
There's a deep irony in that, of course. The whole approach to the forthcoming invasion of downtown Baghdad seems to take place outside the context of history. You listen to Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice, and it's as if they were unaware of the last 100 years, forget the 2000 preceding ones. It's a very ahistorical approach, and that to me is always dangerous. It's frightening. It's as if these people don't know what they're doing. If they do know, they are running against the current of our own history as well as against the grain of the American people. I've found within the last few days talking to audiences that there are a lot of people who object to what's happening, more than the polls and media care to recognize. Certainly, I've seen it at Harper's. There's been a great deal of mail since Sept. 11 from readers who appreciate our magazine's questioning of events. In fact, the magazine's newsstand rate has risen from 30,000 to 40,000 this year.
You mention this response in Theater of War, where you credit Americans for having a "higher quotient of intelligence and a greater store of idealism than their supervisors in Washington think they want or deserve."
These people in Washington are living in a bunker--Cheney certainly is--in a cloistered and claustrophobic atmosphere in place of reality or historical context. Instead, there are map overlays and abstract projections...I'm sure it all must look wonderful in the War Room, but to me it's farther away from reality than are the American people.
In Theater's introduction, you state that it's time America drop "the pose of innocence, kick the habit of entitlement, and write God out of the movie script." Seeing jubilant middle-class parents celebrating the reintroduction of creationism in Cobb County, Ga., schools this week, and continually ducking as Old Glory is publicly brandished, it doesn't seem your sane proposal is very practical at present.
It would be too bad if it wasn't, as the consequences will be dire. We'll end up in the same dream of power and omnipotence that history has a tendency to contradict. I realize how hard it would be to write God out of the script. It's a hope, but, no, I don't know how practical it is. If you're running for public office in this country, and you stand up and say you don't believe in God...your campaign just ended.
To inject more God into the conversation, what's your take on the Reverend Tony Blair?
He has the same type of evangelical spirit that moves Bush. I think Bush is a true believer, as is Ashcroft. Blair, too, I believe, is "twice-born" like them. Whereas I think Cheney and Rumsfeld are entirely cynical. I believe they regard the American people and certainly the media with contempt. Last June, at a NATO meeting in Brussels, Rumsfeld was asked by the gathered reporters what proof existed for the worldwide terrorist conspiracy. He brushed this question aside by saying, "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Under those rules, we'll all go to jail.
Is there anything in Theater of War that you would change?
No, I would add to it. I would like to add my current Harper's essay on Iraq and another one I wrote a few months back on the reorganization of the FBI, where they have taken even more police powers than were granted by the U.S.A. Patriot Act. Events have moved on since the final essay in the book, so I'm trying in my appearances to put the essays into the context of what has happened since their publication.
Other than Harper's, where would you instruct Americans to seek news and information?
I read the Manchester Guardian and the Financial Times. I don't have a computer, so I don't "surf." But as the editor of Harper's, I see so many manuscripts that often in the jumble I'll discover patterns.
By Lewis Lapham
(The New Press, 202 pages, $22.95)
Lewis Lapham will present
at Powell's City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651. 7:30 pm Wednesday, Oct. 2.
WWeek 2015