Presidential speeches are often dull, playing to a predictable base and never producing promised progress. Jimmy Carter’s “Crisis in Confidence” speech, delivered during a grim period in 1979 marked by long lines at the pump and a decadent and vacuous post-60’s fallout, is a stark exception. He addressed an emptiness at the heart of the American project, noting that greed and consumption had produced a numbing effect on the people and ruptured the psychological tenor of the country, resulting in a crisis in the meaning of our lives to be filled by wider and wider bell bottoms, medallions and cocaine. Washington politics post-Watergate had given rise to a cynicism that had lowered the vibrancy and texture of cultural life- a clinical depression. The downfall of the American project, according to Carter, would be from cynicism and selfishness, not reliance on foreign oil or inflation. Media interests since 1979 have silenced sharpened negative social critique, encouraging the polarity between conservatives and liberals rather than allowing for a more comprehensive inventory of our nation’s direction. We talk about mental health issues while worshiping at the altar of attention and money, hypocrisy and inertia blocking political progress. Carter’s “Crisis of Confidence” speech was, in his own words, a warning- in order to progress as a nation, we would need to confront the issues head-on.
Carter was scheduled to address the energy crisis and inflation with the same old dry policy proposals, but he decided a week before to address what he perceived were “deeper” issues in the nation. He held counsel with real American citizens, collecting the honest voices and reactions to a maddening world, tamped down by the breakneck pace of social systems and negative news. One interviewee told Carter, “Some of us have suffered from recession all our lives”; another, “The big-shots are not the only ones who are important. Remember, you can’t sell anything on Wall Street unless someone digs it up somewhere else first.” The masses live lives of quiet desperation, but also manifold hopes and dreams. The culture industry alienates us from each other, putting a primacy on our differences and appearances, selling arbitrary fashion that signifies “current fashion” and nothing else. An overeducated coterie has popularized political opinions too complex for most to wield appropriately. Regular people of all races and creeds feel left out, forced to keep up with a market of consumptive conformity that is leading nowhere. Carter’s social critique in such a national address was rare, an example of intellectual leadership that took a bold stance on a broader moral issue, and we may be in a similar period of malaise, as we reevaluate technology and the direction of our own lives.
Carter utilized the gravitas of the Oval Office, but appealed to an audience that had changed dramatically since the 1960’s, and a media environment that was in the early stages of what we now suffer through- a bit more jaded, a bit more drugged out. He implored the American people to pull themselves together, to think beyond the private accumulation of goods, which were increasingly manufactured overseas. The speech also addressed the emerging feelings of postmodernism: “[the problem is] a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.” That lack of meaning is the target of conservatives who blame the dissolution of the nuclear family and multiculturalism, but the lack of signification is important to postmodern theorists such as Frederic Jameson and Jean Baudrillard as well, who point at the dissolution of meaning-making structures as a result of technology-driven abstraction and “late capitalism”. It is a vague “problem” which cannot be fully articulated, and once articulated, loses some of its power. It is a monstrous unknown. We fill that void with the usual suspects: entertainment, empty validation, drug use. Carter states the obvious, but the often ignored:
“In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.”
Online leftists justify their impotent cynicism by dismissing hard work and strong families as “white supermacist” values, or an outdated idyll of the American past, but common purpose is a prerequisite for the comfortable lives that most of us are beneficiaries of. He noted that we continue to “close the door on our history”, which has only become more pronounced- we’ve taken it even further, and begun to rewrite history from a biased modern lens. Now, 43 years after Carter’s speech, we have a nonsensical outrage cycle that refuses to look within and ask where these arbitrary disagreements stem from, and who benefits from such a disorienting media landscape. We’ve reacted to our doubts about the meaning of our lives by becoming even more opinionated, contentious, and selfish, staring into our phone cameras and convincing ourselves that whatever little world we’ve woven for ourselves must be defended, and has to be the correct way to live. Self-interest is an existential fact, but many no longer agree to basic empirical truths and base worldview on ignorance. Our great commonality now, regardless of political affiliation, is desirousness- wealthy coastal elites with obscure nutrition regimens and expensive Teslas, suburban middle America, with manicured lawns, huge pick-up trucks and palatial tract homes, and meth heads with their daily score, enough to rev the engine till next time.
Carter confronted these despondent “vibes” as a Christian, but also as if holding an intervention: “Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our democracy.” Without belief In our ability to contribute to the nation as a whole, we’ve become self-absorbed leeches, buying nice chairs and new kitchen appliances and video games and clothing and concert seats to distinguish ourselves from nothing. Carter’s critiques still hold. We’ve lost interest in building better communities, let alone towns, let alone states, let alone a country, especially young people, who would rather be absorbed in a stew of commercial imagery . We are consumed by image- fashion and an obsession with the face have escalated narcissism into a parodic extreme. Within this environment, it is absurd to expect the government to save us, as they too are absorbed in the toxicity. Carter understood that Americans saw politics as a load of bullshit: “Looking for a way out of this crisis, our people have turned to the Federal Government and found it isolated from the mainstream of our nation’s life….
…Washington, D.C., has become an island. The gap between our citizens and our government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual.”
It’s worth noting that during the energy crisis, people believed that oil companies were raising prices for profit. The late 70’s were awash in conspiracy theories, much like our current Trump-stained moment. Carter might as well be addressing the country today, and his solemnity stands in stark contrast to the last few U.S. presidents. It would be hard to imagine Joe Biden addressing the tenor in the nation, as he sticks to prescribed media-friendly proposals and cultural conflicts, prefabricated to be intractable- racism, for example, is a perfectly circular issue, in that it will never be “resolved”, and can be mined for profit by conglomerates across the spectrum, or the COVID-19 pandemic, a never-ending crisis, or the Capital Riot on January 6th, which appears to be a red herring but has served as a distraction and excuse for Democrat inaction. Carter pointed to the fact that for the first time in modern polling, Americans believed the next five years would be worse than the last. Reagan and the economic boom of the 80’s staved off that fatalist prediction, but similar polls are given now, and if you’d bet five years ago that we’d be worse off, you would’ve been right. Most trends point to a worsening condition. We lack a leadership figure that is bipartisan enough to build the nation’s confidence back, and it seems the system is set up to prevent real heroes- much easier to have us arguing at each other’s throats about CGI-laden superhero movies, a failed equivalency.
There’s no lesson to learn. Jimmy Carter, who is considered a failed president, was the opposite. He was the canary in the coal mine, issuing a dire call for a real attitude adjustment. It was too little too late. The academy took over social criticism, making it an esoteric language style, a prfessionalizstion of people discussing how crappy the world is while securing jobs within a flimsy institutional structure, and a very luxurious careerism with shallow output. Want he pointed to, which was nothing less than a loss of belief in the meaning of our lives. He implored us to fight against an impulse towards disillusionment- we must continue this (post)-modern project, an ill-fated but worthwhile endeavor.
mantis fists 