Jendrysik: Jeremiah versus Jihad
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practices within the democratic polity with calls for repentance. For these writers, the
tensions created by these demands prove impossible to resolve.
In this essay I will focus on three public figure who have used the events of 9/11
as a platform for a broader analysis of the current American and world condition. Victor
Davis Hanson “advocates the unapologetic and aggressive practice of old fashioned
Periclean values.” He “implores us wimpy moderns to see the world as the ancients did,
in tragic and heroic terms” (Tepperman, 31).
Gore Vidal “is a dissenting patriot, a
nostalgist of the lost republic” (DW, 63).
He sees himself as a lonely voice, a gadfly on
the slumbering body politic. Patrick Buchanan is both an insider and outsider. He
presents himself as a true believer, seeking to defend real American values (which are of
course conservative ones), against the corruptions of both right and left. He “cherishes
an image of himself as a gallant marauder in a cause achingly lost” (Morrow). All three
claim that American faces disaster unless it changes its ways.
While it is true that political ranters announcing inevitable doom have existed for
most of the history of the United States, today these types of publications enjoy wider
circulation than ever. “There are plenty of ways to read modern American culture, but
the Jeremiahs have been roaring loudest” (Monroe, 450). We live in “an era of best
selling jeremiads on both sides of the political divide” (Brinkley, 10). Why are such
works so popular? Because they always present plausible and preexisting arguments.
They play to the deep seated anxieties of the American people. They make statements
which can be believed, even if closer inspection reveals that they have not given you the
whole story. But, they have credibility because the American people are attuned to the
narrative of decline and have been bombarded with tales of a lost golden age.
The modern Jeremiad, in the American context, is a two-headed beast. Any
author who attempts such a performance must be aware of the expectations of his
audience. It seems clear that their audiences, like the listeners to a fire and brimstone
sermon, want some punishment. But, in both cases, the reader or listener wants a way
1
Tepperman notes that “Vice President Dick Cheney positively gushed over Victor Davis Hanson’s
Autumn of War, telling his assistants it encapsulated his tough-quy philosophy” (31).
2
In this essay I will refer to Vidal’s books as follows: PWPP for Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace; DW
for Dreaming War; and IA for Imperial America.
3
They do this by taking advantage of what Arthur Herman has called the move of “declinism” from an
explicit issue to an implicit one in modern political discourse (364). Contemporary readers have
integrated an expectation that society is in decline into their ideological systems.
Convention