Anyone who knows me will tell you I don’t mess around with the term “axial period” loosely. I know some of you may delight on telling those old “three cognitive psychotherapists walk into a bar …” jokes, but not me. No sir. I take epoch defining shifts seriously.
And I also see a lot of movies. Sometimes you see a movie that clarifies the manner in which the world has changed with such clarity that you have to pull out the big A word. I remember Animal House was one such movie. Now I have seen Barak Goodman’s new documentary Oklahoma City, and I begin to wonder if we are not at another axial crossroads.
Axial periods, for those who slept through cognitive psych, are periods in which mankind’s fundamental way of interacting with the world undergoes a permanent change. The first one, which spanned about five hundred years back in the centuries leading up to the birth of Christ, led to the emergence of organized religion and philosophy. Then, depending on which cultural anthropologist or anthropologic psychologist you prefer, there weren’t anymore, or there were a bunch more. These guys can’t even decide what to call themselves so it’s no surprise that they disagree on how often humanity reinvents itself. I choose Michael J. Mahoney myself and so believe that there have been two other axial periods – the Renaissance, ushering in the primacy of science, and then the 20th century, in which constructivism basically unmoored us from most previous traditions. Damn you, Albert Einstein. Everything was peachy before you said everything was relative. Well, everything was peachy for the power elites in any given society.
All right, no more pysch. Now onto movies!
Goodman’s movie comes at a fascinating time in our American culture. It is a detailed chronicle of the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. 168 people were killed, including more than 100 federal workers and 19 children, many of them babies, who were in the building’s Day Care Center. The devastating act of evil was carried out by a white male American citizen, Timothy McVeigh, an army veteran, with the assistance of two of his former army colleagues.
Now, I have to believe that as he was preparing his movie, Goodman operated under the same assumption that all of us mainstream establishment types had, be you liberal or conservative. That was that America would reject a candidate who gave voice to white nationalism, regardless of whatever promises of plenty he offered. I say this based on nothing more than the director’s name, which could not have been more perfect had he come out of an Aaron Sorkin screenplay. Barak Goodman. I kid you not.
But that’s besides my main point. Which is: consider how radically the world has changed in such a brief period. The flowering of democracy and brotherhood, from the Berlin Wall to the Arab Spring, from the European Union to the Paris Agreement. It really seemed for a while there like something was happening. Sure, there is no shortage of cynics or radicals who will be quick to point out that it was all illusory and things weren’t as rosy as they seemed. But by and large, it was a nice little run for progressivism. The United States even elected an African American man as President, just a few years later than Bobby Kennedy predicted they would.
But of course, there was push back. And now, as nationalism and emboldened brands of religious fanaticism and racism spread across much of the globe (not Iceland though – you guys are cool), we are asking, Peggy Lee-style, is that all there is?
Goodman’s movie is excellent. It gives a clear appraisal of how a man like Timothy McVeigh came to commit his heinous crime, tracing the growth of anti-government, white supremacist doctrine through Richard Butler’s Aryan Nation to the twin tragedies at Ruby Ridge and Waco, Texas. Anyone not familiar with those pieces of recent American history has some basic brushing up to do in order to begin to make sense of the USA, 2017.
Perhaps the most chilling aspect of the Goodman’s film is the way in which it demonstrates just how much the tables have turned. The biggest villain in the Aryan Nation view of the world was never the black man. Richard Butler believed that the United States federal government was the true evildoer, allowing for the disintegration of individual rights. Timothy McVeigh hit the Murrah Building because it represented that government. He was particularly angered by the law enforcement branches, the FBI and the ATF.
You see, way back then, government enforcement agencies were seen as the ones who would seize all the guns and lock up the dissenters who refused to make room for the sodomites and miscegenists. Watching Oklahoma City today, it is impossible not to fear that those very same enforcement agencies are now in the hands of the white supremacists who once saw them as the enemy. That is indeed the most terrifying aspect of Goodman’s movie. Suddenly, the story of Philadelphia police officer Ian Hans Lichterman and his “is it a Nazi symbol or not” tattoo takes on renewed significance. Or, since I promised this would be about movies … “If Luca sold out we’re in a lot of trouble, believe me. A lot of trouble.” (That’s The Godfather, for those of you who aren’t fifty year old men who have watched it fifty-plus times.)
So we are left wondering, are we indeed at another axial period?
I suppose it all depends on your perspective. I mean, I really like John Prine and his offbeat, progressive-leaning songs. But isn’t the advice in “Spanish Pipedream” – Blow up your tv, throw away your paper, go to the country, build you a home, plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches, try to find Jesus on your own – exactly what white nationalist martyrs like Randy Weaver and David Koresh did? Goodman’s movie adds a great deal to that perspective and it should be seen by anyone concerned about the current state of the country. It does not have wide theatrical release yet, but you should be able to see on PBS, provided the current president doesn’t sledgehammer PBS to pieces in the next few months.
Oh, did I mention that PBS produced the movie?
Well, maybe this is all just a little blip. Maybe five years from now, when President Warren is resuscitating PBS and progressivism at large, some innovative director – let’s call him Donald Heilkiller – will put out his own movie about how the left wing stole the country. After all, the axial periods come fast and furious in the (alternative) information age.
