Achronology as a cultural force, part 2

 

In my previous blogpost, I described how achronology’s ability to blur and obfuscate people’s understanding of the past could impact cultural, social and political decisions in the present. This ability to influence decisions and currents makes achronology a cultural force. Achronology in its purest form means the merging of the past into a single unit where periodisations do not matter. However, achronology rarely, if ever, operates in its purest form. Moreover, since achronology usually operates in conjunction with other forces, impulses and factors, achronology is also very malleable. And, in addition, achronology both creates and thrives on vagueness. For these reasons, it can sometimes be difficult to detect how achronology enacts its influence in current events. One of the most complicated, but also best, examples is how the past was used during the presidential campaign of the forty-fifth president of the United States from 2015 onwards. The infamous slogan “Make America Great Again” exemplifies precisely how achronology impacts current events. In this blogpost, I aim to make a case for how this campaign slogan should be understood as achronology.        

From the beginning, it must be emphasised that I absolutely loathe the entire campaign of the forty-fifth president, as indeed I loathe any Republican politician. I emphasise this because this present blogpost will also explain why the slogan “Make America Great Again” is a stroke of rhetorical genius. The genius of the slogan must be acknowledged, much as one must acknowledge the rhetorical genius of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph des Willen, while at the same time one can, and should, detest both Fascism and Nazism.          

The core message of “Make America Great Again” has very deep roots. The message evokes the idea of a glorious past that is lost and must now be recovered, a golden age that has to be made anew. Several versions of this concept exist, most famously the story of Adam and Eve, and also in Greek mythology from which the concept of the golden age was mediated to the Romans and onwards to the medieval imagination. A modern version can be seen in various secularist movements that hold up the so-called Enlightenment era as the apex of historical progress, and argue that we need to return to this apex. In essence, the concept of a golden age is the sublimation of nostalgia, very often a false nostalgia, and it serves as a perpetual mirror where contemporary flaws are accentuated and magnified in seriousness.    

The concept of a golden age is, of course, not per definition achronological. Indeed, in several versions the vision of a lost golden past necessitates other historical periods, especially if we follow the traditional scheme of a degradation with the passing of time, where history moves from the golden to the silver to the bronze to the iron age. However, there is also a very common distillation of the idea of a golden age, namely the expression “things were better before”, something very familiar to Norwegian ears, for instance. This expression demonstrates how the idea of a golden age can take on achronological properties. “Before” is not a precise chronological unit, and its main point is that it is not here and now. When people state that things used to be better, they might very well have a clearly defined period in mind. But just as often it expresses a belief that things have become worse than they used to be. In either case, the golden age is somewhere in the past and when that past is not clearly defined it is up to whomever listens or utters this idea to imagine when that past was and how that past was. The ambiguity of the unstated timeframe of the past which was so much better is, in essence, a form of achronology, because it turns the past into a uniform canvas onto which people can paint and pinpoint the golden age wherever and however they wish.      

When people utter variations of the idea that things were better before, they tend to have a specific period in mind, usually the time of their childhood. However, because the past is mythologised in popular culture, in education, and in public discourse, it is also possible that people have other historical periods in mind. As mentioned, for certain so-called rationalists that period was the Enlightenment, notwithstanding the many horrors that unfolded in that period, horrors which were rationalised by thinkers or with recourse to intellectual discourse. For those who fetishise masculinity, it can be any time when “men were men”, be it the Viking Age, the Roman Empire, or the Stone Age. For pathological individualists, it might be the Wild West, or the age of European colonisation. Other candidates for the lost golden age also exist, and since the past is lost to us every part of it is up for grabs whenever someone wants to turn it into something more glorious than it actually was.            

Individual ideas of the golden age are usually time specific, in that people tend to select that part of the past which they know or have mythologised. It is not simply the past in all its vast irrecoverability, but a specific part of it. In this way, the golden age is not in and of itself achronological. However, because the golden age can be placed in so many different places on a timeline, the concept also carries in it something achronological. Because it can be placed at any point in time depending on who places it, the golden age depends on a vague understanding of the past and the chronological progression of time. In effect, the idea of the golden age carves out a space in time that is immutable, which is the very opposite of what history is. Because the golden age becomes preserved like a bug in amber, locked in one motion that makes it recognisable to those who seek it, the golden age is also achronological: it is then, not now, and this is its most important defining feature.          

The concept of the golden age thrives on, and indeed requires, a blurred understanding of history, of the passing of time, and of the complexity of humanity’s shared and entangled history. In this way, achronology – which simplifies and blurs the distinction between parts of history – is a key component in sustaining visions of any piece of the past as golden. Moreover, since the golden age is unfixed in time but shared by so many as a general idea, it can be talked about and agreed upon by several individuals who all have very different visions of that golden age, but who can communicate the idea through shared features and common reference points. The most important feature is that the golden age is in the past. Because people can agree about the existence of a golden age without agreeing, or even describing, when that golden age was, the rhetoric about the golden past is in effect achronological.           

Now that we have established, more or less, that the golden age has achronological properties, we return to the slogan “Make America Great Again”. This slogan has three important features that together make it a very successful tool of manipulation. First of all, it states that America, or the US, rather, once was great. Secondly, it implies that America is no longer great and that its greatness must be recovered. (Yes, these are two points but they work jointly and cannot be separated.) And thirdly, the greatness is to be found again in the future. The last point is important here, because the slogan does not suggest to move back in time, to retreat into the past. In so doing, the slogan avoids the connotations of degeneration that lies in a similar expression, “back to the Stone Age”. The past is lost, we are not moving back there, we are moving forward. The slogan, then, preys on the idea that we progress not only chronologically but also qualitatively, and the best is yet to come, as one Republican spokesperson once screamed at a national convention. Even though this slogan implies a return to the roots, it avoids the negative connotations of a return, or going back to something, and instead of retreating or deteriorating, things are moving up, forward, onward, upward. This distinction is enormously important to the imagination, especially in a country like the US, where the national mythology has trumpeted the idea of progression and improvement more or less since its beginning as an independent political unit. 

The first point of the slogan, that America was once great, is of course the key component, and this is where achronology is enacting its force. Because the question inevitably becomes. When was America great? The answer depends on whom you ask, and it is very likely that you will get a wide variety of answers, even though some of those will be more or less the same given the country’s very young age and therefore lack of periods to choose from. But the important thing is not when America was great, but that this greatness, this golden age, can be found whenever one seeks it, and whenever one wishes to find it. Also, the greatness is not here and now, as stated by the second point of the slogan. In this way, the slogan is on the one hand very precise: America was great before this point in time. But because it is completely open in its vagueness about when it was great, stating only that this greatness lies in the past, everyone can receive this message according to their own visions, fantasies and frames of reference. And in this quality, the slogan is achronological.        

When we consider the consequences of the 2016 presidential election in the US, it is clear that the slogan “Make America Great Again” was as successful as it is contemptible. It is also clear that the reason why it was successful is that it leaves an unspoken space that can be filled by whomever listens, and is therefore achronological: the greatness is in the past and not now, and this is a problem. Because achronology played such a key role in the presidential campaign, I argue that it serves as a clear example of how achronology – in conjunction with other factors – can work as a cultural force.