As Kohler recalls the resentments of his father’s generation — “They were America, damn it, and Americans should come first” — he offers a word of advice to those who have been abandoned by history: “Don’t invest in a future you will never see, a future which will despise you anyway, a future which will find you useless. Pay for your own burial plot. Get the golf clubs out. Die with a tan your daughter’s thighs would envy.” This sense of betrayal, which can shade into vengefulness, leads to a radical strain of politics that Gass later described in an interview: “Fascism is a tyranny which enshrines the values of the lower middle class, even though the lower middle class doesn’t get to rule. It just gets to feel satisfied that the world is well-run. It likes symbols of authority and it likes to dress up. It likes patriotic parades.”
In the novel’s most prophetic passages, Kohler fantasizes about forming a movement called the “Party of the Disappointed People.” He draws pictures of its insignia and merchandise (including special caps) and explains: “What the other parties avoid, we shall embrace. We shall be the ones with the handshakes like the Shriners, the symbols, the slogans as if we were selling something, the shirts, the salutes and the flags.” By definition, its constituents feel disenfranchised by life, so they need powerful collaborators: “If we were to recover a bit of pride, we might be able to make ourselves into harassing gangs. So we shall make our pitch to the huddled elites, the ins who are on the outs.”
The party will need to be circumspect about its intentions — Kohler proposes a secret hand signal that will allow its members to recognize one another — until a public figure arises to amplify its anger: “What a pool of energy awaits the right voice.” Kohler’s ideal tyrant is modeled on Hitler, but he also looks ahead to the demagogue of the future. “And now the hero comes — the trumpet of his people. And his voice is enlarged like a movie’s lion. He roars, he screams so well for everyone, his tantrums tame a people. He is the Son of God, if God is Resentment. And God is Resentment — a pharaoh for the disappointed people.” Kohler anticipates the role of the media — “TV faces and their blatant lies are now our leaders” — and contemplates the shape of such a man’s life: “Our favorite modern bad guys became villains by serving as heroes first — to millions. It is now a necessary apprenticeship.”
