The Irrepressible Conflict ver.2

Perhaps we are on the cusp of our second “irrepressible conflict,” the first being to “determine whether the nation would be dominated by a system of free labor or slave labor.” That first conflict ushered in our first American Civil War.  And, yes, it was about slavery, mostly.  But for now, what if we changed “free labor” to “higher educated” and “slave labor” to “under-educated”?  Could we be talking about another such conflict, a social and cultural condition of irresolvable differences based on distinctly differing core understandings of our society’s traditions and values?  Opposing views of the meaning of “freedom,” the Bill of Rights, “democracy,” “republic,”  “hard earned money,” representative government, “justice,” and so on—are thought to be universal concepts that all citizens agree on.  But do all of us citizens actually agree?  Or have we reached the point in our evolution at which each of us by our individual “right” can determine what these concepts mean?  And if we have reached that point, are we then no longer a unified pluralistic and secular society—no longer e pluribus unum?  And if we are not, what can the consequences be?

In his 1858 speech (the source of the quotation), William H. Seward felt that final question had been answered—the only way to resolve the irrepressible differences was to enter a conflict that risked the destruction of the nation.  His proclamation became the underlying principle of what followed.

I think we will avoid civil war.  I don’t think we have the courage for that.  But I do think that the people of the United States will no longer share an interest in accepting or believing in our cultural commonality, an agreed upon system of values.  What we are experiencing is a shift from our acceptance that we are a nation of diversity to an acceptance that we are a nation of divergence, of turning away from and turning inward.  As the street protests grow in their response to the absurdity of the election of 2016, we will hear much about our “belief” that we are a nation of laws.  But, in fact, we are a nation of money and its power to control every facet and need of our daily lives, from our education to our health to our identity to our longevity, and so on.  Whatever laws enter or are a part of that, those laws exist merely to justify and sustain that power.  One of the great ironies inherent in our condition is that virtually the rest of the world understands the truth of it.

I reach this conclusion reluctantly and unhappily.  I have written on this blog and elsewhere about how the creep of various forms of insular and self-absorbing media formats (such as this blog) and other cultural stressors have undermined our cultural cohesion.  We have become alone together.  Add to that the loss for millions of Americans of the stability and reliability of a reasonable means of sustenance and community, which includes their cherished belief system, and you have an unforgiving gulf between those people and the others for whom that loss is not so perilously felt and experienced (see J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy).  For people on either side of this gulf, fear has risen from an incidental emotion to a metastasizing central part of their consciousness.  And that experience becomes a vigorous motivator. 

Some observers have decided that the street protests we’re experiencing are no more than the same things that happened in the 60s.  I disagree.  The 60s protests were opposed to a war, to its execution and to its consequences that were seen to be detrimental to our culture and our government.  Our current protests oppose what is seen as the destruction of our traditions and values.  The threat is seen very much as internal, rather than external.  To avoid an irrepressible conflict Americans must seek to restore their commonality.  If what have become labeled as the so-called coastal elites and the fly-over states as geographical representations of the gulf and become acceptable (as in North vs. South), we will be headed for a more serious dilemma than an absurd election.  It will be our time “for something entirely different.”

Our Troubles

Lately some of the more honest writers I've been reading have been sniffing out the same seriousness I've been suspecting before and during this nightmare we think is an election.  George Packer (see The New Yorker, 11/7/16) and many of the online writers at the strident websites have toned down the sarcasm and cosmopolitanism and seem to think something serious and ambiguous is, or has been, going on, that this surreality we're enduring will not resolve into a more or less familiar actuality, a comforting new American Dream. 

Instead, they share, as I do, a suspicion that the rage and force of the 40 million and the malaise of the rest will not be assuaged and will not go away. To paraphrase the song from the 60s, something has been going on, and what it is refuses to be clear.  The U.S. has changed, but no one can articulate that change, because the change seems to indicate that what have been the reliable leverages and shibboleths no longer apply...even the meaning of "Great." 

Part of our problem is that the language we are using to discuss what's going on in our country—and not just about the election but about virtually everything in our culture—has no relevance to what we experience and feel.  I just watched an interview with Lewis Black in which he lamented that it's getting almost impossible to do his job, because he can't satirize what's going on—we in fact are experiencing the intersection of satire and reality, our national life, a ridiculing ache.  Satire is meant to evoke humor, but the satire in our reality evokes at best alienation and at worst horror.

In my perspective, I have the excuse of being a 20th century mindset per force evolving into a very alienating 21st century existence.  I tread water, growing old, as much as possible staying away from crowded places which have willy-nilly become random shooting ranges, listening to insipid language being used by mouthpieces for infotainment networks, and seeking something, anything that resembles engaging writing on the printed page or electronic sources.  I am, in short, so 20th century.  

But I wonder if feeling that difference, feeling that confusion isn't what so many of us are experiencing.  People around my age must strain to realize the mindset and thought processes revealed in the language of the millennials.  And likewise, millennials and those younger lack any semblance of our understanding of the relationship between the past and the present, and the effects each has on the other.  Their understanding is primarily of the present and the future.  We should not be surprised by what we hear and overhear as very much a babel of freelancing miscommunication.

Bill Clinton spoke of technology being the bridge to the 21st century.  I disagree.  Technology and its liturgy of disruption leapt us over an abyss.  A bridge suggests safety and reliability.  A leap over emptiness suggests extraordinary risk and danger.  I think the latter is what we are feeling, no matter what we think we're experiencing.  Our leap has left the reliable traditions and secular bonds behind.  And as of right now we can't seem to know the beginnings of how to muster their replacements.  These will be difficult years ahead.  I suspect the result of this election will provide very little by way of easing our difficulty.  We can call this our version of The Troubles.

Spate of the Union

“We have nothing to show for ourselves but a frivolous and deceitful appearance, honor without virtue, reason without wisdom, and pleasure without happiness.” ­—from March, a graphic novel by John Lewis, et al.

Look at the other

One or tens or 38 million or

50 million or 14 million or 2 million

Or whatever, as they say,

and each one, each singularly

moshing a life and

what do I see, and hear, and smell?

Is it something new and

Pleasant, like a delicious and

Strange meal or nothing,

An indifferent shadow lacking familia?

The shadow falls

And disconnects, as they say.

So strange to be part of

So many disconnections in

A world like mine,

E pluribus animus.

Because there are

So many others, each to

Each and other to other,

What is a person,

What am I, to do?

So much else to do,

Who has the time,

The desire?

Your Land Is…This Land Is…

[With a nod and many thanks to Colson Whitehead, Leo Connellan and some others subrosa-ly mentioned]

This is not a cactus land,

a dead land, but

a dread land, a land of crusted 

vision and lonely love, vacant

going forward 

to wherever that could be

…or so it seems, maybe, 

always maybe, the risk is worth 

the value, isn’t it?  Isn’t it?

Be smart, more smart than the rest,

very smart, depart, leaving the rest,

leaving the best for the most, the mess.

What’s best is to keep busy, to keep 

as much friending as possible, to keep,

yes, to keep so that collecting is

owning and that’s this, this land of

promised promises…yes, and that, 

yes, with so fun! so pretty fun!

Get!  Spend!  Consume!  Have!

These are the meaning, oh my!

right from the start, even before the

beginning, but if we only had an image, 

what would we look like?  The meaning

must have substance, some thing, 

something, yes, the need to have

to have the thing to believe in,

that’s it.  Isn’t it?  How much much, how much

believing can you heap on having?

Part One

They left from the East, from clogs

and slogs of salient dreams, schemes

and sounds of creation in a new

world, dream images posted by cash 

hounds but no, not like that, not

exactly, so it was like, it was like a motion, 

you know, like moving, that was it, like a big 

thing only not a thing,

I mean, you know, like that.

This is much later, after things got

to be so fun, even going forward, even

that was fun, nothing grubby and loose

and real, you know, I mean it was 

really something,

When they looked they actually

thought that they could see just 

imagine that they could think that

way, looking beyond even the next

trial and try-works as they might have

said, yes, they looked for that next

hill, the one with the fringe on top.

Boppledock told this tale much better back

then when they ignored experience and 

thinking, looking inward away from the only story that

mattered and there was Bop staring them down and

grabbing them by the collar he hollered more than they

would care and moved along to nowhere they were

going and he growled and strafed their mortarboards.

He had more love in his pinky toe than all the churches 

around Orchard Beach and so-called poetry. Ya see,

dantchaknow

Would he take us by the hand and show us the way

crossing America this way?  I don’t think so, not now,

not him, not Bop, cause he knew Bop couldn’t lead

now, not now, with so little love, so little caring around.

We miss Bop but we don’t even know it,

it’s no matter as we say whatever and

he’d hate that in any way,

Anyway, that’s over, and this is

only part one, pursuing, maybe 

becoming for once, just this once

maybe, so we’ll keep trying, I guess.

Part Two

They said, when cracking parched earth, rocky soil

and Indian heads, they said, freedom’s just another

word for license, and some still feel that way, so

long as it’s other folks doing the freedom and worse

it becomes a curse when it’s thrown around so.

He said you could be amusing yourselves to death,

indeed, just narcissusing, your selfies and friending, 

trending and unfriending, sexting and texting, 

twitching and bitching… is all naval gazing, 

all selfie amazing beyond your depth—but awesome, 

in sum, you say, like pretty fun or 

ugly fun and maybe even wholesome? And there

it is, like interesting, like nice, like, I mean,

be real, really like dread (see above) mixed with

awe, a flawless national anathema anthem for a new nation,

yes, this, awesomeness mess.

Yes, you guess, so what is it, vision or revision? Which

turn to take, to tour again, along the now trammeled trails, or

break out to dare a spare hope in the one not taken?  Let’s

see, a sea change, perhaps, but no, too long, too glacial, so 

to speak, ha! that’s a not so good one that no one cares

to share but still can’t duck and cover from the creepy,

crawling, mauling salty spraying high rise.

OK, enough of this stuff, this crabby nega-natality, baggage 

unclaimed remaindered under the skin of septas and octos

not so smart old farts with old eyes unseeing horizons, back

then, as kids, myops wishing for another Bop who never was 

with them, not Bop…and so we end this part for you, 

but not for us.

Part Three

And so, turn or return? re-

Turn to what and where, the exit’s closed…

YIKES! Closed! so we have to deal, make another

real, to turn, really? we might get an erection or

election, yes, really, no time to be needy, but real?

do we know, have we ever had it? we know we

thought we did, as kids, then, but now we ask,

can we miss The Con this time, stay on-a-line this

time can we walk past the emperor of ice cream, and 

not seem but be, can we see past hoping and wanting

and grasp living and loving, that’s the matter, can 

we not be Gogo and Didi, and step past the tree?

Where to start, then, send out a shout as they tried, 

no, not them, not G and D, the others, the ones from 

the street, pushing you to the curb, up in your face,

they tried, but you worked The Con and gave them 

bling to cleanse them of the hope they were shouting

about, about that, let’s move on, going forward, to what ,

to where? you ask, but is to ask to deny, and then why 

bother? well, because dread gets to be souring, and 

bilious—or something like that?—so let’s start and forget 

about one and two, that’s what you did, have done, always

do, but it feels good, so why not? Oh my, all these 

questions! Let’s see, maybe we can reach into pop,

get this gig going with a little snark, a nipsy shark.

So let’s do happy, happy joy, joy, oh boy, boy toys and

ms’s, wagons ho!, oy, oy, the real McCoy boy is what

you want, it is is it?  wait, what? happiness, you guess

and distress, what a mess, they hippity-hopped to their revolt

over there, and was it very fun? you ask. I don’t think

so, no, no bling for them, they know if you want to mend 

and when, then, seem gets to be an actual be and fun 

is a pun for unthinking trickster-hipsters, yes then, a sun 

will shine on some smiling faces, but then, that’s a long way 

off.

So that’s it, that’s the cause and symptom you’ll know,

maybe a glow, a little, maybe, not like before, but more

like a little while ago, you wouldn’t know,

you weren’t there, so you won’t know but will feel it.

and that’s better and makes all the difference.

Colson Whitehead's Chilling Wisdom

"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable."
              T. S. Eliot, "Burnt Norton," The Four Quartets

As I was finishing Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, a passage from the chapter "Ridgeway" kept creeping into my thoughts.  Ridgeway is the unique villain of this novel, much more than the "catcher" role he plays rounding up freedom seeking slaves. He, in fact, belongs to a rich tradition of such chilling characters created by American authors (more on that later)—they embrace their villainy and disparage those who think they are better than villains.  The narrator is inside Ridgeway's mind, summarizing Ridgeway's perspective of the American experience:

     "They'd never seen the likes of this, but they'd leave their mark on this new land,
     as surely as those famous souls at Jamestown, making it theirs through unstoppable
     racial logic.  If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn't be in chains.
     If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it'd still be his.  If the white man
     wasn't destined to take this new world, he wouldn't own it now.

     Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor—if
     you can keep it, it is yours.  Your property, slave or continent.  The American
     imperative."

What's chilling in this perspective are not only its hubris and dismissiveness, but also its exclusion of human dignity.  Of all the "catchers" and "patrollers" that dog the terrified slaves' efforts to survive and resurrect their personhood, Ridgeway prevails right up to the last chapter and is forever ensconced in the mind of Cora, the central character.  As he remains in ours, for we know him very well.

He is Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger,  Melville's Confidence Man, and Flannery O'Connor's Misfit.  But those are only a few of his literary likenesses.  We know Ridgeway each time we hear our fellow citizens and leaders justify the exploitation of others in the name of proprietariness and expedience.  We know him each time we hear and read about slavery as the "peculiar institution" and about Native Americans as beneficiaries of European largesse.

One characteristic of "American exceptionalism" is the ease with which we erase the unattractive and cruel events in our history.  We, in fact, are internationally renown for our short and long term memory loss.  And we ought to be grateful for Colson Whitehead's intensely vivid reminder of exactly what is essentially our heritage, our American imperative.

We are what we are.  Whatever we tell ourselves our values are and however we imagine the brilliant light our City on a Hill shines across the globe, we cannot shake the Great Spirit that guides us—if you can keep it, it's yours.

And think for a moment how this underscores the bizarre political season we are experiencing.  This is why I led this post with the quotation from Eliot.  It is safe to say that Donald Trump and, especially, the millions of his true believers embody the American imperative.  We seem to have come to a point in the movement of our society where, indeed, all time and the baggage contained within it are unredeemable.

For me, this is the message of The Underground Railroad.  The metaphor of the novel is not so much escape for Cora and all the thousands of others in 19th century America.  The metaphor is about America's unredeemable time.
                 

The Matrix Now

We are in our Matrix now, and we remain blissfully ignorant of our situation.

But this is no fictive speculation of human vanity and heroism.  This time we are actually bereft of a Morpheus and his Nemo.

This time the agent Smiths are actual agents of our commodification...and we welcome it as our distraction and disaggregation.  The simulacrum is complete.

Seems Like Only Yesterday...

(from Fuel For Thought, 2004)

Moral Values and Cancer           (November 3, 2004)                                                    

At 3:30 a.m. today I tuned to CNN and listened to Bill Schneider reporting on exit polls, his effort to explain how the exit polls could have got it so wrong about Kerry’s presumed success earlier on Tuesday.  He said people kept talking about “moral values, moral values, moral values” one after the other.  And in today’s NY Times, Nicholas Kristof reminds me that one third of Americans are evangelical Christians (98 million white-robed souls), and that they feel “Democrats are contemptuous of their faith”.

I became so frustrated I googled “moral values” to see if I could find some way to understand why I could be feeling so alienated.  As I scrolled down, I spotted a reference to Tennessee Williams.  I’ve always felt that Southern writers/artists have had a good fix on the hypocrisy in our culture (Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor also pop up, especially O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and “Good Country People”—check them out to experience the blindness of those who will not see.).  Williams’ genius, of course, has been shunned by our homophobic culture, so his cultural observations have lacked serious considerations, because the red states (see last paragraph) regard him, I suppose, as an elitist.

Anyway, in his study of Williams, “’Certain Moral Values’: A Rhetoric of Outcasts in the Plays of Tennessee Williams” Darryl Erwin Haley states, “The outcast characters in Tennessee Williams's major plays do not suffer because of the actions or circumstances that make them outcast but because of the destructive impact of conventional morality upon them… religious outcasts, who are vehicles for the playwright's commentary on contemporary Christianity.” And Williams, like Faulkner and O’Connor, fuses this naïve, evangelical Christianity with the naïve vision of America as a culture of well-wishers and engaged citizenry.  They demonstrate what we have been experiencing recently—the zealous frenzy of the 98 million evangelical Christians thumping the message of God being at the core of the land of the free and home of the brave is really a front for the land of the spree and the home of the knave.  They are blind to the ground level, real time issues, because they are assured of The Rapture.  These are the people O’Connor includes in the character of the grandmother whom The Misfit (serial killer) refers to when he says, "She would of [sic] been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

The NY Times editorial writer says no matter who wins the election (as of this writing, Kerry has not conceded) the country must pull together.  Is this possible?  My ancestry in this country goes back to the early 1700s, but I don’t feel that I belong here.  I have never felt this alienated.  My moral values have to do with civility and the general welfare.  I don’t see those values being exercised by the majority of the people in my community nor in the way this nation squanders its wealth on consumption.  Everything I see is smiley faces, yellow ribbons and get-the-hell-outta-my-way-and-the-devil-take-the-hindmost.

As I looked at the red and blue map of the voting results, the map seemed to be bleeding internally.  As the youth vote that decided not to show up will discover as it ages, the thing about internal bleeding is that when you find the blood in your stool, it’s already too late.  That’s the insidious nature of colon cancer.  The symbolism here resonates for me.  Beneath America’s show of might and right, of preciousness and righteousness, we are not mindful of our deteriorating cultural health.