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.
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.
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