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Past Due: Constructive National Self-Examination
Thanks to the conservative resurgence that began with Ronald Reagan in 1980, the 1960s took a severe and mostly undeserved beating. It was supposedly the decade when the country began "slouching toward Gomorrah," in the words of Robert Bork, the former federal appeals court judge who tends to slouch toward anything suppressive and autocratic. But the conservative storyline about the 1960s is bankrupt. Iraq and the Bush years have exposed conservatism for the duplicitous opportunism that it's been. Ronald Reagan is crying on the cover of Time because he sees what's coming. It's a matter of time before the '60s experience a resurgence of their own -- as a model of constructive self-doubt and social renewal.
The 1960s are the last time the nation really questioned itself about its role in the world and its purpose as a nation. The wars in Vietnam and on America's streets were unhealthy symptoms of a nation in trouble. But they provoked healthy soul-searching.
Martin Luther King anticipated that national soul-searching in 1967 when he had this to say about the Vietnamese in his famous Beyond Vietnam speech: "They must see Americans as strange liberators. . . . For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. . . . The only change came from America as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received regular promises of peace and democracy -- and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us -- not their fellow Vietnamese -- the real enemy. . . . What do they think as we test our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building?"
Replace the word Vietnam with the word Iraq, and you get a picture that has hardly changed. It's not about land reform this time. It's about democracy. It's not even about democracy anymore. It's about security. And, in fact, it's never been about security, WMDs, terrorism or even regional stability. It's always been about oil. Otherwise we'd be invading places like the Congo and the Sudan, where literally millions of people have been killed in civil wars and ethnic cleansing. Why isn't the national conscience so eager to go over there and create free and democratic republics? First off, they're black. Second, there's no oil, or not much anyway. The Sudan has some, but the oil conveniently flows where the blood doesn't. So Martin Luther King was onto something when he referred to "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government."
It would be another six years after King's speech before Richard Nixon removed ground troops from Vietnam and eight years until that last helicopter flew off the roof of the American embassy in Saigon. The war provoked a rethinking of America's role in the world and of the American presidency. But then came Gulf War I, which essentially rehabilitated the United States as the world's policeman, and then came the second Bush, and then came 9/11.
For a moment after 9/11, we did have the glimmer of a nation stopping to wonder: Who are we, what are we becoming, who could possibly wish us such harm that we don't quite understand? And for a moment, the world's solidarity, Iran and China included, was with the United States. But just as Bush was to squander a world of good will in the aftermath of the attacks, he also squandered a chance at redefining American purpose in the world. He reduced absolutely everything, to that Manichaean view of the world as good and evil, us versus them.
That's not to say that the acts that had targeted the United States weren't evil and that there wasn't a world of good to defend against them. But all of a sudden we were caught in the juvenile world of comic-book and superhero dialogue at a time that evoked something closer to Dante's Inferno or "Paradise Lost." There was no national discussion, no questioning. Can any of us think of a single great speech delivered in the past six years that comes anywhere close to the kind of self-reflective themes Martin Luther King tackled in his Beyond Vietnam speech? Where were the debates? Where were the discussions?
Subversion doesn't happen only against governments. The most effective purveyors of subversion are governments. They subvert the truth. They subvert history. They subvert the healthy will to doubt, to question, to oppose. The Bush administration did all those things in the last six years. The country is slouching as a result -- back to the healthy subversions of the 1960s. It's about time.
Tristam is a News-Journal editorial writer. Reach him at ptristam@att.net or through his personal Web site at www.pierretristam.com .
© 2007 News-Journal Corporation
14 Comments so far
Show AllI agree that this war is in part about oil, and Americans have an ambivalence about giving up our efforts to control it and guarantee our obscenely wasteful standard of living, Americans are also unwilling to take a hard look at the suffering we inflict on others to protect and support our standard of living with our wars and our consumption. But this war is also a result of the control the military-industrial complex has on our economy. Eisenhower, among many other former Presidents going back to the revolution, has warned about it, and it has grown into a Hydra that is completely changing our society. Is it any accident that our military is becoming trained and equipped in urban warfare?
It is important to remember that Eisenhower was hand in glove involved in the formation of the institution he later warned against. And he, too, is guilty of war crimes for his undeclared war waged against Indonesia, not to mention Guatemala and Iran.
It never ceases to amaze me how many truely remarkable journalists are out there in America. Without the internet I would have never heard Tristam's voice. And I thank him for naming what is one of truths of our time. But with his statement: "The Bush administration did all those things in the last six years. The country is slouching as a result — back to the healthy subversions of the 1960s. It's about time.", I think it is a stretch to believe that we are in the midst of a '60s like self examination. We as a nation aren't even close to that yet. We have only begun the fight to stop the horrors done in our names by the currant administration. We haven't had time yet to face the truth of our own complicity in how we got to this point of degradation as a nation. We as citizens are just waking up from the long slumber of consumerism to see a world in total chaos created by our inattention, destructive habits, and sleeping state.
I have been fully awake but slightly groggy for quit some time now. Thank you Tristam for helping me plan for tomorrow.
Good for you Rebel Farmer! Absolutely 100 per cent correct. I am going to remember the name Pierre Tristam. He does not just talk; he has something to say.
Are you really a farmer?
Pierre is usually very good but James Carroll's recent piece in the same vein was better. Something in Carroll's piece made me pull "Economics And The Public Purpose" by John Kenneth Galbraith of the shelf and read it again for the fourth time.
Galbraith is unapreciated in our time.
I dunno Pierre, I watched "Forrest Gump".
Not only has recent American policy been destructive for others; above all it has been self-destructive, as I have tried to show in "America's Suicidal Statecraft: The Self-destruction of a Superpower".
We do indeed need a new vision,not only in America but also in other countries who aspire to the same American ideals. Despite the last three to four decades, America is still best qualified, in its fundamental decency, to show us a new vision. In "America's Suicidal Statecraft" I have quoted Charles Reich in saying: Thirty years ago, many people's hopes were high. Charles Reich wrote of a visionary American consciousness of the late 1960s and early 1970s: "The extraordinary thing about this new consciousness is that it has emerged out of the wasteland of the Corporate State, like flowers pushing up through the concrete pavement. Whatever it touches it beautifies and renews: a freeway entrance is festooned with happy hitch-hikers, the sidewalk is decorated with street people, the humourless steps of an official building are given warmth by a group of musicians. And every barrier falls before it. We have been dulled and blinded to the injustice and ugliness of slums, but it sees them as just that - injustice and ugliness - as if they had been there to see all along. We have all been persuaded that giant organisations are necessary, but it sees that they are absurd, as if the absurdity had always been obvious and apparent. We have all been induced to give up our dreams of adventure and romance in favour of the escalator of success, but it says that the escalator is a sham and the dream is real. And these things, buried, hidden and disowned in so many of us, are shouted out loud, believed in, affirmed by a growing multitude of young people who seem too healthy, intelligent and alive to be wholly insane, who appear, in their collective strength, capable of making it happen. For one almost convinced that it was necessary to accept ugliness and evil, that it was necessary to be a miser of dreams, it is an invitation to cry or laugh. For one who thought the world was irretrievably encased in metal and plastic and sterile stone, it seems a veritable greening of America."
Three decades later, after the fading of the caring and visionary society, the rise and fall of the junk-bond buccaneers, the slapstick politicians in the Reagan/Thatcher mould, the vision splendid has blurred. The happy hitch-hikers have gone, the greening become a browning. The escalator of success is no less a sham than thirty years ago; but the young no longer believe that the dreams of adventure and romance can be real. No longer are the flowers pushing up through the concrete pavements; the sidewalks are no longer decorated with street people but cracked and crowded with homeless beggars; injustice and ugliness are again accepted as part of the inevitable human destiny. Communism is dead but, for most, victorious capitalism is only slightly less gruesome than its defeated rival. Now we need a new vision, a new image, a new consciousness of self. We will get it. Our looking-glass fantasy refuses to accept that we won't. But it had better come quickly - before catastrophe, from the demise of dreams, beats it to the finish line.
[This quote was taken from my earlier book, "The Human Mirror"]
James....since the media has been co-opted by the very entities that are planning our demise as a free people with the potential to dream, I really don't see how we can ever get enough traction to effect meaningful change. Yes, I am indeed pessimistic. Most of the developed world is entirely too comfortable, and hypnotized by its currently privileged position, to take any action which might jeoperdize that comfort. Those who are uncomfortable have no means to influence the "powers that be" who have no loyalty to anyone or anything other than the bottom line. I'm afraid this situation is bound to play itself out. My only hope is that the catastrophe will not be so complete that future generations will have the opportunity to remake the world in a more equitable fashion. If there are enough survivors with enough resources to begin again, then perhaps the spirit of cooperation will again enter and inform the human community.
National self-examination? Sorry, too worried about Anna Nicoles infants money. Whats that? My government lied about going to war?...whens the Super Bowl?
Its doubtful that a MLK will emerge from a myspace and youtube culture. The allure of 24/7 entertainment distracts from whats happening below the surface.
Pierre Tristam is an excellent journalist. I wonder what the Administration thinks of the eggs he keeps throwing in their face.
Thanks for helping to keep the country from slouching.
James: had to Google the titles in your post to see which James you might be. I don't mind the self promotion as I wasn't aware of your work.
Nice to know this forum attracts the informed and the articulate.
I think that until Americans are educated about the imperialistic militarism that has defined our foreign policy since the nation's beginning, there can be no new consciousness that emerges from the nightmare we have today. Most people think that VietNam was an aberration, not simply another demonstration of American disregard for the lives of millions of innocent people who stand in the way of our "naitonal interest," however that is spun at the time. Most people believe the propaganda used to cover up the truth: our vicious militarism benefits the greedy interests of business and corporations. Most have no idea of the suffering we have brought upon people in Latin America, for example, and the kinds of vicious dictatorships we have gleefully supported in order to crush any opposition to US hegemony.
Until most people are educated about the truth of America's role in the world, they will continue to view events like 9/11 with shock, and will continue to believe the lies of leaders like Bush who exploit that ignorance and fear.
As Ballerina said, I too am pessimistic. I am pessimistic about our society's ability to rationally discuss and then to implement meaningful change in this mad plunge toward a super-charged facisim, which is at present ably guarded by the military-industrial complex.
Don't forget that despite all its nostalgic appeals to peace and love the 60's also preached revolution. Short of that outcome, I don't really see how this social catastrophe we're in today can be turned around.
Too much needs to change, it all seems so permanently entrenched: the entire educational system that continues to feed our rampant consumerism; the entire political system that continues to cater to elites and corporate greed; the entire economic system that continues to ensure 98% of the earth's resources are controlled by less than 2% of its population.
What troubles me most is that my pessimism leads me to lethargy and inaction. I'm not sure of anything anymore, except this: my nine year old grand daughter is a straight A student who questions absolutley everything; she counsels me to turn off the water when I'm brushing my teeth and to make certain I seperate the plastics from the paper. That, at least, gives me some hope.
"The most effective purveyors of subversion are governments. They subvert the truth. They subvert history. They subvert the healthy will to doubt, to question, to oppose."
Yes, politicians are MASTERS of subversion. Campaign contributions (and perhaps other gifts we may not be aware of) from the corporate rulers have a way of castrating those who once possessed their own voice and soul.
Neitzsche,
Yeah, I really am a farmer. Small, local, and fighting tooth and nail what the government and big business has and continues to do to destroy our ability to provide local food for ourselves. They are destroying every possibility in every area of endeaver for the people of the world to be free for power and greed.....But, that's off topic. Sorry.