Arrested Development
Maybe this explains some people; maybe it doesn't explain anything.
Like Neo-Neocon and others who came from the same background as a lot of the modern Western fringe left, and who once thought we were among them, I feel an occasional mission to try to understand how they got to where they are now and I didn't. It can become a kind of obsession, like some people used to be obsessed with the Lindbergh baby or Nixon.
Like a lot of people, I'm puzzled by the fact that the fierce heat of the anti-war, anti-Bush protesters -- who could turn out hundreds of thousands at one point -- hasn't come close to producing a political movement. Howard Dean tried to tap into it, but that fizzled out.
The excuse I often hear is that the people who control the media never gave them the chance. That doesn't fly. When in history did a "movement" begin with the media on its side? In fact, operating inside that media, I can tell you the gatekeepers were more than willing to rally to the anti movement, if it had just shown any sign of legs. But if there's one quality that defines the media more than "liberal," it's "cynical."
Instead, I look out and I see people who don't know how to, or don't want to, achieve positions of power and authority. They kick the door open, and then they stand there, blinking like animals, forgetting what to do once they get inside, or even how to get inside.
I've been surrounded by these cynical, lifelong dissenters for years. They all are of one generation; older than me, younger than my parents. Now I'm watching them head down to their graves as permanent outsiders in the land of their birth. They don't seem nearly as sad about this as I am; they seem to like it.
I can stack up their statements and speeches, but when I do the words never seem to build into anything. Their positions and ideologies of this year contradict their positions and ideologies of last year. It doesn't matter to them. These folks have a glib, snide, articulate put-down for everything they dislike. They defend nothing, they advocate nothing but glib, snide, articulate put-downs. Their current hero is that Jon Stewart guy who was on the Oscars. Last year it was Michael Moore.
They are fatalists, but not passive. They protest; they raise hell; they march with glib signs and big-headed puppets to shame the infamy. They offer no viable alternatives. They never stood up for Democrats when they were in power, though they would make glib, snide, articulate put-downs against Republicans who attacked those Democrats.
Here's what might have happened. There comes a point in a young intellectual's life when he discovers hypocrisy and stupidity and venality in his culture -- about the same time he notices the same in his parents. He or she reacts strongly against that.
During the 20th century, from say 1920 to 1990, young intellectuals in the West, and especially America, could flee, figuratively, from selfish America and posture in alien and enemy collectivist political cultures.
Communism was the most enduring of these, first in the Soviet model, then in the Third World version. In the 1920s and early '30s Italian fascism also had its allure, and many of Ezra Pound's generation succumbed to it. These alternatives seemed to be the future. They seemed idealistic. The realities were distant and reported in America in garbled form, if at all.
And after a time the wise and sane among the young intellectuals eventually arrived at historian Theodore Draper's conclusion. He wrote, "each generation had to discover for itself in its own way that, even at the price of virtually committing political suicide, American Communism would continue above all to serve the interests of Soviet Russia."
Draper himself made that journey. The moment of discovery, though perhaps I imagine this, tended to come about the same time the young intellectual found himself confronted with the personal realities and ugly choices that made him understand his own parents' compromises.
It was almost a rite of passage, for a young intellectual. But then the place for posturing collapsed. And those who were in full rebellion against the West in 1980 were robbed of the final step, the back-down at the time and place of their own choosing, the ability to escape with dignity intact and return to the fold. They were never allowed to make their own way back, and they refuse to come back on any other terms.
Maybe this explains some people; maybe it doesn't explain anything.
Like Neo-Neocon and others who came from the same background as a lot of the modern Western fringe left, and who once thought we were among them, I feel an occasional mission to try to understand how they got to where they are now and I didn't. It can become a kind of obsession, like some people used to be obsessed with the Lindbergh baby or Nixon.
Like a lot of people, I'm puzzled by the fact that the fierce heat of the anti-war, anti-Bush protesters -- who could turn out hundreds of thousands at one point -- hasn't come close to producing a political movement. Howard Dean tried to tap into it, but that fizzled out.
The excuse I often hear is that the people who control the media never gave them the chance. That doesn't fly. When in history did a "movement" begin with the media on its side? In fact, operating inside that media, I can tell you the gatekeepers were more than willing to rally to the anti movement, if it had just shown any sign of legs. But if there's one quality that defines the media more than "liberal," it's "cynical."
Instead, I look out and I see people who don't know how to, or don't want to, achieve positions of power and authority. They kick the door open, and then they stand there, blinking like animals, forgetting what to do once they get inside, or even how to get inside.
I've been surrounded by these cynical, lifelong dissenters for years. They all are of one generation; older than me, younger than my parents. Now I'm watching them head down to their graves as permanent outsiders in the land of their birth. They don't seem nearly as sad about this as I am; they seem to like it.
I can stack up their statements and speeches, but when I do the words never seem to build into anything. Their positions and ideologies of this year contradict their positions and ideologies of last year. It doesn't matter to them. These folks have a glib, snide, articulate put-down for everything they dislike. They defend nothing, they advocate nothing but glib, snide, articulate put-downs. Their current hero is that Jon Stewart guy who was on the Oscars. Last year it was Michael Moore.
They are fatalists, but not passive. They protest; they raise hell; they march with glib signs and big-headed puppets to shame the infamy. They offer no viable alternatives. They never stood up for Democrats when they were in power, though they would make glib, snide, articulate put-downs against Republicans who attacked those Democrats.
Here's what might have happened. There comes a point in a young intellectual's life when he discovers hypocrisy and stupidity and venality in his culture -- about the same time he notices the same in his parents. He or she reacts strongly against that.
During the 20th century, from say 1920 to 1990, young intellectuals in the West, and especially America, could flee, figuratively, from selfish America and posture in alien and enemy collectivist political cultures.
Communism was the most enduring of these, first in the Soviet model, then in the Third World version. In the 1920s and early '30s Italian fascism also had its allure, and many of Ezra Pound's generation succumbed to it. These alternatives seemed to be the future. They seemed idealistic. The realities were distant and reported in America in garbled form, if at all.
And after a time the wise and sane among the young intellectuals eventually arrived at historian Theodore Draper's conclusion. He wrote, "each generation had to discover for itself in its own way that, even at the price of virtually committing political suicide, American Communism would continue above all to serve the interests of Soviet Russia."
Draper himself made that journey. The moment of discovery, though perhaps I imagine this, tended to come about the same time the young intellectual found himself confronted with the personal realities and ugly choices that made him understand his own parents' compromises.
It was almost a rite of passage, for a young intellectual. But then the place for posturing collapsed. And those who were in full rebellion against the West in 1980 were robbed of the final step, the back-down at the time and place of their own choosing, the ability to escape with dignity intact and return to the fold. They were never allowed to make their own way back, and they refuse to come back on any other terms.
Maybe this explains some people; maybe it doesn't explain anything.
Labels: left behind
