Actively Hating Apathy, Part II
Note to the readers, should there ever be any: this is the second part of a piece that I'm writing in sections. You may want to scroll down the page and read Part I before you read what follows; God knows how damned hard it is to find context these days. When the whole thing is finished, I'll reorganize it so it reads continuously from top to bottom.
Dr. Chuck, 2/11/05, 3:55 pm
6:02 pm: Please keep in mind that this is a blog - a stream-of-consciousness record of my impressions - which should not be read as my attempt to make a subtantial contribution to any literary, historical, or philosophical canon. I know I might be completely wrong, so please disagree with me all you'd like - in fact, I'd love it if enough people read this to start a real debate - but don't call me a charlatan: nothing in this blog makes any claim to legitimacy, and I believe it should stay that way.
I want to propose two reasons to reject the narrative that concludes Part I.
1) It's so influenced by my own passion (and reverence for Dr. Thompson's style) that it would make a fine theatrical monologue if anyone who didn't earn his living writing daytime TV scripts wrote melodrama anymore. Perhaps, then, it's an emotionally accurate portrayal, but it's a simplistic failure as actual history. There were countless subplots at play during the period referred to, and barely three of them - drugs, the coming of the Yuppie Ethic of Public Life, and the corporate capitalization of the popular counterculture - are covered therein.
2) It is premised an ideological distortion, to-wit: the protest era of the 60's encompassed a real, youth-driven political movement.
Bullshit. As far as I know, the only thing that the student protestors succeeded in doing, other than a whole lot of drugs, was getting on the national news. Their stated goals were an end to the Vietnam war and the reform of American society. In my opinion, they failed at both. The U.S. didn't leave Vietnam because the protestors made it politically untenable to do so; it left Vietnam because the whole boondoggle had become too expensive to continue.
I would argue that the leaders in any democratic government during times of war could give a damn about whether or not the war is popular if they think the war still needs to be won. (See The American Civil War, history of) American leaders thinks that way because most of the American people think that way, too. It's a mistake to read the term "unpopular war" literally: an "unpopular" war isn't a war to which there exists actual, popular political opposition; it's a war whose end can be a politically popular move, if it's done right. The most popular act that a politician can possibly perform is achieving victory in an unpopular war.
Remember Nixon's appeal to the "Silent Majority"? He was right on the money with that one: sure, the majority of his constituents wanted the war to end, but they still wanted to win. They had damned good reasons to want to win, and I don't mean stopping the spread of Communism.
Hail, Rome, victorious in thy mourning weeds!
...There greet in silence, as the dead are wont,
And sleep in peace, slain in your country's wars!
-Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, Act I, Scene 1
No nation would willingly endure the blow of mourning thousands of its youth, senselessly murdered, if it were possible to believe that those thousands achieved something by dying. A nation at war desperately, sometimes irrationally, wants to hail its victorious dead, not mourn those who died defeated. The latter option is too painful to be accepted.
And because the student protestors didn't get that, because they viewed the war as an abstraction - without any visceral connection to the pain of losing someone you love to a murderous foreigner, no chance to say goodbye or offer comfort or aid - they were first and finally a purposeless society of bored children of privilege, who would do anything to feel wise and righteous - and that goddamned Silent Majority of the American body politic, even in its flawed wisdom, knew them for it. The only reason they achieved any kind of significance was their numbers, which were primarily the result of the conflation of legitimate anti-war rhetoric and popular culture.
Of course, even that illegitimate significance was enough to make a lot of people very scared of them, which is why the student protest "movement" was eventually crushed. That, and its brief flirtations with the Black Panthers and the Hell's Angels, which really scared the hell out of people, even if the Panthers and the Angels thought the students were nothing but a bunch of dillettantes, too.
So much for the student protestors being a legitimate anti-war movement, or posing any threat at all to any kind of status quo injustice.
But what of their other stated aim (here an admittedly broad generalization on my part) , the reform of American society? What of the civil rights movement? Can it be taken as a youth-driven political movement? Not really. I almost made the mistake of saying, "Not at all. I've never seen any newsreel footage of white college students getting blasted with firehouses." Then I thought of the black students who started the sit-in movement, and the Freedom Riders, and I realized that, oh yes, there certainly was a real youth-driven component within the civil rights movement, but I'd almost forgotten it in my bias. The larger movement itself, however, was neither youth-led nor youth-driven. But I'll say this for those of its members that are of concern to me in this essay: they were heroes for a real cause. When the cause was gone, however, well... see the end of Part I, taking into account the history of the economic attacks on the black community since the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
I've been at this for more than two hours now, and I'm getting a bit peckish, so I'm going to call it a day. Many things still beg consideration. This project began as a subjective, mainly philosophical attempt to explain the phenomenon of my generation's widespread political apathy, but as it's progressed, I've begun thinking about the history of the relationship between political life and American kids. I'm about to wrap up the history lesson by talking about 60's feminism and the growth of a new counterculture, but the point I'm trying to get to with all this analysis is the realization that there has never in our history been a real youth-driven political movement.
Whether or not the historical persistence of political apathy means it is an intractable feature of being young in this country remains to be considered. For my part, I will be making the best attempt I possibly can to remain unconvinced.
Dr. Chuck, 2/11/05, 3:55 pm
6:02 pm: Please keep in mind that this is a blog - a stream-of-consciousness record of my impressions - which should not be read as my attempt to make a subtantial contribution to any literary, historical, or philosophical canon. I know I might be completely wrong, so please disagree with me all you'd like - in fact, I'd love it if enough people read this to start a real debate - but don't call me a charlatan: nothing in this blog makes any claim to legitimacy, and I believe it should stay that way.
I want to propose two reasons to reject the narrative that concludes Part I.
1) It's so influenced by my own passion (and reverence for Dr. Thompson's style) that it would make a fine theatrical monologue if anyone who didn't earn his living writing daytime TV scripts wrote melodrama anymore. Perhaps, then, it's an emotionally accurate portrayal, but it's a simplistic failure as actual history. There were countless subplots at play during the period referred to, and barely three of them - drugs, the coming of the Yuppie Ethic of Public Life, and the corporate capitalization of the popular counterculture - are covered therein.
2) It is premised an ideological distortion, to-wit: the protest era of the 60's encompassed a real, youth-driven political movement.
Bullshit. As far as I know, the only thing that the student protestors succeeded in doing, other than a whole lot of drugs, was getting on the national news. Their stated goals were an end to the Vietnam war and the reform of American society. In my opinion, they failed at both. The U.S. didn't leave Vietnam because the protestors made it politically untenable to do so; it left Vietnam because the whole boondoggle had become too expensive to continue.
I would argue that the leaders in any democratic government during times of war could give a damn about whether or not the war is popular if they think the war still needs to be won. (See The American Civil War, history of) American leaders thinks that way because most of the American people think that way, too. It's a mistake to read the term "unpopular war" literally: an "unpopular" war isn't a war to which there exists actual, popular political opposition; it's a war whose end can be a politically popular move, if it's done right. The most popular act that a politician can possibly perform is achieving victory in an unpopular war.
Remember Nixon's appeal to the "Silent Majority"? He was right on the money with that one: sure, the majority of his constituents wanted the war to end, but they still wanted to win. They had damned good reasons to want to win, and I don't mean stopping the spread of Communism.
Hail, Rome, victorious in thy mourning weeds!
...There greet in silence, as the dead are wont,
And sleep in peace, slain in your country's wars!
-Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, Act I, Scene 1
No nation would willingly endure the blow of mourning thousands of its youth, senselessly murdered, if it were possible to believe that those thousands achieved something by dying. A nation at war desperately, sometimes irrationally, wants to hail its victorious dead, not mourn those who died defeated. The latter option is too painful to be accepted.
And because the student protestors didn't get that, because they viewed the war as an abstraction - without any visceral connection to the pain of losing someone you love to a murderous foreigner, no chance to say goodbye or offer comfort or aid - they were first and finally a purposeless society of bored children of privilege, who would do anything to feel wise and righteous - and that goddamned Silent Majority of the American body politic, even in its flawed wisdom, knew them for it. The only reason they achieved any kind of significance was their numbers, which were primarily the result of the conflation of legitimate anti-war rhetoric and popular culture.
Of course, even that illegitimate significance was enough to make a lot of people very scared of them, which is why the student protest "movement" was eventually crushed. That, and its brief flirtations with the Black Panthers and the Hell's Angels, which really scared the hell out of people, even if the Panthers and the Angels thought the students were nothing but a bunch of dillettantes, too.
So much for the student protestors being a legitimate anti-war movement, or posing any threat at all to any kind of status quo injustice.
But what of their other stated aim (here an admittedly broad generalization on my part) , the reform of American society? What of the civil rights movement? Can it be taken as a youth-driven political movement? Not really. I almost made the mistake of saying, "Not at all. I've never seen any newsreel footage of white college students getting blasted with firehouses." Then I thought of the black students who started the sit-in movement, and the Freedom Riders, and I realized that, oh yes, there certainly was a real youth-driven component within the civil rights movement, but I'd almost forgotten it in my bias. The larger movement itself, however, was neither youth-led nor youth-driven. But I'll say this for those of its members that are of concern to me in this essay: they were heroes for a real cause. When the cause was gone, however, well... see the end of Part I, taking into account the history of the economic attacks on the black community since the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
I've been at this for more than two hours now, and I'm getting a bit peckish, so I'm going to call it a day. Many things still beg consideration. This project began as a subjective, mainly philosophical attempt to explain the phenomenon of my generation's widespread political apathy, but as it's progressed, I've begun thinking about the history of the relationship between political life and American kids. I'm about to wrap up the history lesson by talking about 60's feminism and the growth of a new counterculture, but the point I'm trying to get to with all this analysis is the realization that there has never in our history been a real youth-driven political movement.
Whether or not the historical persistence of political apathy means it is an intractable feature of being young in this country remains to be considered. For my part, I will be making the best attempt I possibly can to remain unconvinced.
posted by Dr. Chuck | 3:47 PM
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