“ ”

George Santayana (reportedly) says:
"All history is wrong and has to be rewritten."

Independence day

I.

The other day, Liz and I were meandering through one of the many, quiet old church graveyards in the historic part of downtown Philadelphia. We came across a simple, stone grave marker from the early 1800s, pock-marked and shined with age and precipitation. This fellow, my countryman, is to be remembered by exactly two pieces of information—his name and a five-word legacy: "A Son Of The Revolution."

This dramatic, distinctly concise epitaph could be the launch pad for a thousand reveries, depending on the nature of your mental trade winds. On this day (our nation-state's glorious birthday), I would like to leave you, dear reader, with just a few reflections. The first three fall into the category of "The Impossibly Ironic (But Inevitable?) Oxymorons of Institutional Aging":

1. That a state conceived by anti-imperial revolutionary fervor could in such a short period of time grow into the largest and most complete global empire the world has ever known, thus becoming the de facto arch nemesis of any contemporary sons of any revolution opposed to the current, global capitalist order (in which 86% of the world's goods are consumed by 20% of the world's population).

2. That a state birthed by an intensely politically engaged populace (e.g. ready to shoot, ready to die, ready to identify themselves primarily with the life or death of their local community) could in 200 years so completely become transformed into a disaffected, disengaged crowd of virtual spectators (e.g. ready to watch the TV, ready to make fun of the President, simultaneously ready to benefit from the perpetuation of the current order).

3. That a state birthed from not only from a radical political revolution but from a very violent political revolution could evolve into a state of people generally in denial about the violence of the world, distant from even the possibility of either killing or dying for their beliefs, taught to instinctively disregard any person or social movement that uses violence to achieve its ends (other than America, of course) as shocking and inherently illegitimate. (To me, this doctrine seems to be an echo of nonviolent strategy, twisted out of shape, co-opted and bent back onto itself to reinforce a detached passivity.)

4. The truly shocking, pervasive association of any disturbance (creative or not, violent or not, just or not, in line with the constitution or not) with the recently invented monolithic meme known as "Terror" (e.g. “Domestic terrorism”--esp. “Eco-Terror”, Human rights activists as terrorists, Peaceable assembly as terrorism; also, see China tear a page out of the American propaganda rule book, referring to the Dalai Lama as a terrorist).

II.

The Organizational Kid is good at finding practical, productive ways to integrate all his energies into the existing order. But he is not very good at getting any larger perspective on the good-ness or evil-ness of the existing order.

Granted, the American kid of my generation is working with some pretty mixed messages. Namely:

“Rebel! Conformists are boring and un-sexy.”

“Conform! Get real. Cynicism and resistance are downers (and futile, to boot).”

The most obvious way to synthesize this contradiction—especially when the second claim holds more ultimate, authoritative weight in society—is to conform with the substance of one's life while preserving one or two symbolic holdouts of cultural rebellion, perhaps in the realm of accessorization or media consumption.

These days I am also learning about another, equally comforting way to resolve such cognitive dissonance: To oscillate back and forth, to weigh endlessly, to “not take a stance." The social pressure to withhold judgment, masquerading as a value for intellectual humility, is in fact a very effective way for cultural conformity to insinuate itself. For example, to harbor a vague sense of disapproval about the Iraq war (“What a messy conflict. I wouldn’t want to hold one of those big guns. Women and children are dying. Plus, I don’t like dusty places.” Or “What are we even over there for?”—the confused question, not the rhetorical one) without real or actual commitment to that disapproval, while enjoying the benefits of imperial dominance every day, is one such remarkable feat of incoherent resolution.

Beyond this, there is of course the social pressure to not act on a defined position even once it has been reached (“Don’t be one of those extremists.”). A moderately acceptable path might perhaps be to teach about your radical position from within the academy. Or blog about it.

But to quote Howard Zinn: You can’t stay neutral on a moving train.

I wish that I could be extricated quicker, more completely, with more objectivity, from the numbing, paralyzing body cast of illusory neutrality.

After Brancusi's "The Kiss"