FEELINGS:

A Boy and His Dogma: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Hate the Left (Mark Gauvreau Judge, 7/15/98, Baltimore City Paper)

In his 1979 book The Culture of Narcissism, Lasch summed up the atmosphere in post-1960s America this way: "The contemporary climate is therapeutic, not religious. People today hunger not for personal salvation, let alone for the restoration of an earlier golden age, but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic security. Even the radicalism of the '60s served, for many of those who embraced it for personal rather than political reasons, not as a substitute religion but as a form of therapy. Radical politics filled empty lives, provided a sense of meaning and purpose." Lasch cites the radical '60s group the Weathermen as an example, noting, "The atmosphere in which the Weathermen lived--an atmosphere of violence, danger, drugs, sexual promiscuity, moral and psychic chaos--derived not so much from an older revolutionary tradition as from the turmoil and narcissistic anguish of contemporary America."

That narcissistic anguish is now the property of a new generation of rebels. Down in Washington the day after the concert, I happened upon the "Free Tibet" rally at the Capitol. I couldn't help but feel like I was confronting myself 10 years ago, at least psychologically. The kids had the same imprecise "rage against the machine," the same obsession with being hip while trying to act aloof, the same hypocritical hatred of middle-class values while hailing from the suburbs of America. Their every public comment, whether mouthed on MTV or quoted in The Washington Post, revealed the same half-baked activism: Uh, I read some pamphlets and it's really bogus what's going on in Tibet. It should stop. When's the next band come on?

The kids also have the same distrust of capitalism I did. Because capitalism became the enemy of the Left in the '60s and these kids are that decade's imitators, they instinctively look for solutions without consulting the market. This is a shame, because if the Left became interested in money it could really make some concrete change.

Imagine that instead of "Save Tibet" they held a series of "Save Our Cities" stadium concerts. The millions of dollars would go toward megaentertainment centers in the downtowns of our most needy cities, and the centers would boast shopping, grand ballrooms, ornate movie theaters, maybe Starbucks. These centers would hire people from the surrounding neighborhoods, offering Michael Moore's minimum-wage recommendation of $10 an hour as well as full benefits and a chance to move up the ladder.The government could give the developers huge tax breaks.

Injecting the inner city with a couple hundred cc's of raw capitalism could draw the middle class, both black and white, into the cities, give the people already living there jobs, and transform crummy neighborhoods into safe ones. Of course it wouldn't be as exotic or psychologically uplifting as trying to save a country on the other side of the planet, nor would it offer the puff of self-righteousness that comes from that. But it could perform a miracle here at home. Maybe I'll write a letter to The Nation about it.

Perhaps no one should have to face what they were like when young.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 10, 2003 07:30 PM