Word and Image of Vermont

This site exists to promote the pleasures of discussion and to nudge us all -- myself included -- an inch or two towards decency. You're welcome, and encouraged, to comment on any of the opinions you encounter here by using the e-mail link on the left.

John R. Turner

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Thoughts for May 18, 2012

If you check this site regularly you know I’ve been on a brief holiday from posting. That’s because I’ve been on an actual holiday here in California, and even more because during the first part of the week Shirley and I left Los Angeles and drove up to the Monterey area, where we stayed at a motel right across from the Asilomar Conference Center. It was at Asilomar that Goddard College held week-long meetings for students in the Adult Degree Program back in the late 1970s. I taught in several of those sessions and as a consequence was able to enjoy the amenities of the conference center, now a part of the California park system. It’s a wonderful place to relax, walk along seaside, watch lounging seals and other marine life. It was good to experience all that again.

I’m almost tempted to slide into an extensive travelogue, describing the many beauties of Monterey Bay. But you can read about them on so many web sites, my efforts would be worse than redundant. So I’ll spare you regular tourist talk. Instead, I’ll descend into thoughts about holiday places compared to home places.

Whenever I go to a place I like, I find myself asking if I would flourish by living there. California is a place I like quite a lot but I suspect it would not be permanently sustaining for me. That, of course, is a somewhat foolish statement because California comprises so many places that you would have to be peculiar, or wedded to a single place elsewhere, not to be able to find somewhere you could live happily. Still, regions do have cultures, and though California has a great array of different modes, there does seem to be, sheltering all of them, something you could call a California way of being.

I don’t know how to describe it, but I do think I can say it is clearly different from the New England way of being, or the Southern way of being, the two moods I have experienced most fully. I should note, right from the start, that these are not phenomena which can be placed in a ranked order. Anybody who said the California way is worse -- or better -- than the New England way, would be exhibiting a severely constricted mind.

On the other hand, you can say that for oneself, one mode is more likely than another to help work towards becoming the creature one wishes to be. Figuring out who that is involves great complexities, independent of taking place into account. Even so, place ultimately does manage to play into self-construction. You can do it better in some places than you can in others.

The thing about the California culture that might get in my way is that money is immensely evident here. It is a thing to be displayed, to be proud of, to be used as a primary measuring stick. In that form of calculation there is no way I can come out other than poorly. I’m not so naive as to think that money counts for nothing. Obviously one needs a certain amount of it to live decently. But beyond that amount, I don’t care much about it. And I am always aware that acquiring money requires an expenditure of life, so that if you spend more of life on it than you need to, you probably have not made a healthy bargain.

Just because you’re in a place where people are spending more of life on money than they need to doesn’t mean that you have to join in the excess. But it probably does mean you will be more oppressed by money-getting than you would be elsewhere. My problem is I don’t want to be oppressed by anything. That may seem excessive in itself. 

Please don’t take me to be saying that in California money is everything. Clearly it is not. But it is omnipresent in a way that one seldom observes in Vermont. That may mean no more than that Vermonters are more sneaky about money than Californians are. I can’t say for sure about that. But I can say that not having money always highlighted makes it easier for me to walk comfortably down the street.

The truth is that you don’t want your vacation places to be identical to your home place. Vacation is for fantasy, and California is the perfect fantasy land. If I were to become a Californian, where then could I go to get the fantasy I require from time to time?

Thoughts for May 12, 2012

Last night I went to the Vista Theatre, just off Hillhurst Avenue to see The Avengers. I mention the movie theatre because it had a definite effect on my viewing. It is a large, old-fashioned movie house which reminded me of the experiences of my youth, and which, in a way, called back my comic book reading days.

Many people don’t like comic book movies. I have even heard some criticize them for being unrealistic. It’s a bit hard to understand knocking something for achieving its purpose. To put people in a world different from the one they inhabit is the reason comics are written and why films are made from them. They are forms of imaginative release. Why we need imaginative release is an immense topic I can’t lay out here. I’ll just say I think it’s fairly obvious we do.

The Avengers succeeds moderately well as escapist melodrama. It gives us a set of characters who have a background of human angst, so there is just enough realism to provide a tie lacking in pure comic book figures like Superman or Wonder Woman. In other words, we can identify to some extent with their feelings. Yet by the time they show up as Avengers they have escaped reality pretty well by surging past the limitations of ordinary human physicality. They can do things most of us would be ill-advised to try.

The plot of the current film is fairly simple. Loki, an Asgardian (don’t ask me where Asgardia is) has enlisted the help of the leader of the Chitauri in an attempt to take over the world. His goal, he says, is to free the humans of freedom, which they really don’t want and are unsuited for. He has managed to get through a portal (there are lots of portals in science fiction movies) opened by a machine called the Tessernet and has started wreaking havoc on earth, prior to summoning the Chitauri soldiers. Nick Fry, head of S.H.I.E.L.D., knows that ordinary earthly defenders are helpless against him, so he calls together the Avengers, who though they are difficult to work with, do have certain abilities Nick needs. Thus Iron Man, Captain America, The Hulk, and the Black Window, with later assistance from Thor and Hawkeye, assemble to dart wise cracks at each other while they slaughter more Chitauri than you can count, in ways you can’t imagine. In the end, they kill them all. They can’t kill Loki, because he seems to be immortal in some fashion, so they send him back to Asgardia with his brother (by adoption) Thor, and shut up the portal. That’s it; there is no more plot.

Subtle plot, though, isn’t the point of comic books. There needs to be just enough of a story to set the super heroes in action, so that then, in some crazed manner, we can identify with them.

In this tale I think I feel more akin to Iron Man than to anyone else. It may be because he has the assistance of Pepper Potts, barefooted in denim shorts, but it could also be that he makes such sardonic remarks that most people think he cares about no one but himself. Yet there are times I envy all of them, even Captain America, although I think I would have a hard time wearing his suit without feeling ridiculous.

Comic books, in their thrust to create a modern mythology, will never come up to Homer. Aphrodite is simply more sexy than the Black Widow, and always will be. And in a battle between Achilles and Thor, it seems clear to me the Greek warrior would win, hands down. Still, it’s admirable that comic books even make the attempt. Who else is trying?

Go see The Avengers -- like everybody else. Even if you’re a person who hates comic book movies, and even if you turn out to hate this one, you will benefit from it in ways that will never be apparent to your conscious mind. You will be enriched far below the surface, and some of that wealth will be likely to worm its way into your so-called real life, even if you never know it’s happening.

Thoughts for May 11, 2012

Here’s a prediction: the story about Mitt Romney’s cutting off the hair of a classmate at his prep school will have more staying power than it seems, at first glance, to deserve. The reason, of course, is not the hurt foolish boys caused almost fifty years ago but, rather, how Romney has responded to the report.

He doesn’t remember the incident. Really?

This is either a lie (the most likely explanation) or Romney is brain-dead. No normal person forgets an event of that sort which happened when he was fifteen years old. And this is a fact the media will not be able to dismiss. It’s just too tempting. Also, it has the dog-on-the-car-roof deliciousness.

Evidence that this will be the case has already appeared. Both Richard Cohen and Ruth Marcus have articles on the story in this morning’s Washington Post, and both emphasize the sleazy nature of Romney’s so-called apology. To whom is he apologizing? The boy who was victimized by the school bullies is now dead. Romney can scarcely be apologizing to him. He seems to think the way to handle untoward incidents from long ago is to throw out vague apologies to the universe. And this practice only adds to the public sense that he’s possessed of a weird psyche.

The perception grows that Romney can’t imagine the emotions of other people. That’s not likely to be good for his campaign.

•••••

At the University of Southern California Bookstore last night I found a rack of small books put out by the Oxford University Press under the general title “A Very Short Introduction.” There are more than two hundred of these diminutive books, in paperback with French flap covers, measuring about 4X7 inches. Some are on curious topics, such as “Risk” or “Witchcraft,” but most deal with the sort of subjects you would expect, major writers, thinkers, and professional practices. They are attractive little volumes, and I suspect that’s their main appeal. The contents are often less than enthralling.

Certainly, it was the format which led me to buy the very short introduction to Nietzsche, by Michael Tanner, though it was egregiously overpriced at $11.95. It turned out, however, in this case, that the book’s contents are fairly useful. The primary value of a book of this kind is to give one a framework in which to place more detailed learning. You can’t learn much from the book itself but you can employ it as an organizing device.

Tanner’s main thesis about Nietzsche is that he has been astoundingly misrepresented. This, I think, is undoubtedly true. Tanner cites a phrase from Ecce Homo where Nietzsche says, “Do not, above all, confound me with what I am not.” to show how ironic pleas of this nature are. Probably no one has been more confounded with what he is not than Nietzsche has been.

The passage I found most agreeable in the early portion of Tanner’s text deals with the basic conclusion Nietzsche reached about the course of Western history:

His underlying view is that if we don’t make a drastically new start we are doomed,

since we are living in the wreckage of two thousand and more years of fundamentally

mistaken ideas about almost everything that matters .... offers carte blanche to people

who fancy the idea of a clean break with their whole cultural inheritance. Nietzsche

was under no illusions about the impossibility of such a schism.

This manages to combine two ideas which generally are seen as being strongly separate:

• That we really do need to take a new turning.
  

• That thinking you can completely remove yourself from your past is silly.
  

I hope it’s not confounding Nietzsche with what he is not to see him as wanting to work towards a genuine individualism, but one which incorporates the past rather than dismissing it. His ideal of a heroic individualism constructed through dramatic artistry has to be based on understanding the past, on tracing your cultural genealogy. If you wanted to get seriously simplistic, you might say you can’t know what you want to be until you know what you are.

This process is far more complex than a tiny book like Tanner’s can sketch. And without the complexity the idea becomes trite. Still, this modest outline is all right as a beginning.

Thoughts for May 10, 2012

It turned out that the evening after I mused about the moral problem of buying books, I went to a reading by Ann Patchett at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena. Lately Ms. Patchett has been getting publicity not only for her success as a novelist but also for having set up a new bookstore in her home town of Nashville. It seems that prior to Ms.Patchett’s action, the former Athens of the West had descended to having no bookstore at all, a condition I consider fairly astounding.

Ms. Patchett delivered a good humored but passionate appeal for the community services provided by independent bookstores, using as an example the very reading we were attending that night. She reminded us that if we want institutions of that kind to be available we have to be willing to pay five or ten dollars more per purchase at a bookstore than we would if we made it from Amazon. She also noted that if anybody came to Parnassus Books in Nashville to look at a book and then bought it from Amazon, he would be killed. I think that was a joke.

In the spirit of the evening, and to support Vroman’s, my wife bought a copy of Ann Patchett’s latest novel, State of Wonder, and got her to sign it, which she did in a firm, clear hand. Though the event was supposed to be a promotion for the paperback edition of the book, and though Patchett did read a short section from it, her remarks concentrated more on bookstores, and on her general habits of writing, than on this particular novel, her eighth.

It was a pleasant evening. Ann Patchett is an accomplished, witty speaker, and clearly she sought to entertain as well as inform. And she succeeded. Even so, I went away still uncertain about where and how to buy my books. I have a suspicion that if I went to the Parnassus Bookstore, I wouldn’t find many of the volumes I would be interested in seeing. I fear that the days of bookstores with truly expansive inventories are over. Even Vroman’s, which is huge by normal bookstore standards, has limited offerings in areas serious readers want to explore. That’s not to say that local bookstores aren’t healthful social institutions. They certainly are. But the convenience of being able to get a book I can’t find in a bookstore by looking for it on the internet means that a considerable portion of my book buying will continue to be done that way, even if it causes me a pang of guilt. As a result of hearing Ms.Patchett, I’ll likely make a stronger effort to buy more off the shelves of real bookstores than I would have otherwise. If other readers can make similar shifts, bookstores should have increased chances of survival. But they’re unlikely ever to be widely available to the general public or to constitute a major feature of American commerce. The basic problem is not the method people use to acquire books, but, rather, why they read books as infrequently as they do.

•••••

Mr. Obama’s announcement about same-sex marriage has raised for me again the question of why people should be so vehemently opposed to it.

I can’t see that it hurts anyone. It’s true, of course, that it constitutes a social change but most people seem to be fairly well convinced that, over time, social change is inevitable. People alter the way they think about all sorts of things. Judgment, you would think, should be based on the issue of harmfulness or benefit and not simply on change or difference.

I understand that many continue to find the thought of sexual activity between persons of the same sex unpalatable. But no one is expected to engage in it if he, or she, doesn’t like it. Nor is anyone required to observe it. Surely we’re all aware that there are many things done in private that someone might regard with disfavor. And if we have an ounce of self-consciousness we have to recognize that there are things we do that someone else might view as bizarre. That’s no reason to make laws against everything that offends us. To do that would be to create a social hellhole. Again, the standard has to be harm.

I have heard some say that once a practice becomes accepted, persons who would never have thought of it might be lured into new ways. But so what? That’s true of the use of cell phones. And if you’re really concerned with harm you can make a stronger case against electronic gadgets than you can against same-sex romance.

The entire furor is absurd.  But then I guess I have to admit it’s a sign of what the human race is. Thinking of what we are makes it hard, at times, to avoid discouragement.

Thoughts for May 9, 2012

Yesterday we ventured into the heart of Hollywood, and at the Chinese Theatre saw Jesus Henry Christ.

It’s impossible to estimate how many movies and novels have been built around the theme of a man so obsessed with his career that he can’t imagine anything else in life until he discovers his life is falling apart because he has neglected the things that really count. But just because the theme is hackneyed doesn’t mean the movie has to be. And in this case we have something quite fresh and ultimately endearing.

I noticed on Rotten Tomatoes that only 51% of viewers liked the film. That’s a good sign for a movie like this because it indicates that it’s not broad enough in its humor to engage the whole of the great American public. But nothing that’s actually sharp can do that in any case. This film has some genuinely funny scenes, better than anything you’ll ever see on Jay Leno. I don’t want to be snide about this because there are times when I enjoy broad humor, and even times when I like Jay Leno. But I do think it’s engaging, at times, to see someone trying for something different.

The distinctive feature in Jesus Henry Christ is a ten year old boy genius who was produced by his mother’s acquisition of a sperm donation from a bright guy. The donor is nowhere near as intelligent as the result of the donation but, still, bright enough, to make the product believable.

The boy actually is a kind of Christ figure in that he sees and speaks the truth with no concern for the truth’s being hated by most people, and, in particular, by school administrators. On his first day of school, in kindergarten, he is suspended for showing he knows what’s going on. The good part of Henry’s Christ-like being, though, is that he’s also likable enough to escape any kind of serious crucifixion. Think of it. Supposing we had had Jesus without the crucifixion. We might have been spared tons of droopy theology.

I doubt that Jesus Henry Christ will ever rise above the 51% approval rating, and critics will doubtless have many snobby things to say about it. But my advice is to go see it if you get a chance.

•••••

There’s a quite good bookstore on Vermont Avenue, not quite a mile from my daughter’s apartment. I’ve visited Skylight Books almost every day I’ve been here. But it presents me with a moral problem.

Like most independent bookstores, Skylight Books has to sell its books at retail prices. And I have the feeling I can’t afford to pay that much. Consider these books for example:

Slavoj Zizek and Boris Gunjevic, God in Pain: Inversions of the Apocalypse (a paperback book for $19.95)

Malcolm Bull, Anti-Nietzsche (hardback, $26.95)

Robert Pippin, ed., Introductions to Nietzsche (hardback, $27.99)

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas (hardback, $30.00)

If you consider just these four books, all of which I would like to have, the total retail price is

$104.89. If, however, I got them on Kindle, the price, collectively, would be $44.98. In other words, buying then from Skylight Books costs 233% as much as getting them electronically. Can I afford to pay more than twice as much?  I’d like to support independent stores. But twice as much?

I confess, I don’t know what to do. It’s situations like this that make me wish I were rich.

Out and About for May 8, 2012

As I promised yesterday, I did walk down to get a few pictures of the Scientology complex. I wanted...  continue to article >>>

Thoughts for May 7, 2012

What’s wrong with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed? He doesn’t want to cooperate with his own trial at Guantanamo. He seems to think it’s not a real trial, just a showy preliminary to his certain killing by the United States. What could have given him that idea? Was it merely that he was tortured for weeks on end, and subjected to waterboarding 192 times? Could it be that his not being allowed to talk to his own lawyer has convinced him that there’s no intention to provide him with a genuine defense? He doesn’t seem to grasp the sanctity of the U.S. judicial process. There are so many unreasonable people in the world that we Americans are having a hard time convincing all of them that all we really care about are truth and justice. Judge James Pohl has his hands full making that case to the world.

•••••

This morning we -- that is Shirley and I -- took a long walk to the west, several blocks past Vermont Avenue, and then south to Sunset Boulevard where, having turned back east, we discovered the gigantic blue Scientology complex, surrounding the Scientology Church, bordered on the east side by L. Ron Hubbard Avenue. What a sight!

When I say blue, by the way, I mean really blue.

I stood on Sunset Boulevard for a long time and asked myself what might be happening on the other sides of the hundreds of windows I saw. And I realized I had no idea.

Tomorrow, if my intention holds, I’m going back to Sunset Boulevard with my camera to take photographs of the great Scientology pile. Then I’ll work up a little “Out and About” item and post it for your delectation.

Thoughts for May 4, 2012

We made it to Los Angeles late last night after a long and fairly unpleasant day. I ask myself if I’m being silly to despise airport world as much as I do. After musing over and weighing the evidence, I conclude that I’m not. Airport world manifests virtually everything that’s disgusting about the modern life. It bespeaks economic privilege as the meaning of existence. It proclaims the right of authority to do anything to people without a note of explanation. It works to destroy human meaning. If I believed in Satan, I would be forced to say the language employed in airports comes straight from the Satanic headquarters. In short, airport world gives me the creeps.

Standing on an access ramp in Newark waiting for luggage to be brought up from under the plane, I heard someone say he had read a survey which rated Newark as the worst airport in America, and maybe in the world. Then at the baggage carousel in Los Angeles I heard someone else say that LAX (as it’s called in airport world) has been evaluated as the second worst airport in the United States. From the worst to the second worst for me yesterday: I guess you could say that’s progress of a sort.

•••••

This morning in the Los Feliz section of Los Angeles, the world had been transformed. The sun was shining; the temperature was 70 degrees. At the Gelato Coffee Shop on Hillhurst Avenue, I paid too much for a cup of coffee -- $3.00 -- but the atmosphere was pleasant and scones, also overpriced, were tasty. Then, over to Vermont Avenue, and down past the bookstore and the little theatre. There’s a restaurant there with “Barre” stenciled on the window. I asked Shirley if she thought I would get free food if I went in and told them I was from Montpelier. She said they would think I was insane. So, I didn’t go in. Thus are great enterprises squelched by propriety.

Back on Hillhurst, in Albertson’s, I noticed that the milk cartons and other packaging are identical to the ones in Shaw’s at home. Might Albertson’s and Shaw’s be part of the same monstrous financial empire? I could probably find out by going to Google, but if I discovered a connection it would be discouraging. So I’m not going to check it out.

In the Los Angeles Times this morning, Ron Brownstein has a column titled “All or Nothing Politics,” in which he compares wheeler-dealer politicking of the Lyndon Johnson era with the scorched earth campaigns of today. He implied, mildly, that the former mode was better. My trouble with Brownstein, although he’s a careful and generally truthful reporter, is that virtually everything he does is mild. I’m not saying mildness can’t be a virtue, at times, but it can also mute the distinction between sensible, well-intentioned policies and blatant bigotry and viciousness. With Brownstein it’s as though, if Group A wants this, and Group B wants that, all that really needs to be discussed is how each is faring in getting its goal. There’s too much of David Broder in him, though I don’t mean to imply that he’s as impeccably evenhanded between God and the Devil as Broder was.

I’d like to see more reporters, Brownstein included, make distinctions between policies that are worthy to be elements of compromise and those that aren’t. And if I were told that would be taking a stand, I wouldn’t feel crushed.

I’ll be in California until the 19th, and as has been my habit when I’m traveling, I’ll probably be telling you more of what I see, day by day, than I do when I’m at home. I’ll admit that gradually, in my mind, there has grown up the notion that Vermont is real world, and most other places I go are fantasy world.

I love to visit fantasy world, and the things I see there are always driving me to exclamation.

Thoughts for May 3, 2012

In Truthout, Henry Giroux posts incredibly prolix and abstract denunciations of the warfare state (see “Violence USA: The Warfare State and the Brutalizing of Everyday Life” from yesterday). Most of what he says is as true as abstractions can get but it’s a truth that’s unlikely to have much effect. I don’t like criticizing him because he’s on the right side and there aren’t enough there. Still he’s flailing in a way that won’t much weaken the thing he wants to bring down.

The left has been carrying on in this manner for goodness knows how long and the result is pitiful.

When someone wants intensely to do something good but never seems quite to manage it, the reason is usually a bad idea. In this case, the bad idea is the notion that the warfare state is driven by evil. We need to get over the concept of evil people. It’s not useful in any way.

It’s true that the results of the warfare state are evil. It causes misery for millions. But it’s senseless to imply that the people who promote it are evil. They aren’t minions of Satan (mainly because there is no Satan). Rather, they are juvenile, confused, and silly. Think of David Petraeus strutting around in his little uniform (which I guess he’s not allowed to wear anymore). Is he evil? No. Is he ridiculous? Obviously.

What’s the best thing for people who are ridiculous? Mainly, it’s laughter. They want desperately to be viewed as serious. And the cure for them is to demonstrate that their concepts of seriousness are absurd.

There probably is some good in showing the results of what they wreak. I’ve got nothing against that. If photographs can be had of what happens when a drone missile hits a rural village, they ought to be publicized. But the healthy treatment for those who use the drones is to highlight the quality of their minds.

Indignation of the sort that Henry Giroux and others of his school apply so liberally is not a tenth as effective as a teaspoon of sly humor. 

Our reformers need to study more carefully about the right weapons to be used.

•••••

Later today I'll get on an airplane to fly to Los Angeles, where Shirley and I will be until May 19th. I seem to have developed a bifurcated sentiment about traveling. No matter how much I want to go to my destination, I still dislike leaving where I am. And the latter feeling is strengthened if I’m leaving home.

I don’t know if other people are like this, but wherever I am, I feel myself taking a kind of possession of it. So when I have to leave, I sense that something which belongs to me is being taken away. And even when I know I can return to it, the sensation of loss remains palpable. One of my problems with frequent travel is that it stains me with a vague perception that I’ve lost numerous places I now have to grieve for.  England contains so many spots I cherish and, yet, that I may never be able to get to again, that I get down in the dumps just thinking about them. I don’t know how many more places of that character I want to add to my psyche. Los Angeles doesn’t fit in that category yet because I’ll probably go back to it again after this trip.

When plane travel is involved my emotions get even darker. I really dislike the ordeal the TSA has in store for me, and not just because I think it’s senseless but because I’m pretty sure it’s deliberately designed to turn the American people into sheep. Why else would someone pick your pen up out of basket, stare at you threateningly and ask you what it is? Plane travel gets ever more like a scene from a science fiction dystopia.

Still, I really do want to go to Los Angeles to visit my daughter and her husband. So I have to face down my dread. Once I’m there it may take me only 24 hours or so to shake off the feeling of humiliation travel dumped on me. Then, I’ll have a good time. I’m taking my computer with me, and if the TSA doesn’t steal it, I’ll send you notices of the delights California has reserved for me.

Thoughts for May 2, 2012

I see that Michael Sandel is out with a new book: What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. His argument is that during the era of “market triumphalism,” the time ushered in by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, we moved from being a market economy to being a market society. What does that mean? It means virtually everything is for sale.

In Sandel’s view, this is not a good situation. Not only does the commodification of everything sharpen the sting of inequality, but putting a price on the good things of life can -- and usually does -- corrupt them. Perhaps we’re not yet to the point where people can openly buy and sell children, or votes, but we appear to be moving in that direction.

What’s the cure? Here’s where I think Sandel fails to dig deep enough. He wants us to reason together, in public about the social goods we prize. Our political system, at the moment is not allowing us to do that. As he says, “Our politics is overheated because it is mostly vacant, empty of moral and spiritual content. It fails to engage with the big questions that people care about.”

Do people care about big questions? What are they, then? And where do we find the people who care about them? Obviously, there are persons who try to think seriously about life’s meaning, and how we should use our efforts and resources, and what should matter most. Yet I doubt they begin to approach a majority. A much larger number are like children at a fair, feeding their nickels into a machine where an automated arm pretends to pick up prizes and dump them onto a ramp leading outside. But most of the time, the arm drops the toy before it gets over the escape ramp. And even on those few occasions when the toy emerges, it turns out to be cheap junk. In either case, all the kid’s nickels are gone.

When people reason together in public, what they reason about is how to drop the nickels, or which machine to drop them in.

I’ll admit that in America there are numbers of groups and institutions who are saying, “Get away from those machines. Spend your nickels on something you’ll really enjoy.” But generally they’re overwhelmed by the guys with money who own the machines and who scream, incessantly, “Next time! Next time!”

Thinkers of Sandel’s persuasion keep saying, “Put your faith in the people. When they really get to talking, they’ll teach each other about what counts.” That strikes me as almost as bloated an illusion as the belief you’ll finally hit it big with the machines. People are made by the environment which envelops them. And there is little in our general environment to nudge the general population towards the values Sandel would consider good.

Talking with friends at lunch yesterday about Sandel’s book, I found myself saying, in effect,

“We need to get out of the dominant social environment, and find ourselves a perch from which we can watch it but avoid letting it catch us up or sweep us away.”

I’m afraid the only way to get out is to step away from the public religion’s professed faith in democracy. The wisdom of the people, as a whole, is not going to save us. I don’t discount how hard reaching that decision is. I was once as strong a believer in the public faith as anyone. But the time has come to disenthrall myself.

I’m not going to stop voting; elections can make some difference. I’m not going to move to a sod hut in the far northern regions of Canada and try to merge with nature. Outwardly, I probably won’t be much different from what I have been. But in my mind I’m going to attempt to wash away the sentimental tripe designed to keep me dropping my nickels. I’m not going to support our troops. I’m not going to believe in a national political party as the solution to our difficulties. I’m not going to think that putting the right man in the White House will change everything. I’m not going to take solace in the notion that Americans may make some mistakes but that, in the end, they always come through. I’m not going to believe in any kind of nationalistic destiny. I’m not ever going to tell myself that all the people want this or that, or stand for this that. I’m not going to love market capitalism. I’m going to hope to have enough courage not to worry about what the herd thinks of me (which, of course, is a kind of arrogance because they don’t think of me at all; but still I’m going to hope).

I am going to try to find new friends and, more important, try to be loyal to the ones I have. And I’ll keep wishing that some of the seemingly small efforts people are launching will strike sparks.

Books like What Money Can’t Buy are interesting, and they may do moderate good. But they don’t go down far enough. They don’t reach for the roots of public corruption and the people’s indifference. They want, too much, to hold onto comforting illusions. We have to give those up if there’s to be a chance of erecting a healthy public arena -- assuming that such a project is not itself a gigantic delusion.  

 

©John R. Turner

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