I often find that I agree with a commentator’s main point but am puzzled by one of his assertions. This is most often the case when the assertion at issue is about “us:” the American people. We’re a variegated bunch. Generalizations about us tend to be rather weak and fraught with important exceptions. Part of the reason for that is that so many of us don’t know ourselves, but that’s a subject for another tirade.
Toward its end, Thaddeus McCotter’s column of this morning, which advises President Trump to close his campaign on a positive, optimistic note, makes such a generalization:
[W]e Americans remain a practical, optimistic, and aspirational people.
Do we? I’m not so sure. I’ve encountered a lot of beaten-down souls these past few decades. Quite a number of the people I’ve known have spent the greater part of their lives just trying to survive. The pattern calls to mind a bit of Paul Simon:
I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered,
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease;
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered,
Or driven to its knees.
Oh, but it’s all right, it’s all right,
For we’ve lived so well so long…
Still, when I think of the road we’re traveling on,
I wonder what’s gone wrong…
I can’t help it, I wonder what’s gone wrong.
The C.S.O. and I had a moment of reflection over this just the other evening. We’re old. We remember how things were when we were younger. If our memories are accurate – always a question, when septuagenarians get to reminiscing – America was a better place then. Americans were better, too: more optimistic, less stressed, and much more neighborly. If you’re in your seventies or older, perhaps you have some memories to add to ours.
That’s all for the moment, Gentle Reader. Perhaps I’ll be back later with something more upbeat. Until then, enjoy your Sunday.
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I’m a decade too young to add memories as requested, but I’ve come across plenty of essays and such where a couple of questionable assertions or logical steps make me rethink my agreement with the conclusion. I don’t have a general method for reconciling the contradiction and deal with them case by case.
Worse than that, I’ll sometimes come across a statement by a scumbag which accords with one of my long-held beliefs, causing me to rethink my belief. It’s probably like what a properly liberal vegan feels when she finds that Hitler became a vegetarian in his later years.
I’m 71, and so share our host’s perspective. Concerning “then and now,” two things leap to mind:
One, the widespread fallacy that science somehow makes religion obsolete.
Two, best expressed by Rudyard Kipling, and becoming more relevant by the day:
The Stranger
The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk—
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind.
The men of my own stock
They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wonted to,
They are used to the lies I tell.
And we do not need interpreters
When we go to buy and sell.
The Stranger within my gates,
He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control—
What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
Shall repossess his blood.
The men of my own stock,
Bitter bad they may be,
But, at least, they hear the things I hear,
And see the things I see;
And whatever I think of them and their likes
They think of the likes of me.
This was my father’s belief
And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf—
And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children’s teeth are set on edge
By bitter bread and wine.
Author
Kipling put it brilliantly. He was impatient with the political arguments and maneuverings. He went straight to the core of the thing: They are not like us. And so it was… and is.
Paul Simon, a leftist no doubt, caught the existential angst in that song “American Tune” as well as in “Still Crazy After All These Years” and “My Little Town.”