How good does it feel to be right? How good does it feel to know that you are right? How about this — how important is it that the other guy is wrong? I’m not just talking here about going national on the National Trivia Network’s Buzztime but being on the right side of the big stuff. But what exactly is the big stuff anymore?
I recently finished reading Cultural Amnesia, and the underlying concern of this otherwise far-ranging collection of essays is to make exacting distinctions regarding just who was correct on questions of fascism and communism in the 20th century. Fair enough, but in picking winners and losers, Clive James seems to play the bouncer behind the intellectual velvet rope. There is also the smugness that comes from knowing who was the most obscure; Tom Cruise may try to convince us in Valkyrie that Claus von Stauffenberg was the leader of the July 20 plot, but you and I now know that Henning Von Trescow was in fact the strongest force behind the attempt to assassinate Hitler. Pause here to consider the troubling “yes, but” issue of assigning hero status to officers in the Wehrmacht.
James spends most of his energy engaging the “yes, but” question in relation to artists and what was their degree of appropriate response to the crimes going on around them. His preferred method is to contrast a famous figure with a lesser known but less-compromised contemporary. Borges, for example, is not excused from remaining silent about the disappeared, especially since his countryman Sabato condemned the generals and continued to “read the newspapers” despite being blind himself.
This desire to assign scores to those based on who knew what when and what they did about it is understandable given the stakes described but also feels generational. Roth suddenly gives us a historical what if and Martin Amis feels compelled to write not one but two books assuring us that he knew Stalin was bad. Is anything particularly gained from having such unassailable bogeymen? Might thinkers be drawn to this time period not only because it was so consequential but also because it feels so definitive in terms of offering an absolute right and wrong? Do we get any of this moral certitude? I assume we don’t want it if there is a corresponding historical price to be paid, but what does it mean to potentially not have such a clear dividing line for evaluation in the future?
My question, my friends, is what issue will we be judged by 25 to 50 years from now? Iraq? The general erosion of civil liberties and governmental oversight? Stem cell research? Darfur? The environment?
I ask sincerely but also with an eye toward what the French Resistance (not in quotes yet, Scott, but read on) called l’epuration sauvage. James singles out Sartre as a particular offender here; not only did he continue to be “wrong” on the Soviet Union long after he should have known better, but he was one of the most vocal of those who would sit in judgment of traitors while he was one of the least visible during the time of true struggle.
When our time comes to delight in the denunciation of the impure who will claim to be securely in the right and in the know?
“who will claim to be securely in the right and in the know?”
Bill Buckley
Hovering over the I-5 North between Olympia and Tacoma is a billboard that is owned by a conservative wacko. When I lived in the area, I was excited whenever Mr. Wacko changed the message; it usually had to do with gun control, the sins of Bill Clinton, or some other such rightwing ranting.
As I was just up in the area, and driving from Portland to Seattle, I was overjoyed to see that Mr. Wacko is still alive and kicking. I was disappointed, however, to see that for the first time, I agree with his message (and, I feel, the answer to your question): “Is winning a war for freedom worth losing our freedoms?”.
Terrorism is our barbarians at the gate. It is a perfect post-modern enemy to crumble our post-modern empire.
It’s a silly game, isn’t it, deciding who was right and wrong 40 or 60 or 100 years ago? Often merely an exercise in self-congratulation.
This reminds me of the stories in the press a few weeks ago about how Bush is awaiting the judgment of history on his presidency, confident he’ll be vindicated. But compare that to climate-change activists, who believe that in 50 or 100 years everyone will realize their issue was by far the most important one facing humanity in 2007.
I happen to think Bush is wrong about the future judgments of history, and climate-change people are probably right. But what you have to do is make judgments now about the issues we face, when you can still be wrong. (And don’t be delusional about it — that’s Bush’s problem.) This Clive James business sounds fatuous.
I’m not sure I’m up to tackling these questions today but it seems to me the most self-assured and self-righteous are often the most delusional. The ability to question one’s own beliefs is a good sign in my book.
#2: Scott, I know that billboard! With the illustration of Uncle Sam and rows of movable letters. I’m surprised there was a message I’d agree with.
BW: I know! Are we getting older, or is crazy phycho-man getting wiser? Dave, yes for a minute I forgot about global warming — silly me.
Here’s a passage from Tom Athanasiou and Paul Baer’s book, Deat Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming, in which the authors describe the worse case senario called the fortress world:
In the face of accelerating social and ecological decay, it becomes clear that nothing effective is going to be done. The planet warms, and the impacts rise to horrific levels, but with the elites unwilling to face the demands of redistributional equity, the climate-protection coalition fragments and collapses. New and terrible kinds of wars take center stage, dominating international politics and solidifying the deadlock.
In hindsight, it becomes clear that an opportunity has passed. Hope fades. Environmental and social deterioration begin to feed on each other, pulling the world into a self-reinforcing downward spiral. Governments, largely captured by private interests, withdraw from social projects, and economic and racial divides are accepted as normal. Economic polarization continues to increase; the sense of loss deepens; culture becomes more commercialized, more cynical, and more decadent than could have previously been believed; pessimism fades into barbarism.
I’ve said it before, but it is this type of post that keeps me coming back to TGW.