I rarely burn the midnight oil. At the tender age of 74, there is some sense of security in turning in earlier. Silly, right? I am retired, so I don’t have to be anywhere most of the time the following day. So its not as if insomnia would prejudice the following day, and therefore require an adequate margin of error to pass out. And for years I was a night owl, somehow thinking that if I convinced myself of seriousness, well, that was a reasonable marker of ability–or a substitute–or, at the very least, some evidence of bona fides.
People who come from my background are never quite sure. If you have any measure of success, it isn’t easy to assume it’s the product of talent. But, Hell, if you outwork everyone else, there is the consolation of effort. Well, dammit, it’s not as if I didn’t try to figure that damn problem out. If intuition fell short, busting a gut was a reassuring substitute. After all, the cliches about genius, inspiration, persperation–even if you suspected they were rationalizations or the mere condescension of the successful (piece of cake, old boy), were a compensation of sorts. Yeah, someone else may have had all the advantages, but you had the never-say-die of a good American soldier. You take the hill, or you expire trying. At least honor was a kind of success.
So, here I sit now, and my honest reaction is: did you really believe all that bullshit? You know, the kind of academic naivete that said your work spoke for itself. Merit was its own reward and immediately recognized. A good book got a good review, right? Only losers complained about the incestuous ethics of the various guilds we populated. That connections, or legacies, or a nice ass really mattered. You were never a victim of circumstances or a product of timing. Hell, it was all marginal productivity, as the econ say. Sooner or later, a good day’s (or night’s) work would be rewarded. Right. And that you were out to change the world for the better. Not mere ambition, but an existenialist-infused mission loaded with Sarter, Marcel, Camus, and them guys. How noble.
The worst part about growing up is the first time you realize that the conceit is what keeps most of us in line: tame, dedicated, emollient, and complaisant. Don’t make waves–make an effort. You’ll see. And yet at some point all watch a perfectly mediocre effort rewarded, or Hell, a consideration confused with a qualification. It is the bane of the white male in this society, convinced of his handicap while others condemn his priviliege. What privilige? I worked to get here. What the Hell did you do? There were no “moves” or “sandbags” or “wires.” Everyone was equally considered. Your readers were all logical, rational, open-minded and empirically driven, right? Others did politics or ideology. You did science in your immaculate search for truth. Right.You never suffered from bad faith. The jerk across the hall in your dorm did. And went to work on Wall Street.
Some years ago I watched a very able junior historian get driven out of the profession by a senior scholar who set himself up as accuser, judge, jury, and executioner. The case was notorious in its time, and I was tangentially involved as a witness in which two contending groups of scholars tried to outdo themselves in ill-mannered vitriol. It was my first clue thar big time academics could be a blood sport, long before race, class and gender stole the limelight. In retrospect, this was about the pretty traditional rules for the evaluation of documentary evidence with a good deal of ideology and some perhaps less noble motives thrown in as well. There are times I wonder if the affair was attributable to some form of male menopause? Really? Yes, really. The older guy was hooked up with some von Hotty German-type. Maybe it wasn’t going so well.
I also became aware, slowly, that we had colleagues who thought if they threw enough politically supercharged terms around often enough–repeatedly, and maybe with no adequate grounding in anything resembling a fact–well, that was ok. Their hearts were pure. They were on the side of the people. Even if their heads were full of crap, no matter. I received an outraged lecture on something called “dualism” from some equally obscure guy who managed to convey the impression that I must be arguing in favor of some sexual perversion. Amusing now, but at the time, I was a bit peeved. One discipline’s relative prices was another’s out-and-out theft. A pointless exchange? Absolutely. But this is how we identified our heros and villains. And yes, there were the fast-track Gods and Goddesses. What ever happend to them? Our deities have a damn shot shelf-life. Maybe the next generation’s will do better.
The Hell of it was, it took me some forty years to wake to all this crap. And, oddly, the catalyst was somehow Donald Trump and a move from Texas to bring things into focus. You know, this American way stuff–all the mythos of the land of the free and the home of the brave–somehow collapsed under the weight of this brutal clown and his antics, not to mention that corruption, lies, and simply thuggery of the crowd with which he has surrounded himself. Venal? Jesus, is there any question? Corrupt? Does the proverbial bear do it in the woods? Misogynist? Cruel? Delusional? Debased? Hell, evil? Yes evil. As someone said to me, every word out of Satan’s mouth in Paradise Lost was a lie. Go, Trump, and do likewise. Repeatedly. And demand the fealty of your followers. And the abysmal assent of the good third or so of Americans who think, well, this is all ok? Really? And you wonder why I sit here and question virtually everything I believed or was taught since the 1960s? You see, we have come to a moment of great clarity: the lies that brought us Vietnam were awful, but hardly unique. The ambitions of the unpalatable Nixon, the grandiose ambitions of power compounded with the lies and criminality of Kissinger, just a warm up. I barely remember Joe McCarthy, but I sense the same casual relation to truth, ethics, integrity–the same contempt for decency. And worse, the same naivete about some of his Wisonsin constituents (I taked to one in college) who told me he was a “good man.” So you see see, this hideous moral dyslexia that now afflicts us is really not so new. It was there all along, waiting for yet another opportunity to present. Is this the real America? I don’t know.
I sit here at 2AM, considering the balance of my career, back from extensive wanderings in America, exposed to people of all sorts, forced to consider the myths that our diverse populations share. And wondering, in all honesty, if I haven’t been part of the con job that got us to the point. You know, suitably credentialed, educated, socialized, bought off even, because that’s what the purpose of the entire exercise was? I am not being hard on myself. Maybe just honest for a change. My generation was supposed to change America. You know, the flower children, the Aquarians, the truth-tellers. I wonder now, Was this all simply what we told ourselves we were doing, not much different from the generation that came before us? It’s a Hell of a conclusion to come to.
We just found a novel way to fail, convinced that we were different, superior, and the avatars of the change that would revolutionize America. You remember The Greening of America. Phew. What tripe.
Whatever happens, our successors gotta do better than this. With Trump in the saddle, that shouldn’t be hard……..after all, blaming the Boomers is clearly running out of material. Like I said, I’m 74. Do the numbers.
This Game Is Over, Salvucci Sez 