Found It

[oselle]

In my post yesterday I mentioned a quote that I wished I could find, by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Considering Schlesinger was an assistant to and chronicler of President John F. Kennedy, this quote is especially meaningful today in the wake of Senator Edward Kennedy's death. This is from an interview with Schlesinger in 1969, but it is even more relevant today. The emphasis is mine:

“We are today the most frightening people on this planet. The ghastly things we do to our own people, the ghastly things we do to other people, these must at least compel us to look searchingly at ourselves and our society before hatred and violence rushes on to more evil, and finally tear our nation apart. . . we cannot blame the epidemic of murder at home on deranged and solitary individuals, separate from the rest of us. For these individuals are plainly weak and suggestible men stamped by our society with a birth rite of hatred and a compulsion toward violence. We must recognize, I believe that the evil is in us, that it springs from some dark intolerable tension in our history and our institutions. It is almost as though some primal curse had been fixed on our nation. We are a violent people with a violent history, and the instinct for violence has seeped into the bloodstream of our national life.”

I have a superstitious streak and I believe in things like destiny and fate and karma or, if you will, that what goes around just comes around. All great nations of this earth (and many of the not-so-great) have blood on their hands. Yet there are few nations founded with such radically noble intentions that, in truth, wound up being constructed upon two terrible evils -- the genocide of one people and the enslavement of another.

I've thought about this from time to time over the last few years and especially in the last month. America was founded in an extraordinary spirit of enlightenment and has done a lot of good in the world. We've had many great leaders, one of whom we lost today, and for much of our history we really have been a beacon of light for the rest of the world.

But this is still a nation with a profoundly dark legacy. At times I believe that the sins of our past are so awful that they can never be expiated by our good deeds, can never be cleansed, but are now at last bearing their final rotten fruit.

Comments

[tskterata.livejournal.com]

I've been crying on and off all day over Ted Kennedy, and I'm at work so people think I've finally truly lost it. I was reading a 2003 profile of him in the Boston Globe and it made me think of your last post and the current crop or cowardly Dems.

I suppose its too much to hope that this will make the Dems stand up and ram Health care down the throats of their rivals.

"This is a guy who, the first thing he did in the Senate was take on the poll tax," says Bancroft Littlefield Jr., who was Kennedy's chief of staff through most of the 1990s. "The first issue he sinks his teeth into is trying to make it possible for black Americans to vote in the South. If he didn't have that passion for the underdog and for dispossessed people in his blood, that wouldn't have been the first thing he went after.

"To me, when you try to figure out Ted Kennedy, you have to understand those things he did early on, before the fancy advisers showed up," Littlefield says. "Then look at what happened between '95 and '98, when he's in the minority. The House passes the whole Contract With America in 100 days. All 10 bills, and nothing gets through the Senate, because Kennedy, basically, organizes the forces of resistance, and piece by piece, he brings the Democrats back, because he remembered what they stood for."

And he did it, in part, because he had learned the etiquette of the Senate as well as he had learned its rules. "There's one thing you can count on with Ted," says McCain. "He will always keep his word. There are a lot of people in Washington who waver in their commitments, but that's not him. The Patients' Bill of Rights was a tough fight. People were being cajoled by the special interests and by the White House, and he never wavered."

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2003/01/05/kennedy_unbound/?page=full

[oselle.livejournal.com]

What I've been thinking about is that the Kennedys, like the Roosevelts before them, were born into immense wealth and privilege and yet somehow were endowed with an unshakable desire to see justice and opportunity for all people. I don't think such people exist anymore, certainly not among the gilded class. I had a brief moment of hope today that Kennedy's death was a sort of divine spark that would inspire and motivate the Democrats but I think after all the sentimental eulogizing, the Repubs will remember that they hated Kennedy's guts and will be back on the warpath and it will be business as usual.

[tskterata.livejournal.com]

I have no doubt that you are right about the Republican response. I've given up on them ever being reasonable or enlightened about anything. I'm hoping that the Democrats will be reminded of what they can and should do with the power that they wield, and that this will inspire them to stomp all over the Republican minority.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I seriously think the same way. Part of the problem is that a lot of people not only want to exaggerate to the good things to the point where they can't acknowledge the good that any other country has done, but they refuse to even admit the bad things. Slavery? Yeah, whatever, it was bad and discrimination happened, but it has nothing to do with what's going on now and anybody who brings it up is accusing me of something I'm innocent of. Genocide of Native Americans? You must just hate America. Totally didn't happen. Now we've come full circle where racism takes the form of accusing other races of picking on you because you're white.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

We're supposed to look upon slavery (and years of Jim Crow segregation in the South) as things of the past. Meanwhile, the slaughter and endless cheating and betrayal of Native Americans is occasionally given a sort of "well, that was a shame" lip service but if people think of it at all, they think of it as first of all, water under the bridge, and second, as essentially less important than the manifest destiny "civilizing" of the continent by and for white people. But maybe time and history keep silent accounts of these things, even if we don't, and maybe all the things we've seen, not just now but over the past 40 years, are the bills coming due.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

There was not a single member of my family on American soil prior to 1946 so I'm not talking about any one of us being personally responsible for the evils of genocide or slavery. I'm talking about something a little more spooky than that, the idea that a nation, a land, can be cursed.

The other developed nations of the world have been steadily moving forward while we have been moving backwards, dragging around the yoke of racial supremacy upon which this nation was founded, just like Jacob Marley was doomed to drag "the chains he forged in life" through eternity. I think so much of the opposition to national healthcare is because working white people can't bear the thought of "free" healthcare going to undeserving minorities -- and that's just one example of how this legacy of bigotry asserts itself. It's everywhere. It's in the nation's blood. Not just bigotry but violence. Ignorance. Greed. And the shallow, showy "patriotism" that makes us believe we're the best in the world and that no other nation has anything to teach us. The chains we've forged since 1776.

Shlesinger's piece was written 40 years ago but can you honestly tell me it sounds dated? With the things that have been happening domestically and the recent revelations about torture and the abuses committed by the Blackwater mercenaries, can you say that our time is not just as "ghastly" as 1969? Can you possibly say that quote doesn't sound as if it were written today?

I am revolted and angry and tired and I'm thinking that maybe people, and a nation, really does get the government it deserves.

[oxer12.livejournal.com]

This is really for your post yesterday, which I just read:

{{{Oselle}}}

Because of your recent posts, I've become aware of issues I didn't know were going on, and I'm a leftie who should know! Because of your posts, I've been able to pass that information on to other people, who also didn't know.

Are you familiar with the starfish story? A guy is throwing starfish back into the sea, from a beach littered with thousands of them. A passerby comes along and says, "Why are you wasting your time? There are too many starfish on the beach; you're never going to make a difference." The guy picks up another one and throws it back into the sea - "Made a difference to that one!"

You've made a difference to this starfish. :-)

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Blurgh, you made me tear up a little.

You really should keep up with crooksandliars.com. And balloon-juice.com. And Slacktivist. And all the other blogs they link to on those blogs. That's where the goods are at.

[tskterata.livejournal.com]

Somehow I missed that this was written in 1969 when I first read it. I thought he was writing about today.

Ack.

[mara-snh.livejournal.com]

Oops! Sorry I deleted my overlong, convoluted post on this subject before realizing you'd posted a reply.

Ah, okay, I see what you're saying about how you read Schlesinger's piece. the idea that the US could be cursed for its history of slavery -- a history, by the way, shared by many other nations of the world that have really good health care programs for their people, and a high standard of living. That aside, the whole idea that the US could be cursed sounds too much like when the Religious Reich said the 9/11 attacks were God's curse on the US because it's tolerated pagans, feminists, gays, and so on. I'm not playing that game.

The gist of my deleted post was that while a lot of Americans are indeed descended from some fairly rapacious types,and could be said to have violent DNA, there are many, if not more by now, who are descended from immigrants who came here to escape that sort of thing, just hoping to find some work and a few square meals a week. As I said before deleting myself, many descendants of such immigrants grew up with a profound sense of responsibility to help build a better nation, do whatever they could to alleviate the suffering of others, and prevent in this new world the kind of injustices their ancestors had experienced in the old. I certainly was. It's not surprising that some of the greatest statesmen, journalists, moral leaders and, yes, politicians of our time have the same immigrant roots.

I'd like to think this is the DNA where the "better angels of our nature" are coming from lately.

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

I think so much of the opposition to national healthcare is because working white people can't bear the thought of "free" healthcare going to undeserving minorities -- and that's just one example of how this legacy of bigotry asserts itself. It's everywhere. It's in the nation's blood. Not just bigotry but violence. Ignorance. Greed. And the shallow, showy "patriotism" that makes us believe we're the best in the world and that no other nation has anything to teach us. The chains we've forged since 1776.

Yes. This. I think you've nailed it.

[sixth-queen.livejournal.com]

Oselle is definitely correct here. In fact, I think the deception is multi-level.

The Republicans whisper to the ultra-rich: you work hard, you deserve your millions, don't let those mediocre white-collar professionals (and their damn benefits) take it away from you, please vote for us! Then the Republicans whisper to the white-collar professionals: you work hard, you deserve your hundreds of thousands, don't let the blue-collar workers (and their damn unions) take that away from you, vote for us! Then the Republicans whisper to the blue-collar workers: you deserve your tens of thousands, don't let those dirty welfare queens and illegals (and their damn children) take it from you, vote for us! The Republicans don't have to whisper to the welfare queens because the welfare queens don't vote.

So they all vote for Republicans. And each cycle, a little more $$ makes it way up to the millionaires. Health care would go a long way toward breaking this cycle.

[pearlette.livejournal.com]

At times I believe that the sins of our past are so awful that they can never be expiated by our good deeds, can never be cleansed, but are now at last bearing their final rotten fruit.

I do think -- to borrow theological language -- that the 'sins of the fathers' can continue through the generations. But I don't think America is unique in that respect. I think it's part of the human condition.

Twenty years ago, Yugoslavia seemed to be at the forefront of the Velvet Revolution, as one Communist bastion after another finally fell in Europe. Huzzah! I will never forget how joyful I felt as I watched the Berlin Wall topple in November 1989. A new era of peace ...

Three years later, I, along with millions of other Europeans, was stunned and horrified to watch former Yugoslavia descend into hell, re-anacting ancient hatreds that had merely been suppressed by the former Communist regime and now exploded with terrifying force. These ethnic prejudices went back much further than the atrocities of WW2. That was the 'dark fruit' of the Balkans.

Then a similar thing happened in Rwanda, and it was even worse.

I don't regard America's sins as worse than those of Germany's (or my country's: Britain grew rich on the wealth of the slave trade). The land that gifted the world with Bach and Handel was responsible for the worst act of genocide in human history. Yet Germany has faced its past fair and square. And I don't regard the Holocaust as a uniquely 'German' issue, even though it happened on German soil: it's the violence and hatred lying dormant in the human heart that can be kicked into touch at any given time in history.

As an outsider, it strikes me that American government has become tremendously corrupt. I also believe the same is true of my own government, and the European Union.

I don't think this is anything new. As a Christian, I try to balance realism about human nature with a redemptive view on history and the future.

And, you know ... every civilisation has its day.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I took it more to be the DNA of the country, if such a thing can exist, rather than the personal DNA of the people in it.

[mara-snh.livejournal.com]

Ah, well, that's a little too animistic for me ;-)

[oselle.livejournal.com]

The Germans don't fly a swastika over their government buildings and call it "heritage," the way some Southern states do with the Confederate flag. Maybe there are people in Germany who would like to do so but I'm sure they're not lauded as patriots. Similarly, I doubt that Britain considers its contribution to the slave trade something to be proud of. The problem isn't that America did these things it's that the country was literally founded upon these sins, and for the most part, we have not faced our past, fair, square or otherwise -- and there are many people in this country who consider these things part of our proud cultural heritage. The decimation of the native population was manifest destiny. Slavery was just one of the "traditions" of a genteel and gracious society where everyone knew their place and kept to it. We are yoked to our past and to our evils in a way other, civilized countries are not. When white people get up at these "town hall" meetings and start senselessly frothing that they're losing "their America" they're talking about one thing -- the fact that a black man is president. It's beyond belief what's going on here, nearly a decade into the 21st century. Every civilization has its day and if we don't check this regression that we've been on, then our day will exist only in the past tense.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

You are right. At the lower tiers, the message is heavily racist. As you go higher up the economic ladder, it becomes more and more about class. By the time you get all the way to the top, there are only two groups -- the "deserving" rich and the great unwashed...in other words, all the rest of us.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

Yes.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I'm not playing that game.

I'm not either and I don't think that's what Schlesinger meant. I think he meant that we have a history of violence and bigotry that we have not only not renounced, but that we are actually proud of in a way that other nations with perhaps equally dark histories are not -- and this curse, for lack of a better word, continues to resurface and plague us time and time again. I call it a curse but there's probably a more down-to-earth term for it. I see no sign of it dying out, in fact, with the assistance of a powerful, right-wing media, it seems to be gaining more ground than ever. I hope I'm wrong.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

He might as well have been writing about today. It's terrifying to think of how little has changed in 40 years.

[mara-snh.livejournal.com]

That clears it up. Thanks. No doubt there's an attitude usually thought of as "typically American" that is odious to you and to me as well: the kick-ass, John Wayne, give-'em-hell rebel. The right wingnuts play up to that. Sarah Palin stresses her "maverick" nature and talks tough to make up for what she sees as the shortcoming of being a woman. To such people, compassion is a weakness. It's -- literally -- "pussy."

But when you look at the people whom Americans really honor, in historical narrative, in holidays, through epic storytelling and even in pop culture, you see America's heroes are men and women famed for their humanitarian vision, their selflessness and wisdom, people who acted courageously to bring greater freedom, enlightenment and opportunity to the brutalized and disadvantaged in their midst. Even our war heroes are heroic to us not because they were the most ruthless of killers, but because their acts of bravery saved the lives of others, at great risk to their own.

Of course there are exceptions, but not many, and a cynic might say that this has been produced for effect, to make Americans believe in their own "manifest destiny" and to permit them some sense of inherent value in being an American to offset the "curse" that's also part of the deal. Maybe we all view history through rose-colored revisionist glasses. But the fact that we want to, that we need to see our past and our present in ways that give us hope for a more noble future, that says something about us, too. Something encouraging. [Edit: I hope you won't take this to mean I think it's okay to whitewash the past, to explain away slavery and genocide as mere aberrations that we needn't study and learn from. What I hoped to convey here was the idea that we aspire to be better than we have been -- better than our worst, of course, but also even better than our best -- and that there is always that possibility.]

I don't know your age. I suspect that, at nearly 62, I'm more than a few decades older. I've seen American society go through some ghastly times and emerge better for those bitter experiences. I chronicled some of those times as a network news journalist, with a great deal more story on background that ever made it to air, so when I say "ghastly," I'm not using the term lightly. Yet there were always people in those times who knew better, who knew more, and continued to work for change no matter the odds. Those people are my heroes.

Might I mention Supernatural? Anyone looking for a contemporary spin on the old John Wayne figure could say they'd found it in Dean Winchester, but they'd be wrong. Oh, Dean Winchester is a perfect modern American hero, but not because he's a killer who "don't take nothin' from nobody" or any of that. He's a hero because the moment he realizes he has an innocent in his cross-hairs, he instantly lowers his weapon and asks what he can do to help. He wastes no time wondering if it's okay to let that much compassion for people in need cloud his otherwise all-American kick-ass attitude.

I rather like that. It reinforces what I think I want to be as an American, and I know I'm not alone in that.

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I was 13 years old when Ronald Reagan was elected president, so I've never really known an America where liberals and Democrats weren't something to be at best mocked and at worst loathed. I was 25 when Bill Clinton was elected and I thought he'd be the first great Democratic president of my lifetime but then five years later I watched the Republicans and their media lackeys reduce his entire presidency to a dirty joke. Of course we choose to honor the great humanitarians in our history but that's most often after the fact -- what plays out on a day-to-day basis seems to me very different and it's the day-to-day events that mold the nation and affect our lives, not the posthumous (and sometimes self-congratulatory) accolades we bestow on men like Martin Luther King Jr.

In some ways the country is better than it was, especially in the area of civil rights, but in other ways it isn't. The other day my father said that every parent wants their kid to have it better than they did but he knows that I won't -- I'm better educated than he was and I make more money, but he enjoyed (and continues to enjoy) the sort of benefits I can only dream of, like comprehensive health insurance and a generous pension plan that has given both him and my mother the security of a comfortable retirement. And always, the forces of conservatism are trying to take things away from us -- look how successfully they've whittled away access to abortion and how they've saturated American culture and government with a backward religiosity that would have been unimaginable, even un-American to earlier generations.

Ah, there's always room for Dean Winchester around here. If there were a fictional role model for these times, I'd wish for it to be Dean Winchester...but unfortunately, Jack Bauer seems to be the direction we've chosen.

[mara-snh.livejournal.com]

I appreciate your sharing the perspective of your life as a person so much younger than I am. It's easy to understand the cynicism of your generation when given that information.

You probably can't imagine this any more than I can imagine what World War II was like for my parents, but I saw Martin Luther King almost every night on the evening news. The huge demonstration in my home town of Washington DC -- rally, more correctly -- at which King gave his now historic "I have a dream" speech was the lead story that day mostly because it had tied up traffic so badly. When they finally broadcast film of the "I have a dream" line, I remember being a little frightened, as well as thrilled, by the storm of energy it generated.

The night he was murdered, I was singing at a dance concert in college (American University in Washington DC; I recall with a shudder that "Another Man Done Gone" was one of the songs I sang). They told us backstage during intermission, right after that song, that King had been shot and was apparently dead. No one could believe it. We were quarantined in the theater for three days while the Army used our campus for a war-zone staging area in response to the riots that had a significant part of the city up in flames. We heard that mobs of looters and rioters were coming our way. We expected to become collateral damage in some kind of apocalyptic urban war; no shit.

A few months later, Robert F. Kennedy was murdered.

Trust me. It's better today.

Oh and by the way, two weeks after RFK's death, I found out I'd gotten myself pregnant because I was that ignorant about how you could prevent pregnancy -- there was no sex education, no "Our Bodies Ourselves," no information to be had from doctors, who would talk about such things only with married couples, with the husband present. Abortion was illegal everywhere. I was lucky to have survived the one I obtained in a foreign country where it was equally illegal but offered the advantage of relative privacy. It never occurred to me to tell my parents and have the baby. In those days, it would have ruined their lives, and they didn't deserve that.

So yeah, trust me. It's better today. People like me who lived through crap like that saw to it. But it can be -- has to be -- better still.

Meanwhile, for those daily irritations you cite, I live for the levity of Wonkette. It really does help keep you from wanting to blow your brains out. You know, the movement to raise money for that nutjob Michelle Bachmann's opponent started on Wonkette and a few similar Web sites. Almost overnight, Tinklenberg had over a million dollars in contributions from all over the country to buy advertising. He came very close to winning. Two other candidates who received the same attention did win.

I'm thinking that the Web can be a very powerful tool along these lines -- it certainly was for Obama -- as long as it and the energy sources on which it depends remain available to We the People. The isolation of individuals that dependence on the Web creates is as much a part of the Internet phenomenon as its potential for unity. The religious nuts are making efforts to meet in flesh space, routinely in their churches and occasionally at "tea bagger" rallies, these town hall insurrections and so on, while we sit in our offices blogging. There's a paranoid little part of my brain that wonders what they know about the future of political organization that we don't. Remember, they have natural allies in the energy industry.

I think I'd better quit now. I must be driving you crazy!

[oselle.livejournal.com]

I think the difference between our generations is that you saw things get better and I feel like I've seen things get worse, especially economically (unless you work at Goldman Sachs, of course). I don't know. You say it's better today but doesn't it enrage you that so many people want to drag us right back to the old way...and further back than that, if they could?

[mara-snh.livejournal.com]

Yes, it does enrage me -- more than I can even find words for, but that doesn't keep me from trying.

You've really hit an important point about the differences between our generations. I wonder if people shouldn't be talking about that more. It explains some of the relative reticence of pro-reform people versus the vocal (some might say insanely shrill) opposition.

[mara-snh.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I'd be so quick to let wealthy people off the racist hook. Where I live, it's been an undercurrent for generations, especially among the "old money" crowd. At that level, "class" is exclusively white -- and I mean the "right" white: Irish need not apply.