History of My Reading: Bookends

I'm going on with this intermittent series that now has its own label: History of My Reading.  I've added that label to prior posts, a series which began as a result of reading Larry McMurtry's memoir Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen.  He wanted to figure out how he, a boy in a rural small town in Texas, wound up owning the country's biggest used books store.  That inspired me to my own ruminations and inquiries about my history of reading and relationship to books in particular.

I mentioned that my parents--principally, I'm sure, my mother--always had at least a shelf of books in whatever served as their living room, and that this was unusual for our time and place.  I don't remember seeing books displayed in other homes I visited as a child, though perhaps I'm forgetting one or two.  But it was rare, and I've been thinking more about it.  It must have taken a certain courage to do it, and the risk of seeming different when people visited--as they did a lot; my mother was very social, especially in that first decade.  In that time and place, being called different was not often a compliment.

My mother was clearly committed to displaying books as a feature of her decor.  One indication is that she had decorative bookends.  The ones I remember most clearly were two golden lions.  They looked like metal and they were heavy, though they actually were painted plaster.  Still, they had a definite heft and presence.

You can just make them out behind us in the photo above of my mother and I taken in our first home, an apartment at the top of a large house on College Avenue in Greensburg, PA.  Those lions were later displayed in proper bookshelves in the living room of our new home, on a hill just outside the city limits.  That sofa also made the transition--it was a deep blue upholstered sofa with a matching chair or two.  Two later sets of furniture replaced them, but the lions stayed until both my parents were gone and the house was sold.  I thought I had kept one of the lions--slightly chipped but unbowed. Maybe not, since I can't find it now.

I believe that to some extent those lions and her books on display were a statement my mother made about herself.  Both of her younger siblings went to college, but as the oldest who graduated high school during the Depression, there was no money to send her--not even to the local Catholic colleges my aunt and uncle attended while still living at home.

As a child visiting my grandparents, I slept in the room in which my mother and aunt had slept most of their childhood and adolescence.  The bed and large dresser with the oddly shaped mirror above it that gave me nightmares, didn't leave room for much else.  I wonder if she had space for her own books, as her personal possessions and personal statements.  Maybe that was part of the dream for her own home. There did seem to be a certain aspirational quality to the display in our home, which I think my father felt as well, at least at first.

But there was another weighty bookend in our living room that tells another story.  It's made of actual bronze.  It consists of an ornate platform on which is displayed a bronzed baby shoe.  In fact, mine: their first born.

I don't know that people do this much anymore, but bronzing a baby shoe was once quite a thing, at least where I lived. The internet tells me that its popularity began in the US in the 1930s, and that one company in Columbus, Ohio did the bronzing.  This shoe was bronzed in 1948 or so, and Ohio wasn't that far away.

That it serves as a bookend tells its own story.  The parents guide to the Book House set suggests that in addition to reading to their children and giving them their own books, parents keep proper books in the house for children to see and get used to as objects, all to encourage them to read.  I'm pretty sure this was a factor in my mother keeping books on display. That's the story the bronze baby shoe bookend tells me.  I have it now on one of our living room bookshelves.

Homegrown Hitler's Progress

The word most used in the news media to describe certain tendencies of the current chief executive is "authoritarian."  It is perhaps accurate but certainly abstract.  Besides which it doesn't sound as dire as it is, nor as extreme as those who use it mean it to be.

Some used the term "fascist."  That surprisingly includes the former Secretary of State Madeline Albright.  It is the title of her new book, which is about the rise of 21st century fascism in Europe and around the world. The book begins with the current US administration.

The word however is also a little vague, especially as it is tossed around as a favored epithet in political arguments, both by the so-called right and so-called left, on a host of issues.

References to Hitler and Nazism are even more abused.  Every online political argument, someone once observed, sooner or later results in an opponent being identified with Hitler.

But this reference, I would argue, is not meaningless, because it still carries emotional weight and specificity. The two extremes of political argument (and perhaps they're all extreme now) seem convinced that the other side personifies 21st century Nazis. (Except of course the groups that call themselves Nazis, and wouldn't extend the compliment to their opponents.) Still, there is sufficient evidence and imagery to build factual arguments and historical comparisons regarding this administration.

So the current chief executive of the US, who is in all ways the Antipresident, also remains Homegrown Hitler, the apprentice dictator.  His tendencies are well known, and despite all the trouble he seems to be in, he is making progress towards creating the conditions to install dictatorship.  First he must weaken and deform the existing American political system, and he is doing so, by destroying
effective democratic government and substituting a pure power struggle based on an improvised ideology, practical intolerance (Muslims and Mexicans being named favorites) and violence.

In personal terms he is raging and threatening to take control of the Justice Department.  His threats are becoming more explicit, as reporting suggests various efforts to obstruct federal investigations involving violations very close to treason.  Stories, such as those involving Ukraine, are still breaking.

 He is also effectively developing his own Gestapo in ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement brownshirts.  A simple Google search will turn up lots of evidence, including unlawful incarcerations, targeting activists and the hallmark of brownshirts, bullying and intimidation.

But he is no longer alone.  He has succeeded in converting what was once an ordinary if traditionally (and often destructively) reactionary party, into the 21st equivalent of a proto-Nazi Party.  It's not all the way there yet, but it is getting closer.

Homemade Hitler vilifies his opponents without evidence, and supports his loyalists regardless of facts, as part of his general pattern of asserting whatever supports him, his ego and his political power (which to him are indistinguishable), while denying whatever is contrary to him and his political power, with absolute disregard of the facts and minimal political and civilized human norms, and with distortions and lies that he and his minions repeat shamelessly and endlessly.

His example is now more than ever being followed among members of his party in Congress, as we are seeing increasingly.  The Republican majority of a House intelligence committee issued their own partisan report on a matter of the highest national security. In absolutely and prematurely denying evidence of  collusion with Russian efforts to attack the American election system, it has itself colluded with that attack.   Ignoring and distorting evidence, it has no objective credibility. It is a complete assertion of power.

A few days later, Republicans blithely ignored serious accusations and evidence of corruption against EPA Secretary Pruitt, encouraged to do so by the White House, because Pruitt is good enough at p.r. to give the impression that he is effectively fulfilling the antipresident's agenda of destroying the planet in order to revenge himself on President Obama.

The pervasive breakdown in upholding universally accepted standards for government officers and in immediate accountability is exactly what is necessary to pave the way for totalitarian government, either directly or with an intervening period of chaos.  Or both.  Update: Jonathan Chait adds additional evidence in his Thursday post.

Then there is one of those relatively minor matters that may turn out to matter a lot as a very serious warning sign.  The lame duck Speaker of the House fired the chaplain of the House--the first such firing in the history of the Republic-- basically because he is not a member of the official religion of the Republican Party, which is the ultra-right white branch of evangelical Christianity.  (The fired chaplain is Roman Catholic, but not the kind of ultra-conservative Catholic that ultra-right white Evangelicals consider tolerated allies. He apparently offended Republican members by representing the Catholic position on social justice and compassion for the poor enshrined in various encyclicals of various Popes, in a prayer.)

That sector of Evangelical Christians is the last certain bulwark of the party's support, going into congressional elections, so it must be shown fealty.  But the cost of this move is a perhaps small but significant step towards the de facto establishment of a particular religion as representing the United States.  How long before it becomes the official religion (and political ideology) you must adhere to, to be a US citizen? This kind of thing can happen in small steps, as it did in Germany.

All of this has unfortunately also infected the opposition in Washington but especially in the media, with its increasing intolerance.  Though the accusations against the nominee to head Veterans Affairs turned out to be overwhelming,  the rush to judgment early on was notable--with few instances of even the formality of "if the charges turn out to be true."  The apparent collapse of the WH Press Correspondents Dinner is also a likely symptom.

A lot of this goes by the name of polarization.  But a perennial battle between two forces is not where this is headed.  The Democrats may become the majority in Congress, and they may win the White House next time.  But the Republicans will obstruct because they are unprincipled. And the next time the Republicans win, the way will have been prepared by this administration and this Congress.  The norms that restrain tyranny--even and especially when tyranny arrives in the name of representing the people, as it did in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia--will no longer exist.  It's a long game that not many may even realize they are playing.

The end game is not polarization, two extremes opposing each other but with common standards and a common set of laws that govern both.  It's totalitarian government, a homegrown 21st century Nazi state.   I used to believe that the American political system was resilient enough to prevent that, especially if the public is warned to watch for the signs.  It can happen here, and we must be vigilant, but I always thought it would be unlikely.

Now more than ever I believe it is possible.  Given the strains that will be placed on the institutions of this country in the coming decades, I see more danger that it won't just bend.  Unless there is substantial healing or reconsitutition, it may break.  This could be a crucial period in that regard.

This administration and this ruling party must be repudiated as well as defeated in the next two elections.  We must know what is at stake.  Unfortunately there is not yet anyone of the stature to be heard, who is making the case clearly that the American system of government is being destroyed.  Fortunately there may be one person who can, when election campaigns begin this year.  That person is President Obama.

Vox and the Boomers: Prejudice and Villification Explained

A couple of self-professed Millennials strike back at criticism of  their generation in the only way that Millennials apparently can: by trashing the Baby Boom generation.  It's been done before, in fact it's pretty much a media cliche.  But perhaps not with the consistent vitriol of Sean Illing's interview of author Bruce Gibney on the site called Vox.

Gibney, a venture capitalist and libertarian, is still being interviewed for his 2015 book A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America. The tenor of this generational hit piece in Vox can be found in the "questions", which never actually question Gibney's premises or choice of evidence, even for the purpose of clarification.  It's a lovefest of prejudice and vilification, that borders on hate speech.

Before considering the dubious merits of the argument, let's step back and look at what they are doing.  They indict at great length and in detail, an entire generation as principally responsible for wrecking the country, and they attribute certain characteristics to this generation.  If they were attributing the plunder and corruption of America to black people, it would be called racism.  If they blamed it on women or homosexuals, it would be sexism.  If they named Muslims or Jews, they would be called bigots.  But an older generation is fair game.  That's not prejudice, or bigotry, or guilt by association, or dangerous.

I say it is. Sure, it's natural for a younger generation to rebel against the older.  We certainly did--even though our parents' generation is now venerated as the Greatest Generation.  Well, some were, some weren't.  But this isn't just generational idealism expressed as rebellion.  This is vilification expressed in the same terms, and with the same ignorance, as racism and bigotry.  A Generation of Sociopaths? The proof is in the title.

As opposed to a functional category (like capitalists) or even a voluntary association that professes an ideology (like Republicans), you're part of a generation just because you were born into it.  Indicting a generation in these terms is like indicting a group defined by race, gender or ethnicity.  The onus inevitably falls on all individuals within it.

The Baby Boom is in one sense valid as a group--more so than, say, Millennials. Whereas "the Millennials" is just a made up marketing thing with no clear meaning (for it does not seem to designate the first group born in the 21st century, for instance), the Baby Boom, as the name suggests, was an actual phenomenon.  1946 marked the beginning of a steeply increasing number of births in America.  It was a demographic fact. The beginning and end dates are somewhat arbitrary, if nicely symmetrical: 1946 to 1964.

What distinguishes it as a generation is a combination of the effect of its numbers with its relationship to what happened during those years.  Some phenomena with social implications are clearly related to their numbers: more and bigger schools and hence a larger educational establishment, the growth and changing nature of television, the growth of suburbia, for instance.

That this is a big generation also accounts in part for the impact of activities involving some of its members.   Because that "some" was a lot in sheer numbers, in comparison with previous generations.  Any early boomer (born in the first third, between 1946 and 1952, say) can tell you that all the splashy stuff that has become the 1960s brand (hippies, anti-war and other political activists) were performed by a small minority of our age-group.  It's just that a small minority of a very big generation made for a large crowd--and eye-catching pictures.

So, for example, the idea suggested by the photo that accompanied the Vox hit job--- of swaying stoned longhairs in the park--that the turned-on generation became Reaganites, is trash thinking.

But regardless of whether you believe vilifying an entire generation vilifies all its members, let's look at their intellectually lazy and self-serving assertions about the Baby Boom.

 Gibney defines the cohort he is particularly writing about as the first two-thirds of the Baby Boom, or those born between 1946 and 1958.  He states his premise: "They were raised after the war and so have no real experience of trauma or the Great Depression or even any deprivation at all. More importantly, they never experienced the social solidarity that unfolded during war time and that helped produce the New Deal."

Okay, so let's assume that he knows that the New Deal preceded World War II. Apparently learning history from war movies and Depression nostalgia, and swallowing whole the PR paeans to the Greatest Generation, he assumes a solidarity that didn't exist, once the historical record is examined, or even a few biographies.  It was much more complicated.

But let's get to the years I experienced.  Born in June 1946, I am one of the first of the postwar Boomers.  It is astonishing to me that in the spring of 2018, as we recount the incredibly traumatic events of fifty years ago in 1968, that he can stay with a straight face that my generation had "no real experience of trauma."  That's ignorant and offensive. (Readers of my previous post, please forgive the repetitions that follow.)

There was first of all a little trauma called the Vietnam War, begun and carried forward by members of the Greatest Generation. Thousands of boomers died or were maimed, thousands returned traumatized for the rest of their lives.

 There were the assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK and too many others.  There was the trauma of duck and cover drills in grade school, the Cuban Missile Crisis in high school, and the possibility of nuclear holocaust at any moment, every year of my life, for most of my life.

 There was racial violence in the South, cities everywhere burning in racial strife several times in the 1960s.  More than 300 people were killed in one 24 hour period during the riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King.

There was the draft, in which hundreds of thousands of  young men were sent against their will to die and to kill in a futile war, and there were the young people of my generation beaten, gassed and killed in protest demonstrations for various causes.

Yet members of my generation propelled the women's movement, gay liberation, the American Indian and Latino movements, as well as following our slightly older brothers and sisters in the Civil Rights movement.  Members of my generation postponed careers to serve in the Peace Corps, the International Volunteers Service and other organizations, in the sincere effort to help others.

And while the hippies may seem self-indulgent, many were rebelling against machine-like conformity in the service of predatory capitalism, searching for meaning and purpose.  Some were sincerely searching for spiritual alternatives. Some risked and sacrificed a lot in doing so.

As for boomers exploring alternatives that went against conventional medicine, a great deal of today's medicine is due to those explorations.  If some went overboard on exploring their own psychologies and settled for oversimplifications, the direction was needed. This society could use a a lot more self-knowledge.

As for the boomer generation not suffering "any deprivation at all," this is ignorant class prejudice.  You don't think any Baby Boomers grew up poor?  Or in struggling lower middle class families?   Or did these pompous dogmatists learn about the 1950s from Leave It To Beaver and Happy Days reruns?  Sorry but those weren't historical documents.

I remember surplus food, I remember the pall of fear in our classroom during a steel strike.  Have you guys ever even seen a picket line?  We also had actual parents and grandparents who experienced the Great Depression, the mine strikes, the quotas and the perils of immigration in the 20s.  These were flesh and blood connections your generation lacks.

In this interview, the Baby Boom generation as a whole is made responsible for Reagan, and all the economic catastrophes that resulted in the trashed economy and trashed planet that make life hard and sad for Millennials.  Why?  Because that big group born between 1946 and 1958 constituted the majority of voters, homeowners and solid citizens in the 1980s.  So we all voted for Reagan, right? None of us foresaw the consequences, or fought against them, or were in absolute despair?

By the way, if you were born in 1946, you got the vote in 1967.  My first vote was for Bobby Kennedy.  Oh wait, it wasn't.  The American people managed to elect Nixon twice without the Boomers in control.  The roots of what's happened to this society go back before boomers were in control of anything.

On the other hand, how about white people--weren't they the majority?  Why name the Boomers instead of white people?  Christians maybe? Or why not those nefarious right-handed folks? Way more of those.

The cause isn't there, and neither is the effect.  Members of my generation were selfish and politically deluded.  Like no Millennials are, of course.  By sheer numbers, the selfish, clueless and deluded boomers increased the power of the traditionally nefarious.  That hardly makes for an entire generation of sociopaths.

Unless you define a sociopathic generation as a particularly large one. Millennials therefore constitute a more virtuous generation because their generation is smaller. And of course, not sociopaths.

But these guys get even more ridiculous than that.  Get this exchange:

Sean Illing:
Something that doesn’t get discussed enough is how hostile so many of these boomers are to science. It’s not hard to connect this aversion to facts to some of these disastrous social policies.

Bruce Gibney:
This is a generation that is dominated by feelings, not by facts. The irony is that boomers criticize millennials for being snowflakes, for being too driven by feelings. But the boomers are the first big feelings generation. They’re highly motivated by feelings and not persuaded by facts. And you can see this in their policies.

You know, I heard that's true of black folks, too.  All feelings, no facts.  Must be their jungle blood.

And yes, you can definitely see this "in their policies."  Why at the last Baby Boomers national reunion, we decided that America should vote on our laws by pressing the Like button, or indicating our positions by means of emojs.

So I get that self-described Millennials are upset at being stereotyped, and have had their feelings hurt by being bashed as such.  Welcome to the club. I don't give Gibney a pass for anything.   But a site like Vox wants to appeal to their marketing demographic (which is the only thing that "Millennials" means.)  Vox appeals to its readers by explaining everything to them.  Really, nearly every article is in this form, viz: The past 72 hours in North Korea news, explained.  They have writers called "explainers."  Not too juvenile or anything.

So let me explain something.  You vilify me, I don't give you my clicks.  Vox is off my daily news bookmarks list.  You may not want me, you may think you don't need me, but if you want an explanation, you've just read it.