Tuesday, November 04, 2008

The Last Election

I'll be scarce this week, taken up with things more personal and pressing than a national election, which is not to say that I've no interest in the fact that this country - which I used to call my country - is about to lurch leftward in a fashion unprecedented (indeed, prior to this moment, I'd have said unthinkable) in its history. A tie to the past is being cut, and a new thing is taking over. John McCain, in spite of his faults, is a symbol (though no less flesh and blood for that) of a former time, of those who believed in revering and emulating the sacrifices of their predecessors, of honoring them in our collective memory, and of never failing to thank them for it in public ritual. It once seemed an urgent matter that an ineffable sense of gratitude be passed down through the generations. In the course of his erratic campaign, a formerly oft-heard slogan has disappeared, the one urging that we ought to serve something greater than ourselves.

That's all gone now. I've been taking an informal sampling of students' opinions, and I can assure you that McCain's having been tortured beyond endurance in a Vietnamese prison camp exercises their sympathies in the same way that a yawn enervates the jaws. Vietnam really is so yesterday. Its history doesn't touch them. What matters is that McCain is old, not new and exciting. He's also responsible for the economic collapse, or, at least, he doesn't know what to do about it.

"I can't identify with him."

"Voting for him would be like voting for Bush all over again." (If you think those media soundbites have no effect, you're wrong. Heads are full of them, and it's easier than thinking.)

But, I point out, you didn't vote for Bush. You were too young four years ago. Well, yeah, but...They're not bothered by an inability to respond. They know what they want. Desire, enthusiasm is all.

My favorite entrance pollees were those who had written research papers against abortion. "Who you votin' for?"

"Obama."

"You do realize that he and you are on opposite sides of this issue."

"Well, I'm not voting for him for that reason."

"But you said here that abortion is murder. Is there some issue more important than that?" Well, no, but...

Some of them are aghast that Obama is one of a very few senators who voted against the partial birth abortion ban (though a few ask, "What's that?"). They actually don't know this about him. And yet I sense no movement.

Another says, "What about the economy? Why does everything come back to abortion?" I say I guess it doesn't, if you consider money more important than life. She gives me a strange look.

Says another, "Oh, I'd never get one myself. Besides which my mother would kill me. But I don't really care what other people do." That, I say, is a prescription for moral chaos. She shrugs.

There was one girl of Latin derivation, Puerto Rican I think, to whom I'd like to pay tribute. All of her friends are voting for Obama. When she tells them she's voting for McCain, they start yelling at her, calling her crazy, insane, a traitor. A traitor to what? she asks. To your race. But I'm not black! she protests. And besides, what's race got to do with it? Well, McCain's white. She stands her ground, but I can tell her feelings have been hurt. I tell her I hope she gets to keep her friends, but if doing so means sacrificing her principles, maybe they aren't worth keeping. She says she's not budging. They won't change her. Man, sometimes you never know what's hiding behind those faces.

But if things go as expected tomorrow (today), you won't be able to blame this generation of youngsters. They can't do it alone. They need grownups to help out. That would be their parents and in some cases their grandparents. A different generation. In other words, My Generation. The Boomers I think we're called.

I remember the Weather Underground; I was barely older than most of these students when it was active. In these latter years I can't figure out how Ayers and Dohrn might have been even one moral cut above the fellows who blew up the Twin Towers. But I remember, maybe even from my own lips, the murmured admiration for those who had the guts to do what no one else did. But the Weather Underground is unknown history to the young of today, and the Boomers who have sired them and directed the various levels of their education from their tenured redoubts in the academy and the federal bureaucracy are protective of, and nostalgic about, their former sympathies. These were the glory days of their youth.

It was indeed my generation that brought a strain of liberalism to its place of ruinous prominence, and which I thought had found its most publicly admirable apotheosis in the person of the philandering, perjuring, pot-smoking, draft-dodging William Jefferson Clinton. But I was wrong. Clinton was only the storm front. Obama is the whirlwind. It was my generation that made drug use (and contempt for the law) respectable. We made education universal and ideological. We made lust, not war; we made it "free" and children became an annoyance. We liberated women by encouraging them to leave the home, after first enslaving them to birth control and opening their wombs to the executioner's blade. We fulfilled the promise of free speech by rendering religion irrelevant in the "marketplace" of ideas. We loved peace almost to the point of pacifism (unless the violence was being incited by the Chicago 7), and the founding ideals of our country so much that we never tired of exercising our first amendment right to convey the degree of our hatred for it. There's an essay to be written about it all, but it's a very long one. In the meantime, I compensate by condemning in others what I most despise in my own past. You can thank me later for the diagnosis.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wrote a post a while back pointing out that rather than looking at Obama as an African, or an African-Amerian, or a fringe liberal, his story makes most sense if you think of him being the child of a broken family. It's all there -- the need to be loved by everybody, the identity crisis and drug use, the relishing attention, the search for a community to belong to (even the point of organizing a community to be a part of). So if you want to blame your generation for something in particular, how about skyrocketing divorce?

As for my generation, well, as you say, Gens X and Y, which I straddle, are simply practicing crass identity politics. Obama to them really is "new" and fresh, nevermind the specifics. It's really something to see, and I don't think I would have understoof the depths of it if not for the Facebook account I opened in March. My generation is sinfully stupid.

Anonymous said...

So if you want to blame your generation for something in particular, how about skyrocketing divorce?

I do. This is implied in the part about lust, contraceptives, abortion and leaving the home.

That Puerto Rican girl I mentioned kept asking her friends why they were voting for Obama. They couldn't tell her, beyond that identity stuff you mention.

Ellyn said...

You said a lot!!!

(I also think much of the momentum of this election is driven not just by the young who are looking for the "new, fresh change," but by those who are still dwelling, perhaps even reveling in, their freewheeling, liberal past. It's still 1968 in some peoples' heads)

Anonymous said...

Well, since I'm forbidden by my husband to despair ("we're still in God's hands tonight, just like we were last night, just like we will be tomorrow"), I'll at least admit to a little depression.

I told my 22 year old son how sorry I am for leaving him a world that's a damn sight sorrier than the one I inherited.

Personally I have never been more ashamed.

smockmomma said...

hey, i think america is getting exactly what she deserves.

Anonymous said...

She is, is she? I didn't know America was a person, let alone a she. I thought it was made up of individuals, who vary greatly in what they deserve; nor did I think any one person was authorized to say what measure of justice ought to be meted out to whom. I don't think my daughters, for example, deserve this. I don't think the uncounted unborn who stand to perish in the face of Obama's freedom-of-choice fanaticism deserve this.

Elena LaVictoire said...

If it makes you feel any better, my 19 year old was proud to vote for McCain and he may have persuaded a few of his friends too (global warming was apparently their big issue).

I have six children. I have many conservative friends with that many or more, solid, Catholic, conservative. Within the next 9 years five of mine will be voting. Within 16 they all will. So I am very hopeful.

The only bright spot I can see is Governor Palin goes back to Alaska - she is an amazing woman and I admire her very much. The media almost destroyed her. I want her and her family to have a wonderful life in that beautiful state. We don't deserve her.

Lydia McGrew said...

Bill, you don't deserve Barack Obama for a President, either. Don't blame yourself for the stupid and wicked things people did who just happen to be in the same generation with you.

I just hope we conservatives and pull together to fight it out over the next few years.

Lydia McGrew said...

Bill, you don't deserve Barack Obama for a President, either. Don't blame yourself for the stupid and wicked things people did who just happen to be in the same generation with you.

I just hope we conservatives and pull together to fight it out over the next few years.

Anonymous said...

I think you just figured it out: repetition. That's how Obie won the election.

TS said...

I spent hours and hours explaining why Obama was bad news and my "independent" brother-in-law (not the one I write the parody blog with) would not be convinced. He voted Obama. It's surreal. I felt sure I was making good arguments.

Anonymous said...

Good arguments seldom prevail over prejudice or enthusiasm.