"The small towns of Faulkner, the paranoid communities of Pynchon, the tangled but discrete “cases” of Raymond Chandler, all reflect beyond themselves onto the guilt, corruption, and greed that power our national political “progress” and economic “growth.”"
I really hate cynicism. It's considered hip nowadays to think everything is degraded, monstrous, corrupt garbage. It's like people have forgotten that there's more to humans than the murderous. Must we blind ourselves to the good in order to recognize the bad? How about the respect for human dignity, the love of family and country, the sacrifice, the self-restraint, the growth and change, the reform that we've seen through human history, and American history in particular? Was the Civil Rights Act powered by "guilt, corruption, and greed"? Was the establishment of drug safety standards? Was the abolition of slavery?
People are so blithe in proclaiming everything horrible. I just worry it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This is a fine point, but it is totally orthogonal to the point of this essay, which is specifically about a tragic and evil event that reverberates through American history (the good and the bad) ever since.
In practice the Civil Rights Act didn’t accomplish all that much, as I’d say the de facto racial segregation in the US is now even larger compared to the 1950s. The progressive white component of the US population decided that the fight had been won by the late ‘60s and they moved on to other endeavors.
The racial riots from the early ‘90s should/could have been a new sign to re-open the fight but nothing of the sorts happened, by now most of the black population is resigned with the horrendous status-quo while most of the white population doesn’t find the current status-quo at all horrendous, at most they protest against some punctual anti-black population actions which they only see as individual abuses (the Ferguson case, the helpless Florida kid case etc).
The mistake is thinking in terms of linear social progress, which is trivially perverted for rhetoric. People are certainly more civil and aware of acute racism and racial discrimination. But in material terms, being black makes you acutely more vulnerable to all of society’s problems: poverty, prison, poor healthcare, poor access to jobs, poor education, low wages. The civil rights movement—and MLK’s life—ended before addressing this. More relevantly to now, only 1 in 5 black Americans are able to work from home.
Segregation still exists, it just largely uses other mechanisms today other than red lining and direct racial discrimination in businesses and government. I recognize claims similar to “we”re doing better now than we were in the 50s” as one technique of many to focus on social, not material or systemic, gains, though I suspect in many cases this does not come from an intent to do so.
I fully agree. I was astonished at how polite and helpful people were in the US for my week long first ever visit beginning of this year. The sentence you quote seems to be typically of most news/social media we are exposed to. Luckily I am aware of the technology side of the US so I typically take the cynicism with a pinch of salt but many people take it at face value and mouth it off as facts.
It has always been that way. Gordon Sinclair famously noted it a generation ago.[1]
The people I have interacted with across my lifetime from around the world have been quite oblivious to the good deeds of the US and largely only aware of anything negative the US has been responsible for. Cynicism sell better. That's what people who have been news-educated online have seen the past 25 years. In the early days of the Web most people I would chat with internationally were heavily ignorant of the US, other than select major details. Today, every flaw and mistake is magnified and broadcast globally, daily. The US kept most of Belgium alive after WW1 with the CRB [2], and fed ten million Russians daily [3] - who were nationally not our friends - during their famine of 1921-1923. Most people are entirely oblivious to that type of history, even in the US (a failure of our education system). Today it's PEPFAR, keeping millions of people alive in Africa. Or Gates & Buffett donating 2/3 of their wealth to helping poor people outside of the US (and the US treats them as heroes for it). When Russia sent that plane of supplies to the US last week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted they hoped the US would reciprocate the favor back the other direction if things become increasingly dire in Russia. And that is exactly what the US will do, if it is able to ramp up the production of medical gear in the coming months.
It is puzzling I must say. On the one end people here are into American things such as MacDonalds, Krispy Creme and Apple is probably the ultimate technology brand. Its a status symbol to own an iPhone. If someone goes to Harvard or MIT the rest of us will be sure to hear about. Probably a few local papers will have the story. Then the same people holding the iPhone aspiring to go to Harvard will be some of the most cynical people.
An example of how "patient" I felt New Yorker's were was on Brooklyn Bridge. Even though I was a tourist myself I was annoyed at how just unaware/selfish some of the tourists were in the search for a selfy, standing in clearly marked bicycle lane. I was amazed at the restraint of the cyclists. The most they did was ring their bells. One guy did sort of say in an exasperated tone, just get out of the way. Where I am from people definitely not as polite. Look no society is perfect but America's problems are put under a microscope by the free press and because you are the biggest economy.
Nothing wrong with recognizing that few things are all black or all white. In fact, I suspect those beautiful things that you mention happened at least in part because people were motivated by the darkness they saw.
Many think too globally, which ironically gives us a narrow view of humanity as we are dealing with such broad strokes. If all you have is a shallow understanding of global politics and news, then you've really got no choice but to be cynical, but you're also missing out on what's really happening around you in your local community. Somewhere you could actually enact change and help, and enjoy the good in the community around you.
I really hate cynicism. It's considered hip nowadays to think everything is degraded, monstrous, corrupt garbage. It's like people have forgotten that there's more to humans than the murderous. Must we blind ourselves to the good in order to recognize the bad? How about the respect for human dignity, the love of family and country, the sacrifice, the self-restraint, the growth and change, the reform that we've seen through human history, and American history in particular? Was the Civil Rights Act powered by "guilt, corruption, and greed"? Was the establishment of drug safety standards? Was the abolition of slavery?
People are so blithe in proclaiming everything horrible. I just worry it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.