Airing of Grievances

‘Our Own Worst Enemy’ looks at Americans’ apathy https://t.co/y1ODotliXe via @Harvard

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) September 7, 2021

First, I think Tom Nichols has been reading Ray Bradbury; specifically "The Pedestrian" and Fahrenheit 451. Both stories make central villains of television as the solvent which dissolved social bonds in America (Bradbury's idyllic America is America in the 1920's when everybody had a lawn, a front porch, and long summer evenings.  Not coincidentally, everybody was white.  I don't attribute any innate racism to Mr. Bradbury's nostalgia, I'm just painting a picture.  More like introducing a theme, but you get the idea.)  Here's Mr. Nichols' version, from 20,000 feet (Bradbury at least was at street level):

We have become so wrapped up in our own narcissistic beefs that we will vote against our own interests and against the well-being of ourselves and our neighbors purely as some kind of tribal exercise. This has been going on for 50 years. And this is not limited to one party. We have become surly villagers — me, my family, my little plot of land, and everybody else can go to hell.

And why is that? Because we've all become apathetic little shits, apparently; and Nichols is here to scold us for it.

Well, that’s not America. America prospered, especially in the 20th century, on the exact opposite of that. We created civic associations. I’m an Elk. We contribute to scholarship funds and flag drives. Yet people now won’t do that and then they say, “Why is society so mean and heartless and awful? And why is democracy so callous and ruthless?” Well, we never look at home for those answers.

No True Scotsman, to begin with; and presumably your home is the one where no one looks for answers, not Mr. Nichols' home.  Or more likely that guy's home over there; the guy without a TV who walks the sidewalks at night and whose every window is ablaze with light while the rest of us sit in darkness, the better to see the picture on the tube.  (Bradbury never imagined a house with multiple TeeVees, and everyone watching their own.  What would he make of today, with a screen in every palm?)

Gotta pause here and insert a historical note:

The existence of an alternative to liberal democracy sobered everybody up at various times during the Cold War. You didn’t get up every morning and think that Soviet paratroopers were going to wade ashore in Boston Harbor. But most people knew and understood that there was a giant, nuclear superpower that was our peer competitor that wished us harm, and that their model of government was the opposite of our model of government. 

I'm obviously older than Mr. Nichols, because:  yes, we did get up every morning anticipating invasion. I grew up (as he probably did not) with "duck 'n' cover." I was taught to crouch into a fetal position beneath my tiny metal and wood desk, resting on spindly legs with only a hollow box beneath the wood for books, paper, and pencils (no more mass than that, IOW) as protection while I learned to clasp my hands behind my head on my neck, to protect it from flying objects hurled by the nuclear blast.  Oh, and not to look at the blast, which would melt my eyes out.

This was in elementary school.  We weren't worrying about whether or not the USSR was the opposite of our model of government.  We were worrying about them doing to us what we did to Japan; twice. There’s still an entire literature on it: movies, books, TV shows. They may not be historical documents, but they capture the fear and anxiety of that “Age of Anxiety.” I’m surprised Mr. Nichols is so dismissive of that record.

We're still the only country in the history of the world to have used nuclear weapons. American exceptionalism. It didn’t make us feel guilty; but it did scare hell out of us; that nuclear war would come with Russia. I remember it well. It wasn’t their form of government that scared us the most.  Speaking of history, nothing in the analysis of America in the past 50 years, in Mr. Nichols' interview at least, touches on racism, economic decline of the middle class (the "bubble" that ballooned after WWII and finally burst in the late '60's with the coincidental rise of inflation and equal rights for blacks and women.  White guys have been resentful ever since.  Listen to a few Springsteen songs, you'll get the reasons for some of that.)  This is, in other words, a complex issue; and it may just be the problems stem from fundamental assumptions Mr. Nichols doesn't want to examine.  Instead he just wants to look at attitudes; and some of those he simply doesn't like.  Like Frank Costanza at Festivus, he's gotta lotta problems with you people!

NICHOLS: It’s an existential threat to our security. Our democracy is in danger of collapsing, and our enemies are here for it. And again, we had an administration that was completely in cahoots with our worst enemy, Russia, and nobody seemed to care. The Democrats cared, but not enough. Think of the hearings that the Republicans had over Benghazi. We haven’t even had anything close to that on the Trump administration or Jan. 6. And now we’re arguing about, does the infrastructure bill care enough about the constituency that I care about?

It is inconceivable to me that we are talking about anything except the fact that we are fighting a rearguard action to save the constitutional system of the United States of America. And yet here we are with business as usual.

More Bad Example Theater:  the GOP didn't care about what happened in Libya, they cared about shaming Obama (does no one else remember McConnell's oath to make Obama a one-term President?  Was that an act of apathy, or self-centeredness?  Inquiring minds want to know.) and slamming Hillary Clinton.  That's all they cared about, and it worked.  Pretty much the same way they went after Ms. Clinton's husband (is Mr. Nicholson old enough to remember that?  Or is that history, too?).  They "weaponized" impeachment in the last decade of the last century, and now brazenly accuse the Democrats of doing that to Trump, so they can do it to Biden (who is allegedly incompetent, old, mentally unstable, and a traitor).  Wouldn’t replicating that abandon even the rearguard action, and leave no one defending the system?

As for what we haven't had on Trump or January 6th, I didn't realize years had passed since Trump was POTUS or January 6, 2021. I clearly need a new calendar.  I also need to alter my expectations so that government works like a TeeVee show; isn't 13 weeks enough to resolve all problems until the next season and a new set of problems is written?

But the larger problem with Mr. Nichols' thesis is its grounding in sweeping generalities.  Apathy is the root of our evil, now?  Kathleen Norris wrote a book on the subject; has he read it?  She has offered some thoughts on the subject from the context of these modern times; is he aware? And that's not even touching on real expertise in the subject.  Has he read the work of Robert Wuthnow?  Does he know people have been writing about this subject since Thoreau in America, Eliot in England, and Kierkegaard in Denmark?  Has he studied the issue of declining social clubs and structures and the changes in American life?  Sociologists have and they haven't come up with any easy answers or explanations. What is Mr. Nichols' solution to this problem?  "Get over it!"  "Care about others!"  "Quit being apathetic!"?

I dunno; maybe he has something to say on the subject.  The thing is, I kinda doubt it.  He sounds like he just wants to tell everybody how disgusted he is with them, and then tell 'em to get offa his lawn.  One more national scold is one more thing we don't need.