Saturday, August 17, 2024

"Attention Wandered"

The small town where I went to college in deep East Texas, a place in the "Piney Woods" that more resembles eastern Louisiana than most people's image of Texas (Monument Valley, from John Wayne movies. Did I tell you about the movie set in Texas on the Red River, the border with Oklahoma? There were mountains in the background. There are no mountains in the country between the Appalachians and the Rockies. It's why they're called the "plains states." Oklahoma barely has hills. Anyway...). The Piney Woods have been accurately described as the "Pine Curtain," because the culture is near impenetrable to change.  But in that small town, in the '50's, in the middle of the "Red Scare" you hear so much about, the people of the town entered into a community project to build a hotel in order to attract visitors.  It's still there, though in private hands, now.  It was built, however, as a community enterprise, for the benefit of all, by the community itself.

In the town where I was raised, just north of that town, the most prominent bank in town was the People's Bank.  Only when a mutual friend pointed it out and asked jokingly if we were commies (in the '60's), did I ponder the meaning of the title.  It simply didn't occur to me people had nothing to do with capitalism.  Of course, contemplating communism brought the ills and evils of capitalism into relief, but I wasn't there yet.

It's just interesting that during the '50's, when the "Red Scare" supposedly had us all scared (rather like Welles' famous "Panic Broadcast," I think that fear is exaggerated in reach and breadth in hindsight), the real fear of commies came later.  McCarthyism was bad, but it affected Hollywood and D.C., which is one reason McCarthy lasted so long (and it failed when McCarthy tried to reach beyond the State Department, full of publicly unknown bureaucrats).  There was a knee-jerk rejection of "Commies" (it was the excuse majeur for Vietnam), but in general it was a label stuck on anyone who questioned capitalism. And few in the country really did.

Now it's back, or wants to be.  And it wants to be a general shibboleth waved toward anyone who can be tarred by it.  Not surprisingly, it doesn't seem to be working.  It never really worked as a general complaint in the '50's and '60's.  Sure, it got tossed around against anti-war protesters and MLK; but it never really stuck.  It still doesn't.

More interesting is the determination of the media to treat Trump the way they actually treated King before he died. King's utterances were marginally reported, and whatever sheen he had from having a dream, faded rapidly after he condemned the war at Riverside Church.  He only recovered his reputation in death.  Trump, similarly, is not being given the attention he richly deserves.  Maybe in death we can discuss what a monster of selfishness and greed he was, what a babbling brook of idiocy he proved himself to be in 2024.  Maybe.

I'm sure we'll decide that was the widespread impression held by all, especially the press, at the time.  If only people had listened....
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