Touch and Go (31 page)

Gore Vidal uses a phrase, “The United States of Amnesia.” It's on the button. But we've got something even deeper than amnesia. If there is no past, we can
invent
our own past. And so we invent our own past.

In our political elections, we vote on the basis of
absence
of memory. What was the New Deal, what did it do? What is Social Security, what does it do? Why did it come into being? Has everyone forgotten something called the Great American Depression? The grandchildren, boys and girls whose granddaddies had their butts saved by big government, are the ones saying, “Too much big government!” They condemn the very thing that allowed their ancestors to carry on when the spine of the Free Market had shattered.

Memory itself is part of the brain. A brain is like a muscle, and unless it's used, it rots away and becomes useless. We haven't used our memory to call on the past because it's always the
present
, this
moment
, that is it. We have the news today about what's the latest—Iraq's got weapons of mass destruction. The next day we find it's untrue. We, unabashed, go on to other matters. Our memory is also determined by what we see and hear, and what we see and hear depends to a great extent on television, and bit by bit we've gotten a media that's in the hands of fewer and fewer people.

We have been deceived so often, the memory of the past is the memory of so much deceit. We erase it.

We want to be left alone and not to think of a past that might disturb us. Might disturb what? Might disturb our sense of complacency, our sense of satisfaction.

Chester Kolar, technician, two-flat homeowner. “I'm cold to it, these war photos. The only remark of me and my friends is, ‘What do you know about that?' What does John Q. Public know what should happen? Let's not stick our nose into something we know nothing about. We should know once a month, let's have a review of the news: what will happen and what has happened. What will happen these people should be worried about painting their rooms . . . they should become industrious.”

Fortunately, there is Stanley Cygan, a retired steel-mill laborer. “I want to know, what is [speaking precisely, using all five syllables] re-la-tiv-i-ty. I ask professor at Hull House, they can't explain to me. I must know the meaning—I know it is important—re-la-tiv-i-ty.”

He is the next-door neighbor of Chester Kolar. He, too, lives in a two-flat. Thus, we have two Americans.

 

 

I THINK ALL human beings want the same thing. They'd like a good job, friends, happy family. They'd like to be undisturbed by things and to live in an ideal world. If they could live in a vacuum, that would be perfect.

We can't; we are related to the world whether we want to be or not. And now, more than ever, we are a part of the world.

I have a memory of something in 1945, a very great moment, to me the most hopeful moment in my life and perhaps even in the life of the planet: when the United Nations was formed in San Francisco. It was such a fantastic moment!
That
is a memory.

After World War II, we had a boom period, things were easy, and all the talk about another world that could be, a world that was possible, was forgotten. I remember the words of the brilliant radio writer Norman Corwin: “Post proofs that brotherhood is not so wild a dream as those who profit by postponing it pretend.” Although we were the strongest, the most powerful, the most generous of all the nations, at the same time we were
part
of the world community. The memory is now so warped that when the president said: “To hell with the U.N.!” thousands applauded. Fifty years ago, who would have dreamed of that occurring?

Memory. How can we have memory if we don't have any knowledge? If we have no history, no memory of what happened yesterday, let alone what happened fifty years ago?

It's ironic that a thing like the GI Bill, which greatly benefited World War II veterans, has fed into our forgetfulness. The GI Bill gave returning veterans money to go to college, and in the case of many, the GI was the first in the family to attain a college degree. The GI Bill helped them buy houses in the new suburbs, like Park Forest, or Levittown. As a result, something happens to this new American. He is a college graduate and a homeowner, and suddenly the term “middle-class” belongs to him. All his life he wanted to be something above that blue-collar guy. He is helped, of course. But at the end of World War II, something else happened: the Cleaver family and consumerism. He's now part of a new class, and he wants more.

Farmworker and organizer Jessie de la Cruz described one of the people most virulently against the Chicano workers' struggle to form a union as a guy who was once a Joad. He said: “I was an Okie. I own this! I worked hard.” He could have been little Winfield Joad. Remember that little boy in
The Grapes of Wrath
? What happened
to him after they found the camp? Winfield fought in World War II, got the GI Bill, went to college, and studied agronomy. And he bought a house! He became part of the affluent society; he made it. The result? All history is forgotten.

What happens to all Alzheimer's sufferers is tragic. What I'm talking about is what I call a
national
Alzheimer's—a whole country has lost its memory. When there's no
yesterday
, a national memory becomes more and more removed from what it once was, and forgets what it once wanted to be.

We're sinking under our national Alzheimer's disease. With Alzheimer's you forget what you did yesterday. With Alzheimer's finally, you forget not only what you did, but also who you are. In many respects, we have forgotten who we are.

We're now in a war based on an outrageous lie, and we are held up to the ridicule and contempt of the world. What has happened? Have we had a lobotomy performed on us? Or is it something else? I'm saying it is the daily evil of banality.

A
poll involving millions of viewers was recently taken by a couple of TV channels. Question: Who was America's best leader ever? Among the candidates were Abe, George, Thomas J., and Franklin D. The winner, hands down—Ronnie Reagan . . . and nobody laughed.

We declared war on Grenada. Most of us had no idea who or what Grenada was. Was it one of the Seven Wonders of the World? The dustup involved a number of American dental students who may have been experiencing bicuspid trouble. We triumphed over Grenada . . . and nobody laughed.

(1998: General Augusto Pinochet, the former president of Chile, was indicted in an international tribunal as a war criminal and mass murderer.)

February 15, 2006: A huge op-ed piece appears in the Chicago
Tribune
. It is headed: IRAQ NEEDS A PINOCHET. “I think all patriotic and informed people can agree; it would be great if the U.S. could find an Iraqi Augusto Pinochet. In fact, an Iraqi Pinochet would be better than an Iraqi Castro. Both propositions strike me as so self-evident as to require no explanation.” The op-ed is signed: “Jonah Goldberg, Editor of
The National Review Online
” . . . and nobody laughed.

John Kenneth Galbraith told me a funny story. Several years ago,
Public Television featured Milton Friedman, the godhead of the good ship Free Marketry. There were ten or twelve hours weekly. Following that series was one featuring Galbraith, who expressed a wholly different point of view. Galbraith was given equal time. There was one difference: Friedman's lectures had no rebuttals. Every one of Galbraith's shows had a Free Market–driven rebuttal . . . and nobody laughed.

My old friend, Philip Clay Roettinger, CIA whistle-blower, came right to the point. “I got word in 1954 that we were planning to overthrow the government of Guatemala. A fellow came to my office and said: ‘We're planning to overthrow a government.' Simple as that.”

“Did he give any reasons?” I wondered.

“No, no, no, you didn't have to do that,” Phil said, and laughed. He elaborated:

M
any of the readers are acquainted with the name of David Dellinger. But they never knew the man, nor his father, Raymond. We know of the celebrated Conspiracy 8 trial in Chicago as a result of the tumultuous happenings during the Democratic presidential convention in 1968. Governor Kerner, in a governmental paper, referred to it as something of a police riot as well as a study of the two Americas. It was a devastating report.

Hundreds of thousands of the country's young, as well as furious Vietnam veterans who felt betrayed by their leaders, did battle with Daley the Elder and his city's finest. Eight of the country's leading activists, objecting to the pursuance of our misadventure in Vietnam, were tried for encouraging violent behavior on the part of the many.

Of those eight, three were iconic in stature. The late Abbie Hoffman had become renowned for his wit, especially at the expense of the doddering jurist, Judge Julius Hoffman. Tom Hayden was involved in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and author of the Port Huron Statement. The third was the eldest, Dave Dellinger, a lifelong pacifist and activist. During World War II, he had done time as a conscientious objector in a federal prison.

I was guest at a reunion between Dellinger and a group of seminarians
he'd studied with at Union Theological Seminary. They recalled old times at the C.O. jail as they watched a number of ball games, all the while maintaining their objection to the killings in any war. The common sentiment: Whoever won in an armed struggle, it wouldn't be the people.

Dellinger was voted Wakefield, Massachusetts' top athlete of the half-century, as well as being awarded an Oxford scholarship. However, in 1936, when he heard of the war in Spain against the Fascist Franco, he volunteered. By the time he returned, he was a committed conscientious objector, no matter what the war.

From then on he knew his assignment in life. He had by the time of the trial become a figure of front-page repute. He was certainly the most stalwart of the eight. The trial was something of a farce and the journalists in town, especially the redoubtable Mike Royko, had a high old time of it. The result was that all of the convictions were reversed on appeal. Dave went back to work again, objecting to all wars, wherever they might be.

Almost all of the above is known to the great many. But what about his old man, what about his father? Raymond Dellinger had been, all of his working life, a lawyer, a quite conservative and successful one. He was early on a close friend of Calvin Coolidge, who for a time was governor of Massachusetts, and later our president.

Ray Dellinger was more than simply conservative; he was actively so. Yet folks in his community and beyond knew all about his son, who was vigorously against much of that in which his father believed. The father was far more than embarrassed; he felt humiliated. You may understand that son and dad did not get along at all. The son was a cut to the father's heart.

The years went by. On special occasions, there would be family gatherings. Say it's Mrs. Dellinger's birthday. Dave's mother buys a special gown for the occasion. The father is in black tie, of course. Even Dave, who years earlier followed St. Francis of Assisi's example and traveled around in rags, would wear a tie for the occasion.

There is Dave's memory of his father, a formal gent, subject to all
ritual. Yet there was something else Dave recognized in the man. Something wholly unexpected, yet often occurring.

During the sumptuous dinner, at one unbelievably horrendous moment, the young waitress, perhaps it was her first day, perhaps it was sheer nervousness—the dress, the patrons (they were all big shots) may have been too much—spilled a bowl of lobster bisque on Dave's mother's gown. Silence and embarrassment, a tightening of lips, a raising of brows. Not a second hand moved, not the semblance of a pause . . . Dave's father murmured in head-lowered fashion: “It was my fault. Did you notice what I did? I was holding forth and gesturing with my hands when they struck the tray and over it tipped.”

He apologized to the trembling girl, who must have felt unbelievably relieved. She was the only one who knew, aside from Dave, that his father was lying. He wasn't within ten feet of that tray. Never once did Dave ever observe his father embarrassing, let alone bullying, a person serving their table.