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Liberal Boomers and Courage

What is it about liberal boomers and courage?

I guess the short answer would be that they OD’d on the John Wayne-style propaganda of the fifties and early sixties and decided that, as Dick Cheney once said, they had “other priorities” for themselves and their children. As a late boomer myself, I very much understand this rejection of the hyper-masculinized, faux patriotic tripe turned out by the media elites born in the teens, twenties and thirties. Indeed, given that the ghost of this childish propaganda still gallops quite happily across great swathes of the nation, I applaud the ongoing efforts of Glenn Greenwald and others to demonstrate how flimsily contrived so much of it really was.

What is less clear to me, however, is how and why this intelligent reaction against a cartoonish and bellicose conception of bravery—one which sadly still has much relevance on the Fox-consuming Right—morphed, on the so-called Left, into a snoring indifference toward the very ideas of courage and courageous actions. Look around.

When was the last time you heard a well-known person of the Left (or what passes for it today) talk about courage or taking a stand on principle in the face of overwhelming political odds simply because it is the right thing to do?

No, the generation that slept and munched-out below posters bearing Che Guevara’s “I’d rather die on my feet than live kneeling down,” that used to tell stories of Allende’s machine gun-vs-dive-bomber defense of the Moneda Palace, now prattles earnestly on about requiring a veto-proof majority, about Obama’s need to “say certain things” (a.k.a. placate powerful interests) to get into office, and about “not letting the perfect become the enemy of the possible.”

The political and social sub-culture that used to loudly proclaim its inconformity with existing frames of reality, now assiduously hectors itself and others about the need to work within the set of options provided by a carefully circumscribed political and media system.

That the same system is, arguably, several times more corrupt and schlerotic than the one they once fantasized about overthrowing, or at least radically modifying, seems to matter little. It’s as if they were still bent, in their late 40s, 50s and early 60s, on apologizing to their now-sainted daddies of the “Greatest Generation” for having questioned their incandescent imperial wisdom all those years ago. “Look at me Dad, I’m serious the way you and your martini-drinking World War II vet buddies were serious. Really Dad. We can do Empire too!”

Some one needs to remind these folks that, believe it or not, young people sometimes get it right when they sense a great and gathering stench over the land and that while a detailed study of one’s “pragmatic possibilities” is generally advisable, it is seldom what allows people to change the course of history or even the course of their own lives.

Boris Yeltsin was a drunk and a grafter, but his gut-level decision to climb on top of a tank 18 years ago today, changed the course of history. Had David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel been at his side surely they would have advised against it.

Whether liberal America wants to admit or not, George Bush Jr. modified the core assumptions of American foreign and domestic policy more than any President since Franklin Roosevelt. The results, from our ho-hum embrace of having every word we write online or speak into the telephone examined by the NSA, to the official doctrine of pre-emptive war (the same thing we found so horrifying and unacceptable when Hitler used it to invade the Sudetenland) and everything in between, are there for all to see.

George Bush was a fool who, at the height of his powers, had only a very slim majority in both houses of Congress. But he did have courage. It was, of course a stupid, ill-informed, racist, delusional form of courage. But guess what? By sticking to these perverse articles of faith, by sending clear and repeated message to his political rivals that he wouldn’t retreat from what he wanted, he changed our lives, and our children’s lives, forever.

Americans love to believe in the perpetually self-correcting nature of their political system. A look at history in other places, however, tells us that this faith is naïve in the extreme. To gain back what we have lost, indeed to even get back to where we were on September 10th, 2001, is going to take courage, lot’s of “take your best shot and I’ll still stand my ground” courage. Unfortunately, Obama and his people, almost all good, culturally refined and ambitious baby-boomers, appear to have no understanding of this salient fact.

20 August 2009