CURRENT WAR REVEALS HUGE CULTURAL DIVIDE IN AMERICA

A recurrent theme for me is the astonishing cultural divide that exists between the way most ordinary Americans live their lives and view the world, as against the perceptions of many cultural, media and intellectual elites regarding America, our economy, our culture and our way of life. The current war in the Persian Gulf has vividly reemphasized this dichotomy, this remarkable disconnect between our supposed cultural leaders and those who are led. I cast my lot with the latter.

The following editorial from The Wall Street Journal amplifies these themes in very thoughtful fashion.

The Heart of the Country

The most striking thing about all the yellow ribbons and American flags seen now is not merely that they appeared, but that they appeared so quickly ... The ribbons and flags speak support for America's fighting men and women, but perhaps something more is going on in the public mood. There is a sense that a larger force, pent up and held down for years, is behind all those flags. They hang with a still and quiet pride. But they also look defiant.

Remember the Supreme Court flag-desecration case and the fight over a constitutional flag amendment? There aren't too many public-policy issues that pervade public consciousness, but this one did ... One image we recall vividly from the time was of a flag-waving march through part of Chicago, punctuated by one sign: "Try to burn THESE flags you ..."

Why so defiant? Why the sudden outburst now of ribbons and flags? We think the answer lies in the cultural tensions that have held this country for 25 years, since Vietnam.

The mood of America tends always to be an unsettled mix of two cultures. An elite or intellectual culture, with access to print and cameras, criticizes constantly and issues judgments about the rush of ideas, trends and values coursing through the country's daily life. The mainstream culture, the subject of these judgments, goes about its business, tries to do well in life and votes in presidential elections. A healthy democracy accepts the creative tension caused by elites trying to push established values in new directions, but the post-Vietnam agenda of many elites in the United States was a little different. Instead of changing or improving the older values, they were going to repudiate them.

Take patriotism. Patritotism is normally a common value, not a battleground. After Vietnam, however, an active ideology developed around the idea that patriotism was about the American military and American assertiveness and that was dangerous. Imperial overstretch. Waste, fraud and abuse. No more ROTC programs for the Ivy League.

Hanging out the flag came to be seen as an activity for blue-collar workers, right-wing Republicans and Southern yahoos. But virtuous people began to give up this tradition; for them, the flag was part of something that good conscience could not support. Even people with patriotic instincts got the message. The flag stayed in the attic.

The new, adverserial culture had other judgments. In the years that passed from Vietnam into Watergate and through the reflexive opposition to the Reagan presidency, an intellectual fascination with failure, limits and the contrary seemed to develop. America can't compete. Its products are junk. Homelessness, poverty and drugs stand as an indictment of the economic growth of the 1980s. The Greed Decade. Junk bonds for a junk economy. Short-term focus. Twin deficits destroying our grandchildren. A nation that has forgotten how to save. Real incomes are flat. Mindless consumption. The Japanese are buying everything. An undertaxed people. Still wasting energy. Polluting the environment. America home of the grim and the grave.

Within this catalogue of complaint one can find pieces that are false, arguable or true. But whatever the number of America's deficiencies, one is entitled to ask: What about the denominator? What about the sum total of daily effort, production, good works and individual achievement that coexisted alongside the problems of this period? It is difficult to deny that the sum of this American effort is a record of unparalleled social and economic achievement.

A vibrant intellectual culture would have found a place for recognizing these achievements even as it pushed society to address its weakest parts. But the American elites never regained their balance in the two decades after Vietnam, instead writing and broadcasting about a United States that the average American wouldn't recognize, or admit.

If there was any hint of the present mood, it was the U.S. invasion of Grenada, an event that revealed a large disconnection between the general population and its elites. Assessing the event, a very modest use of American military might, sophisticated politicians and commentators cringed. The public cheered, effusively. It should have been apparent then that beneath the soured surface of American politics, some strong, deep currents were running in the opposite direction.

Now the U.S. is again engaged in something large whose outcome depends fundamentally on America's ability to succeed. The flags, the yellow ribbons, the 90 percent support level this surge is coming from sources much deeper in the country's faith in itself than the performance of its hardware and people in the Gulf. For nearly 25 years, the strength and success of this underlying self-confidence have been widely ignored. It is time for a reassessment.

Wall Street Journal

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As with ordinary Americans everywhere, Cape Girardeau continues to participate in the magnificent surge described in the above, splendid editorial from the Journal. On Saturday, February 23, a Support-the-Troops in Desert Storm parade will be held in Cape Girardeau. Details are elsewhere in a news story in today's edition. Come on, everybody let's bury some more of that corrosive nonsense from the '60s.

See you there.